The Taken

Chapter Thirteen

Grif had been fighting sleep for a day and a half, ever since Sarge had threatened him with unforgettable dreams and a “living nightmare.”

So when he lay down on Tony’s couch while waiting for Kit to finish primping for the charity ball, he told himself he was just going to shut his eyes for one moment. Rest his body for the night to come. He had no intention of actually sleeping, which was why he was already entering the bungalow, hand-in-hand with Evie just as he had fifty years prior, before he even realized he was dreaming.

Of course, by then it was too late.

Defy me again and I’ll send you dreams you’ll never forget.

This dream picked up where the first had left off, on the final night of his first life. He and Evie had already arrived in Vegas and been driven by golf cart to a room that was a bungalow in name only. Hidden deep within the thick foliage of the Marquis’ horseshoed center, these were the high-roller suites. Evie squealed at the sight of all the white marble and gold paint, right at home in accommodations meant for a movie star.

“Everything’s comped, Mr. Shaw,” the bellboy said, but the owner had already told him that. Anything for the man who tracked down my darling kidnapped niece, said Sal DiMartino, clapping Grif on the back. Anything for the P.I. who’d put his family back together.

“It’s like the honeymoon we never took,” Evie beamed, once they were alone. Guilt sailed through Grif at that, but he’d been working long hours back then, and she had, too, until a few weeks later, when she quit, saying standing on her feet behind the counter at Woolworth’s was too hard on a woman trying for a baby.

But she wasn’t remotely fragile on this night. They exhausted themselves with each other in the bedroom, then again in the gilded shower. The heated water was bested only by Evie’s hot mouth, her need for him thrumming in the tightening of her thighs around his waist.

“Tonight we’ll make a baby,” she said, the words wet on his cheek. Tonight all their greatest hopes for the future would come true.

And she stared up at him like they already had.

But the Grif that was fifty years older and deader knew better than that, even as the dream-Grif felt his heart swell.

I love her best like this, he thought. Bare-faced, stripped of clothing and artifice, wet and giving him a look that belonged to him alone.

But later, when her hair framed her face in tight, gold waves, and she wore a wiggle dress and high heels, he thought her just as perfect. She dabbed perfume at her wrist, a lilac memory that made him pulse, and flashed him a knowing smile. Her nails matched her dress, a blend of dark cherry and glitter left over from the holiday season.

“It’s perfect for Vegas,” she explained, blowing on the tips, helping them dry. Then they wrapped their arms around each other’s waists and traded the privacy of their courtyard bungalow for the action of the clanging casino floor.

Evie went on to repay Sal DiMartino’s generous hospitality by chip-hustling her way through the craps pit. She moved like a charmer in a pit of snakes, and Grif was as enchanted as everyone else.

Yet this time he was also aware of the plasma.

He couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t do anything he hadn’t done the first time, but he’d dwelled in the Everlast, and knew what to look for now. The dead could spot death coming, even from the corner of their eyes.

So his eyes remained glued on Evie’s wrist, and as time ticked away on his celestial meter, he noted the gambler next to Evie watching it, too. The man, balding and wide, bit his lip as she threw a seven, hooting in celebration even as she slipped a couple of chips out of the rack near his waist. She turned her head away when he tried to buss her cheek in thanks, and fluttered her lashes at Grif, laughing like all of life was a game, and a grift at that.

Behind her, death-the world’s greatest con-inched closer.

Grif sipped at an old-fashioned, and then another. He switched to straight whiskey when Evie ignored the subtle jerk of his head and continued to hold the table like she was spotlit in the main lounge of the Silver Slipper Casino. He admired her moxy and style, every red-blooded man at the table did, but he was surprised to realize this time around that he hadn’t much liked it on this night.

So Grif drank some more. The Centurion in him, wise with hindsight, screamed for him to stop, that he’d need his senses and reflexes to react, to protect. But the old Griffin Shaw, the dream one-the dead one-kept drinking and silently fuming and watching that slim wrist throw sevens and spirit chips, mending and breaking hearts with fingertips that glittered.

The silver plasma gathering around him was now thick as mercury.

Then, without warning, they were back at the bungalow, and Sarge was right about the moments that followed. They were a living nightmare.

The movement was a blue-black slide from the shadows, too hard and fast for Grif to block, even without whiskey slowing him down. He slumped like a rag doll, but felt the wall, solid at his back, and pushed from it-moving forward, always forward, just like his boxing coach had taught. He didn’t yet feel the knife in his gut-the heat lightning of shock masked the severing of tissue and muscle and organs-but this time Grif felt it.

The shearing of his remaining earthly years. His mortal coil unraveling like spilled guts.

Then, somewhere, Evie screamed.

