“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.
