The Mediator #2: Ninth Key

by Jenny Carroll

  His smile was something to see, let me tell you. His dad had probably paid some orthodontist a pretty penny for it, but it was worth it, every cent.

  "You know this young lady, Tad?" Marcus said, his disbelief evident in his tone.

  "Oh, sure," Tad said. He stood next to me, water still dripping from his dark hair like diamonds. "We go way back."

  "Well," Marcus said. And then he evidently couldn't think of anything to add to that, since he said it again. "Well."

  And then, after an awkward silence, he said it a third time, but then added, "I guess I'll leave you two alone then. Tad, you'll show Miss Simon the way out?"

  "Sure," Tad said. Then, when Marcus had disappeared back through the sliding glass doors into the house, he whispered, "Sorry about that. Marcus is a great guy, but he's kind of a worrier."

  Having met his boss, I didn't exactly blame Marcus for worrying. But since I couldn't say that to Tad, I just went, "I'm sure he's very nice."

  And then I told him about the story I was doing for the school paper. I figured even if they discussed it later, his dad wasn't going to go, "Oh, no, that's not why she was here. She was here to tell me about this dream she had."

  And even if he did, he was so weird I doubt even his own son would believe him.

  "Huh," Tad said when I was through describing my article on the ten most influential people in Carmel. "That's cool."

  "Yeah," I babbled on. "I didn't even know he was your dad." God, I can lay it on when I try. "I mean, I never did get your last name. So this is a real surprise. Hey, listen, can I borrow a phone? I've got to see about engineering a ride home."

  Tad looked down at me in surprise. "You need a ride? No sweat. I'll take you."

  I couldn't help looking him up and down. I mean, he was practically naked, and all. Okay, well, not naked, since he was wearing a pair of swimming trunks that did reach practically to his knees. But he was naked enough for me not to be able to look away.

  "Um," I said. "Thanks."

  He followed my gaze, and looked down at his dripping shorts.

  "Oh," he said, the beautiful smile going gorgeously sheepish. "Let me just throw something on first. Wait here for me?"

  And he took the towel from around his neck and started toward the back of his house –

  But froze when I gasped and said, "Oh my God! What's wrong with your neck?"

  Instantly, he hunched his shoulders, and spun around to face me again. "Nothing," he said too fast.

  "There most certainly is not nothing wrong with it," I said, taking a step toward him. "You've got some kind of horrible – "

  And then, my voice trailing off, I dropped my gaze down toward my hands.

  "Look," Tad said, uncomfortably. "It's just poison oak. I know it's gross. I've had it for a couple of days. It looks worse than it is. I don't how I got it, especially on the back of my neck, but – "

  "I do."

  I held up both my hands. In the blue glow from the pool lights, the rash on them looked particularly grotesque – just like the rash on the back of his neck.

  "I tripped and fell into some plants the night of Kelly's party," I explained. "And right after that, you asked me to dance...."

  Tad looked down at my hands. Then he started to laugh.

  "I'm so sorry," I said. I really felt bad. I mean, I had disfigured the guy. This incredibly sexy, fabulous-looking guy. "Really, you don't know – "

  But Tad just kept laughing. And after a while, I started laughing with him.

  C H A P T E R

  9

  "Shuttered," Father Dominic repeated. "The windows were shuttered?"

  "Well, not all of them," I said. I was sitting in the chair across from his desk, picking at my poison oak. The hydrocortisone was drying it out. Now, instead of oozy, it was just plain scaly. "Just the ones in his office, or whatever it was. He said he's sensitive to light."

  "And you say he kept staring at your neck?"

  "At my necklace. It was his assistant who checked out my throat like he expected to see a giant hickey there, or something. But you're missing the point, Father Dom."

  I had decided to come clean with the good father. Well, at least about the dead woman who'd been waking me up in the middle of the night lately. I still wasn't ready to tell him about Jesse – especially considering what had happened when Tad had dropped me off the night before – but I figured if Thaddeus Beaumont Senior was actually the creepy killer I couldn't help suspecting he might be, I was going to need Father D's help to bring him to justice.

