Dangerous Lovers (139 page)

It was something I’d counted on, something that throughout the years I knew to be true. The Grim Reaper always kept his word. He never went back on a deal. I was beginning to think he was going to prove me wrong this time, but thankfully, it appeared he wasn’t.

“However, I never said I couldn’t make the job impossible. I never said I couldn’t make your life a living hell.”

He lunged across the room and grabbed my arm, his hand wrapping around my arm.

The pain was severe, an instant searing sensation that started where he touched me and worked its way up my arm, like a spreading infection, a growing disease. My veins began to turn black and they showed through my skin, which was now completely white.

I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there, caught between life and death, as the pain spread throughout my entire body. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. The pain was so intense that it robbed me completely of sound.

And then my eyesight began to go. Dark spots started swimming in my vision until there were so many everything went completely dark and I could see nothing.

Is this what it was like to be touched by the Grim Reaper? I thought death by him was instantaneous, that it was swift and final. Where was this pain coming from? Why did it hurt so incredibly bad?

When my insides were completely obliterated, I slid to the floor, dead. Only I wasn’t dead. Just the body I’d been using for the past twenty years. I was hovering above my body, staring down at what a mess it was. The pain of what happened still vibrated in my soul. It almost looked like I’d been electrocuted to death. Kind of felt that way too.

And just like that, I no longer had a body. Not one that I could actually live in.

“I hope that didn’t hurt too bad,” G.R. said, sounding rather thrilled with himself.

“I thought when you touched someone, they died instantly.”

“Humans, yes. For them it is pain free and blissfully quick. But for Escorts, it’s entirely different. My bodies are different. To truly destroy one of my creations, it’s much harder.”

One of his creations? Did he think he was Frankenstein? The guy collected bodies, bodies he stole from other people. He didn’t create them.

“And what a waste this one was.” He frowned. “It was a good one.” He looked at me. “But you certainly didn’t deserve it.”

“That body was more mine that yours,” I spat.

He looked at me and lifted an eyebrow that seemed to reach halfway up his wide forehead. “That body was never yours. It was on loan to you. I am the one who collected it. I am the one who prepared it for a soul that was not its own, and I am the one who made it possible it didn’t rot like a body is supposed to. The reason that body served you so well is because I was the one who made it possible.”

You know, it kind of pissed me off that he was standing there trying to take away my claim to the body I wore for twenty years.

It also occurred to me that since my body was completely unlivable, I was now in a very tough position with the Target. Basically, I was going to have to start over.

Score for the Reaper.

“Tell me, do souls need air to breathe?”

“No.”

“Oh well, that’s good, because I forgot to poke holes in the lid of the jar I stuffed your soul in.”

“
You did what?
”

“I know,” I said. “I was surprised she wasn’t willing to go with me either. I mean you would think any woman would choose me over you. When she refused to come along, I had to take matters into my own hands.”

“Do you think I won’t find her? Find the bodies?”

“That’s another thing… What was my body doing in your secret stash? You haven’t been using it, have you?”

“You don’t have a body. Not anymore.”

“Well, if you want your thirty million dollars, you’re going to have to give me one.”

“I thought we already determined that I never really cared about the money.” There was a gleam in his eye that I wasn’t liking.

“So?”

“So, I think I have better things to do than spend my day arguing with you.”

He raised his hand and pushed me backward toward the opening in the wall. I tried to steer away, to wiggle from the control he seemed to have over my soul.

He laughed—a happy and joyous sound. “Fight all you want, but I am the Grim Reaper. I own your soul. I control it.”

I was pushed through the tiny hallway, past the closet where the bodies once hung, and right into the small secret apartment. He appeared in the doorway, blocking the only exit.

“Let me tell you how this is going to go,” he said smoothly, happily. He actually kind of reminded me of the Grinch after the green guy stole all the gifts from the town and he was so jolly and thrilled.

“On my word, I cannot Recall you until you fail to kill the Target. So you will remain here, in this makeshift prison, without a body, without contact to the outside world. When the six-month time limit I gave you is up, I will let you out. And then I will Recall you.”

“And what about the bodies I took. The soul I stuffed into a jar? Do they mean nothing to you?”

“On the contrary. But while you whittle away your last few months on Earth here, alone, no doubt replaying everything you did that brought you to this unfortunate end over and over again…”

Was it just me or was he a bit dramatic?

“I will be searching. And you should know by now, I always get what I want. So when I at long last open that door to send you off into the void for your final exile, you will not only see me, but the possessions that you dared to steal.”

“I’ll be looking forward to that day.” I quipped.

“You joke. You’re funny.”

The joke was on him if he thought I was just going to sit in here and wait for my punishment.

He began to pull the door closed behind him. I rushed forward, thinking I could at least try to slip by except my soul didn’t move the way I wanted it to. Instead, it moved sideways.

“Oh, and might I suggest while you are in here that you think about your weaknesses. The things you’re leaving behind.”

“You already played that card. You can’t use my sister against me anymore.”

“Actually, I can,” he corrected. “However, I have discovered that your sister is not your only weakness.”

Everything in me stilled.

He smiled.

“I was always partial to blondes, too.”

“Don’t you go near her,” I growled.

