Page 33 of Devil in the Details (Vegas Slayers #2)

“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.”

“It’s still a kind of communication,” he responded. “So maybe it’s not so strange that it’s started to…branch out, for lack of a better way to put it.”

Delia didn’t think she liked the sound of that idea at all. Over the years, she’d gotten used to her quirky little talent, especially since she thought she could do some good with it. But she’d prefer to stay out of other people’s heads, thank you very much.

“I don’t know,” she said, knowing she probably sounded way too stubborn.

On the other hand, she guessed that a lot of people might have an issue with psychic talents popping up out of nowhere, so her defensiveness on the topic probably wasn’t so strange.

“I guess I find it hard to believe that my gift…if you want to call it that…could suddenly start morphing into something else.”

For a moment, Caleb didn’t reply. Instead, he ate a bite of shawarma, washed it down with some wine, and then said, “Back in California, there was this woman named Audrey Barrett.”

“An ex-girlfriend?” Delia asked with a curl of her lip.

“No,” he said, now looking amused. “She’s married to a guy named Michael Covenant. He’s a demonologist.”

“Ah,” Delia said, although she couldn’t really see where Caleb was going with this.

“Anyway,” he went on, expression undaunted, “she was a marriage and family counselor when she met Michael. Not a single drop of psychic blood, as far as she knew. But after she was around Michael and was exposed to a pretty crazy demon infestation, her talents began to develop. These days, she’s a powerful psychic. ”

For a moment, Delia could only stare back at Caleb. “So, what,” she said slowly, “you’re saying that because I’ve spent all this time around you, my latent psychic powers are beginning to emerge?”

“Something like that,” he replied. “I mean, I wouldn’t say they were totally latent, not when you’ve been communicating with spirits on some level for years. But it’s possible that being around me has made them stronger, made them something a little different from how they started out.”

Well, that was just fabulous. Her life had been humming along smoothly enough, maybe with a little weirdness thanks to the whole talking to ghosts thing, but overall just fine, and now she was supposed to accept that she could sometimes hear people’s thoughts?

“It’s obviously not constant,” he added, as though trying to comfort her. “I mean, can you hear what I’m thinking right now?”

Delia stared across the table at him. His whole attitude was utterly casual, so she didn’t think she’d be able to discern his thoughts merely from his posture.

“No,” she said after a moment.

“Well, then,” he replied, as if that solved everything, and then picked up the bottle of wine and poured them each a little more.

She didn’t think he’d proved anything at all. “What were you thinking?”

“That we should have ordered some baklava for dessert.”

For a second, she only gazed at him blankly, and then an unwilling chuckle emerged from her throat. “I suppose you have a point there.”

He grinned in response. “I’m sure what happened last night was kind of disconcerting. But it doesn’t look as if you’ve had some sort of ‘always on’ mind-reading talent descend on you, so I don’t think it’s so bad. And it could come in handy one day.”

Possible, like if the thoughts of one of the people he was trying to investigate came through loud and clear when she was standing nearby.

However, Delia thought the odds of that happening were fairly low, especially when you considered she’d been near Ty Carter for the greater part of fifteen minutes and hadn’t heard a single one of his thoughts.

Or maybe this weird offshoot of her supposed talent only worked properly after she’d had a couple of margaritas.

With so many variables involved, it was really hard to say for sure what had caused her to hear Aaron Sanchez’s voice in her head…

or what it would take for that mental power to wake up again.

“I suppose so,” she said, but wasn’t willing to allow anything more than that.

Caleb smiled again. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens next.”