Darkest Hour

Darkest Hour

Jenny Carroll

CHAPTER 1

Summer. Season of long, slow days and short, hot nights.

Back in Brooklyn, where I spent my first fifteen of them, summer - when it hadn't meant camp - had meant hanging out on the stoop with my best friend Gina and her brothers, waiting for the ice cream truck to come by. When it wasn't too hot, we played a game called War, dividing into teams with the other kids in the neighborhood and shooting each other with imaginary guns.

When we got older, of course, we quit playing War. Gina and I also started laying off the ice cream.

Not that it mattered. None of the neighborhood guys, the ones we used to play with, wanted anything to do with us. Well, with me, anyway. I don't think they'd have minded renewing acquaintances with Gina, but by the time they finally noticed what a babe she'd grown into, she'd set her sights way higher than guys from the 'hood.

I don't know what I expected from my sixteenth summer, my first since moving to California to live with my mom and her new husband . . . and, oh, yeah, his sons. I guess I envisioned the same long, slow days. Only these, in my mind, would be spent at the beach rather than on an apartment building's front stoop.

And as for those short, hot nights, well, I had plans for those, as well. All I needed was a boyfriend.

But as it happened, neither the beach nor the boyfriend materialized, the latter because the guy I liked? Yeah, he so wasn't interested. At least, as far as I could tell. And the former because ...

Well, because I was forced to get a job.

That's right: A job.

I was horrified when one night at dinner, around the beginning of May, my stepfather Andy asked me if I'd put in any summer employment applications anywhere. I was all, "What are you talking about?"

But it soon became clear that, like the many other sacrifices I'd been asked to make since my mother met, fell in love with, and married Andy Ackerman - host of a popular cable television home improvement program, native Californian, and father of three - my long hot summer lazing at the beach with my friends was not to be.

In the Ackerman household, it soon unfolded, you had two alternatives for how you spent your summer break: a job, or remedial tutoring. Only Doc, my youngest stepbrother - known as David to everyone but me - was exempt from either of these, as he was too young to work, and he had made good enough grades that he'd been accepted into a month-long computer camp, at which he was presumably learning skills that would make him the next Bill Gates - only hopefully without the bad haircut and Wal-Mart-y sweaters.

My second-youngest stepbrother, Dopey (also known as Brad) was not so lucky. Dopey had managed to flunk both English and Spanish - an astounding feat, in my opinion, English being his native language - and so was being forced by his stepfather to attend summer school five days a week . . . when he wasn't being used as unpaid slave labor on the project Andy had undertaken while his TV show was on summer hiatus: tearing down a large portion of our house's backyard deck and installing a hot tub.

Given the alternative - employment or summer school - I chose to seek employment.

I got a job at the same place my oldest stepbrother, Sleepy, works every summer. He, in fact, recommended me, an act which, at the time, simultaneously stunned and touched me. It wasn't until later that I found out that he had received a small bonus for every person he recommended who was later hired.

Whatever. What it actually boils down to is this: Sleepy - Jake, as he is known to his friends and the rest of the family - and I are now proud employees of the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort, Sleepy as a lifeguard at one of the resort's many pools, and me as ...

Well, I signed away my summer to become a hotel staff babysitter.

Okay. You can stop laughing now.

Even I will admit that it's not the kind of job I ever thought I'd be suited for, since I am not long on patience and am certainly not overly fond of having my hair spat up in. But allow me to point out that it does pay ten dollars an hour, and that that does not include tips.

And let me just say that the people who stay at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort? Yeah, they are the kind of people who tend to tip. Generously.

The money, I must say, has gone a long way toward healing my wounded pride. If I have to spend my summer in mindless drudgery, earning a hundred bucks a day - and frequently more - amply compensates for it. Because by the time the summer is over, I should have, without question, the most stunning fall wardrobe of anyone entering the junior class of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy.

So think about that, Kelly Prescott, while you spend your summer lounging by your father's pool. I've already got four pairs of Jimmy Choos, paid for with my own money.

What do you think about that, Little Miss Daddy's AmEx?

The only real problem with my summer job - besides the whiny children and their equally whiny, but loaded, parents, of course - is the fact that I am expected to report there at eight o'clock in the morning every day.

That's right. EIGHT A.M. No sleeping in for old Suze this summer.

I must say I find this a bit excessive. And believe me, I've complained. And yet the management staff at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort have remained stubbornly unswayed by my persuasive arguments for refraining from offering babysitting services until nine.

And so it is that every morning (I can't even sleep in on Sundays, thanks to my stepfather's insistence that all of us gather around the dining table for the elaborate brunch he prepares; he seems to think we are the Camdens or the Waltons something) I am up before seven....

Which has, I've been surprised to learn, its advantages.

Although I would not list seeing Dopey without a shirt, sweating like a pig, and gulping OJ from the carton as one of them.

There are a lot of girls who go to my school who would, I know, pay money to see Dopey - and Sleepy, too, for that matter - without a shirt, sweat or no sweat. Kelly Prescott, for instance. And her best friend, and Dopey's sometime flame, Debbie Mancuso. I myself do not understand the attraction, but then I can only suppose that these girls have not been around my stepbrothers after a meal in which beans played any sort of role on the menu.

Still, anyone who cared to see Dopey do his calendar pinup imitation could easily do so for free, merely by stopping by our house any weekday morning. For it is in our backyard that Dopey has been, from approximately six in the morning until he has to leave for summer school at ten, stripped to the waist, and performing rigorous manual labor under the eagle eye of his father.

On this particular morning - the one where I caught him, once again, drinking directly from the juice carton, a habit of which my mother and I have been trying, with little success, to cure the entire Ackerman clan - Dopey had apparently been doing some digging, since he left a trail of mud along the kitchen floor, in addition to a dirt-encrusted object on what had once been an immaculate counter (I should know: it had been my turn to 409 it the night before).

"Oh," I said, as I stepped into the kitchen. "Isn't that a lovely picture."

Dopey lowered the orange juice container and looked at me.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of a wrist.

"Of course," I said. "But I was hoping that before I left, I could enjoy a nice glass of calcium fortified juice. I see now that that will not be possible."

Dopey shook the carton. "There's still some left," he said.

"Mixed with your backwash?" I heaved a shudder. "I think not."

Dopey opened his mouth to say something - presumably his usual suggestion that I chew on some piece of his anatomy - but his father's voice called from outside the sliding glass doors to the deck.

"Brad," Andy yelled. "That's enough of a break. Get back out here and help me lower this."

Dopey slammed down the carton of OJ. Before he could stalk from the room, however, I stopped him with a polite, "Excuse me?"

Because he wore no shirt, I could see the muscles in Dopey's neck and shoulders tense as I spoke.

"All right already," he said, spinning around and heading back toward the juice carton. "I'll put it away. Jeez, why are you always on me about crap like - "

"I don't care about that," I interrupted him, pointing at the juice carton - although it had to have been making the counter sticky. "I want to know what that is."

