Reborn

by C. C. Hunter

  “But I have another—”

  “It’s a done deal. The report came back positive. I’m supposed to go and finalize the paperwork and set up sentencing. Now go get some breakfast, and if you’re still tired, skip your first classes and take a nap.”

  “You don’t understand,” Della demanded. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. I think I’ve found another suspect.”

  “You are the one not listening,” he said. The DNA is a match.” He frowned but with empathy. “In this job, second to seeing the victims, the hardest thing is sometimes arresting the guilty—especially the fresh turns. It hurts like hell … heck … to realize that sometimes good people can do terrible things.”

  Della swallowed and tried to accept it, but that stupid voice started chanting again in her head, and it came in rhythm with the throb in her temple.

  Innocent. Innocent. Innocent.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Della skipped campmate hour and went back to her cabin to do an Internet search on Billy Jennings. She was right: He belonged to the school band. And to the chess club. The guy was an honor student. And not even a cool honor student. He was a geek. How could someone so … so perfectly geeky kill Lorraine and John?

  Feeling as if she couldn’t do a damn thing to help Billy, she cut the computer off and went to her first class—science. But by the time she sat down, her head pounded so hard it felt as if her eyes were going to pop out.

  Mr. Yates, Jenny’s brother as well as their teacher, stood up in front of the class talking about how cell phones and signals worked.

  Della didn’t give a rat’s ass. All she could think about was her headache and then Billy. Playing the flute one week, being arrested for murder the next.

  “There’s one a couple of miles from here.” Perry spoke up, but his voice sounded distant, as if he were far away. “I never get service there.”

  All of a sudden, Mr. Yates’s phone rang. “Well, someone isn’t in the dead zone.” He answered the call. Then the teacher looked right at Della, his gaze almost angry. “Innocent.” His voice echoed like they were in a cave. “Innocent!” he yelled.

  “What?” Della asked. But when she blinked Mr. Yates wasn’t looking at her and was back talking into his cell. What in hell’s bells was going on? Had she just imagined…?

  She blinked again and the fogginess in her brain increased. The air suddenly changed, and she smelled wet dirt. It had turned night. Her gaze shot around, expecting to see the classroom, but she saw only woods, the trees stared down at her. Sh glanced down at her hands. A diamond ring, an engagement ring, sparkled up at her from her left hand. Engagement ring? What the hell?

  All of a sudden, her hands didn’t look like her hands. She shook her head, feeling as if her reality had been yanked away. Nothing made sense. Nothing mattered but getting that damn ring off. She started to yank at it, but her hands were covered in blood. Lots and lots of blood. But the blood didn’t seem to matter as much as the ring. She tried again to pull it off, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t move. She felt paralyzed or … dead.

  Her heart jolted. She wasn’t dead. The smell of dirt vanished, but the blood on her hands hadn’t. She felt the hard school desk against her back. She started to jump up, but then the blood disappeared.

  The ring disappeared.

  Her breath caught.

  “Della? Della?”

  In the distance someone called her name. But she didn’t care about that either. She kept staring at her hands, turning them one way and then other.

  Damn it! What had just happened?

  She closed her eyes. Innocent. Innocent. Innocent. The words echoed around the schoolroom, as if everyone was chanting them. Della jumped up from her seat and looked around. Everyone was staring at her, but no one was speaking, or chanting.

  “Della? Della?”

  Her name echoed again. This time Della recognized Mr. Yates’s voice.

  She forced herself to glance at him. He stared at her, looking puzzled. Della moved her gaze around, seeing everyone gawking at her as if she was nuts. And hell, maybe they were right.

  “Della?” Mr. Yates said again.

  “Yeah,” she managed to answer, but only after she growled at the gawkers.

  “Are you okay?” He walked to her desk.

  No. I’m losing my mind. She nodded.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  She stared at him blankly, and he must have gotten the message that she hadn’t heard a damn thing.

  “Holiday wants to see you. In the office.”

