Reborn (Shadow Falls: After Dark #1)(50)

He couldn’t tell her that. He didn’t even try lying. So she didn’t shut up. And after several more minutes of ranting and a few touches of Holiday’s hand, the obstinate vampire agreed to let her go to Kylie’s.

She was walking back to her cabin when she realized he’d never agreed to let her work the case. The temptation to go back bit, but her gut said she should fight that battle another day.

What mattered was that come Saturday, Della would be making a trip to the funeral home that had helped fake both her uncle’s and Chan’s deaths. And while she was out and about, she hoped to possibly get a lead on the Crimson Blood. If the funeral-home director worked with vampires to plan fake deaths, he might know something about the local gangs. Hell, maybe the old man had kept in touch with Chan.

But if she found out where the Crimson Bloods were located, she didn’t know if she could find a way to get there. She recalled Holiday’s “no risks” rule.

Della exhaled. She’d just wait and see what she got from the funeral home, and then she’d make the decision if it was too risky.

But feeling rather productive after winning the argument with Burnett, she decided not to stop just yet. Instead she went to find Derek and see if he’d found anything else out about her aunt and uncle. She’d given him the school name, earlier, and he’d said he was back online.

Answers, Della thought. It would really feel good to at least learn something. Something that at least told her that her uncle and aunt were really alive.

Zilch. Nothing. That’s what she got from Derek. Well, almost nothing. He’d found an old classmate from Klein High who was considering selling his yearbook. Della had gladly agreed to hand over her fifty dollars of allowance to pay for the damn thing. Derek went online right then to tell the guy they had the money, but then the guy started wavering. Maybe he wanted to sell it, or maybe he didn’t.

Frankly, Della wasn’t certain why the damn book was so important. She already had a picture of her uncle, but Derek explained that a yearbook could give them names of who he’d hung out with, his interests outside of the school, and that might offer them more leads. Della didn’t want more leads, she wanted answers.

Chan would have answers. Now back in her cabin, and in bed, she looked at her phone resting on her bedside table and willed it to ring.

When it rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

Heart thumping, she grabbed the phone, thinking it could be Chan, and looked at the number.

Not Chan.

Steve. She’d spoken with him last night and barely managed to get off the phone without pummeling him with questions about big-smile-big-boobs Jessie. The last thing she wanted to do was come off like a jealous girlfriend.

She stared at the ringing phone. And gave in.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi, I thought you weren’t going to answer.”

“Sorry, I was caught up in … something.” The decision to take or not to take your call.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine. How are things with you?” You having fun with Jessie?

“Missing you,” he said. “I wake up at night and you’re all I can think about.”

But not during the day when you have Jessie around, huh? She bit her lip to keep from saying her thoughts out loud. “I’m sorry,” she said instead.

“Why? I like thinking about you.”

She closed her eyes. “It’s unhealthy. Not sleeping like that.” She hadn’t been sleeping too well herself.

He paused. “You don’t think about me sometimes? About how it feels when we kiss. How it feels when we almost—”

“Sometimes,” she admitted abruptly, not wanting to be reminded of things.

“What exactly do you think about?”

“Stop it,” she said.

“Stop what?” he asked.

“Stop sounding like you want to have phone sex.”

He burst out laughing. “I never said anything about phone sex.”

She smiled. Della liked his laugh—liked knowing she made him laugh. Did Jessie make him laugh? “Well, you sounded like it. Using that deep Southern sexy voice.”

“Do you think my voice is sexy?”

“Stop talking about sex,” she snipped.

“You’re the one who started it.”

“Well, I’m finishing it, then!”

“Just one more question,” he pleaded. “And then I’ll shut up.”

“Okay,” she said, knowing Steve wasn’t easy to persuade. Sometimes the guy came off more vampire than shape-shifter. Not that he really had any vampire in him. He was just stubborn sometimes. As crazy as it sounded, she admired that streak in him.

“Have you ever had phone sex?”

“No, I just saw it in a movie.”

“What kind of movie?” he asked, sounding intrigued.

“Not the kind you think. It was a romantic comedy. A chick flick.”

“Hmm,” he said. “How did they do it?”

“Nope. You said one question,” she reminded him.

“Okay.” He paused. “Oh, I remembered something you said that you never explained. You said you had something you wanted to talk to Derek about. What’s up with that?”

She hadn’t told Steve about her weekend discoveries, and part of her didn’t know if she should, but suddenly she wanted to tell him.