The Collector (15 page)

Chapter Thirty-one

Glittery Pink Seals

“You’ve been destroying my work,” I yell.

“Correct.”

“How? I mean, why? No, the first one…how?”

“How indeed.”

“Are you going to talk to me or stare at your fake-ass nails all night?”

Her eyes snap on my face. “My nails are not fake. Now can you please sit down before you make a scene?”

I sit slowly, keeping my eyes locked on her as if she might slurp a chameleon tongue out and swallow me down. “Who are you?”

“I already told you, my name’s Valery.”

“Yeah, I got that much.” I lean forward. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Stop avoiding my questions.” I release a frustrated sigh. “How do you have seals?”

Valery lifts her high-heeled feet and
clacks
them on the table. She delicately pulls up her black pants and exposes a gold cuff, same as mine. As soon as I see it, it’s like I can sense her as another collector. I guess I didn’t before because I wasn’t expecting it. I reach over to touch her cuff.

She slaps my hand away. “Don’t ever touch a lady’s cuff without permission.”

“You’re a collector,” I breathe.

“Well, of course.” Valery brings her heels off the table and recrosses her legs, leaning back in her chair and inspecting the room. She waves her empty hand—the one without the cigarette—toward the people dancing. “Interesting club choice, not that I’m surprised.”

“You’re new.” I state this versus asking. For some reason, I don’t want her to know just how clueless I am.

She nods without looking at me. Then her face brightens like an idea just occurred to her. “Hey,” she says. “Wanna dance?”

“No, I don’t want to freakin’ dance. I want you to tell me when you became a collector, and who you replaced, and who the hell trained you, since that’s supposed to be my job.”

Her face falls, and she lifts a hand to her impossibly red hair. “You bore me.”

“Lady—”

“No!” Valery points a slender finger at my chest. “I’m not a
lady
. I’m a woman.”

I suppress a laugh, wondering when
lady
became a derogatory term. “Fine. Woman…” Valery smiles and nods. “Just answer my questions. I know you’re going to, or you wouldn’t have popped up in the middle of my assignment.”

“You mean Charlie?”

The hair on the back of my neck rises. Something is beginning to occur to me. No one would’ve been hired without Max running and telling me. And no Underworld collector would use pink seals. “Valery.”

She looks at me.

“Who do you work for?”

Valery takes a long drag on her cigarette and blows the smoke over her shoulder. Then she raises a red fingernail and points straight up.

I shake my head and fall back in my chair. “A damn heaven-sent collector. I thought Big Guy wasn’t into using collectors. I thought he was into freedom of choice and all that crap.”

A roided-up guy walks by, taking his time to check out Valery’s chest. She smiles at him, then turns back to me. “He does. Nothing’s changed. And we’re called liberators, not collectors. Same job, better boss.”

“Fine. Why the hell did he send a collector—er—
liberator
?” I ask through my teeth. “Because if you think you and your damn pink seals are going to botch this assignment for me, you’re dead wrong.”

“I’m not here to interfere,” she says. “I’m just doing my job. Same as you.”

“So, what? You just give out seals when people do good things?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

I bring my hands together in my lap and twist. “And you’re not going to mess with Charlie?”

“No.” Valery licks her lips. “But if I could, I’d take you down like the rat you are. I don’t know why you guys can’t play fair; let her go to Judgment Day like everyone else. That girl has a near-perfect soul. She’d live a lovely, honest life if you’d just back the fuck off.”

I laugh out loud. “You just cussed. And you obviously smoke. Aren’t you supposed to be saintlike?”

Valery snorts. “Hardly.”

I glance to my right to see if I can spot Charlie, but she’s nowhere in sight. That won’t last forever, though. I’ve got to get rid of this liberator. “Look, if you’re not here to screw things up for me, then why even show yourself?”

“Because you don’t know everything about Charlie. I thought I’d try to talk some sense into you.”

“Not going to happen.” I cross my arms over my chest. So Charlie doesn’t have seals that destroy our own. That means there’s another reason Boss Man wants her. And I’ve realized something, I don’t want to know. In fact, the less I know, the better. It’ll help me keep a clear head during this assignment, and a clear-ish conscience. “Now can you kindly get out of my face and go back to playing liberator?”

Valery presses her lips together. “Fine, I’ll go. But remember, I’ll be close by. Watching everything you do.”

