Charmed (Death Escorts)

by Cambria Hebert

  Finally, he ripped his mouth free of mine.

  His chest heaved, and with every deep draw of breath he took, he brushed against my chest, which felt swollen and sensitive. I bit my lip to keep from making a sound.

  He gazed down at me, and even in the darkness I saw the intensity in those very green eyes. He looked completely and utterly satisfied with himself.

  He reached out and ran his thumb along the bottom of my lower lip. The lip I knew without a doubt was swollen and pink.

  “Tell me,” he murmured, caressing the fragile flesh of my mouth one last time. “If I kiss her like that, will she still believe you?”

  His words penetrated the cloud around my head, the heavy fuzz of being extremely, thoroughly kissed.

  It was all to prove a point.

  He did this to me, revved my engine, made a complete and utter fool of me to prove a point.

  And what was worse?

  It worked.

  I kicked him in the shin.

  He groaned and bent forward.

  “How freaking dare you!” I hissed. “Don’t you ever…” I paused to suck in a much-needed gulp of air. “Ever come near me with that lizard-like tongue of yours, ever again.”

  He laughed.

  He actually started laughing.

  I kicked him again.

  He groaned but then lunged at me, grabbing my arm and yanking me up against his chest.

  My freaking body was a traitor and it shifted toward him. He chuckled knowingly.

  I was about to scream bloody murder and create the scene to end all scenes when the valet cleared his throat behind us.

  Charming stiffened and released me, spinning around so fast that I wobbled on my feet.

  “Your car, ma’am,” he said.

  I stepped around Charming, avoiding any and all contact with him. Touching him again was the last thing I wanted. I stopped in front of the valet with my chin held high. “Thank you,” I said and jerked my head in Charming’s direction. “The gentleman there has your tip.”

  Charming made a sound and I smiled at the young valet. “He’s loaded. Don’t take less than a twenty.”

  Then I walked, very steadily I might add, over to my Jeep, climbed in, and slammed the door. I didn’t look back as I drove away.

  I didn’t need to.

  I knew exactly what I was leaving behind.

  And I was very afraid that this time I was in way over my head.

  Chapter Nine

  “Pizza - an oven-baked, flat, disc-shaped bread typically topped with a tomato sauce, cheese (usually mozzarella), and various toppings, depending on the culture.”

  Charming

  I handed the valet a twenty as the taillights of her Jeep disappeared around the corner. She was a piece of work. Showing up here tonight, hell-bent on screwing up my plans, telling everyone she was my sister.

  I made a sound of disgust in the back of my throat as I headed up the stairs, back into the ball, where hopefully I could reverse whatever damage she had done.

  Gay. She freaking told my Target I was gay.

  I should have strangled her for that.

  But I had my revenge. I got her curvy, sassy body all turned on. It must suck to be so turned on by someone you hate.

  There was some movement off to my right, over in the darkened part of the huge stone patio that wrapped itself around the entire front of the home. It was a shadow within a shadow.

  A low curse fell off my lips. As if this night hadn’t been screwed up enough.

  Making sure that no one outside paid me any attention, I made my way over into the darkness, away from prying eyes. I leaned up against the side of the house and looked around for more movement. He was there to my left, trying, I would guess, not to be seen.

  “I thought Ghost Escorts were supposed to be invisible,” I said flat. Ghost Escorts were another version of a Death Escort. Except they didn’t kill. Their job was to stay in their “ghost” form—meaning G.R. wouldn’t let them have a body—and they used their “ghost” status to follow Targets around and watch them. They also watched the Death Escorts and reported everything they saw back to G.R.

  A very colorful twist on a curse word came out of the dark, and I was impressed. But I didn’t show it. He was following me. If I wasn’t already on G.R.’s shit list, I would have killed him right then, but killing another Escort is definitely against company policy.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “Shit, man. You saw me?”

  “I think that much is obvious.”

  “Not again,” he muttered and I glanced in his direction.

  “You mean this isn’t the first time you got caught spying on someone?”

  “For the record, it isn’t spying when you’re being paid to do it. It’s surveillance. And yeah… I got caught before. On my last job.”

  “Which one are you?” It annoyed me that all the Ghost Escorts were black. I knew being so dark was what made them blend so well into the shadows, but it also made it very hard to tell them apart.

  “Storm.”

  “You were the Ghost assigned to Dex,” I said, my interest perking a bit.

  “Yeah. He was cool. We were gonna chill on a beach once his job was done. But then you screwed it all up for him and he got Recalled.”

