Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(96)

“I told you before, Suze, I’m not a child anymore. I want to help!”

“I think you’ve helped enough,” I said. “And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Really, David, I don’t know what I’d do without you. But I’ve got to go to bed. Good night.” I hung up before he could say another word.

“God.” Gina passed me the bowl of buttered popcorn that had been sitting on her lap. “It sounds like you’ve had a spectacularly shitty night.”

“Tell me about it.” I shoved a handful of popcorn into my mouth. It tasted like salty ash, but that was due to the day’s events, not Gina’s popping skills. “I just need to decompress for, like, an hour.”

“Fine.” She lifted the remote. “What do you want to watch?”

“Anything but The Bachelor. I’ve had enough of bachelors for one night.”

“Your wish is my command.” She aimed the remote at the screen and flicked through the channel guide. “Uh, looks like our only palatable choices are your favorite, Ghost Mediator, or one of those budget bridal gown shows.”

“Good God. Budget bridal gowns, please.”

She grinned. “I thought so. Budget bridal gowns it is.”

We watched until we fell asleep—well, one of us, anyway. I got up quietly so as not to disturb her, then padded to my bed . . .

. . .but was still wide awake an hour later, unable to get one image out of my mind:

Stop. Wait. Don’t.

There was a lot of blame to go around for the evening’s events, but Jimmy Delgado’s death was squarely on me. That was one soul I’d failed to save . . . not that it had been a soul worth saving.

Jesse, though. What was he doing now? Was he, too, lying awake in his cell, thinking of me? Was he warm enough? What if he didn’t have a blanket? Was he getting along with the other prisoners? What if Paul did not, in fact, drop the charges like he said he was going to? Could I really tell anyone the truth about the triplets?

These were the thoughts with which I was torturing myself when I realized I was not alone in my room.

I knew who it was before I opened my eyes.

I rose up on one elbow and stared at her. Even though I’d sensed her presence, my heart was still thumping.

“You can’t keep doing this,” I said. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

Lucia didn’t reply. She just stood there at the side of the bed, a soft aura glowing all around her, looking at me with those huge dark eyes. She wore the same somber expression she always wore, her mouth the same pink rosebud of disapproval.

What had I done wrong now? Maybe she didn’t like that I slept in the same room as a rat, or in an old black tank top and yoga shorts.

Or maybe she didn’t like that I hadn’t tried very hard to keep her murderer from offing himself. He was never going to get his day in court. At least, no court on planet Earth.

“How did you even get in here?” I looked around. She shouldn’t have been able to enter my apartment, the place was so barricaded against evil spirits, between the salt and the house blessings and the crosses and the mezuzahs.

On the other hand, Lucia wasn’t exactly evil.

“What can I do for you, Lucia?” I asked her. Talking to this kid was like talking to the stuffed animal she clutched in her hands, she was so unresponsive. “Is it about Jimmy? Er . . .”

I realized, belatedly, that only Becca had ever called Lucia’s killer by his name, and even she didn’t like to. Lucia herself had been too traumatized by what he’d done to her ever to mention him by anything other than “he.”

“Is it about the, um, bad man?”

I sat up in bed, careful to move slowly so as not to alarm her. There was no sound in the room except my voice, and the gentle grunts of Romeo, who’d woken and immediately begun cleaning himself in his cage.

“Because he’s gone, Lucia.” This seemed a fitting euphemism for what had happened to Delgado. Gone. He was gone. “I found him and made sure that he’ll never hurt you, or Becca, or anyone else ever again.”

Lucia only continued to stare at me in silence, her eyes gleaming as luminously as the rest of her. I couldn’t read her expression. Was she apprehensive, or reproachful?

“Tomorrow I plan on taking care of the priest who hurt Becca, too. Okay?” My voice broke a little. “Not in the same way as Jimmy, but . . . he’ll never be able to hurt anyone either. I’m sorry things got so messed up, and that they took such a long time to fix. Not that they’ll ever really be fixed, but . . . well, you know. This was a tough one, Lucia. This one was really hard.”

I reached up to move some hair from my eyes and found, when my fingers came away wet, that I was crying. Me, who never cried.

All the signs were there. My cheeks were damp. My throat had closed up. My eyes stung.

This wasn’t allergies. I was crying. Crying for Lucia.

For Lucia, or for Becca, or for me? Maybe for the triplets, too, and a little bit for Jesse. Crying for all of us.

Lucia only continued to stare at me owlishly.

I reached for my cell phone, which I kept on the nightstand, and scrolled through the photos I’d stored on there.

“Look, Lucia. I found your family. They’ve moved away from here, but not too far. They have a vineyard north of San Francisco. It looks really nice. They don’t have horses, but they have llamas. See, here’s a picture.” I held the screen on my phone toward her so that she could see. The glow lit up her face even more brightly than her own spectral radiance. “There’s your mother, and your father, and your brothers. And look, see here? After you died, they adopted two little girls.” This caused her to lean in closer. I finally had her attention.