The Mediator #2: Ninth Key

by Jenny Carroll

  Only it did not appear to be working because every time she started to turn the cards over, she kept coming up with the same one.

  The ninth key.

  This was, apparently, upsetting to her. Shaking her head, Aunt Pru – that's what she'd told me to call her – scooped all the cards back into a pile, shuffled them, and then, closing her eyes, pulled one from the middle of the deck, and laid it, face up, for us to see.

  Then she opened her eyes, looked down at it, and went, "Again! This doesn't make any sense."

  She wasn't kidding. The idea of anyone summoning a ghost with a deck of cards made no sense whatsoever … to me, at least. I couldn't even summon them by standing there screaming their names – something I'd tried, believe me – and I'm a mediator. My job is to communicate with the undead.

  But ghosts aren't dogs. They don't come if you call them. Take my dad, for instance. How many times had I wanted – even needed – him? He'd shown up, all right: three, four weeks later. Ghosts are way irresponsible for the most part.

  But I couldn't exactly explain to Cee Cee's aunt that what she was doing was a huge waste of time . . . and that while she was sitting there doing it, there was a cat trying to eat his way out of my book bag in Adam's car.

  Oh, and that a guy who might or might not have been a vampire – but was certainly responsible for the disappearances of quite a number of people – was running around loose. I could only just sit there with this big stupid smile on my face, pretending to be enjoying myself, while really I was itching to get home and on the phone with Father D, so we could figure out what we were going to do about Red Beaumont.

  "Oh, dear," Aunt Pru said. She was very pretty, Cee Cee's aunt Pru. An albino like her niece, her eyes were the color of violets. She wore a flowing sundress of the same shade. The contrast her long white hair made against the purple of her dress was startling – and cool. Cee Cee, I knew, was probably going to look just like her aunt Pru someday, once she got rid of the braces and puppy fat, that is.

  Which was probably why Cee Cee couldn't stand her.

  "What can this mean?" Aunt Pru muttered to herself. "The hermit. The hermit."

  There appeared, from what I could see, to be a hermit on the card Aunt Pru kept turning over and over. Not of the crab variety, either, but the old-man-living-in-a-cave type. I didn't know what a hermit had to do with Mrs. Fiske, either, but one thing I did know: I was bored stupid.

  "One more time," Aunt Pru said, sending a cautious glance in Cee Cee's direction. Cee Cee had made it clear that we didn't have all day. I was the one who needed to get home most, of course. I had an Ackerman dinner to contend with. Kung pao chicken night. If I was late, my mom was going to kill me.

  "Um," I said. "Ms. Webb?"

  "Aunt Pru, darling."

  "Right. Aunt Pru. May I use your phone?"

  "Of course." Aunt Pru didn't even glance at me. She was too busy channeling.

  I wandered out of the darkened room and went out into the hallway. There was an old-fashioned rotary phone on a little table there. I dialed my own number – after a brief struggle to remember it since I'd only had it for a few weeks – and when Dopey picked up, I asked him to tell my mother that I hadn't forgotten about dinner and was on my way home.

  Dopey not very graciously informed me that he was on the other line and that because he was not my social secretary, and had no intention of taking any messages for me, I should call back later.

  "Who are you talking to?" I asked. "Debbie, your love slave?"

  Dopey responded by hanging up on me. Some people have no sense of humor.

  I put down the receiver and was standing there looking at this zodiac calendar and wondering if I was in some kind of celestial good-luck zone – considering what had happened with Tad and all – when someone standing right beside me said, in an irritated voice, "Well? What do you want?"

  I jumped nearly a foot. I swear, I've been doing this all my life, but I just can't get used to it. I would so rather have some other secret power – like the ability to do long division in my head – than this mediator crap, I swear.

  I spun around, and there she was, standing in Aunt Pru's entranceway, looking cranky in a gardening hat and gloves.

  She was not the same woman who'd been waking me up at night. They were similar body types, little and slender, with the same pixyish haircut, but this woman was easily in her sixties.

  "Well?" She eyed me. "I don't have all day. What did you call me for?"

