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.”