Meg Cabot - Darkest Hour

Only I never got a chance to tell Felix Diego what I was going to have to do him. That's because he interrupted me. He said, in this deep and surprisingly menacing voice, for a guy with a goatee, "It has long been my conviction that the only good mediator is a dead one."

Then, before I could so much as twitch, he threw his arms around me. I thought he was trying to give me a hug or something, which would have been pretty weird.

But that wasn't what he was doing at all. No, what he was doing, actually, was throwing me off the porch roof.

Oh, yes. He threw me right into the hole where the hot tub was supposed to go. Right where they'd uncovered Jesse's remains, just that afternoon....

Which I thought was kind of ironic, actually. At least, while I was still capable of thought.

Which wasn't for long, since I lost consciousness shortly after slamming into the ground.

CHAPTER 10

Here's the thing about mediators:

We're hard to kill.

I'm serious. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've been knocked down, dragged, stomped on, punched, kicked, bitten, clawed, whacked on the head, held underwater, shot at, and, oh, yeah, thrown off roofs.

But have I ever died? Have I ever sustained a life-threatening injury?

No. I've broken bones - plenty of them. I've got scars galore.

But the fact is, whoever - or whatever - created us mediators did give us one natural weapon, at least, in our fight against the undead. No, not superhuman strength, though that would have been handy. No, what we've got, Father Dom and I - and Jack, too, probably, although I doubt he's had an opportunity to test it out yet - is a hide tough enough to take all the abuse that gets heaped on us and then some.

Which was why even though by rights a fall like the one I took should have killed me, it didn't. Not even close.

Not, of course, that Maria de Silva and her paramour didn't think they'd been successful. They must have, or they'd have stuck around to finish the job. But when I woke up hours later, groggy and with a headache you would not believe, they were nowhere to be seen.

Clearly, I had won the first round. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway. I mean, I wasn't dead, and that, in my book, is always a plus.

What I was, was concussed. I knew right away because I get them all the time. Concussions, I mean.

Well, all right, twice.

Anyway, it's not so pleasant, being concussed. Basically, you feel pukey and sore all over, but, not surprisingly, your head really hurts more than anything. In my case, it was even worse in that I'd been lying at the bottom of that hole for so long, the dew had had a chance to fall. It had collected on my clothes and soaked them through and made them feel very heavy. So dragging myself out of that pit Andy and Dopey had dug became a real chore.

In fact, it was dawn before I finally managed to let myself back into the house - thank God Sleepy had left the front door unlocked when he'd come in from his big date. Still, I had to climb all those stairs. It was pretty slow going. At least when I got to my room and was finally able to peel off all of my sodden, muddy clothes, I didn't have to worry, for once, about Jesse seeing me in my altogether.

Because of course Jesse was gone.

I tried not to think about that as I crawled into bed and shut my eyes. This strategy - the not-thinking-about-Jesse-being-gone strategy - seemed to work pretty well. I was asleep, I think, before that thought had really had a chance to sink in again.

I didn't wake up until well past eight. Apparently Sleepy had tried to get me up for work, but I was too far gone. They let me sleep in, I guess, because they all assumed I was still upset about what had happened the day before, about the skeleton they'd found in the backyard.

I only wish that was all I had to be upset about.

When the phone rang a little after nine and Andy called up the stairs that it was for me, I was already up, standing in my bathroom in my sweats, examining the enormous bruise that had developed beneath my bangs. I looked like an alien. I'm not kidding. It was a wonder, really, I hadn't broken my neck. I was convinced that Maria and her boyfriend thought that's exactly what I'd done. It was the only reason I was still alive. The two of them were so cocky, they hadn't stuck around to make sure I was well and truly dead.

They'd obviously never met a mediator before. It takes a lot more than a fall off a roof to kill one of us.

"Susannah." Father Dominic's voice, when I picked up the phone, was filled with concern. "Thank God you're all right. I was so worried . . . But you didn't, did you? Go to the cemetery last night?"

"No," I said. There hadn't been any reason to go there, in the end. The cemetery had come to me.

But I didn't say that to Father D. Instead, I asked, "Are you back in town?"

"I'm back. You didn't tell them, did you? Your family, I mean."

"Um," I said, uncertainly.

"Susannah, you must. You really must. They have a right to know. We're dealing with a very serious haunting here. You could be killed, Susannah - "

I refrained from mentioning that I'd actually already come pretty close.

At that moment, the call waiting went off. I said, "Father D, can you hold on a second?" and hit the receiver.

A high-pitched, vaguely familiar voice spoke in my ear, but for the life of me, I could not place it right away.

"Suze? Is that you? Are you all right? Are you sick or something?"

"Um," I said, extremely puzzled. "Yeah. I guess. Sort of. Who is this?"

The voice said, very indignantly, "It's me! Jack!"

Oh, God. Jack. Work. Right.

"Jack," I said. "How did you get my home number?"

"You gave it to Paul," Jack said. "Yesterday. Don't you remember?"

I did not, of course. All I could really remember from yesterday was that Clive Clemmings was dead, Jesse's portrait was missing ...

And that Jesse, of course, was gone. Forever.

Oh, and the whole part where the ghost of Felix Diego tried to split my head open.

"Oh," I said. "Yeah. Okay. Look, Jack, I have someone on the other - "

"Suze," Jack interrupted. "You were supposed to teach me to do underwater somersaults today."

"I know," I said. "I'm really sorry. I just ... I just really couldn't face coming in to work today, bud. I'm sorry. It's nothing against you or anything. I just really need a day off."

"You sound so sad," Jack said, sounding pretty sad himself. "I thought you'd be really happy."

"You did?" I wondered if Father D was still waiting on the other line or if he'd hung up in a huff. I was, I realized, treating him pretty badly. After all, he'd cut his little retreat short for me. "How come?"

"On account of how I - "

That's when I saw it. Just the faintest glow, over by the daybed. Jesse? Again my heart gave one of those lurches. It was really getting pathetic, how much I kept hoping, every time I saw the slightest shimmer, that it would be Jesse.

It wasn't.

It wasn't Maria or Diego either - thank God. Surely not even they would be bold enough to try to take a whack at me in broad daylight....

"Jack," I said, into the phone. "I have to go."

"Wait, Suze, I - "

But I'd hung up. That's because sitting there on my daybed, looking deeply unhappy, was Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.

Just my luck: Wish for a Jesse. Get a Clive.

"Oh," he said, blinking behind the lenses of his Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. He seemed almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him materialize there in my bedroom. "It's you ."

I just shook my head. Sometimes my bedroom feels like Grand Central Station.

"Well, I simply didn't - " Clive Clemmings fiddled with his bow tie. "I mean, when they said I should contact a mediator, I didn't ... I mean, I never expected - "