“No, I didn’t,” he said. “Because I’m not stupid. This ring has been in my family for generations. It was my mother’s. And before that, my grandmother’s. Now I’m hoping it will be yours . . . if you’d act like a lady for five seconds and let me propose properly, and put it on your finger.”
I stared at him. How could he have his mother’s ring? I knew everything about him, but I’d never known this.
Well, not everything, of course. Not the things I most wanted to know, like what he looked like naked, or even what he looked like sleeping—-unconscious, maybe, but not asleep. After I’d saved him from ever having been murdered in the first place (long story, and another one of our secrets), Father Dominic had forged a few records to help accelerate Jesse’s educational process, and he’d managed to skip four years of college. When you’ve got nothing to do for nearly two hundred years but haunt the room you’d died in during a previous life, you end up reading a lot of books. Most of the books Jesse read were medical journals. He passed the MCATs with one of the highest scores in California state history, and had schools falling all over themselves, offering him scholarships.
And now he was offering me his mother’s ring, and I was offering him attitude.
What was wrong with me?
“Not now, all right?” I said, breaking free of his embrace. “Right now we have more important things to do. We have to go keep one ghost from turning a kid into another ghost, remember? And possibly me, too. So let’s go do it, and talk about this later.”
He frowned as I began to buzz around the room, gathering my ghost--busting material. “Susannah, did I do something wrong?”
“You? What could you possibly have done wrong?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. Querida, are you blushing?”
“Of course not.” My cheeks were hot as fire. But I couldn’t tell him why, because I didn’t know why. “Well, okay, maybe I am. I just can’t deal with this right now.”
“Can’t deal with what right now? The man who loves you asking you to spend the rest of your life with him?”
“Not that. That part’s a given. I mean, I’d kill you if you didn’t.”
“Is this about your mother?” he asked, flipping the ring box closed as I shoved my cell phone into a bowl of uncooked rice I keep on my bookshelf for just such emergencies. “Is this about how she wanted us to date other -people while we were at different schools? Are you regretting that you didn’t take her advice? Or—-” His voice grew oddly still. “Did you take her advice? Is that where you really were tonight?”
“God, Jesse, of course not!” I exploded. “What do you think, that I made up this elaborate story about the kid in the cemetery so you wouldn’t find out I’m cheating on you with some dumb frat boy? Are you kidding me?”
Jesse looked thoughtful. “I was thinking of a teaching assistant. I couldn’t see you with a fraternity boy. You’d probably only scare them.”
I grabbed my messenger bag. “Thanks for the compliment. Now we should probably go. Is your phone charged? I need you to check and see if there’s a local address listed for a family under the name of Farhat. Please, God, there can’t be more than one.”
“Or do you think I’m trying to trap you the way the dead boy did his girlfriend because I don’t know where I’m going to be for my residency next year?” he mused. “We could be even farther apart than we are now. But I swear that’s not what this is about. I’m confident that wherever I end up, we’ll work it out.”
“Oh, my God, Jesse, I know.” I reached for the vodka and cranberry Lauren had given me. Now that Jesse was here, he could drive. He’s a better driver than I am—-which is disturbing, considering I’ve had a license longer than he had—-and I needed the liquid courage. For what we were about to do, and, well, for other things.
“Then is it nerves about telling your mother and stepfather our plans?” he asked. “If this was the 1850s—-and I’m glad it’s not, because I’m grateful for vaccines and antibiotics—-I’d be asking Andy’s permission to marry you.” He ignored the choking sound I made, which had nothing to do with the drink I was chugging. “I’m not going to, not only because I understand that would be—-what did it you call it again? Oh, yes—- ridiculously chauvinistic, but because you obviously seem to have some kind of issue about the idea of our getting engaged right now. That’s fine. I can wait. But I do think we should consider telling your parents the truth about how we met and who I really am and how you can actually see the undead. It’s a bad idea to start a marriage with a lie —-”
“Oh, my God, no!” I burst out—-though not loudly enough to draw the attention of my suite mates, who for all I knew were listening at the door. I wouldn’t put it past them. Some of them had never been on dates before, and so were extremely curious about them. “Are you insane? I can’t tell my mom any of that stuff, let alone Andy. It would blow their tiny little minds. They’ll think we were in a cult, or something.”
“Having the gift of second sight is hardly the same as being in a cult, Susannah.”