Darkest Hour Read online

  Jesse never called me Suze, either.

  “Jack’s a mediator,” I said. “He’s eight years old. I’ve been babysitting for him up at the resort.”

  Father Dominic looked surprised. “A mediator? Really? How extraordinary.” Then his look of surprise turned back to one of concern. “You ought to have called me straightaway, Susannah, the moment you realized it. There aren’t many mediators in the world. I would like very much to speak to him. Show him the ropes, as it were. You know, there’s such a lot to learn for a young mediator. It mightn’t be wise for you to undertake educating one, Susannah, given your own comparative youth….”

  “Yeah,” I said with a bitter laugh. To my bemusement, the sound caught in my throat on a sort of sob. “You can say that again.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I was crying again.

  What was this, anyway? I mean, this crying thing? I go for months dry as a bone, and then all of a sudden, I’m weeping at the drop of a hat.

  “Susannah.” Father Dominic reached out and grabbed my arm. He gave me a little shake. I could tell by his expression he was really astonished. Like I said, I never cry. “Susannah, what is it? Are you crying, Susannah?”

  I could only nod.

  “But why, Susannah?” Father Dom asked urgently. “Why? Jesse? It’s a hard thing, and I know you’ll miss him, but—”

  “You don’t understand,” I blurted. I was having trouble seeing. Everything had gotten very fuzzy. I couldn’t see my bed or even the patterns on the pillows on the window seat, and they were much closer. I raised my hands to my face, thinking maybe Father Dom had been right, and that I should get that X ray after all. Something was evidently wrong with my vision.

  But when my fingers encountered wetness on my cheeks, I was forced to admit the truth. There wasn’t anything wrong with my vision. My eyes were simply overflowing with tears.

  “Oh, Father,” I said, and for the second time in half an hour, I threw my arms around a priest’s neck. My forehead collided with his glasses, and they went all crooked. To say that Father Dominic was startled by this gesture would be an understatement of the grossest kind.

  But judging by the way he froze up when I uttered them, he was even more surprised by the words that came out of my mouth.

  “He exorcised Jesse, Father D. Maria de Silva tricked him into doing it. She told Jack that Jesse had been b-bothering me, and that he’d b-be doing me a favor, getting rid of him. Oh, Father Dominic—” My voice rose to a wail. “What am I going to do?”

  Poor Father Dominic. I highly doubt he has hysterically weeping women throwing their arms around him all that often. You can totally tell. He didn’t know how to react at all. I mean, he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Shhh, everything will be all right,” and stuff, but you could tell he was really uncomfortable. I guess he was afraid Andy was going to walk by and think I was crying because of something Father Dominic had said.

  Which was ridiculous, of course. As if anything anybody said could make me cry.

  After a few minutes of Father Dom saying, “Shhh, everything will be all right,” and being all stiff, I couldn’t help laughing.

  Seriously. I mean, it was funny. In a sad, pathetic kind of way.

  “Father Dominic,” I said, pulling away and looking up at him through my streaming eyes. “Are you joking? Everything is not going to be all right. Okay? Nothing is ever going to be all right ever again.”

  Father Dominic might not have been a very good hugger, but he was all there in the hanky department. He fished his out and started dab-bing my face with it. I’d seen him do this before with the little kids at school, the kindergartners who were crying over dropped ice-cream cones or whatever. He really had the whole dabbing thing down.

  “Now, Susannah,” he said as he dabbed. “That isn’t true. You know that isn’t true.”

  “Father,” I said. “I know it is true. Jesse is gone, and it is totally my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?” Father Dominic looked down at me disapprovingly. “Susannah, it isn’t your fault at all.”

  “Yes, it is. You said so yourself. I should have called you the minute I realized the truth about Jack. But I didn’t. I thought I could handle him myself. I thought it was no big deal. And now look what happened. Jesse’s gone. Forever.”

