She held up a sack. “I brought Chinese.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” I said, holding out my can so she could take it. “Here, take this. I’m about to go ninja style on all these clothes holding me hostage.”
Then I winced at my word choice.Good one, Frankie, remind her all about the time she was kidnapped at gunpoint and thrown in a trunk and held hostage by a killer.A killer who walked into the DMV today like he wasn’t a criminal.
I snuck a peak at her to see if what I said caused some horrible flashback, but she was grinning, no doubt wondering how I was going to escape my closet.
I began kicking at the shirts and pants, but all that did was wind them further around my feet. I took a step forward and toppled over, right into the giant pile of black that I’d made. I squealed, landing face first, and pushed myself up onto hands and knees and proceeded to crawl out of the mess. On my way, I found the knit black cap I’d been searching for.
“Score!” I exclaimed and paused to pull it over my head.
“What’s with all the black?” Piper asked as we left the mess behind and went into my galley-style kitchen.
“Guess I’m feeling moody,” I said non-committedly. I still wasn’t sure what I should tell her about today.
“What happened in here?!” Piper exclaimed, staring at the explosion that was my counters. Bowls, spatulas, and several appliances with awry cords cluttered the countertop. Cupcake liners were scattered about and there were multicolored sprinkles making a rainbow in the sink.
“I did some baking last night,” I said. “I was hoping the maid would come by today while I was at work. Good help is so hard to find these days.” I sighed.
“You don’t have a maid, Frankie.”
“Shh! Don’t ruin my fantasy.”
“Well, where are the cupcakes?” Piper asked, snooping through the cupboards.
“I threw them away.”
“That’s a crime against sugar!” she said and then gasped.
I laughed. “Actually, the crime was the way they tasted.”
“Everything you make tastes great. You’re just too hard on yourself.”
“Yeah, well, when there’s a place like the Iced Princess to compare yourself to, standards are high.”
Piper made a tsking sound as she pulled out the Chinese from her bag. I grabbed some plates and we loaded up on noodles, veggies, and chicken. We ate in silence at the tiny table on the far end of the kitchen for a few minutes before I brought up the hard stuff.
“So how ya doing?” I asked.
She knew it wasn’t a general question. She set down her fork and looked at me. “Better, I think. I still miss him. It helps, you know, knowing that he’s not somewhere suffering.”
I nodded. Piper fell in love with a Death Escort, a guy who worked for the Grim Reaper, and was assigned the job of killing her. But in the end he couldn’t kill her, and it cost him his life. He somehow got a message to her that he wasn’t suffering in death, but he was still dead. And she was alive, but left to deal with everything that happened alone.
I wasn’t sure if I should tell her who I saw today or not. I thought she had a right to know that Charming was here, but I also didn’t want to disrupt any kind of healing she was doing.
“Out with it,” Piper said, cutting into my mental ping-pong.
“With what?” I asked, batting my eyes at her.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “That won’t work on me. I know you are far from innocent.”
I pushed away from the table and went to the living room to grab my bag of stash, stopping at the fridge to put away the Yoo-hoo and Cherry Coke. Then I grabbed a pack of Junior Mints from the back and carried them back to the table.
This conversation required chocolate.
“I saw Charming today.” I didn’t bother beating around the bush. It wouldn’t make the news any less hard.
Her fork clattered against her plate and her skin paled a little. “Where?”
