“But right now I need a shower.”

After another quick squeeze of my hands, Charley left to get dressed. As she did so, I studied her apartment in lieu of trying to remember anything more. I no longer wanted to know who I was.

What I was. I ran my hands over my belly as I perused her book collection, a gesture that seemed as natural as breathing, as though I’d been doing it a long time. I didn’t look very far along, but certainly far enough to be showing. Perhaps six months? Maybe a little more?

My heart contracted, and I forced myself to stop thinking about it, to pay attention to what I was looking at. Charley had books by Jane Austen, JR Ward, and everyone in between. I’d never read Sweet, Savage Love, but it must have been really good. She had three copies. After that, I careened past Mr. Wong’s corner and toured the rest of the tiny box-like dwelling in about thirty seconds flat. I thought about trying to strike up a conversation with Mr. Wong, but he seemed to be meditating, so I sank into Charley’s overstuffed sofa and let my mind wander.

It paused at a place of longing, at a need so desperate, so overpowering I was willing to give my life for it. Like a teenager who knew she would just die if Daddy didn’t buy her a new car. Were my desires so superficial? I couldn’t help but wonder, because I had no idea what it was I longed for. Had I committed suicide because I wanted something and couldn’t have it? Could I be that childish? That callous? Especially with a baby on the way?

“Ready?” Charley asked.

I opened my eyes to darkness and had to concentrate to gain my bearings. But I seemed to be slipping, falling into oblivion. Then I saw her light in the distance and traveled toward it until I was in her living room again.

“You okay?” she asked.

She’d showered and changed into jeans and a white hoodie. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail and I saw her face fully for the first time. What a beauty she was. I wondered if she knew.

When she started another pot of coffee, I furrowed my brows in question.

“This is for my friend Cookie. She lives across the hall,” she said as she scribbled a quick note.

“She’ll be over for coffee soon, but we have an errand to run.”

“We do?” I asked. Maybe she’d figured something out.

“We do. I think your gown is new.” She gestured toward it with a nod. “I remembered seeing it at Target when I was in the shower.”

I looked toward her bathroom. “You must have a really big shower.”

“You’re funny. I saw it recently, which means you died recently. Probably very.”

“Really?” I looked down at my gown. It did look new.

She slapped the sticky note onto the coffee pot. “Give her my message, lover,” she said, winking at the pot before grabbing her bag and heading for the door.

I studied the pot a long moment, long enough to realize she was kidding, a little relieved when it didn’t answer her. But all of this was new to me. Who was to say what was alive and what wasn’t in this world? On this plane?

“Wait ’til you meet Misery,” she said over her shoulder, then stopped short when she opened the door and a tall man stood blocking her path. Or at least I thought it was a man. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over a wide chest, a breathtaking grin tilting one corner of his mouth.

But he was different. Dark. Fierce. The air around him seemed to stir as though he were turbulence itself. And he seemed to be made only partially of flesh and blood. The rest of him was smoke and shadows, and the mere sight of him, the magnificence of him, weakened my knees.

Charley put one hand on a hip. “Where have you been?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

“Miss me?”

“Not even,” she said, adding a snort to emphasize her apparent distaste. She didn’t fool either of us.

“You’re such a bad liar.” His grin widened to reveal a set of white teeth, and I doubted I could’ve torn my gaze away if someone had paid me. Simply put, he was stunning. Thick black hair. Full mouth. Piercingly dark eyes with long, inky lashes. And quite possibly the most devilish grin I’d ever seen.

“I’ve told you before, I’m a wonderful liar. You’re just really astute. And I have a case, if you don’t mind.” She tried to sidestep him, but he braced an arm on the other side of the doorjamb and tilted his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“What?” she asked, her voice thin and airy. He was getting to her. “Nothing. I have a case.”

He pressed his lips together and studied her a long moment. When she gestured for him to move, he looked over her head and asked, “Who’s the dead chick?”

“Reyes...” She looked at me apologetically then turned back to him. “That is horridly rude.”

“Um, son of Satan?” he said, apparently referring to himself. “Don’t you want to know what I’m doing here?”

“No.”

Wait, did he say son of Satan?

“I have every intention of kneeing you in the groin if you don’t move,” Charley said, squaring her shoulders.

Reyes leaned in until his mouth was at her ear. “I’m incorporeal at the moment, Dutch.”

She kneed anyway, and at once he was gone. Vanished into thin air. Dark smoke lingered, along with a deep chuckle that faded into silence almost instantly. Charley turned back to me. “Sorry about that. We have a few things to work out. Respect for my clients, for one thing.” She said the last through gritted teeth before heading out the door.

I followed. “Did he say ‘son of Satan’?”

“Yeah. It’s an evil incarnate thing. And, trust me, he wears it well.”

I couldn’t imagine him wearing anything badly.

We stepped into the night air, thick with a syrupy darkness, and yet it didn’t hinder my eyesight at all, besides perhaps muting the colors. But again, the streetlamps darkened the area directly below them. The effect was surreal.

“This,” Charley said, gesturing toward a red Jeep Wrangler, “is Misery. I’m in love with her, but don’t tell my sister. She’s a psychiatrist and would psychoanalyze the crap out of that.”

We climbed in and Charley brought the Jeep to life, turning on the heater with a shiver. That’s when I realized I wasn’t cold. Or hot. Or anything. Temperature, like taste and texture, was apparently lost on me. As we drove down a street I didn’t recognize, I clasped my hands in my lap and asked her reluctantly, “Was he there for me?”