Dead on Delivery

Table of Contents

 

“Riveting adventure . . . One of the best books I’ve read in years! Melina is an edgy, kick-ass protagonist.”

—Alyssa Day,
New York Times
bestselling author

“A strong and sassy heroine shines in this exciting, sexy and hilarious debut. Melina’s charisma and wit, interesting side characters and dashes of hot romance will keep readers wanting more.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Amusing urban fantasy . . . Fun [and] lighthearted.”

—
Midwest Book Review

“Rendahl has a really distinctive voice. Her writing’s nicely detailed, and with a little sarcastic wit thrown in, I felt [it] was great . . . Fantastic.”

—
Night Owl Reviews

“Her first stab at the paranormal world is off to an excellent start. She comes out with the big guns, ready to take gold! This book will have you screaming for more.”

—
Manic Readers

“[A] highly entertaining start to a new series . . . Melina is a sarcastic yet lovable heroine . . . Rendahl has a winner on her hands!”

—
Romantic Times

 

DON’T KILL THE MESSENGER
DEAD ON DELIVERY

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2011 by Eileen Rendahl.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. BERKLEY
^®
SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition / March 2011

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Rendahl, Eileen.

Dead on delivery / Eileen Rendahl.—Berkley Sensation trade pbk. ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47870-7

1. Messengers—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3618.E5745D43 2011

813’.6—dc22 2010045589

 

 

I lead a charmed life. At no time is it more evident to me than when I set about to write acknowledgments. My life is full of people who sustain me and give me joy and make sure that I’m never lonely even when following a somewhat solitary pursuit. My family and my friends are absolutely the best. Thank you to everyone who listened to me, laughed with me, drank with me, biked with me and ran with me.

A huge thank-you to the very patient Leis Pederson, who suffered with me through some missteps in the early production of this book, and as always, I don’t know where I’d be without the guidance and support of my agent, Pamela Ahearn.

“DO YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN THIS?” TED DROPPED A FOLDED copy of that morning’s
Sacramento Bee
onto my kitchen counter and jabbed a finger at an article in the Our Region section.

I picked up the paper and looked at the article. Some dude in Elmville had died under suspicious circumstances. Crap. Another one had bitten the dust. Neil Bossard was the second person I’d made a delivery to in Elmville in the past two months who had ended up dead. Coincidence? Possibly. I wasn’t crazy about the odds, though. Elmville was tiny. It had been weird enough to make two deliveries there within such a short time period—and both of them to ’Danes, to boot. To have both of the recipients wind up dead? Not likely to be a wacky fluke. Still, I didn’t know for sure and there was no point in upsetting Ted before I knew that there was something to get upset about.

“Why do you ask?” I avoided looking up into his cornflower blue eyes. Not because I couldn’t look directly into them and lie, though. I could do it. Probably. The real problem was the way my heart did that weird flip-flop thing in my chest every time I looked directly into his baby blues. The flip-flop thing made it hard to lie. I needed to focus to lie and Ted was nothing if not distracting to me.

“The case is weird, which always makes me think of you.” He took a step closer and lifted my chin. A smile quirked at the corner of his lips.

Now I had no choice but to look into his eyes and there went the damn flip-flop. “Is that a nice way to talk to your girlfriend?” That gave me a shiver. I was someone’s girlfriend. Who’d a thunk it was possible? It never had been before.

I am twenty-six years old, nearly twenty-seven. Ted Goodnight is my first boyfriend ever. There have been a few dalliances before but never a boyfriend. I still can’t decide if it’s the best good fortune that has ever befallen me or the worst mistake of my short life, and there have been some doozies, starting with the day I decided to sneak into the swimming pool behind my mother’s back and drowned. That was pretty much the mother of all mistakes. It’s the one that started me down the road to all the rest.

On that day, I was legally dead for three minutes. They resuscitated me and everyone said it was a miracle that no harm had been done. The doctors couldn’t detect any brain damage. I would be “normal.” Ha! If only they’d known. Apparently, the ability to sense supernatural creatures and see all the crazy-ass paranormal doings that go on around most people without them noticing doesn’t show up on an MRI.

