Jillian Cade (6 page)

Six

There is a
beautiful lake in Echo Park. Surrounded by palm trees, it's dotted with ducklings and lotus flowers and paddle boats. Three graceful plumes of water shoot up from a center fountain. A view of the Los Angeles skyline is visible from its shores. It is serene. Lush. Gorgeous.

The lake went by in a blue-green blur.

I was driving to a
different
part of Echo Park, the part the real estate pages and websites don't mention. The one with litter-strewn streets, chain-link fences, and graffiti-sprayed walls; home to my destination, a grubby strip mall. I slid out the driver's side door and walked past a Chinese diner, an insurance company, and a Laundromat. I imagine that Echo Press doesn't have the kind of neighbors most publishing houses do.

Tiny and dark, the office was papered with the company's work: election brochures, business cards, neighborhood weeklies
. . .
and of course, framed covers of my father's books. Behind a high wooden counter sat the owner, Ernie Stuart.

It had been at least a couple years since I'd last seen him. In that time, his ever-present mullet had started to slide down the sides of his head, leaving his skull gleaming through the strands of hair left atop it.

Ernie peered at me for a second before he made the connection. “Jilly!” He rose to his feet, arms spread wide, and embraced me over the counter. “Look at you, all grown up. How are you doing, sweetie?”

“Fabulous,” I told him.

Lies come easy to a professional liar.

“You know, I've been hoping you'd pop by and come see me,” he said. “I would've gone to your mom's funeral—”

“But there wasn't one. How's it going here?”

“Eh,” he said. “Slow. You need something for your dad?”

I shook my head. “I was wondering if you could take a look at something
. . .
for me. On the DL.”

“The DL?”

“Down low,” I said.

“You kids.”

I pulled open the envelope and dropped the obituary—
my
obituary—on the counter. I watched Ernie's eyes skate back and forth over the words before lifting to meet my gaze. “Joke or a threat?”

“I'm trying to figure that out,” I said. “Is it a real newspaper?”

Ernie slid a fingertip around the edge of the scrap, then nodded. “Feels like litho. Cold, probably. Or heatset. Maybe web-fed.”

I blinked at him. “Uh
. . .
”

“Sorry. What I mean is, any press could've done it.”

“So there's no way to find out who?”

“Leave it here. I'll call around.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.”

He made a copy of the obituary for me. I thanked him again and headed for the door. I was almost there when he spoke up.

“Funny you should come by today. I got an email from your dad.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned around, trying to make my voice sound casual. “Yeah?”

“He'll be home soon,” said Ernie. “But I guess you already knew that.”

“Sure.” I hoped my tone sounded appropriately optimistic. “Can't wait.” I ducked out. The last thing I wanted to do was celebrate the purported return of my father, back from his yearlong self-imposed sabbatical from life
. . .
from me.

Besides, there was no way it would actually happen. My dad was an even more seasoned professional liar than I was.

I was so busy zipping the copy of the obituary into my backpack that I didn't notice Sky Ramsey until I was almost on top of him. He was leaning against my car, legs crossed at the ankles and arms crossed over his chest. I stopped short. That white smile floated over his face.

“What are you getting printed?” he asked.

“None of your business.” I reached for the door handle, but he blocked it with his body.

“Funeral programs for Todd Harmon? You're going to need them if you don't get on top of our case.”

Our case?
Unbelievable. It was
my
case, period. He'd simply blackmailed his way into it. Anger simmered below the surface of my skin as my eyes traveled over him, this guy with the too-bright teeth and the too-intense gaze who was acting way too interested in me.

“You stalked me from school.”

He nodded. “I wouldn't use the word ‘stalked,' but yeah. And it wasn't easy. You drive too fast.”

My jaw clenched. “Before that, before the driving-fast part, did you happen to notice what I was up to?”

“You were sitting in your car in the school parking lot, doing something really important on your phone. That reminds me, what level of Candy Crush are you on?”

I returned his smirk. “I wasn't playing Candy Crush. I was doing research. In fact, I had a breakthrough. I made a really important discovery about the Todd Harmon case.
My
case.”

