Charmed (Death Escorts #2)(25)
Author: Cambria Hebert

His eyes narrowed. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

“What?” I asked innocently while inside I did a little happy dance. It thrilled me to no end to know he wasn’t as unaffected by me as I previously thought. I felt less horrified by the way my body reacted to him.

“What kind of game are you trying to play, love?” he asked, leaning over the table and lowering his voice. Desire spiked within me.

I swallowed, knowing if I tried to make some smart reply, I would only end up babbling or making a fool out of myself. I looked at him, telling myself there was a lot more to him than a pair of green eyes and a sexy body.

It worked.

I sat back in my chair and set down the treat. “Can I ask you something?”

His eyes widened a little when he realized I wasn’t going to be falling all over him like the girl behind the counter.

“What?” he asked warily.

“Is it hard?” I began. “You know… what you do?”

His face and eyes seemed to close up. That little peak of genuineness I saw in his smile earlier completely disappeared. “I’ve been doing my job for a very long time.”

“How long?” I asked, remembering the time he said he knew Marilyn Monroe.

“Ninety or so years.”

Surprise had me sitting up a little straighter. I hadn’t really expected him to answer and I sure as sugar didn’t expect that amount of time.

“Ninety years,” I whispered to myself. Then I looked back up at him. “So, that body… your body… that’s not yours?”

“It’s mine, has been for a while. But it wasn’t my first one.”

Wow. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake up one day in a completely different body. Seems like it would be hard to know who you were.

I cleared my throat, wanting to get back to my original question. It was one of the thoughts that sent me here tonight, one of the thoughts that seemed to eat away at me.

“So is it?”

“Is it what?” he asked, picking up his coffee.

He knew what I was asking. Was he avoiding the question?

“Is it hard to kill people?” I lowered my voice, leaning in.

“No.”

Just like that.

I didn’t believe him. A man couldn’t kill for over ninety years and it never bother him. That just wasn’t natural… It wasn’t human. “I don’t believe you.”

His eyes snapped to my face and he set his coffee between us on the table. “Believe it. Killing isn’t as hard as you think. Most of the time it’s over in seconds, before the person even knows what’s happening. It’s not something I drag out.”

It’s not something I drag out. His statement was more telling than he realized. It was like he was saying he did it quickly to get it over with because it was something he didn’t enjoy.

“But what about the ones like Rosalyn?” I said, my stomach tightening at her name. “The ones you have to spend time with, the ones you get to know. Doesn’t it bother you then? Don’t you feel bad for all the things—all the life—you’re robbing from them?”

“It’s getting to you,” he said softly.

“What?”

“You’ve gone out to lunch and off shopping. You’ve inserted yourself into her life. You’ve made her your friend. And now you feel guilty.”

It didn’t surprise me that he knew I spent a little time with her on my own. I shrugged and picked at the top of a cupcake. “Why don’t you?”

He leaned forward even farther, a snarl curling his lips. “She isn’t my friend. Yes, I smile and make jokes, I pretend to listen to the words that fall from her lips, but I’m not really hearing. She’s not a person to me. She’s a job. A means to an end. It’s her or me.”

“She’s a person,” I said, not knowing what to feel or think about his words.

He shook his head. “She’s an assignment and if I don’t finish my assignment then I’m the one who gets Recalled. Death isn’t a place for a girl like you,” he said, his words taking on an angry tone. “Death is cold. It’s mean and it’s unforgiving. It’s every man for himself in my world and if I don’t do the job, someone else will.”

And that’s when I realized.

He really meant it when he said it wasn’t hard to kill. But the reason it wasn’t hard wasn’t because he’d done it so many times. It was because he wasn’t completely human. Yes, I joked about it before, but I never really considered that it might be true. This was a man who should have been dead. This was a man who walked around in a body that really wasn’t his. The reason he seemed so detached sometimes was because he was… Charming was completely detached from life, from living. All he knew was death.

I stood up from the table abruptly. My chair would have fallen back onto the floor, but I caught it, sliding it beneath the table and gripping the back with both my hands. I didn’t know what to say to him. All sarcastic remarks had completely faded from my brain.

“I have to go,” I said.

And then I rushed out into the night.

Chapter Fifteen

“Kiss – to engage in mutual touching or caressing with the lips.”

Charming

I finally said something that got to her. Yeah, I said stuff constantly that drove her crazy or made her mad, but I don’t think I ever said something that got this far under her skin so fast.

I watched her go, thinking I finally found the thing that would drive her away.

Maybe now I could finish this job without issue.

Funny, I thought I would be happier. I thought I’d feel lighter without having to worry about what she was up to that might ruin me.

I didn’t feel lighter.

I didn’t feel satisfied at all.

I dropped a five on the table, picked up the huge box, the coffee, and waved good-bye to the girl who let us in. She told me her name, but I wasn’t listening. I pointed to my cup where she’d scrawled her phone number and I grinned, making her think I was eager to call her. I wasn’t ever going to call her.

She blushed and disappeared into the back. I took the opportunity to increase my speed, stopping just behind Frankie who was fumbling to get inside her Jeep.

“You forgot your cupcakes,” I said, shifting the load to one arm and reaching around her with the other to open her door.

She didn’t turn around.

“Why are you here?” Her voice was slightly hoarse and my body tightened.