Fifth Grave Past the Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

gray of his eyes even more arresting. And again he had abs to die for as evidenced
not
by his lack of a shirt but his negligence in buttoning said shirt.
    I drank in a hearty swig of Garrett-abs before addressing him. “How’s it hanging, Swopes?” I asked, ducking past him.
    He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and index finger. “Charles, it’s late.”
    “It’s always late when I come over. At least you weren’t in bed this time.”
    After a lengthy sigh to let me know just how annoyed he was pretending to be, he closed the door and headed for the kitchen. For some reason, every time I came over, he felt the need to drink. It was weird. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.
    “To my pleasure, duh. I get all kinds of joy annoying the ever-loving crap out of you.”
    “I meant, what’s going on? Is the world ending? Is a mass murderer stalking you? Are you trying to stay up for days at a time to avoid alone time with your evil neighbor?”
    Damn. He knew Reyes had moved in next door to me. I’d wanted to be the one to tell him, to break it to him gently. My relationship with Reyes was complicated and, at one point, involved me staying up for days to avoid summoning the guy into my dreams. Unfortunately, Garrett had become a victim of my circumstance. He’d helped me through a rough time and I should’ve been the one to tell him about Reyes’s new pad.
    “Who told you I had a new neighbor?” I heard him twist the top off a beer, the snap and hiss strangely comforting.
    “I’ve been keeping tabs,” he said.
    That probably wasn’t good.
    “So what’s going on?” he asked again.
    “What? I need a reason to come see my oldest and dearest friend?”
    When he walked back to the living room and handed me a Corona, he kind of glared at me before sinking into a recliner.
    “Okay, well, my old-ish and most annoying friend anyway.” I sat on the sofa opposite him, taking note of the chaos strewn about the room. Just like the last time I’d come to visit, the coffee table was littered with books and notes on the spiritual realm, heaven and hell, demons and angels. “I’ve been worried about you.”
    “Why?” he asked after taking a swig.
    “I don’t know. You just seem different now. Distant. Like you have PTSD.”
    I knew from where I spoke. My TSD got P’d when I was tortured by a monster named Earl. While attempting to execute my rescue, Swopes was shot and died as a result. The doctors were able to resuscitate him, but he’d recently told me that while in the jaws of death, he went to hell. That worried me. What worried me even more was the fact that, while in the fiery pit of eternal damnation, he had a heart to heart with Reyes’s dad, an experience that had to be traumatic on all kinds of levels.
    “I’m fine,” he said, as he had the last seventeen times I’d asked. “I’m just working on something.”
    I scanned the area. “I can see that. Anything you want to share?”
    “No.”
    He’d said it with such determination, no way was I going to argue. “Roger that,” I said instead. Wait. Who was I kidding? “But you know you can tell me anything, right?”
    He eased his head back, closed his eyes, and stretched out his legs in front of him, his foot sending a stack of notes sprawling across the floor. He didn’t care. “Stop fishing, Charles. It’s not going to happen.”
    “Roger that.” I took a sip of beer, then added, “But this stuff looks really interesting. I could help with the research.”
    “I’m good,” he said, his voice edged with a hard warning.
    “Roger that.” I picked up a page of scribbled notes and tried to decipher his handwriting. “Who is Dr. A. von Holstein? And is he related, by chance, to a race of cows?”
    He bolted upright and snatched the page out of my hand. Oh, yeah, that wouldn’t stimulate my curiosity. “I said no, Charles, and I meant it.”
    I sat back. “Geez, roger that.”
    After placing the paper back in the exact same spot