Dopey looked where I'd moved my finger. He blinked down at the dirt-encrusted oblong object.

"I dunno," he said. "I found it buried in the yard while I was digging out one of the posts."

I gingerly lifted what appeared to be a metal box, about six inches long by two inches thick, heavily rusted and covered in mud. There were a few places where the mud had rubbed off, though, and there you could see some words painted on the box. The few I could make out were delicious aroma and quality assured. When I shook the box, it rattled. There was something inside.

"What's in it?" I asked Dopey.

He shrugged. "How should I know? It's rusted shut. I was gonna take a - "

I never did find out what Dopey was going to do to the box, since his older brother Sleepy walked into the kitchen at that moment, reached for the orange juice carton, opened it, and downed the remaining contents. When he was through, he crumpled the carton, threw it into the trash compactor, and then, apparently noticing my appalled expression, said, "What?"

I don't get what girls see in them. Seriously. They are like animals.

And not the cute fuzzy kind, either.

Meanwhile, outside, Andy was calling imperiously for Dopey again.

Dopey muttered some extremely colorful four-letter words beneath his breath, then shouted, "I'm coming, already," and stomped outside.

It was already seven forty-five, so Sleepy and I really had to "motor," as he put it, to get to the resort on time. But though my eldest stepbrother has a tendency to sleepwalk through life, there's nothing somnambulistic about his driving. I punched in at work with five minutes to spare.

The Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort prides itself on its efficiency. And it is, in fact, a very smoothly run operation. As a staff babysitter, it's my responsibility, after punching in, to ask for my assignment for the day. That's when I find out whether I'll be washing strained carrots or burger fixings out of my hair after work. On the whole, I prefer burgers, but there's something to be said for strained carrots: generally the people who eat them can't talk back to you.

When I heard my assignment for that particular day, however, I was disappointed, even though it was a burger-eater.

"Simon, Susannah," Caitlin called. "You're assigned to Slater, Jack."

"For God's sake, Caitlin," I said to Caitlin, who was my supervisor. "I was stuck with Jack Slater yesterday. And the day before."

Caitlin is only two years older than me, but she treats me like I'm twelve. In fact, I'm sure the only reason she tolerates me is because of Sleepy: she is as warm for his form as every other girl on this planet ... except, of course, me.

"Jack's parents," Caitlin informed me, without even looking up from her clipboard, "requested you, Suze."

"Couldn't you have said I was already taken?"

Caitlin did look up then. She looked at me with cool, blue contact-lensed eyes. "Suze," she said. "They like you."

I fiddled with my bathing suit straps. I was wearing the regulation navy blue swimsuit beneath my regulation navy blue Oxford T-shirt and khaki shorts. With pleats, no less. Appalling.

I mentioned the uniform, right? I mean, the part where I have to wear a uniform to work? No kidding. Every day. A uniform.

If I'd known about the uniform beforehand, I never would have applied for the job.

"Yeah," I said. "I know they like me."

The feeling isn't mutual. It isn't that I don't like Jack, although he's easily the whiniest little kid I have ever met. I mean, you can see why he's that way - just take a look at his parents, a pair of career-obsessed physicians who think dumping their kid off with a hotel babysitter for days on end while they go sailing and golfing is a fine family vacation.

It's actually Jack's older brother I have the problem with. Well, not necessarily a problem ...

More like I would just rather avoid seeing him while I am wearing my incredibly unstylish Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort uniform khaki shorts.

Yeah. The ones with the pleats in them.

Except, of course, that every time I've run into the guy since he and his family arrived at the resort last week, I've been wearing the stupid things.

Not that I care, particularly, what Paul Slater thinks about me. I mean, my heart, to coin a phrase, belongs to another.

Too bad he shows no signs whatsoever of actually wanting it. My heart, that is.

Still, Paul - that's his name; Jack's older brother, I mean: Paul Slater - is pretty incredible. I mean, it isn't just that he's a hottie. Oh, no. Paul's hot and funny. Every time I go to pick Jack up or drop him off at his family's hotel suite, and his brother Paul happens to be there, he always has some flippant remark to make about the hotel or his parents or himself. Not mean or anything. Just funny.

And I think he's smart, too, because whenever he isn't on the golf course with his dad or playing tennis with his mom, he's at the pool reading. And not your typical pool book, either. No Clancy or Crichton or King for Paul. Oh, no. We're talking stuff by guys like Nietzsche, or Kierkegaard.

Seriously. It's almost enough to make you think he's not from California.

And of course it turns out, he's not: the Slaters are visiting from Seattle.

So you see, it wasn't just that Jack Slater is the whiniest kid I've ever met: there was also the fact that I wasn't really all that enthused about his hottie brother seeing me, yet again, in shorts that make my butt look roughly the size of Montana.

But Caitlin was totally uninterested in my personal feelings on the matter.

"Suze," Caitlin said, looking down at her clipboard again. "Nobody likes Jack. But the fact is, Dr. and Mrs. Slater like you. So you're spending the day with Jack. Capeesh?"

I sighed gustily, but what could I do? Aside from my pride, my tan was the only thing that was really going to suffer from spending yet another day with Jack. The kid doesn't like swimming, or bike riding, or Rollerblading, or Frisbee tossing, or anything, really, to do with the great outdoors. His idea of a good time is to sit inside the hotel room and watch cartoons.

I'm not kidding, either. He is, without a doubt, the most boring kid I ever met. I find it hard to believe he and Paul came from the same gene pool.

"Besides," Caitlin added, as I was standing there, fuming. "Today is Jack's eighth birthday."

I stared at her. "His birthday? It's Jack's birthday, and his parents are leaving him with a sitter all day?"

Caitlin shot me a severe look. "The Slaters say they'll be back in time to take him to dinner at the Grill."

The Grill. Whoopee. The Grill is the fanciest restaurant at the resort, maybe even on the entire peninsula. The cheapest thing they serve there costs about fifteen dollars, and that's the house salad. The Grill is so not a fun place to take a kid on his eighth birthday. I mean, even Jack, the most boring child in the world, couldn't have a fun time there.

I don't get it. I really don't. I mean, what's wrong with these people? And how, seeing the way they treat their youngest child, had their other one managed to turn out so ...

Well, hot?

At least, that was the word that flashed through my mind as Paul opened the door to his family's suite in response to my knock, then stood there grinning down at me, one hand in the pocket of his cream-colored chinos, the other clutching a book by someone called Martin Heidegger.

Yeah, you know what the last book I read was? That'd be Clifford. That's right. The big red dog. And okay, I was reading it to a five-year-old, but still. Heidegger. Jeez.

"All right. Who called Room Service and ordered the pretty girl?" Paul wanted to know.

Well, okay, that wasn't funny. That was actually sort of sexually harassing, if you think about it. But the fact that the guy saying it was my age, about six feet tall, and olive-complected, with curly brown hair and eyes the color of the mahogany desk in the hotel lobby, made it not so bad.

