Brighter Than the Sun
Author: Darynda Jones
Date: 2015-10-06 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Urban Fantasy; Fantasy; Romance; Paranormal Romance; Novella; Ghosts; Demons; Adult
Description: All his life, Reyes Alexander Farrow has suffered the torments of the damned. Only one thing has given him hope: the woman who radiates a light that no mortals can see; a light that only the departed can see... Told from his point of view, BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN chronicles the first time Reyes ever encountered Charley, and how their relationship has been the one thing that can either save him or doom him.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin’s Press ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

For Alexandra

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Acknowledgments

This novella was a long time coming, and it owes a lot of thanks to a lot of people. Just to name a few (in no particular order): Jennifer, Alexandra, Caitlin, Hillary, Eliani, Lorelei, everyone at Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, Kit, Celeste, Theresa, Jowanna, Dana, Netter, Danny, Jerrdan, Casey, and The Grimlets. Thank you for the storming of the brains, the calming of the nerves, the general care and feeding of the driven.

And thank you to everyone who wanted to hear Reyes’s side of the story.

1

I’m curled in a corner of the basement, shivering like a little bitch and licking my wounds from the latest encounter, when I hear my sister crying at the door. I try to assure her I’m okay, but the edges of my vision darken and a beckoning light appears in the distance. I collapse and drift toward it. Weightless. Ethereal.

I always drift toward it.

Not literally. I’ve been locked in the basement by a psychopath. I don’t get out much. But mentally.

You should probably know that even though I’m twelve, the circumstances of my existence are not normal. The things that happen to me are not normal. The things in my head are not normal. And the light that I’m drifting toward, the warmth I feel from it, the … forgiveness for all my abnormalities, is as abnormal as I am.

I’m three the first time I see it, and in a very similar state. I follow it. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and drift toward the white-hot pinprick of light burning the back of my eyes. The closer I get, the brighter it becomes until, just when I think I’ll never see again …

… she appears.

This tiny being peeking out from between a lady’s legs. I don’t know what to think at first, besides I shouldn’t be looking between a lady’s legs. But she is dying, the lady, so I figure it’s okay. I wouldn’t look at her bad anyway. My head doesn’t always work right, but even at three, it knows not to look at a lady bad.

Anyway, she’s shaking. The lady. Not shivers like if she’s cold, but deep shakes like if something’s wrong. Her head is thrown back and her body is stiff. The nurses hold her down as a doctor pulls at the light. At the thing. The tiny being that was in the lady’s belly, and suddenly it all makes sense.

Not the light, but that whole “Where do babies come from?” thing.

It’s disturbing, but not so disturbing as the lady. One of the reasons my head doesn’t work right is because I feel what others feel. Could ever since I was a kid. A littler kid. I can feel other people when they’re mad or pissed or in pain. That’s how I know when to stay away from Earl. When to run and hide. It doesn’t always work, but it’s damned sure worth a shot.

But right now, I feel the lady’s pain and it hurts and I almost leave if not for the light. I try to catch my breath once more. To be near it. Near her. Just a little longer.

She comes out in a whoosh of baby and liquid and a light so bright, I can hardly see—and I’m mesmerized. Then the pain stops and I can breathe normally again. The lady is still. A solid, constant note sounds in the room, and people gather around her and the baby. Everyone except the man holding the lady’s hand. He is doubled over. His shoulders shake, and I realize the people around the baby—most of them, anyway—are dead. They’re people from the past come to see the light. Ghosts. Dead.

Their faces are full of wonder, but they are blocking my view, so I push them aside and drift closer. She is wailing like babies do. Then she sees the lady. Her mother. The woman standing beside the doctor, looking down at her. I’d never seen anything like the emotion in the mom’s expression, and I think how it must be love, because it’s soft and caring and tender.

I’m glad for the baby and sad at the same time. The mother touches her face. The baby’s. Tells her to be strong. Stronger than she was. Then she kisses the man’s bowed head, and I think about how I didn’t know ghosts could cry. Then she does the impossible: She steps into the baby’s light and is gone.

I watch as the baby goes still and then gasps and then starts wailing again, and I wonder if she’s crying for her mother. The doctor cuts a cord that goes to her belly button, but it doesn’t hurt her. I’d have felt it.

Another doctor is trying to bring the mother back to life. He works on the lady with a bunch of nurses. They don’t know she is already gone. Already on the other side. There is no coming back from that.

This is the second time I see somebody die. The first was a man. It happened before I was tall enough to piss in a toilet. The man got in a fight with Sir. Earl used to make me call him Sir. He still tries. He fails.

I don’t know what the fight was about, but when he went to heaven, a light opened up around him and he disappeared. The baby is like that light, and I wonder if she swallowed it. I’m three at the time, remember. I wonder about a lot of strange shit. Either way, she’s special. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She stops crying and looks at me—right at me—her eyes wide and curious. They sparkle like a diamond ring and I can see things in them. Stars and ribbons of light. Shimmering gold rivers and purple trees. And I realize she is from there. That place I’m seeing. She was sent here, and she’s showing me her galaxy. Her universe. And I don’t know how, but I know what she is. The seeker. The one who searches for lost souls.

A name pops into my head. It’s in another language. Aramaic, maybe. It’s supposed to be something like D’AaeAsh. No, that’s not quite right. D’MaAeSH? No. There’s more to it. Either way, I can hear it in my head. I just can’t pronounce it, so when I tell her what she is, it comes out “Dutch.” I know a lot of words I can’t pronounce at that age in a lot of languages. Earl gets mad when I talk about it. He calls me a liar, but I’m not.

Doesn’t matter anyway. Dutch will work for now.

She seems to like it, but I feel like she’s scared when she looks at me. Just a little, so I hide. At first, I imagine a cape like Superman’s but decide against it. Too bright. Too flashy. Instead, I imagine a cloak like the knight in my comic book wears. It’s thick and black with a hood. As I think, it appears around me like a big, black sea and settles around my shoulders. That’s the great thing about daydreams.

The doctor “calls it” and checks the clock. The nurses clean the girl—Dutch—and take her to a room with other babies, and she stays there for three days. The man comes and goes. He doesn’t stay long. But that’s okay. We keep vigil. Me and the ghosts.

She likes them. I can feel it. Even the one with a big hole on the side of his head. But when I get close, she winces, so I call forth the cloak and watch her from a corner of the ceiling. I watch until the man comes to take her home.

His sadness hurts my chest and makes it hard to breathe. He whispers into her ear. Something about just the three of them now, and I remember that the man has another daughter. He was telling a nurse as he looked down at Dutch. As he held her for the first time. As he balanced a bottle in his big hands. As he cried and cried and cried.

I remember wondering why nobody ever told him it’s not okay for boys to cry.

Then she is gone, taken to be with her family. What’s left of it. And I wake up from the dream. The dream about a girl made of pure light. You’d think that since it was a daydream and not a night one, I could’ve controlled what happened. I should have tried harder. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve made the lady live and be with her little girl. If I’d thought about it.

2

When I wake up, I’m not in the basement anymore. Groggy and disoriented, I don’t recognize my surroundings. It takes me a minute to realize I’m in a hospital. A hospital. I stay still when a nurse comes in. Checks my IV. Tells me I had a seizure.

Okay. That’s all fine and dandy, but I always have seizures. I’ve had them since I was three. Since I first saw Dutch’s light. Why am I in a hospital? I’ve never been to a hospital. I’ve never even been to a doctor. I’m in a blue gown and my arms are taped up. One has an IV in it. The other has a bandage that runs from elbow to wrist.

Earl is sitting beside me. His cheap cologne hovers in the air around me like teargas. Inside, he is furious. I can feel it like red-hot needles on my skin. Outside, he’s all smiles. A smile on his face is a scary thing. He flirts with the nurse. She laughs and ducks her head. He pats my arm with his sandpaper hands and calls me Alexander. Then he gives my arm a tight squeeze as if I don’t know what the fuck “Alexander” means.

Eyes down. Mouth shut.

My first thought is for my sister, Kim. She’s not my real sister but definitely the next best thing. She’s all I have, and Earl knows it.

“You took quite a spill,” the nurse says.

I don’t say anything. I just nod.

“I’m Gillian.” She checks my bandages. “Goodness.” She pulls back in surprise. “Almost healed. How on earth is that—?” She stops and fixes her expression. “That’s amazing. I bet you’ll be able to go home soon.”

I nod again and wince at the longing she feels for me. She wants a kid. A boy just like me. Sweet. Polite. Respectful. She has no idea what I am. How filthy I am. How bad. I feel sorry for her.

“You ready to go home, sport?” Earl asks me.

He ruffles my hair. My fucking hair like I’m a two-year-old. Heat wells inside me. Burns my skin. I bite down and nod like the good little bitch I am. His words. Little bitch. I just happen to agree with them.

Gillian laughs. Her eyes sparkle when she looks at me. I turn away. She needs to save that for someone a little more deserving.

“It could be a few more days, unfortunately,” she says. “We still don’t know what’s causing those seizures. But I bet you’ll be out of here in no time.”

Earl’s anger peaks to a new high.

“You have some interesting markings on you,” she says. She wants to look. To see them again. To examine them more closely.

I don’t encourage her. Earl doesn’t like it when people notice them. My birthmarks. The curves and lines that cover much of my shoulders and back. They were really light when I was a kid. Barely noticeable. They’re getting darker, though, and the shapes have started showing up in my dreams. Like they mean something. Like they lead somewhere. Probably into darkness.

Earl nods. “Been there since he was born,” he says, like he would know.

“Well, I’ll let the doctor know he’s awake.” Her smile is innocent like sunlight on a flower.

A man comes in, a custodian, as she writes on the chart. He glances at her, grabs the trash, wipes down the counters in the bathroom, and glances again. I look at him hard. Then I look back at Gillian. Then back at him.

His name is Donald. He has oily brown hair and thick glasses, and he is going to stab her to death in a few weeks. He wants her to go out with him. She’s nice. Nobody is nice to him. But when she tells him she only wants to be friends, he’s furious. Calls her a tease. Calls her a slut. He’s waited so long for her. Hoped for so long. If he can’t have her, no one will.

I close my eyes. Try unsuccessfully to block out the scene that unfolds inside my head. A scene I can envision only because he is going to hell as a result of it, and I can see the thing that brands people for hell. That first horrible act they commit that sets their fate. I know the names of everyone going to hell, and I know if a person is going there the minute we meet, whether the person has committed the sin yet or not.

Hell is not a good place. I’ve seen that in my dreams, too. In my nightmares. Most of them are about Earl. About his hands and his nails and his teeth. But sometimes I dream about hell. About the fire and the agony and the soldiers. The devil’s army. I see them from on high as they march. As they battle. I command them as though I’ve done it for centuries, and that just can’t be good. There’s only one way I can see such things. I’m bad. I’m evil, because only an evil person would know things about hell.

I want to tell Gillian about Donald, but I can’t. Not with Earl right there. She wouldn’t believe me anyway.

Earl’s anger rises when the nurse tells him it will be a few more days, and I know I’m in even more trouble. But that’s okay. I can still feel the light. It permeates the crust. The outer shell. Sinks deep inside me. He can’t take that away. I want to dream about her some more, but the minute the nurse leaves, Earl rips out the IV, throws my clothes at me, and tells me to get dressed. Quietly. Or I know what will happen.

Damn straight, I do.

3

I don’t see the light for a while after that. I’m in the basement for days and everything is blurry. Kim stands guard. I can hear her moving around behind the door.

My throat hurts because Earl choked me. He doesn’t normally do that. Goes to show how pissed he was. Not even at me. He’s mad because the girl he was seeing found me in the basement. That’s how I ended up in the hospital in the first place. Earl had gone out for beer and she went to the basement, looking for a washer to do his laundry. She was going to surprise him. Kim must have been in the shower. She would’ve explained that I was okay. But since I was unconscious, she thought I fell, so she called 911 before Earl got home. He had to go along with it, I guess, but he got angrier than I’ve ever seen him.

Sometimes I wonder why he has girlfriends. He doesn’t like them. He pretends to. Tells them what they want to hear. They never last long, though. He gets tired of them pretty quick. This last one made a huge mistake. I’ll never see her again, and I liked her. She didn’t smoke and she smelled like peppermint and made me spaghetti.

I lie back against the concrete and think of Dutch. Of the girl made of light. Of the people in her life who didn’t work out quite as one would expect.

When she is about a year old, her dad brings home a girlfriend. I don’t like her. She is too much like Earl. She’s fond of the dad well enough, and Dutch’s sister, but there is something strange about the way she looks at Dutch. She oohs and ahhs when the dad is around, but when she is alone with Dutch, something isn’t right. I feel contempt come off her. Jealousy. Why would a lady be jealous of a baby?

I don’t understand people. They smile when they are mad. They hug people they hate. They steal from people they genuinely love. And they are jealous of babies.

Dutch’s eyes sparkle and her light is brighter than ever. A dead lady is pretending to eat her toes and Dutch laughs and laughs. Her dad laughs, too, but it makes the lady angry. That’s when I know for sure what the woman is. A problem.

4

I’ve died a hundred deaths, but I’m alive. Because of her. Because of her light. Because of her smile. Every time I die, I float toward her, and I am saved. I am healed. Her light soaks into me. Oozes inside me. Fixes all the broken parts, accomplishing something all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never have done.

Sometimes I’m grateful. Sometimes I’m not, because I know it will happen again and again, and I figure there comes a time when it needs to end. When I just need to die and stay dead. But she saves me whether I want to be saved or not.

And now she’s doing it again. I am at her house, drifting toward her light. She brushes past me in the hall and turns around real fast, like I’ve startled her. She’s wearing a summer dress and sandals, and her hair has been pulled up into a ponytail.

I stay back. I always cover myself in the hooded cloak and try to stay back, but she stands there with her gold eyes wide and her pretty mouth open. She’s nine going on thirty. Full of sass and spark and secrets. She shimmers with life. She is the exact opposite of me and I’ve grown to understand the “opposites attract” thing.

Her lips are pink and full and her cheeks warm. If she weren’t so scared of me, I’d try to steal a kiss. But she’s terrified, and that just seems wrong. Like something Earl would do. I shudder at the thought.

Then the problem lady, aka her stepmom, stomps into the hall and grabs her arm. They are going to be late and she is in a lot of trouble, little lady. Why is she wearing that dress? She told her not to wear that dress. It’s too chilly. She’ll just have to freeze. Maybe she’ll learn a lesson.

Anger bubbles up inside me, and Dutch’s eyes grow wider and wider. The lady looks at me, too, but she all she can see is the wall at my back. Nobody but Dutch can see me in these dreams.

They are married now. Dutch’s dad and the problem lady. Dutch was happy about it at first. I don’t know why. The woman has never liked her. And Dutch is like me. She can feel indifference. Apathy. Contempt. But she doesn’t understand why her stepmother has such harsh feelings for her. She hasn’t seen what I’ve seen. Some people are just bad.

When the woman doesn’t see anything, she whirls Dutch around to face her. “You have to stop this. I mean it.”

Her fingernails dig into Dutch’s tender skin and my lungs stop working. I shake. I snarl. I want to kill her. I want to bash her face in.

“I’m not putting up with it, Charlotte. There’s nobody there, and you damned well know it.”

But Dutch won’t quit looking at me, so the lady pushes her down the hall toward the front door.

My anger consumes me. Rises and swells until the walls ripple around me with the force of it. I knock a vase off a side table, and the lady turns. Stares straight at me. Pulls her eyebrows together until they make an ugly line down her forehead. Then she clenches her jaw, turns once more, and hurries out the door.

5

By the time I get back, Earl is finished. I crawl to my closet and hide for a few days. Kim hides with me. She has long red hair and pale skin with a light dusting of freckles across her nose. She brings water and washes what she can. Then she makes me soup and we talk about what we are going to do when we grow up.

Kim is the most timid, soft-spoken person I’ve ever known. So when she tells me she wants to be a fighter pilot, I laugh till my stomach hurts. It hurt already, so it doesn’t take long. I wish she were my real sister. But that would make Earl my real father. Fuck that.

We left our TV behind at our last place because we had to sneak out a window in the middle of the night. The colors were off and the picture wasn’t quite in the center, but that didn’t matter. It was something.

But the landlord wanted the rent and he wanted it now. Nobody tells Earl Walker what to do. Nobody gets in his face and orders him about. He leaves for a couple of hours and then we sneak out. I feel like something bad has happened, but I don’t ask Earl about it. I never talk to him if I don’t have to. I get enough unwanted attention.

But Kim is asleep, and without a TV, I have to think. I think about Dutch. Why she saves me and doesn’t let me die. I think about her light. How bright it is. How nourishing. I think about Earl. I’m pretty sure he wants to kill me. He threatens to “put me in the ground” all the time, and I wonder why I’m even here. On earth. Why I even exist.

Sometimes Earl takes pictures. The kind that roll out of the camera and slowly come into focus. It is the bane of said existence. He hangs them on a line in whatever room constitutes our family room. I think that’s why Kim walks with her head down all the time. Her shoulders concave. He leaves the pictures up unless he’s seeing someone. Then he stuffs them in a sock in his drawer.

I used to wonder why he took them. I don’t care anymore. No one can ever see them. Earl knows how I feel about them and he laughs. He keeps them until we move again. And then he knocks a hole in a wall, dumps them in there, and patches the hole. He just leaves it like that. A big white spot on the wall. A reminder of what he has on me. He’s too stupid to know the photos are way more damning to him than me.

It takes me awhile, but I figure out why he hangs them up. I think he does it so I won’t bring any friends over. Like I have any. I do get to know some of the neighborhood kids, because he lets us go out sometimes, but only if I have no visible bruises. So I concentrate on healing. He says I heal fast. I say I don’t heal fast enough. Any time spent indoors with him is too much.

Sometimes he gets a job and we’re home alone. That is what heaven is. We get to do whatever we want and eat whatever we want. Well, whatever we have. He is working today, so Kim gets the last can of ravioli and I eat a package of crackers and mustard. We find a bunch of books in a box the last tenants left behind. I learned to read from abandoned books and magazines and from closed-captioning when we had a TV. And I taught Kim to read years ago. But today, I read to her until she falls asleep, the afternoon sun stretching across the floor and lighting her hair on fire. I eat more crackers. Lick the mustard off my fingers. And celebrate the good life.

He’s gone and we can breathe.

