The school office was air-conditioned, but the shiver I felt down my spine had nothing to do with the fact that my supervisors (some of whom dress in religious habit) liked to keep the thermostat at a crisp sixty-five degrees.
“I’m sorry,” I said, glad the shiver didn’t show in my voice. “I’m actually very busy and important and don’t have time for rich jerks from my past who want to make amends. But I wish you luck on your path toward transformative enlightenment. Bye now.”
“Suze, wait. Don’t you want to save your house?”
“It isn’t mine anymore, remember? It’s yours. So I don’t care what happens to it.”
“Come on, Suze. This is the first time in six years you’ve actually called me back when I’ve reached out to you. I know you care—about the house.”
He was right. I’d been upset when Mom told me she and my stepdad, Andy, were selling it—much more upset than Jesse when he heard the news.
“It’s only a house, Susannah,” he’d said. “Your parents haven’t lived there in years, and neither have we. It has nothing to do with us.”
“How can you say that?” I’d cried. “That house has everything to do with us. If it weren’t for that house, we’d never have found one another!”
He’d laughed. “Maybe, querida. Then again, maybe not. I have a feeling I’d have found you, and you me, no matter where we were. That house is only a place, and not our place, not anymore. Our place is together, wherever we happen to be.”
Then he’d pulled me close and kissed me. It had been hard to feel bad about anything after that.
I guess I could understand why the big, rambling Victorian on 99 Pine Crest Road meant nothing to him. To Jesse, it’s the house in which he was killed.
To me, however, it was the house in which we’d met and slowly, over time and through many misunderstandings, fell in love—though it had seemed for years like a doomed romance: he was a Non-Compliant Deceased Person. I was a girl whose job it was to rid the world of his kind. It had ended up working out, but barely.
While the so-called “gift” of communicating with the dead might sound nifty, believe me, when a ghost shows up in your bedroom—even one who looks as good with his shirt off as Jesse does—the reality isn’t at all the way they portray it in the movies or on TV or the stupid new hit reality show Ghost Mediator (which is, I’m sorry to say, based on a best-selling video and role-playing game of the same name).
The “reality” is heartbreaking and sometimes quite violent . . . as my need for new boots illustrated.
Except, of course, that in the end it was my “gift” that had enabled me to meet and get to know Jesse, and even help return his soul to his corporal self, though my boss and fellow mediator, Mission Academy principal Father Dominic, likes to think that was “a miracle” we should be grateful for. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I believe in miracles. There’s a rational and scientific explanation for everything. Even the “gift” of seeing ghosts seems to have a genetic component. There’s probably a scientific explanation for what happened with Jesse, too.
One thing there’s no explanation for—at least that I’ve found so far—is Paul. Even though he’s the one who showed me the nifty time-jumping trick that eventually led to the “miracle” that brought Jesse back to the living from the dead, Paul didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. He did it out of a desire to get in my pants.
“Look, Paul,” I said. “You’re right. I do care. But about people, not houses. So why don’t you take your amends and your fancy new housing development and your private jet and stick them all up your external urethral orifice, which in case you don’t know is the medical term for dick hole. Adios, muchacho.”
I started to hang up until the sound of Paul’s laughter stopped me.
“Dick hole,” he repeated. “Really, Simon?”
I couldn’t help placing the phone to my ear again. “Yes, really. I’m highly educated in the correct medical terms for sexual organs now, since I’m engaged to a doctor. And that isn’t just where you can stick your amends, by the way, it’s also what you are.”
“Fine. But what about Jesse?”
“What about Jesse?”
“I could see you not caring about me, or about the house, but I think you’d be at least a little concerned about your boyfriend.”
“I am, but I fail to see what your tearing down my house has to do with him.”
“Only everything. Are you telling me you really don’t remember all those Egyptian funerary texts of Gramps’ that we used to study together after school? That hurts, Suze. That really hurts. Two mixed-up mediators, poring over ancient hieroglyphics . . . I thought we had something special.”
When you’re a regular girl and a guy is horny for you, he invites you over to his house after school to watch videos.
When you’re a mediator, he invites you over to study his grandfather’s ancient Egyptian funerary texts, so you can learn more about your calling.
Yeah. I was real popular in high school.
“What about them?” I demanded.
“Oh, not much. I just thought you’d remember what the Book of the Dead said about what happens when a dwelling place that was once haunted is demolished . . . how a demon disturbed from its final resting place will unleash the wrath of eternal hellfire upon all it encounters, cursing even those it once held dear with the rage of a thousand suns. That kind of thing.”
I swore—but silently, to myself.
Paul’s grandfather, in addition to being absurdly wealthy, had also been one of the world’s most preeminent Egyptologists. When it came to obscure, ancient curses written on crumbling pieces of papyrus, the guy was top of his field.
