PRAISE FOR MARYJANICE DAVIDSON AND HER UNDEAD NOVELS FEATURING BETSY TAYLOR, VAMPIRE QUEEN
“Delightful, wicked fun!”
—Christine Feehan, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Think Sex and the City . . . filled with demons and vampires.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Her] adventures are laugh-out-loud entertainment.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Be prepared to fall in love with the undead all over again!”
—Romance Reviews Today
“What can you say about a vampire whose loyalty can be bought by designer shoes? Can we say outrageous?”
—The Best Reviews
“[Her] prose zings from wisecrack to wisecrack.”
—Detroit Free Press
“[Davidson] has her own brand of wit and shocking surprises.”
—Darque Reviews
“Sexy, steamy, and laugh-out-loud funny.”
—Booklist
Titles by MaryJanice Davidson
DEJA WHO
UNDEAD AND UNWED
UNDEAD AND UNEMPLOYED
UNDEAD AND UNAPPRECIATED
UNDEAD AND UNRETURNABLE
UNDEAD AND UNPOPULAR
UNDEAD AND UNEASY
UNDEAD AND UNWORTHY
UNDEAD AND UNWELCOME
UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED
UNDEAD AND UNDERMINED
UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE
UNDEAD AND UNSURE
UNDEAD AND UNWARY
DERIK’S BANE
WOLF AT THE DOOR
SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES
SWIMMING WITHOUT A NET
FISH OUT OF WATER
Titles by MaryJanice Davidson and Anthony Alongi
JENNIFER SCALES AND THE ANCIENT FURNACE
JENNIFER SCALES AND THE MESSENGER OF LIGHT
THE SILVER MOON ELM: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL
SERAPH OF SORROW: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL
RISE OF THE POISON MOON: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL
EVANGELINA: A JENNIFER SCALES NOVEL
Anthologies
CRAVINGS
(with Laurell K. Hamilton, Rebecca York, Eileen Wilks)
BITE
(with Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Angela Knight, Vickie Taylor)
KICK ASS
(with Maggie Shayne, Angela Knight, Jacey Ford)
MEN AT WORK
(with Janelle Denison, Nina Bangs)
DEAD AND LOVING IT
SURF’S UP
(with Janelle Denison, Nina Bangs)
MYSTERIA
(with P. C. Cast, Gena Showalter, Susan Grant)
OVER THE MOON
(with Angela Knight, Virginia Kantra, Sunny)
DEMON’S DELIGHT
(with Emma Holly, Vickie Taylor, Catherine Spangler)
DEAD OVER HEELS
MYSTERIA LANE
(with P. C. Cast, Gena Showalter, Susan Grant)
MYSTERIA NIGHTS
(includes Mysteria and Mysteria Lane, with P. C. Cast, Susan Grant, Gena Showalter)
UNDERWATER LOVE
(includes Sleeping with the Fishes, Swimming Without a Net, and Fish out of Water)
DYING FOR YOU
UNDEAD AND UNDERWATER
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by MaryJanice Davidson
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN: 9780698135314
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Davidson, MaryJanice, author.
Title: Deja Who / MaryJanice Davidson.
Description: Berkley Sensation trade paperback edition. | New York, New York : Berkley Sensation, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038123 | ISBN 9780425270394
Subjects: LCSH: Reincarnation—Fiction. | Private investigators—Fiction. |
Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3604.A949 D45 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038123
Cover art by Blake Morrow
Cover design by Katie Anderson
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.
Version_1
For the victims like Mary Jane Kelly and Isabella Mowbray,
whose lot it was to suffer undeservedly.
And for the watchers of the world like Louise Élisabeth de Croÿ
and Mary Moormon, whose lot was to survive,
and tell us what they survived.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Sources for some of the historical figures mentioned in this book are Wikipedia, because nothing says exacting research more than relying on a resource anyone can change at any time. Oh, and Cracked.com. Because they are hilarious. I really need to pitch an article to those bums. To quote another historical figure (Madonna): “I am not ashamed.”
All the (fictional) characters’ past lives are based on (real) people, sometimes pretty roughly. Not much is known about Jack the Ripper’s fifth victim, Mary Jane Kelly; I researched the poor woman as well as I could, then made up a few things, such as how she may have felt about her hometown of Limerick, Ireland.
