Death and the Girl Next Door d-1

by Darynda Jones

  The mental image of the scene played over and over in my mind as we walked home, wondering how Jared fit into the picture. It made no sense. Elliot Davis died of an aneurysm. What did that have to do with anything?

  Brooke and I decided to do a little more investigating by way of my grandparents until Glitch got out of football practice. I couldn’t imagine what a team manager did, but the guy rarely missed a practice and never missed a game. His job must have been really important, whatever it entailed.

  “Hey, Gram,” I said, strolling into the kitchen with Brooke in tow. Grandma was a couple inches taller than either of us, but that wasn’t saying much. She was thin with light gray hair and soft baby blues that Grandpa said made all the boys’ hearts go pitter-pat. He would wriggle his brows and assure me she’d been the prime catch of the season. It cracked me up.

  “Hey, kids. I’m trying a new recipe for the gang.”

  The gang she referred to was her bingo group. She and Grandpa played bingo at least once a week at the church Grandpa pastored, so that made it almost a religious experience in their eyes.

  “It smells wonderful,” I said, plopping my books onto the kitchen table. The store and our kitchen were separated by a pocket door, so Grandma could work in the house when we didn’t have customers. I often did the same on my shifts, concocting all manner of salsas in the kitchen until the bell rang, announcing a potential sale. My peppered red chile was the best.

  Brooklyn tiptoed to look into the pot. “You need any taste-testers? We’re available all afternoon and have excellent taste buds.”

  Grandma chuckled and handed us a bowl of chips as she stirred. We dipped freely of the chile con queso and sank our teeth into a spicy, crunchy kind of heaven.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Brooke said, her mouth half full. “This is incredible.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I agreed, going in for another test.

  “I made plenty, so I’ll leave you a bowl.”

  “Thanks, Grandma,” I said.

  “You girls aren’t double-dipping, are you?”

  I turned as Grandpa walked in through the back.

  “Hey, Pastor,” Brooke said, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Hey, Grandpa.”

  He placed his cap on its usual hook and walked over for a hug, squeezing both of us at the same time. “Well, now that you two have tested the fare, I guess I can have a go without the threat of imminent death hanging over my head.” When Brooklyn looked up at him in surprise, he said, “Oh, yeah, this woman has been trying to kill me for years.” He shook an accusing chip at Grandma. “Didn’t pix tell you?”

  She turned toward me, her brows raised in question.

  “He’s right,” I said between bites. “She tried liquid Drano once, but he could taste it in the food, so she had to get more creative.”

  “Now, now,” Grandma said. “That Drano thing was just a big misunderstanding.” She winked at Brooklyn, and we both laughed at my grandparents’ teasing. They were so fun.

  While Grandpa was a pastor, he made preaching look more like stand-up comedy than a lesson on the teachings of the Bible, so we had a pretty big congregation. He had a thick head of white hair, soft gray eyes, and a wide, solid frame. He wasn’t particularly tall either, but at least my grandparents could see over the seats in the movie theater. They were my mom’s parents. I’d never met my other set of grandparents. They died before I was born. But I had this set, and I was perfectly happy with them. When they weren’t lecturing me.

  “Can I ask you guys a question?”

  Grandma spared me a quick glance as she poured us our own bowl of queso. “Absolutely.”

  “You know down in the Abo Pass where it turns three times really sharp and then levels off?”

  “Right,” Grandpa said, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “The turns past the Missions?”

  “That’s it,” Brooke said, heading to the fridge for a soda.

  “Sure do. That’s pretty far,” he said, wondering what we were up to.

  “We’re not going out there or anything,” I assured him. “We were just wondering what’s there.” I couldn’t help but think Jared might have found some kind of shelter nearby, if there was any to be had, maybe in someone’s barn or shed.

  He rubbed his chin in thought, but Grandma beat him to the punch line. “The old Davis mansion is out there,” she said. “And the Aragon homestead.”

  Brooklyn’s head popped up from behind the fridge door. “The Davis mansion? I’d forgotten about that.”