That’s why I was swearing. I’d been wrong: Paul wasn’t calling to make amends. This was something way, way worse.
“Nice try, Paul,” I said, attempting to keep my voice light and my heart rate steady. “Except I’m pretty sure that one was about mummies buried in pyramids, not ghosts who once haunted residential homes in Northern California. And while Jesse was never exactly an angel, he was no demon, either.”
“Maybe not to you. But he treated me like—”
“Because you were always trying to exorcise him out of existence. That would make anyone feel resentful. And 99 Pine Crest Road wasn’t his final resting place. Even before he became alive again, we found his remains and moved them.”
I couldn’t see Jesse’s headstone from my desk, but I knew it was sitting only a few dozen yards away, in the oldest part of the mission cemetery. On holy days of obligation, it’s the fifth graders’ job to leave carnations on it (as they do all the historic gravestones in the cemetery), as well as pull any weeds that might have sprouted from it.
The fact that there’s nothing buried under Jesse’s grave—since he happens to be alive and well—is something I don’t see any reason to let the fifth graders know. Kids benefit from being outdoors. Too much time playing video games has been shown to slow their social skills.
“So tearing down the place where he died isn’t going to hurt him,” I went on. “I’m not personally a fan of subdivisions, but hey, if that’s what floats your boat, go for it. Anything else? I really do have to go now, I’ve got a ton of things to do to get ready for the wedding.”
Paul laughed. Apparently my officious tone hadn’t fooled him.
“Oh, Suze. I love how so much in the world has changed, but not you. That boyfriend of yours haunted that crummy old house forever, waiting around for . . . just what was he waiting for, anyway? Murder victims are the most stubborn of all spooks to get rid of.” He said the word spooks the way someone in a detergent commercial would say the word stains. “All they want is justice—or, as in Jesse’s case, revenge.”
“That isn’t true,” I made the mistake of interrupting, and got rewarded by more of Paul’s derisive laughter.
“Oh, isn’t it? What was it you think he was waiting around for all those years, then, Suze? You?”
I felt my cheeks heat up again. “No.”
“Of course you do. But that love story of yours may not have such a happy ending after all.”
“Really, Paul? And why is that? Because of something written on a two-thousand-year-old papyrus scroll? I think you’ve been watching too many episodes of Ghost Mediator.”
His voice went cold. “I’m just telling you what the curse says—that restoring a soul to the body it once inhabited is a practice best left to the gods.”
“What are you even talking about? You’re the one who—”
“Suze, I only did what people like you and me are supposed to—attempt to help an unhappy soul pass on to his just rewards.”
“By sneaking back through time to keep him from dying in the first place so I’d never meet him?”
“Never mind what I did. Let’s talk about what you did. The curse goes on to say that any human who attempts to resurrect a corpse will be the first to suffer its wrath when the demon inside it is woken.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous, since there’s no demon inside Jesse, and I didn’t resurrect him. It was a miracle. Ask Father Dom.”
“Really, Suze? Since when did you start believing in miracles?” I hated that he knew me so well. “And when did you start believing that you could tinker around with space and time—and life and death—without having to pay the consequences? If you help to create a monster, you should be prepared for that monster to come back and bite you in the ass. Or are you completely unfamiliar with the entire Hollywood horror movie industry?”
“Fiction,” I said, my mouth dry. “Horror movies are fiction.”
“And the concept of good and evil? Is that fiction? Think about it, Simon. You can’t have one without the other. There has to be a balance. You got your good. Ghost Boy’s alive now, and giving back to the community with his healing hands . . . which makes me want to puke, by the way. But where’s the bad? Have you not noticed there’s something missing from this little miracle of yours?”
“Um,” I said, struggling to come up with a flippant reply.
Because he was right. As any Californian worth his flip-flops could tell you, you can’t have yin without yang, surf without sand, a latte without soy (because no one in California drinks full dairy, except for me, but I was born in New York City).
“I assume the bad is . . . you.” This was weak, but it was the best I could come up with, given the feeling of foreboding slowly creeping up my spine.
“Very funny, Suze. But you’re going to have to come up with something better. Humor doesn’t work as a defense against the forces of evil. Which are dwelling, as you very well know, inside your so-called miracle boy, just waiting for the chance to lash out and kill you and everyone you love for what you did.”
