“I’ll do that. Just as soon as I get out of this torture chamber.”
I started up the Jeep and pulled out of the parking lot. “Let me guess, you treated someone else to your winning personality and they punched you in the face?”
He grunted but otherwise said nothing else.
At my apartment, I pulled up behind his Porsche and parked, moving the seat so he could climb out of the back. I started to walk away but then stopped. “Thanks for bringing my Jeep. The cabs around here take forever.”
“Did you make that phone call yet?”
Ahh, and there it was. The real reason he brought my Jeep. It was just an excuse to check up on me.
I sighed. “No.”
“I’m not leaving until you make the call.”
“Fine. Come upstairs. I’ll call her inside.”
At my door, I used my keys to unlock it and let us in, pausing once the door was open. “You left the door unlocked this morning when we left.”
“You locked it when you left, then?”
He nodded. “Leaving your doors unlocked isn’t safe.”
I almost made a quip about him not caring about whether or not I was safe, but I didn’t bother. I was tired.
He sat down in the nearby club chair and dabbed at his eye.
I went in the kitchen and grabbed an icepack and towel. “Here,” I said, jabbing it in front of his face. “That looks like it hurts.”
“I’ve had worse.”
I leaned in and looked at it. It was still oozing. “Did you even clean it?”
“I rinsed it out. You gonna make that call?” he asked, holding the ice up to his face. He didn’t even wince when the pack made contact with his wound.
I grabbed up my phone and dialed Rosalyn’s number. I was aware of Charming’s brooding stare as the phone rang. Rosalyn answered on the third ring.
“Hello?” Her voice was a little questioning, probably because my number was new.
“Hi, Rosalyn. This is Frankie. We met the other night…”
“Oh, yes! How are you?”
“I’m great. How are you?”
“Nothing wrong that a greasy slice of pizza can’t fix.”
I laughed. “I don’t think there is anything pizza can’t fix.”
“Hey, you wouldn’t want to grab some in a bit would you?”
“Oh. Well…” Charming appeared next to me and nodded. “I’m just getting off work—” Before I could finish my sentence, he snatched the phone out of my hand.
“Rosalyn,” he purred into the line. “This is Charming. We met the other night.” He grinned at whatever she was saying. “Yes, I’m here with Frankie. She was having some car trouble so I picked her up from work.”
I wondered if he would like a gash on his left eye to match the one on his right.
“Pizza?” he was saying. “Sure, we’d love to.” His eyes slid to mine and he smirked. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a soda out of the fridge and sat down at the table. This day just kept on getting better.
A few minutes later he pulled out a chair across from me and sat down. “Hope you like pizza, sister dear, because we have plans.”
“Can’t you just tell her I’m sick?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Too bad. You’re the one who told her we were related. Then you told her I was gay. You’re going to come tonight and tell her I’m not. That you were just being an overprotective sister and didn’t want your only brother to get hurt.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because once she knows I’m not gay, I can start dating her and then I won’t have to use my ‘sister’ as an excuse to see her.”
Well, at least then I wouldn’t have to see him every five minutes. Maybe once he wasn’t watching my every move, I could actually come up with a plan to get rid of him.
I got up and pulled out a small first-aid kit near the sink and returned to the table, pulling my chair directly in front of his. “At least let me clean up that eye. I don’t want to have to look at it while I’m eating.”
When he didn’t protest or make some nasty comment, I tore open a small cleansing wipe and reached up to dab at the corner of his eye. I expected him to wince or suck in a breath, but he didn’t do either. He just sat there staring at me without blinking as I worked.
“It really does look like someone punched you.”
He grunted.
“Was that a yes?”
“It was a ‘you should have seen the other guy.’”
I paused, wondering if he was being serious and deciding I really didn’t want to know, then finished dabbing at the cut and dropped the wipe on the table. “So, the other night… when I was in your apartment—”
“You mean the night you broke into my house?” he interrupted.
“Yeah, that one.” I said, opening up a butterfly bandage and reaching for the antibiotic cream. “You moved really fast. How’d you do that?”
I dabbed a little ointment around the edges of the cut. His shoulder’s tightened, but he made no other acknowledgement about my movements.
“It’s one of my abilities.”
“Moving fast?”
“Sort of. It’s called kinetic absorption. It’s the ability to absorb energy from other people and things around me. My body then can use the extra power by converting it to extra strength, super speed, or even sometimes using it to create power blasts.”
“Like from your hands?” I asked, forgetting I was cleaning his eye and just sitting there listening to him.
He nodded.
“Wow. I never heard of that before.” It might even be unbelievable if I hadn’t seen him do it. Or if I didn’t know the Grim Reaper existed.
“So is that all you can do?”
“I have super hearing too.”
“So that’s how you knew I was in the house.”
He shook his head. “The energy level in the house changed. You have lots of energy.”
I glared at him. “You used my energy that night?”
He shrugged.
“But I didn’t feel tired.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I take the extra energy; I don’t suck all of yours away.”
“Oh.” I picked up the bandage.
“Actually, that ability pretty much is the only one I have beyond the hearing. But it allows me to do a lot. It pretty much turns me into a super-powered human.”