I close my eyes and find Dutch. She’s at a park near her house, riding bikes with another girl whose hair is almost as red as Kim’s. The sweater Dutch is wearing swallows her whole and is barely a shade lighter than her long coffee-colored hair. Her cheeks are flushed and she laughs when her tire almost slides down the side of an arroyo. The same arroyo she almost died in.

She doesn’t come here often anymore, but it was her stepmother, Denise’s, favorite place to take her before she started kindergarten.

On one particular occasion, she’s playing hopscotch with her friends, a group of older girls. Dutch is only three. Way too young to play by herself. But Denise is too busy chatting with the other girls’ mothers to be too concerned.

Some boys are watching the girls play. I remember being jealous of them. They throw sticks and run. The girls chase them until Denise yells at Dutch to stay where she can see her. Then she turns and continues her story, completely ignoring her stepdaughter.

A girl about thirteen years old calls Dutch over to where she is standing on the edge of a cement arroyo. They have had a lot of rain and it is half full of raging water. The current is strong enough to drown anything caught in its path.

The girl summons Dutch closer. She is dead. The girl. Dutch ignores her stepmother and wanders toward her. The girl is lost. I can see it in her eyes. She is scared and desperate and confused, but that doesn’t give her the right to kill anyone. I can see a bad thing about to happen from a mile away. I think it’s the hellfire in me. The brimstone in my blood.

I step between them. Shake out my cloak. Glare at Dutch until she backs away, her lids round, her face bright pink from the cold weather. After a moment, she runs back to her stepmother and gets yelled at for going too far. For once, I’m right there with the crazy bitch. Better yelled at than dead.

I turn to the girl. She’s old enough to know better. Old enough to know what she just tried to do was wrong on several levels.

She stares at me. Hypnotized. Enchanted. I lower my hood and she wants to touch me. With her fingers. With her mouth. I touch her instead. I grab hold of her throat. Pull her closer.

“This is my world,” I say from between clenched teeth. “Go anywhere near the reaper again, and I’ll send you to a place where your skin will bubble and your face will melt and you will scream in agony for all eternity.”

The girl’s mouth drops open. She nods. I let go and she disappears, and I’m more than a little surprised that worked.

6

I try to run away several times growing up. Before Kim comes along, I figure I’m old enough to be on my own at around six or seven. But Earl bars the windows and nails them shut, and I can’t get them open no matter how hard I try. He also locks the doors from the outside when he leaves, and no matter how hard I push, they won’t budge. Someday, I think, when I’m stronger, I’m going to smash the windows out and pull the bars apart with my bare hands. Someday.

It’s around this time I begin to ponder why I created my other world. Why I created Dutch. I can be strong there. Powerful. Cunning. Like an angel from the Bible I stole from a hotel room we broke into. Or the superheroes in comic books I found in the trash. Or the Road Runner in my favorite cartoon.

In real life, I’m more like the Coyote. Bumbling. Conniving. An absolute failure at everything I do. I feel like the Coyote when he falls off a cliff and splats on the ground below in a puff of dust.

But not when I’m in Dutch’s world. Her world is so vivid. So tangible. Things happen that I can’t control. If I could, I would make Dutch’s new mother love her. And I would make Dutch love me, so it’s probably good I can’t control it.

Instead, I go see her every chance I get. To feel her light on my face. To see the shimmer in her eyes. I lie back and fall into her world for hours at a time. Earl gets mad. Tells me to snap out of it.

But he’s never been to her world.

I used to ask Earl every day if I could go to school. He always said no. Said we move too much. And, boy, do we. Sometimes, I get to know a few of the neighborhood kids when we move in. Some I like. Some I don’t.

I have to prove myself again and again. The girls want to kiss me. Several of the boys want to kiss me, too. The older girls have something else in mind. Their eyes roam to my mouth. To my shoulders. To my stomach. But that only makes the older boys mad even though their eyes roam, too. It’s a pretty even split between desire and absolute hatred.

I got in my first fight when I was five. Three boys from middle school tried to bash in my face with a rock. The leader was crazy as hell. Which figures. He’s going to hell for shooting a man in the car next to him at a stoplight, but not for several years.

The actual fight didn’t last long. They tried to hold me down while the leader balanced the rock over his head. I pushed one’s face with my hand. Elbowed the other. And simply kicked one of the leader’s arms. The rock crashed down onto the top of his head, and that was that.

He was in the hospital for two days. The boys told the cops I attacked them. Thankfully, I was five and they were eleven and twelve. I told them my dad wasn’t home. I didn’t lie. Earl is not my dad. I’ve known that for a long time. He cowered in our apartment while I told the cops he ran to the store. While they were talking to the other parents, Earl threw our stuff into an old suitcase and a laundry basket and we hightailed it out of there. We’ve never been back to that apartment. We’ve never been back to that side of town.

The apartment we’re in now, we got only because Earl flirted with the landlady. He even dated her a couple of times. I heard them having sex. They both faked it, and the relationship fizzled fast. But we have a shiny new apartment, complete with a washer and dryer that stack on top of each other. The dryer doesn’t work, but that’s okay. I’m just grateful for the washer. We’ve never had one actually inside the apartment.

Earl is always happy when we have a new place. But happy is not always good. He cooks for Kim and me. Dotes on us. Sends her to bed. Calls me to him.

I think he knows Kim and I are leaving soon. He starts locking us in again. Doesn’t let us walk to the store or go to the library. But we’ve learned to sneak out of most of the places we stay at. There’s always a weakness in the structure. Always.

When I was a kid, we had a house once with an access panel in my room that led to the attic. In the attic was a vent. I could push the vent aside, crawl through, jump down onto a pile of logs, and make my way to the library. Not quite as good as school, but close. As long as I was home before Earl, I was good. The couple of times I wasn’t, I paid a hefty price. But it was still worth it.

7

As I’m growing up, I feel myself being drawn to Dutch more and more. Lured. Usually, I go to her. I watch her. But sometimes her emotions are so powerful, I’m actually pulled toward her by an invisible force. Like a magnet. I have to go. To see if she’s okay. Which is ridiculous, I know, since she’s not real.

The first time that happens, the first time I’m drawn to her, I’m seven. Her emotions tug at me. The strongest is anger. An anger that only Dutch can feel. She is powerful, and her emotions, even at four, are a force to be reckoned with.

She is sitting in a car with Denise. She calls her stepmom Denise, in fact, and it makes the woman so mad, her face turns red. But Dutch has figured out Denise doesn’t love her, and no matter what she says or what she does or how she acts, the woman probably never will. So she calls her by her first name instead of “Mommy” like Denise wants. Denise doesn’t even want it for herself but for Dutch’s dad. To make everything seem okay on the outside, no matter how messed up things are on the inside.

But Dutch wants her dad to know how she feels. How distant Denise is. How unloving.

I realize Denise’s face is red for a different reason this time. Her father has died, and Dutch is trying to tell her so. She’s trying to give her a message from him, but Denise is shaking, she is so astounded.

She glares at Dutch. Her hand twitches, she wants to slap her so bad. She decides a good berating will do the trick. “Charlotte! How dare you say such a thing.”

Dutch doesn’t like being called Charlotte. She likes “Charley” better. It’s what her dad calls her. And her uncle Bob. They are her two favorite people in the world. She likes her sister, Gemma, okay, but because Gemma is Denise’s pet, Dutch keeps her distance for the most part.

Denise doesn’t believe her. Dutch repeats the message, trying to get her to understand. Something about blue towels. I don’t get it, but it seems pretty important to the dead guy talking to Dutch from the backseat. He looks over his shoulder at me. His eyes widen, but I’m more interested in the reaction of Dutch’s stepmom. Of his miserable daughter.

“I can’t believe you would say such a horrible, horrible thing.” Denise grabs Dutch’s arm and jerks her closer. “You are a horrible child. I’m going to tell your father what you just said, and I hope he makes it hurt for you to sit down for a week.”

A flash of anger takes my breath away. I hold back. I want to kill the woman for the hundredth time, but I don’t. Still, it’s my dream. Surely I can get rid of her somehow.

They are behind a bar that Dutch’s dad frequents. It’s a local cop hangout. She unbuckles Dutch’s seat belt and pulls her across the seats and out the driver’s door with her. Her fingernails bite into Dutch’s skin. I feel the pain as they tear through several layers. But more than anything, I feel the humiliation when she drags Dutch inside and deposits her roughly on a bench just outside the kitchen.

“You sit here. I’m going to get your father.” She leans down until her face is mere inches from Dutch’s. “And then we’ll see how much he thinks of his little angel.”

She stomps off as a waitress offers her a sympathetic glance. Dutch wants to crawl under the bench and disappear. Humiliation and anger surge through her.

Denise finds Dutch’s dad, Leland, at a table with his brother, Robert, or Uncle Bob, as Dutch calls him. Denise is throwing a fit. He shifts in his seat, embarrassed by Denise’s behavior. Almost as humiliated as Dutch is until he hears the words, “She said my father just died.”

He glances around. Stands up. Ushers her toward the door.

“She said he died, Leland. How dare she say such a thing!”

“Denise, honey, please calm down.”

“Calm down?” she screeches. Really loudly.

The other people in the bar, mostly cops, are either amused or annoyed. Some of them don’t like Denise. One of those is Leland’s brother. He glares as Mr. Davidson tries to lead Denise away.

“Here you are, drinking with your buddies in the middle of the afternoon, and your daughter is telling me my father died.”

“We were having lunch.”

She leans forward until her face almost touches his. “She is evil.”

Mr. Davidson clenches his jaw. He is angry and she is making a scene in front of his colleagues.

I want to rant. To rave. To get their attention. Dutch is so hurt, she crosses her tiny arms over her chest and whispers, “Fine. I’ll just run away, then.”

If only I could go with her.

She pushes past the heavy back door and does exactly that. She runs. As fast as she can. As far as she can until she trips and slides into the street, scraping her knees and elbows.

She looks around but doesn’t recognize anything. I feel confusion take hold. A slight sense of panic until a man comes over to help her up.

“What happened here?” he asks. He lifts her up and shuttles her out of the street before a car runs her over.

“I can’t find my dad.”

He smiles. “I’ll help you, honey. I think he’s this way.”

He holds out his hand, but Dutch hesitates. “You know my dad?”

“Sure do. He’s looking for you.”

“Oh.”

He’s lying. He’s lying! And she knows it. She can feel it. She has to feel it. But she places her hand in his anyway. Lets him lead her away, and I know the emotion leaching out of him. I’ve felt it hundreds of times. The hunger. The desire.

His name is Ethan and he committed the sin that branded him for hell years ago. He is old. Like forty or something, with hairy shoulders and rolls of fat hanging over the waistband of his pants.

I appear in front of them. He can’t see me, but Dutch can. She looks up. Starts to slow. But he tugs her along behind him.

“He’s right over here,” he says to encourage her.

Fortunately, he is actually headed back to toward the bar, but she doesn’t know that.

When she tries to wrench free, he says, “Everyone is looking for you, honey. You are in a lot of trouble. We have to hurry.”

I go back to the bar. Denise is still berating her husband. Robert bounds out of his chair, almost toppling it over, and stalks out.

He goes out the back door to see to Dutch, but she isn’t there. He looks around. Tears through the kitchen. The restrooms. Nothing.

“There it is,” Dutch says, pointing to the back of the bar.

The man hesitates. Scans the area. Probably knows it’s a cop hangout.

When he sees no one, he says, “Yeah, but your dad is in that apartment building over there. Knocking on doors. Looking for you.”

“Oh.”

She looks toward the bar longingly as they walk right by it and into the apartment building behind it. She lets him lead her inside. Shudders when the doors close behind them. Chews her fingers when the building swallows her whole.

Robert finally goes back to the table, grabs Mr. Davidson’s arm, and says, “Maybe you should help me find your daughter instead of bowing down to your sniveling wife.”

Denise gasps but Mr. Davidson snaps to attention.

“What do you mean, find her?” He looks around and rushes out the back.

Uncle Bob follows him and they check everywhere.

I try to think of a way to lead them to her. The man is taking her up the stairs, and the emotion radiating out of her is almost foreign to me. She isn’t scared of anything. Ever. Except me. When she sees me out of the corner of her eye, a small tingle of fear laces down her spine. But in all the years I’ve been dreaming of her, I’ve never felt fear off her for any other reason until now.

She knows there is something wrong. She knows she should’ve said no. Should’ve run from him. Dutch is like me. She can feel emotions, too. And she knows the emotions coming off this man are not right. They are not in her best interest.

His grip is growing firmer with every step. He’s getting excited. I can feel the blood pumping through his veins. His heart beats speed up. And Dutch feels it, too. She pulls her bottom lip through her teeth. She feels fear, true fear, possibly for the first time in her life. And she doesn’t like it.

She starts to struggle against his hold. He locks thick fingers around her wrist and almost drags her to his apartment. When she struggles more, he picks her up and carries her. She’s wearing a dress. Denise made her. She likes making Dutch wear things she doesn’t want to, like it’s a way to torture her or to control her. The man feels her panties when he picks her up, and almost comes in his pants. I feel a slight sting of excitement burst from him.

I want Dutch to scream, but she just pushes against the man. Against his face and shoulders. When he locks the door behind them, she pulls at his hair and kicks and bites. She’s more of a handful than he expects, so he throws her on his bed and wraps her in a blanket.

I know what is about to happen. I’ve been on the receiving end for as long as I can remember. But it’s my fucking dream. Why can’t I stop him?

I’m trembling and tears are blurring my vision.

She is kicking from under the blanket. He holds her down with his arm. Hard.

Her heart is racing when he lifts the blanket over her legs. She kicks some more, so he presses harder. Almost crushes her windpipe, but still she fights. She tries to push him off her. She scratches and claws at him, but he is lost. He runs his fingers along the band of her panties. They are pink with tiny flowers on them.

I am shaking so hard, I almost throw up. I can feel those same fingers on me. Pushing. Pinching. Invading.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

She manages to get the blanket off her face and she sees me. I feel it the moment her gaze lands on me. I’m in my cloak, though. She can’t see my face, but she’s even more afraid. Why? I’m not the one who wants to do bad things to her.

But that doesn’t matter. She has stopped fighting and is staring at me, her eyes, like raw gold dust, large and shimmering with unspent tears. He doesn’t pay attention. He is mesmerized by her panties. By her slim legs. By the V they create at her crotch. He pushes her knees apart. She lets him. She’s gone completely limp, but I know what he is going to do next.

Vomit creeps up my throat. This is my dream. This is my dream. Not his.

He pulls her panties down, and something inside me breaks. I can’t see him do this to her. He’s been slated for hell for years, but he doesn’t go for a long time.

So maybe he doesn’t die just yet, but that doesn’t mean he should be able to hurt people. Especially not Dutch. Not my Dutch.

If this were a video game …

My cloak billows around me like a deep black sea. The cloak that I created with a single thought. What if—?

I reach behind my back as I would in the video game at the laundry mat, wrap my fingers around the hilt of a blade, and unleash a wicked sword. It’s hot like it just came out of a fire. Smoke drifts off its razor-sharp edge. An edge that’s serrated with wisps of curves and hooks, very much like the markings on my shoulders and back. And I know it’s from hell. Like me.

I wrap both hands around the hilt. I have no choice but to do this in front of Dutch. Her gaze is locked on to me. My every move. My every emotion. She no longer even notices where his fingers are. How he has violated her.

I jump onto a dresser and swing the sword. It slices clean through him. Easily. Like he is barely there.

But there’s no blood. There’s no wound. He doesn’t cry out or double over, and I stand there in shock. I’ve failed. My eyes drift shut. I’ve failed. There’s nothing I can do.

A thud echoes in the room and I look down as Ethan slumps over. His eyes are wide. He doesn’t know what happened. But neither do I.

What I do know is that they are looking for her. Her father and uncle are in the alley, calling her name. I can hear them, but Dutch is in a trance. She huddles in the corner, her panties around her ankles, the blanket bunched in her tiny fists and around her midsection. It covers half her face and she is biting it. Biting her knuckles through it.

“Run,” I tell her.

She hears me. Her eyes widen even farther, but she remains silent.

“Where?” her father asks a woman in the alley.

She shakes her head. Unsure. “I just saw a little girl. I was carrying groceries. I just— I don’t know.”

“Go, damn it. Run.”

Dutch continues to stare, so I grab a handful of hair and jerk her toward me. I don’t show her my face. I keep it hidden in the black. Maybe that’s even better. Maybe that will make her even more scared of me, which right now would be awesome.

I wrap my other hand around her throat. The fear in her eyes is almost unbearable, but her dad and uncle go the wrong way. Search in the wrong direction.

I lean in closer and whisper this time. “Run or I will snap your fucking neck.”

She takes a breath to scream, but they are too far away to hear her.

I squeeze harder, tighten my hold on her hair, and without another second of hesitation, she scrambles out from under the blanket and runs at last. The lock gives her some trouble, so I reach out and turn with her.

It gives and she lunges toward the stairs. Stumbles down them. Trips on the last one and crashes into the door. But she barely notices.

Then sunlight streams in and she steps outside. She is in a trance again, walking without seeing. When she gets halfway to Denise’s car, she stops, paralyzed. Fat tears shimmer between her lashes as urine streams down her legs. Soaks her socks. Pools in her shoes.

Humiliation blazes to life inside her. It brightens her skin and blisters her cheeks. At first I think it’s because she’s peeing or because of what Ethan did, but she has gathered her skirt into her tiny fists and is holding it to her legs. Sobs punch through her chest as she turns around and starts walking back towards the building.

What the hell? Why would she go back there?

Then I understand. Her panties. They got bunched up in the blanket when she scrambled to get away from me and she left them there.

I appear in front of her and she stops short. I take a step forward. She takes one back. I do it again and again. Her dad and uncle are running toward us. I can hear them. Another step forward. Another one back.

Then her dad’s arms are around her. He’s asking her questions, but she can only stare at me, so I back off to a safe distance. It doesn’t help. Her gaze never leaves mine.

Her uncle strokes her hair then notices her condition. He pulls out a handkerchief. Cleans her legs. Dabs at her socks.

Her dad sets her at arm’s length. Asks her what happened.

She bows her head. Shame incinerates her and it breaks my heart. But she doesn’t tell him. She shakes her head and says, “I— I got lost.”

He doesn’t believe her. I can tell, but after another quick scan of the area, he drops it and pulls her into his arms again. She is in a state of shock when he lifts her into his arms.