And the knife was suddenly in his hand. It was slashing and furious, in some ways more alive than he, and suddenly it, too, was covered in blood. Grif didn’t remember this part.

He staggered, catching his balance, watching as the guy he’d gutted twitched but didn’t get up. He was dark-haired and olive-skinned, wearing driving gloves that matched his black suit, and Grif had a moment to think he looked vaguely familiar… but then there were no moments left.

His skull popped and his legs shorted out, electricity surging through them in a numbness that was oddly sharp, not blunt. A second man, thought the Grif with Centurion hindsight. Why hadn’t he realized it before?

Didn’t matter. Again. The marble floor was littered with too much, the knife, the gold vase. Blood. His mortal coil. And glittering fingertips, Grif saw. Splayed in the shards of gold, attached to a delicate, crafty wrist now covered in droplets of blood.

He’d never even heard Evie fall.

Horrified, Grif tried to call out, yet his brain was swelling, pushing like putty against the crack in his skull. Baby, he thought as he began to rise and float… but there was nothing he could do. Nothing but live out the nightmare, and remember what he’d rather forget.

Nothing but die again and, this time, watch Evie do the same.

Grif!”

Kit had rushed into the room at the sound of the first cry, but froze when she saw Grif writhing and gasping, tears sliding from the corners of his eyes. She thought he was sleepwalking for a moment, but her voice had him lunging into a sitting position so quickly that he fell from the couch. He only hit his side on the coffee table, but he cried out like the wound had gone much deeper.

“Grif!” Kit rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”

But she could see he wasn’t. His heart raced beneath her palm, and his fists were clenched and sweaty. He squeezed his eyes shut, but still they moved beneath his lids like minnows caught in a drying puddle.

“God,” she said, pulling him close and wrapping her arms around him. “What happened?”

“It was only a dream, just a dream…” But he was talking to himself and rocking and still unable to catch his breath. Kit pulled him closer, and this time he clung to her, fingers digging into her back.

“Shh,” she said. “Sit. Just be right here, right now. It’s over…”

She continued to make soothing noises, coupled with reassuring platitudes until his trembling lessened and his grip relaxed. She soothed him as best she could, but fell short of telling him it was all right. She’d never seen anyone wake from a dream so violently before.

“It was only a dream,” he said again, and this time he sounded like himself. Kit pulled away and stared at his stricken face.

“You’re exhausted,” she said, and guilt flooded her because she knew it was mostly due to her. “Let me get you some water.”

“I’m fine.”

No one this drained of color was fine, Kit thought, but stayed close, still touching him, trying to stroke the nightmare away. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

She nodded, and waited. Finally he breathed in deeply. “Sorry, I just… it was a flashback. It was a bad time.”

“I understand. The good thing about flashbacks is that they’re confined to the past. Dead and gone. They can’t really hurt you.”

More platitudes, she thought, and could see that Grif thought so, too. “You weren’t there.”

“I’m here now,” she said softly. And even with all her reservations and questions about his appearance in her life, she wanted to be here for him. Just as he’d been there, and stayed, when she needed him most.

But he wasn’t going to make it easy. “It’s not that simple, Kit.”

“No, I know that. But it can be.” Some things, she thought, stroking his neck, should be simple.

He froze under her touch, but this time she didn’t let it dissuade her. Her fingers tensed on his neck, neither demanding nor soft, but testing. Grif was trying to catch his breath again, and if she was right, it had nothing to do with his nightmare.

“It’s okay, Grif,” she whispered, letting her fingertips loosen, stroke, play. “You’re safe with me.”

He closed his hand atop hers and they both stilled. Tilting his head, he studied her face. “It doesn’t hurt as much when you’re around.”

“What doesn’t?”

He didn’t seem to hear. “I can actually feel your skin beneath my fingertips.”

And he touched her like that was novel, hands moving along her arms, firing nerve endings, and quickening her pulse.

“I can smell you, too. It’s been years…” And his gaze landed on her mouth.

Pulling her head low, he pressed a kiss to her lips, so that it sat there sweetly, like a gift. Like gratitude and acceptance all at once. He gave a full-body shudder, then slowly pulled away. “Thank you.”

But Kit wasn’t done. She found that her curves fit nicely to his ridges, and her skin still burned where his hand had found her waist. Her nipples brushed his chest as her mouth hovered over his, just long enough for her to know his breathing had stopped altogether.

Then she pressed with the whole of her body, mouth immediately widening for a deeper taste. Her chin brushed against his stubble as she sought and found soft places on the hard man, causing a needy hum to move in her throat and thread between them. She would have moved in closer if he didn’t pull away.

“No.”

“Why?” Kit’s voice was different, throatier than she’d ever heard it. Needier, too. She swallowed hard, but it was still there, desire rising up so thick in her throat she could choke.