  So had I. And it was in the same area Jared had last been seen.

  “Far as I know, nobody’s lived there for years,” Grandpa said. “Probably nothing but ruins now.”

  “Do you know how to get out there?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.

  “There’s a turnoff right past that last curve. Have to be careful, though. Foreigners are always taking that curve too fast.” Grandpa called anyone not from New Mexico foreigners. He cracked me up. New Mexicans took those curves just as fast as anyone else, but hard as we tried, we never convinced Grandpa of that. “What’s all this about?” he asked, munching on another cheese-covered chip.

  “Oh, it’s for our science fair project,” I said before biting the bullet and trying my hand at a big black lie instead of the little white ones I was so fond of. “Speaking of which, I know we’re grounded and all, but we were wondering if we could go back to school and help Ms. Mullins set up for the science fair this afternoon.”

  “My mom said it’s okay with her if it’s okay with you,” Brooklyn added. Man we were getting good with the lying.

  “Science fair, huh?” Grandma said as she hurried to clean the kitchen before they set out for a wild night of legalized gambling. Bingo players were hilarious. “I guess if it’s for science. Just be home before dark.”

  Grandpa winked at me behind her back and whispered, “She’s so easy.”

  I had to agree. My grandmother would let me rob a bank if it was in the name of science.

  * * *

  “I’ve always wanted a peek inside this house.” Brooklyn bounced in the front seat of Glitch’s car, giddy with excitement.

  Glitch looked at me in the rearview mirror as we wove through the menagerie of ponderosa pine and alligator juniper. “So, no one has lived there since the Davises?”

  “According to my grandma. After Elliot Davis died, his parents closed up their business, boarded up their house, threw the kids in the car, and moved to South Texas. They didn’t sell it or anything. I think Mr. Davis was a freshman at the time.”

  “I wonder if they still own it,” Brooklyn said.

  “I wish we knew,” I agreed before explaining more of what we’d learned to Glitch. “Elliot Davis was younger than my grandma, but she remembers him, remembers what happened. She said the Davises were devastated. It broke her heart.”

  As much as we’d found out about the Davises and the incident, we still had nothing to tie Jared to Elliot Davis’s death. We’d asked my grandparents what they remembered. I thought they might know something, might have heard something that wasn’t in the papers. I was surprised at how much she remembered, but just as the paper reported, it was a medical condition. Nothing suspicious.

  “If they do own it, why wouldn’t Mr. Davis have moved into it when he came back?” Glitch asked. “It just seems odd.”

  Mr. Davis had moved back to take the principal job when it opened up a few years ago. Apparently, the whole town was surprised when he moved back.

  “Grandpa said it’s in shambles now and would cost more to repair than it would to just tear it down and start over.”

  Brooklyn turned and peered around the passenger’s seat at me. “And why do we think the boys might be here?”

  I shrugged. “Just a hunch. It’s a straight shot from where Jared jumped out of Cameron’s truck to here. And it’s abandoned. What better place to take refuge?”

  “That’s true, I guess. If I were seeking refuge, I’d
want to hole up in a cool old mansion.”

  “Can you believe this?” I asked, my mind wandering back to Jared, to everything we’d learned so far. “The first guy I’ve ever really liked, and he could be some supernatural bringer of death. I should just give up.”

  “Give up on boys?” Brooklyn said. “That’ll be the day.”

  “I should. I should just quit while I’m ahead.”

  “Lor,” she said, crinkling her nose with skepticism, “you have to actually be ahead to quit while you’re ahead. Besides, they’re boys. They’re big and clumsy. They’re in a constant state of flux that makes them almost interesting. Why quit now?”

  “Because she’s tired of unrealized expectations and fruitless endeavors?” Glitch said, wriggling his brows.

  I pretended to be appalled. “What are you talking about? My endeavors are totally fruity.”

  Glitch chuckled, and I wondered why he was helping me if he didn’t believe a word I’d said. He even left football practice early for me. He had never done that before. I wasn’t sure how the team would manage without him. How would they carry on? Of course, with the lot of us being grounded, the only way he could go with us was to pretend he was at football practice and skip out.

