Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(8)

Cookie finally picked up on the twelve-hundredth ring, panting and out of breath.

“Are you getting a quickie at the office again?” I asked, climbing into Misery, my cherry-red Jeep Wrangler.

“No, Charley, I have never gotten a quickie at the office. I was trying to put paper in the copier.”

I did not even want to know why that would have her so out of breath.

“It’s acting up again.”

I turned Misery’s engine over, put her in reverse, and sped out of there, all the while keeping an eye on the celestial being keeping an eye on me. It was all very cyclical.

“Did you check the carburetor?”

“I don’t think copiers have carburetors.”

“Did you check to see if it had one? Maybe you need to be on top of these things instead of judging others.”

“You’re absolutely right. I apologize.”

She didn’t mean it. I could tell.

Once out of his sight, the tension in my lungs eased, though just barely. “So, I have bad news.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m going to have to let you go.”

“Did we lose money on a case again?”

“This one was not my fault. I was attacked. And I hate cheap toothpaste, so it’s either let you go or buy cheap toothpaste. Sorry, hon.”

“That’s okay.”

“Of course, at the rate I’m going, I might need to find a new job as well. Or go back to my old one. My former pimp said he’d hold my corner for me should I ever go back to him.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet.”

“Actually, I think his exact words were, ‘If you ever come crawling back to me like the ungrateful bitch you are.’”

“Well, still, it’s the thought that counts.”

“Right?”

“So?” she asked.

“So?” I asked back.

“How’d it go?”

“Not horridly, if that’s what you’re implying. But I didn’t get to say good-bye to Alexander Skarsg?rd.”

“Don’t tell me. A chair?”

“No.”

“An end table?”

“No.”

“A floor lamp with really nice curves?”

“A couch.”

“Ah.”

“Seriously, Cook, if stealing weren’t illegal, I would’ve taken him home with me. And slept on him. And possibly licked him.” Parting was such sweet sorrow.

“Well, you’ve licked worse.”

“Why? What have you heard?”





3

Talking to yourself is okay. Answering back is risky.





—BRIAN SPELLMAN


I parked in front of our office building, partly because I worked there and partly because there was an actual space open. On Central. In the middle of the day. That rarely happened. Of course, I usually parked at the apartments behind our building. Partly because I had my own parking space with a sign that warned any would-be trespassers of car booting and disembowelment should they even think about parking there, and partly because I lived there. Mostly because I lived there.

But, hey! Free space!

Just kidding. There was a meter.

I fed it a few quarters, ignored yet another angel watching me from the building top next to ours, and took the outside stairs to our second-floor offices. Mr. Farrow, my slightly sexier half, would be at work in the café below, and I wasn’t sure what all he’d wanted to talk about. Thus, I decided to avoid him at all costs.

Cookie was at her desk, looking rather perky in a hot-pink, frilly thing. I could totally use that in my streetwalking gig. It would be a tad big, but that’s what bondage straps were for.

“Hey, Cook,” I said, hanging up my jacket.

“Hey back.”

Uh-oh. Doldrums. I could feel them coming off her in waves and hoped it wasn’t contagious. I was already depressed. I’d recently found out that, as a god, I couldn’t die except at the hands of another god. What if I became suicidal? What would I do? The fact that I couldn’t die would make me even more depressed, and there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do about it.

Oh, well. Best cross that bridge when I got to it.

“What did you do last night?” she asked, her gaze glued to her computer screen, her voice listless, which was completely at odds with the searing pink she was wearing and the spiky black hair that framed her round face and cerulean eyes.

I sat in the chair across from her, the one I’d secretly named the Winter Soldier. It had a mysterious vibe with a murky, possibly sordid past. “I went onto the dark web. I thought it might be a chat room for demons. Figured I could get some inside info.”

“And how’d that turn out?”

“Bad. Very bad. Hey, is it inside-out day again? I used to love that in, like, the third grade.”

She looked down at her blouse, then pulled it out at the neck, and either searched her seams for a clue or checked out her girls. “Damn it. It is inside out.” She let out a lengthy sigh, stood, and headed for the restroom.

“Hey, you okay?” I asked, noticing the matching earrings and pink bracelet.

“Sure.”

“Cookie?” I said, drawing out the vowels in my best I-know-you’re-a-lying-skank voice. Only without the skank. Cookie was as much of a skank as I was a saint. “What’s going on? You’ve never been into color coordination before.”