  “I screwed it all up for him?”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t been so hardcore after his Target, he wouldn’t have felt the need to protect her instead of kill her.”

  “I wouldn’t have been so hardcore if he’d just done his damn job.” I growled.

  “Guess it doesn’t really matter now.”

  “Why are you following me?”

  “Man, I don’t know what the hell you did, but G.R. is hating on you hard right now. So hard I didn’t even get a vacation between jobs. He wants you watched twenty-four-seven.”

  First he gives me a lecture, assigns me an impossible Target, stations me in this godforsaken iceberg, and now he’s having me followed? I was really beginning to hate that guy.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want or need a babysitter. So you can just go on and spy on someone else.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” Storm said, his voice going cold.

  “You’ll be taking something if I see you creeping around me again.” To prove my point, I shot my hand out toward the darkness where I could see just enough of where he was.

  When my hand didn’t go through him, but rather connected, we both froze.

  “What the hell?” I muttered. I hadn’t expected that at all. All I was trying to do was scatter around some of the mist that made up his form. It would only annoy him, but it was the only thing that you could really do to a guy with no body. But that was exactly my point. He didn’t have a body…

  So how did I just touch him?

  “Care to explain how a guy with no body is partially solid?” I asked dryly.

  “Nope.”

  “Really. I wonder what G.R. would say if he knew he was employing a Ghost Escort who is lacking the actual ghost qualities.”

  Another one of those colorful words slipped out and I grinned. This guy was pretty entertaining. “Where’d you learn to cuss like that?”

  “I grew up in Brooklyn.”

  “I’m from New York, too,” I said, thinking that things from my past just kept coming up tonight.

  “Yeah? Well, then you must be good people.”

  I was about to make a sarcastic remark, but he started telling me things I wanted to know so I bit back my comments.

  “At first, not having a body wasn’t too bad. I mean, without a body, I never really got hungry. I never had to take a bathroom break or worry about taking a shower. I liked watching people when they didn’t know they were being watched—I actually still like that part. You learn a lot about the human population by what they do when no one’s looking.”

  He paused and I could feel his gaze, so I nodded. “Go on.”

  “But the thing about being a ghost is that
no one ever sees you. It’s like you don’t even exist. All my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions… they’re all unheard. Without the mundane things like showering, sleeping, and eating, every day just stretches out before you like a one long endless event. And man, sometimes a dude just wants to eat a slice of pizza.”

  “Hear that,” I said, and without thinking I held up my fist for a fist bump. When I realized what I’d done, I went to lower it, but he stopped me by saying, “Wait.”

  So I stopped and held my fist in the air.

  I watched as a dark shadow, a black shape in the form of a fist came forward and bumped mine. The force of the impact caused some of his form to slip and spread out like smoke, but some of his shape held and I felt the impact.

  “Sitting around and watching people all day gets kind of boring. So I started experimenting, seeing if I could figure out a way to make myself solid. It started working. Now when I try, I can hold a cell phone, make a call. Or sometimes if I’m really bored, I can manage to play a game on it for a while. It just started out as something I wanted to see if I could do. I was kind of shocked when it worked… Then it became an obsession. Only, now…” His voice trailed away.

  “Now, what?”

  “Only now my body doesn’t seem to ever go all the way back to being a ghost. It makes it harder to do my job. Dex saw me. You saw me… If I keep getting caught, word is gonna get back to G.R., and if that happens…”

  “You’ll get Recalled.”

  “Being a ghost might not be ideal, but it’s better than that.”

  “Maybe we can turn this less into a ‘you spy on me’ job and more into a partnership,” I suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Meaning, I won’t tell G.R. about your, uh, problem and instead of watching me all the time, you can watch the Target and tell me what she says about me when I’m not around. It will give me an edge if I know what she’s thinking, if I know what angle to play.”

  “I can get on board that train,” Storm said thoughtfully.

  I didn’t point out I wasn’t giving him a choice. “Just don’t get caught. The last thing I need is another person hanging around and messing up my job.”

  He snorted. “That blonde is a piece of work, isn’t she?”

  Something short of irritation flashed through me. “You’ve been watching Frankie?”

  “She’s kind of hard to miss.”

  “She’s not part of the job.”

  “Seems to me she made herself part of it when she announced to your Target that she was your sister.” He was silent a moment, then laughed. “She told her you’re gay.”

  Maybe this “partnership” wasn’t such a good idea. I felt like I was surrounded by idiots.

  “I’m not gay,” I growled.

