Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel
Darcy is quiet as we trail across the street to the bar, the mums held securely in her arms. The yellow blooms make her skin glow, little circles of gold haloed beneath her chin.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she mutters when I glance over for the third time.
“Like what?” I ask, reaching into my jeans pocket for my keys.
“I don’t know. Like you’re waiting for dark magic to explode out of me.”
That’s not what I’m worried about. Fine, that’s less than fifty percent of what I’m worried about. I can’t stop thinking about the shock on her face, and how quickly it ebbed into panic. How she stared at her hands like they didn’t belong to her at all.
“Has that … happened before?” I ask carefully.
I shoulder open the door of the bar, then grab the mums from her arms. I place them on the edge of the porch only for Darcy to immediately move them to the other side.
“No,” she says quietly, avoiding my eyes. “That was new.”
“Why do you think it’s happening now?”
She stops fussing with the flowers and stands, brushing her palms against the front of her jeans. She’s in her unofficial uniform today. Dark denim and dark boots with a dark sweater.
“I don’t know,” she says, but the look on her face tells me she has some ideas. She chews on her bottom lip. “Do you think Tater Tot will be okay with Frank for a while?”
I stare down at the top of her head as she slips past me into the bar, deciding I’ll allow the clumsy attempt at a subject change.
She wanders over to the stool on the left she seems to like better than all the rest while I slap on the lights.
The lanterns above the bar flick on and everything glows orange and red.
“Yes, I believe your hell beast will be just fine with the seemingly endless amount of treats Frank seems bound and determined to feed him.”
“He’s not a hell beast,” Darcy argues. She slips onto the stool I now consider hers while I debate whether that’s a good thing.
It’s probably not.
I duck under the edge of the counter and slip off my jacket, tossing it over a crate of wine bottles I haven’t bothered to unload yet. “Sorry,” I say. “Your zombie dog.”
“He’s not a zombie either. He’s just—” She swings her braid around her shoulder and toys with the end of it. “Undead, I guess.”
I grab two glasses with one hand, dropping them on the counter between us. “Right, so. A zombie.”
“Not a zombie.” Darcy presses up on the stool, leaning over the counter to grab the soda gun. She pours herself a generous glass of Coke, then tops me off with tonic water. “You’re undead. Are you a zombie?”
I grin at her. All teeth. “I’m an angel, sweetheart.”
She huffs. The first smile since we left Frank’s teases the edges of her mouth. “You’re a pain in my ass.”
“And what a lovely ass it is.”
She laughs and it settles at the base of my sternum. Like the press of a dull blade or … a band around my chest. I shouldn’t flirt with her. I shouldn’t do anything with her, but all the things that initially yanked me in her direction are still there.
Those sad eyes and that sharp mouth. The way she’s always looking at everything around her like it’s something she wants to be a part of. She wasn’t far off the mark when she said my Guardian instincts guide me forward.
“Okay.” I take a sip of my drink, forgetting she poured me tonic. I flinch when I taste the bitter. Darcy snickers. “Let’s talk about your list.” I hold the folded-up paper between us. Darcy plucks it from between my fingers.
“I get to choose this time,” she says with a haughty little expression that has everything south of my belt tightening.
Instincts, I remind myself. It doesn’t mean anything.
She unfolds the list carefully, pressing the edges down against the countertop. Her tongue finds the corner of her mouth, and I find something else to look at it.
“How do you feel about parasailing?” she asks.
“I’m gonna go ahead and pass on that.”
Her laugh is quiet. “Bowling?”
“Maybe later this week.”
“Oh, here we go.” She taps one finger somewhere in the middle of her list. Her brown eyes catch mine and hold. “I’d like to get drunk.”
I choke on the drink I’m desperately trying to power through. “Pardon?”
She folds her hands in her lap, her back straight, her posture perfect. A demure little merchant of death.
“I would very much like to get drunk,” she tells me.
Every time I think I know what to expect out of this woman, she surprises me.
“Is that … safe?”
Her face collapses into a scowl.
I rush to explain. “I just mean—it takes a lot for us to get buzzed, yeah?” Our senses are muted, and how our bodies physically operate is …
not something I’ve ever decided to investigate.
We can get drunk, but it takes a shit ton of alcohol to get us there.
“Do you think it will be safe, I mean. Considering your magic is doing … whatever it’s doing. ”
“You think alcohol will make it worse?”
“No clue. I haven’t gotten drunk since—” I squint my eyes, word-lessly counting back. “The last time I got drunk was in the twenties, I think.”