No other guy has been able to get past the freaky things that happen around me or my crazy schedule or what my mother refers to as my “moods.” In fact, the only guy I can remember making it past two dates was David Bounds in eleventh grade and he was bipolar. Even he couldn’t hang in there with me, not even with medication to help him.

I’m not saying Ted hasn’t had his occasional problems with who and what I am. The first time he saw me truly in action almost killed our relationship before it ever really started. Maybe it’s because he grew up in such a crazy family (seriously clinically crazy). Maybe it’s because he’s amazingly accepting. Maybe he really, really likes me. I am the Sally Field of Messengers. Could be worse.

Whatever it is, it’s working and while I am not the type to skip joyfully through fields of daisies, I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I do try to keep most of the woo-woo things I’m up to separate from him so I don’t freak him out too much, but I’m used to compartmentalizing.

The big drawback to having Ted Goodnight as a boyfriend? He’s a cop.

I have always mistrusted cops. Cops mean trouble. It’s not that I’m into breaking the law; it’s the order part of the police department that I have issues with. Or maybe order has issues with me. My very existence is about the disorderliness of things. I don’t fit neatly anywhere. Trust me, I wish I did. I think I’ve spent most of my life wishing that, but this beggar isn’t riding and I never quite belong anywhere. All of which makes it even more interesting that I’m now dating a cop, especially one who I’m pretty sure wanted to hear that I had nothing to do with some guy running into traffic on Highway 120 and being turned into road pizza by a semi, which was exactly what had happened to Neil Bossard. According to the article, they didn’t know what he was doing running onto the highway. I didn’t either. I didn’t like it, though.

“Looks like a traffic accident to me, Ted. What could I possibly have to do with it?” It did look like a traffic accident, but one that made me a little bit itchy and uncomfortable.

“Not every detail made it into the paper. The local cops think that maybe somebody was chasing the guy. Or, at least, he thought he was being chased. Someone saw him running down the road, screaming that something was after him, but he was all alone. Before the witness could do anything to help, the dude had run out onto the road and gotten creamed by a big rig.” Ted smoothed my hair back behind my ear and I felt a little gooey inside. “They were canvassing the guy’s neighborhood to see if they could figure out who might have been chasing him and somebody mentioned seeing a car that sounds an awful lot like yours. Weird plus an old Buick tends to equal you in my book, babe.”

Fabulous. What more could I want than to be the solution to a funky equation? He wasn’t wrong, though. I weighed my options. I could lie. Chances were that this whole thing would completely blow over and he’d never know. Of course, if it didn’t and Ted found out that I’d lied to him ... well, suffice it to say, I didn’t think he’d be pleased. I could tell him the truth, as far as I knew it, which really wasn’t all that far. I didn’t have to mention Kurt Rawley, the other guy I’d made a delivery to who was now six feet under.

Come to think of it, his death had been weird as well. Had it been arson? I remember it had something to do with a fire.

“I made a delivery to him,” I blurted. “It was days ago.”

“What was it?” Ted leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

I shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“You don’t look?” He looked incredulous.

I shook my head. It wasn’t a rule, as far as I knew. Nobody had ever told me I couldn’t look inside the packages that were left for me to deliver. I chose not to peek. Peeking signaled curiosity and perhaps an interest in becoming involved. I generally had neither. Or, at least, I hadn’t had.

If someone handed me something, all unwrapped, then I knew what it was. If someone had taken the trouble to put it in an envelope or wrap it up in a little box, like whoever had needed me to make a delivery to Neil Bossard had, then I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Or, at least, I didn’t want to care. With information comes responsibility and I’ve spent almost twenty-seven years avoiding as much of that as I can and now have more than I ever wanted.

My last experience in getting involved with a delivery hadn’t gone well. I’d lost someone very dear to me and damn near gotten killed myself. It didn’t make me want to change my habits now. The fact that this particular package had given off a little hum of power didn’t exactly make me more interested in opening it. It did needle at me a little bit, though.

“How did you know where to take it?” He wasn’t quite using his cop voice on me, but it was getting close. I liked that about as much as I liked it when my vampire buddy used his vampire voice on me, which was not much.

I smiled at him, even though I didn’t totally mean it, and said, “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it was some special magical divining process. Maybe it spoke to me. Or maybe I used the address that was written on the package.”