Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
The three of them emerged in a hotel suite Delia had never seen before. Sitting on the couch in the middle of the living room area were her friend Pru and, for some reason, Aaron Sanchez.
They both gaped at Delia and Caleb and Ty, with Pru’s expression shifting at once to concern after she seemed to focus on the half angel.
“Holy crap — did you just do ten rounds with Riddick Bowe at Caesar’s Palace or something?”
Ty reached up to touch the puffy skin around his eye, now turning spectacular shades of purple and dark blue. “No — maybe more like five with a demon under the Aquarius.”
“Should I get you some ice?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied, then headed over to one of the unoccupied club chairs and basically fell into it.
Delia couldn’t really blame him for wanting to collapse. Although she hadn’t been physically knocked around like Ty Carter, she also felt as if she’d been pummeled, just in a different kind of way.
Aaron looked over at Caleb. “What happened?”
“We won,” Caleb said briefly. “So I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about selling the house now. The thing your grandmother was trying to warn us about isn’t a problem anymore.”
“Well, not exactly,” Ty put in. Pru had just handed him a baggie full of ice, and he pressed it against his eye and winced slightly. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, but he’d need to clean it up at some point. For now, though, it was probably better if he attended to his eye first.
Delia crossed her arms and sent him what she hoped was a steely look. “What do you mean? With Sellers gone — ”
“He’s gone,” Ty broke in, “but the river is still without a guardian. Sooner or later, someone’s going to try to exploit its power again.”
This comment obviously didn’t sit very well with Caleb, because he glared at the half angel. “You need to shut up about that. You’re not roping Delia into being some kind of river guardian.”
“Whoa, whoa.” She held her hands up and looked over at Ty. What the hell was he even talking about?
Clearly, she’d missed a lot during the time August Sellers was holding her captive.
But she remembered the terrible visions she’d seen while she was feeling her way around in the utter darkness of her prison — an older woman, possibly Alba, falling to the floor as unseen hands appeared to choke her to death.
A car crushed by a semi on a dark highway under glittering, uncaring stars.
And the much younger woman, probably even younger than Delia, fleeing her apartment, a suitcase in each hand.
“August Sellers killed or scared off anyone in the Sanchez family who could have been the next guardian,” she said, and everyone stared at her, frankly astonished.
“How do you know that?” Aaron demanded.
Considering it was his family they were talking about, Delia supposed it made sense that he’d be the one asking the questions.
“Because I saw it in a vision,” she said. “Your grandmother didn’t die of natural causes — I saw something choking her.”
His wasn’t the sort of complexion that could turn exactly pale, but he looked stunned nonetheless. “The doctors said it was a heart attack.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”
He was silent for a moment. “Did you see anything else?”
She nodded. “There was a terrible accident — a car and a semi. It looked like it was out in the middle of the desert somewhere, but I didn’t see any mile markers or anything that could tell me where it was.”
But Aaron obviously knew what she was talking about, because his expression turned very grim. “My cousin Isaac. He was driving back to Laughlin from Needles, and a semi plowed right into him. He didn’t have a chance.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Caleb remarked. “Not when a demon was gunning for him.”
Yes, those were pretty terrible odds. Even though Delia knew she shouldn’t expect demons to do anything but leave a trail of destruction in their wake, she still had a hard time accepting the notion that they would so wantonly kill off anyone in their way.
But….
“There was someone else,” she said. “A woman who looked like she might have been around twenty-five. She was pretty and wore her hair in a French braid. I saw her hurrying out of an apartment and carrying a couple of suitcases.”
Even as she spoke, she feared that maybe the final vision she’d seen hadn’t been connected to any of this at all, that possibly the demons had allowed something random to slip into her mind’s eye to throw her off the scent.
However, Aaron spoke up at once. “That must have been my cousin Eiza. She took off in the middle of the night right after our grandmother’s funeral.
Didn’t say anything to anyone, just took her stuff and bailed out.
I guess her apartment was month-to-month, so she didn’t get in too much trouble over abandoning the lease, but… .”
“She had to have known something,” Pru said, apparently deciding to jump into the conversation once she thought there was a suitable opening. “Maybe she was just psychic enough to guess that something was horribly wrong about her grandmother’s death.”