  “Hey, dude, it’s cool.”

  “Forget it,” I said and turned to walk away. The last thing I needed right now was to be seen having an argument with myself in a darkened corner of the terrace.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not sure your Target believed her.”

  I swung back around. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because right before the blonde came to find you, the Target asked her to have lunch. Then she mentioned she should bring you along.”

  Frankie, the little brat, didn’t mention that to me. “Interesting,” I said, feeling suddenly better about tonight. Maybe all the progress I made with the Target hadn’t been lost after all.

  “Thanks for the info,” I told Storm.

  “Does that mean you won’t say anything to G.R.?”

  “No, I won’t. He’s been nothing but a colossal pain in my ass since Dex got around his claim on Piper, so not telling him something he might be interested in is the least I can do to pay him back.”

  “Thanks,” Storm said, relieved.

  “Don’t thank me just yet. Don’t forget the deal. You keep an eye on my Target.”

  “Will do.”

  I started to walk away, but then I realized he probably knew something else I needed. “Before I go, I’m gonna need to get an address.”

  And just like that, I got what I wanted.

  Chapter Ten

  “Breakfast - The English word derives from the concept that sleep prevents eating, thus an involuntary fast occurs during sleep; this fast is broken by the first meal.”

  Frankie

  The incessant knocking on my door far too early the next morning dragged me out of the steamy bathroom and through my chilled apartment. I hated the morning. I hated getting out of bed at some ungodly hour when humans were meant to be sleeping. But noooo, I had to drag my still half-asleep butt into the DMV where the lines never went away and my boss was likely in her office sticking needles in her voodoo dolls that looked exactly like all of us poor unfortunate employees.

  And oh happy day, it was also Monday.

  The knocking just wouldn’t stop, and it was beginning to give me a headache, so I rushed a little faster toward the door, tripping over the striped rug and almost doing a face plant into the sofa.

  “Hold your freakin’ horses, Piper!” I yelled. “Gheesh. I know I didn’t call you back last night—” My words died off midsentence when I flung open the door and saw it was not my best friend trying to give me hell for a missed phone call.

  It was Charming.

  I slammed the door in his face and headed back to my bathroom where likely all the nice warm steam from my shower had now evaporated and I would have to finish getting ready in a cold room. Perhaps I would ask my boss if she had any extra dolls so I could pretend one was him and stab it repeatedly with a needle.

  The door opened and closed behind me and I stopped, pivoted around, and stared at the man who just let himself into my apartment. Damn, I should have thrown the lock. It was just too early to think of such details.

  “I’m sorry, but did you not understand the way I slammed the door in your face?” I said coldly. “It means I don’t want you here.”

  “Charming place you have here,” he said, ignoring me completely and walking around my house, looking at all of my things.

  “Get out,” I said, flat.

  He stopped in front of my wall of Marilyn Monroe and stood looking up at her for long moments. “She was even prettier in person,” he said, still staring at one of the posters.

  “You met Marilyn Monroe?” I asked, partially in awe.

  He shrugged. “We used to run in the same circles.”

  I snorted. “I highly doubt she would go anywhere near you.”

  He turned and looked at me. “She liked men. Charming ones at that.”

  “You are not charming.”

  “Your idol thought so.”

  The headache that had been forming since the pounding on my door started erupted full force. “It’s far too early to deal with you.” I went to the door, opened it, and then stared at him pointedly.

  “Have breakfast with me.”

  I looked at him like he had fifteen heads and not one of those fifteen had a brain. “Are you on drugs?”

  His white teeth flashed when he smiled. “Get your coat.”

  I looked at myself. “I’m still wearing my pajamas.”

  He looked at my sleep pants and T-shirt pointedly. “Oh, is that what those are? I can’t tell the difference between your day clothes and these. Both are equally ridiculous.”

  My mouth fell open. Then snapped shut. Then fell open again. “What did you just say to me?” I growled.

  “Time’s a wasting. Wouldn’t want you to be late for work,” he said, pointing at the insanely expensive watch on his wrist.

  Of course even at six a.m. he looked completely put together wearing dark trousers, black shoes, and a navy-colored crewneck sweater (probably cashmere) with a white T-shirt beneath it, and topping it all off was a black wool coat. Even his hair was perfectly styled to look effortlessly messy.

  “You’re completely insane if you think I’m going anywhere with you,” I said, still holding
the door.

  He came over, and just when I thought he’d finally gotten the hint and was taking his sorry butt out the door, he stopped, grabbed the door from my grasp, and slammed it closed.