Remembrance (The Mediator #7) (34 page)

Jesse made a lunge at Paul as he rose to leave the table, catching him by the lapels of his suit jacket and causing all of the dishware to rattle noisily, and some of the silver to slide to the floor.

“She was never yours to give, Slater,” Jesse hissed, his face only inches from Paul’s. “Nor is she mine. Women aren’t horses, they don’t belong to one man or another, though maybe you think they do, since you’ve evidently been working so hard to steal her away.”

“I wouldn’t call it work.” Paul did not sound particularly troubled by the fact that there was six feet or so of fuming former ghost looming over him. “Not when you’ve made it so easy by failing to properly tend to her needs.”

Fortunately the sommelier hurried over at that exact moment, and he and I both managed to pry Jesse away from Paul in time to keep him from physically assaulting him . . . but not in time to keep every head in the restaurant from swiveling toward us.

I felt all of Jesse’s muscles tense beneath my fingers. He was itching to heave a punch in Paul’s face, and truthfully, Paul deserved one.

But neither the sommelier nor I wanted a scene in Mariner’s, especially at the Window Table. With our combined weight and a combination of pushing and pulling, we managed to get Jesse back into his seat before he did any damage.

“Jesse, please,” I begged him as the sommelier fussed over him like a mother hen, folding his napkin back over his lap, since it had fallen to the floor, and brushing off his suit. “Paul’s drunk. And, even if he completely messed it up, he did do you a favor tonight. You know you can’t afford to be anywhere near people like Delgado.”

Jesse turned his glare on me. I felt like one of the tiny cakes inside my stepnieces’ vintage Easy-Bake Oven, burning under the bright white lightbulb.

“Did me a
favor
?” He looked incredulous. “Susannah, I don’t need those kind of favors, from him or anyone, especially when they involve you. And,” he added with a dark glance in Paul’s direction, “he’s a little
too
drunk, don’t you think?”

“What? No.” I hurried back to my own seat just as the second course, a gold-rimmed plate of Monterey Bay wild salmon with Meyer lemon, was being laid there by a team of servers so professional they gave the appearance of not having noticed there’d been a near knockout in their restaurant. “He seems fine to me. Wait, what are you—”

I broke off as Jesse reached down beneath my chair.

“Really, please, carry on, you two,” Paul slurred drunkenly from the chair he’d sunk back into. To my amazement, he still hadn’t left the restaurant. “Pretend like I’m not even here. I’m used to it.”

Jesse pulled my bag from beneath the table and began to rifle through it. Suddenly I knew
exactly
what he was doing . . . and what he was looking for. My heart flew into my throat.

“Jesse, no,” I cried, reaching for the leather straps to snatch the bag away. “I—”

But I heard the distinctive rattle, and knew his fingers had closed over the prescription pill bottle before I could stop him. He pulled it from the depths of the bag and squinted at the label in the dim candlelight on the restaurant table.

“What are those?” Paul asked interestedly. “Suze, did you bring party favors? My kind of girl.”

“They’re not the kind you’d like, Slater,” Jesse said, quickly opening the bottle and dumping the contents into his hand. Counting swiftly, he asked, “How many have you given him?”

“Just a few. I put them in the whiskey bottle when he wasn’t looking. I didn’t want him to taste them.”

Jesse swore. “You gave him sleeping pills
in
alcohol?”

At Jesse’s appalled expression, I shrugged. “It is a big bottle. He’ll be fine, just a little out of it for a while.”

“Thank you for your medical diagnosis, Dr. Simon.” Jesse had already pulled out his cell phone, ready to dial 911. “Why would you do such a thing?”

I bit my lip. I was going to have to tell him eventually. Look at everything that had happened because I hadn’t told—because
Becca
hadn’t told. Oh, wait. We were talking about me now.

But in the end, Paul was the one who spilled the beans.

“Sleeping pills? That’s a new low, even for you, Simon.” He reached into his jacket pocket for his own cell phone. “I should have known you never had any intention of holding up your end of the bargain. I’m texting Blumenthal to go ahead with the demo on Monday.”

This caused Jesse to pause while making his call. “There that word is again. Bargain. What
bargain
?”