Not so bad. What am I talking about? The guy could sexually harass me anytime he wanted to. At least someone wanted to.

Just my luck it wasn't the guy I wanted.

I didn't admit this out loud, of course. What I said instead was, "Ha ha. I'm here for Jack."

Paul winced. "Oh," he said, shaking his head in mock disappointment. "The little guy gets all the luck."

He held the door open for me, and I stepped into the suite's plush living room. Jack was where he usually was, sprawled on the floor in front of the TV. He did not acknowledge my presence, as was his custom.

His mother, on the other hand, did acknowledge me: "Oh, hi, Susan. Rick and Paul and I will be on the course all morning. And then the three of us are meeting for lunch at the Grotto, and then we've got appointments with our personal trainers. So if you could stay until we all get back, around seven, we'd appreciate it. Make sure Jack has a bath before changing for dinner. I've laid out a suit for him. It's his birthday, you know. Okay, buh-bye, you two. Have fun, Jack."

"How could he not?" Paul wanted to know, with a meaningful glance in my direction.

And then the Slaters left.

Jack remained where he was in front of the TV, not speaking to me, not even looking at me. As this was typical Jack behavior, I was not alarmed.

I crossed the room - stepping over Jack on my way - and went to fling open the wide French doors that led out onto a terrace overlooking the sea. Rick and Nancy Slater were paying six hundred dollars a night for their view, which was one of the Monterey Bay, sparkling turquoise under a cloudless blue sky. From their suite you could the see the yellow slice of beach upon which, were it not for my well-meaning but misguided stepfather, I would have been whiling away my summer.

It isn't fair. It really isn't.

"Okay, big guy," I said, after taking in the view for a minute or two and listening to the soothing pulse of the waves. "Go put on your swim trunks. We're hitting the pool. It's too nice out to stay inside."

Jack, as usual, looked as if I'd pinched him rather than suggested a fun day at the pool.

"But why?" he cried. "You know I can't swim."

"Which is exactly," I said, "why we're going. You're eight years old today. An eight-year-old who can't swim is nothing but a loser. You don't want to be a loser, do you?"

Jack opined that he preferred being a loser to going outdoors, a fact with which I was only too well acquainted.

"Jack," I said, slumping down onto a couch near where he lay. "What is your problem?"

Instead of responding, Jack rolled over onto his stomach and scowled at the carpet. I wasn't going to let up on him, though. I knew what I was talking about, with the loser thing. Being different in the American public - or even private - educational system is not cool. How Paul had ever allowed this to happen - his little brother's turning into a whiny little wimp you almost longed to slap - I couldn't fathom, but I knew good and well Rick and Nancy weren't doing anything to help rectify the matter. It was pretty much all up to me to save Jack Slater from becoming his school's human punching bag.

Don't ask me why I even cared. Maybe because in a weird way, Jack reminded me a little of Doc, my youngest stepbrother, the one who is away at computer camp. A geek in the truest sense of the word, Doc is still one of my favorite people. I have even been making a concerted effort to call him by his name, David ... at least to his face.

But Doc is - almost - able to get away with his bizarre behavior because he has a photographic memory and a computer-like ability to process information. Jack, so far as I could tell, possessed no such skills. In fact, I had a feeling he was a bit dim. So really, he had no excuse for his eccentricities.

"What's the deal?" I asked him. "Don't you want to learn how to swim and throw a Frisbee, like a normal person?"

"You don't understand," Jack said, not very distinctly, into the carpet. "I'm not a normal person. I - I'm different than other people."

"Of course you are," I said, rolling my eyes. "We're all special and unique, like snowflakes. But there's Different, and then there's Freakish. And you, Jack, are going to turn Freakish, if you don't watch out."

"I - I already am freakish," Jack said.

But he wouldn't elaborate, and I can't say I pressed too hard, trying to find out what he meant. Not that I imagined he might like to drown kittens in his spare time, or anything like that. I just figured he meant freakish in the general sense. I mean, we all feel like freaks from time to time. Jack maybe felt like one a bit more often than that, but then, with Rick and Nancy for parents, who wouldn't? He was probably constantly being asked why he couldn't be more like his older brother, Paul. That would be enough to make any kid feel a little insecure. I mean, come on. Heidegger? On summer vacation?

Give me Clifford, any day.

I told Jack that worrying so much was going to make him old before his time. Then I ordered him to go and put on his swimsuit.

He did so, but he didn't exactly hurry, and when we finally got outside and onto the brick path to the pool, it was almost ten o'clock. The sun was beating down hard, though it wasn't uncomfortably hot yet. Actually, it hardly ever gets uncomfortably hot in Carmel, even in the middle of July. Back in Brooklyn, you can barely go outdoors in July, it's so muggy. In Carmel, however, there is next to no humidity, and there's always a cool breeze from the Pacific....

Perfect date weather, actually. If you happened to have one. A date, I mean. Which of course I don't. And probably never will - at least with the guy I want - if things keep up the way they've been going....

Anyway, Jack and I were tripping down the brick path to the pool when one of the gardeners stepped out from behind an enormous forsythia bush and nodded to me.

This wouldn't have been at all odd - I have actually gotten friendly with all of the landscaping staff, thanks to the many Frisbees I have lost while playing with my charges - except for the fact that this particular gardener, Jorge, who had been expected to retire at the end of the summer, had instead suffered a heart attack a few days earlier, and, well ...

Died.

Yet there was Jorge in his beige coveralls, holding a pair of hedge clippers and bobbing his head at me, just as he had the last time I'd seen him, on this very path, a few days before.

I wasn't too worried about Jack's reaction to having a dead man walk up and nod at us, since for the most part, I'm the only one I know who can actually see them. The dead, I mean. So I was perfectly unprepared for what happened next....

Which was that Jack ripped his hand from mine and, with a strangled scream, ran for the pool.

This was odd, but then, so was Jack. I rolled my eyes at Jorge, then hurried after the kid, since I am, after all, getting paid to care for the living. The whole helping-out-the-dead thing has to play second fiddle so long as I'm on the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort time clock. The ghosts simply have to wait. I mean, it's not as if they're paying me. Ha! I wish.

I found Jack huddled on a deck chair, sobbing into his towel. Fortunately, it was still early enough that there weren't many people at the pool yet. Otherwise, I might have had some explaining to do.

But the only other person there was Sleepy, high up in his lifeguard chair. And it was pretty clear from the way Sleepy was resting his cheek in one hand that his shutters, behind the lenses of his Ray Bans, were closed.

"Jack," I said, sinking down onto the neighboring deck chair. "Jack, what's the matter?"

"I ... I't-told you already," Jack sobbed into his fluffy white towel. "Suze . . . I'm not like other people. I'm like what you said. A ... a ... freak."

I didn't know what he was talking about. I assumed he was merely continuing our conversation from the room.

"Jack," I said. "You're no more a freak than anybody else."

"No," he sobbed. "I am. Don't you get it?" Then he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, and hissed, "Suze, don't you know why I don't like to go outside?"

