Chapter 2 #2
“We’ll only need a minute,” Caleb assured her.
He looped his arm in Delia’s, and they headed into the chapel.
The custodian was over on the other side of the room, bending down to pick up what looked like a dropped program.
However, as soon as he caught sight of them, he sent them an annoyed look and disappeared through another door, one Delia guessed probably led into a supply closet or something similar.
Well, at least they wouldn’t have to worry about him interfering with the vibes in the space.
Still arm in arm, the two of them moved toward the dais. She could feel herself tensing as they approached, even though everything now felt utterly neutral, with no repeats of the strange, almost buzzing sensation she’d experienced when she’d first walked into the room.
And definitely no temperature drops…and no strange chorus of unseen voices.
Caleb’s brows drew together. “I’m not getting anything.”
“Neither am I.”
Still frowning, he gently released her arm and stepped onto the dais, then moved behind the lectern.
Delia wasn’t sure what that was supposed to prove, although she thought maybe he was trying to provoke whatever spirits might be lurking in the place.
After all, that was where the officiant was supposed to stand, not a quarter-demon interloper.
“Nothing,” he told her, then came down off the dais to join her.
“So, what…did we hallucinate the whole thing?”
An amused light flickered in his warm brown eyes. “I doubt it. But whatever’s here, it seems to be lying low for the moment. I assume you’re not hearing anything, either?”
“Not even a single whisper,” Delia replied. While she supposed some people might have been relieved by the utter lack of anything supernatural going on, she couldn’t help thinking something was seriously wrong here.
Caleb glanced up at the twenty-foot ceiling with its white-painted beams and smooth plaster, and shrugged. “Well, we weren’t able to duplicate what we first sensed here, so we might as well get going.”
Fine by her. Maybe if they’d hung around long enough, the whispers would have started up again, but she didn’t think so.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Caleb drove her home. When they got there, she invited him in, guessing that their conversation wasn’t over.
“Some water?” she asked. The one beer with dinner had been enough for her, and she didn’t see the point in drinking anything else, especially when she had an early house showing the next morning.
“Sure,” he replied.
She went into the kitchen, and he followed her, then leaned up against the black granite counter as she poured water from the pitcher in the fridge and handed over a glass.
“So,” he said after he’d taken a sip, “either we both had the same hallucination, or whatever’s hanging out in that chapel got a whiff of your psychic powers and decided to lie low.”
“Or maybe it was your demon blood,” Delia suggested, and his shoulders lifted a fraction.
“It’s possible,” he said. Something flickered in his eyes, and she wondered if she should have even mentioned his demonic heritage.
Although he’d always been honest with her about it, she knew he didn’t like to discuss the inhuman blood that flowed through his veins unless he absolutely couldn’t avoid doing so. “Or….”
“Or what?”
For a second or two, he didn’t answer, and instead remained leaning against the counter, fingers tapping against the glass of water he held.
It was in still moments like this that Delia was struck again by how really handsome he was, how sculpted his expressive mouth, how the sweep of his dark brows contrasted with his sandy blond hair.
Maybe someday she’d get tired of looking at him, but that day definitely wasn’t now.
“The atmosphere in a place like that must be pretty charged,” he said after a pause. “All those hopes and dreams, all those people gathering to wish their loved ones well. Do you think it’s possible that all we picked up was some sort of emotional residue and not anything ghostly?”
Delia found herself frowning. It was an angle to the situation she might not have even thought of, but she supposed Caleb had a point.
Except….
“I’ve been in places like that before and never sensed anything odd,” she told him.
He didn’t look too fazed by that revelation. “Maybe not,” he replied. “But have you been in one since your powers really started to wake up?”
No, she hadn’t. The last quickie wedding she’d attended in a place like that had been her college friend Suki’s, who’d wisely decided that it would be much smarter to put all the money she and her fiancé might have spent on a much more lavish ceremony toward a down payment on a house instead.
That had been more than two years ago, and in fact, Suki and Zack had bought a house about a year after their wedding, so going the budget route had obviously been a smart choice.
Anyway, back then, Delia had thought her “psychic” gifts extended to ghost whispering and nothing else.
She hadn’t been able to communicate with her mind or close down interdimensional portals or do much of anything except sense whether a house was haunted and figure out the best way to let a resident ghost know it was time to move on to the next world.
“I haven’t,” she admitted. “So you could be right. In which case, there’s no reason in the world to tell Olivia that something might be iffy about the chapel she chose for her wedding.”
“Probably not,” Caleb said. “Still, I might try to slip back in there at some point and see if I notice anything. If it still feels fine, then I guess we’ll just have to chalk it up to being a psychically charged atmosphere and call it a day.”
“All right.”
She knew she sounded far less than certain, and he seemed to realize she needed a little reassurance.
He set his glass down on the counter and came over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close.
At once, her body responded to his proximity, the usual warmth flooding through her as she looked up so their mouths could meet.
Ah, those lips, so warm and welcome, so strong. Not for the first time, Delia wondered why she couldn’t seem to allow things to go any further than this, why she didn’t seem to have the inner will to take his hand in hers and lead him down the hall to her bedroom.