The pervert is alive. And he’ll be alive for years, slurping his supper through a straw. Fucker. If only I could do that in real life. I’d love nothing more than to have Earl slurping his supper through straws as well.

She may be afraid of me, but at least she’s alive. And then it hits me. I remember. Most of her kind don’t live long. Seekers. Reapers. Soul collectors. They always die very young, and I wonder if that is a part of the world I created. I just know in the same way I know when someone is going to hell. I know their name and what they did to get sentenced to such a horrible end.

Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe Earl has hit me one too many times. Drugged me one too many times.

Denise finally makes her way out of the bar, but Leland ignores her. He puts Dutch into his SUV and takes her home. When they are gone, Robert glares at Denise.

She raises her chin and is about to deny fault when he steps toward her and says, “Your father is dead. He died two hours ago at Pres.”

He seems to enjoy her astonishment. I didn’t take him for a cruel man, but I suddenly like him a whole lot more.

Too bad he dies in the most horrible way possible. Too bad he goes to hell.

8

By the time I realize I’ve been drugged, it’s over and Earl is done with me. He loosens the ties and goes to clean himself up. I must have fought him despite the drugs. He hits me when I fight him, and I’m pretty sure my jaw is broken. Pain tears through me every time I try to move, so I lie still.

The breaks are just one more way Earl makes sure I don’t run. It’s hard to sneak out of a crawl space with a broken wrist. To run with a broken ankle. Every time I’m almost healed, he breaks something else. Breaks are fine. I can endure the breaks. It’s the other things he does, the things that crush me on the inside, that make me want to die.

I would have if not for Dutch’s light. I would be dead. I know it. I wish it were real. I wish she were real. She’s getting older and more beautiful with each passing day, and even though she’s a figment of my fucked-up imagination, I love her. To the very depths of my soul.

Kim rushes in with a bowl of hot water and a rag. It’s our usual routine, and I try to remember what I did before she arrived.

Oh, yeah. I writhed in agony and bled a lot. Pretty much like now, only without Kim watching over me.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say to her, my voice cracking with each syllable.

She lowers her gaze. Focuses on my wounds. Doesn’t believe me.

But I’m not lying. I think of a day very much like this one. I’m seven and three-quarters. That three-quarters is very important to me.

Earl sits beside me on the bed. I pretend to be asleep.

“What are you?” he asks. He examines a break I had two weeks ago. I was opening a can of SpaghettiOs and dropped it. The kitchen ended up covered in SpaghettiOs and I ended up with a broken wrist.

He lifts my arm, now completely healed, and turns it over in the light. I feel his confusion. His fascination. He’s been trying to come up with a way to make money off the fact that I heal fast, because he thinks of only two things: sex and money. Mostly sex. And it’s not worth losing me to get a little extra dough. Any attention he brings to me could open a can of worms he’s not ready to eat.

There’s a knock on the door and he bolts forward to turn off the lamp in my room. The knock sounds again, harder this time.

A woman calls out. “I know you’re in there.” She coughs and pounds on the door some more. “Earl! I know you’re in there!”

He recognizes the voice and lets out a long, frustrated sigh. After walking to the front door, he says through it, “What do you want, Kelly?”

“I have something for you.”

“Leave it at the door.” Then he mutters, “Crazy bitch.”

“I heard that. And I can’t just leave it at the door. Open up.” There is a long silence; then she adds, “I’m dying, Earl. Open the door.”

He opens the door at last, and I can see from my bedroom a redheaded woman. A woman I recognize from somewhere. She has a redheaded girl in one hand and a suitcase in the other. It’s blue.

“What is this?” he asks.

She coughs a full two minutes before she can answer. When she does, her voice is gravelly, like she smokes too much. “I’m dying. I don’t have long, and I need you to take Kim.”

He looks down at the girl, but she is looking at me. Or she seems to be. But my room is dark. Can she even see me? Her eyes are like saucers. She is sick, too. Or maybe she just doesn’t get enough to eat. Either way, she is skinny and her long hair is full of tangles.

“Why would I take your bastard kid?”

The woman pushes the girl toward him. “Because she’s yours. She’s your daughter.”

He snaps to attention. “Bullshit.”

“She is. Check the birth certificate.” She holds out an envelope.

“That don’t mean jack, and you know it. You could’ve put the king of England’s name on that thing, and you put mine?”

I don’t mention to Earl that there’s not a king of England right now.

“Yes. Because she’s yours. I got pregnant right before you got the boy.”

He turns back to me, and I slam my eyes shut.

“I just need you to take her for a few days. Just until I can hunt down my aunt Donna. You remember her.”

He nods. “Don’t mean I can take her.”

“Please, Earl. I have nowhere else to turn.” When he doesn’t budge, she says, “I can pay.”

That gets his attention.

She pushes the envelope toward him again. “I got two thousand in there. It’s yours if you’ll just keep her safe until I can find Aunt Donna.”

He hesitates. Looks the ragamuffin up and down. Then agrees with a low rumble in his chest. “You got one week, then she’s out on the street.”

She nods, her face suddenly bright like all her prayers were just answered, and I wonder if she even knows the man she’s talking to. If she realizes she’s just delivered her daughter into the arms of the devil.

9

Her name is Kim. Kim Millar. She’s shy and hides behind anything she can find, which suits Earl just fine. I can’t wait for her to leave, because then I can ditch this Popsicle stand. The minute I get a chance, I’m outta here. Earl hasn’t messed with me at all the whole time she’s been here, though. He’s mad. It’s been two weeks, and Kim’s mother still hasn’t shown up. He keeps threatening to take her downtown and dump her off at the nearest shelter.

He’s gone to look for Kim’s mother when I take the skinny shell of a girl a bowl of ramen noodles. She’s hiding behind the couch again. It’s her favorite place to hide, so I have to hunch over and hand her the noodles through the tiny space between it and the wall.

She doesn’t take them. She never takes them.

“You have to eat,” I say to her.

“I’ll eat when my mom gets back.” It’s the first thing she’s said to me in two weeks.

Surprised, I sit beside the couch. “That could be days.” I know she eats. Just not in front of me or Earl. She waits until we go to bed; then she scrounges for food and hides it away with her behind the couch. I can see a crunched box of crackers from where I sit and an empty can of deviled ham.

She scoots farther back into the tunnel, so I start to eat her noodles. I slurp them up, making lots of noise, until she caves.

“Maybe I’ll have a little.”

I pass her the bowl. She inches closer.

“How old are you?” I ask.

She takes a mouthful of noodles and mumbles softly, “Four and a half.”

“I’m seven and three-quarters.”

“I don’t like Earl.”

I laugh. “I don’t like Earl either.”

“Is he your dad?”

“Hell no.”

She nods unfazed, clearly used to bad words. Earl told me her mom is a prostitute and they were probably living on the streets.

“Do you have a house?” I ask, very interested, as I am going to be living on the streets soon myself.

She shakes her head.

“Where do you sleep?”

Now she ducks her head and slurps up another spoonful of noodles.

“Is your mom really dying?”

She nods.

“Do you—?”

“Why do you have seizures?” she asks just before she lifts the bowl and drinks the juice, making slurping sounds that rival my own. Little droplets slide down her chin.

“Who says I have seizures?”

She swallows hard and lowers the bowl. “Earl. You were having one today and he got mad.”

I cross my arms over my chest. He didn’t need to tell her that. I had to see Dutch. She was … upset. I could feel it. When I go to her, she is at a park with her stepmom. She tells her a little girl that the whole town is looking for is making castles in the sandbox. The little girl’s mom runs and stumbles and calls out to her daughter. Denise is mortified. She can’t see ghosts like we can. She doesn’t believe her, and right there in front of everybody and God, she slaps Dutch right on the face.

Anger consumes me almost as bad as when Dutch was taken into that apartment. Everyone was yelling at her. Accusing her of being a horrible person, but Dutch was right: The little girl was right there, waving at her mom. Stupid-ass people.

Unfortunately, sometimes I can’t control my emotions, and I decide the stepmom has to go. I pull out my sword, but Dutch is terrified. She shakes her head, her expression pleading. So I put my sword back and go off into the trees to sulk as everyone still yells at her.

Her dad shows up, and instead of getting mad at Denise, he wraps his arm around her and helps her to his car like she’s crippled. I could’ve crippled her. Missed my chance.

Then he goes to check on Dutch. Lowers his head as if ashamed when he asks if she knows where the body is. She nods and tries to tell him through hiccups as she sobs.

By the time I left, there was a whole regiment of cops taping off the area and going over maps to coordinate a search.

I look over at Kim, and I don’t know why, but I tell her the truth. About Dutch, that is. About my dreams. About how I know who is going to hell. I don’t tell her absolutely everything. I don’t tell her that her mom is already dead. It wasn’t the disease that killed her though, though. She was killed by a man last week and then buried on the West Mesa. I’d seen him one day when Earl let me out to go to the store by myself. That’s why I recognized her mother. Kelly was his first offense. The one that got him sentenced to hell.

She hadn’t been lying when she said she was dying. I asked only because I wondered if Kim knew the truth. Her mom was lying, however, when she told Earl she was going to find her aunt Donna. Kelly was never going to look for Donna, and she was never coming back for Kim.

Of course, I don’t tell Kim any of that, either. I just tell her the weird stuff. By that point, she is so excited, she’s sitting right next to me.

“But what if she’s not a dream?”

“Dutch? She has to be. People like that don’t really exist. No one is made of light.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think she’s real.” She leans back against the wall and stares into space. “I think she will be beautiful and strong and she will kill bad guys with her superpowers.”

I lean back, too. “If she does, she’ll have to kill me, too.”

She bolts upright. “Nuh-uh.”

“Uh-huh,” I argue.

“You’re wrong.” She wraps her arm in mine. “You’re not bad. You gave me noodles.”

“Well, that settles it, then.”

“Wait,” she says, straightening. “Is—? Is my mom going to hell when she dies?”

“No,” I say.

Kim nestles beside me again, and I’m thankful she can’t feel other people’s emotions. She doesn’t know I just lied to her.

Kim’s mom never shows up, which is understandable, since she’s burning in hell, but all of a sudden Earl seems okay with Kim being there. He’s never okay with anything. Ever. Unless there’s an angle in it for him. About two days later, I find out what that is. And my plans for leaving are shot to hell.

10

After that—after the park incident in which Dutch helps her father find the body of a little girl, a girl her own age, actually—her father goes to her one night. I’m there, too. I hadn’t been drawn there that night. I simply wanted to be there. To see her. To feel whole.

I stay back so I don’t scare her. Her father goes to her room and tells her they’ve found the little girl’s body. He is confused, I can tell. He’s scared. Not of Dutch, but of what she can do. What she can see.

“Of course you found her,” Dutch says. “She told me where she was.”

She is wearing a pink nightgown and lime green socks. Classic Dutch style.

“How?” he asks. He stands and rakes a hand through his hair.

Dutch is confused, too. “She opened her mouth and told me.”

“Charley,” he says, sitting beside her again.

She is holding a doll and twirling its hair in her fingers.

“How did she tell you, honey? I don’t understand.”

She lifts a tiny shoulder, unable to comprehend what his problem is.

“Sweetheart.” He takes the doll out of her hands and lifts her chin. “Explain to me exactly how … how she told you.”

“Daddy, I don’t understand now. She just told me. Was she not ’posed to?”

He lowers his head lets out a frustrated sigh.

“Oh, and Jacob wants me to tell you that his girlfriend killed him. No one knows. They think she was out of town, but she gave her credit card to a friend, broke into his house as he was taking a shower, and stabbed him.” She looks over at the man in her room. The naked one covered from head to toe in blood.

From the looks of it, the woman did more than stab him. He has burn marks on his body. Brandings. Like something ritualistic.

Neither the blood nor his nakedness throws Dutch. She is already used to such horrors. Such atrocities.

Maybe that’s why I long to be near her. Maybe it’s her sense of everydayness. Her acceptance of anyone, no matter how they died. No matter how they lived.

“Jacob?” her dad asks. “Jacob Townsend?”

She looks at the man. He kneels beside her bed so she doesn’t see him down there. He nods.

“Yep,” she says, picking up her doll again. “Her name is Beth and he says she’s crazier than a gallon of Pop Rocks.”

Her dad puts the doll down again. “Sweetheart, how do you know about Jacob Townsend? We just found his body two hours ago. It hasn’t been announced.”

“Oh.” She straightens. “So, I should wait until it’s announced to tell you?”

“What? No, honey, that’s not what I’m saying. How do you know about him?”

“He told me.”

His mouth falls open for a whole minute; then he asks, “How?”

Dutch giggles and her laughter lights up the room. Jacob smiles. He is as mesmerized with her as I am.

“He opened his mouth and told me. You’re funny, Daddy.”

He rakes a hand through his hair again. But slowly, as more and more departed go to Dutch for help, he begins to believe her. She simply knows too much. Sees too much. And this becomes her life. From that day on, she begins helping her father with cases. And her uncle Bob. For the most part, nobody knows. Denise, the stepmother from hell, begins to suspect. It seems to make her even more jealous, and she treats Dutch worse than ever.

11

My thirteenth birthday is spent in the closet with Kim cleaning blood off me. Earl leaves after he finishes. Goes to see his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Sarah. Not because he misses her or wants a piece of ass. He got that from me. He needs money for beer, and she is his latest ATM.

Sarah is a dental hygienist. She likes me. A lot. And not in a healthy, nurturing way. Her attraction was instant the first time Earl brought her home, but she hides it well. And she really likes Kim. In a healthy, nurturing way. So I put up with her. She cooks for us and buys Kim bubble bath. She says it’s for both of us, but I’m a tad old for bubble baths.

In Sarah’s defense, I don’t look thirteen. Or at least I don’t think I do. Older girls are attracted to me. Younger girls are attracted to me. Women are attracted to me. Thankfully, most women don’t act on their impulses. Those who do are usually train wrecks.

But women want me in a different way than girls do. The older they get, the more knowledgeable they are about what they want. Girls, young girls, want to make out. To kiss. To touch. They want to run their hands over my arms and back and stomach. Women want the same thing, but more. Much more.

A lot of boys want to make out, too, but I don’t. I’m not into boys. And when men want me, I make it very clear I’m not open for business. I get enough of that shit at home. All in all, I get tired of their desire. Of the weight of it. Everyone wants something from me, and it’s exhausting. So, I usually hide under a hoodie. Like today. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

After Earl leaves, Kim helps me stand. I take a long shower even though the hot water last only about three minutes. Then we sneak out of the apartment through a crawl space underneath the house. I have to get to the park. I’ve been waiting weeks for this day, and I’m not about to let Earl’s strange appetites ruin it for me.

By the time we get to the park, I’m feeling a little better. It’s a warm day for the season, so I take off my hoodie, and three girls notice immediately. They start flirting with me. It takes my mind off Earl, so I flirt back. Just a glance here. A half smile there.

Kim sinks into the background, seeks out the swings when the girls work up the courage to approach. They’re in high school. Juniors, they say as they flip their hair. They talk and laugh and play the usual games.

One looks kind of like Dutch. Maybe that’s the real reason I’m entertaining them. She is like an older version of her, since Dutch is only ten. This girl isn’t quite so pretty, but she has the same hair color, dark brown. And her eyes are a similar shape, almond and catlike, though hers are blue gray and Dutch’s are gold. But that’s okay. I don’t think of Dutch that way. At least I don’t think I do. I find myself drawn to this girl because of the resemblance. Not sure what that makes me.

They ask if I will settle a bet for them. They want to know who the best kisser is.

It’s a lie. They never had a bet. But I don’t mind. They’re pretty, especially the dark one. And kissing can be fun under the right circumstances.

Since I’m killing time anyway, we go to a grouping of trees just past the swings. Kim eyes me, worried. I avoid her probing gaze. She bites her lip and lets the swing sway back and forth as we disappear behind bare, weathered timber.

I’m sore and I try not to wince when we walk up an incline, where I drop my hoodie on the ground. I put my hands in my jeans pockets. Lean against a cottonwood. And wait for them to make the first move. Because they always make the first move.

The first contestant walks up. A pretty blonde with thick eyeliner and clear lip gloss.

“Ready?” she asks. Her heart is beating fast. It pounds in my ears.

I nod.

A shy smile spreads across her face and she leans in. Presses her mouth to mine. Then her body. I don’t miss the fact that her hips rub against my crotch during the kiss. A kiss she deepens by sliding her tongue inside my mouth. She tastes like peaches. I leave my hands in my pockets. This is their game. It’s up to them how far they want to take it.

And then it happens. It happens every time. The fall.

When someone is kissing me or groping me or, hell, even going down on me, when they lose all sense of reality, they fall into a state of absolute bliss. They lose themselves in the act. They abandon all their inhibitions.

I thought it was the same for everyone, but it’s not. Earl doesn’t do that when he kisses Sarah. Only with me. Not that we kiss. Fuck that.

I’ve watched others, too. They get excited, but they never fall completely, and I wonder if it’s the evil part of me doing it to them.

Either way, this girl has fallen. Her breaths quicken and she claws at me, wanting more. I wince when her nails rake across my stomach, but I don’t stop her. She breaks off the kiss only because one of her friends shoves her softly to get her attention.

Then the girl starts giggling. “This is a contest. We all get a turn.”

The contestant snaps out of it but doesn’t want to leave me. Her soft eyes gaze into mine. Drunk. Swimming with desire. Still not 100 percent back. Her lips are pink and plump from her excitement. Her friends give her another shove and she stumbles to the side.

Next up is the other blonde. She is bolder. More confident. She kisses me hard. Presses into me harder. The bark scratches my back, but her fingernails are worse. She’s pretending at first. Putting on her best show. Trying to impress. But soon she does the fall thing, too. She breathes in slowly, enjoying the taste of me. Captivated, her muscles go slack and her head starts to spin. She digs her fingers into my hair and kisses me deeper and I feel a warmth pool in her belly and between her legs.

Our teeth clink a couple of times, but she doesn’t stop. Her other hand clutches my ass and pulls me into her. The movement is rhythmic as she grinds against me. A soft moan falls from her lips and I’m getting pretty into the whole thing, too, when the first girl practically drags her off me. Cool air whooshes between us. Yanks me out of the moment.

She turns on her friend with teeth bared and claws extended.

Her friend giggles and points to the dark one. “It’s Celeste’s turn.”

She calms down and shakes her head as though coming to her senses.

Celeste walks up, the dark one, her steps timid. She bites her lip, then says, “I don’t know if I can beat that.”

