Dangerous Lovers

by Becca Vincenza

  “I had a sister a long time ago. Before I died. Before I became an Escort.”

  A million questions sprang into my head. A million things I would love to know. I never really thought about Charming’s story, but of course he had one. And looking at him now, it seemed his story was the key to who he really was.

  You know all you need to know. I reminded myself. You’re supposed to be washing your hands of him.

  “He wants me to fail. I didn’t really realize how much.”

  This time I didn’t say anything. I figured he was having enough trouble saying whatever it was he wanted to say without me interrupting and asking questions.

  “He knew the one thing, the one thing that could throw me off. He found my weakness and he used it against me.”

  “Now you know how it feels,” I said. The words were just a thought, something I hadn’t meant to say out loud.

  He glanced up, his green stare pinning me in place. “What did you say?”

  I swallowed and shook my head.

  “Say it again,” he insisted.

  “I said now you know what it feels like. For someone to use your weakness against you. For someone to basically be working against you.” He just kept staring, almost as if he were looking right through me. “Whatever he did to you… it sounds a lot like what you do to other people.”

  “You’re right,” he said, realization dawning on his features. “I’m the Target this time.”

  “So, the Grim Reaper wants you dead?”

  He stared off into space. “I’m already dead. He just wants to Recall me.”

  “Do you want a beer?”

  The side of his mouth pulled up. “Yeah.”

  I took the blanket with me into the kitchen, tiptoeing across the cold linoleum, and took out two bottles from the fridge and popped the tops. I juggled them with the blanket back into the living room where Charming had propped up his feet on the coffee table and had taken control of the remote.

  “You’re watching an old movie?”

  “I like old movies,” I defended.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  I tried not to gape at him. He actually said he liked something. It was a miracle. I handed him a beer and set the other one by his feet.

  “Is that one for me too?”

  “I didn’t think one was going to cut it.”

  “You trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?” he said, tilting the bottle to his lips and taking a long pull. His throat worked as he swallowed and I noticed he unbuttoned the top few buttons of his button-down.

  “Two beers will get you drunk?” I scoffed. “Lightweight.”

  I sat back down on the couch, squishing myself into the corner. He seemed to be taking up a lot of space.

  “Why did you let me in tonight?” His serious tone caught me off guard.

  So did his question.

  “You looked kind of lonely,” I replied, my voice hushed.

  He took another long pull of the beer and turned up the TV. We sat there watching while he finished off both beers. He didn’t talk anymore and I didn’t ask him if he wanted to. I figured that the very little he said was more than he’d ever told anyone.

  That knowledge changed something for me. It made me less angry with him, less appalled. It was hard to tell yourself that you shouldn’t care about someone when that someone desperately needed you to care.

  At some point I dozed off. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke, it was to the sounds of an infomercial for some kind of booty shaking workout. Charming was still beside me. He’d fallen asleep too. His arms were crossed over his chest as it rose and fell with every breath he took. He looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Funny, I never realized how “on” he always looked until I caught a glimpse of him “off.”

  I decided not to wake him. Instead, I turned off the TV and used the blanket in my lap to cover him. As the cover settled over him, he wiggled a little deeper into the cushions. I resisted the urge to stroke his cheek, settling instead for taking advantage of his slumber to stare at him.

  “You know what I think?” I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me. “You aren’t dead. You just don’t remember how to live.”

  I turned the lock on the front door as I went past and then climbed into bed. I fell asleep almost instantly and slept more soundly than I had in weeks. I woke to the sun streaming through my curtains, but I didn’t think about the weather or how I could languish in bed because it was Sunday. My first thought was of Charming. I wondered if he would still be here. Of what I would say to him if he was.

  One way to find out.

  In the living room, I noted the door was still locked. My stomach began to flutter around as I peeked over the back of the couch. I expected him to still be there.

  He wasn’t.

  But my cell phone was sitting on the coffee table beside his empty bottles.

  I glanced back at the door, which was definitely locked. How had he gotten out and locked the door behind him?

  I sighed and went to make coffee. It was just one more thing I could add to the very long list of things about Charming I wanted to know.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Weakness - something of which one is excessively fond or desirous.”

  Charming

  You aren’t dead. You just don’t remember how to live.

  I pretended not to hear her words. But I did. I lay there long after she’d gone to bed, half awake and half asleep. I couldn’t seem to pass the threshold of being truly unconscious so in my half in, half out state I thought about her words.

  She was wrong.

  I remembered what it was like to live. To feel. To worry.

  Living was too hard. Death was easy by comparison. With death, the only considerations were the when and the how. In some ways what I did was doing people a favor. I was taking them out of a world that most likely was making them miserable and sending them off somewhere that had to be better than this.

