Page 87 of Grim Tidings

“Did I drive you to drink in the middle of the afternoon?” She presses up on her toes, glancing in the grocery bag. “And why do you have so many carrots?”

I ignore her question. I’m waiting for a monster in the shape of a man to appear, Gideon come to claim his rogue Reaper.

“Another Guardian was here just now,” I tell her.

She stops messing with the groceries and stares at me. “Oh?”

I nod and reach for the bottle of scotch. I pour a little, then a little more, just for the hell of it.

I slant my eyes to hers. “Gideon is back. He’s been seen at the department.”

She blinks, then snatches the glass out of my hand. She downs it in one heavy swallow, then wipes the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Uh-oh,” she rasps.

Yeah, I agree. Uh-oh.

Chapter Twenty

Darcy

And you’re okay? Really?”

I smile at Nate while I sip at my piña colada. It’s more pineapple juice than rum, with three cherries for garnish and an orange slice roughly the size of my face. But Gabriel had slid it across the bar with a no-nonsense look, muttering something under his breath about reducing inflammation, so I’m trying not to complain.

“I’m fine. I promise. It looked worse than it was.”

Nate frowns, adjusting his glasses. “It looked pretty bad.”

He’s asked the same question in fifteen different variations since I sat down at the bar a half hour ago. I know Gabriel encouraged Frank and Nate to let it go, infusing the demand with a bit of his Guardian compulsion, but Nate seems motivated enough to battle through the magic.

“It was just a few scrapes,” I assure him. “Gabriel took good care of me.”

Gabriel’s been taking good care of me. He’s channeling his frustration and anxiety into homemade chicken soup and smoothies. After the jarring news of Gideon’s reappearance, he quickly ushered me back upstairs, wrapped me in a blanket, and made me watch some home gardening show while Tater Tot took a nap half draped in my lap.

Another cherry appears in the top of my drink as he slips by for the third time, a wink thrown over his shoulder while he leans across the bar to hear an order from an older man in a backward Orioles hat.

“The bar is crowded tonight,” I tell Nate, sipping through my straw. “I don’t think I’ve seen this many people in here before.”

Every table is occupied. Gabriel drifts up and down the bar, taking orders and filling them before a new wave replaces the last. I don’t think we’ve exchanged more than a handful of words since he opened the bar an hour ago.

“It’s always like this the Friday before Halloween.” Nate shrugs. “There are a couple of big pub crawls around town, but Gabe doesn’t participate.”

Now the woman in the bee suit makes sense. I study the room again, and notice there are plenty of people in costume, scattered throughout the crowd. A pirate, a ghost, a Christmas tree in the corner. I don’t know how I didn’t notice sooner.

“Gabe says it’s bad enough that Halloween exists. He’s not going to put food coloring in vodka and call it witch’s brew.”

I snort. “Why am I not surprised?”

“The man seems philosophically opposed to fun.”

“I don’t know,” I muse, thinking about the boat. The dock. The lighthouse. The way he pressed me up against the window and kissed me until I couldn’t think of anything but him. “I think he can be fun.”

Nate snorts. “Should I tell you about the time he—”

I let my attention drift over the crowd in the bar as Nate mindlessly chatters next to me. He says Gabriel doesn’t like Halloween, but there are rogue strings of garland half-heartedly strung across the ceiling beams. A pumpkin, next to the jukebox that’s been playing “Benny and the Jets” on loop tonight. I squint at the display and wonder if that’s a choice, or a mistake. But my view is obstructed by a tall, dark figure.

Leaning up against the jukebox is a man in an all-black costume, a Jack Skellington mask pushed to the top of his head. I study his features, an itch at the very back of my mind. Blond hair. A too-wide smile. He looks like … Brad.