  I stared at the woman in wonder. The truth was, I hadn't called her. I hadn't done anything, except stand there and wonder if Tad was still going to like me when Mercury retrograded into Aquarius.

  "Mrs. Fiske?" I whispered.

  "Yes, that's me." The old lady looked me up and down. "You are the one who called me, aren't you?"

  "Um." I glanced back toward the room where I could still hear Aunt Pru saying, apparently to herself, since neither Cee Cee nor Adam could have understood what she was talking about, "But the ninth key has no bearing …"

  I turned back to Mrs. Fiske. "I guess so," I said.

  Mrs. Fiske looked me up and down. It was clear she didn't much like what she was seeing. "Well?" she said. "What is it?"

  Where to begin? Here was a woman who'd disappeared, and been presumed dead, for almost half as long as I'd been alive. I glanced back at Aunt Pru and the others, just to make sure they weren't looking in my direction, and then whispered, "I just need to know, Mrs. Fiske … Mr. Beaumont. He killed you, didn't he?"

  Mrs. Fiske suddenly stopped looking so crabby. Her eyes, which were very blue, fixed on mine. She said, in a shocked voice, "My God. My God, finally … someone knows. Someone finally knows."

  I reached out to lay a reassuring hand upon her arm. "Yes, Mrs. Fiske," I said. "I know. And I'm going to stop him from hurting anybody else."

  Mrs. Fiske shrugged my hand off and blinked at me. "You?" She still looked stunned, but now in a different way.

  I realized how when she burst out laughing.

  "You're going to stop him?" she cackled. "You're … you're a baby!"

  "I'm no baby," I assured her. "I'm a mediator."

  "A mediator?" To my surprise, Mrs. Fiske threw back her head and laughed harder. "A mediator. Oh, well, that makes it all better, doesn't it?"

  I wanted to tell her I didn't really care for her tone, but Mrs. Fiske didn't give me a chance.

  "And you think you can stop Beaumont?" she demanded. "Honey, you've got a lot to learn."

  I didn't think this was very polite. I said, "Look, lady, I may be young, but I know what I'm doing. Now, just tell me where he hid your body, and – "

  "Are you insane?" Mrs. Fiske finally stopped laughing. Now she shook her head. "There's nothing left of me. Beaumont's no amateur, you know. He made sure there weren't any mistakes. And there weren't. You won't find a scrap of evidence to implicate him. Believe me. The guy's a monster. A real bloodsucker." Then her mouth hardened. "Though no worse, I suppose, than my own kids. Selling my land to that leech! Listen, you. You're a mediator. Give my kids this message for me: tell them I hope they burn in – "

  "Hey, Suze." Cee Cee suddenly appeared in the hallway. "The witch has given up. She has to consult her guru, 'cause she keeps coming up bust."

  I threw a frantic look at Mrs. Fiske. Wait! I still hadn't had a chance to ask her how she'd died! Was Red Beaumont really a vampire? Had he sucked all the life out of her? Did she mean he was literally a bloodsucking leech?

  But it was too late. Cee Cee, still coming toward me, walked right through what looked – and felt – to me like a little old lady in a gardening hat and gloves. And the little old lady shimmered indignantly.

  Don't, I wanted to scream. Don't go!

  "Ew," Cee Cee said with a little shudder as she threw off the last of Mrs. Fiske's clinging aura. "Come on. Let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

  I never did find out what Mrs. Fiske's message to her kids was – though I had a
bit of an idea. The old lady, with a last, disgusted look at me, disappeared.

  Just as Aunt Pru came into the hallway, looking apologetic.

  "I'm so sorry, Suzie," she said. "I really tried, but the Santa Anas have been particularly strong this year, and so there's been a lot of interference in the spiritual pathways I normally utilize."

  Maybe that explained how I had managed to summon the spirit of Mrs. Fiske. Could I do it again, I wondered, and this time remember to ask exactly how Red Beaumont had killed her?

  Adam, as we headed back toward his car, looked immensely pleased with himself.

  "Well, Suze?" he said, as he held open the passenger side door for Cee Cee and me. "You ever in your life met anybody like that?"

  I had, of course. Being a magnet for the souls of the unhappily dead, I'd met people from all walks of life, including an Incan priestess, several witch doctors, and even a Pilgrim who'd been burned at the stake as a witch.

