“I could see you not caring about me, or about the house, but I think you’d be at least a little concerned about your boyfriend.”
“I am, but I fail to see what your tearing down my house has to do with him.”
“Only everything. Are you telling me you really don’t remember all those Egyptian funerary texts of Gramps’ that we used to study together after school? That hurts, Suze. That really hurts. Two mixed-up mediators, poring over ancient hieroglyphics . . . I thought we had something special.”
When you’re a regular girl and a guy is horny for you, he invites you over to his house after school to watch videos.
When you’re a mediator, he invites you over to study his grandfather’s ancient Egyptian funerary texts, so you can learn more about your calling.
Yeah. I was real popular in high school.
“What about them?” I demanded.
“Oh, not much. I just thought you’d remember what the Book of the Dead said about what happens when a dwelling place that was once haunted is demolished . . . how a demon disturbed from its final resting place will unleash the wrath of eternal hellfire upon all it encounters, cursing even those it once held dear with the rage of a thousand suns. That kind of thing.”
I swore—but silently, to myself.
Paul’s grandfather, in addition to being absurdly wealthy, had also been one of the world’s most preeminent Egyptologists. When it came to obscure, ancient curses written on crumbling pieces of papyrus, the guy was top of his field.
That’s why I was swearing. I’d been wrong: Paul wasn’t calling to make amends. This was something way, way worse.
“Nice try, Paul,” I said, attempting to keep my voice light and my heart rate steady. “Except I’m pretty sure that one was about mummies buried in pyramids, not ghosts who once haunted residential homes in Northern California. And while Jesse was never exactly an angel, he was no demon, either.”
“Maybe not to you. But he treated me like—”
“Because you were always trying to exorcise him out of existence. That would make anyone feel resentful. And 99 Pine Crest Road wasn’t his final resting place. Even before he became alive again, we found his remains and moved them.”
I couldn’t see Jesse’s headstone from my desk, but I knew it was sitting only a few dozen yards away, in the oldest part of the mission cemetery. On holy days of obligation, it’s the fifth graders’ job to leave carnations on it (as they do all the historic gravestones in the cemetery), as well as pull any weeds that might have sprouted from it.
The fact that there’s nothing buried under Jesse’s grave—since he happens to be alive and well—is something I don’t see any reason to let the fifth graders know. Kids benefit from being outdoors. Too much time playing video games has been shown to slow their social skills.
“So tearing down the place where he died isn’t going to hurt him,” I went on. “I’m not personally a fan of subdivisions, but hey, if that’s what floats your boat, go for it. Anything else? I really do have to go now, I’ve got a ton of things to do to get ready for the wedding.”
Paul laughed. Apparently my officious tone hadn’t fooled him.
“Oh, Suze. I love how so much in the world has changed, but not you. That boyfriend of yours haunted that crummy old house forever, waiting around for . . . just what was he waiting for, anyway? Murder victims are the most stubborn of all spooks to get rid of.” He said the word spooks the way someone in a detergent commercial would say the word stains. “All they want is justice—or, as in Jesse’s case, revenge.”
“That isn’t true,” I made the mistake of interrupting, and got rewarded by more of Paul’s derisive laughter.
“Oh, isn’t it? What was it you think he was waiting around for all those years, then, Suze? You?”
I felt my cheeks heat up again. “No.”
“Of course you do. But that love story of yours may not have such a happy ending after all.”
“Really, Paul? And why is that? Because of something written on a two-thousand-year-old papyrus scroll? I think you’ve been watching too many episodes of Ghost Mediator.”
His voice went cold. “I’m just telling you what the curse says—that restoring a soul to the body it once inhabited is a practice best left to the gods.”
“What are you even talking about? You’re the one who—”
“Suze, I only did what people like you and me are supposed to—attempt to help an unhappy soul pass on to his just rewards.”
“By sneaking back through time to keep him from dying in the first place so I’d never meet him?”
“Never mind what I did. Let’s talk about what you did. The curse goes on to say that any human who attempts to resurrect a corpse will be the first to suffer its wrath when the demon inside it is woken.”