Sixth Grave on the Edge

by Darynda Jones

  A smile broke across Cookie’s face. She pointed an accusing finger at him. “No, you aren’t.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, not really.”

  “Rascal,” she said before she closed the door behind her. Or tried to. It just kind of hit the doorframe and bounced back. She tried again with the same result. Then again. And again.

  “Cook, it’s okay,” I said, peeling the injured door out of her hands, which were still covered in yellow rubber. “I’ll get the door.” When she nodded and started across the hall, I added, “I’ll need those gloves back.”

  I examined my door. It was fine. The doorframe, however, had seen better days. “Did you do this?” I asked him. “How can I lock my door if I can’t even close it?”

  “That is a problem.” He’d come up from behind and reached a long arm over my head, imprisoning me. “Guess you’ll have to stay at my place.”

  I fluttered my lashes. “Or Cookie’s.”

  He handed the towel back to me, a wicked expression on his face as he walked back to his apartment. Naked. All shimmery and sleek. Cookie had nailed it. Holy mother of God.

  * * *

  After the plainclothes got to Cookie’s apartment, I let him walk her over to the office while I sought out Misery. Cook would have a busy day with everything I’d thrown at her, and I had enough to do to keep me busy for minutes. Probably half hours.

  I needed a man. A man I could push around and shout orders to like a military commander. I needed a man named Garrett Swopes. He was the only one of our group who’d visited hell. Besides Reyes, of course. I excavated my bag for the keys to Misery, which were brand-new and not like my old keys at all, and headed that way. I unlocked Misery with the fob. That was new, too. Misery had never had remote anything. She’d been old school. Stick the key in. Turn. I was surprised I didn’t have carpal tunnel with all the sticking and turning. But now, I just pushed a button. It was so Jetsons. I made that whirring sound every time we took off down the street.

  After opening the door, I tried to climb inside. I would have succeeded, too, if an eighty-pound Rottweiler hadn’t been sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Artemis,” I said as she panted happily, her stubby tail wagging as fast as bumblebee wings flutter, “you can’t drive. The last time you drove, we almost killed a mailman.”

  She whined and put a paw possessively on the steering wheel, her huge brown eyes pleading.

  I leaned over and checked Mr. Andrulis. He didn’t seem to mind Artemis. I rubbed her ears. “Okay, look, I know traditionally your species and the mailman variety of my species have never really gotten along, but we can’t kill them. We can’t target them.” I was never sure if she did that on purpose or not.

  She let out a loud bark, indicating something just over my shoulder. I let my gaze wander in that direction and realized we had company. A man in his early thirties dressed in a gray hoodie and fatigues stood watching us. Well, me, since he couldn’t see Artemis.

  I nodded congenially before turning back to Artemis and saying through gritted teeth, “Seriously, girl, you have to move.”

  “I’ll wash it for you,” the guy said, taking a couple of steps forward. I’d recently had a gun to my head and wasn’t in the mood for any more shenanigans from the penis-endowed gender. I reached into a side pocket of my bag as nonchalantly as I could and wrapped my fingers around Margaret, my Glock.

  “I’m sorry?”

  If he was homeless, he hadn’t been for long. He was clean, his clothes almost new.

  “Your Jeep. I can wash it. I have a side business.” He took another step toward me and handed me a homemade business card. It’d been printed on regular paper, then cut out with scissors. Apparently by a preschooler.

  “Well, thanks, we’re good for now.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of bucks on you?” he asked, sniffing into a knit fingerless glove.

  “You take a few steps back, and I’ll look.”

  “Really?” he asked, excited. “Thanks.” He stepped back, and I once again excavated my purse for a wallet as I let my gaze slide past him.

  I’d been having a lot of odd encounters with homeless people of late. Well, lots of my encounters with homeless people were odd. Especially the one where that guy threw a mustard burger at my windshield as I sat at a stoplight. I didn’t even do anything to that man. He was all screaming through my plastic window.

