Paul was right about one thing. Jesse was waiting for me outside the restaurant.
I almost walked right past him . . . not because I wasn’t expecting to see him. I was. Or at least, I’d hoped he’d be there . . . but because when I noticed the dark figure standing in the shadows of the porte cochere, there was a red glow coming from its mouth.
“Jesse?” I nearly dropped my bag in astonishment. “Are you smoking?”
“Susannah.” He leaned forward to stamp out the cigarette in one of the fairy-lit planters. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
“We decided to skip dessert. Well, I decided to. Since when do you smoke?”
He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I don’t. Well, I do, obviously, sometimes. But not often. It sets a bad example for the patients.”
“Now who’s been keeping secrets?”
I studied him in the dim lighting. It was late, and so cold out the valets had gone inside to keep warm. We were alone in the cool night air. Now that he’d put out the cigarette, he had his hands shoved into his jacket pockets to keep warm, and was regarding me with a look I could only describe as wary.
“Well?” he asked, finally. “Where is he?”
“He’s paying his four-thousand-dollar dinner bill,” I said. “We’re leaving. Here.”
He looked down at the decorative plastic sack I held toward him as if it might contain explosives. “What is that?”
“It’s a homemade banana nut muffin. Mariner’s makes them for all its dinner guests. You’re supposed to have it for breakfast tomorrow. You left without yours.”
His mouth twisted into a grimace. “That’s all right. You can have mine.”
“What’s the matter, Jesse?” I asked lightly, dropping the muffin into my bag. “Don’t you care to remember your dining experience at Mariner’s?”
“I do not.”
“I don’t particularly want to remember it, either.” I held out my hand. “I’m sorry.”
For a few agonizing heartbeats, we stood there beneath the porte cochere, my hand stretched toward him across the red carpet. There was no sound except for the waves crashing against the beach a few dozen yards below.
What was happening? Was he going to just let me stand there forever with my hand out? Did he have any idea how hard it was for someone like me to apologize?
He did. Finally he lifted one of those hands from his pockets and wrapped his strong fingers around mine.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Susannah,” he said, his voice as warmly reassuring as his hand. “None of this was your fault. It was his.”
“Thanks, Jesse. You still should have had heard about it from me, though. I wanted to tell you, I was just—”
“Afraid I’d get angry,” Jesse said. “Yes, I know. But I should have trusted you, as well. Let’s just say we both made mistakes—not only tonight—and leave it at that.” He’d begun steering me toward Jake’s BMW, which I saw parked a dozen feet away. “Susannah, do you actually believe it?”
“What?”
“This curse. That—”
“Of course not,” I interrupted. “I don’t believe there’s a murderous bone in your body . . . toward anyone but Paul, any-way. But even if it’s true, we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“What?” He looked startled. “David said there was no way to break the curse. He said he’d been looking into it with some friend who—”
“It doesn’t matter. Ninety-nine Pine Crest Road isn’t getting torn down.”
His voice didn’t sound so warm anymore all of a sudden. “Why?”
“Because I own it.”
We’d reached Jake’s car, but Jesse didn’t move to pull the keys from his pocket. He did drop my hand, however. “You own it? How do you own it?”
“Well, I don’t own it quite yet,” I explained. “There’s still some paperwork I’ll have to sign. And apparently there are going to be some tax issues. I suspect I’ll get slammed pretty hard. But Paul’s going to sign the house over to me in exchange for my never revealing that he’s the triplets’ real father, and for my giving them mediator lessons there when they’re older.”
Jesse stared down at me in silence for several beats. It was a little hard to see his face, since the lighting in the parking lot wasn’t that great and the moon was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. But I had the impression that he wasn’t too happy.
This was confirmed when he let out a blistering curse (in Spanish, of course), and said, finally, “You’re the one who is possessed.”
“What?” I stared up at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Everyone is so worried that I have a dark side? You’re the one I think we should be worrying about.”
“Oh, come on, Jesse. You want us to be honest with each other? Then let’s be honest. You had to have suspected.”
“No, Susannah, the possibility of Paul Slater being your nieces’ father never entered my mind, and I’m wondering how you knew.”
“Because Lucia told me,” I said, before I could think.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw in his eyes the betrayal I’d inflicted. But it was too late to undo the damage.
“Lucia told you?” Jesse looked as if he’d been slapped. “And you never said a word to me?”
I backpedaled at once.
“I wasn’t going to say a word to anyone,” I insisted. “It seemed like the kind of thing that ought to be kept a secret—”
“From me? We’re supposed to be getting married!”
“What do you mean, supposed to be?” My heart twisted. “Jesse, I can understand you being angry with me, but don’t you think it’s a little extreme to get this angry—”
“I’m not angry with you, Susannah.” He dragged a hand frustratedly through his thick dark hair. “I . . . I don’t know what I am.”