I took the same liberties with Mary Ann Cotton’s poor, doomed daughter, Isabella, whom she poisoned in 1867. Mary Ann killed thirteen people before Isabella, and seven more after, all family members. She explained this away by telling authorities how “weak stomachs” ran in the family. Nobody blinked when her husband(s) and stepchildren succumbed to the hereditary “weak stomach” they did not inherit. Interestingly, reporters caught on before the cops did. And by “interestingly,” I mean “how the hell did the cops not catch on to this?”
(I know, I know: I wasn’t there, I’m Monday morning quarterbacking, I’m neither a cop nor a doc, etc. And you’d be right; I wasn’t there, and I’m not a cop nor a doc. I didn’t even go to college. But come on. Hereditary? For victims who were not blood relatives and thus did not inherit jack shit? Come on. Gad, this happened over a century ago and I’m still super pissed about it.)
Albert DeSalvo did not, to the best of my knowledge, have a sibling; I made one up for the purposes of storytelling. And recent research, including DNA evidence, has suggested more than one person was responsible for the Boston Strangler murders, which screws up my book, so I’m ignoring the DNA evidence, which is my right as an American.
Leah makes mention of Lavinia Fisher, who is generally acknowledged as the first female mass murderer in the United States. Born in 1793, Lavinia and her husband opened a hotel in South Carolina, as people have a right to do, and started robbing and murdering their guests, which is frowned upon. The number of their victims is unknown, and their method of execution was pretty foolproof, to a point. Lavinia would ply the guest
with (poisoned) tea, and then her husband would creep up to the guest’s room after the poison had taken effect, stab him to make sure he was super-duper dead, and rob him. The plan broke down when they ran across a guest who hated tea and poured it out when Lavinia wasn’t looking. (D’oh!) It all went to hell from there, possibly literally in Lavinia’s case.
Interestingly, once she knew she was to be executed, Lavinia informed the authorities that they couldn’t hang a married woman. They agreed . . . and hanged her husband the day before. (The gentlemanly thing to do, I suppose. Apparently hanging a widow is a little more chivalrous.) Her last words were along the lines of, “If anyone has a message for the devil, give it to me.” So she was also something of a stickler for passing on messages to Satan.
The mayor of Boston is my homage to one of my favorite authors, Carl Hiaasen, who is funnier on his worst day than I am on my best. I fell in love with his characters years ago, in particular Clinton “Skink” Tyree, former governor of Florida, current full-time forest hermit, and my current literary crush. If you haven’t checked Hiaasen out, you’re missing some of the funniest lectures on how we’re ruining the planet.
Hiaasen is not a fan of urban development, and he’s cursed with the nutty idea that maybe every single square inch of Florida should not be made of concrete. He lets readers know that he disapproves of the daily raping of his home state, in the best possible way. Run, don’t walk. Start with Double Whammy or Striptease. Then become resigned to getting hooked and plowing through his backlist. Damn you, Hiaasen. Now I care.
All that to say the scandals that led the mayor of Boston to live in a Chicago public park are based on real-life “racist but not really” comments featuring David Howard, former head of the Office of Public Advocate, and Kenneth Mayfield, former Texas county commissioner. Both men were forced to make amends for 1) correctly using a scientific term as well as an adjective with Old Norse roots, and 2) not being racists. Seriously. Look it up if you don’t believe me. It’s as hilarious as it is depressing. I love when the media tells us what to think. I hate when we obey.
The college degrees Leah ponders in the first chapters actually exist. Yep. You can get a degree in growing marijuana and auctioneering.
The hospital Leah threatens a patient with, Chicago-Read, has a nasty rep in real life. Established in the mid-1800s, it was a hospital for (as they say in comic books) “the criminally insane” with all the shenanigans that implies. Corpses have gone missing. Patients have committed suicide, succeeding in large part due to the poor supervision. (The attending physician at the time of inpatient Martha Grote’s suicide declared he “would rather have lost a month’s salary than have this thing happen.” Really? A whole month? 1 month’s salary = 1 human life? That’s terrifying math, doc.) In 1901, nurses starved two patients to death. Unsanitary conditions and broken equipment have been thoroughly documented, and in 1993, it lost its accreditation. (Yeah, finally, right?)
All this to say Leah’s patient was quite right to be annoyed at the prospect of being admitted there, and Leah was quite wrong to threaten her with admission.