She starts to stand, but I reach out and grab her wrist. “It was you. You’ve been following me around without showing yourself.”

She waves a hand as if to say,
Yeah? So?

“Must get boring,” I taunt. “Standing outside her house, and in the middle of streets, and outside convenience stores.”

Confusion passes behind Valery’s eyes. Then she smiles so big, it overwhelms her face. “Sounds like I’m not the only one keeping tabs on your performance.”

I realize at once it hasn’t been her I’ve sensed. At the same moment, relief and fear wash over me. I’m glad Big Guy isn’t watching me as closely as I thought. But then again, that means one of ours still is.

Valery walks to my side of the table and leans close to my ear, her enormous chest grazing my shoulder. “You’re so territorial over
your
assignment, and you don’t even know where she is…right…now.”

I glance up at Valery, then whip my head away to search for Charlie. I don’t see her anywhere. This didn’t bother me before, but something about the way Valery just spoke says she knows something’s up. I get up from the table so quickly that the chair beneath me grinds across the floor.

My legs can’t move fast enough to the dance area. I push bodies around, trying to make my way deeper into the crowd in the hopes of finding her. “Charlie,” I yell, even though it’s pointless. The music is so loud directly over the dancing, there’s not a chance of her hearing me.

I spot Annabelle dancing with Blue and shove my way toward them.

“Where’s Charlie?” I demand.

Annabelle glances around, then points over her shoulder. “She went that way.”

I glance in the direction she’s indicating, but I don’t spot Charlie. “How long ago?”

Blue glances at his plastic wristwatch—something the stylist really should have addressed. “Ten minutes ago.” As he says this, concern sweeps over his face, like he didn’t realize how long it’d been. He moves toward where he must have last seen her, but I stop him.

“Just stay here.”

I bolt in the direction Annabelle indicated and turn to see Blue on my heels. I roll my eyes and keep moving. A flash of blond near the bar makes me stop. It’s the Hair Toss. My question is: who the hell is she doing it for?

I push past people and get within ten feet of her. That’s when I see the tall, wiry guy hovering over her with a nasty smile on his face. He’s wearing a shiny douchebag shirt, and he’s got his douchebag hand on Charlie’s hip. She smiles and sways wildly as he hands her a shot glass filled to the brim with black liquid. The guy all but lifts her hand to her mouth.

“Charlie!” I yell.

Too late.

Down the black liquid goes.

Chapter Thity-two

I See You

I cross the distance between us and knock the laughing guy’s hand off her hip. Then I grab the empty shot glass out of Charlie’s grasp. “What do you think you’re doing?” I ask her.

“I’m not doin’ nuffin,” she slurs.

I turn and face the guy next to her. “Why are you feeding her shots? She’s obviously wasted.”

The guy takes a small backward step, but his buddies push him toward me. He glances at them, remembers they’re watching, and glares at me with renewed confidence. “What’s it to you? You her boyfriend or something?”

Behind me, Blue shouts at Charlie. “How much have you had to drink?”

Charlie mumbles something about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“You were only gone ten minutes,” Blue adds.

The guy in front of me shoves my shoulder. “Did you hear me? I said, what’s it—”

“I heard what you said. All you need to worry about is getting the hell away from this girl.” I jab a thumb over my shoulder.

“Yeah,” Blue chimes in, standing slightly behind me. “Get the hell out of here.”

The guy raises his hands. “You guys are getting loud about nothing. And you obviously have some kind of threesome going on here, so I’ll just let you get on with that.” He starts to walk away, but he can’t help adding. “Girl’s ugly, anyway.”

I reach out to grab the guy, but before I can, he hits the ground. Blue stands over him, face flickering in shadows from the nearby fire. My mouth opens in a gasp. Blue weighs, like, twenty-seven pounds, but he apparently knows how to toss every bit of it around when he’s pissed.

I grab Charlie’s arm and pull her back as Blue leans over and grabs the guy’s shirt. He rips it upward so that their faces are inches apart. Then Blue says something quietly. The guy’s eyes widen, and he backs away on the floor until he can stand up. Blue flicks a hand like he’s releasing him, and the guy scrambles off with his friends.

Blue. Is. A badass.

Even though I itched to down the D-bag myself, watching Blue, I feel like a proud parent on graduation day.

