Reborn Yesterday

by Tessa Bailey

  A lead weight sank in her stomach.

  Mate.

  What had he meant by that?

  Mate.

  “Any fresh bodies for me to see today?”

  A delighted shock ran through Ginny and she scrambled to the edge of the bed to find Roksana lying casually on the floor.

  “You’re back,” Ginny breathed, moisture rushing to her eyes. Before she could stop herself, she rolled off the bed and landed beside the slayer, promptly throwing a leg across her body and pulling her into a bear hug. “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t appreciate this display of emotion,” Roksana said, contradictory laughter in her voice. “It makes me feel lumpy.”

  “Lumpy?”

  “That’s what I said. Get off, you crazy animal.”

  “Okay, fine.” Ginny let go of Roksana and scooted back, fairly vibrating with excitement over having her friend back. Since the slayer had left, she’d mostly been worried about staying alive, but seeing Roksana in person now made Ginny realize she’d desperately needed her friend. “You didn’t answer me. Where did you go?”

  “Upstate. Downstate.” Roksana studied her finger nails. “Here and there.”

  “What made you come back?”

  “The prince.” She snorted. “Who else?”

  Ginny’s brow knit. “I don’t understand. He took care of the threat last night. I’m no longer in danger.”

  “Hmmm.” Was it her imagination or did Roksana’s attention slip to her neck. “Perhaps that is true. Perhaps he thought you shouldn’t be alone on your birthday.”

  When she should have experienced warmth or pleasure over Jonas’s thoughtfulness, there was only a scalding, syrupy sense of foreboding. “He isn’t coming back, is he?”

  Roksana evaded her gaze. “This vampire drama does not concern me. I am only here to party.”

  “Roksana, please,” she whispered. “Something happened last night—”

  “Hold that thought,” the slayer said quickly, rolling under the bed. “We have company.”

  No sooner was Roksana out of sight than Larissa stumbled into the room with a bottle of NyQuil clutched to her chest and a wadded up tissue protruding from one nostril. “What the hell are you doing on the floor?”

  “Oh, um. Looking for an earring.”

  “Whatever.” She waved the bottle of blue liquid. “I’ve come down with a cold. This is why I hate hosting the viewings. Every granny in the house wants to blubber all over my shoulder or make me shake their snotty hands. God.” She shivered and took a swig of the cold medicine. “Kristof’s second viewing is today. I have no idea why they wanted two when barely anyone showed up yesterday, but as long as they’re paying, I’m not questioning it.” She paused to deliver a wince-inducing scream sneeze. “Can you handle the second viewing, as well as your shift tonight? It’s four to six.”

  “Yes, I can do that.”

  Anything to get Larissa out of the room. Not to mention, if there was a lack of guests at the wake, she would like the chance to show some support to the grieving family. It’s what her father would have done.

  “Great.” Larissa smiled and tilted her head, but with her red nose and puffy eyes, she kind of resembled the clown from every child’s nightmare. “Have you thought any more about selling?”

  “Not yet, sorry. I’ve been a little distracted lately.”

  The smile turned tight. “There’s a big world out there, you know. Much bigger than Coney Island, Ginny. You need to get out there and see it.”

  Ginny didn’t know how to respond to that. Coney Island seemed a lot bigger and crazier than it ever had before.

  “Well,” Larissa said haltingly into the silence. “I’m off to bed.”

  “Feel better, Larissa.”

  Her stepmother turned to leave, but stuck her head back in at the last second. “Oh and…” She chewed her lip, seeming conflicted. “Happy birthday.”

  The door snicked shut.

  Ginny sighed and sat up, watching as Roksana rolled back out from beneath the bed. “I could kill her?” Roksana suggested. “She’s already rotting on the inside. I’d be doing her a favor.”

  “Do not kill my stepmother.”

  “Great. Now I have to figure out a different birthday present.”

  A laugh bubbled up in Ginny’s throat, her gaze straying to the clock. “How did I sleep so late?” She jumped to her feet and lunged for the closet. “I have to get dressed and prepare the visitation room. Put out the flowers and prayer cards…”

  “Since you asked nicely, I will help you.”