I shook my head. I didn't get it. Even then, I still didn't get it.

"Because when I go outside," Jack whispered, "I see dead people."

CHAPTER 2

I swear that's what he said.

He said it just like the kid in that movie said it, too, with the same tears in his eyes, the same fear in his voice.

And I had much the same reaction as I had when watching the movie. I went, inwardly, Freaking crybaby.

Outwardly, however, I said only, "So?"

I didn't mean to sound callous. Really. I was just so surprised. I mean, in all my sixteen years, I've only met one other person with the same ability I have - the ability to see and speak with the dead - and that person is a sixty-something-year-old priest who also happens to be principal of the school I am currently attending. I certainly never expected to meet up with a fellow mediator at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.

But Jack took offense at my "So?" anyway.

"So?" Jack sat up. He was a skinny little kid, with a caved-in sort of chest, and curly brown hair like his brother's. Only Jack lacked his brother's nicely buff shape, so the curly hair, which looked sublime on Paul, gave Jack the unfortunate appearance of a walking Q-tip.

I don't know. Maybe that's why Rick and Nancy don't want to hang around him. Jack's a little creepy looking, and apparently has frequent dialogues with the dead. God knows it never made me Miss Popularity.

The talking to the dead thing, I mean. I am not creepy looking. In fact, when I am not wearing my uniform shorts, I am frequently complimented on my appearance by the occasional construction worker.

"Didn't you hear what I said?" Jack was depressed, you could tell. I was probably the first person he'd ever told about his unique problem who'd been completely unimpressed.

Poor kid. He had no idea who he was dealing with.

"I see dead people," he said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. "They come up, and start talking to me. And they're dead."

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

"Jack," I said.

"You don't believe me." His chin started trembling. "No one believes me. But it's true!"

Jack buried his face in his towel again. I glanced in Sleepy's direction. Still no sign that he was aware of either of us, much less that he found Jack's behavior at all odd. The kid was murmuring about all the people who hadn't believed him over the years, a list which seemed to include not only his parents, but a whole stream of medical specialists Rick and Nancy had dragged him to, hoping to cure their youngest child of this delusion he has - that he can speak to the dead.

Poor little guy. He hadn't realized, as I had from a very early age, that what he and I can do ... well, you just don't talk about.

I sighed. Really, it would have been too much to ask, apparently, for me to have a normal summer. I mean, a summer without any paranormal incidents.

But then, I'd never had one of those before in my life. Why should my sixteenth summer be any different?

I reached out and laid a hand on one of Jack's thin, quivering shoulders.

"Jack," I said. "You saw that gardener just now, didn't you? The one with the hedge clippers?"

Jack lifted an astonished, tear-stained face from the terry cloth. He stared up at me in wonder.

"You ... you saw him, too?"

"Yeah," I said. "That was Jorge. He used to work here. He died a couple days ago of a heart attack."

"But how could you - " Jack shook his head slowly back and forth. "I mean, he's . . . he's a ghost."

"Well, yeah," I said. "He probably has something he needs us to do for him. He kicked off kind of suddenly, and there may be stuff, you know, he left unfinished. He came up to us because he wants our help."

"That's ... " Jack stared at me. "That's why they come up to me? Because they want help?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "What else would they want?"

"I don't know." Jack's lower lip started to tremble again. "To kill me."

I couldn't help smiling a little at that one. "No, Jack," I said. "That's not why ghosts come up to you. Not because they want to kill you." Not yet, anyway. The kid was too young to have made the kind of homicidal enemies I had. "They come up to you because you're a mediator, like me."

Tears trembled on the edges of Jack's long eyelashes as he gazed up at me. "A ... a what?"

Oh, for God's sake, I thought. Why me? I mean, really. Like my life's not complicated enough. Now I have to play Obi Wan Kenobi to this kid's Anakin Skywalker? It so isn't fair. When was I ever going to get the chance to be a normal teenage girl, to do the things normal teenage girls like to do, like go to parties and hang out at the beach, and, um, what else?

Oh, yeah, date. A date, with the boy I actually like, would be nice.

But do I get dates? Oh, no. What do I get instead?

Ghosts. Mainly ghosts looking for help cleaning up the messes they made when they were alive, but sometimes ghosts whose sole amusement appears to be making even bigger messes in the lives of the people they left behind. And this frequently includes mine.

I ask you, do I have a big sign on my forehead that says Maid Service? Why am I always the one who has to tidy up other people's messes?

Because I had the misfortune to be born a mediator.

I must say, I think I'm way better suited for the job than poor Jack. I mean, I saw my first ghost when I was two years old, and I can assure you, my initial reaction was not fear. Not that, at the age of two, I'd been able to help the poor suffering soul who approached me. But I hadn't shrieked and run away in terror, either.

It wasn't until later, after my dad - who passed away when I was six - came back and explained it that I began to fully understand what I was, and why I could see the dead, but others - like my mom, for instance - could not.

One thing I did know, though, from a very tender age: mentioning to anyone that I could see folks they couldn't? Yeah, not such a hot idea. Not if I didn't want to end up on the ninth floor of Bellevue, which is where they stick all the whackos in New York City.

Only Jack didn't seem to have quite the same instinctive sense of self-preservation I'd apparently been born with. He'd been opening up his trap about the whole ghost thing to anyone who would listen, with the inevitable result that his poor parents didn't want to have anything to do with him. I'd be willing to bet that kids his own age, figuring he was lying to get attention, felt the same way. In a sense, the little guy had brought all his current misfortunes down upon himself.

On the other hand, if you ask me, whoever is up there handing out the mediator badges needs to make a better effort to see that the folks who get awarded the job are mentally up to the challenge. I complain a lot about it, because it has put a significant cramp in my social life, but there is nothing about this whole mediator thing I do not feel perfectly capable of handling....

Well, except for one thing.

But I've been making a concerted effort not to think about that.

Or rather, him.

"A mediator," I explained to Jack, "is someone who helps people who have died to move on, into their next life." Or wherever people go when they kick the bucket. But I didn't want to get into a whole metaphysical discussion with this kid. I mean, he is, after all, only eight.

"You mean like I'm supposed to help them go to heaven?" Jack asked.

"Well, yeah, I guess." If there is one.

"But ... " Jack shook his head. "I don't know anything about heaven."

"You don't have to." I tried to think how to explain it to him, then decided showing was better than telling. That's what Mr. Walden, who I had last year for English and World Civ, was always saying, anyway.

"Look," I said, taking Jack by the hand. "Come on. Watch me, and you can see how it works."

Jack put the brakes on right away, though.

"No," he gasped, his brown eyes, so like his brother's, wild with fear. "No, I don't want to."

I yanked him to his feet. Hey, I never said I was cut out for this baby-sitting thing, remember?

"Come on," I said again. "Jorge won't hurt you. He's really nice. Let's see what he wants."