  "The point," I said, "is that he was surprised for the wrong reason. He was surprised this woman had said he hadn't killed her. Which implies – to me, anyway – that he really had. Killed her, I mean."

  Father Dominic had been working a straight-ened-out coat hanger underneath his cast when I'd walked in. Apparently he had an itch. He'd stopped scratching, but he couldn't let go of the piece of wire. He kept fingering it thoughtfully. But at least he hadn't gotten the cigarettes out yet.

  "Sensitive to light," he kept murmuring. "Looking at your neck."

  "The point," I said again, "is that it seems like he really did kill this lady. I mean, he practically admitted it. The problem is, how can we prove it? We don't even know her name, let alone where she's buried – if anybody bothered burying her at all. We don't even have a body to point to. Even if we went to the cops, what would we say?"

  Father D, however, was deeply absorbed in his own thoughts, turning the wire over and over in his hands. I figured if he was going to slip off into la-la land, well, then I would, too. I sat back in my chair, scratching my poison oak, and thought about what had happened after Tad and I had got done laughing at each other's disfiguring rash – the only part of my evening I hadn't described to Father Dom.

  Tad had gone and changed clothes. I had waited out by the pool, the steam rising from it warming my pantyhose-clad legs. Nobody bothered me, and it had actually been kind of restful listening to the waterfall. After a while, Tad reappeared, his hair still wet, but fully dressed in jeans and, unfortunately, another black silk shirt. He was even wearing a gold necklace, though I doubt he won his by writing a scintillating essay on James Madison.

  It was all I could do not to point out that the gold was probably irritating his rash, and that black silk with jeans on a man is hopelessly Staten Island.

  I managed to restrain myself, however, and Tad took me back inside, where Yoshi reappeared like magic with my coat. Then we went out to Tad's car, which I saw to my complete horror was some kind of sleek black thing that I swear to God David Hasselhoff drove on that show he did before Baywatch. It had these deep leather seats and the kind of stereo system that Sleepy would have killed for, and as I put my seatbelt on, I prayed Tad was a good driver since I would die of embarrassment if anyone ever had to use the jaws of life to pry me from a car like that.

  Tad, however, seemed to think the car was cool, and that in it, he was, too. And I'm sure that in Poland, or somewhere, it is considered cool to drive a Porsche and wear necklaces and black silk, but at least back in Brooklyn if you did those things you were either a drug dealer or from New Jersey.

  But Tad apparently didn't know that. He put the car in gear and an instant later, we were on the Drive, taking the hairpin curves along the coast as easily as if we were on a magic carpet. As he drove, Tad asked if I wanted to go somewhere, maybe get a cup of coffee. I guess now that we shared the common bond of poison oak, he wanted to hang.

  I said sure, even though I hate coffee, and he let me use his cell phone to call my mother and tell her I'd be late. My mom was so thrilled to hear I was going somewhere with a boy, she didn't even do the usual things mothers do when their daughters are out with a boy they don't know, like demand his mother's name and home phone number.

  I hung up, and we went to the Coffee Clutch, a particularly favorite haunt of kids from the Mission Academy. Cee Cee and Adam, it turned out, were there, but when they saw me come in with a boy, they t
actfully pretended not to know me. At least, Cee Cee did. Adam kept looking over and making rude faces whenever Tad's back was turned. I don't know if the faces were due to the fact that Tad's rash was plainly evident even in the Coffee Clutch's dim lighting, or if Adam was just expressing his personal feelings over Tad Beaumont in general.

  In any case, after two cappuccinos – for him – and two hot ciders for me, we left, and Tad drove me home. He wasn't, I'd discovered, a particularly bright guy. He talked an awful lot about basketball. When he wasn't talking about basketball, he was talking about sailing, and when he wasn't talking about sailing, he was talking about jet-skiing.

  And suffice it to say, I know nothing about basketball, sailing, or jet-skiing.

  But he seemed like a decent enough guy. And unlike his father, he was clearly not nuts, always a positive. And he was, of course, devastatingly good looking, so all in all, I would have rated the evening around a seven or eight, on a one to ten scale, one being lousy, ten being sublime.

