“Oh, yes,” Aunt Lil said with a delirious nod. “Send her my love.”

“Aunt Lil,” Cookie said, straightening and looking beside me. Only on the wrong side.

I nodded in Aunt Lil’s direction again, and Cookie corrected her line of sight.

“Aunt Lil, I’m so sorry. We’ll miss you so much.”

“Aw, isn’t she the sweetest thing? I always liked her.”

With a smile, I took Aunt Lil’s hand into mine. “I always liked her, too. Until about fifteen minutes ago.”

* * *

I decided a shower was not out of the question and hopped in as Cookie took inventory and Aunt Lil decided to see what Africa looked like from her new perspective. I wondered if she’d ever figure out how long she’d been dead. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her.

Hot water was one of the best therapies in the world. It washed away stress and soothed nerves. But Rottweilers were even better. Ever since a gorgeous Rottie by the name of Artemis had died and become my guardian—against what, I had no idea—I found my showers more challenging than usual. Mostly because Artemis loved showers, too. She didn’t come around that often, but the minute I turned on the water, there she was.

“Hey, precious,” I said as she tried to catch a stream of water in her mouth.

She barked playfully, the loud yelp echoing off the walls of the tub. I reached down and rubbed her ears. The water ran straight through her, so she was dry to the touch, but she tried so hard to catch the thick droplets on her tongue.

“I know how you feel, girl. Sometimes the things we want most seem completely out of our reach.”

When she jumped up on me, her stubby tail wagging with delight, her weight sent me crashing against the tile wall. I clutched on to the showerhead to keep my balance, then let her lick my neck before another stream of water captured her attention. She dived for it, almost knocking my feet out from under me. I totally needed a shower mat. And shaving my legs with a Rottweiler chasing every splash of water known to man was like taking my life into my own hands, but it had to be done.

After semi-successfully shaving my legs with minimal blood loss, I turned off the water and nuzzled her to me. She licked my left ear, her front teeth scraping the lobe and causing goose bumps to spread over my skin, and I laughed out loud. “Oh, thank you. I needed that ear cleaned. Thank you so much.”

With another yelp, she realized fun time was over. The wonderful world of waterworks had stopped, so she dived through the exterior wall and disappeared. I wondered if it was wrong that I took showers with a dog.

I dried my hair and pulled it into something that resembled a ponytail, dressed in jeans and a white pullover with a zippered collar, then inspected myself in the mirror. No idea why. I’d only change back into my pajamas in a couple of hours anyway. Why did I get dressed? Why did I bother? Why did I shower, for that matter?

I pumped a dollop of lotion onto my palm and rubbed my hands together as I examined the nasty scar on my cheek. It was almost gone. On anyone else, it would have remained a constant reminder of events better left forgotten. But being the grim reaper had its benefits. Namely, quick healing and minimal scarring. Nary a shred of visible evidence to support the reasoning behind my sudden case of mild agoraphobia. I was so stupid.

I took the lotion I’d been rubbing into my hands and smeared it across the mirror. White streaks distorted my face. A definite improvement.

Growing more annoyed with myself by the second, I strolled to the window to see if my traitorous father was at work yet. He seemed to be coming in later and later. Not that I cared. Any man who would have his own daughter arrested while she lay dying in a hospital bed after being tortured almost to death didn’t deserve my concern. I was just curious, and curious was way on the other side of concern. But instead of seeing my father’s tan SUV, I caught sight of one Mr. Reyes Farrow, and my breath stilled in my chest. He was leaning against the back of Dad’s bar, arms folded at his chest, one booted foot leveraged against the building.

And he was out.

I knew he would be, but I had yet to see him. He’d been in prison for ten years for a crime he didn’t commit. The cops caught on when the guy he’d supposedly killed tied me up and tortured me. I was glad he’d been freed, but to get there, Reyes’d used me as bait, so we were once again at an impasse. I was mad at him for using me as bait. He was mad at me for being mad at him for using me as bait. Our relationship seemed to hinge on these impasses, but that’s what I got for falling in lust with the son of Satan. If only he weren’t so deliciously and dangerously hot. I had such a thing for bad boys.

And this particular bad boy had been dipped in a lake of beauty when he was born. His arms corded with muscles across a wide chest; his full mouth, too sensual for my peace of mind, sat in a grim, moody line; his dark hair, forever in need of a trim, curled at his neck and tumbled over his forehead. And I could just make out his thick lashes as they fanned across his cheeks.

A man walked past him and waved. Reyes nodded, but then he must have felt me watching him. He looked down in thought then up directly at me. His angry gaze locked on to mine, held it for a long, breathless moment, and then slowly, with deliberate purpose, he dematerialized, his body transforming into smoke and dust until there was nothing left of it.

He could do that. He could separate from his physical body, and his incorporeal essence—something I could see as easily as I saw the departed—could go anywhere in the world it wanted to. That didn’t surprise me in the least. What surprised me was the fact that, while incorporeal, no one else could see him. But that man had waved. He’d seen Reyes standing there and waved. That meant his physical body had been leaning against that brick wall.