After another moment of silence, she said, “One of these days, you are going to tell me everything.”

“Okeydokey. Go. Celebrate.”

I hung up, then almost collapsed onto the couch we’d stuffed into the corner for just such occasions.

“Charley,” Cookie said, “you realize you have to tell me everything. And I do mean everything.”

“You sound like Kit.”

“Charley Davidson—”

“I will. I promise. Once I absorb it all myself, I’ll tell you. I don’t know if you’ll believe it or not, though.”

“I’ve seen too much not to.” She turned her attention to Beep. “Yes, I have,” she said in an animated voice. “I’ve seen enough to make a grown man wet himself. And they don’t wear diapers like you do.”

I couldn’t wait to tell her about the birthmark. That’d keep her up at night.

14

I HAVE COMPLETELY MASTERED THE RIGHT WAY

OF DOING EVERYTHING WRONG.

—T-SHIRT

Garrett, Osh, and I sat around the reassembled kitchen table and gazed down at little Miss Beep. She was trying to decide if she wanted to fuss or catch some Z’s. It was a hard decision for most of us. She made baby sounds. Nothing on earth made sounds like that. They were a ruse. A ploy. A way to get adults to fall in love.

They worked really well.

But the reason our little moppet was lying on the table—on a blanket, of course—was so that we could see the birthmark. Or, more accurately, so that I could show them the birthmark. Barely visible, she had the lines, the map to the gates of hell, marked on her body just like her father.

“How?” I asked no one in particular. “I mean, those were put on Reyes when he was forged in hell. How did they transfer to Beep?”

Nobody answered. It was a fairly rhetorical question anyway.

And Reyes wasn’t there to give his opinion. He’d been pacing outside, but I lost sight of him a while earlier. He was probably off dragging hellhounds around. I bet they hated that. And he was probably still mad at me. So, I went to hell. I’d needed information. That was the quickest way to get it. The only way to get it. And because of it, we saved a girl’s life. Sure, it was dangerous, but that was my middle names. I’d assumed he was used to that by now. Figured he even liked that about me. Apparently not.

Of course, the thought of a family reunion right here on earth was the most likely culprit of his agitation. Coming face-to-face with one’s evil father after centuries apart was enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

Speaking of bad moods, with all the unwanted attention Beep was getting, even she’d started leaning toward the fussy end of the spectrum, so I wrapped her up like a burrito, warmed up a bottle of breast milk I’d collected earlier, and walked around the house crooning and crowing about this and that. It was like dinner theater.

Uncle Bob had taken Quentin back to school in Santa Fe, and Cookie and Amber left, too. Amber had school in the morning, much to her chagrin, and Cookie wanted to get some shopping done. She’d been cooking quite a bit and bringing it out to us.

I thought about cooking once.

Beep and I walked around the house as she ate, partly to look out the windows in the hopes of seeing her daddy. And partly to work off some nervous tension. I’d hurt him by going to hell, and that was only the half of it. We wandered into the laundry room and I explained the washer and dryer as best I could. I turned on the dryer and put her on it. The vibrations lulled her to sleep again.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I said, picking her back up again. “You have to be burped. If I don’t burp you, I’ll get arrested by the burp police, and then—”

I stopped midsentence. The wall Reyes broke was adjacent to the locked closet door. He must’ve triggered a latching mechanism when he broke the stud, because it stood slightly ajar.

“At last,” I said as we walked to it. “Are we ready for this?” I asked her.

She didn’t reply.

I slid open the heavy door. It creaked along rusted tracks. It was a pocket door, which explained why it hadn’t opened when we pushed on it, but as tall and narrow as it was, it had to be at least three inches thick. I peeked inside and, wow, was I not impressed.

“This is it?” I asked Beep. After fumbling in my pocket for my phone, I turned the flashlight on and took a closer look. It was a tiny round room, dusty and cobwebbed. Nothing special about it. The ceiling formed an arch overhead, so that was almost interesting. But there were no shelves. No nooks for storage. No dead bodies. Nada.

“What on earth is this for?” Finding no light switch, I stepped inside and, only a little fearful we wouldn’t get the door open again as I’d seen how it latched, slid it closed. Then we stood there. Waited. Turned in a circle. Then I opened the door, utterly disappointed.

“Okay, then,” I said, stepping out and giving it another once-over. “This is rather useless in the grand scheme of things.”

I turned to leave and came face-to-face with everyone left in the house. They all stared at us with mouths slightly agape.

“What?” I asked, wiping at my face, then smoothing my hair down. “What?”

“Your light,” Angel said at last. “It completely disappeared when you were in there.”

“Really?” I turned back to give it another once-over. “That’s odd, right?”

Osh stepped to the closet. “You have no idea. Your light is eternal. It’s constant and boundless. Nothing can stop it from being seen from a thousand different planes.”