Now he’d gone too far. “I do not know that. How do you know that? You haven’t even seen him in six years. You don’t know anything about us. You can’t just come here and—”
“I don’t have to have seen him to know that he didn’t escape from having lived as a spook for a century and a half without having brushed up against some pretty malevolent shit. De Silva didn’t just walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Simon. He set up camp and toasted marshmallows there. No one can come out of something like that unscathed, however many kids he’s curing of cancer now, or however many wedding-gift registries his girlfriend’s signing up for in order to assure herself that everything’s just fine and dandy.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “And that’s not fair. You might as well be saying that anyone who’s ever suffered from any trauma is destined never to overcome it, no matter how hard they try.”
“Really? You’re going to fall back on grad school psychobabble?” His voice dripped with amusement. “I expected better from you. Can you honestly tell me, Simon, that when you look into de Silva’s big brown telenovela eyes, you never see any shadows there?”
“No. No, of course I do, sometimes, because he’s human, and human beings aren’t happy one hundred percent of the time.”
“Those aren’t the kind of shadows I’m talking about, and you know it.”
I realized I was squeezing my phone so hard an ugly red impression of its hard plastic casing had sunk into my skin. I had to switch hands.
Because he was right. I did see occasional glimpses of darkness in Jesse’s eyes . . . and not sadness, either.
And while I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Paul about Jesse’s desire to help heal the sick and most downtrodden of our society—it was an integral part of his personality—I did worry sometimes that the reason Jesse fought so desperately against death when he saw it coming for his weakest patients was that he feared it was also coming back for him . . .
Or, worse, that there was still a part of it inside him.
If what the Book of the Dead said was true, and Paul really did tear down 99 Pine Crest Road, there was no telling what that destruction might unleash.
And it didn’t seem likely we could count on yet another miracle to save us. A person is only given so many miracles in a lifetime, and it felt like Jesse and I had received more than our fair share.
If miracles even exist. Which I’m not saying they do.
As if he’d once again sensed what I was thinking, Paul chuckled. “See what I mean, Simon? You can take the boy out of the darkness, but you can’t take the darkness out of the boy.”
“Fine,” I said. “What do you want from me, exactly, in order to keep you from tearing down my house and releasing the Curse of the Papyrus, or whatever it is? Forgiveness? Great. I forgive you. Will you go now and leave me alone?”
“No, but thanks for the offer,” Paul said, smooth as silk. “And it’s called the Curse of the Dead. There’s no such thing as the Curse of the Papyrus. Curses are written on papyrus. They’re not—”
“Just tell me what you want, Paul.”
“I told you what I want. Another chance.”
“You’re going to have to elaborate. Another chance at what?”
“You. One night. If I can’t win you over from de Silva in one night, I’m not worthy of the name Slater.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
If I hadn’t felt so sick to my stomach, I’d have laughed. I tried not to let my conflicting feelings—scorn, fear, confusion—show in my voice. Paul fed off feelings the way black holes fed off stars.
“I’m not, actually,” he said. “I told you, it’s never a good idea to joke when the forces of evil are involved.”
“Paul. First of all, you can’t win back something you never had.”
“Suze, where is this coming from? I really thought you and I had something once. Are you honestly trying to tell me it was all in my head? Because I’ve had a lot of time to think it over, and I have to say, I don’t agree.”
“Second of all, I’m engaged. That means I’m off the market. And even if I wasn’t, threatening to tear down a multimillion-dollar house and release some kind of evil spirit that may or may not live inside my boyfriend is beneath even—”
He cut me off. “What do I care if you’re engaged? If Hector doesn’t put enough value on your relationship to bother consummating it”—Paul put an unpleasantly rolled trill on the second syllable of Jesse’s given name—“which I know he doesn’t, you’re still fair game as far as I’m concerned.”
“Wait.” I could hardly believe my ears. “That isn’t fair. Jesse’s Roman Catholic. Those are his beliefs.”
“And you and I are non-believers,” Paul pointed out. “So I don’t understand why you’d want to be with a guy who believes that—”
“I never said I was a non-believer. I believe in facts. And the fact is, I want to be with Jesse because he makes me feel like a better person than I suspect I actually am.”
There was a momentary silence from the other end of the phone. For a second or two I thought I might actually have gotten through to him, made him see that what he was doing was wrong. Paul did have some goodness in him—I knew, because I’d seen it in action once or twice. Even complete monsters can have one or two likable characteristics. Hitler liked dogs, for instance.
But unfortunately the good part of Paul was buried beneath so much narcissism and greed, it hardly ever got a chance to show itself, and now was no exception.
“Wow, Simon, that was a real Hallmark moment,” he snarked. “You know I could make you feel good—”
“Well, you’ve gotten off to an excellent start by threatening to turn my fiancé into a demon.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger, baby. I’m not the bad guy here. If I weren’t the one tearing down your house, it was going to be some other filthy-rich real-estate developer.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“What the hell, Simon? You should be grateful to me. I’m trying to do you a solid. Where is all this hostility coming from?”