I give her my best completely blank expression. “I bet you can.”

A soft laugh escapes her. Then she refocuses on me. “How old are you, anyway?”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

I raise a brow.

“Almost. I’ll be seventeen in two weeks. You?”

Part of me doesn’t want to tell her. She’ll be horrified. But part of me wants to know what she will do when she knows the truth. “How old do you think I am?”

She lifts a slender shoulder. “At first I thought maybe eighteen, but now I’m thinking at least nineteen. Maybe even twenty?”

“Why’s that?”

“You seem very … experienced.”

I nod. “You’re close. Today’s my birthday. I’m thirteen.”

Yep. Horror. She steps back, her face the definition of stunned. The other girls are, too.

“Are you teasing us?” one of the blondes asks.

“I wish.” And I did. I would’ve left years ago. I would’ve found a way to take Kim and leave. But Earl has made sure I can’t do that. If I leave, he’ll kill her. If I take her with me, he’ll say I kidnapped her and make sure our faces are plastered all over the planet. If I don’t do what he wants, he refuses her food, then water, until I give in to his demands. If I go to the cops and he’s arrested, she’ll end up in a foster home or a children’s home. I’ve seen a lot of kids from those homes. Some of those places are great. Some are worse than my darkest nightmares. No way will I risk it.

If I were older, though, I could figure out a way. I’d have more options. I’d be smarter. More cunning like the Road Runner.

Celeste steps back to me. “I feel like we just molested a child.”

I lower my head and look at her from underneath my lashes. “You haven’t done anything yet. You aren’t forfeiting, are you?”

I finally take one hand out of my pocket. Look at my watch. I have a little more time, so I loop a finger into the waistband of her pants and pull her toward me. She lets me. Leans into me. Parks her chin on my shoulder so I can whisper into her ear.

“Show me what you got.”

A thrill races over her skin. I feel it as strongly as she does. She accepts my challenge, but she doesn’t start with the kiss. She leans her forehead against mine. Lifts her hands to my hips. Eases them up under my shirt. Slides them over my rib cage. I pray that’s all she does.

She falls almost immediately. Her huge gray eyes gloss over. Grow hooded. Intoxicated. Her breaths mingle with mine, and before she even kisses me, she runs her tongue along the seam of my mouth. It’s hot. She’s hot. Especially when she grazes her fingernails down my ribs and lowers one hand to my crotch. Feels the length of my erection.

Heat swells inside her. Floods her abdomen and rushes down her thighs. She moves in for the kiss a microsecond before she is ripped off me. I see her stumble back, but I don’t move. The five high school kids standing around me convince me to tread carefully.

“What the fuck are you doing?” one yells to Celeste.

Her friends help her up. She is still … inebriated.

Kim is standing behind one of the boys, her eyes wide.

Three of them are wearing letter jackets with hornets on the chests. The other two are dressed to impress with expensive sneakers, jeans riding their hips, graying beaters, and thick chains that run from their belt to their hip pockets. They all look like they’re fresh out of prison. I can’t help but notice the knives they each have clipped to their belts either.

The one who yelled turns to me. Raises his chin in greeting. Smirks. “Hey, dog.” He steps close. “You’re messing with the wrong girls.” Closer. “At the wrong park.” He has a lot of facial hair. “These are taken.”

I look at Kim to make sure she is okay before refocusing on him. “They didn’t mention it.”

“Leave him alone, Gabriel.” One of the blondes tugs on his jacket sleeve.

He ignores her.

“Well, how could they? With your tongue down their throats.”

“Actually, theirs were down mine.”

Celeste’s eyes become huge circles on her pretty face. She’s scared for me. A part of me is grateful. A part of me is embarrassed. But another part, a deeper part, feels bad for what she is about to see. I came here to kill someone, and it looks like I have my first volunteer.

He reaches out, yanks off the chain I’m wearing around my neck, and throws it on the ground. That’d show me.

Celeste walks up. “Gabriel, he’s only thirteen years old.”

He laughs. They all laugh.

“Bullshit.”

“He is, and I’ll call the cops if you touch him.”

Gabriel turns on her. Grabs her arm. Wrenches her forward. “Then what the hell does that make you? Kissing a thirteen-year-old? Maybe I should be the one calling the cops.”

She pales and tries to step back. He doesn’t let her. He glares until she bows her head. She seeks me out from underneath her lashes. Her expression full of apologies.

I look past her to another boy, this one younger. I’m not sure if he’s a part of the gang or not. He’s looking on but makes no move to join in.

He turns his head and spits, completely at ease. But I can feel the ripples of tension that have his skin pulled taut over his muscles. He is anything but at ease. A bomber jacket is resting on the ground beside him. Like he just took it off. Like he is expecting trouble.

“Maybe we’ll just give him a pink belly, then,” Gabriel says. “Teach him not to play in our sandbox.”

Before I can react, three of them grab me and push me to the ground. If I hadn’t already had the shit kicked out of me, I could’ve fought them off better. Or at least given them a better show. Gabriel straddles my hips as they hold me down.

At first, I just go with it. I’ve had a hell of a lot worse than a pink belly. But when Gabriel crawls on top of me, something inside me snaps. I’m tired of being hit. Of being handled and forced into situations I never wanted to be in. And I am damned sure tired of being straddled by men who are older than me. Bigger.

Earl knows what I’m capable of. He’s learned to tie me up or drug me first. These guys have no clue.

But before I do anything, I realize they’ve stopped. Everything has stopped. My shirt lies open, the edges tattered, and every gaze is locked on to my exposed stomach. Even the girls’. Their mouths open. Their brows drawn in horror.

Humiliation bursts inside me. Kim tries to get to me, but one of the lettermen holds her back. He’s not like the others. I felt it the moment they walked up.

“What the fuck?” Gabriel asks before he jumps off.

I grab the tattered ends of my shirt and scramble to my feet. The one holding Kim has slipped from longing to blatant carnal desire. He wants to save me. To rescue me. To kiss the wounds on my stomach and hold me until I’m new again. If only that were possible.

I get a similar reaction from the girls. They’ve shifted from desire to empathy in zero point three seconds, and I try to control the anger threatening to take hold of me.

The kid with the bomber jacket is standing behind Kim. He’s not gaping like the others, and I notice a knife in his hand. Was he coming to help me? Or, perhaps, Kim?

The struggle has reopened some of the nastier slashes. Two long, thin bloodstains spread across my shirt. Every gaze is laser-locked.

The one holding Kim lets her go at last. She runs to me. Throws her arms around my neck as the guy grabs my hoodie and holds it out to me. He wants to hug me as well. So bad, it hurts.

I take the hoodie and turn away. He’s good-looking as hell, but his desire is unwelcome. If we were alone, I would tell him the right guy will come along. And if that were not a lie. The right guy never comes along, and he commits suicide in less than two years. I know this because Gabriel finds out about him. Beats the shit out of him. Is branded for hell because of it. Because his actions lead to the death of an innocent.

I turn toward Gabriel. He scowls at me, and I realize I could save the kid. I could kill Gabriel right then and there. Before he beats up a friend for something that is completely beyond the boy’s control. The boy who doesn’t know it’s okay to be attracted to members of the same sex. It’s not a sin. If it were, every gay person I came across would be branded for hell. They rarely are. When it does happen, it has nothing to do with their lifestyle.

But who knows if the boy will really commit suicide anyway? The situation is too much of an unknown. Too risky. I have another job today, so I decide against intervening. I can’t risk being arrested before completing my first objective.

The others stare in silence as Kim and I turn to leave. The kid with the bomber jacket does the same. After a few feet, he slips his jacket over his shoulders. The back of it reads AMADOR. I commit it to memory.

Celeste calls out to me. “What’s your name?”

“Alexander,” I say over my shoulder.

Kim turns back to her. “Reyes,” she says, and I question her with a raised brow. She squeezes me harder. “Your name is Reyes. Reyes Alexander Farrow.”

I suppose it is.

12

We walk to the edge of the park and wait. I am there for a reason, after all, and that reason is walking through the park as we speak. Gillian, the nurse who ruffled my hair in the hospital, is walking toward us. If she hadn’t been so nice to me, I would never have tried to find her again. But she was, and now I can’t let it go. I just can’t.

She is on a cell phone, laughing, completely unaware that she is about to be stabbed to death in her own house.

We follow her, keeping back a ways so she doesn’t notice. She’s pretty, just as I remember, with dark blond hair and a wide smile. When we get to her house, I tuck Kim behind a group of bushes, stand at her back door, and wait. This is the moment I saw in the hospital. The orderly is in love with her, but she just wants to be friends. He is not taking it well.

Then again, things could’ve changed. I’m hoping that they did, in fact. I’m not sure if fate is set in stone, but I figure any number of things could have happened that would set the orderly, Donald, on a different path. That was years ago. Maybe he found someone. Or has learned to take rejection a little better. Or died in a freak defibrillator accident. Surely someone has to clean those.

Sadly, that is not the case. I can feel him. He’s already inside.

I try the door. It’s locked, naturally. I shove it with my shoulder. Normally, knocking in a door wouldn’t be a problem, but since I’d recently gotten the shit kicked out of me, the door was proving more of a problem than I’d expected. By the time I push hard enough to crack the doorframe, Donald has stabbed her.

They are in her kitchen. She is screaming as he raises the knife again. Pleading with him to stop. I walk up behind him. She falls back against the refrigerator, and he is just about to plunge the knife into her heart when I say, “You’re going to hell eventually anyway. Why put off the inevitable?”

He stops and whips his head around, which helps the momentum when I snap his neck.

Gillian is horrified. She gasps and throws blood-covered hands over her mouth. Then, as Donald is crumpling to the floor, I slam his head into the countertop.

“He was hiding in your house when you got home,” I say to her, letting his body slump the rest of the way to the ground. “He attacked you.” I pull his legs out a little so it looks like he fell. “You fought back.” There is a glass of water on the counter. “Pushed him.” I throw the contents on the floor. “He slipped. Fell against the counter. Broke his neck.”

She doesn’t acknowledge anything I say. She slides to the floor herself and stares in horror, completely blindsided on two counts: his and mine.

I go to her. Take her shoulders. Shake her until she focuses on me. “What happened?”

Her lids flutter. “What?”

I shake her again. “What happened here?”

“I— He was in the house.”

“Waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me. He attacked me. He stabbed me.” She gasps when she realizes she’s really been stabbed. Starts to hyperventilate. I lift her off the floor and sit her on a chair.

“What next?”

“I— I pushed and he stumbled back. He fell. Hit his head on the counter.”

“You have to slow your breathing.” I put a hand on her back. “You’re going to pass out and you need to call an ambulance.”

She nods, scared out of her mind, and gradually begins to recognize me. I see it in her expression.

I change mine. Harden it. Shake my head. She nods again, understanding.

I lean over her and kiss her cheek. She wants to hug me but she doesn’t. I think she doesn’t want to get blood on my clothes. I’m wearing the hoodie, so she doesn’t know my clothes are already bloody.

“Call the police,” I say.

She puts a hand on my cheek. “He would have killed me.”

“Call the police,” I say again. Then I leave.

I hear a whispered thank-you as I hurry out the door.

I can’t see what happens to her anymore. Her future is hers now. Donald was slated for hell the minute he made the decision to take her life, so even though he didn’t get to kill her, he is still going down. I don’t stick around long enough for the floor to open up and swallow him, though. I’ve seen only one person go to hell. I have no desire to see it again.

Kim and I walk back to the apartment, and I wonder why I did that. Why I stuck my neck out for Gillian. She was supposed to die. I wonder if I’ve thrown a wrench into some cosmic order in the universe. I wonder if that one simple act will cause the destruction of our world in a hundred years. Then again, I could just as easily have saved it. It’s impossible to know what one tiny change will do. What kind of effect the butterfly will have. Maybe the tsunami will happen whether the butterfly flaps its wings or not.

We get back before Earl does, and Kim washes the blood off me again. Gets me a clean shirt. Makes me spaghetti. She wants to ask what happened, but she doesn’t. Which is good. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I’ve just killed a man. If I can do it once, why can’t I do it again?

No. I can’t. I can’t risk going to prison and leaving Kim alone. She would be put in foster home after foster home. At least in our situation, I know I can take care of her. I can be here for her.

13

The years go by and we exist. I convince Earl that Kim needs to go to school. I make promises if he will let her go. More if he will let me go as well.

So a few weeks later, I am in high school. I’ve never been to school of any kind. It’s like being in a foreign country where I know the language but not the customs. Kim is scared when I walk her to middle school and drop her off. I tell her she’s in the same grade as Dutch. I tell her she is going to love it. I tell her I’ll be there to pick her up the minute she gets out.

She nods, completely unconvinced. Kim has never been to school either, but a group of girls rushes up to us when we arrive. One of them takes her hand and they lead her to the playground before she can change her mind. I’m grateful and head to my own institution of higher learning: Yucca High.

The kids stare when I walk on campus, so I put up my hoodie. Only in school, I’m not allowed to wear the hood up, so I get in trouble every few feet. I drop it back, walk a ways, then put it up again. It doesn’t stop the staring, but it helps me cope with it. Like I’m in my closet. In a dark place. Safe. Forgotten.

I get registered and they hand me a class schedule, so a little while later, I’m standing in a room full of kids staring at me. Again. It’s physical science. The teacher looks at my schedule, then introduces me. To the whole class. I’m floored they actually do that. I can feel my face warming as I shift my weight.

Thankfully, nobody says anything. The teacher points to a seat. It’s surrounded by the hopeful gazes of sophomore girls.

“Hood down,” he says, his voice harsher than most of the others’.

I sit down and push my hood back. There is a coordinated release of breath around me. The emotion swirling in the room presses into my chest. I’m not sure I can do it. This. Any of this. My lungs aren’t working right, and everyone is looking at me. Gazes rake up my back and across my skin. Some are so full of longing, I almost feel sorry for them. Some are full of hatred. I do that. Inspire hatred for no reason. I figure it’s part of who I am. Another gift from hell. The hatred, I understand. The longing, not so much.

The teacher, a Mr. Stone, hands me a book. Points to the page number on the board. But I’ve already read the entire thing cover to cover. He asks a lot of questions about the chapter the class was supposed to read the night before. I know all the answers, but because I’m new, I’m spared the dreaded hot seat. That probably won’t last long.

All my classes go pretty much the same way, and by lunch, I still don’t have my bearings. I wonder if I ever will. My world has always been so small. So concentrated. This is like a diluted version of it.

I make my way outside while others are rushing for the lunchroom or the parking lot. There aren’t a lot of benches outside and most are taken, so I head for a quiet corner with a slice of grass that’s still green despite the chill. A voice resonates nearby as I sit on the grass.

“What’s up, cabrón?”

I look up. Block the sun with an arm to see a kid standing there. He walks over, and it takes me a minute, but I recognize him from the park. The one with the bomber jacket from that day five years ago. Amador. I wonder if he recognizes me, too, or if he’s just really friendly. I give him a head-nod greeting, so he sits next to me. Unfolds a tube of tinfoil. Reveals a burrito. The scent makes my mouth water.

He offers me half. I shake my head. I don’t have any money for lunch, but I’m not hungry anyway. At least that’s what I tell myself. He tears off half anyway and holds it out. I drop my gaze and take it.

Amador is like any other kid there and yet as different from them as Dutch is from me. There is a calmness about him. A stillness beneath choppy water. Being around him is soothing.

We eat in absolute silence; then he takes my schedule out of my hoodie pocket and opens it up. Nods his head. Passes it back. “We have two classes together.”

I nod back. “Cool.”

We lie on the grass and watch the clouds roll by the rest of the period. He is very popular. Everyone who walks by says hi. He waves. Shakes hands. Bumps fists. Whatever the situation calls for.

The bell rings. We get up and brush ourselves off before heading to our next class.

He doesn’t introduce me to anyone as we walk inside the building and through the halls, even though everyone is curious. They glance at me, then eye him. Mostly the girls. He ignores them. Changes the subject. Insults them in some humorous way.

There are only two classes after lunch because we have the B lunch period. The late one. We are in history, and I want to tell the teacher that he is pronouncing King Christian X wrong, but I don’t. Again, I’ve been spared having to speak in class because I’m new. I decide to savor that.

When the last bell rings, Amador and I clutch hands and lean our shoulders into a half hug before heading in opposite directions.

“Hey,” he calls to me.

I turn back.

“Do you remember my name?”

I smile for the first time all day. “Amador.”

He laughs. “Amador Sanchez, Mr. Reyes Alexander Farrow. How’s your sister?”

“She’s good. See you tomorrow?”

“Not if I see you first,” he teases.

I watch him leave, astounded. I’ve never had a friend. Not a real one. I check my watch and realize I’m late.

When I pick up Kim, she is a mass of jiggling nerves. She’s scared, but school is what she needs. She needs to socialize. To make friends. To be a kid.

She doesn’t want to go back the next day. I can’t wait. The school counselor is waiting for my school records to be transferred. I figure I can hold her off on that for a few weeks. Shit gets lost in the mail all the time, so I hear.

In the meantime, she is going to test me. I’ve never had a test. Not a real one. But I learn to love them. Except when Mr. Stone, my science teacher, decides to give me an assessment to test where I am in the curriculum. I ace it. I ace every test. Probably why I love them so much. But he accuses me of cheating. Marches me to the principal’s office. Says no way could I have aced that test; some of the concepts aren’t introduced until college graduate courses. He wants me expelled.

I can hear them talking through the wall. The principal tells him the counselor also tested me, and my scores were off the charts. I sit smugly, not realizing what that might mean for me.

I find out two months later when men from the government show up to do some tests of their own. I fake the flu. It’s not hard. My temperature naturally runs a little hot most of the time. I sprint all the way to Kim’s school, check her out, and hurry home.

So, my stint in high school lasts only three months, but I convince Kim she can keep going. Then we move again, and it’s too far for Kim and me to walk. She’s scared to death of buses. I want to ask her why, but I figure she’ll tell me when she’s ready.

There is a middle school not far from our new apartment. We get her registered, and I walk her there every day. It’s the same at first: She is scared. Doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to start all over. But after a while she is fine and looks forward to school. It becomes an escape for her. One she desperately needs.

Amador and I keep in touch. He skips school and visits about twice a week. We go to the skate park or the mall or hustle cash for lunch. When he’s not around, I will go find a quiet place and enter Dutch’s world. One day, she is sitting by herself outside, reading. A soft breeze is pushing strands of her hair into her eyes. They get stuck in her lip gloss. What’s left of it. She keeps pulling her lower lip between her teeth.