  His ancient Subaru groaned in protest when we hit a pothole. Poor thing. Its maroon paint had long since faded to a brownish gray, and its rattles and squeaks made it impossible to hear the radio. But it got us where we needed to go.

  He looked at me in the rearview mirror again. “Do you really think he’ll be here?”

  I gave a halfhearted shrug. “I have no idea. I just don’t know where else to look.”

  “I’m game either way,” he said in an obvious attempt to reassert his support. I loved him for it.

  I was just about to tell them I’d remembered something else from the vision—Jared’s name, his real name—but Brooklyn sucked in an awestruck breath.

  “Here it is,” she said.

  Tucking the info away for future reference, I looked up at the huge Spanish ranch house looming before us. The earthy tones of the two stories had faded with time. Thick adobe walls crumbled to expose interior blocks mixed from mud and red native clay. Mammoth wood pillars supported the second-floor balcony from where it was said Mrs. Davis would sit for hours to paint the landscape.

  “Wow,” Glitch said, agreeing with Brooklyn’s awe. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah. Grandma said Mr. Davis’s grandfather built it in the forties.”

  The car crawled to a stop before two twelve-foot wooden doors. We piled out and stepped through the massive portal onto a veranda long overtaken by brush and vines.

  “We should have brought another flashlight.” Brooklyn staggered to my side and took hold of my arm as I was holding the only flashlight we’d brought. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “No kidding. When the heck did the sun set?” I asked, hitting the light against my palm. It finally came on, shining a bright beam through the darkness. “I don’t remember it setting. What time is it?”

  A neon green light appeared at my side as Glitch checked his watch. “It’s after seven.”

  “Grandma’s gonna kill me.” My insides seized with anxiety and a special torturous kind of dread. “I told her I’d be home before dark.”

  “Well, she can’t do any worse than my parents.” Brooklyn shivered. “When they find out I skipped again…”

  Glitch pushed open the front door. “It’s not locked. Maybe he really is here.”

  An excited thrill shot through me like a bolt of lightning. What if Jared was here? What would I do? What would I say to him? Somehow, Thanks for saving my life; sure hope your near-fatal concussion is better, seemed a tad trivial.

  After a thorough search of the first floor, I stood with Glitch and Brooklyn at the bottom of a wide staircase leading to the second. The house was in a sad state of disrepair, crumbling from time and a serious lack of TLC. Trash and debris cluttered the floor, and tattered curtains hung uselessly over dirty windows. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said it looked haunted.

  In a word, it was beautiful.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked nevertheless, studying the stairs doubtfully.

  “They look okay.” The uncertainty in Glitch’s voice did not inspire confidence. “Stay close to the railing just in case.”

  We tiptoed up the staircase single-file: Glitch, me, then Brooklyn. An eerie creak echoed against the walls with every step, the boards cracking just enough to push our stomachs into our throats. I didn’t even want to think about the hundreds of spiders it would’ve taken to weave the heavy curtains of webs that hung listlessly overhead. Surely they were out doing important spidery stuff.

  Brooklyn had a death grip on my arm. “The two key vocabulary words for this evening are extreme and danger.”

  “Sure gets the blood pumping,” Glitch said.

  After we reached the landing, we began our search again. Carefully, as there was a lot of space between the first and second floors. But five rooms, seven closets, and two bathrooms later, my heart began to sink. I’d been wrong. He wasn’t here. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see him again.

  With a sigh of despair, I opened a door to one of the smaller rooms at the end of a long hall. A dark silhouette sitting on a windowsill turned toward me. I knew immediately it was Jared. The knowledge sent a jolt of delight surging through my body. Finally, I had found him. And he was alive.

  “Jared,” I said, elated. But when I raised the flashlight to illuminate his face, I thought my knees would give beneath me.

  His face was swollen, bloodied, and bruised. He squinted against the harsh light and tried to shield his eyes with an arm. The arm he raised was just as bad. His T-shirt was no longer white. Stained with dirt and blood, it looked like something the cat dragged in after the dog had mangled it to shreds.