“Um,” I said, my panic rising to new heights. “Nothing. Just—”

“Oh, ho.” Paul grinned as he continued to tap into his phone. “
Awkward
. Sorry, Simon. But a deal is a deal. And by attempting to drug me into a stupor, you just voided ours.”

Jesse’s dark gaze burned into me. “Susannah.
What is he talking about
?”

Before I could say a word, Paul went on, “Oh, don’t be too hard on her, de Silva. You should be impressed, as a matter of fact. It’s hard to find women as loyal as this one these days—at least ones who aren’t interested only in your money, which wouldn’t be a problem for you, I know, but for me, I—”

“Okay, that is
enough.
”

I stood up, throwing my balled up napkin to the side of my newly delivered bowl of black truffle risotto with Parmigiano-Reggiano, which at this point I had no interest even in trying.

“Come on, Jesse,” I said. “We don’t have to sit here and listen to this. Let’s go.”

But Jesse stayed where he was.

“No,” he said. His eyes were as dark as Paul’s were light—but even darker than usual, since I saw the now-familiar shadows creeping in. “I’m interested to hear about this bargain.”

I began to feel afraid, despite the string quartet playing lightly in the background.

“Jesse, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s . . . he’s on drugs, remember?”

Paul took a deliberate swig from the whiskey bottle. “Sweetheart, I’ve got news for you. I pop pills like candy. How do you think I maintain my extremely unhealthy lifestyle while looking so good? A few sleeping pills mixed into my hooch aren’t going to bother me in the least because I took four dexies before we left the bar. Anyway, what the two of you have together is really sweet, and I’m envious, especially since you both have to know by now it’s going to end.”

“And how is that?” Jesse asked.

“Well, there are no documented cases that
I
know of human and reanimated corpse copulation, but I think it’s likely such a thing would fly in the face of all physical and natural law. If you ask me,
that’s
what’s probably going to unleash whatever demonic entities reside within the good doctor here. But what do I know? I’m no expert. I guess we’ll find out Monday, won’t we? Oh, that’s the bargain we had, de Silva. Your girlfriend was going to let me bang her if I didn’t tear down her old house. But now that deal is off. So good luck not slaughtering the bride.”

veintinueve

“
Jesse
.”

He didn’t respond. Instead he rose from his chair and swept wordlessly past me—but not, as I initially feared, to lift Paul Slater from his chair and hurl him through the nearby plateglass windows.

To my surprise, Jesse walked right past Paul—who’d shrunk in his seat, clearly expecting some kind of blow—then out of the restaurant, never once looking back, though I called his name again. The last I saw of him, he was disappearing out the front door, his broad-shouldered back stiff as a soldier’s at attention.

“Ouch,” Paul said, straightening in his chair. He reached for his whiskey bottle. “That must have smarted, Simon.”

“Shut up, Paul.” I lowered myself into the nearest seat. Even if I’d wanted to go running after Jesse—and I didn’t see what that would accomplish—I wasn’t sure my legs could support me. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Oh, please.” Paul poured pinot noir from a new bottle into one of the many glasses in front of my plate. “If you two really had such a great relationship, he’d have stuck around, no matter what I said.”

I gave him a sour look. “He left to keep himself from killing you.”

Paul laughed. “Probably. I bet he’s waiting out in the parking lot for you, faithful dog that he is. Woof, woof.”

“You’re disgusting.” But I hoped he was right.

“May I make a suggestion? Leave here with me on my jet. That guy is going to go full Satan’s spawn on Monday, especially now, seeing how much you’ve pissed him off. And as much as you’ve annoyed me, too, Simon, with your behavior tonight, I really would hate to see you die. I dislike seeing beautiful things go to waste. Which reminds me, before we go, help me finish this wine. It’s twelve hundred dollars a bottle.”

That child is lost, and very frightened, and in so much pain,
Aunt Pru had said.
And lost children in pain can sometimes be very cruel. They lash out and hurt others, sometimes without meaning to. But sometimes on purpose, too.

Maybe she really had meant Paul, and not Lucia.

“Paul,” I said, ignoring the wine and reaching into my bag. “Do you recognize this photo?”

Paul glanced briefly at the screen saver on my cell phone, then shrugged.

