Meg Cabot - Darkest Hour

"Oh my God !" I was shouting again, but I didn't care. I was enraged. "Eternal peace? How do you know that's what he's found? You can't know that."

"No," Father Dominic said. I could tell he was choosing his words with care now. Like I was a bomb that might go off if he used the wrong one.

"You're right," Father D said quietly. "I can't know that. But that is the difference between you and me, Susannah. You see, I have faith."

I was across the room in three quick strides. I don't know what I was going to do. I certainly wasn't going to hit him. I mean, the trigger to my anger mechanism might be oversensitive, but I'm not about to go around punching priests. Well, at least not Father Dom. He is my homeboy, as we used to say back in Brooklyn.

Still, I think I was going to shake him. I was going to put my hands on his shoulders and attempt to shake some sense in him, since reasoning did not appear to be working. I mean, seriously, faith. Faith ! As if faith ever worked better than a good ass-kicking.

But before I could lay a hand on him, I heard someone behind me clear his throat. I looked around, and there was Andy, in his toolbelt and jeans and a T-shirt that said Welcome to Duck Bill Flats , standing in my open doorway and looking concerned.

"Suze," he said. "Father Dominic. Is everything all right in here? I thought I heard some shouting."

Father Dominic stood up.

"Yes," he said, looking grave. "Well, Susannah is - and very rightly, too - concerned about the, er, unfortunate discovery in your backyard yesterday. She has asked me, Andrew, to perform a house blessing, and I of course said I would. I've left my Bible in the car, however ... "

Andy perked right up. "You want me to go get it for you, Father?" he asked.

"Oh, that would be wonderful, Andrew," Father D said. "Just wonderful. It should be on the front seat. If you could bring that to me, I'll get to work straight away."

"No problem, Father," Andy said, and he went away, looking all happy. Which is easy to be if you, like Andy, haven't the slightest clue what's going on in your own house. I mean, Andy doesn't believe. He doesn't know there's a plane of existence other than this one. He doesn't know people from that other plane are trying to kill me.

Or that I was once in love with the guy whose bones he dug up yesterday.

"Father D," I said, the minute I heard Andy's feet hit the stairs.

"Susannah," he said tiredly. He was trying to head me off at the pass, I could tell. "I understand how difficult this is for you. Jesse was very special. I know he meant a great deal to you - "

I couldn't believe this. "Father D - "

" - but the fact is, Susannah, Jesse is in a better place now." Father Dominic, as he spoke, walked across my room, stooped down by the door, and pulled out a black bag he'd apparently set down in the hallway. He lifted the bag, set it down again on my unmade bed, and opened it. Then he started taking things out of it.

"You and I," he went on, "are just going to have to have faith in that thought, and move on."

I put my hands on my hips. I don't know if it was the concussion or the fact that my boyfriend had been exorcised, but my bitch quotient was set on high, I think.

"I have faith, Father Dom," I informed him. "I have plenty of faith. I have faith in myself, and I have faith in you. That's how I know that we can fix this."

Father Dominic's baby blues widened behind the lenses of his bifocals as he lifted a purple ribbony thing to his lips, kissed it, then slipped it around his neck. "Fix this? Fix what? Whatever do you mean, Susannah?"

"You know what I mean," I said, because he did.

"I - " Father Dominic took a metal thing that looked like an ice cream scooper out of his bag, along with a jar of what I could only suppose was holy water. "I realize, of course," he said, "that Maria de Silva Diego will have to be dealt with. That is troubling, but I think you and I are both perfectly well equipped to handle the situation. And the boy, Jack, will have to be seen to and adequately indoctrinated in the appropriate methods of mediation, of which exorcism, as you know, should only be used as a last resort. But - "

"That's not it," I said.

Father Dominic looked up from his house blessing preparation. "It isn't?" he echoed questioningly.

"No," I repeated. "And don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about."

He blinked a few times, reminding me of Clive Clemmings.

"I can't say that I do know, Susannah," he said. "What are you talking about?"

"Getting him back," I said.

"Getting who back, Susannah?" Father Dom's all-night driving marathon was starting to show. He looked tired. He was a handsome guy, for someone in his sixties. I was pretty sure half the nuns and most of the female portion of the Mission's congregation were in love with him. Not that Father D would ever notice. The knowledge that he was a middle-aged hottie would only embarrass Father D.

"You know who," I said.

"Jesse? Getting Jesse back?" Father Dominic stood there, the stole around his neck and the dipper thing in one hand. He looked bewildered. "Susannah, you know as well as I do that once spirits find their way out of this world, we lose all contact with them. They're gone. They've moved on."

"I know. I didn't say it was going to be easy. In fact, I can think of only one way to do it, and even then, well, it'll be risky. But with your help, Father D, it just might work."

"My help?" Father Dominic looked confused. "My help with what?"

"Father D," I said. "I want you to exorcise me."

CHAPTER 12

"For the last time, Susannah," Father Dominic said. This time he pounded on the steering wheel for emphasis as he said it. "What you are asking is impossible."

I rolled my eyes. "Hello? What happened to faith? I thought if you had faith, anything was possible."

Father D didn't like having his own words tossed back at him. I could tell by the way he was grimacing at the reflection of the cars behind us in his rearview mirror.

"Then let me say that what you are suggesting has a very unlikely chance of succeeding." Driving in Carmel-by-the-Sea is no joke, since the houses have no numbers, and the tourists can't, for the life of them, figure out where they're going. And the traffic is, of course, ninety-eight percent tourists. Father D was frustrated enough by our efforts to get where we were going. My announcement back in my bedroom that I wanted him to exorcise me wasn't helping his mood much, either.

"Not to mention the fact that it is unethical, immoral, and probably quite dangerous," he concluded, as he waved at a minivan to go ahead and go around us.

"Right," I said. "But it's not impossible ."

"You seem to be forgetting something," Father D said. "You are not a ghost, nor are you possessed by one."

"I know. But I have a spirit, right? I mean, a soul. So why can't you exorcise it? Then I can go, you know, have a look around, see if I can find him, and if I do, bring him back." I added as an afterthought, "If he wants to come, of course."

"Susannah." Father Dom was really fed up with me, you could totally tell. It had been all right, back at the house, when I'd been crying and everything. But then I'd gotten this terrific idea.

Only Father Dominic didn't think the idea was so terrific, see. I personally found it brilliant. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. I guess my brain had gotten a little squashed, what with the concussion.

But there was no reason why my plan shouldn't work. No reason at all.

Except that Father Dominic would have no part of it.

"No," he said. Which was what he'd been saying ever since I first mentioned it. "What you are suggesting, Susannah, has never been done before. There isn't the slightest guarantee it will work. Or that, if it does, you will be able to return to your body."