  Ginny raised an eyebrow at the slayer. “You just want to see a body.”

  “It’s not fair,” Roksana whined. “When you kill a vampire, there is nothing but dust left over. Very anticlimactic.”

  Ginny selected the one black dress in her closet, which she’d bought at Macy’s, then brought home and added a wide, satin belt and a flower on the right side of the collar. “Speaking of vampires, Elias went looking for you.”

  “I don’t care,” Roksana snapped, tightening her blonde ponytail. “When? What did he say exactly?”

  Sensing she’d stumbled upon an opportunity, Ginny tapped her chin. “I’m not sure I can recall exactly…”

  “What is this?” The other woman narrowed her eyes. “Are you keeping information from me to be cagey?”

  Ginny stripped off her dress from the night before and pulled on the black one, all too aware that she needed a shower as soon as the wake ended. “I’ll tell you what Elias did and said—” With some modifications. Probably best not to repeat the term reckless brat. “If you explain why you’re really here.”

  Roksana inclined her head, visibly impressed. “This technique of yours might have worked if I cared about the bloodsucker looking for me.” She untucked a rectangular, gold object from her pocket and fanned her face with it. “He probably just wanted his credit card back. My new boots exceeded his spending limit.”

  Ginny finished tying the bow on the back of her dress and swallowed hard, giving the slayer a meaningful look. “Please, I need to know Jonas is all right. We…there was a mishap last night and I’m worried about him.” Her fingers tremored, longing for the feel of his cool skin. “I’m worried about him never coming back.”

  The slayer looked down at the ground, but not before Ginny caught her troubled expression. “Ginny, my calling is to protect humans. And I do not accomplish this by giving you what you want. Not this time.”

  “He said mate. I think he called me his mate. What does that mean?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you there.” Roksana skirted around the bed and perched herself on the windowsill, throwing her legs over the side and dancing gracefully onto the fire escape. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  She stood and stared at the fading silhouette her friend left behind, the foreboding in her stomach burning hotter. Something was wrong. What took place in her bedroom last night had been significant and she needed to find out what it was. But how? She’d been blindfolded during the trip to Jonas’s apartment. There was a chance she could retrace the turns and figure out how to get there, but intuition told her she’d have to shake Roksana in order to do it.

  Her palm cupped around the spot on her neck where Jonas had licked the stream of blood, leaving no wound behind. Was he staying away because he’d liked it too much?

  An involuntary rush of pleasure made the fine hairs on her body stand on end, her toes curling into the carpet. It would make sense that he’d enjoyed her taste and was being noble by cutting her off. He’d told her from the beginning her scent, her blood, was different, hadn’t he? If someone put a single scratch on your skin, I would go utterly mad, Ginny, and yet I burn to sink my teeth into your neck every second of the day. I don’t know how to uncomplicate that for you.

  Ginny walked in a trancelike state to her dresser, picking up her hairbrush and running it absently through her hair. Until she hit a snarl that prompted a sense of indignation.<
br />
  Since meeting Jonas, he’d made all the rules. Assigning bodyguards. Blindfolding her. Locking her in rooms. If she continued to let him dictate their relationship—and there was no other descriptor for what they had, for better or worse—she would end up without him. He’d only been gone a matter of hours and she already knew living in his absence was a cold, cold place.

  Ginny hadn’t escaped a lifetime of living in a funeral home without learning the value of living like every day was her last. Regrets were a long-lasting poison and if she died tomorrow, she refused to leave any behind.

  Relieved to have a sense of purpose, she started to leave the room, already creating a mental list of the tasks ahead—

  Pain flared in her side, like a knife being inserted beneath her rib cage. A scream of agony caught in her throat and she stumbled, running into the door, hands clutching the place of impact, searching frantically for a wound and coming up empty. Nothing was there. Nothing was there. Why did it hurt so bad?

  As fast as the pain hit, it disappeared, leaving her limp and gasping.