  “It is a tragedy,” Father Dominic said. “I cannot think of a greater injustice. Jesse was a very good friend to you…to both of us. But the fact is, Susannah”—He’d managed to clean up almost all my tears, and now he put his handkerchief away—“he spent a good many years wandering in a sort of half-life. Now his struggles are over, and he can perhaps begin to enjoy his just rewards.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. What was he talking about?

  He must have read the skepticism in my face, since he said, “Well, think about it, Susannah. For one hundred and fifty years, Jesse was trapped in a sort of netherworld between his past life and his next. Though you can lament the manner in which it happened, he has, at last, made the leap to his final destination—”

  I jerked away from Father D. In fact, I jerked away from the window seat. I stood up, strode away a few paces, and then whirled around, astounded by what I’d just heard.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Jesse was here for a reason. I don’t know what it was, and I’m not sure he did either. But whatever it was, he was supposed to stay here, in this ‘netherworld,’ until he’d worked it out. Now he’ll never be able to. Now he’ll never know why he was here for all that time.”

  “I understand that, Susannah,” Father Dominic said in a voice I found infuriatingly calm. “And as I said before, it is unfortunate—a tragedy. But regardless, Jesse has moved on, and we should at least be glad he’s found eternal peace—”

  “Oh my God!” I was shouting again, but I didn’t care. I was enraged. “Eternal peace? How do you know that’s what he’s found? You can’t know that.”

  “No,” Father Dominic said. I could tell he was choosing his words with care now. Like I was a bomb that might go off if he used the wrong one.

  “You’re right,” Father D. said quietly. “I can’t know that. But that is the difference between you and me, Susannah. You see, I have faith.”

  I was across the room in three quick strides. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I certainly wasn’t going to hit him. I mean, the trigger to my anger mechanism might be oversensitive, but I’m not about to go around punching priests. Well, at least not Father Dom. He is my homeboy, as we used to say back in Brooklyn.

  Still, I think I was going to shake him. I was going to put my hands on his shoulders and attempt to shake some sense in him, since reasoning did not appear to be working. I mean, seriously, faith. Faith! As if faith ever worked better than a good ass-kicking.

  But before I could lay a hand on him, I heard someone behind me clear his throat. I looked around, and there was Andy, in his tool belt and jeans and a T-shirt that said WELCOME TO DUCK BILL FLATS, standing in my open doorway and looking concerned.

  “Suze,” he said. “Father Dominic. Is everything all right in here? I thought I heard some shouting.”

  Father Dominic stood up.

  “Yes,” he said, looking grave. “Well, Susannah is—and very rightly, too—concerned about the, er, unfortunate discovery in your backyard yesterday. She has asked me, Andrew, to perform a house blessing and I, of course, said I would. I’ve left my Bible in the car, however…. ”

  Andy perked right up. “You want me to go get it for you, Father?” he asked.

  “Oh, that would be wonderful, Andrew,” FatherD. said. “Just wonderful. It should be on the front seat. If you could bring that to me, I’ll get to work straightaway.”

  “No problem, Father,” Andy said, and he went away, looking all happy. Which is easy to be if you, like Andy, haven’t the slightest clue what’s going on in your own house. I mean, Andy doesn’t believe. He doesn’t know there’s a plane of existence other than this one. He d
oesn’t know people from that other plane are trying to kill me.

  Or that I was once in love with the guy whose bones he dug up yesterday.

  “Father D.,” I said, the minute I heard Andy’s feet hit the stairs.

  “Susannah,” he said tiredly. He was trying to head me off at the pass, I could tell. “I understand how difficult this is for you. Jesse was very special. I know he meant a great deal to you—”

  I couldn’t believe this. “Father D.—”

  “—but the fact is, Susannah, Jesse is in a better place now.” Father Dominic, as he spoke, walked across my room, stooped down by the door, and pulled out a black bag he’d apparently set down in the hallway. He lifted the bag, set it down again on my unmade bed, and opened it. Then he started taking things out of it.

