Reborn

Chapter Ten

“Why didn’t you call me?” Steve asked first thing.

“I got caught up with a few things and was busy,” Della said, knowing it wasn’t the complete truth. The real reason she hadn’t called him was fear. Fear she’d end up spouting out something about the cute little doctor’s daughter who’d polluted the air with all kinds of pheromones when she’d shot him that toothpaste-ad smile.

Della couldn’t be jealous. Well, she shouldn’t be jealous. She had no hold on Steve. Had no right to insist he stay away from blond chicks with bigger boobs than she had and who wanted his body.

But telling herself that didn’t make the feeling go away. It only made it worse. Because she hadn’t really thought about the girl’s boobs until now.

“Too busy to call me?” he asked, sounding ticked.

“Sorry,” she offered, and went into her bedroom, shut the door, and fell on the bed. “I wanted to go back to the falls on the off chance I could still catch a scent of the person who knocked me in the head.”

“Dr. Whitman said for you to rest.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’ve already been read the riot act by Holiday, I don’t need you adding to it.”

He huffed. “I’m not … I’m just worried. The doctor was looking over the paperwork I did on you after you left and he noticed your temperature was elevated. Remember I told you that you felt warm this morning. Anyway, he wanted to know if I’d asked if you were on your menstrual cycle. And I told him you’d said you were—but his concern just sort of worried me.”

Della reached up and touched her brow. Did she have a fever?

“I especially don’t like it that someone hit you on the head. Does Burnett have a clue who did this?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She almost told him about Chase’s scent being on the rock, but decided against it. Steve had already expressed dislike for the guy and she didn’t want to encourage it.

“Could it have anything to do with the case you helped Burnett with and the intruder at the falls that you caught a trace of?”

She frowned. “He mentioned it could be a possibility,” she said.

“Is the young couple who died involved in this case?”

The image flashed in her head. “How did you know?”

“I read about an accident in the paper. I know they sometimes cover up the deaths when it involves supernaturals, so I just assumed…” He paused. “Shit, I don’t like this. A murderer could be after you.”

“We don’t know it was him. And if he comes back again, he’ll be the one who needs a doctor.”

A pregnant pause lingered both on the line and in her bedroom. Della looked around. The door to the bedroom was open. Hadn’t she shut it?

“Did you actually see it?” Steve asked. “See them dead?”

She inhaled, her mind shifting away from the door to death. “Yeah.”

“Damn, I’m sorry, Della. I mean, it had to be tough.”

“It was, but it just makes me more determined that this is what I want to do. Catch bastards like that. Make them pay for what they did. Keep them from doing it again.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like thinking about you looking for sick bastards like that.”

I don’t like you hanging out with blondie, either. Silence came to the line. “I’m sorry.” The line went quiet again. She tried to think of something to say. So tell me about the doctor’s daughter and her thing for you. She spit the words off her tongue and went with something else. Something that didn’t sound so jealous. “So do you see all the patients who come in? Even the animals?”

“Yeah,” he said, as if knowing she’d taken a conversational U-turn.

“Do you enjoy it?” she asked. Enjoy being around the doctor’s daughter?

“Yeah. Dr. Whitman suggested I go to veterinarian school if I want to practice medicine for supernaturals. He said the few supernatural doctors he knows who went through regular medical school have a lot more trouble. And he said I could work for him while going to school. Besides, I like animals.”

She couldn’t help but wonder if the good doctor had his sights set on Steve for a son-in-law. “You don’t have to work as a vet. Supernatural doctors work at regular hospitals. I know because when I was turned I ran into a nurse and doctor.”

“Yeah, but how often do you think supernaturals come in to the emergency room? Which means I’d mostly be working on humans. I could open my own practice, but then it gets messy with insurance and all the regulations. Jessie said Dr. Whitman and his partner were talking about bringing in another partner in a few years, so when I graduate I wouldn’t even have to set up a clinic and find clients.”

“Who’s Jessie?” she asked, but she was afraid she already knew.

“Dr. Whitman’s daughter. I think you met her. The one with the big smile.”

Big smile? “I see,” Della said.

And she did see. Blond and big-smiling Jessie had her life all planned out. And Steve was part of it.

The question was if Della was ready to become the hiccup in the girl’s plans. Or better put, was Della ready to put her heart on the chopping block?

An hour later, almost four in the afternoon, Holiday’s “get some sleep” command was yet to be obeyed. However, not for lack of trying.

