“I wouldn’t … I don’t care if Jimmy is registered or not. I need to know all of this for me,” she assured him.
You need to figure out exactly what this bond thing is, and what it isn’t. Steve’s words echoed inside her.
“I need to know,” she repeated, again pushing back the pain.
He didn’t look at her, but his shoulders loosened. “Jimmy has bonded with three, but the last time he almost died. And…”
“And what?” she asked when Chase paused.
He inhaled. “Each time a Reborn bonds, you give away some of your power. Jimmy is almost back to being a regular vampire now. He can’t afford to do it again.”
Della digested that. “Did you … lose power when you bonded with me?”
“Some.” He leaned forward to see the freeway sign in the distance, then sped up and zipped past a car to enter the ramp.
So Chase had not only suffered, he’d given up power? And seeing him drive this car, she had a feeling power meant a lot to him.
He’d barely known her. Why had he done it?
“You shouldn’t have…” She dropped back in her seat. “I still think I might have made it on my own.”
“We all want to think that.” He cut his gaze to her again and she spotted emotion in his gaze. “I don’t regret it,” he said in a tender voice.
She didn’t want tender.
He shifted gears and she watched as he did it with ease.
“You know how to drive?” he asked, probably having seen her watching him.
“Of course.”
“Stick shift?”
“No.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“That’s okay,” she said, but she couldn’t deny it looked more fun that driving an automatic. “I wouldn’t want to wreck your car.”
“If you wrecked it, I’d just buy another one.”
“Stop,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“Being nice.”
He laughed.
She lowered her attention away from Chase and his niceness to the files tucked tightly between the seats—the files with the addresses of both Natashas.
At least they’d have a last name soon. Would that help find her? For some reason the ghost seemed to think so. And Della could only hope.
Find Natasha.
Della flinched at the sound of the voice. This time she didn’t question if she’d really heard it or just conjured up the memory of the voice.
She’d heard it. Goose bumps tickled the back of her neck, as if the words brought on a chill.
The ghost was here.
Della cut her eyes to the tiny backseat. Empty. Maybe the ghost wasn’t actually in the car, just buried in her head.
The car’s engine roared louder. She glanced again at Chase. His hands gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white.
“You heard it, too, didn’t you?”
“Shit, yeah,” he said, completely understanding what she meant. Then the car shot forward.
As if trying to outrun the ghost.
But if what Holiday and Kylie said about ghosts and their perseverance was true, Chase’s Camaro didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter Sixteen
“That’s it.” Less than an hour later, Chase inched his car in front of a one-story, redbrick house with lots of windows. Located in a small town outside of Houston, it was off a dirt road, not in a subdivision. Larger than the house Della grew up in, it had a wraparound porch with a wicker swing that swayed ever so slightly in the afternoon breeze. A big live oak tree, twice as tall as the house, stood to the right of the property, and a tire swing dangled from a rope. It looked aged, as if it had been someone’s play toy and they’d outgrown it.
But something about the home spoke of family, a place where on lazy Sunday afternoons, people who loved each other gathered out front to eat homemade ice cream. Della remembered doing that on her parents’ back patio when she’d been part of a loving family. Or at her Aunt Miao’s when they’d go for dinners.
Pushing past that thought, she noted the untended gardens lining the front of the house. The sign of neglect hinted that all those loving times had somehow become lost.
Was this where Natasha had lived? Where her parents still lived and grieved for their daughter who they thought was dead? Who would be dead if Della and Chase couldn’t find her?
Tension filled Della chest. Was the sadness she felt from this place imagined, or was this somehow a clue?
She almost asked Chase if he felt it, but worried it sounded crazy.
The tires of Chase’s car slowly crunched over the gravel as he came to a complete stop. He cut off the engine and turned his head to the side just as she did, to see if they could catch any sounds inside the house.
“No one seems to be home,” she said.
“Maybe they’re at work,” Chase said. “Or maybe they’re just resting and not moving around. The car could be in the garage.” He dipped down a little and studied the attached garage.
Today had been one of those days that she’d lost track of time, so she pulled out her phone to see the hour. “It’s almost five.” Dropping the phone in her lap, she pulled out the files. “Is this the Owen or the Brian house?”
“The Owens,” Chase answered.
Della looked at the information they had on the file—basically names and the address of the parents, the name of the graveyard where a casket was placed in the ground to make her parents believe Natasha Owen was dead. It was the same graveyard Chan and other fresh turns held their fake funerals. The one where Chan’s body really was buried now. She looked up through the windshield at the lowering sun. The day was on its way out. The sky already had a dusky look to it.
“You want to knock on the door just in case?” he asked.
She glanced back at him. They hadn’t come up with a sure bet plan. She just wanted to check and see if one of the parents was Asian.
“I guess,” she said, her mind churning, still feeling the unexplainable sadness and loneliness. Was it because of this house, or were her emotions over Steve leaving finally sneaking out?
Chase’s gaze stayed on her eyes for a second longer than needed. He leaned in, bringing his face closer to hers … his mouth closer to hers. She jerked back, hitting her shoulder on the car door.
“I wasn’t…” Frowning, he turned to snatch something from the backseat. When he pulled back, he dropped some papers in her lap. “I was just getting this. I thought we could say we were selling magazines to help pay for a trip to Mexico to help build houses for the poor.”