I practically had to carry him, but I finally got Jack over to where we'd last seen Jorge. A moment later the gardener - or, I should say, his spirit - reappeared, and after a lot of polite nodding and smiling, we got down to business. It was kind of hard, considering that Jorge's English was about as good as my Spanish - which is to say, not good at all - but eventually, I was able to figure out what was keeping Jorge from moving on from this life to his next - whatever that might be: His sister had appropriated a rosary left by their mother for her first grandchild, Jorge's daughter.

"So," I explained to Jack, as I steered him into the hotel lobby, "what we have to do is get Jorge's sister to give the rosary back to Teresa, his daughter. Otherwise, Jorge will just keep hanging around and pestering us. Oh, and he won't be able to find eternal rest. Got it?"

Jack said nothing. He just wandered behind me in a daze. He had been silent as death during my conversation with Jorge, and now he looked as if someone had whacked him on the back of the head with a Wiffle bat a couple hundred times.

"Come here," I said, and steered Jack into a fancy mahogany phone booth with a sliding glass door. After we'd both slipped through it, I pulled the door shut, then picked up the phone and fed a quarter into the slot. "Watch and learn, grasshopper," I said to him.

What followed was a fairly typical example of what I do on an almost daily basis. I called information, got the guilty parry's phone number, then phoned her. When she picked up, and I ascertained that she spoke enough English to understand me, I informed her of the facts as I knew them, without the least embellishment. When you are dealing with the undead, there's no need for exaggeration of any kind. The fact that someone who has died has contacted you with details no one but the deceased could know is generally enough. By the end of our conversation, an obviously flustered Marisol had assured me that the rosary would be delivered, that day, into Teresa's hands.

End of conversation. I thanked Jorge's sister and hung up.

"Now," I explained, to Jack, "if Marisol doesn't do it, we'll hear from Jorge again, and we'll have to resort to something a little more persuasive than a mere phone call. But she sounded pretty scared. It's spooky when a perfect stranger calls you and tells you she's spoken to your dead brother, and that he's mad at you. I bet she'll do it."

Jack stared up at me. "That's it?" he asked. "That's all he wanted you to do? Get his sister to give the necklace back?"

"Rosary," I corrected him. "And yes, that was it."

I didn't think it was important to add that this had been a particularly simple case. Usually, the problems associated with people speaking from beyond the grave are a little more complicated and take a lot more than a simple phone call to settle. In fact, oftentimes fisticuffs are involved. I had only just recently recovered from a few broken ribs given to me by a group of ghosts who hadn't appreciated my attempts to help them into the afterlife one little bit, and had, in fact, ended up putting me in the hospital.

But Jack had plenty of time to learn that not all the undead were like Jorge. Besides, it was his birthday. I didn't want to bum him out.

So instead, I slid the phone booth door open again and said, "Let's go swimming."

Jack was so stunned by the whole thing he didn't even protest. He still had questions, of course . . . questions I answered as patiently and thoroughly as I could. In between questions, I taught him to freestyle.

And I don't want to brag, or anything, but I have to say that, thanks to my careful instructions and calming influence, by the end of the day Jack Slater was acting like - and even swimming like - a normal eight-year-old.

I'm not kidding. The little dude had completely lightened up. He was even laughing. It was as if showing him that he had nothing to fear from the ghosts who had been plaguing him his whole life had lifted from him his fear of ... well, everything. It wasn't long before he was running around the pool deck, doing cannonballs off the side, and annoying all the doctors' wives who were trying to tan themselves in the nearby lounge chairs. Just like any other eight-year-old boy.

He even struck up a conversation with a group of other kids who were being tended by one of my fellow sitters. And when one of them splashed water in Jack's face, instead of bursting into tears, as he would have done the day before, Jack splashed the kid back, causing Kim, my fellow sitter, who was treading water beside me, to ask, "My God, Suze, what did you do to Jack Slater? He's acting almost... normal."

I tried not to let my pride show.

"Oh, you know," I said with a shrug. "I just taught him to swim, is all. I guess that gave him some confidence."

Kim watched as Jack and another boy, just to be irritating, did double cannonballs into a group of little girls, who shrieked and then tried to hit the boys with their foam floaties.

"God," Kim said. "I'll say. I can't believe it's even the same kid."

Neither, it became apparent, could Jack's own family. I was teaching him the backstroke when I heard someone whistle, low and long, from the far side of the pool. Jack and I both looked up and saw Paul standing there, looking all Pete Sampras-y in white and holding a tennis racquet.

"Well, would you look at that," Paul drawled. "My brother, in a pool. And enjoying himself, no less. Has hell frozen over, or something?"

"Paul," Jack screamed. "Watch me! Watch me!"

And the next thing any of us knew, Jack was racing through the water toward his brother. I wouldn't exactly call what Jack was doing a proper crawl, but it was a close enough imitation of it to pass, even in an older brother's eyes. And if it wasn't pretty, there was no denying the kid was staying afloat. You had to give him that.

And Paul did. He squatted down and, when Jack's head bobbed up just beneath him, he reached down and pushed it under again. You know, in a playful way.

"Congrats, champ," Paul said, when Jack resurfaced. "I never thought I'd live to see the day you wouldn't be afraid to get your face wet."

Jack, beaming, said, "Watch me swim back!" and began to thrash through the water to the other side of the pool. Again, not pretty, but effective.

But Paul, instead of watching his brother swim, looked down at me, standing chest-high in the clear blue water.

"All right, Annie Sullivan," he said. "What have you done to Helen?"

I shrugged. Jack had never mentioned his brother's feelings on the whole I see dead people thing, so I didn't know if Paul was aware of Jack's ability or if he, like his parents, thought it was all in the kid's head. One of the points I'd tried to impress upon Jack was that the fewer people - particularly adults - who knew, the better. I had forgotten to ask if Paul knew.

Or, more important, believed.

"Just taught him how to swim is all," I said, sweeping some of my wet hair from my face.

I won't lie or anything and say I was embarrassed for a hottie like Paul to see me in my swimsuit. I look a lot better in the navy blue one-piece suit the hotel forces us to wear than I do in those heinous shorts.

Plus my mascara is totally the waterproof kind. I mean, I'm not an idiot.

"My parents have been trying to get that kid to swim for six years," Paul said. "And you do it in one day?"

I smiled at him. "I'm extremely persuasive," I said.

Yeah, okay, I was flirting. So sue me. A girl has to have some fun.

"You," Paul said, "are nothing short of a miracle worker. Come have dinner with us tonight."

All of a sudden, I didn't feel like flirting anymore.

"Oh, no, thank you," I said.

"Come on," Paul said. I have to say that he looked exceptionally fine in his white shirt and shorts. They brought out the deepness of his tan, just like the late afternoon sunlight brought out the occasional strand of gold in his otherwise dark brown curls.

And a tan wasn't all Paul had that the other hottie in my life didn't: Paul also happened to have a heartbeat.