Caleb ran his hand through his hair, pushing away the one stubborn lock that always wanted to fall over his forehead. “So she skipped town and hoped that would be enough to keep her from meeting the same fate. After all, if she wasn’t in Laughlin, then she couldn’t be a river guardian.”
It seemed like kind of a cowardly thing to do, but then, Delia wasn’t sure how she would have reacted if she’d been in Eiza’s shoes. Facing down demons with Caleb at her side was one thing, but if she’d had to do it alone?
Maybe she would have skipped town as well…and hoped that would be enough to keep her alive.
“But,” Caleb continued, now looking much more cheerful, “with the demons gone, there’s no reason for her to stay away. She can be the new river guardian, and Delia won’t have to be dragged into any of this.”
If she’d been braver, maybe she would have spoken up and said it was fine and that she knew how important it was to keep Laughlin safe.
Now, though…now she was just tired and wanted to go home to Las Vegas. The Sanchezes had been guarding the river for generations, and as far as she was concerned, they could continue to do that.
“Do you know where your cousin Eiza went?” Delia asked.
Aaron frowned. “I think I heard my mom say she was in San Diego. But I don’t know for sure.”
“That’s all right,” Pru said, her expression also much more chipper than it had been a few minutes earlier. “I just need her name and her last known address, and I can find her. Let me get my laptop.”
Having a best friend who was a private investigator definitely came in handy.
“I think I have it on my phone,” Aaron said as he dug his iPhone out of the pocket of his jeans.
Thank God the cell phone hadn’t gotten lost during all the craziness of the past few days.
Delia couldn’t say the same for hers. She’d had her bag with her when she was snatched, but she assumed August Sellers must have gotten rid of it, along with her ID and her phone.
That was going to be a real mess to sort out once she got back to Las Vegas.
“Yeah,” he said a moment later, just as Pru returned with her computer and then set it down on the coffee table. “Eiza Mendoza, 4611 Desert Sage Drive, Number 15.”
“Thanks,” Prudence replied, typing away furiously. “And yep — there it is. She’s now at 62 Seabreeze Way, Number 11.”
“Is her phone number the same?” Aaron asked. “Because if she hasn’t changed it, I can call her.”
Delia couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t reached out to his cousin before this if he had her information stored right in his phone.
Then again, back when Eiza had fled town, probably no one had known why she’d felt the need to bolt, and she could see how Aaron might have thought her sudden departure hadn’t been prompted by anything more than a bad breakup that had sent her in search of a change of scenery.
Besides, not all cousins were close. Hell, Delia didn’t do much more than exchange holiday cards with her cousins in Seattle and Chicago, so it wasn’t as if she could give Aaron Sanchez too much grief for not staying in touch with his cousin after she left Laughlin.
Pru looked back at her computer. “It’s definitely a Nevada area code, so it doesn’t look like her number was changed.”
“Great,” Caleb said. “Then Aaron can call his cousin and let her know the coast is clear, and she can come back and be the river guardian, and we can all get on with our lives.”
That seemed like the simplest solution. On the other hand, there was a strong chance Eiza wouldn’t want to return even after she learned that her reason for running off to San Diego was no longer a factor.
Delia hoped Eiza would understand why she needed to come back, though…
if for no other reason than she was pretty sure Caleb would hop over to Southern California and do whatever he had to in order to convince her that she needed to come back to Laughlin.
Delia definitely didn’t want him strong-arming Aaron’s cousin into compliance.
“Well, I’ll start with seeing if she’s okay,” Aaron said. “Is it all right if I go into one of the bedrooms so I can have some privacy?”
“Sure,” Caleb replied. “You can use the one I was sharing with Ty.”
He pointed toward a closed door on the opposite wall, and Aaron got up from the couch, and went inside, although he didn’t shut the door behind him.
Delia had halfway expected Ty to protest — he probably needed to lie down and rest — but he didn’t say anything.
In fact, the wound on his forehead already looked mostly healed, and when he pulled away the bag of ice, the puffiness and discoloration around his eye had diminished by at least half, maybe more.
His angelic blood speeding along the healing process?
It seemed as good an explanation as any.