I whizzed around a little red Corvette to make my exit sometime this century, wondering why nobody paid me to drive professionally, because I kind of rocked at it.
“Dude, calling me a greeter is like calling Saint Peter a ticket taker.”
“Whatever. Where are we going?” she asked.
“Well, if you must know, I need to talk to a guy I know who may or may not be a demon.” I could ask my intended for the information I needed, but he was currently on my list of persons resembling and/or wallowing in fecal matter.
“I knew it!” she said, glaring at me. “You’re in league with the devil.”
“Duh. I’m affianced to him. Or, well, his son. I guess that makes me ‘in league’ with him, but you can’t judge people by their in-laws. In-laws are all crazy. Everyone knows that.”
She shrugged. “That’s true. My sister’s in-laws wrote the book on crazy.”
“Willa? Really? Who did she marry?”
“Oh, no you don’t.”
“What?” I said, taking an extremely sharp right just off the exit.
“You don’t get to change the subject like that. And you never even liked Willa.”
“Sure I did.” Where Jessica got the idea that I didn’t like her sister, I’d never know.
“You spit on her.”
Oh. Yeah. I did. Kind of. “I didn’t actually spit on her,” I said, taking another extremely sharp right followed by a left, just as sharp. It was odd how sharp those suckers got the faster I drove.
“You’re going to flip us over,” Jessica said in protest.
“Please, I so have this. And I spit on the ground in front of her. It was a gesture.”
“Of what? Hatred?”
“More like contempt, but yeah, at the time it was a little of both.”
“Why?”
I did the deadpan thing. “You have a very selective memory.” The last thing I was going to do was remind my ex-BFF that I’d spit at her sister’s feet only after I dragged said sister off her when Willa had attacked like a berserker craving the taste of blood. And all over a pair of socks Jessica borrowed without asking.
Lesson learned: Never borrow socks. From anyone. Ever.
We were almost at our destination when I began to get worried about Reyes. If he didn’t detect me out and about, he’d never know I left the place without him. As far as he was concerned, I was up in my office, eating.
In an act of desperation, I summoned Angel – a thirteen-year-old gang kid who’d died in the ’90s – my best investigator. But he’d been AWOL for a couple of weeks. Ever since I found out he wasn’t exactly who he said he was. From the first time we’d met, he told me all about his family, how his mother was a hairdresser and had a shop with his aunt. He told me about his nieces and nephews, his uncles and cousins. And it had all been a lie. He’d been posing as his best friend, the one who’d died the same fateful night he did, and pretending his friend’s mother, along with her entire family, was his.
Who could blame him? He’d come from nothing. Grew up with nothing. Unfortunately, he thought that just being Angel – the precious boy I’d grown to love the way someone who’s grown numb to the pain of tattoos learns to love them – wasn’t enough. As though he could ever fall short in my eyes. He could be a royal pain in my donk, but he was family.
So, I understood why he did what he did. Deep down, he knew that – but he was embarrassed nonetheless and hadn’t come around for a while. I was trying not to force the issue, but I needed advice. And grim reaper info.
He popped into the backseat, one foot on the hump thing in the middle of the floorboard, an elbow propped onto his knee as he, too, stared out the window to pout. I had a lot of pouters today. I really wanted to say, A pouter’s a doubter, but couldn’t think of how it applied to this situation.
“Hey, mister,” I said, hoping to brighten the somber mood.
“Who’s the babe?” he asked without looking at me or Jessica.
She turned around, fuming with a spark of indignity until she spotted him. He had his usual bandanna headband worn low over his brow with a smattering of peach fuzz along his young jaw. He’d been on the verge of becoming a man. No, he’d become a man the night he stopped his best friend from firing into the house of a rival gang member by crashing the car they were in and killing them both.
Jessica chilled instantly. “That’s rude,” she said, facing front again.
“Sorry.”
“You haven’t been around much,” I said, looking at him in the rearview. “No complaints about how you were in the middle of one of your nieces’ birthday parties or at a quinceañera when I summoned you?”
“You know they aren’t my family.”
I pulled Misery over, even though we were only a couple of blocks from our destination. Turning in my seat, I nailed him with my best nurturing glower. “Angel, you heard what Mrs. Garza said. You were like a son to her, and she welcomed you into her life with open arms.”
And she had. Mrs. Garza, who’d been hoping the presence she was feeling was her son, was not terribly disappointed when it turned out to be her son’s best friend. She’d loved Angel. I could tell. But getting him to face that fact now could be difficult. Stubborn little shit.
He scoffed softly, pulled in his lower lip, and studied the pattern on Misery’s seat cushion.