Second Grave on the Left - Darynda Jones Page 0,28

read his, and right now they could have caused the earth to shake beneath us.

Garrett said something, but I found myself drowning in the apprehension that saturated Reyes’s liquid brown eyes. It was almost as if I’d betrayed him somehow, stabbed a knife into his back. But hadn’t he just done that very thing to me? And besides, I rarely carried knives.

“How do you know that name?” he asked, his voice soft, dangerous, as if it were more a threat than a question.

I gathered all the bravery I could muster to answer him. “A friend told me,” I said, praying I wasn’t inadvertently putting Pari’s life at risk. “She said she summoned you when she was young, and you almost ripped her leg off.”

“Charley, I’m trying here, but maybe we could take this somewhere else.”

It was Garrett. He was apparently trying to intervene, to make it look like he and I were having a conversation instead of what it would look like to the casual observer, a psycho girl talking to air. For a split second I focused on my periphery, noticed the odd glance here and the frown of disapproval there. But for the most part, people ignored us. We were on Central in the middle of Albuquerque. It wasn’t like the natives hadn’t seen such behavior before.

When I felt two hands push me softly, leading me back against the brick wall of a sidewalk café, I refocused on the being in front of me. “Was that you?” I asked, returning to our conversation. “Did you hurt Pari?”

He braced both hands on the wall behind us and pressed his body against mine. That’s what he did. When threatened, when intimidated, he pushed. He shoved. And he chose his opponent’s weakest point. Went for the jugular every time. Used my attraction against me with the skill of an artist. It was fighting dirty, but I could hardly blame him. It was what he’d grown up with. It was all he knew.

“That was nothing,” he said, his tone deceptively calm, “compared to what I could have done.”

“You hurt her?” I asked again, unwilling to believe it.

“Perhaps, Dutch,” he said into my ear, as if anyone else could hear him anyway, “I don’t like being summoned.”

And just as his mouth came down upon mine, just as the tingling of his life force lifted me from my body to be enveloped in his warmth, he was gone. The chill of late October slammed into me and I sucked in an icy breath, coming to my senses instantly.

He had hurt Pari. I was just as shocked by that as the fact that he would threaten to hurt an innocent man, namely Garrett, who was in front of me at once, and I realized I had fallen into his arms. I clutched on to him just to be safe as he led me away from the curious onlookers.

“That was interesting.”

“I bet,” I said, trying my best to figure Reyes Farrow out. Was he angry that I knew his name? His real name? Why would knowing his name make any difference? Unless … maybe it gave me some kind of advantage. Maybe I could use it against him somehow.

“So, I take it he doesn’t want me looking for him?” Garrett said.

“To put it mildly.”

We walked around Calamity’s, my dad’s bar, to my apartment building behind it. I was still clutching on to Garrett’s arm, not quite trusting my legs yet, when we arrived at my second-floor apartment.

Garrett waited while I fished the keys out of my pocket. “I saw his picture,” he said, his voice suddenly grave.

I inserted the key and turned. “His mug shot?” I asked, assuming we were still on the subject of Reyes.

“Yes, and a couple other photographs.”

That made sense, since he was supposed to be on the lookout for him. “You coming in? I just need to change real quick.”

“Look, I get it,” he said, stepping in behind me and closing the door.

“You do? Well, thank goodness someone does.” I really didn’t want to talk about Reyes with him now, his spine being so unsevered and all. “There’s soda in the fridge.”

I tossed the keys onto the snack bar and headed for my bedroom. “Hey, Mr. Wong.”

“He’s attractive, right?”

I paused and turned back to him. “Mr. Wong?” I looked at my perpetual roommate, at his utter grayness as he stood in my living room corner. He’d been there since I rented the apartment, and since he did have seniority, I’d never had