“Awesome! What did you find out?” He sounded genuinely excited. As if he could convince me, as if I could believe anything about him was genuine at all, other than a genuine talent for lying. Maybe
he was a professional like my dad and me.

Time to find out.

“I thought it was really terrible, about the meth and your friend in Albuquerque. What did you say his name was again?”

“My friend? Bryan.”

I almost laughed. That was the clincher. “Right. A real tragedy.”

Sky nodded. “Super tragic.”

“Everyone must have been so sad.”

“There was a big funeral.”

“Flowers?”

Sky looked at me funny. “What?”

“Flowers. Were there lots of flowers?”

“Sure. Tons. They filled the whole church. Roses mostly. White ones. Some red—”

“Stop it!” The words exploded out of me.

“Stop what?”

“I didn't research Todd Harmon! I researched your meth-cooking friend, except that you don't
have
a meth-cooking friend! You told me the plot of
Breaking Bad
. Bryan Cranston? The actor who played the lead? How stupid do you think I am?”

Sky's smile faltered. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about you being a liar! Todd Harmon is not a drug-dealing would-be victim of gang murder.”

“Fine.” His lips pressed into a tight line. “Then what do you think happened to him?”

“Nothing!” I yelled. “He's just a cheater! He's a guy with a heat-seeking missile aimed at a campus full of coeds. It's sad, but it's classic, and because I need the money, I have to take this stupid case and figure out who he's seeing so I can somehow break it to Corabelle!”

“I hesitate to use the word ‘blowing' right after your missile metaphor—”

“Then don't!”

“But you're blowing it,” he finished. His tone had changed; he wasn't mocking or playful anymore. “Todd isn't cheating on Corabelle. At least not in any traditional sense of the word.”

“That's it.” My hand plunged into my pocket and emerged with my cell phone. “You really
are
a stalker. I'm calling the police.”

“Too bad. You really
are
beautiful,” Sky said, imitating my voice as he whipped out his own cell. “But you are also a fraud and a bullshit artist. So go ahead and call the police. While you're telling them all about me, I will be calling Corabelle to let her know that you don't believe in the curse and you don't believe in her.”

I searched my brain for a comeback. “You don't have her number.”

“I got it in fifth period,” he said. “Government and Economics.”

Of course. My eyes turned to slits. We stood there, staring at each other, holding our phones out like old-west gunfighters in a standoff. Finally, I slid my phone back into my pocket.

“What do you want?” I demanded. “I mean, really. From
me
.”

“To get to know you,” he said.

The perfect answer. I nodded. Not because I believed him, but because I
wanted
to believe him. I wanted that perfect answer because Sky Ramsey was challenging in a way that I had never been challenged before. He wasn't trying to save me; he acted like I could actually use some help. Like I was funny instead of scary. Like I was the person I wanted to be instead of the person I truly was.

“Then why are you blackmailing me?” I asked.

“So you'll take it seriously.”

“You or the case?”

“Both.”

I crossed my arms. It wasn't only because it's what you do when you think something is absurd. It was also because Sky's body suddenly seemed much too close to mine. I needed a barrier between us. I needed a barrier because
. . .

Otherwise being that close to him might start to feel tolerable.

Or, worse, good.

“Listen,” Sky continued. “It could have happened that my parents never met. Dad could have turned a corner a second too late, Mom might have chosen a different restaurant, and I never would have existed. Same thing with your parents, but fate aligned exactly the right way at exactly the right time. Like this morning. I just happened to be at your locker. You just happened to drop your combination.” He bent closer. “I'm telling you, it was fate. We met so we could get to know each other. So we could save Todd Harmon together.”

Right. Of course. Someone who believed in the paranormal would also believe in fate: two things I knew didn't exist. And as much as I would have loved to fairy-tale my way into a hot high school romance, there was one very important
fact
(to use one of Sky's terms against him for once): he
was
blackmailing me.

“It's not fate,” I told him. “It's a public education. We both have mythology class, so I would have met you there anyway. You're still a creep. An insane, stalking, blackmailing creep.”