  But since it seemed so important to him, I smiled and said, "Not exactly," which was the truth, in a way.

  Cee Cee didn't look too thrilled with the fact that one of her family members had managed to provide the boy she – let's face it – had a huge crush on with so much entertainment. She crawled into the backseat and glowered there. Cee Cee was a straight-A student who didn't believe in anything that couldn't be proved scientifically, especially anything to do with the hereafter . . . which made the fact that her parents had stuck her in Catholic school a bit problematic.

  More problematic to me, however, than Cee Cee's lack of faith or my newfound ability to summon spirits at will was what I was going to do with this cat. While we'd been inside Aunt Pru's house, he'd managed to chew a hole through one corner of my bag, and now he kept poking one paw through it, swiping blindly with claws fully outstretched at whatever came his way – primarily me, since I was the one holding the bag. Adam, no matter how hard I wheedled, wouldn't take the cat home with him, and Cee Cee just laughed when I asked her. I knew there was no way I was going to talk Father Dominic into taking Spike to live in the rectory: Sister Ernestine would never allow it.

  Which left me only one alternative. And I really, really wasn't happy about it. Besides what the cat had done to the inside of my bag – God only knew what he'd do to my room – there was the fact that I was pretty sure felines were verboten in the Ackerman household due to Dopey's delicate sensitivity to their dander.

  So I still had the stupid cat, plus a Safeway bag containing a litter box, the litter itself, and about twenty cans of Fancy Feast, when Adam pulled up to my house to drop me off.

  "Hey," he said, appreciatively, as I struggled to get out of the car. "Who's visiting you guys? The Pope?"

  I looked where he was pointing . . . and then my jaw dropped.

  Parked in our driveway was a big, black stretch limo, just like the kind I'd fantasized about going to prom with Tad in!

  "Uh," I said, slamming the door to Adam's VW shut. "I'll see you guys."

  I hurried up the driveway with Spike, determined not to be forgotten just because he'd been zipped into a book bag, growling and spitting the whole way. As I was coming up the front steps to the porch, I heard the rumble of voices coming from the living room.

  And when I stepped through the front door, and I saw who those voices belonged to … well, Spike came pretty close to becoming a kitty pancake, I squeezed that bag so tight to my chest.

  Because sitting there chatting amiably with my mother and holding a cup of tea was none other than Thaddeus "Red" Beaumont.

  C H A P T E R

  12

  "Oh Suzie," my mom said, turning around as I came into the house. "Hello, honey. Look who stopped by to see you. Mr. Beaumont and his son."

  It was only then that I noticed Tad was there, too. He was standing by the wall that had all of our family photos on it – which weren't many since we'd only been a family for a few weeks. Mostly they were just school photos of me and my stepbrothers, and pictures from Andy and my mom's wedding.

  Tad grinned at me, then pointed at a photo of me at the age of ten – in which I was missing both my front teeth – and said, "Nice smile."

  I managed to give him a reasonable facsimile of that smile, minus the missing teeth. "Hi," I said.

  "Tad and Mr. Beaumont were on their way home," my mom said, "and they thought they'd stop by and see if you'd have dinner with them tonight. I told them I didn't think you had any other plans. You don't, do you, Suze?"

  My mom, I could tell, was practically frothing at the mouth at the idea of me having dinner with this guy and his kid. My mom would have frothed at the mouth at the idea of me having dinner with Darth Vader and his kid, that's how hot she was to get me a boyfriend. All my mom has ever wanted is for me to be a normal teenage girl.

  But if she thought Red Beaumont was prime in-law material, boy, was she barking up the wrong tree.

  And speaking of barking, I had suddenly become an object of considerable interest to Max, who had started sniffing around my book bag and whining.

  "Um," I said. "Would you mind if I just ran upstairs and, um, dumped my stuff off?"

  "Not at all," Mr. Beaumont said. "Not at all. Take your time. I was just telling your mother about your article. The one you're doing for the school paper."

  "Yes, Suzie," my mom said, turning around in her seat with this huge smile. "You never told me you were working for the school paper. How exciting!"