  Feeling her insides tremble, she grabbed her book and went to find Holiday. Find her and tell her to call the people who came in with those tight white coats and carted off crazy people. Because Della was pretty certain she was on the path to needing a padded cell.

  By the time she got to the office, she’d convinced herself that living in a padded cell wasn’t her calling.

  Holiday rose from her desk. Concern pulled at her brows.

  “What’s wrong?” Della envisioned the worst—a worst that didn’t have anything to do with visions of blood or engagement rings. Had something happened to someone in her family?

  Holiday motioned for her to sit down. Ignoring the motion, Della stood in the middle of the office, still feeling dazed.

  “What is it?” Della insisted.

  “Lorraine Baker stopped in this morning. Briefly.” The camp leader rubbed her belly.

  “And?” Della asked, trying to convince herself that this was good news. She thought of Billy. Maybe now they’d get a break in the case.

  “When I tried to get her to talk to me, she informed me that she was already communicating with someone. But they weren’t a good listener.”

  Della’s mind spun. “Then she’s lying, because Kylie is good at that. Did you ask her? Maybe Lorraine told Kylie something.” Something that would help Billy. Something that would keep a flute-playing chess lover out of prison.

  Holiday pulled her hair over one shoulder and twisted it. Worry brightened her eyes. “It’s not Kylie,” Holiday said. “She said she’s talking to you.”

  Okay, sitting down suddenly sounded like a good idea. Della took two steps to the sofa and dropped. The sofa sighed with her weight as if complaining. But not as loud as Della wanted to complain.

  “But I’m vampire.” A shiver ran down Della’s spine and she realized she did connect with a ghost. Chan. But what was it Kylie had said? Oh yeah, that some spirits with a strong connection can attach themselves to normal, non-ghost-whispering people. She thought she was just one of those. Not so much normal, but someone who didn’t go around talking to dead people. “Vampires don’t do ghosts,” Della said.

  “Yeah, that has always been what I believed, too. But then Burnett … and now this. I’ll admit, I’m puzzled. I always thought since we don’t really know Burnett’s heritage that he could have been a descendant of the American tribe and that was the reason he had a connection to the falls and the spirit world.”

  “I’m Chinese, not—”

  “You’re half Chinese,” Holiday said. “I subscribed to ancestry.com trying to find Burnett’s family history, so before I called you down here I went on and put in your mother’s maiden name to see if there’s any evidence that your mom might be a descendant.”

  “And?” Della asked.

  “Nothing popped up.” The camp leader exhaled at the same time Della did, but Holiday’s release seemed to extend from disappointment, Della’s from relief. She didn’t want to be part of any bloodline that tied her to ghosts.

  “But,” Holiday continued, “let’s worry about that later. Right now, we need to help Lorraine. What has she told you?”

  “She hasn’t told me shit. I haven’t seen her. She must have lied to you about…” Della remembered the voice she’d been hearing.

  “What?” Holiday asked.

  “I’ve been hearing a voice. I thought … It sounded like me thinking it. Like a song whe
n it gets stuck in your head.”

  “What does it say?” Holiday asked.

  “All it says is … innocent. Repeatedly.” The realization that she had not one, but two ghosts communicating with her scared the living crap out of her. However, Della decided to freak out later. “Lorraine must be trying to tell me that Billy is innocent. That has to be what this means.”

  Holiday frowned. “Burnett said the DNA came back positive on the suspect. He’s there now to present the case to the FRU board to get Billy sentenced.”

  “All in one day?” Della asked.

  Holiday nodded.

  “What happened to having a trial and being judged by twelve of your peers?”

  “It doesn’t work that way with the FRU. When someone is arrested, their case goes before an FRU board and they are sentenced almost immediately. And … the bad news for Billy is that getting a sentence overturned is practically impossible.”

  “Then we have to stop it.” Della snatched her phone from her back pocket. Seeing her hands, she recalled the vision she’d had.

  “The ring?” Della said.

  “What?” Holiday asked.

