Deja Who

  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 gues
t 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
closed.

  “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.