"Why not?" Paul was kneeling by the side of pool, one dark forearm resting across an equally dark knee. "My parents will be delighted. And it's clear my brother can't live without you. And we're going to the Grill. You can't turn down an invitation to the Grill."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I really can't. Hotel policy. The staff aren't supposed to mingle with the guests."

"Who said anything about mingling?" Paul wanted to know. "I'm talking about eating. Come on. Give the kid a birthday treat."

"I really can't," I said, flashing him my best smile. "I have to go. Sorry."

And I swam over to where Jack was struggling to lift himself onto a huge pile of floaties he'd collected, and pretended to be too busy helping him to hear Paul calling to me.

Look, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I said no because the whole thing would just be too Dirty Dancing, right? Summer fling at the resort, only with the roles reversed: you know, the poor working girl and the rich doctor's son, nobody puts Baby in the corner, blah blah blah. That kind of thing.

But that's not it. Not really. For one thing, I'm not even technically poor. I mean, I'm making ten bucks an hour here, plus tips. And my mom is a TV news anchorwoman, and my stepdad has his own show, too.

And okay, sure, it's only local news, and Andy's show is on cable, but come on. We have a house in the Carmel Hills.

And okay, yeah, the house is a converted hundred-and-fifty-year-old hotel. But we each have our own bedroom, and there are three cars parked in the driveway, none of which are propped up on cinderblocks. We don't exactly qualify for food stamps.

And it isn't even that other thing I mentioned, about there being a policy against staff mingling with the guests. There isn't any such policy.

As Kim felt obligated to point out to me a few minutes later.

"What is your glitch, Simon?" she wanted to know. "That guy's got the hots for you, and you went completely Red Baron on him. I never saw anybody get shot down so fast."

I busied myself scooping a drowning ant off the surface of the water. "I'm, um, busy tonight," I said.

"Don't give me that, Suze." Although I had never met Kim before we'd started working together - she goes to Carmel Valley High, the public school my mother is convinced is riddled with drug addicts and gangbangers - we'd gotten pretty close due to our mutual dissatisfaction at being forced to rise so early in the morning for work. "You aren't doing anything tonight. So what's with the anti-aircraft fire?"

I finally captured the ant. Keeping it cupped in my palm, I made my way toward the side of the pool.

"I don't know," I said as I waded. "He seems nice and all. The thing is" - I shook my hand out over the side of the pool, setting the ant free - "I kind of like somebody else."

Kim raised her eyebrows. One of them had a little hole in it where she normally wears a gold stud. Caitlin makes her take it out before work, though.

"Tell," Kim commanded.

I glanced involuntarily up at Sleepy, dozing in his lifeguard's chair. Kim let out a little shriek.

"Eew," she cried. "Him? But he's your - "

I rolled my eyes. "No, not him. God. Just . . . Look, I just like somebody else, okay? But it's like ... it's a secret."

Kim sucked in her breath. "Ooh," she said. "The best kind. Does he go to the Academy?" When I shook my head, she tried, "Robert Louis Stevenson School, then?"

Again, I shook my head.

Kim wrinkled up her nose. "He doesn't go to CVHS,does he?"

I sighed. "He isn't in high school, okay, Kim? I'd really rather - "

"Oh, my God," Kim said. "A college guy? You dog. My mom would kill me if she knew I was going with a college guy - "

"He's not in college, either, okay?" I could feel my cheeks growing warm. "Look, the thing is, it's complicated. And I don't want to talk about it."

Kim looked taken aback. "Well, all right. God. Sorry."

But she couldn't leave well enough alone.

"He's older, right?" she asked, less than a minute later. "Like way older? That's okay, you know. I went out with an older guy, like, when I was fourteen. He was eighteen. My mom didn't know. So I can totally relate."

"Somehow," I said, "I really don't think you can."

She wrinkled her nose again. "God," she said. "How old is he?"

I thought about telling her. I thought about going, Oh, I don't know. About a century and a half.

But I didn't. Instead I told Jack it was time to go inside, if he was going to have a bath before dinner.

"Jeez," I heard Kim say as I got out. "That old, huh?"

Yeah. Unfortunately. That old.

CHAPTER 3

I don't even really know how it happened. I was being way careful, you know? Careful not to fall in love with Jesse, I mean.

And I'd been doing a really good job. I mean, I was getting out and meeting new people and doing new things, just like it says to do in Cosmo. I certainly wasn't sitting around mooning over him or anything.

And yeah, okay, the majority of guys I have met since moving to California have turned out either to have psychopathic killers stalking them, or were actually psychopathic killers themselves. But that's really not a very good excuse for falling in love with a ghost. It really isn't.

But that's what happened.

I can tell you the exact moment I knew it was all over, too. My battle to keep from falling in love with him, I mean. It was while I was in the hospital, recovering from that severe butt-kicking I mentioned before - the one I got courtesy of the ghosts of four RLS students who had been murdered a few weeks before school let out for the summer.

Anyway, Jesse showed up in my hospital room (Why not? He's a ghost. He can materialize anywhere he wants) to express his get-well wishes, which were extremely heartfelt and all, and while he was there, he happened, at one point, to reach out and touch my cheek.

That's all. He just touched my cheek, which was, I believe, the only part of me that was not black and blue at the time.

Big deal, right? So he touched my cheek. That's no reason to swoon.

But I did.

Oh, not literally. It wasn't like anybody had to wave smelling salts under my nose or anything, for God's sake. But after that, I was gone. Done for. Toast.

I flatter myself I've done a pretty good job of hiding it. He, I'm sure, has no idea. I still treat him as if he were . . . well, an ant that has fallen into my pool. You know, irritating, but not worth killing.

And I haven't told anyone. How can I? No one - except for Father Dominic, back at the Academy, and my youngest stepbrother, Doc - has any idea Jesse even exists. I mean, come on, the ghost of a guy who died a hundred and fifty years ago, and lives in my bedroom? If I mentioned it to anyone, they'd cart me off to the looney bin faster than you can say Stir of Echoes.

But it's there. Just because I haven't told anyone doesn't mean it isn't there, all the time, lurking in the back of my mind, like one of those 'N Sync songs you can't get out of your head.

And I have to tell you, it makes the idea of going out with other guys seem like ... well, a big waste of time.

So I didn't jump at the chance to go out with Paul Slater (though if you ask me, having dinner with him and his parents and his little brother hardly qualifies as going out). Instead, I went home and had dinner with my own parents and brothers. Well, stepbrothers, anyway.

Dinner in the Ackerman household was always this very big deal ... until Andy started working on installing the hot tub. Since then, he has slacked off considerably in the culinary department, let me tell you. And since my mom is hardly what you'd call a cook, we've been enjoying a lot of takeout lately. I thought we had hit rock bottom the night before, when we'd actually ordered from Peninsula Pizza, the place Sleepy works nights as a delivery guy.

But I didn't know how bad it could get until I walked in that night and saw a red-and-white bucket sitting in the middle of the table.

"Don't start," my mother said when she noticed me.

