Deadshifted: Edie Spence Series - Book 4 (E-book)

Edie Spence is in desperate need of a vacation-some R&R away from the craziness that shadows her as a nurse dealing with paranormal patients. But as she and her shapeshifter boyfriend, Asher, set sail on a cruise for Hawaii, they'll realize that seasickness isn't the only thing threatening their romantic getaway....

While on board, Asher comes face-to-face with Nathaniel, an old nemesis from his dark past. Asher is convinced he's up to no good...especially when passengers start to come down with a mysterious illness unlike anything Edie and Asher have ever encountered. Soon Edie finds herself fighting for the life of the one person who means the most to her—Asher. As chaos explodes, will Edie be able to save their future together...or will this close encounter with the paranormal side be her last?

I had a death grip on the balcony railing and was looking down at the ocean with trepidation. Our room on the Maraschino was six floors up, maybe four down to the water line. I couldn’t help but wonder just how deep the sea was after that.

"Edie, it's not like I booked us on the Titanic," Asher called from the doorway of our room. "Don't help or anything. I've totally got it all," Asher said behind me, bringing in our bags.

"Okay!" I said with feigned gullibility. He rolled his eyes with a good-natured grin, and tossed the last of our bags onto the bed. I let go of the rail and came over to him. "If you hadn't booked us such a long trip, I wouldn't have had to pack so much."

Asher spread his hands. "Well, if you'd just listened to my plan to keep you in here naked the whole time, I feel sure we could have gotten you down to one small carry-on. I kept telling you they have twenty-four hour room service."

His mystified look at how I could refute such logic made me laugh. He reached for me, and I stepped into his arms. "Think of it, Edie. A two-week trip from LA to Hawaii and back. No snow the whole way."

"Yay, adventure!" I said from the safety of his armpit.

"No. We've had enough of adventure. This"—he swept his arm grandly over the ocean, like he was Poseidon—"is a vacation."

I hadn't had a vacation in a very long time. The road trips my brother and I had been hauled on as a kid where we'd seen Mt. Rushmore hardly counted. I’d had time off before, but I’d never been on a real vacation.

And Asher was right about adventures. I didn’t need any more of those. I'd spent a year of my life knowing too much about the underworld of our hometown, being involved in what could charitably called hijinks or more reasonably called Machiavellian death plans orchestrated by the vampire, werewolf, and shapeshifter communities.

All of that had ended when I'd started dating Asher, seven months ago. In a way, the past seven months with him had already been the best and longest vacation in my whole life.

Asher spun me, and I yelped in surprise. We both landed on the bed—all white linens, with mountainous amounts of white pillows—and Asher pulled me closer to him. “Imagine it. Two weeks, no patients, no MRSA, no vampires—just you, me, and the sun."

I propped myself up and put my chin on his chest and squinted at him. “No norovirus?”

He laughed. “I may be a doctor, but I’m not God. No guarantees.”

His warm smile lit up the whole room, and I was so in love with him. I thought about telling him then, blurting out that I was late, but what if it was nothing? Or—what if by saying something, I jinxed it? Would that be a relief? I didn't even really know yet if I wanted to be pregnant, or even if I was. I was sort of happy, sort of scared, and everything was still sort of imaginary. But we were on board this ship for two weeks—I'd know by the end of our trip. My uterus would have to declare itself one way or the other by then.

He reached out and smoothed my brow with his thumb. "I love you. Everything's going to be perfect."

Yeah. It would be. Either way. I had him, and he had me. I tilted my head to kiss the inside of his palm. "I completely believe you."

The boat, or ship, whatever it was supposed to be properly called, left the dock with a lurch and began to rock beneath our feet. We gained speed as we left the harbor, and I heard the sound of waves slapping against its metal sides. It made noises like an older building in a strong wind.

Asher rolled out of bed and started to industriously unpack.

"Can't we go look around first?" Our luggage wasn't going anywhere, and Asher was right, I had packed a lot of stuff. It wasn't my fault there were two separate formal nights on board. Formal nights required a lot of extra provisioning.

"Hang on," he said, while pulling out a stack of jeans, shorts, and swim trunks. "There's a safety lecture coming up that we have to go to." He started putting his clothes away into the drawers beneath the desk diagonally across from our bed.

"How do you—" I was asking when a five-note chime crackled overhead from an intercom I hadn't noticed in the ceiling. Captain Ames introduced himself and welcomed us aboard at incredible volume, and then a scratchy recording instructing passengers to report to their designated safety zones began.

“I just know,” Asher said, answering my unfinished question when our instructions were over. “But after this, we can take a tour. I promise.”

I just know was Asher’s polite way of telling me he knew knew. From before, when he’d been a full-fledged shapeshifter.

"What?" Asher asked, from inside the closet, where he was hanging up his suit jackets.

"Nothing! Hey, can you hang up my dresses for me?"

"Sure."

I watched him, from my position sprawled across the arctic white bedspread. When he was done he came over to stand beside me on the bed, the red formal gown that I'd bought specifically for this trip hanging down in the open closet behind him.

"Hey," he said quietly. “What’s wrong? Are you sick or something?”

His question was maybe a little too close to the truth. I stood up quickly. "Just jet-lagged. Sorry." I smiled at him like I was carefree. "I'm ready now. Let's go."

And my heart melted when he smiled back at me.