“There’s… someone else.”

She shook her head immediately. “No. You haven’t mentioned anyone. There was a wife, I know, but you said that was long ago.”

Yet doubt edged in. Could she have missed the signs of another woman? She was normally good about such things. Maybe, she thought, she wanted to miss it.

“Don’t make me feel stupid about this, Grif,” she said, because irritation was better than injury. “Or… or like I’m crazy. There’s something between us. You know it. You kissed me back.”

“It doesn’t matter-”

“It does!” Her voice was a shock, a slap, and it surprised her as much as Grif. But she was exhausted, too. Tired of lukewarm relationships, tired of feeling hope only to be let down. She wanted to feel good. She wanted to feel desired and cherished and loved.

“It always matters,” she told Grif. “At least to me.”

“I know that,” Grif said, hoping to soothe her. “And it’s not that I’m not attracted to you.”

“Oh, I know that,” she shot back, pushing away. Maybe Bridget had it wrong. Maybe Grif didn’t have an ounce of thrust in him.

Grif swallowed hard and rose, and she realized it was the first time she’d seen him back away from a fight. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Kit’s heart dropped like a sinking anchor. Grif almost looked as spooked as he had before she’d tasted those mind-numbing lips. “I’m not a rockabilly guy, Kit.”

She sat back on her heels, on the couch, and inclined her head. “I guess I knew that.”

“How?”

“You haven’t got a bit of ink on you.” She’d looked for it, too. She didn’t know one man in this lifestyle who didn’t, yet Grif was as clean-cut as a Boy Scout. Staring, she asked. “So… why?”

“Why what?” he asked, pacing.

“Why pretend? Why… me? Info for your case? Something only a reporter could get? Or money? Something only the future editor-in-chief might have?”

Suddenly the danger was back and he halted and pointed at her. “Don’t compare me to that knob you were married to!”

Kit threw her hands up in the air. “Well, what would you think if someone just showed up out of nowhere, pretending to like the things you like and-”

“I’m not pretending anything!” he said, suddenly as wild-eyed as she’d found him. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

Kit just crossed her arms and waited.

He pointed to his fedora, knocked off during his fall. “That is my hat.” He pulled at his suit. “This is really the way I dress. I was murdered in the fall of 1960. I was thirty-three years old… nine years older than the man whose house we’re in now.”

Kit blinked, then frowned. Had he hit his head when he fell to the floor? Maybe when he was flailing?

“And that’s how you know Tony? Because you were contemporaries back in 1960?” She spoke slowly, wanting to give him a chance to think about what he was saying.

But Grif just inclined his head, seemingly relieved. Then he said, “There’s more.”

“More than his being a time traveler from the fifties?”

“I’m also a… I’m a…” He looked up at the ceiling, cringing like a dog that expected to be swatted.

“A?” she prompted, looking up at him.

“A… sort of… angel.” It rushed out of him and he stood stiffly in place, glancing around the room as if waiting for something to happen.

Kit waited, too, but that was it. She tilted her head. “A sort-of angel?”

He gave her a double-take, like she’d said something crazy. “No, a real angel. A… you know. Angel angel.”

Kit’s recalled the way he’d rushed from the corner in her bedroom, shadows built up around him like wings. It was a good memory to hang on to now that she knew he was out of his mind. “I understand. You saved me from Schmidt and his buddy. You’ve stayed by my side and even though I’m being chased and I talk too much for your liking and-”

“Kit,” Grif cut her off with the sole word. “You’re not listening to me. I’m a real angel.”

She stared, listening now.

Grif’s neck worked as he swallowed hard. “I’m what’s known as a Centurion. Angels who used to be human. There are other angels, of course. Pures, born in the Everlast. It’s a sort of buffer zone to Paradise.”

“Pures,” she repeated flatly. Everlast. Where had she heard that before? She shook her head. The real question was why was she hearing it now?

He nodded. “You know. Immortal, designed by God’s hand, ever in grace. Blah, blah, blah.” He waved his hands like she should already be familiar with all this. “They’re what humans think of when imagining typical angels… but not as cute.”

All the warmth Kit had felt while kissing him drained from her then. She remained silent for another few moments and, when she thought her voice was steady, said, “So how many kinds of angels are there?”

He looked surprised that she should accept his explanation so easily. She didn’t, but it was the first time he’d volunteered a story on his own, and she wanted to hear him out. It was a doozy. “There are Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones… they comprise the highest order. Then the Dominations, Virtues, and Powers… losers, the lot of them. And the Archangels, a breed of their own. Real standoffish, if you get my meaning.”

Kit forced a nod. “And where are you on this angel hierarchy?”

This time he heard the doubt edging her voice, and he frowned. “Higher than you, that’s where.”

