Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet - Darynda Jones Page 0,49

with me and drinking like a fish on dry land. I could read it in her body language, in the shifting light in her eyes, but mostly when she said, “I have ulterior motives.”

She was determined to help me sleep if she had to get me plastered to do it. So she and Cookie were trying out a frozen margarita mixer I’d ordered during a low point in my downfall. For one week, all I could think about was drinking margaritas—well, that and running my tongue along Reyes’s teeth—but I didn’t have salt—or Reyes’s teeth. I’d also lacked the energy to leave my apartment to get some—or the desire to stoop low enough to beg Reyes to let me lick his teeth after what he did—so I could only wish for a margarita. And dream of Reyes’s teeth.

I’d secretly hoped a margarita would magically appear in my hand, but that would mean I would have to put down the remote, and God knew that was not going to happen.

It was a vicious circle.

But Gemma rarely drank. Maybe a glass of wine with dinner. And I drank only on special occasions. Like Fridays and Saturdays. Cookie on the other hand …

“Wooooooohooooooo!” Cookie raised her arms in triumph. No idea why. “I haven’t had thith much fun thince … thince…” She seemed at a loss for coherent words, but she recovered quickly and pointed toward the door. “Thince Reyeth Farlow walked through that door!” She turned back to me, her expression full of awe. “And, my god, doeth that boy know how to walk.”

Cookie stood on the other side of the breakfast bar, trying to bake brownies in my new electric pressure cooker. While the apartment smelled really good, I didn’t have high hopes for a chocolate fix anytime soon. The cooker beeped and she turned to check it right before she disappeared. It was weird. She was there one minute and gone the next. And her disappearance was quickly followed by a solid thud, the sound echoing off the kitchen floor. I thought about hurrying to her rescue, but didn’t trust my own legs at that point. Gemma was draped over the arm of my sofa—which might or might not go by the name of Melvin—and Aunt Lillian, who swore those were the best margaritas she’d had since that beauty pageant she entered in Juárez, was facedown on my floor. No idea why.

“You’re missing out, Mr. Wong. I don’t know what Cookie put in these, but they’re pretty amazing.” I saluted the boxes that surrounded him, downed the last sip of margarita—or Cookie-a-rita, as they’d been recently dubbed—and decided to get a jump on my letter writing Gemma insisted upon as a form of therapy. Usually therapists stuck to journaling, so letter writing was an interesting twist.

I figured I’d write a letter to Santa. Christmas had come and gone, but I’d missed it, as I was not talking to anyone except for the salespeople for the Buy From Home Channel at the time, and they didn’t seem to want to spend Christmas with me.

I’d had Christmas dinner with Cookie and Amber, of course, and Gemma and Uncle Bob had both come by bearing gifts and a special, sticky kind of depression, but I really didn’t remember much beyond that. Though there was an incredible chocolate cheesecake somewhere in there. The rest was a blur.

I took out pen and paper and jotted down my thoughts.

Dear Santa,

What the f**k?

That was about all I could manage, and it got me nowhere fast. I felt no better for the effort. Gemma’s therapy techniques sucked. I still couldn’t get Reyes out of my head. The image of him letting Amber hug him was too precious. And not what I wanted. I wanted to be angry with him, to shake my fists and snarl, but he’d been fighting demons for me. To keep me safe. It was so freaking hard to stay angry with a guy who was secretly fighting a war in your honor. Damn it.

I herded Gemma to the bedroom and lay down beside her only to stare at the ceiling for two hours straight. Then the wall. The nightstand. The skull-clad tissue dispenser. After hours of nothing but frustration, I eased Gemma’s arm off my face and slipped out of bed. I was really hoping that margarita would help me sleep like it had Gemma and Cookie, but it didn’t. When I was trying to stay awake for weeks at a time, all I