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 when 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.