I just shook my head. "I guess if you peel the skin off, it's not that bad for you."

"Give it to me," Dopey said, glopping semi-congealed mashed potatoes onto his plate. "I'll eat your skin."

I could hardly control my gag reflex after that offer, but I managed, and I was reading the nutritional literature that came with our meal - "The Colonel has never forgotten the delicious aromas that used to float from his mother's kitchen on the plantation back when he was a boy" - when I remembered the tin box, the contents of which had also been advertised as having a delicious aroma.

"Hey," I said. "So what was in that box you guys dug up?"

Dopey made a face. "Nothing. Bunch of old letters."

Andy looked sadly at his son. The truth is, I think even my stepfather has begun to realize what I have known since the day I met him: that his middle son is a bohunk.

"Not just a bunch of old letters, Brad," Andy said. "They're quite old, dated around the time this house was built - 1850. They're in extremely poor condition - falling apart, actually. I was thinking of taking them over to the historical society. They might want them, in spite of the condition. Or" - Andy looked at me - "I thought Father Dominic might be interested. You know what a history buff he is."

Father Dom is a history buff, all right, but only because, as a mediator, like me, he has a tendency to run into people who have actually lived through historical events like the Alamo and the Lewis and Clark expedition. You know, folks who take the phrase Been there, done that to a whole new level.

"I'll give him a call," I said as I accidentally dropped a piece of chicken into my lap, where it was immediately vacuumed up by the Ackermans' enormous dog, Max, who maintains a watchful position at my side during every meal.

It was only when Dopey chortled that I realized I'd said the wrong thing. Never having been a normal teenage girl, it is sometimes hard for me to imitate one. And normal teenage girls do not, I know, give their high school principals calls on any sort of regular basis.

I glared at Dopey from across the table.

"I was going to call him anyway," I said, "to find out what I'm supposed to do with the leftover cash from our class trip to Great America."

"I'll take it," Sleepy joked. Why did my mother have to marry into a family of comedians?

"Can I see them?" I asked, pointedly ignoring both my stepbrothers.

"See what, honey?" Andy asked me.

For a moment I forgot what we were talking about. Honey? Andy had never called me honey before. What was going on here? Were we - I shudder to think it - bonding? Excuse me, I already have one father, even if he is dead. He still pops by to visit me all too often.

"I think she means the letters," my mother said, apparently not even noticing what her husband had just called me.

"Oh, sure," Andy said. "They're in our room."

"Our room" is the bedroom Andy and my mother sleep in. I try never to go in there, because, well, frankly, the whole thing grosses me out. Yeah, sure, I'm glad that my mom's finally happy, after ten years of mourning the death of my dad. But does that mean I want to actually see her in bed with her new husband, watching West Wing? No thank you.

Still, after dinner, I steeled myself and went in there. My mom was at her dressing table taking off her makeup. She has to go to bed very early in order to be up in time for her stint on the morning news.

"Oh, hi, sweetie," my mom said to me in a dazed, I'm-busy kind of way. "They're over there, I think."

I looked where she pointed on top of Andy's dresser and found the metal box Dopey had dug up along with a lot of other guy-type stuff, like loose change and matches and receipts.

Anyway, Andy had tried to clean the box up, and he'd done a pretty good job of it. You could read almost all the writing on it.

Which was kind of unfortunate, because what the writing said was way politically incorrect. Try new Red Injun cigars! it urged. There was even a picture of this very proud-looking Native American clutching a fistful of cigars where his bow and quiver ought to have been. The delicious aroma will tempt even the choosiest smoker. As with all our products, quality assured.

That was it. No surgeon general's warning about how smoking can kill. Nothing about fetal birth weight. Still, it was kind of strange how advertising from before they had TV - before they even had radio - was still basically the same as advertising today. Only, you know, now we know that naming your product after a race of people will probably offend them.

I opened the box and found the letters inside. Andy was right about their poor condition. They were so yellowed that you could hardly peel them apart without having pieces crumble off. They had, I could see, been tied together with a ribbon, a silk one, which might have been another color once, but was now an ugly brown.

There was a stack of letters, maybe five or six in all, in the box. I can't tell you, as I picked up the first one, what I thought I'd see. But I guess a part of me knew all along what I was going to find.

Even so, when I'd carefully unfolded the first one and read the words Dear Hector, I still felt like somebody had snuck up behind me and kicked me.

I had to sit down. I sank down into one of the armchairs my mom and Andy keep by the fireplace in their room, my eyes still glued to the yellowed page in front of me.

Jesse. These letters were to Jesse.

"Suze?" My mom glanced at me curiously. She was rubbing cream into her face. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," I said in a strangled voice. "Is it okay ... is it okay if I just sit here and read these for a minute?"

My mom began to slop cream onto her hands. "Of course," she said. "You're sure you're all right? You look a little ... pale."

"I'm great," I lied. "Just great."

Dear Hector, the first letter said. The handwriting was beautiful - loopy and old-fashioned, the kind of handwriting Sister Ernestine, back at school, used. I could read it quite easily, despite the fact that the letter was dated May 8,1850.

Eighteen fifty! That was the year our house had been built, the first year it was in business as a boarding house for travelers to the Monterey Peninsula area. The year - I knew from when Doc and I looked it up - that Jesse, or Hector (which is his real name; can you imagine? I mean, Hector) had mysteriously disappeared.

Though I happen to know there hadn't been anything mysterious about it. He'd been murdered in this very house ... in fact, in my bedroom upstairs. Which is why, for the past century and a half, he's been hanging out there, waiting for ...

Waiting for what?

Waiting for you, said a small voice in the back of my head. A mediator, to find these letters and avenge his death, so he can move on to wherever it is he's supposed to go next.

The thought struck me with terror. Really. It made my hands go all sweaty, even though it was cool in my mom and Andy's room, what with the air conditioning being on full blast. The back of my neck started feeling prickly and gross.

I forced myself to look back down at the letter. If Jesse was meant to move on, well, then I was just going to have to help him do it. That's my job, after all.

Except that I couldn't help thinking about Father Dom. A fellow mediator, he had admitted to me a few months ago that he had once had the misfortune to fall in love with a ghost, back when he'd been my age. Things hadn't worked out - how could they? - and he'd become a priest.

Got that? A priest. Okay? That's how bad it had been. That's how hard the loss had been to get over. He’d become a priest.

Frankly, I don't see how I could ever become a nun. For one thing, I'm not even Catholic. And for another, I don't look very good with my hair pulled back. Really. That's why I've always avoided ponytails and headbands.

Stop it, I said to myself. Just stop it and read.

I read.

The letter was from someone called Maria. I don't know much about Jesse's life before he died - he's not exactly big on discussing it - but I do know that Maria de Silva was the name of the girl Jesse had been on his way to marry when he'd disappeared. Some cousin of his. I'd seen a picture of her once in a book. She was pretty hot, you know, for a girl in a hoop skirt who lived before plastic surgery. Or Maybelline.