  She spun around to find the room empty, the only sound her rasping inhales.

  Tingles ran through her body, from the tip of her head to her toes and although the pain was gone, the sense of impending doom remained.

  Something was off. The universe had tilted. No more waiting to be shuffled around and allowing herself to be protected without detailed explanations of what she was up against. She intended to get answers.

  Tonight.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ginny sat side by side with Roksana in the back row of the viewing room.

  Kristof lay in his casket, his face organized in peaceful indifference. There was only one mourner in attendance and she was motionless in the front row, hands folded in her lap with a rosary wound around her knuckles. Ginny had made an attempt to comfort the woman, but like her husband, she’d been somewhat standoffish—and that was her right. Everyone mourned in their own way.

  With twenty minutes left to go, Ginny craned her neck, hoping someone would walk through the door, but the lobby remained silent.

  “I don’t understand this ritual,” Roksana murmured, speaking to Ginny for the first time since they’d met downstairs, awkward after their exchange in Ginny’s bedroom. “That man is not lying in that box. He’s somewhere else.”

  A sad smile curved Ginny’s lips. “This isn’t for him.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’ve never had to put it into a words before.” Ginny thought for a few moments. “Everyone has a deck of cards for each person they love. You’ve got your regret cards, your good memory cards, bad memory cards. When one of your people dies, the deck of cards gets thrown up into the air and the cards scatter everywhere. Wakes and funerals are about putting them into a new order. You have to. One half of every memory you had with them is gone. You have to figure out how to live with only your half. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.”

  Roksana jostled her leather clad leg. “Sounds complicated, Ginny. Maybe it’s better to have no loved ones.”

  Before Ginny could respond, there was a loud bang out in the lobby. Seconds later, a woman came rushing into the room with a rolling suitcase behind her. She dropped it at the door and slammed to a halt, as if she’d run into a glass wall. Her hands came up to over her mouth and she proceeded forward slowly. The woman in the front row turned and her blank expression crumpled into relief, followed by an overflow of grief. The newcomer stirred the air as she passed Ginny and Roksana, stooping over to embrace the woman in the front now and a sense of finality rolled into place.

  “Forget what I said about the cards,” Ginny sighed. “That’s what the ritual is really about.”

  Roksana sniffed inelegantly. “I’m getting drunk tonight and so are you.”

  “My only experience with alcohol is my stepmother. Oh! And two recent beers. What if I’m a terrible drunk who ruins everybody’s night by dancing on tables and tossing my cookies?”

  “That sounds like a party to me, but we’re not going out out. Not this time.” She flicked her wrist. “I’ll steal a bottle of vodka from the liquor store and we’ll do girls night in. I’ll even watch one of your old movies.”

  “It sounds like there’s a reason you want me indoors.”

  “Don’t read into my actions,” Roksana grumbled. “It’s very rude.”

  Ginny faced forward, taking in the scene at the front of the room. The women stood in front of the casket, locked in an embrace. Did they have regrets? Maybe a phone call they’d ignored from Kristof or an argument over politics that resulted in weeks of silence? She often wondered what people would do with the gift of foresight. How would they change things if they knew ahead of time what the future would bring?

  She knew.

  She’d sat in that very chair and watched a parade of regrets, day in and day out, for most of her life. She had no excuse for sitting back and watching life happen around her. For far too long, that’s what she’d been doing. After the sudden death of her father, she might have created patterns that distracted her from the grief, but those patterns had become a way of hiding. They didn’t open her up to new experiences. Ones that would allow her to feel new things.

  Starting now, Ginny was taking control of her own destiny. She didn’t want to act in ways that were expected. No more safe patterns and coping mechanisms.

  Ginny cleared her throat delicately. “I’m going out out.”

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that.” Roksana drummed her fingers on her knee. “I could tie you to a chair.”

  “You won’t, though. Not on my birthday.”

  “Are you one of these disgusting people who call it a birthday week, Ginny? I can’t get down with that.”