  And then, as I was undoing my seatbelt after having said good night, Tad suddenly leaned over, took my chin in his hand, turned my face toward him, and kissed me.

  My first kiss. Ever.

  I know it's hard to believe. I'm so vibrant and bubbly and all, you would think boys had been flocking to me like bees to honey all my life.

  Let's just say that's not exactly what happened. I like to blame the fact that I am a biological freak – being able to communicate with the dead, and all – for the fact that I have never once been on a date, but I know that's not really it. I'm just not the kind of girl guys think about asking out. Well, maybe they think about it, but they always seem to manage to talk themselves out of it. I don't know if it's because they think I might ram a fist down their throat if they try anything, or if it's just because they are intimidated by my superior intelligence and good looks (ha ha). In the end, they just aren't interested.

  Until Tad, that is. Tad was interested. Tad was very interested.

  Tad was expressing his interest by deepening our kiss from just a little good-night one to a full fledged French – which I was enjoying immensely, by the way, in spite of the necklace and the silk shirt – when I happened to notice – yeah, okay. I'll admit it. My eyes were open. Hey, it was my first kiss, I wasn't going to miss anything, okay? – that there was somebody sitting in the Porsche's tiny little backseat.

  I pulled my head away and let out a little scream.

  Tad blinked at me in confusion.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Oh, please," said the person in the backseat, pleasantly. "Don't stop on my account."

  I looked at Tad. "I gotta go," I said. "Sorry."

  And I practically flew out of that car.

  I was barreling up the driveway to my house, my cheeks on fire with embarrassment, when Jesse caught up to me. He wasn't even walking fast. He was just strolling along.

  And he actually had the nerve to say, "It's your own fault."

  "How is it my fault?" I demanded, as Tad, after hesitating a moment, started backing out of our driveway.

  "You shouldn't," Jesse said, calmly, "have let him get so forward."

  "Forward? What are you talking about? Forward? What does that even mean?"

  "You hardly know him," Jesse said. "And you were letting him – "

  I whirled around to face him. Fortunately, by that time, Tad was gone. Otherwise, he would have seen me, in the glow of his headlights, twirling around in my driveway, yelling at the moon, which had finally broken through the clouds.

  "Oh, no," I said, loudly. "Don't even go there, Jesse."

  "Well," Jesse said. In the moonlight, I could see that his expression was one of stubborn determination. The stubbornness was no mystery – Jesse was just about the stubbornest person I had ever met – but what he was so determined about, except maybe ruining my life, I couldn't figure out. "You were."

  "We were just saying good night," I hissed at him.

  "I may have been dead for the past hundred and fifty years, Susannah," Jesse said, "but that doesn't mean I don't know how people say good night. And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves."

  "Oh, my God," I said. I turned away from him, and started heading back toward the house. "Oh, my God. He did not just say that."

  "Yes, I did just say that." Jesse followed me. "I know what I saw, Susannah."

  "You know what you sound like?" I asked him, turning around at the bottom of the steps to the front porch to face him. "You sound like a jealous boyfriend."

  "Nombre de Dios. I am not," Jesse said with a laugh, "jealous of that – "

  "Oh, yeah? Then where's all this hostility coming from? Tad never did anything to you."

  "Tad," Jesse said, "is a …"

  And then he said a word I couldn't understand, because it was in Spanish.

  I stared at him. "A what?"

  He said the word again.

  "Look," I said. "Speak English."

  "There is no English translation," Jesse said, setting his jaw, "for that word."

  "Well," I said. "Keep it to yourself, then."

  "He's no good for you," Jesse said, as if that settled the matter.

  "You don't even know him."

  "I know enough. I know you didn't listen to me or to your father when you went off tonight by yourself to that man's house."

  "Right," I said. "And I'll admit, it was very, very creepy. But Tad brought me home. Tad's not the problem there. His dad's the one who is a freak, not Tad."

  "The problem here," Jesse said, shaking his head, "is you, Susannah. You think you don't need anyone, that you can handle everything on your own."