But she didn’t. No, she allowed the kiss to linger, and eventually she pulled away.
“Thanks for making me feel better about all this.”
If he was at all disappointed that she’d ended the kiss…and had given no indication that she wanted things to proceed further…she couldn’t see any evidence of it in his face. Instead, he smiled a little as he reached down to push a strand of hair away from her cheek.
“Just doing my job, ma’am.”
In response, she grinned, and knew the moment had safely passed.
“Well, you’re damn good at it.”
They agreed to meet at the flip house the next day to go over some flooring samples, and then she walked him to the door and waited there as he got into his charcoal-hued Mercedes and backed out of the driveway. Once he’d turned the corner, she shook her head at herself.
Coward.
The next morning, she had to be up earlier than usual, since the client she was meeting at a prospective property couldn’t be there at any other time except eight in the morning.
Although Delia hadn’t been up particularly late, she was still a little annoyed by the disruption to her regular routine, since normally, she didn’t get to the office until around nine.
Or maybe she was just irritated with herself because of the way she’d allowed things to end the night before.
Of course, she’d been a real estate agent long enough that she would never allow any of her inner turmoil to reveal itself to a client, and was briskly cheerful as she showed the house to the prospective buyer, a single man who’d told her he worked in security.
It would be a cash transaction, making her wonder exactly what kind of “security” he was talking about, but long ago she’d learned not to ask too many questions.
The provenance of people’s funds only mattered if they were selling their house and the transaction was dependent on those funds for escrow to close.
Once she was done with the showing — the man said he was interested but needed some time to think things over — she headed back to the office.
Her mother probably wouldn’t be in for at least another half hour or so, giving Delia some necessary space to get her head together and try to figure out if it really was wise not to say anything to Olivia about the chapel.
Sure, the wedding was less than a week away, but wedding chapels were pretty thick on the ground in Las Vegas.
Her cousin could probably find another venue without too much trouble if Delia decided to stick her nose in it and issue a few warnings.
On the other hand, neither she nor Caleb had sensed anything strange when they checked out the place a second time. Which was the true impression? Those odd whispers and the other phenomena associated with them, or the serene quiet they’d experienced during their last visit?
No way of knowing, of course, which tended to be the problem when dealing with anything supernatural. There were always so many variables involved, many of which didn’t even reveal themselves right away.
It’s going to be fine, Delia told herself. That chapel probably hosts seven or eight weddings a day, maybe more. If there was anything weird going on, don’t you think someone would’ve noticed something by now?
Maybe. However, she’d already learned that there were huge chunks of the population who didn’t have a psychic bone in their bodies.
And even if someone had a tendency to be sensitive, it was very likely that they’d push aside any feelings of foreboding or odd flashes, believing them to be something their own minds had conjured up rather than being caused by some sort of external phenomenon.
Also, even if everything was just hunky-dory with the chapel, and she and Caleb had picked up on psychic emotional residue and nothing more, there was also the teeny little wrinkle of her asking him to be her plus-one.
Smooth move, Delia.
Not that she would have gone with anyone else, but she could have attended the wedding alone. She’d been single since she and her ex-fiancé Bill had broken up several years ago, so it wouldn’t have looked too strange.
But she knew things were getting serious with Caleb, and not inviting him would have been even more awkward.
Her mother already knew they were seeing each other, and Delia assumed Linda must have passed that information on to Delia’s father at some point, although in general, he tried to stay out of his daughter’s personal life.
They probably would have asked if she’d shown up alone.
No, it would be fine.
For now, anyway. Delia knew that if she and Caleb continued to see each other…if their relationship continued to progress…then at some point, she’d have to tell them the truth about him.
With his permission, of course, but since he’d told her from the beginning who and what he was, she sort of doubted he would want her to withhold that information from her parents. After all, if the relationship progressed to its logical conclusion, then at some point, they’d be his parents, too.
God knows he could use connections like that in his life. Although he hadn’t talked about them very much, Delia got the impression that his mother was a cold woman, more concerned with appearances than providing any real emotional support to her son, and Caleb’s father?
Well, it sure seemed as if everyone was better off with him safely banished to Hell.
One step at a time, Delia told herself. From what she’d been able to tell, her mother already liked Caleb a lot, and she had no reason to believe her father wouldn’t like him, too.
Once he’d been established in her life and her parents had gotten to know him better…
well, maybe that would be the time to reveal the truth.
However, that was all far off in the future, and Olivia’s wedding was only a few days away.
While Delia was more and more inclined to believe what Caleb had said about psychic residue, she also thought it couldn’t hurt to reach out to the one person who could do a little digging and maybe see if there was some reason to believe things at the Angel’s Dream Wedding Chapel weren’t exactly what they seemed.
She reached for her phone and went over to the messages, then looked up the text thread with her best friend Pru, who just happened to be a private detective and was great at this sort of thing.
Pru? If you have some time, could you look into the Angel’s Dream Wedding Chapel for me? Who owns it and for how long, that kind of stuff.
Because it was so early in the morning, Delia doubted she’d hear from her night owl friend until closer to noon.
That was all right, though.
When Prudence Nelson was on a case, the truth always came to light.