“Dex did,” I said, the words falling from my lips before I could stop them.
“Yes, he did. And it cost him his life.” Her eyelashes swept down, hiding her hurt. I started to apologize, but her quiet words shocked me, cutting off whatever I was about to say. “Sometimes I wish he hadn’t found a way out because then he’d still be here. With me.”
Her words sank into me, squeezing my heart and making it hard to breath. “Piper,” I whispered.
“I know. For him to still be here would mean I would have to be dead. But sometimes I still think…” She shook her head.
What it must be costing her sitting here talking to me about this. She’d already been through so much. I let the subject drop, not wanting her to have to relive anymore. As hurt as I was by Charming, I knew that it was nothing compared to what I would be feeling if he were dead.
“Did he try to kill you?” she asked.
I laughed. “No.” That probably would be easier than this. “He… he showed me the person he was beneath the charm. I thought it was the real him. And then he disappeared. It was all just to get me into bed.”
She gasped. “You slept with him?!”
I looked at her. “Well, I never claimed to be a nun!”
She grinned. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
She rolled her eyes. “How was it?”
I sighed. “He totally rocked my world.”
She grinned again.
“He used to be a boxer. He has these boxing gloves…” I felt heat pooling between my legs and I clamped my lips shut. Reliving sex with Charming wasn’t going to make this any easier.
“You know what we need?” Piper declared.
“What?”
“Pizza. Soda. Candy. And a bunch of horror movies where the dumb virgins run up the stairs instead of out the front door. It will make us feel better about ourselves for not being that stupid and for not being virgins.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Who you getting it on with?”
“Please. It’s been so long I might as well be a virgin.”
I laughed. “Someday, sista, someday.”
“Not anytime soon,” she said, getting up and grabbing the phone, but not before I caught yet another flash of hurt in her eyes. “I’ll order the pizza. Go raid the stash of candy you have hidden in your underwear drawer.”
I made a sound of mock surprise. “I do not have candy in there.” Then I went off to get it because that’s exactly where I kept it.
In my room, I pushed past the lace panties knowing they were all gonna have to go in the trash. I would never be able to wear another pair of those again without thinking about the things I did with Charming while wearing a pair. I loaded up on candy and then I remembered my emergency stash. The box of truffles I kept hidden in my closet.
I dumped what I was holding on my bed and went to my closet, pulling open the door.
My eye caught something it didn’t recognize.
I looked.
I looked again.
I forgot all about the truffles, stood there, and stared.
At the body hanging in my closet.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Joke - something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.”
Charming
He took me to his office, but he could have taken me to the depths of hell and I wouldn’t have cared. I was just glad we left before he could take his shitty mood out on Frankie.
I didn’t know what she would think when I wasn’t there, but I was hoping I could get back without being gone too long. And then I could explain. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to explain the fact that I pissed off the Grim Reaper even more than I already had by stealing some of his favorite bodies and jamming his pet soul into a jar.
G.R. didn’t waste any time but instead went behind his desk, reaching under the chair for the secret button. I expected the wall to open immediately and when it didn’t, I looked up.
“How do I know you just aren’t playing more games?”
“You should know by now I don’t play games when it comes to a job.”
He just stared at me and I realized he was trying to decide if I was just grasping at straws, if I was trying to find out his secrets by saying I already knew them. Because the minute he pressed that button, I would know for sure that he did have a secret stash of bodies and a wayward soul. He would know that I found his weakness.
“You gonna push that button?” I said. “The wall isn’t going to open itself.”
And just like that he knew. Cold seemed to seep into the room around me, the kind of cold that stiffened your limbs, the kind of cold that crept over bodies when they died.
He pressed the button and the section of the bookcase opened, just as silently as it had the first time. He walked past me and into the narrow hallway that led to his closet-sized safe and stopped. “Get in here,” he commanded.
I walked over to the door but didn’t go any farther.
He drew a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door where the bodies wouldn’t be, and opened it wide.
The silence that surrounded us was so thick you couldn’t even cut it with a knife. He pivoted around to stare at me, his eyes glowing an odd shade of violet. Then he turned away again, opening the second door, the door to the secret apartment.
He called out for the soul, not calling her by name, and I wondered if that was on purpose or if she just didn’t have one. I stepped forward, looking toward the entrance, and I knew when he realized she was gone because a chair flew by and hit the wall, smacking whatever was there and shattering some glass.
I prepared myself for his wrath as he faced me.
“How did you manage to pull this off?” His voice was deadly calm.
“You’d be surprised what a man can pull off when he’s aptly motivated.”
“Where is she!” he roared. His anger was so intense that it was palpable energy that flew off him and barreled toward me.
It slammed into me, sending me backward, my feet dragging across the floor as it pulled me. It would have yanked anyone else off their feet. It would have flattened them into the wall and knocked them unconscious.
I wasn’t just anyone. I had a few abilities that I could use to my advantage.
My body absorbed most of the energy he threw, using it to fuel my cells and pump me up for a fight. I might not win against G.R., but I could do some damage.
I dug my feet into the large area rug that covered most of his office, planting them solidly apart. What was left of the energy kept going, pulling at my hair and my clothes until it snapped away, crackling behind me and knocking over everything that sat on his desk.