Darkest Hour Read online

  “Hey,” Dopey said when I was finished reading. “How come they never mentioned me? I’m the one who found the skeleton.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sleepy said in disgust. “Your role was really crucial. After all, if it wasn’t for you, the guy’s skull might still be intact.”

  Dopey launched himself at his older brother. As the two of them rolled around on the floor, making a thunderous noise their father would never have put up with if he’d been home, I set the paper aside and returned to my envelope from the Slaters. There was still one more slip of paper inside it.

  Suze, the strong, slanting handwriting on it read. Apparently, it was not to be…for now.

  Paul. I couldn’t believe it. The note was from Paul.

  I know you have questions. I also know you have courage. What I wonder is whether you have the courage to ask the question that is the hardest for someone of our…persuasion.

  In the meantime, remember: If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. But if you teach him to fish, he’ll eat all the fish you might have caught for yourself.

  Just a little something to keep in mind, Suze.

  Paul

  Gosh, I thought. What a charmer. No wonder we never clicked.

  The hardest question of all? What was that? And of what persuasion were we, precisely? What did this guy know that I didn’t? Plenty, apparently.

  One thing I did know, though. Whatever else Paul was—and I was not at all convinced he was a mediator—he was a jerk. I mean Paul had pretty much hung Jack out to dry not once, but twice, first by never once bothering to say Hey, don’t worry, kid, for folks like you and me, it’s normal to see dead people all over the place, and the second time by leaving him alone in that church while those two psychos were tearing up the place.

  Not to mention what, I was convinced, he’d done to Jesse, someone he had not even known.

  And for that, I’d never forgive him.

  And I certainly wasn’t about to trust him. Or his opinions on fishing.

  Disgusted as I was with him, however, I didn’t throw his note away. It would, I decided, have to be shown to Father Dom, who, a phone call had reassured me, was doing well—just a little sore, was all.

  While Sleepy and Dopey rolled around—Dopey yelling, “Get offa me, homo”—I picked up my bounty and went back upstairs. Heck, it was my day off. I wasn’t going to spend it indoors, despite my mother’s orders. I decided to give CeeCee a call and see what she was up to. Maybe the two of us could hit the beach. I deserved, I thought, a little R and R.

  When I got to my room, I saw that Jesse was already up. He doesn’t usually pay morning visits. On the other hand, I don’t normally sleep for thirty-six hours straight, so I guess neither of us was really sticking to the schedule.

  In any case, I hadn’t expected to see him there, and so I jumped about a foot and a half and quickly hid the hand carrying his miniature behind my back.

  I mean, come on. I don’t want him to think I like him or anything.

  “You’re awake,” he said from the window seat where he’d been sitting with Spike and a copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book that I happen to know he’d stolen from my mother’s bookshelf downstairs.

  “Um,” I said, sidling over to my bed. Maybe, if I was quick enough, I could thrust his picture under my pillow before he noticed. “Yes, I am.”

  “How do you feel?” he asked me.

  “Me?” I asked, like there was somebody else in the room he could possibly have been asking.

  Jesse laid the book down and looked at me with another one of those expressions on his face. You know, the kind I can never read.

  “Yes, you,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” I said. I made it to the bed. I sat down on it, and quick as a mongoose—I’ve never seen one in action, but I’ve heard they’re pretty fast—I thrust the check, the letters, and the miniature under my pillow. Then I relaxed.

  “I feel great,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so relaxed anymore. In fact, I sprang to my feet. I don’t know why, but my heart started beating very fast.

  Talk? What does he want to talk about? My mind was going a hundred miles a second. I suppose we should talk about what happened. I mean, it was very scary and all of that, and I nearly died, and like Paul said, I do have a lot of questions—

  But what if that was what Jesse wanted to talk about? The part where I nearly died, I mean?

  I didn’t want to talk about that. Because the fact is, that whole part, that part where I nearly died, well, I nearly died trying to save him. Seriously. I was hoping he hadn’t noticed, but I could tell by the look on his face that he totally had. Noticed, I mean.

  And now he wanted to talk about it. But how could I talk about it? Without letting it slip? The L word, I mean.

  “You know what,” I said, very fast. “I don’t want to talk. Is that okay? I really, really don’t want to talk. I am all talked out.”

  Jesse lifted Spike off his lap and put him on the floor. Then he stood up.

  What was he doing? I wondered. What was he doing?

  I took a deep breath, and kept talking about not talking.

  “I’m just—Look,” I said, as he took a step toward me. “I’m just going to give CeeCee a call and maybe we’ll go to the beach or something, because I really…I just need a day off.”

  Another step toward me. Now he was right in front of me.

