I manage a smile. “I love you too, baby. You know I won’t do anything that you don’t want to do, and I’ll never put you in the position where you’d be scared. Okay?”
“I know,” she says. “I know that. And I know that this means something to you. That you want to use our gifts but…how does that lead to a happy ending for us? How does that not put us back in time, down a road of horror and sorrow and bad choices?”
“Because we’re different people now.”
“You’re a different person. You have no fear because you can’t die.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Hey, we agreed that we were never going to look at it like that. That only invites death, remember? I can die, I have died, lest you forgot that, and I can get hurt. To think otherwise is too damn dangerous.”
“So how come you aren’t scared?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just not. Because this is a different thing. It’s what I said yesterday, that we are in the position to help people for once in our lives, we can do some good, starting now. We can connect him to his wife, the love of his life.”
“How do you know she’s the love of his life?”
I balk. “Why else would he be doing this?”
She shrugs. “Revenge?”
I shake my head. “No way. I could feel it off him.”
“His love for her?”
“His desperation.”
“Doesn’t mean he was in love with her.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you should probably look into it a little more. It’s extremely weird, okay? I don’t know if I trust this person. He wants us to open up the Veil, that’s risking our lives, basically. What if his intentions aren’t as pure as you think they are?”
Huh. She has a point. God, when did I stop being so jaded and cynical?
Oh yeah. The money.
“You don’t know that we have to do anything with the Veil,” I tell her. “He said it was Shabbadoo on Halloween, the Veil will probably be thin enough for her to walk right on through.”
“Shabbadoo? Is that an Adam Sandler holiday?”
“Whatever the fuck that witchy occasion is called. I mean fuck, isn’t Halloween enough? Anyway, I think it would be pretty low-risk. It’s one woman, it’s in a controlled environment, and for all intents and purposes, it’s probably a reunion between loved ones. We’re not filming a TV show out of it.”
“We’re not filming anything at all,” she says quickly, and from the glint in her eyes, I know she was fucking reading me, since I was actually planning on bringing the camera for research purposes.
“That’s not fair!” I exclaim. She’s such a snoop. “Give my brain some privacy. And anyway, now it sounds like you’re considering it. You’re all over the place.”
“Someone has to be. Anyway, I’m still thinking it over.”
“You’re not scared anymore?”
“I don’t know. Yes. No. Maybe…maybe I don’t have a reason to be. But that really all depends on their relationship, it depends on what happened to her, it depends on if this is all real or not. I mean, for all we know this might be a set-up, a prank. Maybe we’ll be filmed after all, look what these losers from Experiment in Terror are doing now.”
“Losers?” I say aghast, my hand on my chest. “Speak for yourself.”
She leans back in her seat, staring at her hands in her lap. “I think I need to call him later.”
“You think you can get a read on him that way?”
“Maybe. Worth a shot. At any rate, my instincts work pretty damn well. Gut feeling never lies.”
Same went for me.
Just wish I knew what the fuck my gut was telling me now.
Chapter 3
Thanks to the car trouble and traffic, we get to the Palomino house an hour later than usual. I have to admit, there’s something nice about the suburbs this time of year, when everyone has pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns and Halloween decorations up. All we have outside our apartment is the same hobo who keeps pissing on the door.
Shit, what’s happening to me? I’m actually appreciating the suburbs? That’s where people go to give up and die.
No, it’s where people go to have a family and settle down.
I don’t listen to that voice. It’s like it’s forgotten I was born and bred in New York Fucking City.
As we slow down the street, I glance at the quaint house next to the Palomino’s, which is currently occupied by one very cool couple in their sixties, Sage and Dawn Knightly.
Unfortunately there’s a beige Mercedes outside, not their car.
“Fuck,” I mutter, driving past it and parking the Highlander in the Palomino’s driveway. “That’s that freaky fucking ginger’s car, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Perry says, looking past me at the vintage mobile. She looks a little troubled. “I guess Jacob’s here.”
Jacob “The Cobb” Edwards was the band manager for Hybrid, which was Sage Knightly’s infamous rock band in the seventies. Long story short, he died decades ago when he was buried in a crypt in Prague, but apparently was pulled out of Hell, or wherever the hell he went.
Now, he’s here in Portland, driving an old Mercedes.
Did I mention he’s not exactly human?
Oh, and he dresses like a badly upholstered couch that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of All in the Family. That’s probably the most disturbing part of all.
“I still don’t trust him,” Perry says, unbuckling herself.
“Neither do I, kiddo. Neither do I.”
I’ve only met him a handful of times when he’s visiting the Knightly’s. He’s like Jay’s mentor, the King of the Supernatural Ginger Brigade, and I guess he talks to Ada a lot too, about how to hunt demons while balancing a college education.
Thus, it shouldn’t be a surprise when we grab our bags and head up the steps to the front door that it opens, displaying both Ada and Jay, her tall, immortal redwood tree of a boyfriend.
“Took you long enough,” Ada says.
“I told you we had