After getting off the phone with a certain shape-shifter, Della kept thinking about Jessie’s big boobs and bigger smile.

Covers up to her chin, she kept practicing smiling. She wasn’t sure she could smile as big as Jessie if someone paid her.

When she wasn’t thinking about that, she was contemplating the ghost. Boobs, smiles, and ghosts … the crazy thoughts didn’t mesh together. Add an occasional vision of last night’s real-life horror flick, accompanied with the need to get justice for the couple, and Della’s head was spinning and hurting. Right along with her heart.

She could even swear there was a chill in the room. She snuggled deeper into the covers and stared at the ceiling. A bug of some sort inched across the white plaster. Even the insect moved slow, as if it was cold.

When Kylie had a ghost show up, the room temperature dropped. Could it be that? Or was Della’s fever going up? She preferred the fever. A flu she could deal with, a ghost, not so much.

I also get the feeling you’re procrastinating. Holiday’s words whispered in her head.

The obituary was still folded and tucked in her jeans pocket.

Sitting up, she pulled it out. Her gaze caught on the door again. Hadn’t she closed it? She had. She could swear she had.

Looking around the room, ceiling to floor, she whispered, “Are you here? Is it you?”

“Who are you talking to?” a voice spoke at the door.

Startled, Della glared at Miranda and Kylie shoulder-to-shoulder standing in her door. “No one,” Della insisted, and she saw Kylie frown and glance up as if … as if looking for an unwanted visitor. “Is it here?” Della asked, not even caring they knew she was frightened.

“Is what here?” Miranda asked.

Kylie frowned. “It was, but it’s gone.”

“What’s gone?” Miranda snapped.

Kylie looked at Miranda. “A ghost.”

Miranda eyes widened. “You’ve got another ghost?”

Kylie shrugged. “I don’t think this one’s mine.”

Miranda’s mouth dropped open and she looked at Della. “You’ve got a ghost? You can’t have a ghost. You’re not a ghost whisperer.”

“Nor do I ever aspire to be one,” Della said, and looked back at Kylie. “So how the hell is this happening?”

Kylie moved in and sat on the edge of the bed. “I … I remember Holiday said that some ghosts contain so much energy that they can appear to normal people.”

“Yeah, but I’m not normal. I’ve been called a lot of things, but never normal.”

“You’re normal enough for us to like you.” Miranda bounced down on the bed. Then her gaze shifted to Kylie. “It is gone, right?”

Kylie nodded and her gaze shifted back to Della. “Do you know who it is now?”

“No,” Della said, and hugged her legs.

“It didn’t appear to you?” Kylie asked.

“No,” Della repeated.

“It didn’t talk to you?”

“No,” Della said again.

“Then how did you know it was here?”

“Because … because it was cold and … and I thought I felt something brush up against my shoulder. Oh … and I’m almost positive it opened my door.”

“Opened your door?” Kylie’s brows puckered.

“Yeah,” Della said.

Kylie shook her head. “That’s unlikely. Ghosts usually only have enough power to move tiny objects, like a cell phone.”

“Well, explain how I closed my door and then it came open?”

Kylie glanced eerily at the door, but disbelief flashed in her blue eyes. “Maybe you just thought you shut it.”

“So now I’m crazy?”

Kylie shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“I didn’t just imagine it.” Della pushed her hands against her eyes. “This is so wrong. So very, very wrong. Frankly, I don’t get why you can’t tell a ghost to leave. What makes them so special?”

Miranda giggled. “I guess they feel as if being dead should give them some rights. Maybe it’s in their death contract. You know, you die, you don’t have to follow rules anymore. Do whatever the frack you want.”

“I’m not joking,” Della said. “I don’t like this.”

“Sorry,” Miranda said. “That hit on your head made you even grumpier.”

Della growled at the witch. “If you had a ghost hanging around you, I’d like to see you be Miss Cheery!”

“No fighting,” Kylie said, and right then her phone rang. She checked it. “It’s Holiday.” She took the call. “Hey.”

Della continued to frown at Miranda and focused on trying to hear Holiday’s voice, but she couldn’t. Her damn hearing was off again.

“Yeah,” Kylie said, and looked at Della. “No, but she’s in bed. Okay.” Kylie hung up.

Della stared. “Was she checking on me?”

“Yeah. She said you needed to stay in bed and she’d bring you supper.”

“She told me you went back to the falls again,” Miranda said. “And you were supposed to be sleeping. Why would you go to the falls to start with? That place is over-the-top eerie. You might have run into a death angel.”