  I looked at Mr. Beaumont. He smiled blandly back at me.

  And suddenly, I had a very bad feeling.

  Oh, not that Mr. Beaumont was going to get up, come over, and bite me on the neck. Not that.

  But all of a sudden, I got this very bad feeling that he was going to tell my mother the real reason I'd gone to visit him the night before. Not the newspaper article thing, but the thing about my dream.

  Which my mom would instantly suspect was you-know-what. If she heard I'd been going around feeding wealthy real estate tycoons lines about psychic dreams, I'd be grounded from here until graduation.

  And the worst part of it was, considering how much trouble I used to be in all the time back in New York, I wasn't at all eager to let my mom in on the fact that I was actually up to even more stuff on this side of the country. I mean, she really had no clue. She thought all of it – the fact that I'd constantly missed my curfew, my run-ins with the police, my suspensions, the bad grades – were behind us, over, kaput, the end. We were on a new coast, making a new start.

  And my mom was just so happy about it.

  So I said, "Oh, yeah, the article I'm doing," and gave Mr. Beaumont a meaningful look. At least, I hoped it would be meaningful. And I hoped what it meant to him was: don't spill the beans, buster, or you'll pay for it big time.

  Though I'm not certain how scared a guy like Red Beaumont would actually be of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  He wasn't. He sent a look right back at me. A look that said, if I wasn't mistaken: I won't spill the beans, sister, if you play along like a good little girl.

  I nodded to let him know I'd gotten the message, whirled around, and hurried up the stairs.

  Well, I figured as I went, Max loping at my heels, still trying to get a gander into my bag, at least Tad was with him. Mr. Beaumont certainly wasn't going to be able to bite me on the neck with his own kid in the room. Tad, I was pretty sure, wasn't a vampire. And he didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd just stand by and let his dad kill his date.

  And with any luck, that guy Marcus would be there. Marcus certainly wouldn't allow his employer to sink his fangs in me.

  I wasn't too surprised when, as we reached the door to my bedroom, Max suddenly turned tail and, with a yelp, ran in the opposite direction. He wasn't too thrilled by Jesse's presence.

  Neither, I figured, was Spike going to be. But Spike didn't have any other choice.

  I went into my room and took the litter box out of my giant Safeway bag and shoved it under the sink in my bathroom, then filled it with litte
r. In the center of my room where I'd left my book bag came some pretty unearthly howling. That paw kept shooting out of the hole Spike had chewed, and feeling around for something to claw.

  "I'm going as fast as I can," I grumbled as I poured some water into a bowl then opened a can of food and left it on a plate on the floor along with the water.

  Then, making sure I unzipped it away from me, I opened the bag.

  Spike came tearing out like . . . well, more like the Tasmanian Devil than any cat I'd ever seen. He was completely out of control. He tore around the room three times before he spotted the food, skidded suddenly to a halt, and began to suck it down.

  "What," I heard Jesse say, "is that?"

  I looked up. I hadn't seen Jesse since our fight the night before. He was leaning against one of my bedposts – my mom had gone whole hog when she'd decorated my room, going for the frilly dressing table, canopy bed, the works – looking down at the cat like it was some kind of alien life form.

  "It's a cat," I said. "I didn't have any choice. It's just until I find a home for it."

  Jesse eyed Spike dubiously. "Are you sure it's a cat? It doesn't look like any cat I've ever seen. It looks more like . . . what do they call them? Those small horses. Oh yes, a pony."

  "I'm sure it's a cat," I said. "Listen, Jesse, I'm kind of in a jam here."

  He nodded at Spike. "I can see that."

  "Not about the cat," I said, quickly. "It's about Tad."

  Jesse's expression, which had been a fairly pleasant, teasing one, suddenly darkened. If I hadn't been sure he didn't give a hang about me aside from as a friend, I'd have sworn he was jealous.

  "He's downstairs," I said quickly, before Jesse could start yelling at me again for being too easy on a first date. "With his father. They want me to come over for dinner. And I'm not going to be able to get out of it."

  Jesse muttered some stuff in Spanish. Judging from the look on his face, whatever he said hadn't exactly been an expression of regret that he, too, had not been invited.