Amber followed suit. At least the thing that’d attacked her had been human once. She couldn’t imagine coming face-to-face with an actual demon.
Kyle glanced at her from over his glasses, his expression questioning.
She nodded. She would be fine. This was about their client. Not her.
“I don’t know if he pushed me or if I just fell, but the next thing I knew, I was floating above my body at the bottom of the stairs. I saw the light, but I knew I had to tell someone. My niece will be in soon. I have to warn her!”
Kyle knelt beside her. “Mrs. Rodriguez, your niece found your body a few hours ago. I guess someone heard a commotion and called her.”
Dora’s hands flew over her mouth again. “Oh, no, mija. I didn’t want that. Is she…? It didn’t hurt her, did it?”
“She’s okay,” Kyle assured her. “She’s upset, of course, but she’s with her family.”
Mrs. Rodriguez made the sign of the cross again and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Amber understood completely. The prospect of facing an actual demon made her knees weak. And yet, here she was.
“I’ll keep watch,” Kyle said, and Amber could hardly blame him. “I’ll let you know if the authorities come back.”
She nodded, drew in a deep breath, and entered Dora’s shop that doubled as her humble abode. The back door opened into a kitchen. It was even smaller than Amber’s but adorable. Bright colors. Lots of knickknacks. A retro diner feel. Dora was an eclectic artist, and her décor spoke volumes.
“The stairs are to the right,” Dora said.
Amber wove around a turquoise table, fifties-style with Bettie Page placemats. She eased through a door and into a narrow hall. The stairs sat to one side of it.
Her pulse quickened, and she pulled her bag closer for something to hold on to. They navigated the hall to the bottom of the stairs. It was hauntingly unremarkable. There was no chalk outline like in the movies. No bloodstain or broken glass. No fingerprint powder or evidence marker. Nothing to reveal the fact that a woman had died there.
Amber’s phone dinged, startling both her and Dora. Dora put a hand on her chest, ironically to calm her racing heart. Amber took out her cell. Mrs. Harmon, wondering if Amber could fit her in. It was an emergency!
It was always an emergency with Mrs. Harmon. Amber fired off a text, telling her it would be that afternoon at the earliest, then put her phone on silent before stuffing it back into her bag. The bag, a conceal carry, matched her sweater. The same bone black but rather useless since she didn’t dare carry a gun. She’d never been a fan. The last time she went to the shooting range, she’d ended up shaking so bad after the first few rounds, she’d had to stop from embarrassment. So, she kept her phone in the side pocket where a sidearm would normally go.
“Are you okay, hon?” Amber asked Dora.
“Yes.” The woman’s voice was soft with fear.
While Amber could see the departed and talk to them and interact with them, she could not touch them physically. Besides the cold, she could not feel them. They were not solid to her like they were to her aunt Charley.
But again…god.
Still, when they touched Amber, she could feel their emotions, and Dora had tried reflexively to grab her arm when her phone dinged. The woman’s fear slammed into Amber’s, compounding her emotions exponentially, but she didn’t want to tell Dora to step away. The woman was scared, and Amber would absorb her emotions as long as she could.
He Who Must Not Be Named could feel the emotions of the departed if one of them touched him, as well. He’d always been able to. But for Amber, that ability had developed over time. And it wasn’t a particularly wanted ability. But it came with the gig, she supposed.
When someone reached out of the shadows and grabbed her arm successfully, the fear that had been building to a tipping point almost strangled her. She screamed, figuring it was either the demon or a cop, as she turned to see a blond standing beside her. A tall blond. Scruffy and disheveled with at least two days’ worth of growth on his jaw.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his signs sharp and edged with anger. The floor tilted beneath Amber’s feet.
He caught her in his arms and eased her onto the second step. Once she’d settled, she pushed his hands away. He Who Must Not Be Named stepped back, showing his palms in surrender, but his expression showed his irritation with her.
“Intruder!” Kyle said from behind him, a day late and a dollar short.
Quentin glared at him, and Kyle stepped back reflexively. Then he refocused his glare on Amber.
“What?” she asked, her hackles rising as hackles are wont to do.
“What are you doing here?” Again, his signs were sharp with irritation.
As Amber sat in utter astonishment—He Who Must Not Be Named was literally the last person on Earth she’d expected to see today—she used the break to take him in.
How much could a guy change in five years?
If Quentin Rutherford was any indication, a hella lot.
She barely recognized him. He’d hardened—in all the right places. His shoulders had widened more than most twenty-seven-year-olds. He’d always been muscular, even when they were kids, but either he’d been hitting the gym, or he’d been magically photoshopped. The hills and valleys that covered his body to exquisite perfection could be seen through the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore, his biceps stretching the seams to their limits. And the jeans, the ones with a few holes here and there, were not a fashion statement so much as a favored pair of work pants.
“Ms. Kowalski?” Kyle said.
Quentin turned to him, and Amber caught a glimpse of two things: the profile of his steely buttocks that had developed as much as the rest of him, and a particularly well-placed rip in the worn jeans that showed part of the indentation in his left ass cheek. The fact that he wasn’t wearing underwear was a bonus. How could anyone she hated so much be so startlingly drop-dead sexy? Life was not fair.
Then she realized something. He’d heard Kyle. Quentin had turned when Kyle spoke, and she wondered if he’d finally gotten a pair of hearing aids. They’d never helped him that much before, so he never wore them, but technology had advanced a lot since then. Maybe they had more powerful aids now that could help him hear.
She snuck a glance but didn’t see any mechanical earpieces. Interesting.
When he turned back to her, she couldn’t get over how much he’d changed. His hair was shorter now and a little darker but still a rich, tawny blond. And he’d either started wearing it spiked, or he had bedhead. Either way, he was even more gorgeous than before. Full mouth. Straight nose. Deep blue eyes like the cobalt on a ceramic bowl.
Damn it.
He studied her as much as she studied him, and she cringed in self-consciousness. She scrambled to her feet on the stairs that allowed her to be a little taller than him and asked him, “What are you doing?”
“I asked first,” he signed.
“This is Dora Rodriguez. She died last night.” Amber signed and spoke at the same time to benefit her mixed audience. “She asked me to take a look.”
Quentin turned and gave the perplexed woman a thorough exam. “Did you see it?” he asked. With his voice. His voice! No signing. And he spoke almost perfectly. But his voice was soft, almost impossible to hear, like he didn’t want to speak too loudly. Regardless, she could hear the rich timbre in it, like warm honey over Amber’s pitter-pattering heart.