Darcy’s eyes dance, delighted. “Prohibition?”
“Been a bit of a rule breaker in all my lives, I guess.” I scratch at the scars over my chest. They’ve been throbbing something fierce since the jump in the river.
It’s a reminder, probably, that I should focus.
Darcy’s gaze tracks the movement and I force my hand away from the incriminating marks.
“If that’s what you want, I can get you drunk. ”
“I don’t plan on drinking alone, Gabriel.”
“Want me to grab Frank?”
“I’m not getting drunk with Frank either.” Her lashes flutter against the tops of her cheeks. “As you said, there is a risk of exposure. I can’t sit at your bar and drink myself to a stupor.”
I have an uneasy feeling I know exactly where this is going. “What are you suggesting?”
“We’re going to drink together,” she says, matter-of-fact. “We’ll go shot for shot until we’re both sloshed. Neither of us can take advantage of the other if we’re both flying high.”
I frown. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”
Her smile is catlike. “I never said my list was for good ideas. They’re just things I’ve never gotten to experience.”
“Don’t see root canals on that list,” I grumble. “You really haven’t gotten drunk? Not since you died?”
She shakes her head. “Never. I tried once, with wine on New Year’s in 2000. The whole Y2K thing. But like you said, it takes a lot. I gave up with a light buzz.” She wiggles in her seat. “I guess I should be grateful, though. Most of the spirits at the department don’t feel anything at all.”
There’s a hierarchy. Those closest to mortal life, and those furthest away.
The ghosts and average hauntings no longer experience sensation, taste, or connection.
The Guardians do, but in a blunter form than the mortals.
Almost as if everything is covered in wool.
Our senses are dulled, but they’re still there.
I thought the Reapers would be on the other end of that spectrum, but I guess not.
I drag my hand through my hair, anchoring it at the back of my neck. “So, you want to get drunk. And then what?”
“Then it’s what we agreed on. I’ll give you another detail of the soul I’ve been sent to reap. Easy peasy.”
“Easy peasy,” I mutter under my breath. Nothing about this sounds easy. I’m already walking a tightrope between good and reckless decision-making. Adding alcohol won’t lead anywhere good.
But I need that information. I need to know who she’s here for. And I need to know it before she does.
It’s a race against the clock with someone’s life in the balance.
My future, in the balance.
“Fine.” I dump my tonic water behind the bar and steal her soda, gulping it down in three heavy swallows. Her face pinches, and I probably shouldn’t like that as much as I do either. The stool, her eyes, her arm braced on the bar three inches from mine. All of it.
I need to stop noticing these things.
“Let’s get drunk.”
“A Reaper and a Guardian Angel walk into a bar,” Darcy slurs, flat on her back in the middle of my living room floor. She has a bottle of wine in her hand and a halo of empty bottles around her, a sleepy-drunk smile on her face. “A—a Reaper and a Guardian Angel walk into a bar, and—”
She descends into bright giggles, curling onto her side with her knees tucked to her chest. She is well and truly sloshed and I am—
Well.
So am I.
We started down at the bar with fancy cocktails and blended shots that tasted like gumdrops, but then the bar filled up and I decided two immortals didn’t need to be testing the bounds of sobriety while in the presence of so many humans.
So I handed the bar over to Jessie, grabbed the wine crate I never bothered to put away, and brought Darcy upstairs.
Another bad idea, in retrospect. Because having a bar between us was curbing a lot of my inappropriate thoughts.
A lot of them.
I crawl across the rug toward her, anchoring myself with my hand against her ankle.
The room is spinning, and for some reason I feel like if I don’t hold on to her, she’s going to spin away, too.
Darcy shrieks and tries to kick me, but I hold on tighter, collapsing onto my shoulder and curling myself around her leg.
Darcy snickers, nudging me with her knee. “What’s happening right now?”
“M’flying.”
Except it comes out in a low mumble that sounds like schmying. Or maybe I’m dying.
Because when I’m sober, it’s easy to hold on to my anger and distrust. To use it as an immovable obstacle between us.
But right now, with alcohol swimming through my bloodstream and Darcy poured across my living room floor, all I feel is affection.
Possession. A desire to hold on to her and never let go.
My magic is still besotted with the idea of her, and I fear when I’m like this, the rest of me is, too.
She laughs, and I nuzzle the curve of her knee through the material of her pants.
We should touch like this more often. All the time. Forever. “You’re clingy when you drink.”