She tucks the hair behind an ear only to have it work loose about five seconds later, but she is so engrossed in her book, she hardly notices.

At first, I’m mesmerized by her. By her hair and her fingers and her legs. And by the fact that she reads without moving her lips. She is wearing a plaid skirt, a button-down, and Mary Janes. Classic Catholic schoolgirl apparel. I stay out of her line of sight but get close enough to see what she is reading. Whatever it is has her dripping wet. Her abdomen tightens. Floods with heat that rivals the fires of hell. Throbs with longing. And I have a hard time concentrating on anything other than the fact that her knees are parted and her breaths are coming in quick, short bursts.

I finally make out the title—Sweet, Savage Love—and make a mental note to get my hands on that book.

If I could, I’d materialize right then and there and see to her needs. Make her writhe. Make her explode. Since she’s terrified of me, I decide against it and leave her to her own devices.

I have to see to my own needs when I get back before picking up Kim from school.

This is a golden time for us. Earl doesn’t bother me so often. He goes through spells, and as long as I can survive them, as long as I’m breathing at the end, I endure for Kim’s sake. Every once in a while, his dark side rears its ugly-ass head, and I get more than I bargained for. He is more violent now. The drinking and drugs are slowly eating away what few brain cells he had, and his moods turn on a dime. There are a few days that I look so bad, I can’t even walk Kim to school or meet up with Amador. But not many.

One day after school, Kim is shaking. Amador is with us, but he doesn’t notice the state she’s in. He gives her a hug and jogs off to catch a bus back to the war zone. When he’s gone, I ask Kim what happened.

“I had to go to the office today.”

I’m instantly alarmed. The blue under her eyes is darker. The white of her skin paler. I put my hands on her shoulders and force her to face me. “What happened?”

“Nothing. They just called me to the office.”

“Why?”

She lifts a shoulder. “It was the counselor. She was nice, but she asked a lot of questions.”

Dread creeps up my spine. It feels like when ice is so cold, it burns. “What did she want to know exactly?”

“She—” Tears flood between her lashes. “She asked me if I felt safe at home. If I get enough to eat. Stuff like that.”

I turn away from her and curse under my breath.

“I told her I was fine. Everything was okay.”

If they take her away, I won’t be able to protect her anymore. Some foster homes and children’s homes are no better than what we already have. At least with Earl, I can keep an eye on her. And he doesn’t touch her. His tastes don’t lean in that direction.

Before I came along, he was all about boys. He would go through a boy every two years, and then he’d sell the kid to one of his friends. But he kept me. He never tired of me, even when I got older than his usual demographic. Even when I got much older.

So I know that as long as we are with Earl, she’ll be safe from that type of attention. If the authorities suspect anything, they could investigate. They could take her away from Earl. From me. They could put her in a much worse situation.

I grab her arm and we hurry away from the school. I can’t help but look over my shoulder.

“That’s not all,” she says as I drag her behind me. She is out of breath, and I slow down a little.

“What do you mean?”

“She asked about you, too. And then the principal came in and they asked— They asked if you’re safe.”

I stop and stare at her. “Me?”

She nods.

“What the fuck?”

She lowers her head.

“Kim. What? Did you say something?”

“No!” She rushes to assure me, and I know better than to even ask. “I swear. They just— I think a teacher saw you last week.”

I bite down. She missed three days of school because of last week. Earl got fired from his part-time job as a janitor at a warehouse, and he took it out on me. I waited three days before taking Kim to school. She refused to leave me, and I couldn’t risk being seen as torn up as I was. I thought I’d waited long enough. I thought the bruises had faded enough. Apparently not.

We hurry home. We knew what was coming anyway. Earl lost his piece-of-shit job. He couldn’t pay the rent. He would either rob someone, kill someone, or we would sneak out in the middle of the night.

Two days later, we do just that. We sneak out in the middle of the night. Sometimes it takes the landlord days to figure out we’ve gone. Vacating during the wee hours buys us time.

Earl knocks a hole in the wall and dumps all the pictures. I can breathe again when he does. These are bad. The worst we’ve had in a while. He’s going to kill me someday. I just have to hold on long enough to get Kim to a safe place. If she’s old enough, she can file for emancipation. But she has to be at least sixteen in New Mexico.

I don’t get to tell Amador that we’re gone, but I have his home phone number. I use a phone at the hotel we are staying at for the night and leave a message. I tell him that our science project has been moved. He knows what that means: I will get back in touch with him when I can. He knows not to ask why. He’s cool that way.

By the time Kim is a freshman in high school, she has grown into a beautiful young woman. She loves art and French and history. Dutch is also a freshman. She loves guys with body art, French guys, and hot guys from her history books. So they have a lot in common.

I have a job at a chop shop with Amador and take a couple of night classes on the side. But I still walk Kim to school every day. Well, most days. There are the occasional bad ones, but those are dwindling to almost nonexistent. Earl is losing his grip on me, and he knows it.

Unfortunately, Kim has figured out she is the reason I stay. The guilt eats at her. Especially on days like today.

I’m missing work and Kim is missing school. I tell her to go, but she refuses. She brings wet washcloths and has to help me into the bathtub. I’m embarrassed. I tell her I’m fine. It’s no worse than usual. She pretends to believe me, then tries to keep her sobs inside, but every once in a while her breath hitches and a tear slips from between her lashes. Her fingers shake as she slides the cloth over my back. I try not to wince. Wincing only makes her feel worse.

When I’m finished, she puts salve on the rope burns. I don’t let her know that my wrist is broken. It’ll heal in a few days anyway. She puts duct tape on the worst lacerations. That seems to help the most, and my lids are suddenly filled with lead.

I try not to slip. I try to stay there for Kim—but then I slip away anyway and seek out the light. Seek out Dutch. She’s at school and I wonder if I see her in school now because of Kim.

Their two schools are both different and the same. The walls at Dutch’s school seem brighter. The kids dressed better. I never imagined her as rich, but she has never had to wear dirty clothes. I’m glad. I wouldn’t want that for her. I would make her rich if I could, but for some reason, I can’t control this daydream.

I find her in the bathroom at her school. She is putting gloss on her lips, running the tube inside the puffy edges, and then smoothing it with her middle finger. She’s wearing a button-down, a short skirt, and boots. She’s sexy as fuck, and I wonder when I started thinking of her as sexy. It seems wrong somehow.

I realize she’s seen me. She stops her ministrations and looks at me in the mirror. I am, of course, blanketed by my robes. My hood is up, so she can’t see my face, but she stares anyway.

The bell rings and the other girls leave, but she stays glued to the spot. She still doesn’t know who she is. What she is. She only knows she helps the departed. She helps them with their problems. Then she helps them cross to the other side. She has no idea she’s the reaper. Destined to do her job for hundreds of years after she passes. It’s what they do. Reapers.

I decide to enlighten her.

I plant my feet on the ground, let my cloak settle around me, and walk toward her. She is frozen. She doesn’t know what to think of me. This girl who is afraid of nothing is scared to death of a coward hiding behind a layer of smoke.

I lean into her. She smells like strawberries and coffee and a soft perfume that barely brushes the air. She is completely motionless. Watching. Waiting.

My mouth grazes the tender tip of her ear, and I whisper, “You are the grim reaper. You will live forever. You will ferry souls to the other side for hundreds of years. And you are magnificent.”

She doesn’t acknowledge anything I’ve said. She just stares.

I realize someone else has entered the restroom. A woman. She is talking to Dutch. Snapping to get her attention. Threatening her with a pink slip, whatever the fuck that is.

I start to draw my sword, but Dutch snaps out of it. She shakes her head. Pleads.

“Miss Davidson,” the woman says. She gets in her face and Dutch slowly turns away from me and toward her. But her gaze is fixed on me. She is worried I’ll sever the woman’s spine. She should be. She’s a bitch.

Fine. I resheath my sword. She’s no fun.

“Go to the office immediately,” the woman says.

Dutch nods and looks over her shoulder at me as the woman leads her out.

I’m still not sure why she’s so scared of me. It’s my dream. But in it, she’s always in trouble. Like she’s made that way. If she’s not almost getting herself killed trying to help a departed, she’s almost getting herself killed by one of her classmates.

Even though our meeting is brief, her light does its job once again. It heals me. At least I think it does. Why else would I heal so fast? Even if it doesn’t, it keeps me sane. It keeps me from ripping the world to shreds.

14

After I confront Dutch in the restroom, I go back to my world. The days are thick and sticky. Not with heat. It’s cold out. With tension. Something has happened. Something has set Earl on edge. He wants more from me, and if I don’t give it, Kim pays the price. No amount of pain is too much to save her. She’s going to get out of here. She’s going to be someone. Even though she’s not in school at the moment, I find textbooks and make sure she reads them and does all the exercises. She may not go to Harvard, but she is going to college if it kills me.

Because of the renewed violent tendencies, I begin seeing Dutch more and more. As the vision in my dreams grows older, as Dutch ages, so does my interest. It ages. Becomes more visceral. More carnal. She is amazing, this creature I created. She is proud and strong and tenacious. She sticks her neck out too often, though. Sometimes she almost gets it cut. Since saving her from the perv who kidnapped her when she was four, I’ve had to come through for Dutch a few more times.

One of her classmates tried to run her over with an SUV. That was one of my more showy displays. The massive vehicle is shooting toward her with the pedal to the metal. She turns just in time to see me step in front of it and knock it into a store window.

The guy is arrested but not for attempted murder, because Dutch doesn’t tell anyone he was coming for her. She doesn’t understand why he did it, but she can feel his pain as much as I can. Doesn’t fucking matter, though. Attempted murder is attempted murder. He should have gone down for that.

But life goes on. Then one night Earl comes home drunk and angry. He is always drunk and angry, but this night, he can barely stand. He storms into our room and starts yelling at us to clean the apartment. We haven’t been here long. We only just left a small garage where we were staying in exchange for fixing up the house and doing some yard work. But Earl never actually did a fucking thing, and the lady kicked us out. He’s been mad ever since.

Whatever set him off tonight, though, must have been a doozy. He is furious. He’s in a filthy beater and dirty boxers. He grabs my shirt and jerks me off the sleeping bag I’m on. Kim is already awake and huddling on the mattress in the corner. Her knees up to her chin. Her hands over her ears.

She’s shaking her head. Praying he is just pissed and really does want the apartment cleaned instead of something else. Her prayers go unanswered.

He shoves me into the kitchen. The harsh yellow floods my vision and I miss the first swing. It lands on my jaw and knocks me back against the wall. He smells like a sewer, and I gag when he leans into me. Fondles my cock through the sweats I’m wearing.

I’m not in the mood for his shit, so I elbow him. His head jerks back and I scramble away, but he grabs my hair. Pulls me to his chest. Wraps an arm around my waist.

“It’s you or her,” he says, his breath hot and noxious.

He lowers his hand. Slips it under my waistband. But I’m not drugged and I’m not tied up. I think about killing him. It would be so easy, but what would happen to Kim? Would they take her away from me? Of course they would. We aren’t even related. I have no claim to her.

I decide not to kill him, but no way am I just going to lie there and think of England. I hit him. Hard. I’m pretty sure I broke his jaw, but he is too drunk to realize it. He wraps a meaty hand around my throat, knocks me against the wall, and hits me over and over, his fist like a boulder.

My immediate concern is air for my burning lungs. I claw at the hand around my throat, but he hits me again. My head whips back and slams into the wall. I go limp, but only for a second or two. I try to block his punches, but when I open my eyes, my gaze locks on to something outside. Something just beyond our kitchen window. I focus for a split second, just long enough to see a girl standing on the sidewalk, looking in. I glare at her, suddenly furious that she is seeing this. That anyone is seeing this. Then Earl hits me again.

We fall to the floor and I know it’s over. He’ll get his way like he always does. Like he always has.

Through the fog, I hear the kitchen window shatter. I blink back to consciousness and look past it to the girl standing on the sidewalk outside. Half her face is covered with a scarf, and a hat hides her hair.

She yells something about calling the police, and Earl is up in a heartbeat. I take the opportunity to run. I go toward our bedroom, but Earl is right on my heels.

Kim screams at me. “Run! Get out!”

So I do. Like the coward I am, I run for the door. Earl trips and is no longer breathing down my back, but I don’t slow down. I crash into the hall, past the other apartments, and out the back door, where I stumble into a chain-link fence behind the building. I use it to leverage my weight—wrapping my fingers in the links as I navigate the uneven, frozen terrain barefoot—and manage to make it to a Dumpster. Which is appropriate, given the circumstances.

I fall onto all fours and try to calm my racing pulse. Dry heaves pump my stomach for several long moments, but nothing comes out. My breaths are ragged and wheezy, the air in my lungs struggling to get through my burning throat.

I hear someone coming, but it’s not him. I know the sound of his footsteps. On carpet. On wood. On gravel. The footsteps I hear are lighter, and there are two sets of them. They stop near me. I can feel concern wafting off them, and it’s the last thing I need. Their compassion. Their pity.

I look up, but they have a light focused on me and I can’t see past it. I glare at them. At her. She got his attention. Now she needs to get the fuck out of Dodge. If she thinks he won’t kill her because she’s a pretty girl, she’s sadly mistaken. I’ve seen him kill a man for a lot less than a broken window. The man wanted me. A broken boy. But not for the same reason Earl wants me. I’ve realized years later that he wanted to save me from Earl. He got too close, though. Asked too many questions. Pried a few too many times. And paid the ultimate price.

But this girl is just standing there. As though a rock through our window and the threat of a phone call will stop him.

I raise a hand to block the light. They think it’s to block the light they are holding, so they lower it. It’s not. It’s to block her light. I’ve never seen it with my real eyes. It’s blinding and brilliant and beautiful. I turn and spit out the blood that filled my mouth in the few seconds we’d been checking each other out, then look back at my two saviors.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

My ears are still ringing, but there is no mistaking the soft lilt of a feminine voice. Of Dutch’s voice. It’s just like in my dream. Or what I thought were my dreams.

I try to stand, but the earth moves under my feet. Dutch jumps forward to help me, but I back away. Livid that she is seeing me like this. At my most vulnerable. At my most whipped.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” she says.

I spit again and start down the narrow passageway between the apartment building and the business next door. I’m shaking and she thinks it’s because I’m cold. She follows me with her sister, Gemma, who is clutching on to Dutch’s jacket sleeve as if it were a life preserver. She’s shaking, too. Partly from the cold and partly from fear. At least she has the sense God gave a gerbil.

“Look,” Dutch says. “We saw what happened. We need to get you to a hospital. Our car isn’t far.”

“Get out of here,” I finally say, trying to keep the crisp edge of pain out of my voice. With effort, I climb onto a crate, grab hold of a windowsill, and try to see inside. Kim is still in there. Just because he’s never hurt her before doesn’t mean he won’t start now. When he’s this mad and this drunk and this volatile, the only wrong move I can make is to underestimate him.

“You’re going back in there?” Dutch asks, appalled. “Are you crazy?”

“Charley,” Gemma whispers to her, “maybe we should just leave.”

Naturally, Dutch ignores her. “That man tried to kill you.”

I throw her my best scowl from over my shoulder before turning back to the window. “What part of ‘get out of here’ don’t you understand?”

She waffles, unsure of what to do. She decides. It’s the wrong decision.

“I’m calling the police.”

I whip around. Leap from the crates. Land inches in front of her. With just enough force to let her know it’s there, I place a hand around her throat and push her back against the brick building.

For a long time I only stare. A thousand thoughts hit me at once, the least of which is the fact that she is real. Flesh and blood. Dutch. Her light soaks into me. Begins to heal me instantly. I begin to calm. To slow my breathing. To clear my head.

I don’t know what to think, other than the fact that she is more beautiful than I ever dreamed. She is real. And she has seen me. The real me. I have no robes to hide beneath now. No cloak. She has seen how I live.

I don’t think she realizes it’s me. Does she know that I’m real? Maybe she thinks like I did. Maybe she thinks I’m a dream. A figment of her imagination. Something to help her cope with the reality of her existence. Or maybe she thinks I’m the boogeyman from under her bed.

No. She is stronger than that. Stronger than me. She faces reality with both fists raised while I cower in a closet. She is so much more than I will ever be.

I don’t want her to see me like this. Covered in blood and whimpering like a little bitch. I have to get rid of her and make sure Kim is okay. I’ll go back inside if I have to. I’ll snap his neck if I have to, and I have a feeling a part of him knows that. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t dare touch Kim.

Either way, first things first: I have to get rid of the angel standing before me.

“That would be a very bad idea,” I say at last.

“My uncle’s a cop, and my dad’s an ex-cop. I can help you.”

I scoff. Toss in a little sneer for added texture. Then do my best to intimidate her. To let her know how unwanted her offer is. “The minute I need the help of a sniveling brat from the Heights, I’ll let you know.”

That throws her, but not for long. She sets her jaw. I’ve seen her do it a hundred times, and I want to groan aloud.

“If you go back in there, I’m calling the police. I mean it.”

I bite down, completely frustrated. “You’ll do more harm than good.”

She shakes her head. “I doubt it.”

“You don’t know anything about me. Or him.”

“Is he your father?”

This is getting us nowhere. There is one surefire way to get rid of a girl, however.

I hate to do it, especially in light of the hell I just came from. The hell she just saved me from. But I steel my resolve and make my move. After raising a hand to her slender throat again, I lower my head and gaze at her like a panther might seconds before attacking a gazelle.

She stiffens, and I have her in my snare, so I charge forward. Press the length of my body against hers. Lean in and whisper into her ear. “What’s your name?”

“Charley,” she says, fear finally staking its claim.

I pull the scarf down so I can see her better. So I can take in every inch of her face. Of her sculpted mouth.

She tries to add “Davidson” at the end, but I’ve surprised her and it comes out as one mangled syllable. Astonishingly, it sounds like the name I gave her, and I have to wonder if that’s a coincidence.

“Dutch?” I ask, scrunching my brows together.

She stares for a while, her eyes glossy from the frozen December air around us. A quake runs through her body. “No. Davidson,” she whispers as my fingers drift down and deliberately brush over her breast. She flinches, but I feel the tiniest bit of desire radiate in an arc around her.

We can’t have that.

More than a little sorry for what I’m about to do, I lean in again and whisper into her ear, “Have you ever been raped, Dutch?” I would never actually rape her. I would never do anything to hurt her. Fortunately she doesn’t know that.