  But maybe these encounters were a sign from God. Maybe he wanted me to work with the homeless. Or, and I was thinking outside the box with this one, maybe they were all some kind of elaborate setup to take pictures of me with these people, so that they could later blackmail me into doing something illicit. Normally my thoughts wouldn’t have veered in quite that direction, but they did this time. Probably because there was a man sitting in a beige sedan parked down the street with a wide-angle camera pointed directly at me.

  Oddly enough, I’d been seeing that same beige sedan a lot lately, too.

  He seemed to have snapped the shots he wanted. He lowered the camera and was scrolling through the shots when I knocked on his window. Hard.

  He jumped and flailed a bit at being surprised.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I said, practically screaming at him. I was not going to take being set up lying down.

  Of course, there was an added benefit to screaming. With any luck, it would garner the attention of anyone who happened to be close by. If he came at me, I’d have witnesses.

  I took two quick seconds to scan the area. Probably something I should have done before provoking a stranger who could’ve had an AK-47 stashed in his undies, for all I knew. Luckily, there was a man taking out the garbage of a little café that sat beside Calamity’s. He paused from his task to look on with mild interest.

  No Reyes, though. I guess the only thing he sensed, the thing that called him to me, was a spike in adrenaline. I tried to stay calm so as not to summon him. He’d had a busy night what with all our sexual energies colliding like atoms in the sun. And then there were the men in masks. Add to that the whole toothpaste debacle, and Reyes should be about as exhausted as I was.

  I refocused on the paparazzi. “What the fuck, dude?” I yelled when he turned to put his camera on the passenger seat. He put his key in the ignition, and for some reason—my reflexes being so catlike and all—I tried to open the door. I had every intention of dragging him out by his hair and beating the truth out of him. Thankfully his door was locked, because at some point during my walk over, I lost all sense of reality. His engine roared to life, and before I could utter another curse word, he peeled out, narrowly missing my toes.

  I stood stunned for a solid minute. He was not just on some mission to set me up—as he drove past, I saw his jacket in the backseat. It had a badge clipped to the pocket. He was a cop.

  9

  I don’t know what I’d do without coffee.

  Probably 15 to 20 in the state pen.

  —BUMPER STICKER

  Son of a bitch.

  Were the cops setting me up?

  I hurried back to Misery, hoping to catch the other guy, as he was clearly part of whatever was going on—but he was gone as well. I slammed the door shut and cursed under my breath before realizing my bag was still there. The guy could so easily have taken it. Thank God for small wonders.

  When I opened the door again, Artemis had moved to the backseat. She stared straight ahead, pretty as she pleased, as though she’d really wanted the backseat the whole time. “I’m sorry, girl,” I said as I climbed in. “Mr. Andrulis, I don’t usually yell and slam doors, but being surveilled in what clearly is some kind of setup makes me cranky.”

  He didn’t answer and I was really starting to feel bad for the guy. He had to be chilly.

  I started up Misery, let her idle a solid five seconds—which was four seconds longer than usual—then backed out of the parking lot in search of a man with an inferiority complex.

  * * *

  When I stopped by
the bond enforcement agency Garrett Swopes most often worked out of, the receptionist told me he was on a sting to apprehend a fugitive. I asked the pretty girl, who was far too young to be working at a bond enforcement agency, where that would be.

  “Oh, I can’t tell you that, Ms. Davidson,” she said, popping her gum. “My uncle would kill me. He told me so. Said he’d cut my throat in my sleep if I ever gave you any information on any of our cases.”

  “Wow. That’s a little harsh. Your uncle, huh?”

  “Yeah. He hired me temporarily to see if I’d work out.”

  “Do you?” I asked, giving her the once-over. “I mean, you look like you do.”

  She blinked, trying to grasp my meaning. “Do I what?”

  “Work out.”

  “Oh,” she chuckled. “Yeah, they warned me about you. But I can’t tell you where he is. You won’t get anything out of me.”

  She went back to popping her gum and filing her nails, and I nodded. “I think you’ll work out just fine, honey. Swopes wouldn’t happen to be at an apartment complex on the corner of Girard and Lead, would he?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “How—?”

