Hush

Eleven

"You're not mad about anything though, are you?" I asked. I tried halfheartedly to bat my eyelashes at him, but I knew that we were going to argue at this point, and there was nothing my feminine wiles would be able to do about it.

"Am I mad about what? About the fact that Paul Slater knew you were pregnant before I did? Am I mad about the fact that you didn't seem to have any intention of telling me we were going to have a child anytime in the near future? Am I mad about the fact that I asked you if there was anything else you were keeping from me the other day, and you lied to me and said no? Or am I mad about the fact that once again, you decided it would be better to plot behind my back than be honest with me? Because I'm not mad about any of that."

"Could've fooled me," I muttered.

"I'm furious," Jesse said. And I knew he was furious because he'd gone to a very strange place with me, where he hadn't said a single swear word in Spanish, and his eyes had gotten steely.

There was a long stretch of silence where I couldn't meet his eyes anymore, and I swallowed uncomfortably.

"Who else knows, Susannah?" Jesse asked.

"About what?"

"About the baby. What else?"

"Just me. And you. And Paul," I added Paul's name begrudgingly.

"How far along are you?" he asked, running a hand through his thick hair in frustration. It was one of his favorite gestures for when he dealt with me while he felt like I was being difficult.

"About seven weeks now, I guess."

"You need prenatal vitamins."

"I've been getting them," I said. "Uh… I guess you should add Dr. Morgan from St. Francis to the list of people who know."

Jesse's next word was a swear word in English bad enough to earn him a five dollar donation to the swear jar. "So now half the hospital knew before I did," he said.

"I'm sorry you weren't the first person to know," I said.

"How did that," and here Jesse inserted a word in Spanish that could either mean male goat, asshat, or, most typically, Paul Slater, "find out before I did? When did you talk to him?"

"After Francesca Powell showed up. She'd had a run in with him, so I wanted to know what had happened," I said.

"So there was something else you kept from me when I asked you if you were being honest," Jesse said in a tone that was falsely pleasant.

I winced. "The only reason Paul knows is because he made this comment like you and I were going to have cursed kids, so I asked him if it was true, and he ended up figuring everything out. I only didn't tell you because I know you hate Paul, and what sense was there in upsetting you over nothing?"

Jesse didn't say anything for a while, and I wondered if that was it. It hadn't been anywhere near as bad as the fight I'd been expecting, but I was grateful for it. And the fact that he knew now felt like a weight off of my chest. Even if he got all over protective, at least I wouldn't have to hide the fact that I felt nauseous half the time from him. Everything was looking up.

Until he said, in a voice that was completely grave and devoid of any humor, "Why don't you trust me?"

And that caught me off guard.

"I do trust you," I said. "With my life. You know that."

"Do I?" Jesse asked. "Because you always seem to be interested in keeping things from me. When have I ever treated you like you it was my right to lie to you just because I might not like your response?"

"You're making this sound worse than it is," I said, and I tried to keep my tone light, but some emotion seeped into it anyway.

"I'm making it sound exactly like it is," Jesse said. "What do you plan on hiding from me next? What else are you hiding from me now?"

"I'm not hiding anything," I said indignantly.

"And now the problem is that I can't believe your answer."

I didn't know what to say to that. Because I did lie to him sometimes. It was never out of malicious intent, but it still happened sometimes, and over big things, regardless.

Instead of arguing for myself, I said, "Let's not fight about this. Can't we just take this time to celebrate? We're going to have a baby."

I tried to make my tone as bright as I could, but it wasn't convincing enough for Jesse to buy it. Instead of forgiving me or smiling or doing anything remotely peaceable, Jesse took another sip of wine.

"You're not going to get involved with this ghost anymore," he said. "If she or Patrick were willing to commit murder and assault a child, there's no telling what they might do to you."

I bristled.

"This is why I held off on telling you. I wasn't trying to keep anything from you. I just knew you'd get like this, and you wouldn't let me do my job. I can take care of myself, and I can take care of Alexa or Patrick or whoever comes along next who needs their ass kicked."

Jesse sighed and didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. Finally, he said, "I know you think it's 'macho,' but can you seriously blame me for wanting to keep you, and our child, safe?"

"Not really," I said, a little reluctantly.

A moment of silence passed where I wasn't sure where we stood with each other. Were we still arguing? Was he still upset? There wasn't much I could think of that I hated more than fighting with Jesse.

I felt his hand against my own a few seconds later. I had my head propped against my left hand, but I straightened up as he took it, along with my other hand, which was resting on the tabletop, into his own. His hands felt warm and safe, and I looked at them stupidly for a few moments before I looked up into his face. The corners of Jesse's lips were turned upward slightly into a small smile.

"What?" I asked.

His soft smile turned into a lopsided grin, the kind where I knew he was going to tease me about something.

"Am I not allowed to be happy now?" he asked. "What happened to what you were saying earlier, about how we should be celebrating?"

And I couldn't help but grin back at him.

Jesse laughed and gave my hands a slight squeeze. "I can't believe it. Less than eight months from now, I'm going to be a father. I never could've imagined…"

And then he smiled at me so broadly I felt like my heart was going to burst. I could faintly smell him from across the table, vanilla and old books, and I could still feel the warmth of his hands in mine. For a second, I was so blindingly happy I felt entirely invincible.