She sucks cold air in through her teeth. Curls her hands into fists. Glances at her sister, who is terrified. Then she whispers a breathy, “No.”

I can feel a raging sea of emotions tumbling inside her. Swirling and clawing and fighting for dominance. But there are few emotions that will overcome the natural instinct for survival.

I tighten my hand around her throat. Force a knee between hers. Spread her legs to gain access to the most intimate part of her. Then I cup a hand at her crotch. Stroke her through her jeans. Touch her like I have the right.

She grabs my wrist with both hands. “Please stop.”

I do, but I keep my hand at her crotch.

She presses a palm against my chest and pushes softly. “Please.”

“You’ll leave?”

“I’ll leave.”

I wait a moment longer—studying her, memorizing every curve—before raising my arms and placing them on the wall behind her.

“Go,” I say, my voice more of a bark, a harsh this-is-your-last-chance warning.

She doesn’t hesitate this time. She ducks under my arm and sprints past her sister, grabbing her along the way. They hurry to put distance between us like frightened cats, and part of me wants to call her back. To fall at her feet. To finish what I started. That’s when I realize I may be more like Earl Walker than I’ve ever imagined.

15

I stay outside for the rest of the night, thinking. Contemplating the plan Amador and I had been going over for months.

Earl was going to kill me. He wanted to. He can feel his grip on me loosening, and the tighter he closes his fist, the easier I slip through. He knows I am going to take Kim and leave him. I’ve been planning it for weeks now. Years, really, but the actual plan was set in motion a few weeks back.

It’s time.

But I can’t get back into the apartment the next morning. Earl has locked me out, and I don’t dare risk waking him by having Kim sneak out of the apartment to let me into the building. She was at the window of our bedroom most of the night, watching me. Struggling to stay awake. She finally fell asleep around 4 A.M.

I tap lightly on the window just as the sun paints the horizon a brilliant orange. Earl will be asleep for hours yet. If there weren’t bars on the window, I’d get her out and take her with me, but I’ll just have to come back for her. Amador will be waiting.

Kim raises her head, her lids heavy with sleep. She cracks the window, but I tell her to stop.

“He might wake up,” I whisper.

“You know he won’t. I’ll unlock the door.”

“No. It’s okay. I can’t risk that landlady calling the police. I’m going to meet Amador.”

She pushes her fingers through the crack. I reach up and weave them into my own.

“She’s real, Kim.”

Kim smiles. “I know. I told you she was.”

“You did, didn’t you?” I say with a laugh.

“You have to tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“Tell her you love her.”

“Yeah.” I kick a rock off the crate with my bare foot. “I threatened to rape her. I’m not sure she wants to hear any professions of love from me.”

“I saw. And I know why you did it. Let me go with you.”

“He might wake up, love. I don’t want you caught in the crossfire. Besides, I still have some last-minute errands to run. I’ll be back.”

“Here,” she says. She opens the window farther and hands me a clean shirt, shoes, socks, and a jacket.

“Thanks. I’ll be back as soon as I can. We’re almost finished with the car.”

She nods. She’s scared of Earl, but not for her own sake.

I start to leave, but the niggling at the back of my neck stops me. I turn back to her. “If anything happens to me, get to Amador.” I take her hand again. “Find him. He’ll know what to do.”

She nods again.

I leave, knowing it’s too quiet in the apartment. Knowing something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

I’m gone all day. Amador and I are almost finished with the car. We just need a fan belt, but the parts store nearby is closed.

It’s okay, though. I’ve decided I need to see Dutch in the flesh one more time. I have to find her. I have to at least try to explain. But the one thing I never did in my dream was pay attention to her address.

I go to the library. Use a computer there to look her up. Everything is real. Her name. Her mother dying at her birth. Her sister. Father. Uncle. Crazy-ass stepmother. It’s all real.

They live in the Heights. I know that. I know every nook and cranny of her house. I know her neighborhood and where she learned to ride a bike. I know who her friends are. What her favorite foods are. Who she’s dated. Who she’s gone all the way with. But I don’t know her fucking address.

I finally find one, but something is wrong. The entire day has been wrong, as though there has been a shift in the universe.

I feel an urgency. I close my eyes and seek out Dutch. She is with her friends, and she’s fine until I show up. She catches sight of me out the corner of her eye and tenses, so I leave her to it. But if not her, then what?

Kim. I straighten in alarm. He wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.

I run out of the library and all the way home. When I get there, they are gone. Earl has packed up and left with Kim. The landlady is pounding on the door, her abused hair—so bleached, it’s almost white—in tangles around her head. She turns toward me, but I duck back. She doesn’t see me. She unlocks the door. I wait for her to enter before walking past. It’s empty except for the usual suspects. Trash strewn about. A sock here. A T-shirt there. I stop. There’s a hole in the wall. The pictures from the latest encounter are in there. They are bad. Some of the worst. It took me almost two weeks to heal after that one.

Bile burns the back of my throat. He took her. A hundred times, he’s threatened to kill her if I defy him. I never believed him.

I leave out the back of the building before the landlady finds me. I don’t get far before falling to my knees. Before doubling over as my chest heaves. As my eyes water. I wrap my arms around my head and do something I rarely do. I cry. Deep sobs overtake me for several long minutes. I want to yell. No. I want to kill.

My body shudders with emotion. But I resign myself to one thing: murder. He is going to die. If he touches her. If he does anything to her, he’s going to die.

I’m not sure where to go first, but I know Earl’s haunts like the back of my hand. I start with the pool hall. From there, I go to his two favorite bars. His girlfriend’s house. Nothing. By the time the sun dips low on the horizon, I’ve exhausted almost every stomping ground I know of.

I decide to try his friends. He actually has some. Well, two. Maybe three. More than I have, I guess.

I am walking in the worst part of town, headed for a dive hotel off Central, when I feel someone following me. I don’t turn around. I can recognize the sound of a cop car a mile away. I contemplate running, because the cops inside are excited. I feel adrenaline rush through their veins like quicksilver. They were looking for me. How the fuck they know me, what I look like, who I am—it’s beyond me. But that whole uneasy feeling I’ve had all day begins to solidify. Something is definitely wrong.

I am about two seconds from taking off when another cop car tears out of an alley in front of me. The same alley I was going to run into.

I slow and almost head in the other direction when another one, an unmarked sedan, heads toward me, tires squealing, from a parking lot on my left. Before I know it, there are seven guns pointed at me.

I am furious. I don’t have time for this shit. I need to find Kim.

With jaw clenched so tight, it aches, I raise my arms. Fall to my knees. End up on my face as I’m tackled by Dudley Do-Right. Anger wells up inside me.

A detective arrives on scene. It’s Dutch’s uncle. Robert. Bob. Whatever. He’s the one who interrogates me at the station. I say nothing. I neither confirm nor deny any of their charges. They give me a public defender who cares more about the ass he has on the side than he does about his clients. He lost respect for them years ago. Works, literally, for the weekend, when he can get shitfaced and fuck his latest achievement.

He was slotted for hell two years ago, when he was driving while intoxicated and hit an elderly man. It wasn’t a bad hit. The guy could have been saved, but he left him to die in the street. I want to snap his neck. To send him down early. I don’t. Only because as much of a fucker as he is, he’s the only shot I have at freedom.

I’m up for murder. Earl Walker was beaten to death with a baseball bat, stuffed into the trunk of the junker he drove, and set on fire. Along with eyewitness testimony by way of Sarah, his fiancée-slash-ATM, who was more in fear of him than in love, and the discovery of Earl’s ring, which they found in my jacket pocket, the same jacket Kim handed me through the bars, it’s a pretty easy conviction.

The killer is that Detective Bob knows I didn’t do it. He knows, but the evidence is too overwhelming. Too stacked against me.

I want to ask about Kim, but I don’t dare. If she’d been with Earl—if she’d been killed, too—I would be up for her murder as well. So I bring out Alexander. Eyes down. Mouth shut.

I sometimes wonder who did it. Who killed the monster. Not that I give a shit.

I am in jail for a week before Amador comes to see me. He brings Kim and I almost pass out, I’m so relieved.

Good girl. She did as I told her.

They are both worried. I feel tension pulled tight in Amador’s gut. Kim’s lids are almost swollen shut from crying. That, combined with the blue under her eyes from lack of sleep, makes her look like a victim of physical abuse. The guard on duty eyes Amador, wondering if he’s been beating her.

She puts one hand on the glass as she holds the phone with the other. I do the same. Tears fall freely down her face.

“I didn’t do it.”

She scoffs and does her best glare. It’s not that great a glare. “I know, shithead. You have to tell them.”

“The detective on the case knows, but the evidence says otherwise. There’s nothing he can do.”

Her heart speeds up. “What do you mean?”

“Kim, they don’t know about you. They don’t know I have a sister. They asked about my family. About any other children. I told them it was just Earl and me, so Sarah must not have said anything about you. And you can’t tell them. You can’t come back here.”

“What? No. No.”

“Give the phone to Amador, sweetheart.”

“No!” she yells. She is coming unglued. It’s unusual for her. She is always so quiet. So painfully shy. “Reyes!” she says as Amador wraps an arm around her shoulders. Not to comfort her, but to hold her down. To keep her from getting them kicked out.

He pries the phone out of her hand. She immediately grabs the counter in front of her, her knuckles as white as the Formica covering the surface. Amador knows the score. We’ve talked about it.

“Give her everything,” I say to him.

He nods. “The place is already set up. She’ll be fine.”

Again, I’m flooded with such a sense of relief, I almost lose my composure. I’m shaking and cursing myself for it. I don’t want Kim to see the emotion running rampant through me.

We don’t have much to discuss. With Amador’s help, I’d been planning to get Kim away from Earl for weeks, so everything has already been set up. She will be with a good family. She will go back to school. And somehow I’ll figure out how to get her some money.

“Okay, give her the phone again, and then you know what to do.”

“I do.”

“Ammo, I don’t know how to—”

“Don’t even think about pulling that emotional crap on me.” His eyes are flooding with tears and he fights them tooth and nail. “I have your back. You know that.”

I nod. “I’d kiss you if I could. Full on. Tongue and everything.”

He laughs, and the movement causes a tear to escape. “Now you tell me. We could have been happy together, pendejo.”

I realize my face is wet. “I love you, man.”

“I love you, too. Just get out.”

“I’ll try,” I lie. There’s no getting out. I won’t admit to something I didn’t do just to get a lesser sentence, but there’s no way I don’t go to prison.

He passes the phone back to Kim. She doesn’t say anything. Her face is so pale, she almost looks like one of the departed.

“You don’t know me. When you leave here today, don’t you ever come back.” I want to add the rest. I want to tell her that no one will ever hurt her because of me again. Not ever. But I can’t get the words past the lump in my throat.

She is completely silent. Her jaw is trembling. I’m not sure she could talk if she wanted to.

“I love you,” I say.

It is the final crack that breaks the dam. She bursts into tears again, and Amador has to carry her out. Literally. But she’ll listen to me. She knows not to get in touch with me. She’s so much stronger than she thinks.

It’s the last glimpse of her I get for a very, very long time.

16

I spend months in jail awaiting trial. They say I’m incarcerated. I say I’m free at last.

Detective Bob interrogates me several times. Practically begs for me to give him something. He knows I’m innocent. I’m not sure how, but he does. I’ll give him that. I don’t say much. I never say much. What could I say that would contradict the evidence against me.

He tries, but his hands are as tied as mine. He gives up about two months in.

The trial doesn’t take long. Despite the incompetence of my defense lawyer, five people on the jury think I’m innocent. Three are female and want me more than they want their next breaths. Two are male. One wants me as much as the women do. One hates cops with every ounce of his being. Never believes a thing they have to say. I could’ve been a serial killer, and he would still believe me innocent.

But the evidence speaks for itself, and I am convicted. Naturally.

I don’t take shit from anyone in jail. For the most part, they leave me alone, but there’s always one who has to prove what a badass he is. Fights become a fairly regular thing. Short but sweet. They allow me to let off steam. To rage. To vent, as it were, while kicking a piece of shit’s ass. Not many things are so satisfying.

I’ve gained a reputation, however, and now I’m the target of every wannabe out there. That’s okay. Keep me on my toes. I can say one thing about Earl Walker: He taught me how to throw a mean punch.

But it’s gone beyond that. People are starting to talk. They say I’m not human. They say I move like an animal. They say I’m more predator than prey.

I’ve gotten to know several inmates. Some are pretty cool. One is really cool, and I do something I rarely do: I tell him he’s slotted for hell. I tell him why. I tell him he can still beat it. He needs to confess. He needs to make amends. He needs to turn his life around. To help others. He’s on that path anyway, but it’s almost as hard to get out of a sentence to hell as it is a sentence to prison.

Surprisingly, he believes me. He stands up, tells the guard he needs to see his lawyer. He is going to confess his sins. To do his time. To help others.

It was back when he was doing drugs. He shot a pharmacist during a robbery. The man is in a wheelchair to this day. He cleaned up his act, for the most part, afterwards. He’s in jail because of a bad situation gone worse. But he’s never hurt anyone else.

Even so, amends must be made. Nothing he can ever do from now on will make up for what he did then, but if he admits his sins and helps others, the brand of hell will eventually fade and wither away altogether. He can still be saved.

If only I could.

17

After I’m convicted, I’m immediately transferred to a prison for physical and psychological testing. A few weeks later, I’m transferred to the state pen. I’m the youngest of the group. The men being transferred with me are a mixture of fresh and seasoned. The seasoned ones are nervous. Anxious. Pissed. The fresh ones are scared shitless. One is so scared, he’s shaking. I want to tell him to chill, but it wouldn’t do any good. He’s going to be somebody’s bitch either way.

Word of me has spread to prison. One of the more seasoned inmates wants me, but he doesn’t know yet about my rep. By the time I’m released into gen pop, they call me the Devil’s Breath. But shot callers like nothing more than a challenge in their mundane lives, and my very first day is met with a price on my head.

I’ve just sat down with my lunch tray when I feel it. Three men are headed toward me from different directions. They have homemade shivs and are going to put me in the hospital if not in the ground. The New Mexico Syndicate, a notorious gang, is looking for a coup. They want to put me in my place.

I wait until they get a little closer. One guard, a kid as new to all this as I am, has noticed the activity. He is alarmed. Calls for backup. But they are on me before he gets out the words.

I deflect a shiv, twist the guy’s arm, and because I’m feeling particularly testy, snap his neck before he even knows what hit him. I do the same to the other two. One realizes what is happening and tries to back out, but I’m not in the mood to let him. He is an especially nasty specimen who was branded for hell when he molested the girl next door and then took her to a wooded area to strangle her so she wouldn’t tell on him. I break his back first, let the pain shoot through his system, then snap his neck.

A few seconds later, I am crouched on the table. Every face staring at me is stunned. The guard who was calling for backup still has the mic at his mouth. His jaw is hanging open.

I straighten. Step down. Grab my tray and move to another table. An old man is gazing at me. He’s not scared of me, though. And he doesn’t want to fuck me or make me his bitch. So I instantly like him.

He chuckles. “You certainly know how to make an impression.”

I wink and eat what I can before the guards take me down. The food’s not as bad as I’d expected. I’ve had worse.

The place goes into lockdown. Everyone is on the ground when four guards rush me. I let them. They’re just doing their jobs. So I’m facedown again, being restrained by men with guns and, worse, Tasers. Those fuckers hurt.

The guard who first noticed the three Syndicates coming at me backs me during the investigation. I am, of course, in AdSeg, but I get a personal interview with the warden. There is a full-scale investigation, and I think the only reason I’m not charged is because of that first guard. His name is Gossett. He is … intrigued by me. Wary. Pisses a little when I look in his direction. He could come in handy one day.

I’m visited by a group of men from the state. They tell me how smart I am. Say my IQ is what is known as “immeasurable.” They want to run more tests.

“I’m in prison,” I tell them. “How smart can I be?”

I refuse the tests and they leave with their tails tucked between their legs.

After I’m released back into gen pop, I get used to the thug life pretty easily. For the most part, no one messes with me. Not often, anyway. There’s always one or two trying to make a name for themselves. I’ve become the ultimate challenge.

And then there are the nations. The organizations that work inside, and outside, the system. A couple of them try to recruit me, but after I make it clear that I won’t be recruited by any of them, they calm down a bit. They know I won’t be out to get them based on the order of an enemy shot caller. It’s all about politics and survival.

The day-to-day life in prison is part boredom, part survival, and part bullshit. Every once in a while, a guard gets a tad too full of himself. Or a shot caller orders a hit. Or a random fight breaks out. In here, however, fights are lethal and taken very seriously.

I decide to use my time wisely. I continue what I started with the night classes, studying law, while also learning about computers. Mainly how to hack them. One of the first things I do is hack into my alma matter, where I spent three months learning about stuff I already knew, and assign myself a high school diploma. Then I earn an online degree in law.

I also become the local computer nerd. The administration brings me in to fix all the computers.

I create viruses to invade at a specific day and time. They call me in, and I eradicate my own virus, only to plant another one to go into effect a couple months later. They ask me why I can’t just fix the computers once and for all. I tell them to quit going to porn sites and it will stay fixed. That shuts them up every time.

*   *   *

So all that keeps me busy for a couple of years when Dutch isn’t in some sort of mortal danger. I’ve come to realize things are thrown in her path because of who she is. They have to be. No one could get into that much trouble without a little supernatural help.

Historically, reapers have never lived very long. They die young, then serve their term ferrying souls across dimensions.

How do I know all this? I’m learning a lot. Remembering a lot. Like who I am. Where I’m from. It’s as though a piece of glass that had shattered is being put back together. Slowly. Painfully. Each razor like shard fitting into the next one as images flood my memory.

Visions of hell fill my nights. Of inhuman armies and epic battles. That’s the part that surprises me the most, because I realize they were right about me. All the whispers, all the rumors and innuendos about my being the breath of the devil. I’m not human. I don’t know what I am exactly, but I do know there is a part of me that is no more human than Dutch is.

I’m also learning a lot, thanks to my abilities to venture into the world unchecked. It’s not like the bars of a prison can hold me. I can go anywhere. Once I realized Dutch was real, that I was literally leaving my body to see her, to seek her out, I realized I could go anywhere.

They think I’m having seizures. They do tests, but they will do only so much on the state’s dime. Probably a good thing, since I don’t think they’re really seizures. Not in the medical sense.

