But swim caps are ugly, and squeeze my head so I can’t think. I do my best thinking when I’m doing my laps.
Under the water, I couldn’t hear the sound of the light traffic over the G16, or the crickets chirping in the decorative plantings the apartment management company had put all around the pool. I couldn’t hear the tinkling of silverware in unit 2-B (they keep their balcony door open at dinnertime, just like I do).
Soon all I could hear was the sound of water splashing and my own breathing as I began to swim.
After my laps were finished, I decided I’d dry off and drive to the hardware store—there was a Home Depot open until ten in Monterey—and buy every bag of rock salt they had in stock (they’d probably think I was a lunatic. It snowed so rarely in Carmel it was considered an apocalyptic event).
Then I’d sow every inch of 99 Pine Crest Road with it, and the soil around it, too. I’d even salt the yards of the neighboring houses.
I had no proof this would work, but what other choice did I have? My apartment was salted to keep troublesome spirits out. Wouldn’t salting the ground of a place where dark acts had been committed keep that evil in?
That probably wouldn’t stop a demon for long, but if I also got Father D over there to perform another one of his house blessings—and maybe, while he was at it, bless Jesse, too—it could help.
Not that I believed for one minute that Jesse was going to sit still for a blessing—at least not without an explanation. He went to mass every Sunday, and on holy days of obligation, as well. If there was a demon living inside him, it was going to take one hell of a blessing to drive it out. I was probably going to have to come up with an imam, a rabbi, and a Wiccan high priestess in addition to Father Dom to get rid of this curse.
If only I’d kicked Paul in the throat instead of the groin on graduation night. If I’d broken his hyoid bone and killed him, I probably would have gotten off on self-defense. If I offed him now that he was so well known—thanks to Los Angeles magazine and his own parents suing him—the case might garner a lot of publicity, and if convicted, I’d probably get some jail time . . . though still way less than Jesse, seeing as how I’m white, and a woman.
But any jail time is too much for a girl who can only sleep with three down-filled pillows on 100 percent cotton sheets.
Oh, what was I saying? I could never kill another human being . . . at least not one that I knew.
Or could I? In order to protect everything—and everyone—that I loved?
When did everything become so complicated? If it wasn’t some jerk from your past showing up to blackmail you into having sex with him, it was a baby homicidal spirit wrecking your office. Non-compliant persons, both living and deceased, seemed always to be popping up from out of nowhere, ruining my life. Was I never going to be able to kick back and enjoy myself for a change?
It’s unconscionable—to use one of Sister Ernestine’s favorite terms—that I was thinking this exact thought when an NCDP appeared in the water beside me.
But I was so absorbed in my dark thoughts about Paul, listening to my own breathing and heartbeat, watching the shadow my own body made on the floor of the pool as I did my laps, that I didn’t notice, despite Pru’s warning not an hour earlier.
I didn’t notice until its clawlike hands were wrapped around my neck, and it was shoving me under the bright blue water.
And suddenly, I was the one about to die.
nueve
I flailed in the water, swallowing deep gulps of it, while clutching at the sharp little fingers digging into my throat.
“Don’t you hurt Becca,” an all-too-familiar voice hissed into my ear when I managed to surface for one all-too-brief gasp of glorious air. “Don’t you come near her again!”
There was nothing I could say in response. Even if there had been, I couldn’t speak. Her grip on my throat was so tight I couldn’t utter a sound, nor could I dig my fingers beneath hers to loosen her grip. Besides, she’d plunged us both to the bottom of the pool, her body—which should have been weightless—suddenly heavy as a refrigerator.
And I was the stray dog someone had decided to cruelly chain to that refrigerator for kicks before shoving both into the bottom of the lake.
All I could do was fight my way back to the surface against the weight inexorably bearing me down. But when I finally did reach the glorious air, instead of taking it in, I could only cough out the burning chlorinated water I’d swallowed.
And she continued to cling to my neck like a thousand-pound weight. How was that possible, when she was only the size of a doll, and a ghost besides? For someone whose name meant “light,” she was anything but.