“You don't believe that.”

His voice was so quiet that I could barely hear him. I wanted to jerk my gaze away from his but I couldn't. He leaned down and I found myself stretching up, meeting him halfway, our heads almost touching in the thick, still air of the parking lot. “I think you trust me enough to solve this case together.”

And then he took a step forward. Got closer, right
there
,
close enough for me to see the flecks of gold in his green eyes. He didn't touch me, but he might as well have. Something radiated between us, something I had definitely
not
felt with Dusty-or-Rusty. Something that made my skin go hot and my breath go fast. Sky dipped his head, bringing his mouth to my ear. “I think we can do lots of things together.”

I didn't really plan to jerk my knee up into his groin. It just sort of happened.

The energy between us vanished, his mouth exploded in a bunch of colorful words, and he dropped to the concrete, rolling to the curb in a fetal position. I yanked open the GTO's door and got inside. As I fired up the engine and backed out of my spot, I caught a glimpse of him in my rearview mirror, struggling to his feet.

For some reason, as I pulled into traffic and turned the steering wheel in the direction of the Valley, I didn't think about how dangerous this guy might be to my reputation or to the fraudulent Cade family business, to my
future
. No, only one piece of information burned its way to the front of my brain. It wasn't about Corabelle LaCaze. It wasn't about Todd Harmon. It wasn't even about my obituary. It was about one thing Sky had said and the way that he'd said it. The way it was different from the threats and the lies.

It was this: Sky Ramsey thought I was beautiful.

Seven

As anyone who's
ever suffered through a late afternoon drive from Echo Park to Northridge knows, traffic sucks. I used the car time to blast the radio, hoping random pop music would erase Sky from my memory. It was nearly five o'clock by the time I reached the small medical clinic not far from CSUN campus. Apparently Todd was pre-med (nicely done, Corabelle—well, except for the cheating thing) and had been helping out in the office over the summer as a way to gain experience.

I had to hand it to him: the guy seemed industrious, both in his career and his sex life.

As I turned off the engine, Norbert called.

“Jillian,” he said, not even bothering with a hello, “Uncle Lewis has left six messages on my phone. Please, for my sanity, call him back.”

“What does he want now?”

“He needs your mom's birth certificate,” said Norbert. “He says it's in a red box inside the living room trunk. You can scan both sides of it and email it to him.”

I groaned. “Did he happen to mention why?”

“I don't know, but just do it, please. I don't want any more messages. I don't want any more texts. I'm afraid he's going to start cyberstalking me.”

“Fine,” I said. “When I get home.”

“I'll let him know.”

“Thanks,” I said, not meaning it, and hung up. I yanked the lever underneath my seat and shoved myself as far back as I could go. In a bag stashed in the backseat, I found a black pencil skirt and a demure white blouse. Getting into them while still in the car may not have been my most graceful work, but I got the job done. I buttoned the blouse over my T-shirt and slipped my feet into black heels (with little bows over the toes, no less). After twisting my hair back away from my face and slicking on some pale pink lipstick, I was satisfied.

Once I swung out of my car, I took a moment to try to straighten everything out. After tucking my phone into a glossy black handbag I'd found at the Salvation Army, I grabbed a clipboard from the backseat and closed the door.

Then I stepped directly onto Sky's foot.

“Ow!” He winced, shaking his foot. “Is there any part of my body you
don't
want to injure?”

I almost smiled. I should have expected him to follow me. Maybe I
had
expected it. “Off the top of my head, I can't think of one. Besides, how else can I convince you to leave me alone?”

Sky gave me the once-over. “How about you tell me why you're dressed like a secretary from the fifties?”

“I'm a pharmaceutical representative,” I said before turning and sailing away in a graceful blaze of self-righteous indignation.

At least, that was my intention. In reality, the stupid high heel on my stupid left foot caught in a crack on the stupid pavement and I nearly fell.

Sky caught me by the shoulders and held me up.

“See?” he said. “I'm not a creep. I'm nice.”

I kicked my heel free of the crack and jerked away from him. “See? I am
not
nice.”