“My heart.”
“This is bullshit.” Now Paul sounded pissed off. “Why should I have to respect some other guy’s beliefs? It’s called free enterprise. Since when can’t a man try to win something that’s still on the open market?”
“Did we just travel back through time again to the year 1850? Are women something you believe you can actually own?”
“Funny. I’ll give you that, you’ve always been funny, Simon. That’s the thing I’ve always liked best about you. Well, that, and your ass. You still have a great ass, don’t you? I tried to look up photos of you on social media, but you keep a surprisingly low profile. Oh, shit, wait, never mind. You’re a feminist, right? You probably think that ass remark was sexist.”
“That’s what you’re worried about? That I’m going to think you’re sexist? Not that I’m going to report you to the cops for trying to blackmail me into going out with you?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to find any wrongdoing on my part a little difficult to prove to the cops, Suze, even if you’ve been recording this phone call, which I’m guessing you only thought of doing just now. No monetary sums have been mentioned, and even if you call it coercion, I’m pretty sure you’re going to have a hard time explaining to the cops exactly how my tearing down a property I legally own is threatening you. Though if you mention the stuff about the ancient Egyptian funerary texts, it will probably give the po-po a good laugh.”
Unfortunately, he was right. That was the part that burned the most. Until he added, “Oh, and I’m going to expect a little more than you merely going out with me. Not to be crude, but virtue is hardly something I value. Unlike Hector, I’m not particularly marriage minded. But I guess being married to you might be fun . . . like being a storm chaser. You’d never know what to expect from day to day. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, our date—it will definitely have to include physical intimacy. Otherwise, how else will I be able to show you I’ve changed?”
I was so stunned, I was temporarily unable to form a reply, even a four-letter one, which for me was unusual.
“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve touched Goldschläger. I’ve vastly improved my technique. I won’t throw you against another wall.”
“Wow,” I said, when I could finally bring myself to speak. “What happened to you? When did you become so hard up for female company that you had to resort to sextortion? Have you ever thought of trying Tinder?”
He laughed. “Good one! See, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed us.”
“There was never any us, you perv. What happened between you and Kelly, anyway?”
“Kelly?” Paul hooted some more. “Kelly Prescott? I guess you haven’t been reading the online alumni newsletters, either.”
“No,” I admitted guiltily. The guilt was only because my best friend, CeeCee, wrote the newsletter for our graduating class, and I paid no attention to it.
“Well, let’s just say Kelly and I weren’t exactly meant for each other—not like you and me. But don’t worry about old Kel. She’s rebounded with some guy twice her age, but with twice as much money as I have—which is saying a lot, because as I mentioned, I’m flush. Kelly Prescott became Mrs. Kelly . . . Walters, I think is what it said on the announcement. She had some huge reception at the Pebble Beach resort. What, you weren’t invited?”
“I don’t recall. My social calendar’s pretty full these days.”
I was lying, of course. I’d been invited to Kelly’s wedding, but only because I’m related through marriage to her best friend Debbie, who’d been the maid of honor. I’d politely declined, citing a (fake) prior commitment, and no one had mentioned missing me.
Weddings aren’t really my thing, anyway. Large gatherings of the living tend to attract the attention of the undead, and I usually end up having to mediate NCDPs between swallows of beer.
My own wedding is going to be different. I’ll kick the butt of any deadhead who shows up there uninvited.
“So when are we having dinner?” Paul asked. “Or, more to the point, what comes after dinner. And I’m not talking about dessert.”
“When Jupiter aligns with planet Go Screw Yourself.”
“Aw, Suze. Your sexy pillow talk is what I’ve missed most about you. I’ll be in Carmel this weekend. I’ll text you the deets about where to meet up then. But really, it doesn’t sound like you’re taking anything I’ve just told you about the potential threat to your boyfriend’s life very seriously.”
“I do take it seriously. Seriously enough to be looking forward to seeing you as it will allow me to fulfill my long-held dream of sticking my foot up your ass.”
“You can put any body part of yours in any orifice of mine you please, Simon, so long as I get to do the same to you.”
I was so angry I suggested that he suck a piece of anatomy I technically don’t possess, since I’m female.
It was unfortunate that Sister Ernestine, the vice-principal, chose that particular moment to return from lunch.
“What did you say, Susannah?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” I hung up on Paul and stuffed my phone back into the pocket of my jeans. I was going to have to deal with him—and whether or not there was any truth to this “curse” he was talking about—at another time. “How was lunch, Sister?”
“We’ll discuss how much you owe the swear jar later, young lady. We have bigger problems at the moment.”
Did we ever. I figured that out as soon as I saw the dead girl behind her.