  “You found him?” Glitch asked as he and Brooklyn stumbled into the room.

  Without a word, Jared spit into the darkness at his feet, folded his arms over his chest, and studied me, his gaze unwavering.

  I lowered the flashlight and walked to him. “I was hoping we would find you here.”

  Despite his bravado, pain lined his handsome face. His jaw stiffened with every breath he took. He didn’t reply, but he seemed almost pleased that I’d found him, proud.

  Suddenly the room brightened. We turned to see Cameron light an oil lamp. He sat on an old desk in the corner, rifle in hand as though guarding a prisoner. He was beat to oblivion as well, holding his side with his free hand, his fingers covered in blood.

  The realization of what these two buttheads must have been doing for the past two days sparked a fury inside me. I had been so worried, sick with it. And these two geniuses spent the entire time in a pissing contest?

  I turned on Cameron. “Have you been fighting for two days?”

  He shrugged. “Off and on.”

  I couldn’t believe it. After all the anxiety and guilt. I blinked back my astonishment and turned to Jared. “May I ask why you two jerks feel the need to beat each other to death? Or do you think an explanation is too much?”

  “What about it, Kovach?” Cameron said. “Got an explanation?” He chuckled humorlessly, then winced. After a moment of recovery, he added, “Oh, wait, that’s not even your real name.”

  “No,” I said as I turned back and fixed him with a cold, hard look, “it’s Azrael.”

  Jared snapped to attention. It was his turn to stare in disbelief.

  I tamped down the self-doubt that threatened to swallow me, suddenly worried about what he might think of my visions. Of my bizarre gift. Would he be appalled? Wary? “I see things,” I explained hesitantly. “Sometimes when I touch people, I see things. I get visions. And I had one with you. In it, your name was Azrael.” When he continued to stare, I added, “I didn’t remember it at first. I was so shocked by what I saw, but then it came to me. I was in your head and your name was Azrael.”

  A
fter a lengthy pause, the initial shock of my statement seemed to ebb. He sized me up for another few seconds, then turned toward the thick darkness outside, something more than physical pain haunting his eyes. He didn’t seem appalled, so that was good.

  “Please, tell me what’s going on,” I said, my voice cracking with my plea.

  Brooklyn stepped to my side, making me grateful my two best friends were near.

  I drew air into my lungs and began again. “I was dying. I felt life leaving me, and you brought me back. You have some kind of power.”

  I inched closer to him. I could almost feel Cameron tense behind me in one of his ill-conceived attempts at protection. Brooklyn turned toward him, ready to fight with all of her five feet if he tried anything. She could never actually faze him, but that didn’t matter. She was there for me, as always. God bless her freaky little soul.

  “Am I wrong?” When he looked down, listening but not answering, I continued. “You fight monsters,” I said, trying to piece together the events as I spoke, “and save girls hit by trucks. But why? Did you come here just to save me?”

  Cameron laughed out loud, the sound harsh and out of place in the quiet room. “I’m pretty sure we already covered this, Lorelei. It doesn’t do that.” He tilted his head to the side, studying Jared. “Tell her, Reaper. Tell her why you’re here.”

  I wanted to get closer, to reassure him he could tell me anything, but I also remembered how incredibly strong he was. And impossibly fast. I decided to plead from where I stood. “Please, Jared. I just want to know what happened.”

  He turned back to me at last, a vertical line creasing the skin between his brows. “I wasn’t there to save your life, Lorelei.” He studied me a moment longer, then said, “I was there to take it.”

  “Bingo,” Cameron said, applauding tauntingly, his satisfaction almost eclipsing the disgust he wore. “Give the man a prize.”

  “I don’t understand.” I stepped back in shock. “I was dying. I almost died, and you saved me. I felt it.”

  Jared wiped the back of his hand across his brow, where a stream of blood dripped onto his lashes. “No,” he said after a long pause, “you wouldn’t have died for another forty-eight minutes. By then it would have been too late. I was sent to take you sooner.”