Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(14)

Becca, perplexed, glanced in the direction I was speaking, but didn’t see anyone standing there. “Uh . . . Miss Simon? Are you all right?”

I didn’t have time for Becca’s concern that I’d jumped on the train to Crazy Town.

“I’m trying to help you, too, kid,” I said to the ghost. “Who are you, anyway?”

Big mistake. Really, my third biggest mistake of the morning, after calling Paul, then slapping the disinfectant pad on Becca.

Though in my defense, you really shouldn’t let the undead run around unsupervised, any more than you should let wounds go too long without cleaning them.

The tiny ghost reacted by reeling backward, so stunned that after however many years she’d been dead someone could finally see her—let alone had communicated with her. She landed with a thump on the cool stone floor . . . a thump that left her looking shocked and humiliated.

But what followed was no girlish tantrum. She may have seemed cute with her blond bangs, stuffed horse, and riding boots and jodhpurs—apparently she’d been an aspiring equestrian in life—but she was by no means an angel (certainly not yet, as something was keeping her earthbound). She leveled me with a menacing stare.

“Lucia,” she screamed, with enough force that my hair was lifted back from my face and shoulders and the panes in the windows shook. “And no one hurts Becca!”

And that’s when the simple mediation I’d been planning went to complete hell.

The stone tiles beneath my feet began to pitch and buckle . . . which was some feat, because they were stone pavers, each more than two feet wide. They had been laid there three hundred years earlier by true believers at the behest of Father Serra. They’d never shown so much as a crack despite all the earthquakes that had since shaken Northern California.

And now some little girl ghost venting her wrath at me had the ancient floors splitting, and the three-foot-thick mission walls trembling, and the fluorescent lights overhead swaying, even the glass in the casement windows tinkling.

“Stop!” I cried, reaching out to grab the arms of the chair in which Becca sat, both to steady myself as well as to shield her from any glass that might start falling. Becca’s eyes were wide with terror. She still couldn’t hear or see Lucia, and so had no idea what was going on.

I knew, and not only was I as scared as Becca—my heart felt as if it was about to jackhammer out of my chest—I couldn’t have been more mad at myself. I’d been so distracted by the potential curse on my boyfriend I’d forgotten one of the most important rules of mediation:

Never, ever underestimate a ghost.

“I’m sorry,” I shouted at Lucia’s spirit. “I swear I was only trying to help—”

“Shut up!” the little girl thundered in a voice that seemed to come from straight from the depths of hell itself. “Shutupshutupshutup!”

Each syllable was emphasized by another jolt to the floor and walls, sending drawers from the file cabinets slamming wildly, files—as well as the pages within them—flying like a blizzard of eight-by-eleven-inch paper snowflakes, and the wooden Venetian blinds that had never in my memory been lowered over the windows suddenly came crashing down.

“What’s happening?” Becca shouted. It was hard to hear anything above the tinkling of the glass and, above our heads, the groaning of the rafters in the pitched wooden ceiling that tourists loved snapping photos of so they could tell their architects back home, I want the living room to look just like this. “Is this an earthquake?”

I wished it were an earthquake. A geological explanation for what was happening would be so much simpler than, Actually, it’s a ghost. No one ever goes for that one.

Instead I said, “Crap,” because I noticed my computer had begun to slide from my desk. The huge monitor—not a flat screen because the school couldn’t afford anything that fancy—was sliding in our direction.

Becca, hearing my curse, followed the direction of my gaze, then screamed and ducked her head. I hunched over her so my back would take most of the weight of the computer if things didn’t work out, then kicked backward, relieved when I felt the sole of my platform wedge meet with a chunk of hard plastic.

This is why I needed a new pair of boots. You never knew when you were going to have to keep a ghost from using your computer to crush you (and a student) to death.





cinco


The shaking stopped.

Sister Ernestine raced from her office, clutching the only adornment to her otherwise sensible attire, a plain silver crucifix that gleamed against her massive chest.

“Good heavens,” she cried. “What happened?”

“Uh,” I said. “Earthquake.”

I looked around for the NCDP. She was gone, of course. What would she stick around for? Her work was done for the day. I imagined she was off wherever baby ghosts go after hours, enjoying some Disney Horror Channel, learning some snappy new rude comebacks and ways to dispose of the living.

“Are you all right, dear?” Sister Ernestine asked Becca solicitously, not giving me so much as a glance.

Becca nodded, looking uncertain. “I . . . I th-think so.”

Oh, sure. Ask the kid who just tried to off herself with some school supplies if she was okay. Don’t worry about me, the girl doing the splits to keep a piece of computer equipment from killing us both.