Page 54 of Devil in the Details

Maybe that wasn’t precisely a curl of Caleb’s lip, but she could tell he wasn’t entirely impressed. “Heaven?”

“I don’t usually like to call it that,” Delia said, knowing she sounded way too prim. “It’s possible Heaven exists, but — ”

“Oh, it exists,” he cut in. “You can’t have Hell without Heaven. But I suppose I can see how there might be other planes between Heaven and here.”

It seemed he was okay with conceding the point, and she could only be glad of that. After the past couple of days and all their assorted weirdnesses, she wasn’t sure whether she was in the right mental place to be arguing for the existence of Heaven.

“Well, then,” she said, and reached for her glass of wine.

She knew she needed a drink.

“But there’s something else, right?” Caleb probed. “What happened with Ty Carter was a little strange, but I get the feeling that’s not the only thing you wanted to talk about.”

To be honest, she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it at all, even with someone as sympathetic about supernatural goings-on as Caleb Lockwood tended to be. But she’d invited him over for dinner, so it would be pretty stupid to turn evasive now.

“It kind of starts with Ty Carter, though,” Delia said. “Just as we were wrapping things up at the haunted house, he told me, ‘I think you might discover you have talents you didn’t even know existed.’ At the time, I didn’t make much of it, but later that night….”

She let the words trail off, since she wasn’t sure how she could even begin to explain the way she might have heard Aaron Sanchez’s thoughts as they were standing next to her car in the parking garage.

“What happened?” Caleb asked. He sounded almost gentle, and she wondered what her face looked like right then.

Worried, probably.

“It was…strange,” she said. “We were done with our drinks and appetizers, and then Aaron walked me to my car. Up until then, the evening had been almost too normal, but….”

Once again, she found herself wondering if she should complete the sentence, especially since she couldn’t really describe what Aaron had been thinking if she didn’t also add at least a few details about what had led up to that moment.

Caleb still sat there quietly, one hand resting on the tabletop near his wine glass, although he didn’t reach for it. “But…?”

“We had a nice time, I suppose,” she said. “I mean, we got along okay, but I could tell there wasn’t any real spark, so I knew we wouldn’t be having a follow-up date. When Aaron walked me to my car, I got the feeling he wanted a goodnight kiss, and I was thinking about how to fend him off. So I told him I didn’t kiss on the first date, and then I heard it in my head, clear as if he’d said it to me directly. ‘You really think you’re all that?’”

Just uttering the words out loud made heat rush to her cheeks, but at least she’d gotten the worst part over with.

“Is that really true?” Caleb asked. His expression was so neutral right then that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Which maybe was a good thing.

“Is what true?” Delia returned. “Because yes, I heard Aaron Sanchez’s voice in my head as clear as if he’d spoken to me.”

Caleb’s mouth quirked. “No, I mean that you don’t kiss on the first date.”

She set down her fork and shot him what she hoped was a sufficiently withering stare. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“I don’t know about ‘relevant,’” he said easily. “But it’s interesting.”

Deciding she really didn’t want to go down that road with Caleb Lockwood, she said, “So, you don’t have an opinion about the way I heard his thoughts?”

“I’m not denying that it’s a little odd,” he replied. “Or maybe not. That is, I’ve heard of things like this happening before.”

“‘Things’?” she echoed.

“Psychic powers developing out of nowhere, that kind of stuff,” he said, calm as if they were merely talking about allergies developing in midlife, the way they had for Delia’s mother.

“I’m not psychic,” Delia said. The words might have come out a little too harsh, but she didn’t think anyone would blame her for that.

Caleb appeared singularly unconvinced. He scooped some more shawarma onto his plate from the takeout container before saying, “Some people would argue that of course you’re psychic. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to communicate with ghosts the way you do.”

“It’s not like we’re having full-on conversations,” she returned. “I just sort of…persuade them.”

---