  “Especially,” I said significantly, looking up at him, “from talking. That’s what I especially need a day off from. Talking.”

  “Fine,” he said. He reached up and cupped my face in both his hands. “We don’t have to talk.”

  And that’s when he kissed me.

  On the lips.

  Suze’s supernatural misadventures continue in the fifth Mediator book,

  Haunted

  The following is an excerpt:

  He must have figured out from my expression that all was not copacetic in Suze-and-Jesse-land, since he laughed and said, “So that’s how it is. Well, I never really thought Jesse was your type, you know. You need someone a little less—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment, CeeCee, who’d been following Adam in the direction of his locker—even though we’d solemnly sworn to each other the night before over the phone that we were not going to start off the new school year chasing boys—came back toward us, her gaze on the guy standing so close to me.

  “Suze,” she said politely. Unlike me, CeeCee had spent her summer working in the non-profit sector, and so had not had a lot of money to blow on a back-to-school wardrobe and makeover. Not that CeeCee would ever spend her money on anything so frivolous as makeup. Which was a good thing, since, being an albino, she had to special-order all of her makeup anyway, and couldn’t just stroll on up to the M.A.C. counter and plunk her money down the way anybody else could.

  “Who’s your friend?” she wanted to know.

  I was not about to stand there and make introductions. In fact, I was seriously thinking of heading to the administrative office and asking just what they were thinking, admitting a guy like this into what I had once considered a passably good school.

  But he thrust one of those cool, strong hands at CeeCee and said with that grin that I had once found disarming but that now chilled me to the bone, “Hi. I’m Paul. Paul Slater. Nice to meet you.”

  Paul Slater. Not really the kind of name to strike terror into the heart of a young girl, huh? I mean, it sounded innocuous enough. Hi, I’m Paul Slater. There was nothing in that statement that could have alerted CeeCee to the truth: Paul Slater was sick, manipulative, and had icicles where his heart should have been.

  No, CeeCee had no clue. Because I hadn’t told her, of course. I hadn’t told anyone.

  The more fool I.

  If CeeCee found his fingers a little too cold for her liking, she didn’t let on.


  “CeeCee Webb,” she said, as she pumped his hand in her typically businesslike manner. “You must be new here, because I’ve never seen you around before.”

  Paul blinked, bringing attention to his eyelashes, which were really long, for a guy’s. They looked almost heavy on his eyelids, like they’d be an effort to lift. My stepbrother Jake has sort of the same thing going, only on him, it just makes him look drowsy. On Paul, it had more of a sexy rock-star effect. I glanced worriedly at CeeCee. She was one of the most sensible people I had ever met, but are any of us really immune to the sexy rock-star type?

  “My first day,” Paul said with another one of those grins. “Lucky for me, I already happen to be acquainted with Ms. Simon here.”

  “How fortuitous,” CeeCee, who, as editor of the school paper, liked big words, said, her white-blond eyebrows raised slightly. “Did you used to go to Suze’s old school?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “He didn’t. Look, we better get to homeroom, or we’re going to get into trouble….”

  But Paul wasn’t worried about getting into trouble. Probably because Paul was used to causing it.

  “Suze and I had a thing this past summer,” he informed CeeCee, whose purple eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses at this information.

  “A thing?” she echoed.

  “There was no thing,” I hastened to assure her. “Believe me. No thing at all.”

  CeeCee’s eyes got even wider. It was clear she didn’t believe me. Well, why should she? I was her best friend, it was true. But had I ever once been completely honest with her? No. And she clearly knew it.

  “Oh, so you guys broke up?” she asked pointedly.

  “No, we didn’t break up,” Paul said, with another one of those secretive, knowing smiles.

  Because we were never going out, I wanted to shriek. You think I’d ever go out with him? He’s not what you think, CeeCee. He looks human, but underneath that studly façade, he’s a…a…

  Well, I didn’t know what Paul was, exactly.

  But then, what did that make me? Paul and I had far more in common than I was comfortable admitting, even to myself.

  Even if I’d had the guts to say something along those lines in front of him, I didn’t get a chance because suddenly a stern, “Miss Simon! Miss Webb! Haven’t you ladies got a class you should be getting to?” rang out.

  Sister Ernestine—whose three-month absence from my life had not rendered her any less intimidating, with her enormous chest and even bigger crucifix adorning it—came barreling down upon us, the wide black sleeves of her habit trailing behind her like wings.

  “Get going,” she tut-tutted us, waving her hands in the direction of our lockers, built into the adobe walls all along the mission’s beautifully manicured inner courtyard. “You’ll be late to first period.”

  We got going…but unfortunately Paul followed directly behind us.

  “Suze and I go way back,” he was saying to CeeCee, as we moved along the porticoed hallway toward my locker. “We met at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.”