  I still wasn’t sure what exactly possessed me to go over there last night. The confrontation with G.R. had left me rattled. Then I saw the text on her phone… The next thing I knew I was standing on her doorstep, hoping she would let me in.

  Chewing off my own arm would have been easier than my attempt at talking. For some reason I thought I would be able to spill everything, to lay out everything that happened like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t a big deal. Only I couldn’t. What I did manage to say probably made no sense to her at all. But that was good because I shouldn’t have gone there. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could “talk” anyway. I lived the last ninety or so years without anyone and I would live the next ninety or so the same way.

  For some reason that thought made my shoulders sag with exhaustion.

  Of course after seeing G.R. yesterday, maybe I wouldn’t live another ninety years at all. Maybe these last few months were all I was going to get.

  Ah, hell, maybe it was time anyway. It wasn’t like I got into this for some long-lasting career. Shit, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I had only done it— I cut the thought off. I wasn’t going to think about that. Those thoughts were too close to life. Too close to feeling. Besides, it didn’t matter why I got into this; it only mattered that I did.

  And fuck my previous thoughts. I wasn’t going to let G.R. tell me when my time as an Escort was over. He wasn’t going to get the best of me.

  I stared up at the ceiling from the center of my California king bed and remembered a few more of Frankie’s words. Whatever he did to you… it sounds a lot like what you do to other people.

  She was right. He was doing exactly what I did to other people. Using my weaknesses against me. So he figured out my one weakness. Now that I knew what he was doing, it took away his advantage. But what about me? What were my advantages?

  If a guy like me had a weakness, then that meant anyone could have one. Including the Grim Reaper. Crap, he’d been alive so long his closet was pro
bably full of skeletons.

  The thought had me sitting up straight.

  That was it. All I had to do was find G.R.’s weakness and use it against him. And where did an Escort start when he was looking for dirt on his boss? A small smile curved my lips.

  Why, of course, in his closet.

  * * *

  “Nice place you got here,” said a voice from behind.

  I spun around, catching the plate in my hand just before it crashed onto the floor. Storm was there, filling up my house with his black cloudlike self. “Seriously, man, don’t you knock?”

  “You called. I came.”

  “I called you hours ago.”

  “Well, spying on the boss isn’t something that can be done in five minutes.”

  “What did you find out?” I said as I finished putting away the last of my dinner dishes.

  “I really thought you would have a maid.”

  “You of all people know that I can’t have some bonbon eating, phone gossiping woman snooping through my house and my life at all hours of the day and night.”

  “I didn’t really mean a live-in maid… although, if that’s your type.” The black shape that was Storm shrugged his shoulders.

  “Maids are not my type,” I ground out. What was with this conversation? We were supposed to be talking business.

  “No. What’s your type, then?”

  Frankie, the voice in the back of my head whispered. I told it to shut up. “Whoever’s my assigned Target.”

  “C’mon, you can’t honestly expect me to believe a guy like you survives with no nookie.”

  “What the hell is nookie?”

  “If I didn’t know better I would have thought you lived in a cave. A celibate cave.”

  Okay, so nookie was what he called sex. With language like that, I was sure he never got any. “I have sex.”

  “With women other than Targets?”

  “I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you,” I said, pulling a bottle of water out of the stainless-steel fridge.

  “That’s code for yes.” He sighed. “You’re wasting that body.”

  I grinned. “I guess not having a body makes getting some pretty hard.”

  “Yeah, well, I make up for it when he lets me have a body for a while.”

  Speaking of G.R. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing. It was business as usual at his place, Escorts coming and going, security guards patrolling. The most exciting part was when the chef cooked his steak wrong and he ordered pizza.”

  “How was that exciting?”

  “I haven’t had pizza in a while, either,” he mumbled.

  “Was he still home when you left?”

  “Yeah, but he was getting ready to go out. He was going to some dinner with the rich people. I don’t know how he manages to never accidentally touch someone.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t,” I replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean maybe if he does accidentally kill someone, he just covers it up. I mean, it’s the perfect crime scene—if you could even call it that. The cops certainly wouldn’t with no fingerprints, no blood, and no sign of a struggle. They would likely call it a heart attack and drag the poor dead sap off to the morgue.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that wouldn’t be too hard of a stretch considering I don’t have a body and you kill people professionally.”

  “Touché.”

  “Anyway, he was going to be gone most of the night.”

  “Good, let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To his house. I’m assuming you can get us in?” The way he just let himself in here minutes ago must mean he was good at picking locks. I was too, but I wasn’t practically invisible.

  “What the hell do you want to go to his house for?”

  “To search it. You know a man like him has got to have some skeletons mixed in with all those bodies in his closet.”