Sometimes I’m lured away and I seize. It’s inconvenient. Seen as a weakness. When I’m in that state, anyone could come at me. I could be dead because a certain reaper with a penchant for getting into as much shit as she possibly can is about to be killed.

It’s during one inopportune time that another realization hits me. One second, I’m on my bunk reading; the next, I’m in front of Dutch. She is on a college campus, UNM, and is being attacked. Naturally. Anger flashes inside me so hot and bright, I don’t even think before wielding my sword and severing his spine.

That’s not the surprising part. She’d called me to her. She’d literally summoned me. Had she always done so? Have I been seeking her out all this time or was she summoning me?

I figure it’s a toss-up. I brush my lips across her mouth before leaving her to deal with campus security. When I get back, I’m being stabbed by a Syndicate recruit. And here I thought we’d come to an accord. At the very least, a mutual understanding.

I don’t kill the kid. I don’t want the hassle. But it does bring into glaring Technicolor how detrimental Dutch’s near-death experiences can be. For me. Not her.

I rough up the kid a bit. Break his nose. Possibly his larynx. Then I hand deliver him to the Syndicate. Sadly, the hit wasn’t ordered. The kid acted on his own. An upstart wannabe out to make a name for himself. He died that night in a puddle of his own blood. A puddle that was not of my making.

A little over two years in, I get a visit from Amador. He comes at least once a month, actually, but this visit is special. This visit will go down in the history books as the day I almost break my best friend’s neck.

“I’ve been arrested for aggravated assault,” he tells me. “It’s pretty much a given I’ll go to prison.”

I stare at him, astonished. He is about to get married. His fiancée is pregnant. He’s never been so happy.

He clears his throat. Taps his fingers on the table.

“Why?” I ask him.

“Because I assaulted a police officer.”

“No, why would you risk everything—?”

“He’s a fucking cop, Rey. A human just like you and me.”

He was wrong on that count.

“Only this guy is an absolute piece of shit. He’s been stalking Bianca, and when she reports it—instead of telling me—he plants a stolen bottle of Oxy on her and has her arrested.”

His hands curl into fists and his eyes water with emotion.

I bite down, frustrated for him.

“They think because they wear a fucking badge, they’re above the law. ¡Cabrones, hijos de puta! Policías como ellos deben morir en un baño de sangre.”

While he vents in his native tongue, I can’t help but feel this is partly my fault. If Amador knew what I was capable of—really knew—he might have come to me instead of taking the matter into his own hands. I could certainly understand his desire for blood, though. I was feeling a little thirsty myself.

“The only reason I was able to get in to see you today,” he says, calming down a bit, “is because all this just went down last night. It hasn’t hit their system yet. But I don’t think I’ll be able to come see you anymore. Not for a while.”

That was the least of my concerns.

“I don’t know where they’ll send me. Hopefully here,” he says with a bitter chuckle, aware of the irony of his hope to get sent to a specific maximum security prison.

“I’ll take care of the cop,” I say.

“And how you gonna do that locked up in here?”

A slow grin spreads across my face, so he shrugs and goes with it.

“Just try to make sure you get sent here, if your lawyer has any say in the matter.”

He nods and we leave our good-byes hanging in the air around us, not sure of when we’ll see each other again. He’s one of the good ones. If he weren’t, I would’ve seen it the minute I met him. He deserves retribution. Bianca even more so.

That afternoon, I go to work. One of the deputy warden’s computers is acting up, and the guard set to watch me knows as much about computers as a squirrel. I hack into the cop’s computer and make it look like he is the head of a huge kiddie porn distribution center. I even set up a bank account with hundreds of small deposits from around the world.

By the time Amador is sentenced and brought to the pen, the cop is facing several decades behind bars. Mostly because I decided to pad his résumé with a little drug trafficking and few nifty extortion charges.

18

I get Amador assigned to my cell with a few simple clicks, and we spend four blissful years together before he is paroled. It’s a good thing. He has a beautiful wife and a gorgeous daughter waiting for him.

He leaves the state pen knowing everything. I’ve left nothing to chance. But it was hard to tell him at first. He takes it really well, though. He suggests I seek counseling and get on some kind of drug therapy program. But it doesn’t take long for him to see the truth for himself.

He’s there when a war is about to break out in the yard. When I walk through the crowd, touch the shoulders of the gang members about to fight. When they drop, one by one, crumpling to the ground like dominoes until I’m standing by the shot callers.

He’s there when I seize because Dutch has decided to join the Peace Corps after she graduates from college and plants her ass right in the middle of a war zone between two tribes in Uganda.

He’s there when she moves back to Albuquerque after a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. She has opened up an investigations business. Because how much trouble can she get into there? She gets drunk one night and tumbles down the stairs in her apartment building. I think she drunk-dials me. Her life isn’t in danger, but the pull is strong enough to yank me out of a deep sleep. I find her sprawled on the second-floor landing, where she orders me to take off my cloak. She wants to see what’s underneath. She wants to see what she’s been so afraid of. To face her demons.

I lift her off the floor and lean her against me, but before I realize what she’s doing, she reaches up pushes back the hood. I go still. She stills. I reach to put it back on, but she stops me. She touches my face. Brushes a stand of hair out of my eyes. Draws the outline of my mouth with her fingertips. Then she rolls onto her toes and presses her mouth to mine.

I don’t kiss back. Not at first. But she tilts her head to the side. Opens her mouth. Invites me in.

With a growl of frustration, I wrap my arms around her and deepen the kiss. She melts into me. Dives her fingers into my hair with one hand. Reaches for my ass with the other. Just as I’m about to give in and take her right there, she goes completely limp in my arms. I continue to hold her. Struggling to get my breathing under control. Fighting the erection that wants to bury itself inside her.

I hear someone on the stairs above us, so I lay her gently against the wall. She tilts over to sleep it off on the stairs. Her neck is going to kill her tomorrow. I wait around. Make sure the guys who find her help her to her bed and not to theirs.

She was drunk off her ass. Literally. I doubt she will remember any of it.

Amador’s there every time she summons me. Has my back. It’s kind of sad, though. There’s nothing like waking up to a shiv sliding between my ribs. He’s also there when the shot caller of the most notorious gang in prison asks for protection from his own men. They’ve turned on him and he is about to die a horrible death, until I step in. They leave him alone. He’s out of the gang. Out from under their protection. Yet no one bothers him.

That, above all things, is the most startling to Amador. Apparently, the parting of the sea of gang members didn’t do the trick. But I’m glad he’s getting out. They have put their lives on hold long enough. She’s been waiting tables and taking night classes and raising her daughter with her mother’s help. Amador is almost salivating to be a dad. To actually live with his wife. They got married the night before he had to report to jail. It was not the best honeymoon.

The good news is, he knows what I’m capable of now. And we come up with a plan. I need to do some more groundwork, but in the next few years, he will be set for life. I promise him that much.

19

Amador comes to see me a lot. He wants to come more often. I tell him not to. He has a family now. He and Bianca even bring the kids to see me. Ashlee and their baby, Stephen. Ashlee is as beautiful as her mother, and I tease Amador that I’m going to steal them from him when I get out. He isn’t too worried. Probably a good thing. Bianca is absolutely in love with him. She is one of the few people attracted to men who don’t fall into a state of crippling desire when they look at me. She has eyes for Amador and only Amador. That kind of devotion is rare. He probably had a witch put a spell on her.

When he comes, he reports on Kim with every visit, making sure not to mention her name. She is doing well. Our plan is unfolding perfectly.

One of the advantages of being able to leave my body and go anywhere I want is something I like to call insider trading. I know things long before the public does. I know when companies are going to fold. When they are about to go public. I learn about stocks and bonds and mutual funds.

Because Amador and Bianca have followed my instructions to the letter, both they and Kim become millionaires overnight. I do as well, but I can’t touch my money until I’m paroled. That could be another decade or two.

“Has she touched it?” I ask him, wondering if Kim is using any of the funds she has.

He shakes his head. “She refuses. Says she’s saving it for you.”

I grind my teeth. The whole point of this was to get her set up so she never has to work again. Instead, she’s working odd jobs and barely scraping by when she could live anywhere in style.

I go to see her sometimes. She’s not like Dutch. She can’t see me, but when I move a picture or knock over a vase, she knows I’m there. She talks to me for hours. I’m beginning to think I’m more hindrance than help. She lost her last job because she sat and talked to me instead of going to work.

“She needs to move on,” I tell Amador. “Tell her—” I breathe in to strengthen my resolve. “Tell her I’m not going to go see her anymore. Tell her it’s too dangerous for me. Tell her to take the money and see the world.”

I know she won’t. She’s waiting for me. She’ll die waiting for me if I can’t figure out how to get her to detach.

Instead of dwelling on Kim, I focus on Dutch. On Amador, Bianca, and the kids. We invest in several companies that skyrocket the minute they go public, and soon we are all millionaires dozens of times over.

Amador keeps pouring money into Kim’s account. An offshore account that’s not actually in her name, but one she has access to 24/7.

It does little good. She barely takes out enough to live on, but at least she’s dipping into it now. At least there’s that.

20

My eighth year of incarceration turns out to be one of the more exciting. There is a riot. Almost. More like the beginnings of a riot, but it could’ve ended as badly as the one from the ’80s if the inmates had commandeered a control room like they planned. New Mexico has a history of violence that few states can rival, and the energy in the old prison was volatile because of it. Toxic. Too much had happened there over the centuries. Too many deaths. Too many massacres.

The land on which the new prison was built doesn’t have the violent history of the last one. It helps. But once a potential riot gets out of hand, it’s difficult to gain control again.

But me? I’m Sweden. I’m nonpartisan. I’m neutral territory. I read in my bunk while my new cellmate goes out to party. He never takes me anywhere.

I do my best to stay out of it. I really do. But when a guard—one of the good ones, not the douche bags who think they walk on water—is taken hostage, I have no choice but to step in. Either that or live with myself, and God knows that’s hard enough as it is.

I step out to see three men dragging O’Connell, the guard, toward the control room. He’s bleeding at the temple and mouth and struggling for air. Partly because of his injuries and partly because of the pepper balls that have been shot into the dayroom. Tears are streaming down all their faces, and I’m starting to feel the effects of the pepper spray as well.

One inmate holds a shiv at O’Connell’s throat. The second is wielding a wrench he stole when the rioters invaded the shop. And the third is telling him how he is going to decapitate him and use his dismembered body as a toilet. Only his words are, “I’m going to saw your head off and shit down your throat.” I was paraphrasing.

O’Connell is terrified, and for good reason. These things rarely end well. I cross the catwalk through a ticker tape parade of toilet paper, trash, shredded bedding, and the occasional mattress.

The inmates at the end of the walk grow wary. The closer I get, the more nervous they become, but adrenaline has flooded every cell in their bodies. They’ll be hard to stop. Well, harder than normal.

I lower my head as I walk forward. Glare from underneath my lashes.

They get more fidgety. The one with the shiv turns, positioning O’Connell between him and me. I curse under my breath when I realize O’Connell’s been stabbed. At least twice. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but he needs medical attention fast. I’ve learned that human bodies are much more fragile than my own. While his wounds would hardly faze me, they could be fatal to a mere mortal.

“Back off, Farrow,” the shiv wielder says, holding it out proudly like a peacock displaying his feathers.

I smile and the guy resigns himself to fighting me. But what he wants is the guard. That particular guard, and I wonder why.

He rushes me, dropping the guard in the process. O’Connell crumbles to the ground while the other two join their comrade. It takes me longer to incapacitate them than I thought it would. The adrenaline keeps them moving despite broken bones and possible skull fractures. I slam one’s head into the rail of the catwalk. He’ll live. The other I toss over it. His future is more iffy.

Now that I’ve gotten them out of the way, I dodge the leader’s shiv, grab him around the throat, look into his eyes, and search for why he hates the guard so much. It’s not a pleasant process when I scour the minds of the living. I don’t do it often.

Since he has O’Connell on the brain anyway, I find the memory easily. He’s being strip-searched, and the guard eyes him with blatant disgust. Not that I can blame him, but he tells the testy inmate that he smells like fish.

O’Connell was standing back, observing. He laughed when the guard spoke. But what Shiv failed to see was that O’Connell was not laughing at him. He was laughing at the other guard. The idiot that none of the guards liked. He was fired months ago, but Shiv never forgot the insults that were thrown at him. Some guys can hold a grudge.

Shiv’s going to hell for his malicious treatment of the elderly in his neighborhood. Clearly he never got the whole do-unto-others thing. I figure I’ll be doing the world a favor by sending him on his way a few years early.

As he pushes forward, I use his own momentum to snap his neck and send him over the catwalk as well.

I grab O’Connell and head for the control room. No one else comes after me. They know better. Even as I’m shouldering a guard, an enemy player in the game, they leave me alone.

When we get to the control room, there is a group trying to get through the glass barrier. They see me coming and part, their faces a mixture of fury and shock.

One of them itches to take me out. I can feel it. He doesn’t want to give up the game yet, but most of the men have been put in lockdown already. Those who are still roaming have absolutely zero chance of getting out. Not that they all want out. Some just want revenge. They go after other inmates who have “wronged them,” according to their demented, drug-scarred minds.

“Open the door,” I say to the guards in the booth.

They glance at each other, trying to decide what to do.

“He needs medical attention.” O’Connell slumps lower and lower at my side.

Holding him up is not a problem. Holding him up while fighting off the men who have gathered might be.

I turn to them. They all know what I’m capable of. Or they think they do. I lower the guard to the floor, then give them my full attention. I’ve decided to see this as an opportunity to make my name even more influential. Even more powerful.

Most of the inmates in Level 5 are in for murder and other violent crimes. Nobody will miss them. I take a deep breath as they close the circle around me, gaining courage from the numbers they have.

The world around me goes silent. Alarms stop blaring. Inmates stop yelling. Doors stop banging.

There are eleven. Two are almost as tall as I am. I start with the men on my left and work my way around, deciding in the span between a single heartbeat who lives and who dies. Their crimes are numerous and plentiful.

The trick is to keep them from rushing me long enough to incapacitate the majority. And like all tricks, sometimes there is a technical glitch. I throw a quick jab at the first one, hard enough to shatter every bone in his face and fracture the third and fourth vertebrae of his spine. I step in and elbow the next one, causing pretty much the same amount of damage. The third inmate wins a broken kneecap and dislocated shoulder. The fourth loses several teeth, the contents of his stomach, and a fair amount of blood. I do all that before the mob takes a single step. Trying to thin out the herd.

It doesn’t work. They jump me en masse, kicking and punching and stabbing. But the icing on the cake is inmate number 5447. He’s pulling my hair. He’s pulling my fucking hair. I snap his wrist along with a couple of necks, crack a few ribs, and relocate several noses.

By the time I’m finished, only three are dead. The worst of the worst. They deserved to die long ago, in my humble opinion. Not that either me or my opinion has ever been humble.

The rest I leave rolling on the ground in agony, their bones broken or their skulls a little shattered. All in all, it takes me seven seconds to take them down. I counted.

The guards behind the glass are standing with mouths agape.

I rest my hands on the glass, my chest heaving from exertion. “I trust you’ll have my back on this?”

They nod, too astonished to speak.

“Then open the fucking door.”

They scramble to get the control room door open and drag their downed man inside.

“Farrow,” O’Connell says through gritted teeth, “get in here. If they find out—”

I laugh softly. “If they find out, I’ll be more of a freak?”

“More of a legend,” one of the other guards says.

I tilt my head. “That works, too.”

The appreciation on O’Connell’s face is almost more than I can bear. I’m not used to such blatant gratitude. Even Dutch doesn’t show gratitude so much as bone-chilling fear when I save her life. Repeatedly. I bristle under his scrutiny. Step back as the door slides shut.

A small group of inmates wanders up and look at the carnage. They want no part of the riot, but they’ve been locked out of their cells. When they question me with a combination of wide eyes and gaping mouths, I say, “Don’t look at me,” and point to the guards behind the glass.

They turn their astonished gazes to the guards, buying me time to get back to my cell, which I inadvertently broke to save O’Connell’s ass, before the cavalry rides in.

21

I’ve been inside for almost ten years. I’ve gone through twelve cellmates. I’ve accrued enough money to buy a small country. I’ve earned another degree. No idea why other than because it was something to do.

Amador and Bianca have a great life that I’m only a little jealous of. They have two kids they bring to see me. His daughter, Ashlee, is almost five now. She has asked me to marry her when I get out. It feels kind of weird since she calls me Uncle Reyes and incest is frowned upon, but who am I to argue with true love? Stephen is still in diapers and giving them a run for their money.

Amador is worried about Kim. She doesn’t look well. I agree. Then again, she’s never looked well. I go see her often. I just don’t let her know I’m there. She barely eats enough to keep a chipmunk alive. She has become a recluse. Rarely going out. Rarely talking to anyone.

He tells me that there are Web sites dedicated to me. “You making those up yourself?”

I scowl and shake my head.

“There’s some crazy bitches out there, cabrón. Watch your ass.”

As much as I’m online, I’d never even thought to look, so the next time I’m on a computer, supposedly taking an online class on how to write your memoirs, I check it out. He’s right. There are fan pages dedicated to me. I shut them down in disgust. It’s like all those women who fill out applications to visit me. What the fuck for? They don’t even know me, and it’s not like we can date. I refuse them all.

But I got another postcard today. It’s the fourth one, I think. I didn’t really pay attention to them at first, but the last one I got caught my eye. They’re never signed, and they’re sent from all over New Mexico. But the last one had the words Wish you were here written on it. It wasn’t the writing that got my attention. It was the scent. Familiar. Sweet. Cheap. It set my mind racing.

But one thing is a given: I have to get out of prison, and I have to do it soon.

22

My new cellmate has Asperger’s. Not bad. Just enough to make him a little slower than the usual suspects. Then again, we’re in prison. Most of this population is slower than the usual suspects. The guy is huge, strong, and easily manipulated. I suspect that his cousin, who is inside as well, is the ringleader of their particular circus act. At first, they spend every second they can together. The dynamics are typical. Beau tells Jerry Lee what to do. Where to stand. Whom to hurt. And Jerry Lee follows him blindly.

Normally I stay out of that shit, but I have to put a stop to it this time. Only because I don’t need an adversary of Beau’s coming into the cell to off his cousin. I’ve been lucky so far, but I have a whole new appreciation for life and the living. Besides, Beau is a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve the air he breathes. He was slated for hell by the time he was six years old, if that tells you anything about him.

