I shifted. Not all the way. Just a little. Just enough to see what they might have seen. Darkness, yes, but so much more.
The world around me changed from the blackness of night to bright, bursting colors. Oranges and reds and yellows, swirling in a perpetual storm where lightning and tornadoes converged. And Reyes, seemingly so serene, burned brightest of all. Engulfed in flames, a true child of hell. But at the center, at his core, was the darkness. The same darkness he tried to hide. He tried to overcome.
I shifted back to the tangible plane, changed into a nightie that fell just past my hips, and slid in bed beside him to spoon, my favorite utensil. I was only there for about five seconds, nestling against him, burying my face in his hair, when he spoke, his voice deep with sleep.
“Did you do it?” he asked, the tenor of his voice as smooth as he.
“Did I do what?”
He took the hand I’d draped over him and lifted my fingers to his mouth, scalding the tips one by one as he tasted me, then said, “Drop the case.”
I decided it was high time I broke in our new sofa: Captain Kirk.
Captain Kirk wasn’t as comfortable as I thought he would be. Not after snuggling with a hell-god. I was able to get in about three hours before Mr. Coffee began serenading me. Whoever invented a coffeemaker with a timer deserved a Nobel Prize. He’d probably saved more lives than Prozac.
I slipped on a pair of bottoms and tiptoed past the angel lounging against my living room wall, the arch of his wings brushing our twelve-foot ceiling, to get to the kitchen. The same kitchen I was fairly certain used to be my neighbor’s apartment. Reyes had remodeled the entire apartment building.
Thankfully, he bought it first.
But he took out all the apartments on the entire top floor and reconstructed it to create only two: ours and Cookie’s. Now I lived in an apartment that resembled a Park Avenue penthouse. And it had the kitchen to back that up. Gorgeous industrial appliances. Deep Tuscan hues. And my favorite part: a butler’s pantry.
I cracked up every time I thought about it. Still, if we ever did get a butler, he’d have his own little corner of the world. With running water and a wine rack. The lush.
Part of me wanted to offer the celestial stalker a cup of joe, but I didn’t want him to stick around. If Reyes found one of them in our apartment, he could come unglued. And gluing that man back together was not an easy task.
It was still dark out when I padded back to the captain and sipped on my cup o’ panacea. But even with a cure-all flooding my cells, my brain felt like one of those inflatable bounce houses. I had so many question marks jumping and colliding and twisting arms and breaking ankles, pretty much like a real bounce house at a seven-year-old’s birthday party.
What had ADA Parker meant when he called me a god eater? I mean, Reyes was a god and I liked to nibble on him, but what an odd thing to call someone. Unless I was drunk when I hit an all-night drive-through and ordered chicken McGodlets – with fries, of course – I’d never eaten a god in my life. Still, I bet they’d be good with ketchup.
And hell was going to freeze over? I just thought that was a saying.
Then there was Uncle Bob. No idea what got his panties in a twist, but he’d best iron them out pronto. And Reyes. I could only take men ordering me around for so long. It was like we were in the Middle Ages. If they’d had programmable coffeemakers. And cell phones. And water bras.
But possibly the most important question mark bouncing around my brain was that of Dawn Brooks, the little girl who was very likely abducted by the Fosters. If that were the case, however, where was she now and why would Shawn corroborate their alibi?
I needed to bring in my FBI BFF ASAP, but I doubted Agent Carson got to the office before eight o’clock. I checked my Bugs Bunny watch. Two hours to go.
Which meant I had two hours to get to know the newest member of our clan. When Reyes remodeled, he opened up the storage units on top of the building, leaving the metal beams exposed and turning the whole thing into a massive skylight.
But there was something else really special Reyes had left exposed. A little blond boy. As in tiny. As in way too young to be hanging out – literally, his feet dangling over the side of whatever beam he happened to be on – in the scaffolding of a twenty-four-foot ceiling. He’d been there since we moved back in, and I had yet to coax him down. Although, admittedly, throwing bread at him was probably not the best way to win his trust, but I was afraid to throw anything harder. Huge plates of glass overhead.
I looked up. He was climbing again. When he wasn’t dangling his feet over the side of a beam, he was climbing one, then sliding back down it. Over and over again.
Every time he slid, however, my heart ended up in my throat. The boy couldn’t have been more than two years old. He was just a baby, climbing and sliding and dangling from beams that stood twenty-four feet high in the center of our living room.
But this time I was prepared. I’d hauled a ladder up from the basement. The kind that elongates and props up against whatever structure one wishes to scale.
Having finished my first cup, which was really like an appetizer, I dragged the ladder out from the butler’s pantry, where I’d stashed it. It was metal and noisy no matter how quiet I tried to be. I cringed when I knocked it against a wall, waited to make sure the man of the house wasn’t going to come check on me, then pulled the two parts until it was as long as it would go. The next part was a bit trickier. I tried to balance it against one of the beams overheard, but it was still too short.
The angel, who’d been ignoring me completely, looked on with something akin to mild interest, while I did some cyphering in my head. Never a good idea. Still, the way I saw it, I could use Captain Kirk to give me those extra inches I needed to reach the beam and climb up to the boy.
I put the ladder back down, almost strained a kidney moving the captain into place, then picked up the ladder again, knocking over a lamp in the process. I cringed again, but miraculously, it didn’t break. And who better to perform a miracle than a celestial stalker-like being?