My OperaThe Mediator 6 - Heaven Sent - Four
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:13:03 PM
The handful of pebbles I'd thrown rattled noisily against the heavy, leaded glass. I looked around, worried someone might have heard. But better for them to hear tiny rocks hitting a window than me whispering the name of someone who wasn't even supposed to be living there...
Someone who, technically almost at once, not at the window, but by my side. That's the thing about the undead. They never have to worry about the stairs. Or walls.
"Susannah." The moonlight threw Jesse's features into high relief. There were dark pools in the place where his eyes should have been, and the scar in his eyebrow - a dog bite wound from childhood - showed starkly white.
Still, even with the tricks the moon was playing, he was the best-looking thing I had ever seen. I don't think it;s just the dace that I'm madly in love with him that makes me think so, either. I'd shown the miniature portrait of him I'd accidentally-on-purpose snagged from the Carmel Historical Society to CeeCee, and she'd agreed. Hottie extraordinaire was how she'd put it, to be exact.
"You don't have to bother with these." he said, reaching out to brush the remaining Pebbles from my hand. I knew you were here. I heard you calling."
Except, of course, that I hadn't. Called him. But whatever. He was here now and that's what mattered.
"What is it, Susannah?" Jesse wanted to know. He'd moved out of the shadows of the rectory, so that I could finally see his eyes. As usual, there were darkly liquid and full of intelligence... intelligence, and something else. Something, I like to think, that's just for me.
"Just stop by to say hi," I said with a shrug. It was chilly enough that when I spoke, I could see my breath fog up in front of me.
This didn't happen when Jesse spoke, however,. Because, of course, he has no breath.
"At three in the morning?" The dark eyebrows shot up, but he looked more amused than alarmed. "On a school night?"
He had me there, of course.
"Father D asked me to pick up some cat food," I said, brandishing a bag. "I didn't want Sister Earnstine to see me smuggling it in. She's not supposed to know about Spike."
"cat food," Jesse said. Now he definitely looked amused. "Is that all?"
It wasn't all and he knew it. But it also wasn't what he thought. At least, not exactly.
Still, he pulled me toward him. I didn't precisely object. Especially not considering that there's only one place in the world I feel completely safe any more, and that's where I was just then... in his arms.
"You;re cold, querida," he whispered into my hair. "You're shivering."
I was, but not cold because I was cold. Well, not only because I was cold. I closed my eyes, melting in his embrace as I always did, reveling in the feel of his strong arms around me, his hard chest beneath my cheek. I wished I could have stayed that way forever - in Jesse's arms, I mean, where nothing could ever hurt me. Because he'd never let it.
I don;t know how long we stood like that in the vegetable garden behind the rectory where Father Dom lived. All I know is that eventually Jesse, who'd been stroking my hair, pulled back a little, so that he could look down into my face.
"What is it, Susannah?" he asked me again, his voice sounding strangely rough, considering the tenderness of the moment. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I lied, because I didn't want it to end... the moonlight, his embraces, any of it... all of it.
"Not nothing," he said, reaching up and pulling a strand of hair from where the wind had blown it, so that it was sticking to my lip gloss. I always seem to have that problem. "I know you, Susannah. I know there's something the matter. Come."
He took me by the hand and pulled. I went with him even though I didn't know where we were going. I'd have followed him anywhere, even into the bowels of hell. Only of course he'd never take me there.
Unlike some people.
I did balk a little when I saw where he had led me, though. It wasn't exactly hell, but...
"The car?" I stared at the hood of my mom's Honda Accord.
"you're cold," Jesse said firmly, opening the driver's side door for me. "We can talk inside."
Talking wasn't really what I'd had in mind. Still, I figured we could do what I had had in mind just as easily in the car as in the rectory's vegetable garden. And it would be a lot warmer.
Only Jesse wasn't having any of it. He seized both my hands as I tried to slip them around his neck, and placed them firmly in my lap.
"Tell me," he said from the shadows of the passenger seat, and I could tell by his voice that he was in no mood for games.
I sighed and stared out the windshield. As far as romance went, this was not exactly what I's call prime make-out spot. Big Sur, maybe. The Winter Formal, definitely. But the rectory parking lot at the Junipero Serra Mission? Not so much.
Cont...
Meg Cabot[/ALIGN][/COLOR][/FONT]
