Her aunt closed her eyes. “She was killed. And now Natasha is gone, too. Like Chan. Why does life give us something so precious and then take it away?”
Natasha’s not dead, Della told herself, and fought to believe it.
“How? How did she die?”
“I’m told it was a car accident. It was only a month ago.”
“No, not Natasha. How did Bao Yu die?” The temperature in the room grew colder. Even Della’s skin prickled with goose bumps. Her aunt Miao folded her arms from the chill and, if her expression was any indication, from the memory.
Looking over her aunt’s shoulder, Della saw Bao Yu standing so close and listening. Almost as if she needed the answer as much as Della.
“I don’t know,” Miao said.
But Della heard her heart reveal the words as a lie.
“I think you do,” Della said. “Tell me. Please.”
“No. It doesn’t need to be repeated. There are some things that are just best forgotten.” She looked at Della as if pleading for her to accept it.
Della recalled the pregnancy tests her parents had insisted she take. Had her father been thinking of his sister then? “That sounds like my dad, and I think he’s wrong. Because you haven’t really forgotten, and neither has he.”
“Oh, my!” Her aunt pressed her fingers to her trembling lips. “Your father will be so angry at me for telling you any of this.”
Della wanted to insist she hadn’t told her nearly enough, but her gut said it would only upset her aunt and wouldn’t lead to any information. “My father doesn’t need to know,” she said. “I won’t even tell him I came here. It will be our secret.”
Her aunt looked suspicious of Della’s proposal, but she nodded.
“Tell me what happened?”
“No, I can’t. I have told you too much already.” She held up her hands. “No more talk about the past. No!”
Della felt the heat spewing out of the vent above. She glanced over Miao’s shoulder and the ghost’s image had evaporated, as did her chill.
“Let me get that tea,” her aunt said, swatting at the tears still on her face. “We can still visit.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have the time, I … I should probably go.”
Her aunt looked at the photograph in her hands. “Can I keep this?”
Della almost said no, but she got the distinct feeling that Chan would have wanted her to have it.
“Sure.” Della started walking to the door, and her aunt moved with her. Certain her aunt would try to hug her again, Della quickly reached for the knob and almost got out when a hand caught her arm.
“I miss you, Della.”
A lump appeared in her throat. “I miss you, too.”
“Then fix whatever is wrong with your life and hurry back home to your parents. You belong with them, not at that school. You are a good girl. I know this in my heart. So fix it.”
It can’t be fixed. Della stiffened her backbone and told one more lie. “I’m working on it.”
* * *
“What did you get?” Chase asked as Della jumped in the car.
“Let’s go,” she said, her heart racing, and looking back to make sure her aunt hadn’t followed her out. Which she would have heard, but she still had to check. Then she felt sweat pop up on her forehead. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sweated.
He started the car and pulled down the street. Then he glanced at her again as he revved the engine and put it in second gear. “What happened?”
The gears in her mind spun with what to tell him. Or how much to tell him. Didn’t she trust him? “I know how Natasha is connected to me now.”
“How?” He cut his green gaze toward her.
“She’s my cousin.”
His brow creased and he looked puzzled. “That’s impossible. There’s only four of you. You and Marla and Chan and Meiling.”
There was something about how he named them off so easily. No, it wasn’t how he named them, it was that he knew the names. How did he know Chan’s sister’s name?
It occurred to her that Chan could have told him. But had she told him her sister’s name? She didn’t think so.
She just stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“Know what?” he asked.
“Their names?”
His eyes widened as if the question put him in the hot seat. He looked back at the road. “It was in the file,” he said. “So your aunt had another child?”
She ignored his inquiry to ask her own. “What file?”
He changed gears again. The car’s engine purred. “The file I got on you and Chan. Just like the file I showed you on Natasha and Liam.”
“That was the FRU’s file,” she said.
“Yeah, but the Vampire Council’s files are practically the same.”
There it was again, the feeling that he knew more than he’d told her. “Do you still have that file?”
“No,” he said without looking at her. “Once a case is over, you turn it back in.”
“What else did it say?”
“Just normal stuff. Where you lived, your parents’ names.”
Something wasn’t adding up, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “So, if you knew their names, why didn’t you get that it was my aunt that called when we were in the closet?”
He lifted up one eyebrow and half smiled. “When we were in the closet, I had my mind on something else.”
She frowned at him. Then bam, her brain found that thing that bothered her. “So, in this file you had, it listed that I was at Shadow Falls?”
“Yes.”
She tightened her eyes. “Then why did you join the Blades? You told me you’d joined them looking for me and that’s where we met.”
He stared straight ahead and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Answer me, damn it! And look at me when you do it!”
He turned and met her gaze. “The Vampire Council knew you were being sent on that mission. They didn’t want me going into Shadow Falls at first because they were afraid Burnett would be on to me.”
“How?” she asked.
“How what?” he came back.
“How did you know I was going on that mission?”
His jaw muscles tightened. “Why are we talking about this instead of talking about how this visit is going to help us find Natasha and Liam?”