Hush

Fourteen

Note: I have some time off, so I'm challenging myself to finish writing this story this week and get it all uploaded by next week. Bear with me. Also, I've just finished fifteen, and I can say now that this story wil more than likely have eighteen chapters.

"I came up with a way to solve our ghost-shifter problem," I announced just about the second Jesse came into my office for lunch.

"I'm listening."

I hesitated for a few more moments while Jesse gave me an imploring look.

"Whatever it is, you can tell me, querida."

He made it a point to call me "querida" whenever he wanted me to do something because he knew it still made my heart do these funny palpitations, even after all these years. It was basically his way of playing dirty to match my own use of feminine wiles or whatever. It just about always worked, and now was no exception.

"I'm meeting up with Paul on Friday to take care of it. He's going to take her to Shadowland and shove her through one of those doors for us."

To his credit, Jesse didn't fly off the handle immediately like I expected him to. Instead he said, in a much too casual voice, "Have you agreed to sell your body again?"

"Oh my God, Jesse, that was one time," I said. "And I didn't plan on going through with it. You know that."

"Well, what did you agree to give to him?" Jesse asked. "Because knowing Slater, he doesn't do anything for free."

"You're right. I told him I'd forget all about knowing he was the triplet's biological father. And that he could get a statement from me in writing that I didn't plan on telling anyone, lest I face financial consequence or something."

Jesse ran a hand through his hair. "That's…"

"A tough deal, I know. But it's not me pretending I'm going to sleep with him, so I think it's a win, considering the situation."

There was a brief pause before Jesse insisted, "I'm going with you."

"The deal has nothing to do with sex or anything," I said. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

"I don't care what he agreed to. That," and then he said something particularly nasty in Spanish that I could only halfway understand, "isn't someone we can trust."

Almost instantly memories of my blistered feet pounding a steaming pavement as I retreated from Paul's house and his shifter lessons came back to me. "I know, I know," I said. "But if you lose your temper, which you always do when you're around him, there's nothing keeping you from an assault charge this time."

"I can behave myself."

I gave him a dubious look. "And I can defend myself. If it comes to that. And I bet Paul would be too proud to admit he got hit by a girl in court anyway, so…."

"So I'll still come with you, and I'll keep my hands to myself."

I already knew Jesse wasn't budging, and there was no way he wasn't going to be watching me like a hawk two days from now to make sure I didn't take off for Paul's alone.

Just great. I was going to be raising my kid as a single mother whose husband was away on a prison stint. I was betting that men's prison was nowhere near as nice as the set up on Orange Is the New Black.

Without another word about Paul, Jesse offered me a sandwich and took a bite of his own. I looked at the sandwich for a couple of seconds in a mix of disinterest, nausea, and drowsiness before Jesse noticed I wasn't eating.

"Something wrong?" he asked. "Nothing from this morning is hurting you, is it?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Daniel, on the other hand…"

And then I gave him a brief rundown of this morning which made him put his sandwich down as well.

"That," and Jesse broke off to say the same word he'd called her this morning.

"I know," I said. And then I tried briefly to imitate his Spanish.

Jesse looked me as blankly as if I'd started spouting off Greek, until one of the corners of his mouth twitched, and he started to chuckle. "That's not even close to what I said," he laughed.

"Then what does it mean? It sounds juicy, and I want to use it."

"It doesn't have a translation in English, that word. And besides, your Spanish when you swear is even worse. Which is strange, considering how bad your Spanish already is and how often you swear in English."

"More like it's strange considering how often I hear you swear in Spanish," I said.

Jesse gave me his best attempt at an entirely innocent smile before he returned to his sandwich. Eventually, he said, "You really should eat, Susannah. You're not the only one in your body who needs food anymore, remember?"

I wasn't entirely sure as to why, but somehow that made me want to eat less.

"Have you scheduled another doctor's appointment?"

I shook my head. "I'm not even sure what doctor I want to use."

Jesse grinned and said, "Don't worry. There's still plenty of time to think about it."

I did not return his grin. Thanks to Alexa, I hadn't spent much time thinking about much of anything aside from homicidal ghosts lately. I hadn't planned on giving my impending motherhood any thought, besides the prenatal pills I'd shambled into my routine in place of birth control, until everything had been handled on the mediation front.

But now I was thinking about it.

I took a bite of my sandwich, chewed slowly, swallowed, and then said, "Do you think the baby will be a mediator?"

Jesse looked slightly caught off guard by my question, but it didn't take him more than a couple of seconds of thought before he said, "There's a good chance-considering who we are and the likelihood that there's some sort of mediator gene, even if it is recessive. Are you worried a ghost will try and intimidate it, like Daniel?"

"That's not it. Well, maybe that is part of it, now that you mention it. But just think about all of the crap we go through as mediators in general. Think about all of the broken bones."

"I've never had a ghost break any of my bones."

"Jesse, you've literally been murdered before. Don't change the subject."

Jesse gave me a very ruffled look, like I had insulted his manhood by reminding him that he was a homicide victim, before saying, "And what exactly is the subject? We'd obviously take care of any ghosts that were troubling it. And, once it got a bit older, we'd teach it the same way you're teaching the triplets now."