“He’ll be fine,” I tell Jerry Lee as they wheel his cousin out. “He won’t be running any marathons, but…”

Odd thing is, Jerry Lee isn’t all that upset. If I had to pinpoint his exact emotion, I’d say he was more relieved than anything.

My plan involves the shot callers of a couple gangs for whom I’ve done enough favors to warrant a favor of my own. Not that they’ll realize I’m collecting. It’ll all be over before they even know what hit them.

That night, I visit each one in their cells while they’re sleeping. I basically talk shit. Tell them the other shot callers are planning a war, and they need to get their armies ready. I do that every night for a week, until the tension in the prison is so high, you could bounce a quarter off it.

I give it one more day, one more night to plant the seeds of my plan, then instead of preventing war, I incite it. Humans are so easily manipulated. A whisper into the right ear while I’m in ghost mode, a perceived attack, and all hell breaks loose.

We’re out in the yard when it goes down. Men are glaring. Guards are watching. And then, in a split second, it begins. One group starts across the yard. They are trying to look nonchalant, but anytime a group of violent, dangerous men moves en masse, it raises a few flags.

Sirens blare from loudspeakers. Guards on the ground rush for their riot gear. Guards in the towers aim their rifles.

I can’t let it end too soon. I need the guards on the absolute edge. The razor-sharp one where their trigger fingers flinch in reflex.

A guard is yelling through a loudspeaker, ordering the men to get on the ground. Most listen. Some do not.

Jerry Lee reacts in the exact fashion I expect him to: He freezes. His eyes round in utter panic. He can’t understand what they’re saying, and when the tower guard fires a warning shot into the yard, he is paralyzed.

Two shots are all it takes for the men to stop. Several are already bloody, but even those men get down. I’m already down. Have been since the whole thing began. But Jerry Lee is not.

I almost feel bad for using him as bait, but I know procedure. I also know the guard in the tower. I chose him quite purposefully. A former marine sniper, he’s an excellent shot.

When he aims closer to the ground by Jerry Lee, the only one left standing, I spring into action. My plan is tricky, but not impossible, because one of the things I’ve learned to do with the hours upon hours I have to think is stop time. I can’t do it for long, and I’m not really sure if time actually stops or if I go into another dimension for a short period. Another time zone.

Either way, just as the guard aims and pulls the trigger, I slow time. I don’t actually stop it until I see the bullet slicing through the air. It’s going to hit about two feet from Jerry Lee’s feet. I dive for Jerry Lee, cringing at how much that tackle’s going to hurt him when time bounces back.

“Sorry about this,” I say before knocking him to the ground. Then I position myself perfectly, hold my breath, and release time.

It bounces back with a vengeance, but I’m too busy letting a bullet rip into my skull to notice. Even for me, it’s a lot to take. I strain against my natural inclination to grab my head and curl into a fetal position as it presses about half an inch into my gray matter and exits the other side. I also fight the inclination to mutter holy shit and son of a bitch and what the fuck was I thinking?

It shatters my skull. Sends fragments onto the grass.

The alarms continue to blare. The inmates are ushered inside, and the entire place is put on lockdown as they call an ambulance.

O’Connell, the guard I helped out during the mini-riot a few years back, the sniper with one of the longest recorded shots in marine history, is the first to get to me. Deputy Warden Neil Gossett is next. He’s in a suit and tie. I laud him for coming onto the yard with no protective gear. O’Connell holds a towel to my head. I can only hope it’s clean.

I stay put, feigning unconsciousness. Wishing I wasn’t having to feign it, because my head is pounding. Probably because half my brain is lying on the grass.

When the ambulance comes, I leave my body and watch as they load me up and drive me to the hospital. And since I’m supposedly comatose, I stay out of my body so that I pass all the coma tests they do. I check on Kim. Amador, Bianca, and the kids.

But I watch Dutch. I watch her work. I watch how she is with people, both alive and dead. She is incredible. Her energy infectious.

I’m in Las Cruces, searching every dive they have when she summons me a few days later. I appear by her side instantly. Only she’s asleep when I get there. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She’s probably never known she was doing it. Summoning me.

And something happens. Something exciting and new. She pulls me into her dream. It’s strange at first. Disorienting. It’s like walking on Jell-O through fog, and then the veil is pushed aside and she’s there.

She’s in bed even in her dream. She’s kicked off her sheets. They’re wrapped around her calves. Her hair is in tangles over her face. Her head thrown back. Her spine arched. Both hands are clutching the sheet beside her, her fists locked tight, her knuckles white.

I step forward. Push a strand of hair out of her face.

She shudders when I touch her. When an electric current passes between us. As far as dreams go, this one is killer. Her breasts strain against the T-shirt she wears. Below that is bare skin and a succulent patch of dark hair. She arches again and I look back at the T-shirt. It reads REMOVE PACKAGE BEFORE CONSUMING.

An appreciative grin widens my mouth. I have every intention of doing just that. Easing onto the bed, I plan to take my time. To get to know every inch of her. To memorize every curve. But this is her world, and in it, she rules.

Before I know what’s happening, I’m pinned against the wall several feet away. She has a hand around my throat, our roles reversed, and her heavy-lidded eyes shimmer dangerously. I can only pray she plans to eat me alive.

She presses into me, her movements slow one moment—then so fast, I can hardly see her the next. Her teeth sink into a shoulder. Her nails scrape along my ribs. The sensual pain wrenches a growl from me and she stops. Stares. Like an animal. She is no longer Charlotte Davidson. She is a beast from another dimension, and I’m hypnotized. Not subdued enough, however, to let her win.

I reverse our positions. Shove her against the wall. Clamp my hand around her throat and my mouth over hers.

This time she growls. She kicks and bites and claws, but I lower her to the floor, clasp her hands over her head, and explore. Her skin is salty when I run my tongue along the length of her stomach. When I nip at the peaks protruding from her T-shirt. She tosses her head back. Squirms under my hold. Rubs her crotch against my erection.

A part of me can’t believe this is happening. After all this time. After everything we’ve been through, to have her here. Now. It’s surreal and hypnotic and disarming.

Something is happening deep inside, but I ignore it. I grab hold of her hips. It’s been a long, long time for me, and this is a dream come true. Literally. I would hate for the evening to end too soon. I draw in a long draft of air before peeling off her shirt and cupping her breasts. A soft moan escapes her when my mouth tastes each one in turn. When it nibbles and sucks and grazes.

But she is impatient. She wants more and she wants it now. She reaches down and caresses my cock. Blood floods the length of it when she twists onto her knees and dips her head.

I grab a handful of hair to postpone her descent, but she looks delicious with her bare ass up in the air and her gold eyes gazing into mine and I am momentarily distracted. Her mouth, hot and wet, slides down the length of me in one quick thrust, and the heat that has gathered in the pit of my belly and at the base of my cock reaches critical mass. I almost come. Again.

I hold her head. Force her to slow. But even that is proving too risky. So I raise her up and flatten her against the wall—only this time she’s facing it. That’ll chill her little ass out. She rages when I crush into her. Fights. Pushes. Snarls. I curl a hand around her throat and pull her against me. But she is doing more to me than just getting me hot. She is penetrating layers of my psyche. Weakening my armor. Storming the gates of my soul. I need to bring it back to the physical. Back to the things I know.

“Dutch,” I whisper into her ear, and she stills herself instantly. “I’m going to fuck you now.”

She lays her head back against my shoulder. Looks up at me. Frowns. “Where have you been?” she asks, and I wonder whom she’s talking to. Surely not me. She can’t know who I am.

“Waiting for you.”

A gentle smile spreads across her face. It pierces the armor and I fight. I cover her mouth with mine. Her skin is so soft, it doesn’t feel real when I push a hand between the wall and her abdomen and dip my fingers between her legs.

She sucks in a soft breath. It’s cool against my teeth.

I push her knees apart with my own, and my fingers open the folds of her delicious cunt before I take advantage of her sensual mouth by dipping my tongue.

She arches against me and I can’t take it any longer. I push her legs apart and my erection inside. She gasps aloud. Digs her fingernails into the wall. Writhes with each thrust of my hips. I use my arms like a clamp to keep her locked to me as I pump inside her. This is better, I think. This I can control.

She begins to make small, desperate sounds, and I can feel the pressure building in her abdomen. Cutting to her core. Burning her bones. I drive into her faster and harder, each thrust pulling her climax closer to the surface. At the same time, I fight my own. I fight the destruction of my defenses. The fracturing of my shield. When her light envelops me, I try to shake it off. I bite. I battle. I broil.

“Come for me,” I say through gritted teeth.

And in that instant, her muscles contract around my cock. Her need stings and pushes and floods until it explodes, delicious and bittersweet.

And I realize it’s not just her need that has risen like a tidal wave. I’m coming, too. The initial burst of pleasure is followed by a pulsating high that throbs inside me for several long moments. Each surge chips away my resistance a little more. Each rush of blood shatters the carefully constructed barricade a little more. Until her light seeps between the spider-web cracks. Until the tension builds. Until it ruptures, and she pours into me like a floodtide.

Until I have drowned in her light.

I am shaking. Trembling so hard my knees give, and we collapse into a heap the floor. A soft sigh slips through her lips, and I wonder if she’ll remember this in the morning. If she’ll remember me. If she’ll understand what she’s done.

23

The dreams continue for over a month. Each one reveals a new facet of her personality. One night, she is wild and unpredictable. The next, she is shy or giggly or coy. She laughs and growls and bites and sucks. She brings me to the brink of orgasm, then pulls back. Forces me to wait. Revels in my agony.

I continue my quest to no avail, and I grow more frustrated every day. But at night, I know what’s coming. Who’s coming.

Part of me, a very small part, wonders why this is happening now when she’s never pulled me into one of her dreams before. When we’ve never even come close to have sex. Most of me doesn’t give a shit and just enjoys the ride. But there’s another part, an obstinate part, that wants more. That wants Dutch live and in the flesh. That wants her hand. Her mouth. Her hips under mine. It wants all of her. Every last ounce. Body and soul. That part is just going to have to settle for what it has. There’s no getting Dutch. There’s no having her. Even if it did come to that, even if it could, the minute she sees the truth about me, the dirty little secrets I carry around, she’ll run for the hills.

So for now, I savor what I have. I relish the intimacy.

When I’m not scouring through the backstreets of every city in the state, I keep an eye on the girl. My girl. She’s working a case with Angel, a departed kid she picked up off the streets, and Cookie, her receptionist and best friend. It’s dangerous. Three lawyers are dead already, so I stay close for a few days.

She’s also working a case on the side. Mine. She’s beginning to put two and two together. To suspect that the man she pulls into her dreams every night and the cloaked figure who’s followed her since the day she was born are one and the same. But that still won’t lead her to me.

I head back to the long-term care facility the state has moved me to. Something is wrong. When I get there, the doctors are speaking with the warden. Neil Gossett is there as well. He’s upset. Wants to give it more time.

Basically, since I have no next of kin and no one to protest, to petition the courts to keep me on the machine, the state is going to take me off life support in a few days. The doctors say there is no hope of recovery. My brain is dead.

They got that right. I may have faked my condition a little too well. I have three days before they pull the plug. Three days to figure out how I’m going to fake my own death without actually being buried alive. Or cremated.

Maybe I could have Amador steal my body. How hard could that be? But Amador doesn’t know the truth. I didn’t have time to get him word. It’s not like I could go to him and explain the situation incorporeally. Well, I could, but since he can’t see into the supernatural realm, it would do me little good. And when he came to the facility to see me, the nurse never left his side. I couldn’t just magically wake up. Not yet. I had places to be and people to see.

I am about to check out another lead when I’m pulled back to Dutch. This time she’s not asleep. She’s in the shower and I’m standing behind her, naked as the day I was born. Steam rises around her and I step to her. Mold myself against her backside. Slide my hands up her thighs and rest them on her hips.

She lets a soft sigh slip through her lips, and blood rushes to my cock. I pull her closer as she reaches around and runs her fingertips over my ass. Dutch is slick and hot and I want to melt inside her. I’m not above begging, but we seem to be on the same page when she forces a hand between us, slides it down my abdomen, and wraps her fingers around my rock-hard erection. I suck in a sharp breath and almost come.

Too soon. Much too soon.

I lock my arms around her, hold her tight against me to keep her from moving. To keep her from creating friction. Once I have control over my body’s response again, I lean close and brush my mouth over her ear. Then I whisper her name.

She goes still a microsecond before her lids fly open and she whirls around to face me. But I am gone. Like a douche, I’ve broken the spell.

I jump back into her bathroom to make sure she’s okay. Shaken, she opens her shower curtain and wraps a towel around that delicious body. I’ve learned over the years to hide my form. Only a handful of people can see me when I’m incorporeal, but now I can hide even from them. Even from Dutch when I have to, though she seems to be able to feel when I’m near.

I don’t want to upset her, so I leave her a message on her mirror. In the steam, I write the letters DUTCH. Then I leave. I watch over her. I don’t spy. I don’t invade her space unless she summons me. But I stay close by.

The lead ends up just like all the others. Taking me on a wild goose chase. I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong.

I hear boots echoing around me. Around my corporeal body. I jump back to the long-term care facility and hear her talking to O’Connell, the guard set to watch me. She’s here. In the flesh. How the fuck did she find me? How did she figure out who I am?

I’m stunned as I settle back inside my own skin. It’s a tight fit. I’m not sure they’re feeding me well. I sense it the moment her gaze lands on me, and it feels like a jury is out for deliberation, deciding my fate with a few, precarious votes.

Does she recognize me? Does she like what she sees?

She steps closer and her warmth is intoxicating. The attraction even more so. I feel the pull of her interest. The rush of her desire. Her hip brushes my arm. Then her fingertips brush over my shoulder.

“Reyes Farrow,” she says, her voice cracking with emotion. “Please wake up. They are going to turn this machine off if you don’t. Do you understand? Can you hear me? We have three days.”

She leans closer and I can smell the coconut shampoo she uses. The exotic perfume she dusts lightly on her skin. The underlying scent of her feminine being. I fight the pressure building under the sheets with a mental curse. I can’t even smell her without getting hard, for fuck’s sake.

Then she makes it even harder. Not my cock, but my ability to order him down. She lowers her head and puts her mouth on mine. Her lips are sweet and warm, but the electricity that passes between us is like lightning.

Images rush at me and I can’t tell if they’re in my head or hers. I replay the last month. The nights we had together. The unimaginable pleasure. The sense of surrealism.

Then I remember that night so long ago when Earl was beating the shit out of me. When I lost consciousness for a split second. When I swam back to the surface and spotted her. Glared. Furious that anyone would see the truth. Livid that it was displayed so openly and under such garish lights.

But then I see her up close. Her gold eyes. Her soft mouth. And I am stunned that she is real.

She begins to faint beside me. I can’t help her without giving up the ruse. I feel her limbs go slack and her mind open. Her light swallows me. Soaks inside. Illuminates every dark corner of my psyche. And I remember everything. In one great wave of enlightenment, I remember it all.

I begin with the first time I see her. A shimmering light in the vast blackness of the universe. How many centuries ago was that? How long have I been waiting for her? She turns and smiles at me and I am lost.

I abandon my mission. The one where I’m supposed to be there when the light is born a human on earth. The one where I’m supposed to kill her, the vessel, and capture her soul. The light. The portal to heaven. The preeminent power that is inherent in her kind.

I’m supposed to wrap her soul up with a bow and lay it at my father’s feet. Not the retched human who pretended to be my father, but my real one. The one who sent me to strangle the vessel and capture the light for his own machinations.

Instead, I wait. I plan. I find a family and give up my memory, my identity, to be born on earth as a human as well. To be raised near her. To meet her on common ground.

We should have gone to school together. We should have been high school sweethearts. We should have lived happily ever after.

Apparently, my father didn’t appreciate my changing his plan, so he threw a killer wrench into mine by means of Earl Walker. That’s what happens when your dad is public enemy number one. It certainly explains a lot. But I am not my father’s son. I am nothing like him. I am not evil.

If my father wants a war, if Satan wants a war, he’ll have one. He never should have created me. He never should have stoked the fires of hell and forged such a ghastly thing. Such a despicable beast.

Dutch collapses and O’Connell helps her to a chair. She didn’t see those last images. She doesn’t know what I am, and I have no intention of letting her find out.

I smile inwardly. She’s becoming a badass detective. And she wants me to wake up.

Maybe I should. Maybe she could actually help me in my quest. Help me find answers.

I’ve never understood how Earl died. Who did it. How I was so perfectly framed. I was hoping to get answers from Sarah. She flat-ass lied on the witness stand. Said Earl was afraid of me. That they both were. Afraid for their lives. Why would she say that unless Earl put her up to it? But why would he put her up to it? And why would she follow through with it after he died?

She didn’t want to. I felt every emotion running through her alcohol-abused body when she was on the stand, and the last thing she felt for me was fear. She still wanted me, even after all the years. I guess I should be grateful she never mentioned Kim. I know now why she didn’t. She liked Kim. Didn’t want her mixed up in any of this. In a way, Sarah set her free.

I went to see her—incorporeally, of course—a few months after I’d been convicted, but she was killed in a home invasion. That was when the niggling in the back of my mind began.

But the postcards are what nailed it for me. The scent of his cheap cologne. The sentimental garbage strewn across one of them.

Earl Walker is alive, and I’m going to find him.

DON’T MISS THE CHARLEY DAVIDSON SERIES

VISIT DARYNDAJONES.COM FOR MORE!

About the Author

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author DARYNDA JONES won a Golden Heart and a RITA for her manuscript First Grave on the Right. A born storyteller, she grew up spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate soul who happened by, annoying man and beast alike. Darynda lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her husband and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys. Visit Darynda at www.daryndajones.com. Or sign up for email updates here.

Author photograph by Donita Massey Privett.

Also by Darynda Jones

Eighth Grave After Dark

Seventh Grave and No Body

Sixth Grave on the Edge

Death and the Girl He Loves

Fifth Grave Past the Light

Death, Doom, and Detention

Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

Death and the Girl Next Door

Third Grave Dead Ahead

Second Grave on the Left

First Grave on the Right

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin’s Press ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

About the Author

Books by Darynda Jones

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN. Copyright © 2015 by Darynda Jones. All rights reserved. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Danielle Fiorella

Cover image by Shutterstock

Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

e-ISBN 9781250090201

First Edition: October 2015