  Well, that was all I needed. “Thanks, hon. Tell your uncle hey for me.” I waved as I went out the door. Poor thing. She had all the details written in triplicate in front of her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I could read upside down.

  Hopefully she’d figure it out eventually. She’d have to learn fast if she planned on working for her uncle. He was quite the skiptracer himself in his day. He’d had a rep for having hard knuckles and a jaw made of steel. Sadly, his nose was not made of the same indestructible substance. It’d been broken more than once and sat slightly to the left of his face, but he was a cool guy.

  Still, why would he tell his niece not to give me any info? We’d been friends for a long time. And I’d apologized for that whole pineapple debacle months back. He really needed to let it go. Resentment like that tended to fester. He’d get an ulcer if he wasn’t careful. That was kind of my specialty, though. Causing ulcers. Everyone had to be good at something.

  * * *

  I pulled in behind Garrett’s black truck and turned off Misery. I’d lost Artemis somewhere around Central and Juan Tabo. She saw a cat. Garrett was standing at his tailgate with two other men. They all wore badges around their necks identifying themselves as bond enforcement agents. I quickly realized one of the men was the receptionist’s uncle, Javier. And he’d told her not to give me any info. I hoped I wasn’t getting her in trouble.

  They turned toward me en masse. Garrett Swopes was a tall drink of water with mocha-colored skin and sparkling gray eyes. He also had incredible abs. Not that I was interested in him, but it was hard not to notice his abs when he answered his door shirtless all the time. That could be because I’m always showing up at his house in the middle of the night. Weird how I always needed him around four in the A.M.

  He’d been in the middle of pulling on a bulletproof vest. This guy must be bad. It took a lot to get Swopes to wear Kevlar.

  It took a moment for Javier to recognize me. He frowned and said something to Garrett, pointing toward me repeatedly. Garrett let him rant, nodded, then waved me to him. The third guy I didn’t know. He was at least part Asian and looked like he’d been in one too many bar brawls. But really, who needed all those teeth? It was overkill if you asked me.

  I climbed out of Misery and sauntered over to them with a nonchalant smile.

  “How did you know where we’d be?” Javier asked.

  “I didn’t. I just knew where Swopes here would be and I need to talk to him. You are just a bonus.” I batted my lashes at him.

  His brows snapped together. “You didn’t bring any C-4, did you?”

  “Javier, you have to let that go. Let bygones be bygones.”

  He pulled his sidearm and clicked off the safety. “I’ll show you bygones.”

  “Now, now,” Garrett said, wrestling the gun from him. “Charley brings out the worst in all of us. It’s not her fault.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “I have a condition.”

  “See?” he said, consoling his boss—though truth be told, Garrett ran that business and was the reason it was so successful.

  “We have a job to do, Swopes,” he said before stalking away.

  I turned to Garrett, grateful that he had my back. I was growing on him. I could tell. I was a lot like mold that way. “I can help,” I said, offering my services.

  Javier heard me and came stalking back. He’d planned on arguing with me, but he changed his mind about halfway back. I could see it in his expression. “Yeah,” he said, looking me up and down. “You can. Go up to apartment 504 in that building and knock on the door. Tell them Crystal sent you.”

  Garrett chuckled under his breath and checked his weapon. His arms were all sinewy and muscly when he did it. God, I loved arms. “We can’t send her up there.”

  “Sure you can,” I said. “I’m here to help out anyway I can, because that’s what friends do for each other. They help each other in times of crisis. They have each others’ backs.”

  He lowered the gun and gave me his full attention. “All right, what’d you do now?”

  “What?” I asked, appalled. “Me?”

  “We doin’ this or not?” the third guy asked. “I have in-laws at my house. They’re trying to convince my wife that I’m no good. That she should leave me and go back to Puerto Rico with them. I have to get home before she realizes they have a point.”

  I laughed and shrugged. “I would make a great distraction. Wait, Crystal isn’t a pimp, is she?”

