Eternal (32 page)

Show her.
The ghost's words seemed to echo in the house, but Della figured only she could hear them.

Show her what?
Then Della suddenly knew. She reached into her pocket for the photo. “I … Chan gave this to me.” It was a lie, but what else could she say? The truth certainly wouldn't suffice.

Her aunt's hand shook as she took the picture. Her breathing came quicker. When she looked up, her eyes shimmered with tears. “I have searched for this picture.” She blinked several times and then swallowed.

“She's my cousin, isn't she?” Della asked.

Her aunt nodded then looked back down at the photo. Slowly, she ran her finger over the image of Chan and then Natasha. “Yes. I…” She blinked and a few tears slipped from her short black lashes. “She showed up on my doorstep, and I knew before she even spoke to me that she was my niece. She is so much like her mother.” Her voice shook a little. “I had to tell her. Tell her the truth. She cried and I cried with her.”

Bao Yu moved closer.
What truth? Ask her for the truth.

“What did you tell her, Aunt Miao? What is the truth?”

“That her mother … is gone. But Bao Yu loved her. She only gave her away because our parents couldn't accept it. They were old-school. And the father's parents would not even accept it was his child. She didn't have a choice. She had to give her away. She was told that the child would go to a family with some Asian heritage. That they would love her.”

I wanted to keep her.
The ghost's voice rang out in desperation
. I cried so hard when they took her away from me. She was my baby. Mine!

Another question sat on the tip of Della's tongue. She needed to ask, needed to know. “How? How did Bao Yu die?”

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?”

“Because I need to trust you to work with you.”

He jerked the car over into a parking lot, cut off the engine, and then slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “You don't trust me? I gave you my blood, went through the turn with you—which was damn painful, in case you don't remember—and I gave you some of my power. And you still think I'm out to hurt you?”

Fueled by his anger, she squared off. “I didn't say you would hurt me. I think you're hiding things. Or not telling me things. And just for the record, I didn't ask you to bond with me. I seem to remember telling you I didn't want you to do it!”

He growled, tightened his grip on the steering wheel, pressed his head back, and closed his eyes. “You are the most stubborn—”

“Not any more than you!” she seethed. “Just answer my questions. How did you know I was going on that mission?”

He turned his head, loosening his grip on the wheel. “And you'll report it right back to Burnett, correct?”

She didn't see any reason to lie. “Probably.”

He exhaled loudly. “So, to win your trust, I have to betray the council?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked appalled that she'd made it that clear.

He stared at her for a second as if debating, and then answered. “There's a leak in the FRU. And before you ask, I don't know who it is. And from what I hear, they don't even give away anything that would really be detrimental to the organization.”

She believed him, not so much about the detrimental part, but about him not knowing who it was. But since he was finally answering questions, she had a few more. “What was the mission with me and Chan?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“What exactly was your mission?” she repeated, her patience thinning.

“I was to check on you, attempt to help you both through the rebirth.”

“So, you were sent to bond with one of us?”

“No, that was totally at my discretion. I was there to try to make sure you kept up your strength. I told you that it's been proven that those who are in better physical condition have a higher survival rate. Remember me making you run?”

She nodded. “Now all I need to know is why and who?”

“Why and who what?”

“Why were you sent and who initiated it?”

“I just told you that I was sent to help you through the rebirth.”

“So they have a list of every possible Reborn?”

His expression tightened with more frustration. “I don't know what all they have … but I do know they know that there are only a few bloodlines that lead to rebirths, so maybe they do.” He passed a hand over his face and then glared at her. “Do you know what all the FRU has?”

No, she didn't. But she wasn't satisfied. “There has to be a reason they sent you, Chase. In a perfect world, maybe they just care about people. But this isn't a perfect world. And I don't think the Vampire Council gives a shit about a few people dying unless it's in their benefit to make sure they don't.”

“They aren't the monsters you make them out to be. The problems between the council and the FRU are political. Not because one of them is evil and the other isn't.”

She heard what he said, but she was too busy trying to answer her own questions. All of a sudden, an answer came to her. “Did they send you so that I would come to work for them? Or maybe that I would be one of their spies in the FRU? Is that what they really wanted? What they want?”

“I already told you they want you to come and work for them.”

“But was that their plan all along? Save me, then use you to try to convince me to become a traitor?”

 

Chapter Thirty-five

“A traitor?” Chase asked. “So the Vampire Council is terrible to ask you to work for them? What the hell do you think Burnett has been doing since he discovered that I'm a Reborn? Is the man you hold the utmost respect for evil for trying to get me to work for the FRU? For that matter, why the hell do you think he's working with Shadow Falls? Or haven't you noticed how many of the students are working for the FRU? He's handpicking the cream of the crop.”

His point gave Della pause, but only for a second. “Burnett cares. He'd die for any of the students at Shadow Falls. And he didn't get involved with the camp just so he would have access to the students.”

“Oh, I'm sure that never crossed his mind,” Chase said with sarcasm.

She leaned closer to him. “I happen to know that he's gone against the FRU and their rules to protect someone. He's put his job on the line for the school. And even you made the point that he coddles his agents. Why do you think that is?” She poked him in the chest with her finger. “Could it be because he cares?”

“Could it be that he's not the only one?” Chase snapped back.

“The Vampire Council doesn't care.”

She went to poke him again and he caught her finger, his eyes bright. He leaned in, she thought to give her more hell, but she was wrong.

“I wasn't talking about the council. I'm talking about me.”

His lips met hers in a kiss that tasted like anger, passion … he tasted good.

So good.

He let go of her finger and one hand came to the back of her neck, the other cradled the back of her head. Della's hand dropped to press against his chest.

The kiss deepened and so did Della's confusion.

His tongue slipped between her lips. She allowed it. Welcomed it.

Finally, seeing reason, she pulled back. “You can't just kiss me to avoid answering.”

“Really?” He drew her closer and kissed her again.

And damn it, she let him.

She finally pushed back. “Answer me,” she said, but without a lot of conviction.

He smiled at her. “I forgot the question.”

She wanted to smack that smile off his face, especially when she realized she'd forgotten the question, too.