Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(65)

I shared his feelings.

After making sure Becca and her invisible bodyguard had safely exited the room into the hallway, I turned to look back at the class. The students were still buzzing among themselves, while Ms. Temple continued to check her phone. To my surprise, I saw that she was texting someone.

I understand that teachers work very long hours for too little pay. So do I.

But honestly.

“Hey,” I said. Possibly I said it a little too loudly, since the teacher wasn’t the only one who looked over. My outburst got the attention of the students, as well. All gazes fell upon me, so I decided to use the opportunity to make a little announcement.

“In case any of you are wondering,” I said, with a pleasant smile, “I’m the same Suze Simon who knocked the head off the Father Serra statue a few years back. And if I hear of a single one of you giving Becca Walters shit ever again, I’ll do the same to you. Have a nice morning.”

I slammed the door on their stunned expressions.

Out in the corridor, Becca was looking up at me, wide-eyed.

“Wh-what did you say to them?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I continued to smile as I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on. We need to have a little chat.”

Becca resisted my perfectly friendly overtures.

“That wasn’t nothing,” she said. “I heard you say—did you say something to them about me?”

“No. You worry too much.” I noticed that Lucia had begun to glow with spectral rage, and added, “Oh, calm down, Casper. I’m only going to talk to her. Go hang out with your three amigos over there.”

Becca looked around, oblivious as always to her ghostly companion. “Who are you talking to?”

“That’s what we’re going to chat about.” I waved at my stepnieces. “Girls, could you help me out here?”

They didn’t need any further coaching. Mopsy raced up to Lucia, gripped her by the arm, then whispered loudly, “My aunt Suze said we could take coins from the fountain!”

“But we have to put them back,” Cotton-tail warned. “It’s wrong to steal wishes.”

“And money,” Flopsy added. “But Aunt Suze says she’s going to pay us back, whatever we take, from her own wallet. We’re going to be rich.”

Becca stared at me as if I were a whack job while the three girls—four, really, but she couldn’t see Lucia—raced off into the courtyard, where the bright morning sun had already begun to burn off the thick fog I’d been driving through. It significantly dimmed Lucia’s aura . . . though she continued to throw me solemn looks, not quite trusting me with her precious Becca . . . yet.

As soon as they reached the wide stone fountain—which this early in the morning had yet to attract any adult visitors—the three living girls peeled off their shoes and socks and jumped in (exactly as I’d told them not to). Even Lucia looked tempted to follow suit. It was hard to believe she was the same spirit who, the night before last, had tried to drown me.

“Who are they?” Becca asked, her gaze following the triplets.

“They’re my stepnieces,” I said. “I brought them so we could talk. Last time we got interrupted, and it wasn’t by any earthquake. Those three are here to keep it from happening again.”

Becca looked more bewildered than ever. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do know about you, though. My stepmother told me—”

“Yes, I’m sure Kelly had plenty to say about me.” I steered her by the arm through one of the stone archways. “Well, I’ve got a lot to say to you. But not about her.”

Becca immediately put on the brakes, refusing to budge from beneath the chilly shade of the breezeway. “We aren’t allowed to go out here,” she balked, staring at the warm, sunny courtyard like it was the pit of a lava-filled volcano, and she was the hapless missionary I was about to sacrifice to the native gods.

“You are if you’re escorted by a staff member. And lucky you, I just happen to be a staff member.”

I pulled her off the smooth flagstone and onto the pebbled pathway that meandered through the courtyard’s many garden plots. She came blinking into the sunlight as cautiously as a mole person.

It might have been November, but in Carmel, that’s one of the most beautiful months of the year—which was why Jesse and I wanted to be married in November, only a year from now. An explosion of brightly colored flowers—milkweed, bougainvillea, azaleas, wisteria, and rhododendrons—lined the paths and even the rooftops of the breezeways and buildings surrounding the courtyard. The milkweed had attracted monarch butterflies, which flew in lazy circles around the yard like low-flying, drunk hang gliders.

Though the stucco walls were three feet thick, and the birds flitting across the clear blue sky overhead were calling noisily to one another, it was still possible to hear the organ music being played at morning mass over in the basilica.

“Sit,” I commanded Becca when we came to an ancient stone bench in a mossy alcove, not far from the fountain the girls were marauding. The bench, coincidentally, was beneath the feet of the Father Serra statue I’d so wrongfully been accused of decapitating.

Maybe this was why Becca looked more nervous than ever as she sat down. “I didn’t mean it about my stepmother. All she said was—”