When Della didn’t answer, Miranda’s eyes went wide. “Did you see a death angel?”

“I … not really,” Della huffed. “I saw some shadows, that’s all. And it happened like the second I was hit on the head, so I probably just … imagined it.” And that was what Della kept telling herself.

“What kind of shadows?” Miranda asked. “Did they look like monsters or … what?”

Della saw Kylie’s eyes light up with interest. Kylie being another ghost whisperer, she shared Holiday’s connection with the death angels.

“No,” Della said. “Just shadows.” When the witch didn’t look happy with Della’s answer, she added, “Hell, ask Kylie about them. She’s like their best buddy.”

With all eyes now on Kylie, she spoke up, “They aren’t monsters. Imagine a spiritual being.”

Miranda shook her head. “They still scare the crap out of me.” Her gaze went back to Della. “I still don’t get why you’d go there.”

Della growled. “I wanted to find out who hit me the second time. The first … I … I don’t know why I went the first time, I was running and I sort of just ended up there.”

“Then you turn your butt around and run the other away,” Miranda said.

“I was going to, but I was hit before I could.” Then Della remembered. “Did Burnett ask you to see if the death angels saw who hit me?”

Kylie nodded. “I put the question out there, but haven’t gotten an answer. Maybe they weren’t there.”

“It felt like they were there,” Della said. “I … I felt like I was trespassing. Like someone there was making me feel that way.” She shivered ever so slightly. “I still halfway think they’re the ones who hit me.”

“And yet you went back the second time?” Miranda snagged one of Della’s pillows to rest on. “And here I thought you were smart.”

Della scowled at the annoying witch. “I told you, I was hoping to find a trace of the piece of shit who hit me.”

“Did you get anything?” Kylie asked.

Della nodded. “Chase.”

Kylie’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

Miranda’s popped up from her reclined position. “Chase is the one who knocked you out?” Her eyes got wide. “And I thought he liked you. Oh, hell, Burnett’s going to kick his ass out of here for messing with his favorite vamp.”

Della shook her head. “First, I’m not Burnett’s favorite vamp.”

“Yeah, you are,” Miranda said.

Della looked at Kylie, who nodded her head as if agreeing with the witch. If she was his favorite anything, why would he want to stop her from going into the FRU? Della pushed that thought away to ponder later. “Second, I said I found Chase’s scent there, but then I found him. He told me Burnett sent him there to see if he could find a trace after I was hit.”

Kylie pulled one knee up to her chest. “Did you ask Burnett?”

“No, but I don’t think he would lie about something that I could so easily check on.”

Miranda crossed her legs. “Maybe he figured you’d think that and not ask.”

“Maybe,” Della said, and tried to think how she could pose the question to Burnett.

Kylie leaned back against the headboard. “Is that the obituary?” She nodded to the folded paper now resting beside her on the bed.

“Yeah,” Della answered.

“Whose obituary?” Miranda asked.

“My uncle’s.” Della pushed the covers off, noting that the cold had left. “Derek found it in some old newspaper files.”

Miranda put on a pout. “Why is it that Kylie always knows stuff before I do?”

Della cut her gaze at Miranda and made a face. “Because you’re always away with Perry getting your earlobes sucked.”

Miranda snatched a pillow and threw it at Della.

Frustrated, Della caught it with two hands and accidentally pulled it apart. Duck feathers exploded in the air like snow and then rained down from the ceiling.

Miranda started giggling. Kylie joined in. Eventually, Della couldn’t help herself. The giggles were contagious.

They laughed for a good five minutes, tossing handfuls of feathers at each other until they had them in each other’s hair, stuck to each other’s faces. Miranda even pulled a couple out of her bra. When the giggles stopped, Kylie found the folded-up obituary under a thick pile of feathers.

The chameleon looked at Della with empathy. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

Della almost said no, not wanting them to think she was too chicken to read it on her own. Part of her even felt guilty. Wasn’t wanting her uncle to be alive so badly saying her family at Shadow Falls wasn’t enough? But if anyone could understand and make this easier, it was Kylie and Miranda.

“Yeah. But I think I might need a Diet Coke.”

They went to get up, but they all froze when the bedroom door slammed. The air in the room became instantly frigid. The feathers, mostly on the bed, rose up and started swirling.

Cold air caught in Della’s lungs. She looked at Kylie. “You still think I’m crazy?”

“Shit,” Kylie said. “This can’t be good.”