  “Man, you don’t really think that someone like the Reaper is just going to leave his business out for anyone to find, do you?”

  “Nope, but I don’t mind digging around until I find it.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “And you’re going to help me.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “For starters, you don’t want him to know about your little visibility problem.” I reminded him. “But also because you need a body and he has a hoarding problem.”

  “Okay, I’ll help. I don’t have anything better to do anyway.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  You would think the home of the Grim Reaper would be a dark and creepy place. That it would be shrouded in shadows with winding trees draping the property and ominous-sounding nightlife to warn you away if you dare get to close.

  Nope.

  The Grim Reaper I knew and hated had his house lit up like the fourth of July on a hot summer night. It’s like he stuck lights in every possible crevice and corner of his home. You would think he was scared of the dark. Of course he wasn’t because whatever else went bump in the night had never met a man that could kill with a single touch.

  “There’s more security here now than earlier. And what is up with all these lights? This ain’t New York City,” Storm said from beside me.

  “It’s because he’s not home. He’s expecting me to pull something after last night.”

  “What the hell happened last night?”

  “We had a little confrontation.”

  “Geez, man, we need to go. You should have known better than to come here.”

  I stood against the side of a four-car garage on the neighbor’s property across the street. This house wasn’t filled with light so the yard was dark, creating a lot of concealment. “No, that’s exactly the reason we should stay.”

  “What?”

  “He knows I’m pissed and won’t go down without a fight. He expects me to try and pull something. So I do it now, while he thinks everything is on lockdown and I can’t get in. I won’t get caught and he’ll never know I was here. Hell, if I’m lucky, he won’t even notice anything’s missing until I’m long gone.” I paused and then added. “Besides, it has to be tonight. He’s sending me out of town tomorrow on another job.”

  “Damn, a double?” Storm said, I looked in the direction of his voice, but I couldn’t make him out in the night. He completely blended in.

  “Yeah, so let’s do this.”

  “What exactly do you think you’re going to find?” The skepticism in his voice made the challenge of what we were about to do even more appealing.

  “A weakness,” I murmured.

  He made a non-committal sound.

  “Here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to go first, unlock the front door from the inside. On your way through the foyer, flick the porch light off and count to three, then flick it back on. Then get to G.R.’s office. I’ll meet you there.”

  “You think you’re going to walk through the front door?” He scoffed. “And if you think three seconds of darkness out there will be enough, you’re a few chips shy of a Pringle can.”

  “Just do it.”

  “Fine. But if you get caught, I’m not going to play Cinderella to your Prince Charming.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’m not really sure,” he muttered.

  “Can we just do this please?”

  “Fine. Be ready.”

  He didn’t say anything else and I didn’t see him move. I didn’t hear the rustle of grass or feel the ripple in the air from a body cutting through it.

  “Storm?” I whispered, but he wasn’t there.

  When he was in complete ghost form, he was pretty good.

  I pushed away from the side of the garage and watched the house, looking for signs of Storm, waiting to see if he would get caught. Even though the yard and house was bright, I didn’t see him once.

  I really hoped he didn’t screw this up.

  I took a deep breath.
/>   The lights over the front door went out.

  One. I took off running, zipping across the street way faster than any human could go.

  Two. I took advantage of all the excess kinetic energy around the house, courtesy of the guards, and propelled myself even faster.

  Three. I opened the front door just wide enough to get through and rushed inside. I heard the shouts from a guard at the corner of the house as the door closed soundlessly behind me.

  The light outside came back on.

  I pressed myself up against the back of the front door and zeroed in on the guards who had just managed to rush to the other side. If they opened it…

  “What the hell was that?” one of them asked.

  “Probably a short in the breaker. All these damn lights,” the other muttered.

  They both moved away from the door and I let out a breath, pushing away and moving down the hall just as quickly as I got into the house. As I reached for the office door, it opened soundlessly, and my heart skipped a beat as I waited for G.R. to appear.

  But he didn’t.

  From inside, Storm said, “Hurry up!”

  Letting out the breath, I went in, the door pushing shut behind me. This room wasn’t lit up like the outside. The only lighting in here was from a small lamp on the desk across the room.

  “How the hell did you get in here so fast?”

  “Fast is a talent of mine. Kind of like becoming solid is yours.”

  “Well, let’s see how fast you can find some dirt on the Reaper.”

  “Where are you?” I asked, searching all the corners of the room.

  He moved so he was closer to the desk, so I could make out a shadow near the lamp.

  “How did you manage to go ghost all the way? Where are the solid parts of you?”

  “They’re still there. I’m just using the non-solid parts to kind of cloak them.”

  “Right,” I said, still not completely understanding, but realizing I probably never would unless I spent all my time without a body.