“Perhaps it’s time I started adding some of the female variety to my collection,” he said, his voice turning thoughtful and mean.

I tried to rush him again. This time I flew backward, hitting the wall with a poof.

He laughed and shut the door.

I didn’t think it was funny.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“
Doorbell - a bell, chime, or buzzer outside a door that is rung to announce the presence of a visitor or caller.”

Frankie

What does one do when they find a body hanging in their closet? Scream? Run? Try it on?

I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I walked out of the bedroom and directly into the living room where I grabbed a Cherry Coke, popped the top, and took a huge drink. Piper watched me with an amused expression on her face.

Finally, I pulled the can away from my lips. “There’s a body hanging in my closet.”

Her mouth opened and closed. I walked back into my room and she followed and we both stood there just staring at it. It was on a hanger, like a dress or a nice shirt. It was a guy who had shaggy blond hair that fell well over his forehead. He was dressed in a pair khakis, a white button-down shirt, and an ass-ugly sweater vest. His chin lay against his chest and his eyes were closed. The body itself was flat and lifeless.

It didn’t move.

It didn’t jump out and yell, “Boo!”

It might have been less creepy if it had.

“Where did it come from?” Piper asked.

“Is there a body store in Alaska I didn’t know about?” I quipped.

She took the can out of my hand and gulped a long drink. “It isn’t a coincidence that your boyfriend works for the Grim Reaper and now you have a body in your closet.”

“Charming isn’t my boyfriend,” I argued. Though she was right about one thing. This was not a coincidence. But after what happened, I couldn’t exactly call him up and say, “Did you happen to leave something at my house?” Charming slept with me and then disappeared. He left me. I wasn’t going to call him for help the first minute a body turned up.

“Why is it here?” Piper asked.

I shrugged. Then I leaned forward and poked it. The hanger swung back and forth on the rod. Piper smacked me in the arm. “Don’t poke it!”

I couldn’t stop staring at it. But not because it was morbid. Because there was something familiar about it. I’d never seen this person (or whatever you wanted to call it), but there was still something about it that felt recognizable. “He’s actually not bad looking.”

Piper gasped. “First you poke it and now you’re hitting on it!”

“I am not hitting on it,” I grumbled. “Give me my soda.” I snatched the can back and drained it. “It seems to me that we should be much more traumatized about finding a body in my closet.”

“Well, we already decided we needed therapy.”

“What should we do with it?”

“Guess we can’t call the cops.”

“Not without looking like we put it there.”

“You could call—”

“No.” I interjected. “I am not calling him. He made his choice.”

“So it’s over between you two?” She seemed a little sad at the thought.

The pain that sliced through me was swift and strong. But I didn’t flinch; I might as well get used to it. “Yeah, it’s over.”

And then the doorbell rang.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“
Message - a usually short communication transmitted by words, signals, or other means from one person, station, or group to another.”

Charming

I wished the Reaper’s last words didn’t bother me. But they did.

I wasn’t used to worrying about someone. I wasn’t used to caring. But I did.

All I could think about was Frankie. What if he wasn’t just making idle threats? What if he really did go after her? What if he touched her? My God, would she feel the pain that I felt when my body was killed while I was in it? Would that searing pain seize her veins and bloom outward until it stopped the beating of her heart?

The questions were relentless. The worry was indescribable. And what made it worse was that I had no body to expel the extra energy. I couldn’t do pushups or punch a wall; I literally just had to hang there and do nothing but hope she was safe.

I wasn’t good at doing nothing. I needed a plan, a way out of here. If I had to kill that Target without a body, then I was going to figure out a way to do it.

I hadn’t lost yet. I was still in the game.

A game that now involved Frankie.

I wanted her safe more than I wanted anything, including not being Recalled. A memory flashed over me from the day Dex lost it in G.R.’s office and threw a couple well-placed punches to my face. I’d taunted him about Piper, about trying to save her, about being weak and caring about someone else over himself.

Is this how he felt that day? Desperate and willing to do anything to save the woman he loved? I couldn’t understand it then, but now… now I understood all too well. I was wrong to think of him as weak because it seemed to me that putting someone else above myself was the strongest thing I could do.

Well played, Dex. Well played.

“Dude, I saw your body. Did that hurt?” said a voice from behind me.

I turned, red scattering everywhere, and faced at a cloud that looked just like me, only this one was black. “Storm! How the hell did you get in here?”

“Dude, you don’t have a body. You can go right through the wall. You’ve seen me do it more than once. Why are you still here?”

“Are you serious?” Sure, I’d seen Storm go through walls and borrow bodies, but I thought those were abilities unique to him. It never occurred to me that I might be able to do those things too.

He snickered low and I watched as he pushed half his form through the wall and then pulled it back in.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I muttered, feeling like a complete idiot for the little bit of panic I felt when he locked me in here and threw away the key.

“Because up until now you’ve spent maybe an hour out of your body in your entire life,” Storm suggested. “And because G.R. doesn’t want you to know that stuff. He wants you to think you’re stuck here.”

But Storm spent most of his life as a ghost and unbeknownst to G.R., he used a lot of that time to learn to do things he wasn’t supposed to be able to do.