  “You and I,” he went on, “are just going to have faith in that thought, and move on.”

  I put my hands on my hips. I don’t know if it was the concussion or the fact that my boyfriend had been exorcised, but my bitch quotient was set on high, I think.

  “I have faith, Father Dom,” I informed him. “I have plenty of faith. I have faith in myself, and I have faith in you. That’s how I know that we can fix this.”

  Father Dominic’s baby blues widened behind the lenses of his bifocals as he lifted a purple ribbony thing to his lips, kissed it, then slipped it around his neck. “Fix this? Fix what? Whatever do you mean, Susannah?”

  “You know what I mean,” I said, because he did.

  “I—” Father Dominic took a metal thing that looked like an ice-cream scooper out of his bag, along with a jar of what I could only suppose was holy water. “I realize, of course,” he said, “that Maria de Silva Diego will have to be dealt with. That is troubling, but I think you and I are both perfectly well equipped to handle the situation. And the boy, Jack, will have to be seen to and adequately indoctrinated in the appropriate methods of mediation, of which exorcism, as you know, should only be used as a last resort. But—”

  “That’s not it,” I said.

  Father Dominic looked up from his house blessing preparation. “It isn’t?” he echoed questioningly.

  “No,” I repeated. “And don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  He blinked a few times, reminding me of Clive Clemmings.

  “I can’t say that I do know, Susannah,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Getting him back,” I said.

  “Getting who back, Susannah?” Father Dom’s all-night driving marathon was starting to show. He looked tired. He was a handsome guy, for someone in his sixties. I was pretty sure half the nuns and most of the female portion of the Mission’s congregation were in love with him. Not that Father D. would ever notice. The knowledge that he was a middle-aged hottie would only embarrass Father D.

  “You know who,” I said.

  “Jesse? Getting Jesse back?” Father Dominic stood there, the stole around his neck and the dipper thing in one hand. He looked bewildered. “Susannah, you know as well as I do that once spirits find their way out of this world, we lose all contact with them. They’re gone. They’ve moved on.”

  “I know. I didn’t say it was going to be easy. In fact, I can think of only one way to do it, and even then, well, it’ll be risky. But with your help, Father D., it just might work.”

  “My help?” Father Dominic looked confused. “My help with what?”

  “Father D.,” I said. “I want you to exorcise me.”

  chapter

  twelve

  “For the last time, Susannah,” Father Dominic said. This time he pounded on the steering wheel for emphasis as he said it. “What you are asking is impossible.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Hello? What happened to faith? I thought if you had faith, anything was possible.”

  Father D. didn’t like having his own words tossed back at him. I could tell by the way he was grimacing at the reflection of the cars behind us in his rearview mirror.

  “Then let me say that what you are suggesting has a very unlikely chance of succeeding.” Driving in Carmel-by-the-Sea is no joke, since the houses have no numbers, and the tourists can’t, for the life of them, figure out where they’re going. And the traffic is, of course, ninety-eight percent tourists. Father D. was frustrated enough by our efforts to get where we were going. My announcement back in my bedroom that I wanted him to exorcise me wasn’t helping his mood much, either.

  “Not to mention the fact that it is unethical, immoral, and probably quite dangerous,” he concluded, as he waved at a minivan to go ahead and go around us.

  “Right,” I said. “But it’s not impossible.”

  “You seem to be forgetting something,” FatherD. said. “You are not a ghost, nor are you possessed by one.”

  “I know. But I have a spirit, right? I mean, a soul. So why can’t you exorcise it? Then I can go, you know, have a look around, see if I can find him, and if I do, bring him back.” I added as an afterthought, “If he wants to come, of course.”

  “Susannah.” Father Dom was really fed up with me, you could totally tell. It had been all right, back at the house, when I’d been crying and everything. But then I’d gotten this terrific idea.

  Only Father Dominic didn’t think the idea was so terrific, see. I personally found it brilliant. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. I guess my brain had gotten a little squashed, what with the concussion.

