Well, the chick was kind of dominatrixy, if you asked me.
She didn't even struggle when, as I read further, the slack on the smoky tendrils tightened, and slowly, the fog began elevating her off the floor.
"Hey," Jack said in an indignant voice. "How come it didn't do that for you? How come you had to climb into the hole?"
I was afraid to reply, however. Who knew what would happen if I stopped reading?
So I kept on. And Maria soared higher and higher, until ...
With a strangled cry, Diego broke away from Jesse and came racing toward us.
"You bitch!" he bellowed at me as he stared in horror at his wife's body, dangling in the air above us. "Bring her down!"
Jesse, panting, his shirt torn down the middle and a thin ribbon of blood running down the side of his face from a cut in his forehead, came up behind Diego and said, "You want your wife so badly, then why don't you go to her?"
And he shoved Felix Diego into the center of the ring of candles.
A second later, tendrils of smoke shot down to curl around him, too.
Diego didn't take his exorcism as quietly as his wife. He did not appear to be enjoying himself one bit. He kicked and screamed and said quite a lot of stuff in Spanish that I didn't understand, but which Jesse surely did.
Still, Jesse's expression did not change, not even once. Every so often I looked up from what I was reading and checked. He watched the two lovers - the one who had killed him and the one who had ordered his death - disappear into the same hole we'd just climbed from.
Until finally, after I'd uttered a last "Amen," they disappeared.
When the last echo of Diego's vengeful cries died away, silence filled the church. It was so pervasive a silence, it was actually a little overwhelming. I myself was reluctant to break it. But I felt like I had to.
"Jesse," I said, softly.
But not softly enough. My whisper, in the stillness of the church, after all that violence, sounded like a scream.
Jesse tore his gaze from the hole through which Maria and Diego had disappeared and looked at me questioningly.
I nodded toward the hole. "If you want to go back," I said, though each word tasted, I was sure, like those beetles Dopey had accidentally poured into his mouth, "now is the time, before it closes up again."
Jesse looked up at the hole, and then at me, and then back at the hole.
And then back at me.
"No, thank you, querida," he said, casually. "I think I want to stay and see how it all ends."
CHAPTER 17
How it all ended that day was with Jack and Jesse and me helping Father Dominic, when he finally came around, to a phone, so that he could call the police and report that he'd stumbled across a pair of thieves looting the place.
A lie, yes. But how else was he going to explain all the damage Maria and Diego had done? Not to mention the bump on his noggin.
Then, once we were sure the police and an ambulance were on their way, Jesse and I left Father Dominic and waited with Jack for the cab we'd called, carefully not talking about the one thing I'm pretty sure we were all thinking: Paul.
Not that I didn't try to get Jack to tell me what was up with his brother and all. Basically, the conversation went like this:
Me: "So, Jack. What is up with your brother?"
Jack: (scowling) "I don't want to talk about it."
Me: "I can fully appreciate that. However, he appears to be able to move freely between the realms of the living and the dead, and I find this alarming. Do you think it is possible that he is the son of Satan?"
Jesse: "Susannah."
Me: "I mean that in the nicest possible way."
Jack: "I said I don't want to talk about it."
Me: "Which is perfectly understandable. But did you know before now that Paul is a mediator, too? Or were you as surprised as we were? Because you didn't seem very surprised when you ran into him, you know, up there."
Jack: "I really don't want to talk about this right now."
Jesse: "He doesn't want to talk about it, Susannah. Leave the boy alone."
Which was easy for Jesse to say. Jesse didn't know what I did. Which was that Paul and Maria and Diego . . . they had all been in cahoots. It had taken me a while to realize it, but now that I had, I could have kicked myself for not seeing it before: Paul's keeping me occupied at Friday's while Maria had Jack perform the exorcism on Jesse. Paul's remark - "It's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar." Hadn't Maria said the exact same thing to me, not a few hours later?
The three of them - Paul, Maria, and Diego - had formed an unholy trinity, bound, apparently by a common hatred of one person: Jesse.
But what possible reason could Paul, who'd never even met Jesse until that moment in purgatory, have to hate him? Now, of course, his dislike was understandable: Jesse had done him a very great bodily injury, something for which Paul has sworn to repay him next time he saw him. I'm sure Jesse wasn't taking it too seriously, but I was worried. I mean, I'd just gone to a lot of trouble to get Jesse out of one sticky situation. I wasn't too enthused about seeing him plunge straight into another one.
But it was no good. Jack wouldn't talk. The kid was traumatized. Well, sort of. He actually seemed like he'd had a pretty good time. He just didn't want to talk about his brother.
Which bummed me out. Because I had a lot of questions. For instance, if Paul was a mediator - and he had to be; how else could he have been walking around up there? - why hadn't he helped his little brother out with the whole I see dead people thing, said a few words of encouragement, assured the poor kid he wasn't crazy?
But if I'd hoped to get any answers out of Jack on that account, I was sadly disappointed.
I guess if I'd had a brother like Paul, I probably wouldn't have wanted to talk about it, either.
Once Jack had been safely dropped off at the hotel, Jesse and I began the long walk home (I didn't have enough money on me for a ride from the hotel back to my house).
You might wonder what we talked about during that two-mile trek. A lot, surely, might have been discussed.
And yet, to tell you the truth, I can't remember. I don't think we really talked about anything important. What was there to say, really?
I snuck in as successfully as I'd snuck out. No one woke up, except the dog, and once he saw it was me, he went right back to sleep. No one had noticed that I'd been gone.
No one ever does.
Spike was the only one besides me who'd noticed Jesse was gone, and his joy at seeing him again was an embarrassment to felines everywhere. I could hear the stupid cat purring all the way across the room....
Although I didn't listen for long. That's because what happened was, I walked in, pulled down the bedclothes, slipped off my slides, and climbed into bed. I didn't even wash my face. I climbed into bed, looked one last time at Jesse as if to reassure myself he was really back, and then I went to sleep.
And I stayed asleep until Sunday.
My mother became convinced I was coming down with mono. At least until she saw the bruise on my forehead. Then she decided I was suffering from an aneurysm. Much as I tried to convince her that neither of these things was true - that I was just really, really tired - she didn't believe me, and would, I'm convinced, have dragged me to the hospital Sunday morning for an MRI - hey, I had been asleep for almost two days - except that she and Andy had to drive up to Doc's camp to bring him home.
The thing is, I guess dying - even for just half an hour - can be very exhausting.
I woke ravenous with hunger. After my mom and Andy left - having extracted from me a promise that I would not leave the house all day, but would instead wait meekly for them to return, so that they could reassess my state of health at that time - I downed two bagels and a bowl of Special K before Sleepy and Dopey even showed up at the table, looking all tussle-headed and unkempt. I, on the other hand, had already showered and dressed, and was ready to face the day ... or at least unemployment, since I wasn't certain the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort was going to extend my contract with them, due to my having missed two days of work in a row.