Sky nodded toward the clinic's cracked sign:
baron & peebler obstetrics
. “Is that where you're going?”

I didn't even bother to answer. There was no point in either telling the truth
or
lying.

He checked his watch. “It's five minutes until five. It sure would suck if the clinic closed before you had a chance to go in. Then you'd have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to gather any more intel on Todd.”

“Is that your way of inviting yourself in with me?”

“Yes, if you promise not to step on my foot or kick me in my balls again.”

“I can't make that promise,” I said with a glance at the clinic. My options were running out. I could stand around and argue with Sky, or I could accept that I was stuck with him. On the plus side, maybe there was something to that old adage about keeping your friends (of which I had none) close and your enemies closer. If I let Sky tag along, he would eventually slip up, and I'd find out his real deal
. . .
or I'd prove that he
was
nothing more than a hot fanboy of my father's fiction. One who also appeared, inexplicably, to have a thing for me.

Of course, I knew the latter was improbable. Or more accurately, impossible.

“Fine,” I said. This time, I managed to turn with something approximating dignity. He followed right behind me as I strutted up the sidewalk. Two little bells chime-chimed when I opened the door.

We stepped into the waiting room, and Sky looked around, taking in the violet-flowered wallpaper and wicker furniture and Anne Geddes calendar. “Quaint,” he said.

“Barf,” I said.

I arrived at the counter right as a ruddy-cheeked nurse bustled out of a back room. She looked between the two of us. “We don't have any more openings today.”

Sky let out a disappointed sigh. I pinched the back of his arm—hard.

“We're not patients.” I raised my clipboard. “I'm a PharmaHeal rep. Is Todd Harmon here?”

The nurse snorted and turned to her computer monitor. “Todd didn't come in today.”

Well, that would have been too easy.

“Hmm.” I tapped my clipboard. “Maybe you can help me. We had a computer glitch this week, and all our sheets are a mess. Do you know if one of my colleagues came by on Friday?”

“No idea,” said the nurse. “Todd normally is our first point of contact for sales, but he didn't show up on Friday. Thursday either. College kids.”

“Thank you for your time.” I turned to leave.

“Wait a minute,” Sky said, staying put. “Would you mind checking to see if PharmaHeal left samples?”

The nurse didn't look up. “I'm really busy.”

“Please.” Sky cleared his throat. When she finally lifted her head, he got all eyesy and teethy at her. “You would be saving me a lot of trouble with this spreadsheet.”

The nurse blushed a little. Actually blushed.

I was reminded that having very good looks and being a very good liar is a very dangerous combination.

“Well, okay. Give me a second.” She scurried away into the back.

Unbelievable.

Sky leaned over the counter and started flipping through the scheduling book.

“What are you doing?” I said. “Stop that!”

“Wednesday,” he said, which made no sense whatsoever. He ran his finger down the page, then grabbed a Sharpie out of the cup of pens on the desk and scribbled something on the inside of his arm.

The first thing that popped into my head came out as a stage whisper: “That's permanent ink!”

“I'll exfoliate,” he whispered, dropping the book back on the desk.

The nurse returned an instant later. “I don't see any PharmaHeal boxes.”

Sky's fingers enclosed my upper arm. “Thanks. That's a huge help.” The nurse fluttered her fingers at him as he pulled me toward the exit.

Once outside the building with the door safely shut behind us, I yanked my arm away from his grasp. “Stop touching me!”

Sky gave me a look that can only be described as
knowing
. Correction:
obnoxiously
knowing.

I scowled. “What?”

“Someday I am going to remind you of this time, of this very moment when you told me not to touch you.” He leaned close to me. “And you are going to take back those words.”

“In your dreams,” I said.

The obnoxiously knowing look broadened into a grin. “Exactly.”

Something inside of me snapped. “I can't take it anymore. The stalking and the smiling and the—”

“The what?”

“The arrogance. I can't stand the arrogance.”

“It's not arrogance. It's awareness of our connection.”

“Dial it back,” I told him. “If you think you found something—a
real
something—let's have it. Spit it out.”