Also: no matter what nastiness I make up, there’s always, always something worse out there in the real world. Which is also why I don’t watch the news, vastly preferring to reread my Sandman graphic novels instead. Take from that what you will.
As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.
—GOETHE
“I think . . . in another lifetime I was probably Catherine the Great, or Francis of Assisi. I’m not sure which one. What do you think?”
“How come in former lifetimes, everybody is someone famous? I mean, how come nobody ever says they were Joe Schmo?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way, you fool!”
—ANNIE AND CRASH, BULL DURHAM
There is no death . . . the soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
—ISAAC SINGER
Tabula rasa: Latin; translation: “clean slate.”
Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil—coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
“Get out of here! Can’t you see we don’t want you anymore? Why can’t you go back where you came from? Now leave us alone!”
—GEORGE HENDERSON, HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS
CONTENTS
PRAISE FOR MARYJANICE DAVIDSON
TITLES BY MARYJANICE DAVIDSON
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
AUTHOR’S NOTE
EPIGRAPHS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
“Please. Please don’t kill me again.”
“. . . I have to.”
So he did.
ONE
Clinic notes: Alice Delaney, Chart #6116
Date: 9/17/2017
INS: Leah Nazir, ID# 29682
Cc: Dr. Riario, CF; Maura Hickman INS ID# 30199
Patient is a well-nourished Caucasian female who presents with anxiety, loss of appetite, fatigue, and night terrors.
“When are we going to figure out what’s wrong? This is our fifth session,” #6116 complained.
“It will be fine,” Leah assured her. Like Liz Lemon, if she rolled her eyes many more times, she risked her optic nerves cramping. “We’re getting close. We’re not filling a cavity; it’s not a one-trip fix. Now take a long deep breath.”
“Okay, but I don’t—”
“Less talking. More breathing.” She kept a smile on her face, which wasn’t easy.
Symptoms began thirteen days ago.
Yes indeed, because putting up with unpleasantness for even two weeks is asking too much. Ugh.
Referred by her GP Gary Riario. DOB 8/1/1993.
Gary, Gary. Not a fan of Insighters, unless he needed to refer. Then he was all Insighters, all the time. What secrets from sticky past lives are you hiding, Gary? “Feeling all right? Nod, don’t speak.”
Chart #6116 nodded, eyes cl
osed.
“Meds bothering you?” The hypnotic analgesic, applied five minutes before the session began, sometimes triggered nausea. And catastrophic brain injury. But that almost never happened with the new protocols in place. Acceptable risk.
Chart #6116 shook her head. Oh, well. There was always the chance she might throw up later. Dare to dream!
I used to be nice. Didn’t I? It was hard to remember. Once upon a time, she liked her patients. Tried to like them, at least.
She bent forward so she was almost looming over #6116 and adjusted the IV. Chart #6116 was lying snugly on the green padded couch, so plush a patient didn’t sink into it but was swallowed by the greedy sofa. A necessary evil, as the couch had built-in sensors that continually monitored blood pressure, heart rate, temperature. It was always good to have advance notice if a patient was about to stroke out. Being devoured by a couch did not go over well with her claustrophobes; she kept a cot for them, and monitored their vitals the old-fashioned way.
The diplomas and certificates on the wall behind her trumpeted her expertise via large font and dark dramatic lettering:
anesthesiology (The American Board of Anesthesiology hereby certifies that Leah Nazir, a licensed graduate of etc., etc.), library science (By virtue of the authority vested the trustees have conferred upon Leah Nazir etc., etc.), competitive reading (Leah Nazir earned this award for participation and completion of the fifth-grade reading club), and Insighting (Leah Nazir: Certified Insider, ID #29682).
The last one, she knew, either impressed or horrified people. The first one just impressed them. They were indifferent about her library science and fifth-grade reading awards. Maybe it was time to go back to school, get a doctorate in . . . God, anything that sounded like it could be good for a few laughs. Criminal psych. Cannabis cultivation. Fermentation sciences. Auctioneering. Gunsmithing?
“Who are you?”
“My name is Alice Delaney.”
“Why?”
“Why? It’s . . . it’s my name. Is why.” Chart #6116’s expression = pay attention, dumbass.
Chart #6116 was not yet down deep enough. She could only see herself, which was a large part of her problem. Problems.