  “In class, I…” Jeepers, would Holiday think she was crazy? Then Della remembered Kylie had those types of visions all the time. Oh, fracking hell, Della didn’t want to go down this road. But she’d worry about that later, too. “I had this vision, I…”

  “What vision?”

  “I saw my hands with blood on them and I was wearing a ring. An engagement ring. I was … repulsed by it. I wanted to take it off, but I couldn’t.”

  Holiday stood there rubbing her stomach.

  “Do you think that means anything?” Della asked. “Is she trying to tell me something?”

  “It always means something. The tough part is figuring it out. The dead suck at communicating.” The fae reached to the back of her chair to get her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Della asked.

  “To see Burnett. You’re right, we have to stop this.”

  “We can’t just call?” Della held up her phone.

  “Nope. Love that man, but he never listens to reason on the phone. Frankly, he doesn’t excel at listening to reason in person. Not when he thinks he’s right. And he’s pretty certain Billy is guilty.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” Della asked, following Holiday out.

  “Convince him that he’s wrong.”

  “How?” Della asked.

  “I’m hoping to figure that out on the ride there.”

  They came up empty, but that didn’t stop them from charging into the FRU building. Well, Della charged. Holiday, wearing a long-sleeved yellow dress that hugged her round belly, wobbled in. She reminded Della of a pudgy duck. A beautiful pudgy duck with red hair. If this weren’t so serious, Della would have found it funny.

  “Hi, Mr. Adkins,” Holiday said to the man at the front desk, granting him a big smile. “I need to speak to my husband.”

  Mr. Adkins, who didn’t smile back, probably because he was a werewolf—Della had checked out his pattern—stared at Holiday. “I’m sorry, Mr. James is in a meeting with the Judging Committee.”

  Holiday made a pleading face. “It’s important.”

  “So is the meeting,” he said.

  Holiday reached out to touch the were, but he backed up. “Fae influence isn’t allowed in this building.”

  Holiday shot Della a quick glance and cut her eyes toward the hall that led to the back. Della couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but her gut said Holiday meant for Della to make a run for it.

  Della didn’t need to be told twice.

  “Now, you wouldn’t want Burnett upset with you for not informing him that his pregnant wife is here, would you?” Holiday asked, drawing the man’s attention.

  “Sorry, the rules are the rules.” The voices echoed behind Della as she hotfooted it down the corridor .

  She tuned her ears off them and listened for voices coming from a room at the end of the hall.

  Unfortunately, she heard the were yelling out for her to stop. Which meant she ran faster. Hearing footsteps, she hit the doors a little hard. The heavy oak panels slammed against the wall and one fell from its hinges.

  Oops.

  One swift glance around, and Della counted fourteen figures in the room. All men. But she knew she was in the right room when she recognized one of those figures as her badass camp leader. But wow, all men! She knew the FRU was chauvinistic, but damn, what century was this?

  Thirteen of those men shot up from their seats.

  The one who remained seated was another she recognized. Billy. Shoulders slumped, he held his head down, staring at his lap, as if his fate had been sealed, as if not one person in the world cared.

  Della cared. Burnett cared. If she could just make him see reason.

  Heavy breathing sounded behind her. “I’m sorry, I’ll remove her immediately.” The were came storming into the room.

  “No,” Burnett demanded. “Let me handle this. She’s harmless.”

  Just in case the dirty dog didn’t listen to Burnett, Della shot around and gave him a peek at her canines. When he took another step forward, she added, “Touch me and I’ll hit you so hard in the balls you’ll wish you’d been neutered as a pup.”

  Burnett cleared his throat. “Okay, she doesn’t sound harmless, but she is.” Burnett’s glare said he’d be the one doing the harming if she didn’t behave. “Della, this is not a good time!”

  “Yes, it is,” a voice came from behind her. Holiday’s voice.

  Della loved it when things came together so perfectly.

