“Then how are you doing it?” She leaned forward, her brows glued together in concern. “How are you not sleeping for days at a time?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t close my eyes.”

“Charley, that’s impossible. And probably dangerous.”

“Not at all,” I assured her. “I’m drinking lots of coffee. And I hardly ever fall asleep while driving.”

“Oh, my gosh.” She let her head drop into her palm.

I popped the toothbrush back into my mouth with a smile. People like Cookie were hard to come by. Stalwart. Loyal. Easy to punk. “Hon, I’m not like you, remember?”

She focused on me again. “You’re still human. Just because you heal really fast and can see the departed and you have this uncanny ability to convince the most mundane of persons to try to kill you—”

“But he’s so mad at me, Cook.” I lowered my head, the sadness of my situation creeping up on me.

She stopped and absorbed my statement before commenting. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

“’Kay. Need coffee first.”

“It’s three thirty in the morning.”

Ten minutes later, we both had a cup of coffee à la fresco, and I was in the middle of describing my dreams—if one could call them that—to a starry-eyed divorcée with lust in her loins. She already knew about my binding Reyes to his physical body, but she didn’t know about the dreams. Not entirely. I’d just told her about my most recent encounter with God Reyes, a being forged in the fires of hell, created from beauty and sin and fused together with the blistering heat of sensuality.

I fanned myself and refocused on her.

“He was actually—”

“Yep,” I said.

“And he put your leg—?”

“Yep. I think for ease of access.”

“Oh, my.” A hand floated up to cover her heart.

“Yep again. But that’s the cool part. The orgasmic part. The part where he touches me and kisses me and strokes me in the most amazing places.”

“He kissed you?”

“Well, no, not this morning,” I said, shaking my head. “But sometimes he does. Strange thing is, he doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t want to be with me. And yet, the minute I close my eyes, there he is. Fierce. Sexy. Pissed as hell.”

“But he actually lifted your leg—?”

“Cookie,” I said, grabbing her arm and forcing her to focus, “you have to get past that part.”

“Right.” She blinked and shook her head. “Right, sorry. Well, I can certainly see why you don’t want to experience that kind of trauma night after night.”

“But I don’t get any actual rest. I swear I’m more exhausted when I wake up, like, three minutes later. And he’s just so mad at me.”

“Well, you did bind him for all eternity.”

I sighed. “Surely it’s not for all eternity. I mean, I can fix this.” I decided to leave out the part where I’d already tried to unbind him and failed miserably. “I’ll figure out how to unbind him, don’t you think?”

“You’re asking me?” she asked, balking at the very idea. “This is your world, hon. I’m just an innocent bystander.” She looked at my Looney Tunes clock.

As usual, my selfless concern for my fellow man amazed me. “You need to get back to bed,” I said, taking her cup and heading for the kitchen. “You can get in a good two hours before you have to get Amber up for school.” Amber was Cookie’s twelve-going-on-thirty-year-old daughter.

“I just drank a cup of coffee.”

“Like that ever stopped you.”

“True.” She stood and headed for the door. “Oh, I meant to tell you, Garrett called. He might have a case for you. Said he’d get in touch this morning.”

Garrett Swopes was a bond enforcement agent whose dark skin made the silver in his eyes glisten every time he smiled, a feature most women found attractive. I just found him annoying. We’d weathered some rough times, he and I, like when he accidently found out about my otherworldly status and decided to have me committed.

For the most part, he was okay. For the rest, he could bite me. But as a skiptracer, he was phenomenal and came in super-duper handy at times.

“A case, huh?” That sounded intriguing. And slightly more profitable than sitting around twiddling my thumbs. “Maybe I’ll just run over there and talk to him about it in person.”

She stopped halfway out the door and looked back at me. “It’s a quarter past four.”

A huge smile slid across my face.

Her own expression turned dreamy again. “Can I come?”

“No.” I pushed her out the door. “You have to get some sleep. Somebody has to be sane during regular office hours, and it’s not going to be me, missy.”

* * *

 

A little over fifteen minutes later, as I stood knocking on Garrett Swopes’s door in my Juicy Couture pajamas and pink bunny slippers, I realized I may have died on the way over. I was so tired, I could no longer feel life flowing through me. My fingers were numb. My lips were swollen. And my eyelids had dried to the consistency of sandpaper, their sole purpose to irritate and drive the will to survive right out of me.

Yep, I was most likely dead.

I knocked again as a shiver rippled down my spine, hoping somewhere in the back of my mind that my probable deadness wouldn’t keep me from performing my supernatural duty, which was basically to stand there while dead people who hadn’t crossed immediately after their deaths crossed through me. But as the only grim reaper this side of forever, I provided an invaluable service for society. For humanity. For the world!

The door swung open and a grumpy skiptracer named Garrett stood glowering at me with a fury I found difficult to describe, which meant I probably hadn’t died after all. He looked like he had a hangover. When hungover, Garrett could barely see elephants, much less the departed. He managed to growl a question from between his clenched teeth. “What?”

“I need ibuprofen,” I said, my voice distant and unattractive.

“You need therapy.” It was amazing how easily I could understand him, considering he had yet to unclench his teeth.

“I need ibuprofen,” I said with a frown, in case he didn’t hear me the first time. “I’m not kidding.”