The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(13)

“What is going on?” She stood and began pacing. “After all we’ve been through together, after all the secrets we’ve shared—granted, you have a few more than I—but still, if you and Reyes are having problems, you know you can come to me. Hell, you’ve slept on my couch more times than I can count.”

“Like, three?” Clearly, she wasn’t very good at counting.

“And now you’re obviously having serious issues and—” She turned toward me. “What did you say?”

Uh-oh. My words just sank in.

“Nothing. I had my listening ears on.”

She pursed her mouth. “What did she do?”

“Who?”

“My daughter.”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“Charlotte Jean Davidson.”

Wow, that really worked. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but don’t say anything. She wants to come to you for guidance and structure. So when she tells you, act surprised.”

Cook narrowed her eyes on me, her expression one of absolute disbelief. She was catching on so much faster these days.

*

I explained all about Amber and Quentin’s new venture. Cookie took it better than I’d hoped. I think it was the part where I told her Amber wanted to come to her first, but she was worried Cookie would be upset about them spending even more time together—you know, beyond the whole every-waking-moment thing—so she came to seek my counsel because she thinks she’s found her calling. She wants to do what her mother does.

That pretty much clinched it. Amber so owed me.

“And the rest,” I said, rising to hunt down my boots, “I’ll tell you at the office. I’ve invited the whole gang.”

She’d started for the door, but she stopped and turned. “It’s that bad?”

I wrested a boot out from under Sophie, my couch, and slipped it on. Without looking back at Cookie, I said, “Yes, sadly, it is.”

We walked to the office together since it was only about fifty feet from the front door of our apartment building. But we walked in silence, she in thought and me in a state of panic. I didn’t let it show, though. I’d essentially lost my husband, his body taken over by a deity I knew nothing about. Was he volatile? That much seemed a given, but was he cruel? Was he malevolent? Only time would tell, but time was not something we had a lot of. If he turned out to be everything we feared, we needed to capture him. Period.

Davidson Investigations, not to be confused with Q&A Investigations, sat on the second floor of a historic brick building on Central, right across from the beautiful campus of the University of New Mexico. The first floor housed Reyes’s bar and grill, Calamity’s. My dad, who’d owned the bar before Reyes bought it, had called it Calamity’s after yours truly. No clue why. Chaos rarely followed me.

We put on a fresh pot of coffee, because coffee made everything okayer, and waited for our guests to arrive.

Which they all did. Like all at once. It was weird.

Garrett. Uncle Bob. Angel. Gemma. Osh.

Wait, Gemma?

“Uh, hey, Gem,” I said, greeting everyone with a hug, including the man who once tried to invent a hug repellent spray thanks to me, my wonderful uncle Bob. And now he was married to my bestie. It’s like we were really related now. Not Cookie and I. We became sisters the moment we met. But Uncle Bob was always iffy at best.

I stepped to Gemma and pulled her into a hug, too.

“Whatcha doin’ here?” I asked into the suddenly very awkward silence.

“Spending time with my little sister. Can’t a girl spend time with her little sister?”

“No.”

She laughed and waved a dismissive hand.

“No, really, Gem.”

Growing more serious, she lifted her chin and said, “I’m ready.”

I strode to the coffeepot for a refill. I just couldn’t seem to get enough of it lately. Probably because of the lack of a good siesta. “You’re ready?”

She braced herself and nodded.

“For?”

“This.” She gestured around her. “You. Whatever it is you do, I’m ready.”

“I’m not sure you are.”

Uncle Bob stepped closer as the others staked their claims in Cookie’s office. “Gem, I think maybe—”

“No,” she said, her mind set. “It’s time I got more involved. You know, step up to the plate. Go for the touchdown. Turn the dial to eleven.”

For someone with a genius IQ, she was really bad at metaphors.

“What the hell does any of that mean?” I asked.

She drew in a deep breath. “I’m here for the meeting.”

“No.”

“I want to become more involved in your life and what you do.”

“No.”

“Why does Uncle Bob get to be involved and not me?”

“No. And who told you we were having a meeting?”

Osh spoke up from his chair in the corner. “I think she should stay.”

Osh may have looked nineteen, but he was centuries old if he was a day. His inky-black hair brushed his shoulders, and he wore his traditional black top hat and black duster, a look he pulled off with such charm and style, it was hard to put him in his place, but put him in his place I did.