First Grave on the Right

have stopped me from telling my ex — best friend more than she could handle. Still, her sudden and complete hatred of all things Charley Davidson struck hard. I simply couldn’t comprehend where her hostilities were coming from. We were best friends one minute, then mortal enemies the next. It was such a shock. I still thought about it often, even though I realized years later she’d just been scared. Of what I could do. Of what was out there. Of what my abilities meant in the grand scheme of things. But at the time, I was devastated. Betrayed, once again, by someone I’d loved. By someone I’d thought loved me.

Between Jessica’s hostilities and my stepmother’s indifference, I sank into a very deep depression. One that I hid well with sarcasm and sass, but the incident sparked a cycle of self-destructive behavior that took me years to crawl out of.

Oddly enough, Reyes was the one who knocked me out of the depression itself. His situation made me appreciate what I had, namely a father who didn’t kick my ass for the sheer joy of it. I had a dad who loved me, a commodity Reyes lacked. Yet he wasn’t wallowing in a cesspool of self-pity. His life was a hundred times worse than mine, but he didn’t feel the least bit sorry for himself. Not from what I’d seen, anyway. So I’d put my little pity party on hold.

Trust, however, was another issue. Trusting the living had never been my strong suit to begin with. But this was Cookie. The best friend I’d ever had. She’d accepted everything I ever told her without doubt or contempt or instantaneous musings of monetary gain.

“And you think I won’t be able to handle what you tell me?”

“No. That’s just it. If anyone can handle it, you can. I just don’t know if I want to do that to you.” I put a hand on her arm and leaned forward, willing her to understand. “It’s not always better knowing.”

After a long pause, she gathered the files with a weak smile on her face. “Your abilities are a part of you, Charley, a part of who you are. I don’t think there’s a thing you could tell me that would change my perception of you.”

“It’s not your perception of me I’m worried about.”

“It’s late,” she said, slipping papers into a file folder. “And you need to get to bed.”

Had I hurt her feelings? Did she think I didn’t want her to know? Sharing every part of my life with a very best friend whom I could confide in would be like finding the pot of green chili stew at the end of the rainbow. Did I dare? Could I risk one of the best things that had ever happened to me?

It was late, but as wonderful as slipping into unconsciousness sounded, the thought of telling Cookie everything — of her knowing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — had my adrenaline pumping. It would be nice to have someone to trust in, a confidante, a comrade in arms and hair gel, despite the fact that it was almost two in the morning and I was exhausted and sore and near comatose. I just prayed neither of us was biting off more than we could chew. I did that once with bubble gum. It wasn’t pleasant.

Maybe I could take a chance. Just this once. Maybe she’d come out of it unscathed and as sane as she was going in. Not that that was saying much, but still.

I ran a finger along the edge of my coffee mug, unable to meet her gaze. I was about to change her life forever. And not necessarily in a good way. “He’s like smoke,” I said, and I felt her still beside me. “And he’s powerful. I can feel it pulse off him in waves. It makes me weak when he’s near, like he absorbs a part of me.”

She sat quiet for a few stunned moments, then placed the files back on the desk. She’d crossed a schism, a gap between two worlds that few people even knew about. As of this point in time, Cookie Kowalski would never be the same again.

“And that’s who you saw today?” she asked.

“In the warehouse, yes. But this morning as well, when Reyes appeared in the office.”

“This being was there?”

“No. I’m beginning to think he and Reyes are the same kind of being. But Reyes is real, a human, and then I keep seeing these blurs lately and having unimaginable sex in my sleep, and then he shows up in my shower —”

“Shower?”

“—and he called me Dutch the day I was born, just like Reyes, only Reyes was too young to be there when I was born, duh, so how did he know? How did the Big Bad know what Reyes would call me fifteen years later?”

The coffee mug slipped from my fingers, as Cookie placed it on the desk. “No more caffeine.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to suppress a sheepish grin.

“We should start at the beginning.” She patted my arm in support. “Unless you want to start with the shower scene.”

“There’s just so much I’ve never told you, Cookie. It’s a lot to handle.”

“Charley, you’re a lot to handle.”

I chuckled, snatched my cup back, and downed the last of my coffee.

“When did you first have contact with this being?”

“The day I was born.” Wasn’t she listening? “That was the first time I saw ‘the Big Bad,’ ” I said, adding air quotes for effect.

“The Big—”

“He’s the smoke. He’s this creature-slash-monster-type thing that shows up at the most bizarre times. Mostly when my life is in danger. We should make popcorn.”

She scooted to the edge of her seat. “And he was there the day you were born?”

“Yep. I just call him the Big Bad because Humongous Slithering Creature that Scares the Ever-Lovin’ Piss Outta Me is too long.”

Cookie nodded, enthralled with where my story might lead, aware by now that my accounts were a bit more engrossing than the average my-aunt-had-a-ghost-living-in-her-attic tale. Mine were not the stuff of campfires or slumber parties. Which could explain the lack of invitations growing up.

“Anywho, like I said, he was there the day I was born.”

She held her cup in limbo between the table and her mouth, trying very hard not to drool. I hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d been craving to know more. How much my silence had affected her.

With brow knitting, she asked, “So, how do you know that? Did someone tell you?”

“Tell me what?” My coffee mug was pretty. It had a tiger lily on it, my favorite flower. I was studying it in an attempt to keep my eyes off Reyes.

“That this big, bad creature was there when you were born.”

“Um, what?” What the heck was she talking about? Maybe I was unconsciously slipping into unconsciousness after all.

“How did you know it was there the day you were born?”

Oh, right. She didn’t know that part yet either. “I pretty much remember everything from day one.”

“Day one?”

I nodded, noticing for the first time that one petal of the tiger lily brushed the rim of the mug just so.

“Day one of what? The first grade? Desert Storm? Your menstrual cycle?” She hissed in a breath of realization. “That’s it! It all happened when you had your first period. A hormone thing, right? That’s when you figured it all out?”

I grinned. She was funny. “Day one of my life. My existence. My presence on Earth.”

“I’m not following.”

“The day I was born,” I said with a roll of my eyes. Cookie wasn’t usually this slow on the uptake.

She sat in stunned silence after that. It was weird.

“I know. That throws everyone.” After running my finger along the brightest orange petal, I added, “Apparently it’s rather rare for people to remember the day they were born.” The petals opened in an explosion of color, darkest at the center, at its most vulnerable point.

“Rare?” she asked, finding her voice at last. “Seriously? Try nonexistent.”

“Well, that’s just odd.” I traced the next petal. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Not that yesterday isn’t fuzzy.” Then I ran out of petals and my gaze drifted up and locked on to Reyes’s again. The pain and anger in his expression were almost palpable. And the color of his eyes, the rich, deep brown, grew darker as it neared the centers, their most vulnerable points.

“My god, Charley, you remember being born?”