  “No idea,” Javier said. “But something like that would go a long way in erasing my memory.”

  “So would tequila. But I’ll help. I’m ready. Send me in, boss.”

  “I’m not your boss.”

  I frowned at him.

  “Okay,” Garrett said after Javier showed me a picture of Daniel, the guy they were apprehending, and told me exactly what to do. We were walking hand in hand to the apartment building, and deep down inside I prayed Reyes wouldn’t show up. The guy’s temper lately—well, always—was kind of iffy. “What do you need?”

  I laughed again, trying to sell the star-crossed lovers bit as Javier and the bad husband took up position, flanking the building and readying to invade. “I need a million dollars, but from you, I need to know how far you’ve gotten with that book.”

  “The prophecies?” he asked, surprised. “Dr. von Holstein is still working on the translations, but he’s had a couple of exciting breakthroughs.”

  I had to force myself not to giggle every time he said the doctor’s name. It was just funny. I needed to name something von Holstein. Too bad I’d already named my couch. Maybe a chair. Or the saltshaker. I could name her Heifer von Holstein.

  “Is that it?” he asked as we rounded the corner to the entrance.

  “Not even. Is there anything about the Twelve in there?”

  He slowed his stride, just barely, but enough for me to know I’d hit pay dirt. “There is, actually. Several stanzas center around the Twelve and their role in the shit storm to come.”

  My heart kind of sank. I usually did my best to avoid conflicts with beings that escaped from hell for the sole purpose of ripping out my jugular and presenting my lifeless body to their master. Especially when said master defined the phrase evil incarnate.

  I held up a brave hand. “Don’t sugarcoat it for me, Swopes.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “God forbid I get a decent night’s sleep.”

  “We couldn’t have that.”

  “Do we win?” I asked. We got to the elevator, which looked about as safe as that guy on the street earlier handing out free samples of blue candy in little Baggies.

  Garrett pressed the UP button. “What do you mean?”

  “The shit storm. The Twelve.” I waved a hand to demonstrate the vastness of it all. “Do we defeat them?”
<
br />   The doors slid open. We stepped inside; then he pushed the button for the fifth floor while offering me a look of mild confusion. “Why would we fight them?”

  “Because they want my head on a platter.”

  Keeping my hand in his—though I wasn’t completely sure why, since no one was in the elevator with us—he asked, “Why would they want your head on a platter?”

  “Because,” I repeated, growing impatient, “they’re the Twelve. It’s apparently what they do.”

  “Charles, you need to stop watching late-night movies. The Twelve are good. They’re sent to protect you, the daughter.”

  “What? They’re hounds from hell. How can they—?”

  “Hounds from hell?” When I nodded, he asked, “Literally?”

  I nodded again.

  “Then we’re talking about a different Twelve. The Twelve the prophecies mention say they are all spiritual beings.”

  “That can’t be right,” I said as we stepped off the elevator. The dreary halls were paved with stained carpet that had the acrid scent of urine and chemicals. I covered my nose and mouth, trying to guard against the telltale aroma of illegal drug production. I wondered if Daniel was a cook or just a distributor. But the worst aspect of the entire scenario was the cries of a baby down the hall. Why was there always a crying baby down the hall?

  We stepped over old fast-food bags, empty bottles of both soda and beer, and a pair of ripped jeans before we found Daniel’s door. Garrett took up position around the corner that led to the stairwell, his sidearm drawn.

  When he gestured that he was ready, I stuffed a piece of gum in my mouth, raised my hand, and almost knocked.

  Garrett questioned me silently with an urgent shrug.

  I leaned toward him and whispered, “Why were we holding hands downstairs, playing star-crossed lovers, if I have to go in here alone?”

  The grin that spread across his face was so full of mischief, I almost laughed.

  “You are a dirty, rotten scoundrel,” I said, teasing him.

  He winked as I straightened my shoulders, then really knocked.

  “What?” a male voice yelled out, clearly annoyed at having been disrupted.