  I could only stare at him as I fumbled with the combination to my locker. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I really couldn’t. What was Paul doing here? What was Paul doing here enrolling in my school, making my world—from which I’d thought I’d rid him forever—a real-life nightmare?

  I didn’t want to know. Whatever his motives for coming back, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get away from him, get to class, anywhere, anywhere at all…

  …so long as it was away from him.

  “Well,” I said, slamming my locker door closed. I hardly knew what I was doing. I had reached in and blindly grabbed the first books my fingers touched. “Gotta go. Homeroom calls.”

  He looked down at the books in my arms, the ones I was holding almost as a shield, as if they would protect me from whatever it was—and I was sure there was something—he had in store for me. For us.

  “You won’t find them in there,” Paul said with a cryptic nod at the textbooks bulging from my arms.

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t want to know. All I knew was that I wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there fast. CeeCee still stood beside me, looking bewilderedly from my face to Paul’s. Any second, I knew, she was going to begin to ask questions, questions I didn’t dare answer…because she wouldn’t believe me if I tried.

  Still, even though I didn’t want to, I heard myself asking, as if the words were being torn involuntarily from my lips, “I won’t find what in here?”

  “The answers you’re looking for.” Paul’s blue-eyed gaze was intense. “Why you, of all people, were chosen. And what, exactly, you are.”

  This time, I didn’t have to ask what he meant. I knew. I knew as surely as if he’d said the words out loud. He was talking about the gift we shared, he and I, the one over which he seemed to have so much better control—and of which he seemed to have such superior knowledge—than I did.

  While CeeCee stood there, staring at the two of us as if we were speaking a foreign language, Paul went on smoothly, “When you’re ready to hear the truth about what you are, you’ll know where to find me. Because I’ll be right here.”

  And then he walked away, seemingly unaware of all the feminine sighs he drew from my classmates as he moved with pantherlike grace down the breezeway.

  Her violet eyes still wide behind her glasses, CeeCee looked up at me wonderingly.

  “What,” she wanted to know, “was that guy talking about? And who on earth is Jesse?”

  Read all the Mediator books:

  THE MEDIATOR 1:

  Shadowland

  THE MEDIATOR 2:

  Ninth Key

  THE MEDIATOR 3:

  Reunion

  THE MEDIATOR 4:

  Darkest Hour

  THE MEDIATOR 5:

  Haunted

  THE MEDIATOR 6:

  Twilight

  About the Author

  Meg Cabot is also the author of the Princess Diaries series, upon which the Disney movies are based. In the books, though, Princess Mia has yield-sign-shaped hair, lives in New York, and Fat Louie is orange. And those are the least of the differences. The following is a complete list of the Princess Diaries books:

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME II:

  PRINCESS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME III:

  PRINCESS IN LOVE

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME IV:

  PRINCESS IN WAITING

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME IV AND A HALF:

  PROJECT PRINCESS

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME V:

  PRINCESS IN PINK

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME VI:

  PRINCESS IN TRAINING

  THE PRINCESS PRESENT:

  A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK

  PRINCESS LESSONS:

  A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK

  PERFECT PRINCESS:

  A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  By Meg Cabot

  Aside from the Mediator books and the Princess Diaries books, Meg has written several more books:

  ALL-AMERICAN GIRL

  Samantha Madison saves the president’s life…only to have his son fall in love with her. Which would be fine, except for all the Secret Service agents following them around.

  TEEN IDOL

  Jenny Greenley gives everyone advice, so why can’t she follow her own and find love? Further complicating matters is the presence of hot Hollywood star Luke Striker in Jenny’s homeroom, of all places.

  Nicola and the Viscount

  It’s 1810, and Nicola Sparks is ready to dive headlong into her first London Season. Good thing there’s a handsome viscount there to catch her!

  Victoria and the Rogue

  Lady Victoria Arbuthnot is accustomed to being right. She isn’t always, though, especially
when her own heart is concerned.

  But wait!

  There’s more by Meg:

  THE BOY NEXT DOOR

  BOY MEETS GIRL

  EVERY BOY’S GOT ONE

  THE 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU BOOKS:

  WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES

  CODE NAME CASSANDRA

  SAFE HOUSE

  SANCTUARY

  For more about Meg and to read her diary, visit:

  www.megcabot.com

  Join her online book club at:

  www.megcabotbookclub.com

  Credits

  Cover art © 2005 by Paul Oakley

  Cover design by Sasha Illingworth

  Cover © 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

  Copyright

  Originally published in 2001 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  THE MEDIATOR #4: The Darkest Hour. Copyright © 2001 by Meggin Cabot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061971914

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004093415

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

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