“Use your words.” It was a phrase we’d employed frequently with the triplets.
“Fine.” He glared at me. “I’m disappointed.”
“Disappointed?”
I don’t think he could have chosen a word that hurt more. Lord knew Jesse and I had argued in the past, but he’d never before trotted out that particular weapon from his arsenal. It pierced my heart like the blade of a stiletto, the pain causing in me a wild desire to hurt him back.
“Are you kidding me? Oh, excuse me, Dr. de Silva. I didn’t mean to disappoint you. God knows I’ll never be as elegant a lady as your precious Miss Boyd. I thought I was doing you a favor tonight—”
“I’ve told you before I don’t want favors from you, Susannah,” he snarled. “I’ve never expected any and I’ve never asked for any. All I’ve ever wanted from you is the truth.”
“Which I’ve always given you, Jesse,” I said. “I admit I may not always have told you things as promptly as I should have, but I’ve always told you eventually.”
“Eventually? You mean years later, in the case of what happened between you and Slater on graduation night. And would I have even found out about your little plan for tonight if David hadn’t called?”
“Which little plan?”
His lips twitched cynically. “So many you can’t even keep track! The one involving the bargain you made with Slater.”
Oh, that plan.
“I was never actually going to go through with that bargain, Jesse. I was going to use the handcuffs and taser on him that you put in the car for Father Francisco. But then—”
“Nombre de Dios.” He looked heavenward. “I suppose because I showed up here, you couldn’t. And it’s a good thing that I did. A man like Slater, who has no scruples about using force against a woman, would only have enjoyed—”
“No. I used those on Delgado. Paul would have figured out what I was up to if I’d brought that bag up to his hotel room. I used the sleeping pills on him instead.”
Jesse shook his head incredulously. “And did you see how effective they were? He takes pills like those for recreation, Susannah!”
“I know.” My shoulders sagged. “I guess noncompliant living persons aren’t really my specialty.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Come here.”
I’d been studying my shoes. Now I looked up, feeling a twinge of hope. “What?”
“I said come here. You’re shivering.”
I took a step toward him, and he peeled off his suit jacket and laid it over my shoulders.
He might have been angry with me—and part demon—but unlike Paul, who was all human, he was still a gentleman. The heat from his body quickly penetrated mine, warming me all over.
More than the warmth from his jacket, however, the fresh clean scent of him and the brush of his fingers against my skin reminded me how much I loved him.
“Oh, Jesse,” I said. “Can we not fight? It’s the worst.”
He appeared unmoved. “No, Susannah. The worst is hearing that your future wife has volunteered to open a mediator school in her old home for the sole purpose of educating Paul Slater’s daughters.”
“Jesse, come on. You know that it isn’t what I meant. Not a school. I was thinking of the clinic we’ve always talked about opening. You’ll look after children’s physical well-being, and I’ll look after their mental health. You should see the promo design CeeCee came up with . . .”
“You can’t open a medical clinic in a residential neighborhood, Susannah.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, yeah, you’re probably right. We’ll just have to live there, then.”
“In the house where I died?”
“In the house where we fell in love. A house I scored for free, in case you missed that part.”
Any couple that had spent as much time as we had in a long-distance relationship (not only because we’d been away at different colleges, but because one of us had been undead for a part of the time we’d been together) was bound to fight—us maybe even more than other couples, given our peculiar situation . . .
But we’d never had a fight like this.
Resolving conflicts is what I do, however. There are lots of ways to resolve conflicts. Not all of them include weapons.
At least, not weapons that come in a sports bag.
And from the heat that I’d seen flare in Jesse’s eyes, I was beginning to get a good idea what kind of weapon would be best used to resolve this conflict. Fortunately, it was one I had in my arsenal. I’d been trying to use it on him, to little avail, for a long, long time.
Thanks to Paul, I now had a good idea why. It was the last thing he’d set out to do, but Paul had, in trying to split Jesse and me apart, handed me the key to finally bringing us together.
“Come on.” I reached out to seize him by the belt and was pleased when he allowed me to tug him a few inches toward me. “The best way to resolve this issue is to prove Paul wrong.”
The eyebrow with the crescent-shaped scar lifted. “In what way?”
“I think if there’s even the slightest doubt that there’s something wicked still lurking inside you,” I said, pulling him even closer, “we should work on unleashing it. It’s basically my duty as a mediator, in fact.”
He was now leaning against me, pressing me back against Jake’s car. I could feel the steady drum of his heartbeat through the material of his suit coat, along with the muscles of his thighs against mine. The heat he was giving off made it hard for me to believe there was any part of him at all that might possibly still be in the grave. But you never know.