I was wrong about being invincible, of course, but I wouldn't know how wrong until later.

"We'll have to start buying things for one of the rooms upstairs," I said. "Babies need a lot of stuff."

"We'll worry about that later. For now, I'm worried about you and this ghost. And whatever ghost should appear next, for that matter."

I groaned as I felt my happy mood dissipate slightly. "I told you I can still handle everything," I said.

"You say that, but a few months from now I'm sure you'll come to disagree. You've already been experiencing morning sickness. That should fade, but as you progress, your respiratory rate will increase, so you'll start to feel more out of breath. Not to mention how your internal organs will start to shift to accommodate the baby. And the relation of the uterus to the bladder and the pelvis means you'll have to urinate more frequently and probably experience constipation, respectively. And none of this includes hormonal changes."

"I thought you were a pediatrician, not an OB GYN," I said sourly.

"This may be hard to believe, querida, but they teach us a lot in medical school. For example, physical trauma, including trauma caused by the undead, can result in miscarriage."

"Your textbooks talked about physical trauma induced by ghosts?"

Jesse ignored that and said, "I want you to take it easy with ghosts until…January."

"January?"

"If you carry to full term, your delivery date should be sometime in January."

"Oh," I said. For some reason, I hadn't even thought that far ahead. January. That was when our lives were going to change irrevocably. "So Penelope will be a winter baby."

"Don't even joke about naming our child Penelope. And don't think you're distracting me from the matter at hand either."

"Who said anything about distracting? Penelope and I have done nothing wrong."

"You and our yet to be named child will be staying as far away from ghosts as possible. We both know that they're unpredictable, powerful, and more than you should be dealing with while pregnant."

I didn't like being told what to do, but I couldn't exactly argue with Jesse when he had a point. Never underestimate an NCDP was one of the golden rules I taught the triplets at mediator lessons, so I knew that he was right about ghosts being unpredictable and powerful.

"Fine," I said. "Until January, I'll leave all matters of a spectral nature to you."

Jesse looked at me in satisfaction. But a moment later he looked annoyed, and then he wasn't looking at me at all.

I was confused until I heard a voice from behind me say, "You shouldn't ask her to make promises she can't keep."

I had been surprised to hear her voice, but I wasn't surprised when I turned in my chair to see Alexa standing with us in the kitchen.

The glimpse I'd caught of Alexa in the jewelry store and in her obituary didn't do justice to Alexa when she was in her prime. There was no evidence of the cancer that had ravaged her body. Her hair was long, wavy, and full of body, and her skin had no visible pores and was perfectly tanned from time spent more than likely frolicking at Carmel Beach.

"Relax," she said. "I didn't mean she was in any trouble from me. It's just that I'm not the only ghost out there, you know."

That didn't convince Jesse, and for that matter, it didn't convince me either.

"Let me level with you. I'm only here for a chat. Mind if I grab some wine?"

"We mind," I said.

But Alexa wasn't listening to me. Or, at least she didn't care, if she was listening to me. She turned her back to us and began to open and close the cabinets and drawers of the kitchen without lifting a finger. She did it all with telekinesis and, impressively, without slamming anything. She methodically opened everything until she found the cabinet with the wine glasses.

She chose a glass, and it floated through the air lazily until it came to rest on the table. The wine bottle moved next until it poured an elegantly stream into her glass and then swiftly followed by topping off Jesse's glass as well.

"More water, Susannah?" Alexa asked. "I did a little snooping of my own, but would you prefer it if I kept calling you Maggie?"

I gritted my teeth. "I'd prefer it if-."

"If you explained to us why you came here," Jesse interrupted.

He shot me a warning look, and I realized he was probably trying to keep me from saying something hasty that would result in her becoming violent. His hands were no longer in mine, and I watched as he eyed the distance between myself and Alexa, which was admittedly a lot closer than I would've liked it to be.

"Sure," Alexa said. "I'm here because the two of you, especially Susannah, have been in contact with Patrick recently. Accusing him of things. Trying to worm your way into finding out more about him. Sticking your noses where they don't belong, basically."

"We're mediators, and you're a ghost," I said. "Trust me when I say it's our business. You should have moved on to wherever it is you're supposed to go after you die. In your case, Hell or being reincarnated as a tree slug somewhere."

Alexa fixed her gaze on me, and it felt as though her eyes were actually piercing through my skin. "What I should have done," she said, in a very slow and precise voice, "is none of your goddamn business."

Before Jesse or I could say anything else, one of the drawers opened and then a knife, knives, three of them, suddenly went flying at top speed. It was too quick for us to do anything in response, and the knives found their target less than two seconds after Alexa had used her spectral powers to throw them.

There were three holes in the wall behind Jesse. From where he sat, they made points around his head in the shape of a triangle.

Pissed was an understatement of how I currently felt. I didn't care if I was pregnant or not. Alexa was about to get her ass handed to her.

Until she spoke in a tone so dark I felt a chill run down to the base of my spine.

"Let this be a warning to you. Stay-away-from Patrick."

And just like that, she was gone.

"Well," I said a few seconds later while Jesse took to removing the knives from the wall, "let's scrap that ghostly minion theory."