“Okay.” Kit stood. “Will you excuse me for a moment.”

“Where are you going?”

“Kitchen.” Rounding the back of the couch, she gave him a tight smile. “Be right back.”

She made it into Tony’s kitchen, let the slatted half-doors swing shut, then let out a scream that had been building ever since Grif had pushed her away.

He was by her side in a second. Maybe he flew, Kit thought, feeling another scream build. “What the-what the hell are you doing?”

“I. Am. Screaming.” She turned toward him coolly. Funny, but it looked like he was mentally redressing her in a straitjacket.

“Why?”

Because she’d listened when a so-called professional had talked to her about thrust. Because she’d believed Grif actually had it. But he was just another man with a faulty heart. And the last thing Kit needed was one more of those.

“So. You’re a fallen angel.” She folded her arms.

“I’m not fallen,” he said roughly.

“Then what are you?”

He shrugged. “Busted.”

“Uh-huh.” Where did Tony keep the hard alcohol in this place? she wondered, bypassing the wine fridge. “And what kind of angelic powers do you have?”

“Now you’re making fun.”

“No. I really want to know,” she said, yanking vodka from the deep freeze and slamming the door shut. “I’ve never met a… what did you call it? A Centurion before. This is a first for me.” Except, sadly, in many ways it was not.

“Okay,” Grif said unsurely, as he watched her fill a tumbler and immediately down it. “I can open doors that are locked.”

“So can a locksmith.” So could a thief. She filled her glass again.

“Fine.” Grif frowned and reached for her glass. “Give me your hands.”

She’d have pulled away at his touch but didn’t want one more action to give away how much she cared. Slowly, deliberately, he led her palms to his back, where his shoulder blades were bunched tight beneath coiled muscle. For a moment, there was nothing. Then he shifted and widened his back. Two knobs, round and wide, flared beneath her palms.

“Damn it, Grif,” she said, jerking away. “What the hell are those?”

“That’s where my wings would be if I wasn’t trussed up in this flesh.” He adjusted his shoulders like it was too tight a fit. “If I were a Guardian, the feathers would grow in like lightning. The Cherubim and Thrones have the downy ones. But the Archangels are the real dandies. They wear the stars in their wings.”

Well, he was nothing if not imaginative. And Kit? She was a fool.

Shaking her head, she asked, “Is there anything else?”

“I died in 1960,” he said plainly. “I don’t need your help in finding out who killed another man named Griffin Shaw. I need your help in finding out who killed me.”

Kit looked at him-exhausted, rumpled, irritated with her because she didn’t just fall for it when he told her he was an honest-to-goodness angel, and yes, still totally hot. Damn it.

“And the woman?” she asked, reaching for her drink, but keeping her eyes on his face. “Evelyn?”

“My wife,” he answered, face grim. “They-someone-killed her, too.”

Kit felt another guttural scream building. Tilting back the tumbler, she swallowed, then shook her head.

“You still don’t believe me.” He shifted so his back was no longer exposed.

“C’mere,” she said, slamming down her glass.

Grif frowned, but allowed her to direct his touch. Placing one of his hands on her hip, just because she felt like it, she dropped the other on the top of her head.

“What are you-?”

“Shhh…” She turned her gaze up as if that would help as she moved his index finger around, letting the others get lost in her black waves. Let him see what he’s missing, she thought, moving that hip. Then she glanced back at his face, and saw the moment he felt it. “My extra brains,” she explained, as he moved his hand over the bump.

He dropped his hand and glared at her. “That’s a cyst.”

“No. It’s bonus gray matter. That’s why I’m such a great reporter.” She shrugged. “And why I usually win at Quiz Night.”

“Quiz…?” Grif huffed. “It’s a cyst.”

Smiling, Kit folded her arms, noting he had yet to move his other hand from her waist. “Darling, what’s more unlikely? That you’ve got wings or I’ve got brains?”

He turned at that. “You are the most infuriating, stubborn-”

“You mean the most awesome, caring, and long-suffering… and don’t you dare walk out that door!” She caught up to him, breathing hard. “Look, I came to you just now because it sounded like you needed me. I kissed you because I thought we both needed it. But what I don’t need is some stone-cold, emotionally castrated jerk who thinks the past matters more than the present!”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”

“Shut up! I need your help in finding out who killed Nic, and you need my help, too. But rest easy, because I won’t kiss you again. I won’t even mention this kiss again. It’ll be like it never happened, and after we both have what we want, I’ll go back to my life and you can go back to the past with your dead wife. But right now I am going to walk out of here first. And you know what you’re going to do?”

He stared.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to watch me go.”

And she turned at that, exiting the room first, and she was right. She left him staring after her, watching her go.