  “No, I’m not,” Ginny said on a quiet laugh. “But I’ve got no other leverage with which to bargain for one night of fun and freedom. I’m not immortal. I don’t have your incredible skill—”

  “Say more.”

  “At the moment, all I have is the date on a calendar.”

  And the desire to draw a certain someone out of the woodwork, even if it did include dancing on a table. Not that she had any plans to say such a thing out loud. Her plan struck her as kind of uninspired, but what was she to do with no power and no way to reach Jonas?

  Furthermore, it was her twenty-fifth birthday and maybe that was reason enough to go a little wild. Growing up, her birthdays had consisted of an ice-cream cake in the break room of a morgue while her father warbled out a well-intentioned yet extremely off key version of Happy Birthday.

  For the first time in…well, ever…she had a friend with whom to party. If Roksana was there because Ginny was still in danger for some reason, Ginny had full confidence that Roksana wouldn’t let anything happen to her a second time. They might even have fun.

  “You are putting me in a tough position, Ginny,” Roksana said, pushing to her feet. “But we will go out. If only because I’ve become a dumb dumb who neglects alcohol and dancing because a bloodsucker asks it of me.” Her lip curled. “They should all have been slaughtered by now.”

  Ginny nodded firmly. “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes, tomorrow. Tonight we fuck shit up.” The slayer wagged a finger at Ginny’s attire, mischief trickling into her expression. “But first, we find you something a little more exciting to wear. You look like a goth Bo Peep.”

  Clutching her jacket closed to hide her cleavage, Ginny jogged to keep pace with Roksana on the sidewalk. Around them, the sky was streaked with purple and orange, a beautiful twilight sky that seemed to cast a glow over the apartment buildings and food shops that lined Mermaid Avenue. The scent of curry and jerk seasoning carried on the night breeze from the corner Caribbean restaurant, reminding Ginny that between wrapping up Kristof’s viewing, showering, blow-drying her hair and modeling outfits for Roksana, she’d neglected to eat dinner.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A place you won’t find on Yelp.” A ma
n passing by did a double take at Roksana and she bared her teeth at him. “You’d think he’s never seen someone in a red latex jumpsuit before.”

  Ginny wished they were still home so she could adjust the borrowed thong underwear currently trying to climb into a place it was not welcome. “Is that jumpsuit more or less uncomfortable than what I’m wearing?”

  Roksana didn’t seem to hear her. She was busy scanning the street and rooftops—for what? Ginny didn’t know. And her friend wasn’t spilling. “Listen to me, Ginny. If I tell you to do something tonight, obey me without question. If you can do that, we’ll maybe, possibly, have an enjoyable time. Do we have a deal?”

  “I’m hearing you loud and clear.”

  “Fabulous.” She hooked an elbow through Ginny’s and took a sharp right, sending them down a narrow street lined with closed garages and a shallow gully of sewer water running down the middle. “I find I’m feeling guilty for calling you goth Bo Peep earlier. Please say something insulting to me, so I can move on.”

  “Oh no, I don’t want to—”

  “I insist.”

  Ginny inflated one of her cheeks and let the air out slowly. “You’re alarmingly violent?”

  “I asked for an insult. Not a commendation.” Roksana sucked her tongue. “Never mind, we’re almost there. Quick rundown, the owner is an ex-boyfriend and he still thinks there is a shot. There is not. Do not mention Jonas, Elias or Tucker. Say nothing of vampires whatsoever or you’ll get us both killed.”

  “Should we just go to a Fridays?”

  “This is a slayer bar.” Something unsettled traipsed across her face. “We’re safest here. Unless—”

  “Unless I mention our primary reason for knowing one another. Got it.”

  “Sassy. I like it.” She guided Ginny between two garages and down a set of steep stairs. “Those clothes are already doing their job.”

  They stopped outside a metal door at the very bottom of the staircase. It was a regular old door no one would look twice at. One might assume it led to a place to which only the electrical company had access. Not one sound could be heard on the other side. In fact, Ginny was getting ready to ask Roksana if they were in the right place when the metal creaked open—and blasting hip hop music nearly rendered her deaf.