His mouth twisted. “Susannah—”
“Shhh. I’ve been training for this for a long time.” I was still holding on to his belt buckle. “I’m ready to take on this very important mission.”
“Susannah.” He had a hand on either side of the car, trapping me within his long, muscular arms. “I know you’re joking, but this is serious. You wouldn’t have gone through all this if you didn’t at least partly believe—”
“I’m not joking, and it doesn’t matter what I believe.” I fiddled with his belt buckle. “What do you believe? If the real reason you’ve put off our making love for so long is fear that it might release something unholy, then I think we have an obligation to find out.” I kept my gaze on his, my fingers locked on his belt buckle. “The truth is, Jesse, I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”
He looked down at me with dark eyes that were filled with something unreadable.
“Perhaps,” he said, dropping his hands to my waist, “you’re right.”
My pulse gave an unsteady lurch.
“What I prescribe is that we both go back to the Crossing tonight,” I said, my voice suddenly a little hoarse, “and split a bottle of wine, and discuss how disappointing I’ve been, in great detail, in your bedroom. For therapeutic purposes I think we should do this unclothed.”
His response was the lopsided grin that I’d missed so much—no trace of cynicism in it this time.
“We could try that,” he said, ducking his head to press a kiss along my throat. “Or we could discuss some of your less disappointing qualities.”
I feigned shock. “Wait . . . I have some?”
“I can think of a few.” One of his hands had risen from my waist to linger dangerously close to my left breast.
“Name one. Let’s see what it unleashes.”
“Hmmm. Strong-willed?”
“Not very flattering. Try again.”
“Witty.”
“Oh, good.” The hand drifted closer to my breast as his lips traveled closer to my mouth. “How about another?”
“Beautiful.”
“I like it. What else?”
He said something unintelligible. As he’d continued to kiss me—one kiss for each word—I’d felt something through the front of his suit trousers that proved at least one part of him was decidedly not disappointed in me.
“We could discuss those things, too,” I said as both his hands now cupped my breasts, and his lips pressed hungrily against mine. “I’m open to winging it.”
“Susannah, Susannah, Susannah,” he whispered after a little while. “Te amo.”
“Me, too,” I whispered back, slipping my arms around his neck. The best part of fighting was always the making up afterward. “Back at you.”
He’d just given me one of those long, simmering kisses that, in my experience with him, generally led to even more long, simmering kisses, when the sound of someone clapping caused us both to start and turn around.
There was no telling how long he’d been standing there beneath the porte cochere, silently eavesdropping. The wind from the ocean was blowing the smoke from the cigar he was smoking in the opposite direction, which was why I hadn’t noticed it. I’m usually more sensitive to those kinds of things.
“Brilliant,” Paul said, still applauding, the cigar clenched between his teeth. “A stunning tour de force. I haven’t seen a performance that entertaining since . . . well, the porn in my room upstairs.”
I felt every one of Jesse’s muscles tense. I grasped the shoulders of his jacket beneath my fingers, knowing exactly what was about to happen.
“Jesse, don’t,” I warned, fear clenching my stomach. “He’s not worth—”
But it was too late.
He was on Paul in three strides. The sound of bone thudding against bone was sickening, almost the same sound the rifle butt had made as it connected with Delgado’s skull.
It’s odd what your consciousness focuses on in moments like that. Mine was seized by the cigar as it went flying from Paul’s mouth into the night air—sending a shower of red sparks after it—only to land on the concrete at my high-heeled feet, followed, a few seconds later, by Paul’s face, in a shower of equally red blood droplets.
“I warned you,” Jesse said to Paul, breathing heavily as he stepped over his inert body to take me by the arm and steer me away from the carnage. “But you wouldn’t listen.”
Paul’s only response was a groan as he struggled to sit up.
“Jesse.” I was completely shocked by the violence of what I’d just witnessed, and I’d witnessed quite a lot of violence that evening. It wasn’t hard for me to believe, in that moment, that Jesse did have a demon within him. He’d just unleashed it on the person he hated most, instead of those he loved. “You didn’t have to—”
“Yes,” he said in a voice that chilled me with its iciness. “I did.”
Then he pressed something into my hand. When I looked down to see what it was, I was surprised, in some dim part of my brain, to see the keys to the BMW.
“Go home.” Jesse was holding on to my shoulders and giving me careful verbal instructions. “Your home. Hurry. It will be better if you leave now.”
“Why?” I asked stupidly. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Call me? I don’t understand. Where are you going?”
But then I saw the valets come bursting out from the lobby, speaking rapidly and excitedly to Jesse in Spanish, and I heard the siren in the distance, and I saw the slow, evil smile on Paul’s face through all the blood as he sat up.
Suddenly I understood exactly why Jesse had given me his keys, and knew precisely where he was going.
All I could do was get into his car and drive home.