“Is he standing beside you?” Cookie asked.

I must have looked at him too intently, because she’d picked up on my façade of nonchalance. With a sigh of guilty resignation, I nodded.

“Hurry.” She snatched the keys and rushed to the driver’s-side door. “Charley, hurry, before he gets back in.”

“Oh.” I booked it to the passenger’s side and slid in. Cookie still thought it was possible to outrun the departed. I let her believe it as she started the engine and tore out of the parking lot like a banshee hell-bent on doing whatever banshees do.

“Did we ditch him?” she asked.

I was torn. On one hand, she needed to know, to understand how the other world worked. On the other, I had a burning desire to make it home alive with little to no car parts protruding from my head or torso or both.

“Sure did,” I said, trying really hard not to stare. The situation reminded me of the time in college when I was headed to class, turned a corner, and came face-to-face with the resident streaker. It was hard not to stare, then or now, mostly ’cause Dead Trunk Guy had taken up residence in her lap.

“Brrr,” she said. She leaned forward and turned up the heat even though we were already pulling into the parking lot of our apartment building.

“I’m going to take a shower, then find out what happened to Janelle York,” she said when we reached our second-floor apartments. It was barely four thirty. “Why don’t you get some more sleep?”

“Cook,” I said, inching to the left, as Dead Trunk Guy was invading my personal bubble. I had a thing about my bubble. “I’ve had three-plus cups of coffee. There is no way I can go back to sleep at this point in my life.”

“At least try. I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.”

“Are you going to throw clothes at my face again?”

“No.”

“Okay, but I’m telling you, I will never be able to get back to sleep.”

I awoke two hours later, according to my clock. Almost seven. Just enough time to shower, make some coffee, and look at hot guys on the Internet for a few. Apparently, Dead Trunk Guy needed a shower as well.

Chapter Three

WITH GREAT BREASTS COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY.

—T-SHIRT

“This is one Froot Loop beyond certifiable.”

I stood in the shower, the water as hot as I could get it, and still goose bumps textured every inch of my body. That tended to happen when dead people showered with me. I looked up into the unseeing eyes of the departed homeless guy from Cookie’s trunk. He had shoulder-length hair, mop-water brown, a matted, ragged beard, and hazel green eyes. I was such a magnet for these types.

My breath fogged in the air, and vapor bounced off the shower walls. I resisted the urge to look toward the heavens and raise my arms slowly while steam rolled up around us in waves, but pretending to be an oceanic goddess would have been cool. I could totally have thrown in some opera for effect.

“Come here often?” I asked instead, humoring no one but myself. So it was totally worth it.

When he didn’t answer, I tested his lucidity by poking his chest with an index finger. The tip pressed into his tattered coat, as solid to me as the shower walls around us, yet the water dripping from my finger went straight through him to splash with all the others on the shower floor. My prodding didn’t elicit a reaction. His unseeing eyes stared straight through me. Which was odd. He’d seemed so sane huddled in Cookie’s trunk.

Reluctantly, I leaned back to rinse the conditioner from my hair, forcing my eyes to stay open, watching him watch me. Sort of. “Have you ever had one of those days that starts out like crazy on whole wheat and goes downhill from there?”

Obviously the insane silent type, he didn’t answer. I wondered how long he’d been dead. Maybe he’d been walking the Earth so long, he lost his mind. That happened in a movie once. Of course, if he was really homeless when he died, mental illness could’ve already played a big role in his life.

Just as I turned off the water, he looked up. I looked up, too. Mostly ’cause he did. “What is it, big guy?” When I glanced back, he was gone. Just disappeared as dead people are wont to do. No good-bye. No catch ya on the flip side. Just gone. “Go get ’em, boy.” Hopefully he’d stay that way. Freaking dead people.

I reached past the curtain for a towel and noticed droplets of crimson sliding down my arm. I looked back up at a dark red circle on my ceiling, slowly spreading like the bloodstain of someone who was still bleeding. Before I had time to say “What the f—,” someone fell through. Someone large. And heavy. And he landed pretty much right on top of me.

We tumbled to the shower floor, a heap of torsos and limbs. Unfortunately, I found myself plastered underneath a person made of solid steel, but I recognized one thing immediately. I recognized his heat, like a signature, like a harbinger announcing his arrival. I struggled out from under one of the most powerful beings in the universe, Reyes Farrow, and realized I was covered in blood from head to toe. His blood.

“Reyes,” I called out in alarm. He was unconscious, dressed in a blood-soaked T-shirt and jeans. “Reyes,” I said, clutching on to his head. His dark hair was dripping wet. Large scratches slashed across his face and neck as if something had been clawing at him, but most of the blood stemmed from wounds, deep and mortal, on his chest, back, and arms. He had been defending himself, but against what?

My heart thundered against my chest. “Reyes, please,” I said. I patted his face, and his lashes, now dark crimson and spiked with blood, fluttered. In an instant, he turned on me. With a growl, his black robe materialized around him, around us, and a hand thrust out and locked on to my throat. In the time it took my heart to beat again, I was thrown against the shower wall with a razor-sharp blade glistening in front of my face.