  Burnett’s eyes widened at the sight of his wife. He looked at the others in the room, then back at Holiday waddling up the center of the room. “I think you all have met my wife,” Burnett said, not looking happy.

  “Yes,” one man said, sounding annoyed.

  That was all it took for Burnett to give him a scowling look. “Is something wrong?” Burnett asked, his harsh look fleeting as he watched his wife.

  “Yes,” Holiday said. Burnett looked ready to run to her, no doubt fearing for his child. “Billy Jennings is innocent.”

  Burnett’s shoulders sank with relief, but Billy’s posture finally showed a backbone and he glanced up. The boy looked condemned, lost, and he had tears in his eyes, but for one second there was a flash of hope.

  “And how have you come to this conclusion?” one of the Judging Committee, a blond vampire, asked Holiday.

  “Lorraine Baker has proclaimed him innocent,” Holiday stated with pride.

  “I didn’t think I did it,” Billy said. “I told them I didn’t think I could do it. I just didn’t remember everything. It’s all a blur.”

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” said the older vampire in the room with a holier-than-thou attitude. “Lorraine Baker is one of our victims. She could not proclaim anything.”

  Burnett’s shoulders flexed. “My wife is seldom wrong. She’s a gifted ghost whisperer.”

  Della wondered why Burnett hadn’t shared this information with his agency.

  But in the next few seconds, she knew why. All twelve men of the committee looked a bit shocked, or maybe scared was a better word.

  What a bunch of wimps, Della thought. Sure, ghosts scared the crap out of her, but she wasn’t some bigwig on the FRU judge-and-jury committee. And how strange was it that they were on a committee to judge others, but feared the dead and the death angels judging them?

  Another of the men, this one a warlock, spoke up and directed it to Burnett. “And you expect us to take the word of your … very pregnant wife, over a DNA test? No offense, but pregnancy tends to lower a female’s IQ.”

  Burnett turned to the warlock, but before he could add his two cents—which didn’t look as if it would be pleasant—Holiday added her own. “That’s funny,” she said, but without humor. “I’ve heard it also makes us vicious if provoked. And for your information, I�
��d be happy to put my IQ up against yours, pregnant or not.”

  “And I’d have to agree,” Burnett seethed, glaring daggers at the warlock. “I would also add, she’s helped me solve several cases. Before and after she was pregnant.”

  Go Burnett! The way he defended his wife was the most romantic thing Della had ever seen. There was no question where his loyalty lay.

  “So, if my wife says Lorraine Baker told her Billy wasn’t her murderer, then I recommend we take another look at the case.” Burnett turned back to Holiday. “Exactly what did Lorraine Baker tell you?”

  Oh, shit, Della thought. It was time to come out of the I-talk-to-dead-people closet. She stepped forward. “Lorraine didn’t tell Holiday. She told me.”

  “Enough of this,” said another man, this one a redheaded fae. “You’re vampire. We all know that ghost whispering isn’t a gift given to your species. This is ridiculous.”

  “I sort of feel the same way,” Della said, realizing that Burnett hadn’t informed them of his own abilities. But if she had to work with these jerks, she wouldn’t tell them shit either. “I don’t understand it, perhaps she just attached herself to me because I was at the crime scene.” She said it honestly, hoping it was true.

  Another one of the twelve, a were with graying temples, shook his head. “We simply can’t take the word of some misfit vamp to decide the fate of a murderer.”

  “She’s not a misfit,” Burnett spit out the same time as Holiday. Warmth spread through Della knowing they were both in her corner. But that thought led her back to Billy, who felt he had no one. And Della knew his main champion wasn’t her or even Holiday, but Lorraine. Della’s respect for the girl grew.

  Burnett focused on Della. “Do you have anything to offer us in the way of evidence?” And she could tell from his expression that he was hoping she’d come through.

  But Burnett wasn’t the only one hoping—nor the one with the most to lose. A storm of emotion filled her chest as she looked at Billy, his pale blue eyes staring at her with faith. And she’d give up her best bra if she had something to offer.