  "I hate to break it to you, Jesse," I said, "but I can handle everything on my own." Then I remembered Heather, the ghost of the girl who'd almost killed me the week before. "Well, most everything," I corrected myself.

  "Ah," Jesse said. "See? You admit it. Susannah, this one – you need to ask the priest for help."

  "Fine," I said. "I will."

  "Fine," he said. "You had better."

  We were so mad at each other, and had been standing there yelling so hard, our faces ended up only a few inches apart. For a split second, I stared up at Jesse, and even though I was totally mad at him, I wasn't thinking about what a self-righteous jerk he is.

  Instead, I was thinking about this movie I saw once where the hero caught the heroine kissing another man, and so he grabbed her and looked down at her all passionately and said, "If kisses were what you were looking for, little fool, why didn't you come to me?"

  And then he laughed this evil laugh and started kissing her.

  Maybe, I couldn't help thinking, Jesse would do that, only he'd call me querida, like he does sometimes when he's not all mad at me for Frenching guys in cars.

  And so I sort of closed my eyes, and let my mouth get all relaxed, you know, in case he decided to stick his tongue in there.

  But all that happened was that the screen door slammed, and when I opened my eyes, Jesse was gone.

  Instead, Doc was there standing on the front porch looking down at me, eating an ice-cream sandwich.

  "Hey," Doc said, between licks. "What are you doing out here? And who were you yelling at? I could hear you all the way inside. I'm trying to watch Nova, you know."

  Furious – but at myself more than anybody – I said, "Nobody," and stalked up the stairs and into the house.

  Which was why the next day, I'd come to Father Dom's office first thing, and spilled my guts. No way was Jesse getting away with accusing me of thinking I don't need anyone. I need a lot of people.

  And a boyfriend would be number one on that list, thank you very much.

  "Sensitive to light," Father Dominic said, coming out of his thoughtful reverie. "His nickname is Red, but he doesn't have red hair. He was looking at your neck." Father Dom opened the top drawer of his desk and took out his crumpled, unopened pack of cigarettes. "Don't you see, Susannah?" he asked
me.

  "Sure," I said. "He's a whacko."

  "I don't think so," Father Dom said. "I think he's a vampire."

  C H A P T E R

  10

  I gaped at him.

  "Uh, Father D?" I said after a while. "No offense, but have you taken too many of your pain pills, or something? Because I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there's no such thing as vampires."

  Father Dom looked closer than I'd ever seen him to ripping that pack open and popping one of those cigarettes into his mouth. He restrained himself, however.

  "How," he asked, "do you know?"

  "How do I know what?" I demanded. "That there's no such thing as vampires? Um, the same way I know there's no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy."

  Father Dominic said, "Ah, but people say that about ghosts. And you and I both know that that's not true."

  "Yeah," I said, "but I've seen ghosts. I've never seen a vampire. And I've hung out in a lot of cemeteries."

  Father Dominic said, "Well, not to state the obvious, Susannah, but I've been around a good deal longer than you have and while I myself have never before encountered a vampire, I am at least willing to concede the possibility of such a creature existing."

  "Yeah," I said. "Okay, Father D. Let's just go out on a limb here and say the guy's a vampire. Red Beaumont is a very high-profile guy. If he was going to go running around after dark biting people on the neck, somebody would notice, don't you think?"

  "Not," Father Dominic said, "if he has, like you said, employees who are eager to protect him."

  This was too much. I said, "Okay. This has gotten a little too Stephen King for me. I gotta get back to class or Mr. Walden's going to think I'm AWOL. But if I get a note from you later saying I'm gonna have to stake this guy in the heart, all bets are off. Tad Beaumont will so totally not ask me to the prom if I kill his dad."

  Father Dominic put the cigarettes aside. "This," he said, "is going to take some researching...."

  I left Father Dominic doing what he loved best, which was surfing the Net. The Mission's administrative offices had only recently gotten computers, and no one there really knew how to use them very well. Father Dominic in particular had no idea how a mouse worked, and was constantly sweeping it from one side of his desk to the other, no matter how many times I told him all he had to do was keep it on the mouse pad. It would have been cute if it hadn't been so frustrating.