"Teach it to be able to defend itself from all the ghosts that are going to try and kill it at some point in time? Because that's what the lessons I'm giving to the triplets are inevitably going to turn into in a few years."

Jesse sighed, leaned back in his chair, and said, "I wanted to know if you'd thought of an obstetrician, and now you're asking me to think about how our child, who is still a fetus, by the way, will cope with the undead a decade from now?"

"Yes," I said stubbornly.

"You worry too much, Susannah."

"Maybe you're not worried enough about our fetus-child, our fetus-child who will already know what every single swear word in English and Spanish sounds like before it's even emerged from the womb. Fetus-children can hear stuff, music and voices, you know. And mediator fetus-children can probably even hear ghosts."

Jesse was doing his best to look like he was taking me seriously, but he was biting his lip to keep from laughing.

"I'm being serious!" I said, and I swatted his arm with part of the wrapping from my sandwich.

"I know you are," he said, and he couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "But everything is going to be fine. The baby will be fine. And we are going to do a fine job of raising it."

I wasn't entirely convinced, but instead of arguing I took a begrudging bite of my sandwich.

Once Jesse had left my office and lunch had drawn to a close, I picked up my phone and did a quick search for the Monterey Police Department's non-emergency phone number. I masked my phone number, like I'd done when I'd called Patrick, and copied their number into the dialer.

It would've been nice if the triplets could have been here for the conclusion of the How to Mediate a Car Crash Victim series, but all of the help Elena had given me this morning made her more than deserving of being moved to the very top of my priority list. Besides, my to-do list at the moment was briefly empty, seeing as there wasn't anything to do with Alexa until I met with Paul on Friday.

My conversation with the officer who answered the phone was brief, and she sounded fairly disinterested. There wasn't much about the story of seeing an abandoned car on the side of the road that instantly led anyone to believe that death was involved. The officer offered to send someone out to check out the situation-though she didn't give a time range for when this would happen. There wasn't any pressing that I could do, and there wasn't any pressing that really needed to be done. All of the pieces were in place, thanks to Elena, and it was only a matter of time until her loved ones found out that she was gone.

"Only a matter of time" turned out to be even shorter than I thought it would be.

Elena appeared in front of me just as Jesse was locking the front door to the clinic behind us. I could tell the exact moment that he turned around and saw her. His hand went to my shoulder immediately, and I could feel his body beside mine.

"She's not dangerous," I said quickly. "This is the ghost we've been helping who was in the car crash."

The tension I felt at my side dissipated as I turned back to Elena.

"Is everything alright? I called the police department, so it shouldn't be too long before they send someone out to investigate."

"They already have," Elena said. "And they've already identified me and called my dad."

"Do you think that's not why you're here then?" I asked. If it wasn't, then the open-and-shut case that Elena was supposed to be was going to get a lot more complicated.

"I think it was," Elena said quickly, "I'm just not entirely sure it is anymore."

I closed my eyes briefly and prayed to whatever benevolent being that there might've been out there that she wasn't going to say she wanted to come back to life. Ghosts that get coming back to life stuck in their heads are the most stubborn variety of ghost possible. Elena didn't seem like that type though. If I had to judge her, she'd definitely be the type to think that moving on meant reincarnation or something else spiritually profound.

"What do you think is keeping you here then?" Jesse asked during my silence.

Elena bit her lip and looked between me and Jesse before saying, "Are you sure you're going to be OK, Suze?"

"Me?" I asked. "I'll be fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

The second I said it the events of the morning came slamming back into my mind like a freight train. And then, after I remembered the feeling of all those knives on my skin and seeing them plunge into Alexa's body with the help of Elena's spectral powers, I felt embarrassed.

The only ghost who had ever seen me vulnerable or saved my life before was Jesse. And Jesse wasn't a ghost anymore-never mind the fact that Jesse had always been more than just a ghost to me. The typical rules of interaction with ghosts, like not trusting them or not making out with them, had never applied to him. But here I was anyway, getting bailed out of danger by a modern day hippie like a damsel in distress. Somehow, even including the danger I'd been in this morning, the feeling that this knowledge produced in me was the lowlight of my day.

The feeling got worse a few seconds later when Elena recounted her rescue of me earlier, as though I hadn't been there.

"So I just wanted to know that you'd be OK dealing with her," Elena concluded.

Before I could speak, Jesse said, "She's got me. She'll be fine."

Elena looked at Jesse briefly, first discerningly, as though she was trying to size him up to see if he was capable of taking on Alexa, and then more discerningly, as though she was trying to figure out whether she wanted to rank him as 9.5 or as a 10 on a scale of good looks.

I tolerated the second look only because the answer was 11, and Elena was dead and probably deserved one last chance to check out a guy before she moved on for good.

"I really will be," I said after a few seconds. "Thank you for being concerned, but I can handle myself. All you need to worry about is taking care of yourself, you know, moving on."

Elena stopped looking at Jesse and started looking at me again. I made my gaze as confident as possible, and she seemed to accept that Jesse and I were right. We could handle this.

"Thank you for all your help," were Elena's final words before she dematerialized for the last time.

If I'd known that Elena had been right to worry, I probably would've asked her to stick around for a little while longer. But since I didn't know that, I got into the passenger side of the BMW, and Jesse and I went home.