Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(20)
“You’re so weird,” CeeCee said. She flipped open her laptop. “But don’t worry. I’m setting up you and Jesse with a nice Web page for when you open your practice. Drs. Hector J. and Susannah S. de Silva, Carmel Pediatrics Center, specializing in your child’s complete health. Licensed to diagnose and treat the physical, emotional, and developmental needs of children. No gold diggers allowed.”
“God, I was kidding about that, okay? I don’t think Kelly literally married for money. Although considering what her stepdaughter told me about her views on engagement rings, one could argue the fact.”
CeeCee ignored me. “What do you think of this?” She spun her laptop around to face me. “I’ve been playing around with your last names as a logo. See how the two S’s curl around the staff like the snakes in the symbol for medicine? Well, technically the caduceus is the symbol for commerce, but enough people have misused it over the years that I figured no one realizes it anymore. And of course, even if you don’t end up taking Jesse’s name when you two tie the knot, we don’t have to change it. The two S’s still work. Dr. Susannah Simon, or Dr. Susannah de Silva, either is—”
I thought it best to cut her off. The topic of Jesse and me marrying was becoming painful. Nothing ruins a wedding faster than the groom going on a murderous demonic rampage and killing the bride, then her family. Boy, did I need a cocktail.
“So what else has Kelly been up to since graduation?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “I see Debbie with Brad once in a while at family functions, and we talk, and sometimes she mentions Kelly, but I seem to have missed the fact that she’s a stepmom.”
CeeCee glanced worriedly around the nearly empty coffee shop. “Shhh. Not so loud. Kelly’s more the yacht club type, but you never know. She might pop in here once in a while.”
I smiled. Once called the Coffee Clutch, the shop had been our hangout all through high school, until a well-known corporate coffee chain had attempted to purchase it from the previous owners.
This did not sit well with the Carmel-by-the-Sea town council, which had managed successfully to ban all chain restaurants, big-box stores, and even traffic lights and parking meters since the town was incorporated in 1916. The goal was to maintain Carmel’s position as Travel + Leisure magazine’s Most Romantic City in America (it was currently number three in the world, after Paris and Venice), and keep it looking like the same charming beach village (atop a cliff overlooking a white sandy beach) it had been for a century.
The council—with the help of people like CeeCee’s aunt, who’d stepped in and bought the Clutch herself, in order to prevent it from going corporate—had resolutely met that goal year after year, to the point of not allowing homeowners even to chop down trees.
So how had Paul Slater gotten permission to tear down my old house?
I didn’t know, but he had it, all right. I’d seen the forms attached to his e-mail, since the ghost girl’s paraspectacular aftershocks hadn’t scrambled them from my computer (Sean Park, one of Becca’s classmates, had managed to rescue my hard drive, though not in time for me to keep Maximillian28 from winning my boots, and for well under what I’d have been willing to pay. I hoped he or she enjoyed them . . . in hell).
Not only were all of Paul’s plans for the destruction of 99 Pine Crest Road—and most of the homes on the rest of my old block—in order, but he hadn’t been lying about the Curse of the Dead. With the help of the Internet, I’d been able to find a translation of it posted on the blog of some Egyptology student specializing in the study of ancient languages.
What the blog didn’t tell me—either because it wasn’t part of the student’s assignment or because it wasn’t written on the papyrus—was whether or not there was a way to break the curse.
I’d fired off an e-mail to the blog’s owner—Shahbaz Effendi—and crossed my fingers that he’d believe my little white lie that I was a fellow Egyptology enthusiast.
I know how pesky those papyruses (papyri?) can be. Sometimes they break off midsentence. (Did they? I wasn’t even sure what papyrus was.)
Really, though, if there’s any chance at all that there’s more to the curse, I’d love to know. It would be very helpful to my current research.
God, this guy was going to think I was insane. Or twelve. But until I heard back from him, Jesse and I were screwed.
“Well,” CeeCee was saying, “after she graduated from the Mission Academy, Kelly went on to get a degree in fashion merchandising.”
I looked up from the cup of coffee I’d been scowling into. “Wait, are you shitting me? Fashion merchandising? Like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde?”
“I heard that,” called my other best friend (and current roommate), Gina, from behind the counter. CeeCee’s aunt had hired her to work the four-to-midnight shift, Monday through Friday. Gina ominously tapped a large glass jar with a pen. “Dollar to the swear jar. Two dollars, actually, because I overheard you call Kelly a ho earlier.”
“That’s a tip jar, not a swear jar,” I said, but reached into my messenger bag for my wallet anyway. I didn’t want to be a bad sport. “And I said pro, not ho. You guys are oppressing my right to free speech.”
“You should be thanking us,” Gina said as I approached the counter. “A future doctor should be classy, not trashy. Not to mention a future doctor’s wife.”