“Sure. You showed it to the dirtbag earlier. Why?”

“They’re my stepnieces.” I scrolled through the photos of the triplets on my phone, giving him a brief slide show. “Brad and Debbie Ackerman’s triplets. Only you knew her as Debbie Mancuso, of course.”

“That’s fascinating, Suze. How come you’re not trying the wine? You really shouldn’t miss it. It’s got some nice earthy undertones.”

“Brad and Debbie’s daughters are mediators, Paul,” I said. “That’s why I’m showing you their photos. Do you know how rare that is? That there should be so many mediators in the Monterey Bay area? Think about it. There’s you, Paul. And your little brother, Jack. And Father Dom, of course. And now Jesse. And then Debbie Mancuso’s triplets, which she conceived very shortly after graduation night.”

Paul had taken a sip of the twelve-hundred-dollar wine he’d ordered. But when I said the words
graduation night,
he choked. He managed to get everything down except a little trickle that dribbled out of the side of his mouth. He wiped it away with his napkin, glancing down to make sure none had gotten on his precious suit.

“Really?” he asked. “Like I said, fascinating. But why are you telling me all this? I’m not a huge fan of kids. I’d rather talk about us.”

“This has to do with us,” I said, resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand as I regarded him closely. “You, me, and Jesse, and what’s going to happen on Monday if you tear down my house. If that curse is real, and Jesse does start going after everyone he loves, that’s going to include those kids. Those kids who see ghosts. How do you think Debbie Mancuso ended up with triplets who see ghosts? Especially since she’s never shown any sign of being a mediator, and neither, as we all know, has my stepbrother Brad. I was hoping you could shed some light on the matter.”

“
Me?
” Paul pointed at himself, his eyebrows raised as high as they would go. “What would
I
know about it? I don’t know anything about kids.”

“To my knowledge, lack of information about children has never medically impeded anyone from having them.”

“Look, I know what you’re getting at, Simon, but they can’t be mine,” Paul declared. “I don’t care what Debbie’s been telling you. I have never not used a condom in my life, and for very good reason. Do you have any idea how much I’m worth? Do you think I’m not fully aware that there are desperate women all over this country who’d love to trap me into fathering some snot-nosed brat so I’ll be paying them gold ducats until the kid is eighteen? No,
thank you
.”

“Paul, please,” I said, looking around at all the diners who were now staring at him. “No one is trying to trap you into paying anything, particularly not Debbie. She’s never said a word about this to me—”

“I should hope not!” He pointed at me. “I am a very,
very
careful guy.”

“Paul, I don’t like this any more than you do. I love those girls, and I would give anything for Brad to be their father. He is their
real
father, in my opinion. But not genetically. You yourself admitted to me that you weren’t too careful graduation night. You said you barely remembered what happened. You used your drunkenness, in fact, as an excuse for what you did to me. But you weren’t too drunk,” I went on, “to remember that later on that evening, Debbie Mancuso, and I quote, straddled me like she thought I was a damned gigolo, unquote.”

Paul dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, hell. Fine.
One time
. I may have forgotten to use a rubber
one time
. But how could she have gotten knocked up with
three kids
from
one time
?”

“Teens and women over the age of thirty-five are more likely to give birth to twins and triplets than women aged twenty to thirty-five.” When he stared at me in disbelief, I shrugged. “It’s called science. Look it up.”

“Well, if you think you’re getting a cheek swab out of me for a paternity test, you’re—”

I leaned forward and lifted the wineglass from which Paul had been drinking. I poured its remaining contents into the floral centerpiece, then wrapped the glass loosely in my napkin and tucked both glass and napkin into my bag.

“They can lift DNA for paternity suits from all sorts of things these days, Paul,” I explained. “It costs a bit more, and takes a bit longer, but they can do it.”

Paul looked as if he was about to have a coronary. “You can’t . . . I’ll . . . My lawyers will . . .”

“No, they won’t. Because the test’s going to come back positive. Those girls are your daughters, and they’re already starting to need special care. They can’t tell the dead from the living.”

“What do you want from me, Suze?” he asked, spreading his hands wide, palms up. “I think it’s pretty clear I’m not going to be any help to them. I’m not mediator material.”