“They have slaves in hell?”
“Apparently. Crazy, huh?”
“Daeva. I like it.”
I explained to her what happened in great detail, mostly because I was having a hard time wrapping my head around everything myself. When I finished, she just kind of sat there. And stared. For a really long time.
I looked over at Mr. Wong. “I think I broke her.”
“No, I’m okay, but holy cow, Charley. This just gets deeper and deeper. I mean, when you told me you were the grim reaper, I thought, ‘What more can there be?’ But it just goes so much further than that. And now the Twelve? Seriously? It’s endless.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. You didn’t sign up for any of this.”
“Are you kidding? I love this shit. I wouldn’t trade my life for the world. Well, maybe the world. Is the Dealer in the market for a slightly used, thirty-something-year-old soul with a few dents in it? I could use a mansion in the Keys. And a Bentley. With chrome rims and a killer sound system.”
I laughed, partly out of relief. “I figured you more as a Rolls-Royce kind of girl.”
“I’d take either.”
“I bet he’d take you up on that offer. I liked him,” I added, picturing his face.
“The Dealer?”
“Yeah. I mean, he was so young. Or, well, he looked young.”
“You have such a soft spot for kids. Are you sure that’s not what you’re feeling?”
“I love kids. They go great with fries and a shake.”
She chuckled. “How does Reyes feel about him?”
“He would rip out his spine if I let him.”
She patted my knee. “I would expect nothing less from the son of evil incarnate. He’s a good guy.”
“Yes, he is,” I agreed. “Even though he has a tendency to annoy me to the lowest levels of hell. Where there is no coffee.”
“But he looks amazing in an apron.”
“Right?”
We both fell into a dream state for a few seconds.
I snapped out of it first. “Okay, well, go to bed. We have a lot to do tomorrow. No rest for the wicked, and all that crap.”
* * *
Cookie was right. Reyes was a good guy. He’d done so much for me. And put up with so much from me. Then again, I had to put up with his alpha-esque personality. Lucky for him, I had excellent self-control. Otherwise, I’d end up kicking his ass every other day, leaving him fetal and whimpering, and then where would we be?
I got ready for bed and changed into something more comfortable, namely a T-shirt with a pair of bottoms that said, PEEL TO REVEAL PRIZE. After weaving my hair into a soft braid, I curled onto my most fabulous mattress, the one I got at a going-out-of-business sale, and snuggled into the thick folds of my Bugs Bunny comforter.
But even insulated, I could feel Reyes’s heat. It leached through the wall and surrounded me in a gentle, soothing warmth. He’d been living next door for a few weeks now, and I wondered if I’d ever get so accustomed to being enveloped in his delicious heat that I wouldn’t notice it. Probably not. Standing next to him was like standing next to an inferno—to me, anyway. And pretty much only to me. If Cookie had been there, she wouldn’t have felt it, which made no sense. Humans could feel the cold of the departed when they were near. Both the departed’s cold and Reyes’s heat were supernatural occurrences. Why could they feel one and not the other?
But the fact that Reyes’s heat could penetrate walls had surprised me the first time I noticed it. Our beds butted up against the same wall, and I could tell the minute he crawled into bed every night. And not just because I was with him about half the time when that happened. Even in my own apartment, I could feel him. He was always hottest when he first crawled into bed. As he drifted to sleep, his heat dissipated a bit. He was still unnaturally warm even in slumber, but not so much as when he was awake. And especially not so much as when he was angry. Or, well, in the throes of passion. Scalding would be an appropriate adjective for that.
But the heat wafting toward me now had the consistency of anger. I lifted a hand and placed my palm on the Sheetrock that separated us. It was scorching, almost painful.
Yep, anger.
He’d been lying in bed, probably thinking of the best way to dispose of the Dealer. I would have to convince him otherwise for the time being. The Dealer was different from other Daeva. He’d been born on earth. He was, in every sense of the word, human. Partly, at least. And very much like Reyes himself.
So if Reyes was going to stew in his own anger, fine. I did what I had to do, and he would just have to learn to live with it. We were nigh affianced. He had to take the good with the bad. And besides, I could give Reyes Alexander Farrow something much better to think about.
I wondered if he could feel my emotions through the wall, because his heat grazed over my fingertips and along my palm as though purposefully. As though it had an agenda.
Reyes could do amazing things with his essence. He could send it out. He could skim it over my skin. He could bury it deep inside me until I writhed in ecstasy. I wondered if I could do that, too.
I’d left my body before. I’d killed a man in the process, but from that experience, I knew it was possible, but could I control it the way Reyes could? He’d come to me hundreds of times, even when we were growing up, before I knew who, or what, he was. And now I’d done it. My essence, my spirit, had left my body. Could I do it again? The first time was under extreme duress. I wasn’t duressed at the moment. A little stressed, maybe. A little befuddled at what had happened with the Dealer, with everything he’d told us, but not duressed.