I put a hand on his shoulder and try to shake him out of his maniacal stare. He brushes it off, stops to inspect Charlie, ensuring she’s okay, then storms onto the dance floor. I’m not sure what’s gotten into him, but I know I like it.

My attention falls on Charlie. She’s hardly able to stand and is giving me a lazy grin. I should be happy that she’s wasted. I know it’ll impair her judgment and make her do things she wouldn’t otherwise. But all I can think about is getting her back to the hotel where she’ll be safe. This was a terrible idea. Coming to Vegas got her to request more beauty, but we should have just stayed at the hotel and hung out there. I need to stick with fulfilling the contract versus trying to get her to sin the traditional way. This—things like tonight—they’re too risky.

Why are they risky? Your goal is to get her in trouble. Not save her from it.

I shake the thought away and drag Charlie to the other side of the room. I don’t know why; I just feel like I need to have her alone right now. To see if she’s okay even though I’m not supposed to care.

And I don’t care.

Or do I?

I push Charlie into a dark corner and glance over my shoulder to see if anyone’s watching. Then I bring my face close to hers and just breathe. Her breath mingles with mine, and I smell a hint of cinnamon. Those shots must have burned going down.

I raise my hands and wrap them around her cheeks. Her face is warm in my palms. She closes her blue eyes and smiles.

“Charlie,” I say, my head dropping. I press my mouth to the top of her head. Not in a kiss, just to rest it there, though once my mouth and nose are near her blond hair, I can’t help but inhale the scent of her shampoo. I squeeze my eyes shut and whisper, “Why are you doing this?”

“Mmm?”

I roll my head to the side and lay my cheek on the crown of her head. “Why, Charlie? Why can’t you stay the same?”

She doesn’t answer, and I suddenly know what I’m really asking: why couldn’t
I
stay the same? I was born an innocent child. When did everything change? What made me into the person I was when I died? Was it just one mistake after another? One wrong decision chased by something worse?

Maybe I was destined to be a self-absorbed screwup.

Maybe I was born a monster.

Below me, my polar opposite stirs. She glances up, and I notice her black mascara has smudged beneath her eyes. I run my thumbs under her drooping lids, but it only makes matters worse.

“Charlie.” I speak to myself, hoping at this point she’s too far gone to comprehend what I’m saying—what I’m feeling. “Stay.”

She only smiles and curls into my chest. She becomes heavier in my arms, as if she’s falling asleep upright. Holding her, I don’t feel like her destroyer. I feel like a protector. But that’s not true, is it? I’m not the person she thinks I am. I’m not like her. I’m not good.

But Charlie—she is. Why else would she make her life’s goal to help others when she’s had such crap luck? And why else would Big Guy break his own rules and send Valery to keep watch?

“Dante,” Charlie says below me. There’s a sound of surprise in her voice, like she forgot where we are.

“I’m here.”

I pull her closer to my chest, and she raises her head.

“Don’t leave me, okay?” she says.

I hold her eyes with mine, but I don’t speak. I can’t.

“I’m going to tell you something, Dante.” Charlie’s words are still slurred, but there’s an urgency to them now. Like whatever she has to say must be said now or forever lost. She raises her hands and places them on either side of my face. My skin burns beneath her touch. “I think you’re beautiful.”

I smile, thinking she’s done. But she releases my face and places her palms on my chest, directly over my heart.

“You’re beautiful right here,” she says.

I close my eyes, and the breath rushes from my lungs.

“I see the good in you, Dante,” Charlie continues, her words rolling together off her tongue. “Even if you don’t, I do. You have a good heart. You know how I know?”

I open my eyes. She’s looking at me like nothing else in the world exists. Like the entire planet and all of mankind just vanished. She slowly wraps my hands inside her own as best she can and places them on her chest. “Because I feel it here.” She taps our hands against her chest. “I know you’re good, Dante. Because I feel it inside of me.”

I throw my arms around her and push her head against my chest. My lungs won’t function. My mouth can’t respond.

But the tears.

They come.

My eyes sting for the first time since my father died, and a tear trails down my cheek and drops into her hair. Her words rush up and down my body. It’s the thing I’ve wanted to hear for the last two years, since I became a walking nightmare. It’s also the thing I’ve never allowed myself to believe. I want to be good. But how can I be when everything I do, everything I now stand for, says otherwise? Second chances—they were never for me. But Charlie, she just gave me one. She just saw something in me.

And maybe I can be the thing she sees.