  But there was no reason why my plan shouldn’t work. No reason at all.

  Except that Father Dominic would have no part of it.

  “No,” he said. Which was what he’d been saying ever since I first mentioned it. “What you are suggesting, Susannah, has never been done before. There isn’t the slightest guarantee it will work. Or that, if it does, you will be able to return to your body.”

  “That,” I said calmly, “is where the rope comes in.”

  “No!” Father Dominic shouted.

  He had to slam on the brakes at that very moment because a tour bus came barreling along from out of nowhere, and, there being no traffic lights in downtown Carmel, there were often differences of opinion over whose turn it was at four-way stops. I heard the holy water, still in its jar in his black bag on the backseat, slosh around.

  You wouldn’t have thought there’d be any left, what with the dousing Father D. had given our house. That stuff had been seriously flying. I hoped he was right about Maria and Felix being too Catholic to dare to cross the threshold of a newly blessed home. Because if he was wrong, I’d pretty much made a big ass out of myself in front of Dopey for no reason. Dopey had been all, “Whatcha doing that for, Father D.?” when Father Dominic got to his room with the aspergillum, which turned out to be what the dippy thing was called.

  “Because your sister asked me to,” Father Dom replied as he flicked holy water all over Dopey’s weight bench—probably the only time that thing had ever come close to being cleaned.

  “Suze asked you to bless my room?” I could hear Dopey’s voice all the way down the hall, in my own room. I’m sure neither of them knew I was listening.

  “She asked me to bless the house,” Father Dominic said. “She was very disturbed by the discovery of the skeleton in your backyard, as I’m sure you know. I would greatly appreciate it if you would show her a little extra kindness for the next few days, Bradley.”

  Bradley! In my room, I started cracking up. Bradley! Who knew?

  I don’t know what Dopey said in reply to Father Dom’s suggestion that he be nicer to me, because I took the opportunity to shower and change into civilized clothing. I figured twelve hours was more than enough to go around in sweats. Any more than that and you are, quite frankly, wallowing in your own sorrow. Jesse would not want my grieving over him to affect my by-now-famous sense of fashion.

  Besides, I had a plan.

  So it was that, showered, made up, and attired in what I considered to be the height of mediator chic in the form of a slip dress an
d sandals, I felt prepared to take on not only the minions of Satan but the staff at the Carmel Pine Cone, in front of whose office Father D. had promised to drop me. I had not only figured out, you see, a way to get Jesse back: I’d figured out a way to avenge Clive Clemmings’s death, not to mention his grandfather’s.

  Oh, yes. I still had it. But good.

  “It is out of the question, Susannah,” Father Dominic said. “So put the idea from your head. Wherever he is now, Jesse is in a better place than he was. Let him rest there.”

  “Fine,” I said. We pulled up in front of a low building, heavily shaded by pine trees. The offices of the local rag.

  “Fine,” Father Dominic said, putting his car into park. “I’ll wait out here for you. It would probably be better if I didn’t come in, I suppose.”

  “Probably,” I said. “And there’s no need to wait. I’ll find my own way home.” I undid my seat belt.

  “Susannah,” Father Dominic said.

  I lifted my sunglasses and peered at him. “Yes?”

  “I’ll wait here for you,” he said. “We still have a good deal of work to do, you and I.”

  I screwed up my face. “We do?”

  “Maria and Diego,” Father D. reminded me gently. “You are protected from them at home now, but they are still at large and will, I think, be excessively angry when they realize you are not dead.”—I had finally broken down and explained to him what had happened to my head—“We need to make preparations, you and I, to deal with them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That.”

  I had, of course, forgotten all about it. Not because I did not feel Maria and her husband needed to be dealt with, but because I knew my idea of dealing with them and Father D.’s idea were not exactly going to gel. I mean, priests aren’t really big on beating adversaries into bloody pulps. They’re more into gentle reasoning.

  “Sure,” I said. “Yeah. We should get right on that.”