The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(34)

I’d ordered my favorite food of the week: green chile chicken enchiladas. Sustenance should help the gurgling sound my stomach insisted on making when I didn’t eat for a few days. And maybe it would help me think better. I gave my brain a good racking, but still nothing. What could Rey’azikeen be searching for? What would he need on Earth and why? The questions wouldn’t stop, and now we had a time limit.

Oddly enough, the dull roar of conversation soothed me into a more relaxed state. I watched a woman flirt with a guy at the bar who was more interested in the bartender than her. The male bartender.

I looked on as a table of men watched a server’s ass so blatantly, all their heads tilted at the same time as she passed.

I caught a woman pour half her drink into her date’s glass when he got up to go to the restroom. And I saw— God. I straightened in my chair. I needed to talk to God. He was the one putting a time limit on everything. He was the only one threatening to cast His brother from the plane. I just needed a sit-down with the Big Guy. I could buy us more time. Me more time.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” a male voice said from behind me. A male voice that I knew better than my own.

My pulse skyrocketed as Reyes stepped around the table. Even in a sand-colored T-shirt and simple blue jeans, he looked magnificent. Wide, powerful shoulders. Sinewy arms. Strong, almost elegant hands.

“You wouldn’t recommend what?” I asked him.

“Talking to my Brother. He’s … antisocial.”

“Must run in the family.” The molecules in my body began to vibrate with his nearness, desiring an encore of our earlier activity more than it desired air.

He reached down and caressed my face, his long fingers gentle.

I lifted my chin, refusing to be baited. If he wanted to talk, he’d sit down and we’d talk. I was finished chasing him.

A lopsided grin adorned his dark features. He bent until our mouths were almost touching, then asked, “Was it good for you?”

I jerked awake, blinking back to awareness, slowly realizing it was, once again, only a dream. I filled my lungs and slowly released the air. How the hell was he doing that?

“You weren’t burned.”

I turned to see Osh standing over me. Garrett walked in the door and headed toward us as Osh sank into the seat across the table.

“Your clothes were incinerated, every stitch of clothing gone, but you didn’t have a mark on you.”

“I can’t explain it,” I said.

“Can’t explain what?” Garrett asked, sitting beside me.

“Why I wasn’t burned.”

“Um, you’re a god?” He took a menu, pretending to peruse it, but I felt the uncertainty quaking beneath his steely exterior.

Osh was a little harder to read, but if I had to put a finger on his dominant emotion, I’d say it leaned toward a grim kind of acquiescence. If he had to take Rey’azikeen out, he would. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d do the job that was set forth the moment I sent Reyes into the god glass.

We ordered and ate in relative silence. Both Osh and Garrett were flirted with mercilessly, which would be good practice for later. Glances from across the room. Subtle innuendoes hidden in a smile.

Another potential suitor even bought all three of us a drink. Very diplomatic of her considering the fact that she only had eyes for Osh, but even more so considering the fact that she was in her late sixties. If she were older, say a few hundred years older, she’d be perfect for the immortal slave demon.

“Watch that one,” I told him, lifting my glass to her in salute.

She did the same as a wolfish grin widened Osh’s mouth. “Why? More sex and less complications.”

I slammed my eyes shut. There were just some things one did not need to know about one’s future son-in-law.

“Thanks for getting Misery back to me.”

They grunted as men are wont to do. But Garrett’s emotions were all over the place.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He plastered a neutral expression on me that fooled no one. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’m okay. You know that, right?”

He nodded silently, then downed the rest of his beer.

“Okay, then.” I put my hands on the table and rose. “Are we ready to do this?”

Garrett slammed his glass down and glared at me. “He took you.”

Osh and I both went stock still as one might do when facing an angry predator.

After a moment, I replied to him. “Yes, he did. But I’m okay.”

“Right out from under us. He took you, Charles.”

I nodded. Nothing I could say at that point was going to help his acceptance. He felt helpless. Which was about the worst feeling in the world.

His hand gripped the glass tighter as a server eased up to us. “Would you like another one?” she asked him.

“We can’t fight him,” he said to me.

I thanked the server before addressing him. “I know.”

“You’re right,” Osh said. “We can’t.” He turned a purposeful gaze on me. “But you can.”

“No, I can’t, Osh.”

“Not with that attitude, you can’t. You need to remember your place. You need to remember what you’re capable of.”