Sky sighed. “Okay, but you have to promise to give me the benefit of the doubt. It's going to sound crazy.”

“Crazier than a cable TV show starring Bryan Cranston?”

He hesitated, looking at me. “Todd Harmon was taken by a succubus.”

“Maybe you misheard me,” I said. “Tell me the truth. I'm waiting.”

“A succubus,” he repeated.

“Like I said, waiting. Because it sounded like you said a succubus.”

“Right. It's a female demon who loves sex.”

I nodded. “Sounds like Corabelle.
She
is a female demon who loves sex.”

But Sky had stopped grinning. In fact, his face had lost any trace of humor. Even his gold-flecked eyes had darkened. “Todd is showing every sign.”

“Of another lay,” I said. “Maybe of some party drugs. Even your bullshit
Breaking Bad
lie made more sense. How's that for irony?”

“I'm telling you, it's succubus addiction,” Sky said. “That's why he was gone at night and couldn't focus during the day. Addicts can think of nothing but the succubus who's infected them. Nothing else can fulfill them.”

Okay, so Sky was messing with me. I decided to play along, because maybe, at long last, this was a way to glimpse who he really was. “Okay, enlighten me. How do you get a succubus to stop screwing your guy?”

“Easy,” said Sky. “Kill her.”

“Excuse me?” I glanced around in case a passerby had heard his plan for paranormal murder.

“You know, make her dead.”

“I got that. I just didn't—”

“Direct sunlight burns them. Like vampires.”

My hands flung themselves into the air. “That's it. I'm out of here!” I marched toward my car, fuming. Just my luck that the first guy I'd been attracted to in
. . .
well, maybe in forever
. . .
was
this
guy. And I still wasn't entirely sure that
I
wasn't the one he wanted to make dead.

“Wait! Jillian, listen.” Sky caught up to me, rattling off information. “On Thursday, Todd smelled like hellfire, and then he didn't make it to work. That means he had to have first contact before that, on Wednesday. We know he was at work, and the schedule book showed only one new patient that day. Nine o'clock. Jillian,
look
.” He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, then yanked up his sleeve to show me the words scribbled in thick black on his arm. It was a name:
Diane Bedloe
. “There's your succubus.”

I blinked up at him. “You're telling me the truth right now. As in, that's actually what you think happened. A female demon sauntered in and kidnapped a gynecologist's intern.”

“Of course not,” said Sky. “Todd followed the succubus of his own accord.”

“And why, exactly, would Todd do that?”

“Because she kissed him. One taste. That's all it takes.”

“Okay, let me make sure I'm following.” I started to dig through my bag for my keys. “Wednesday, a succubus named Diane Bedloe masquerades as a new patient and kisses Todd Harmon. Thursday, he has breakfast with Corabelle but then tragically stops sexting her. Corabelle sees him Thursday night. He refuses to give her his sweet collegiate man-love.” I snap the bag shut. “Then he takes off Friday morning to follow the succubus.”

Sky nodded. He'd been nodding the whole time, in fact. “Correct.”

“Insane.”

“Call it what you will, but do you have a better lead?”

Yes, actually I did. “No, I don't,” I said out loud.

“Then help me track down Diane Bedloe,” said Sky. “Help me find Todd Harmon. We can do this together. We can be a team.”

My heart was sinking. It wasn't that Sky wanted to screw me; he wanted to screw
with
me. That had to be it, right? Because the only other option was that he really truly believed this stuff, and that
couldn't
be it. Sure, he was a pathological liar, but by all appearances, he wasn't
stupid
. And yet a tiny part of me came back to that damn word he'd used before:
fate
. I didn't believe in it. It was coincidence that he'd just said out loud the exact things I'd been thinking when I hadn't been thinking straight. That we could do this together. That we could be a team
. . .

“Jillian, look at me.” It was hard not to, being that he was right there in my face. “Yes, I lied to you about the meth thing—”

“And about the cop thing.”

“Right, that too. But I'm not lying to you now, I swear. There are other things, things in this world that are beyond what most people think of as true
. . .
”