And you could tell by the way she wrote that she knew it, too. That she was hot, I mean. Her letter was all about the parties she'd been to, and who had said what about her new bonnet. Her bonnet, for crying out loud. I swear to God, it was like reading a letter from Kelly Prescott, except that it had a bunch of hithers and alacks in it, and no mention of Ricky Martin. Plus a lot of stuff was spelled wrong. Maria may have been a babe, but it was pretty clear, after reading her letters, she hadn't won too many spelling bees back at ye olde schoolhouse.

What struck me, as I read, was the fact that it really didn't seem possible that the girl who had written these letters was the same girl who had, I was pretty sure, ordered a hit on her fiancé. Because I happened to know that Maria hadn't wanted to marry Jesse at all. Her dad had arranged the whole thing. Maria had wanted to marry this other guy, this dude named Diego, who ran slaves for a living. A real charming guy. In fact, Diego was the one I suspected had killed Jesse.

Not, of course, that Jesse had ever mentioned any of this - or anything at all, for that matter, about his past. He is, and always has been, completely tight-lipped on the whole subject of how he'd died. Which I guess I can understand: getting murdered has to be a bit traumatizing.

But I must say it's kind of hard getting to the bottom of why he's still here after all this time when he won't contribute at all to the conversation. I had had to find out all of this stuff from a book on the history of Salinas County that Doc had dug up out of the local library.

So I guess you could say that I read Maria's letters with a certain sense of foreboding. I mean, I was pretty much convinced I was going to find something in them that was going to prove Jesse had been murdered ... and who'd done it.

But the last letter was just as fatuous as the other four. There was nothing, nothing at all to indicate any wrongdoing of any kind on Maria's part . . . except for maybe a complete inability to spell the word fiancé. And really, what sort of crime is that?

I folded the letters carefully again and stuck them back into the tin, realizing, as I did so, that the back of my neck, as well as my hands, was no longer sweating. Was I relieved that there was nothing incriminating here, nothing that helped solve the mystery of Jesse's death?

I guess so. Selfish of me, I know, but it's the truth. All I knew now was what Maria de Silva had worn to some party at the Spanish ambassador's house. Big deal. Why would anybody stick letters as innocuous as that into a cigar box and bury them? It made no sense.

"Interesting, aren't they?" my mother said when I stood up.

I jumped about a mile. I'd forgotten she was even there. She was in bed now, reading a book on how to be a more effective time manager.

"Yeah," I said, putting the letters back on Andy's dresser. "Really interesting. I'm so glad I know what the ambassador's son said when he saw Maria de Silva in her new silver gauze ballgown."

My mom looked up at me curiously through the lenses of her reading glasses. "Oh, did she mention her last name somewhere? Because Andy and I were wondering. We didn't see it. De Silva, did you say?"

I blinked. "Um," I said. "No. Well, she didn't say. But Doc and I ... I mean, David, he told me about this family, the de Silvas, that lived in Salinas around that time, and they had a daughter called Maria, and I just ... " My voice trailed off as Andy came into the room.

"Hey, Suze," he said, looking a little surprised to see me in his room, since I'd never set foot in there before. "Did you see the letters? Neat, huh?"

Neat. Oh my God. Neat.

"Yeah," I said. "Gotta go. Good night."

I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I don't know how kids whose parents have been married multiple times deal with it. I mean, my mother's only remarried once, and to a perfectly nice man. But still, it's just so weird.

But if I'd thought I could retreat to my room to be alone and think things over, I was wrong. Jesse was sitting on my window seat.

Sitting there looking like he always looked: totally hot, in the white open-necked shirt and black toreador pants he habitually wears - well, it's not like you can change clothes in the afterlife - with his short dark hair curling crisply against the back of his neck, and his liquid black eyes bright beneath equally inky brows, one of which bore a thin white scar....

A scar that, more times than I like to admit, I'd dreamed of tracing with my fingertips.

He looked up when I came in - he had Spike, my cat, on his lap - and said, "This book is very difficult to understand." He was reading a copy of First Blood, by David Morrell, which they based the movie Rambo on.

I blinked, trying to rouse myself from the dazed stupor the sight of him always seemed to put me in for a minute or so.

"If Sylvester Stallone understood it," I said, "I would think you could."

Jesse ignored that. "Marx predicted that the contradictions and weaknesses within the capitalist structure would cause increasingly severe economic crises and deepening impoverishment of the working class," he said, "which would eventually revolt and seize control of the means of production . . . which is precisely what happened in Vietnam. What induced the U.S. government to think that they were justified in involving themselves in the struggle of the people of this developing nation to find economic solidarity?"

My shoulders sagged. Really, is it too much to ask that I be able to come home from a long day of work and relax? Oh, no. I have to come home and read a bunch of letters written to the love of my life by his fiancée, who, if I am correct, had him killed a hundred and fifty years ago.

Then, as if that is not bad enough, he wants me to explain the Vietnam War.

I really have to start hiding my textbooks from him. The thing is, he reads them and actually manages to retain what they say, and then applies that to other things he finds to read around the house.

Why he can't just watch TV, like a normal person, I do not know.

I went over to my bed and collapsed onto it, face first. I was, I should mention, still wearing my horrible shorts from the hotel. But I couldn't bring myself to care what Jesse thought about the size of my butt at that particular moment.

I guess it must have showed. Not my butt, I mean, but my general unhappiness with the way my summer was going.

"Are you all right?" Jesse wanted to know.

"Yes," I said, into my pillows.

Jesse said, after a minute, "Well, you don't seem all right. Are you sure nothing is wrong?"

Yes, something is wrong, I wanted to shriek at him. I just spent twenty minutes reading a bunch of private correspondence from your ex-fiancée, and might I add that she seems like a terrifically boring individual? How could you have ever been stupid enough to have agreed to marry her? Her and her stupid bonnet?

But the thing is, I didn't want Jesse to know I'd read his mail. I mean, we're basically roommates and all, and there are certain things you just don't do. For instance, Jesse is always tactfully not around whenever I am changing and bathing and whatnot. And I am very careful to stock up on food and litter for Spike, who, unlike a normal animal, actually seems to prefer ghost company to human. He only tolerates me because I feed him.

Of course, Jesse has, in the past, felt no compunction about materializing in the backseats of cars in which I happened to have been making out with someone.

But I know Jesse would never read my mail, of which I get only a limited amount, mostly in the form of letters from my best friend Gina, back in Brooklyn. And I have to admit, I felt guilty for reading his, even though it was almost two hundred years old and there certainly wouldn't have been anything about me in it.

What surprised me was that Jesse, who is, after all, a ghost, and can go anywhere without being seen - except by me and Father Dom, of course, and now, I guess, by Jack - didn't know about the letters. Really, he seemed to have no idea both that they'd been found and that, just moments before, I'd been downstairs, reading them.

But then, First Blood is pretty engrossing, I suppose.

So instead of telling him what was really wrong with me - you know, anything about the letters, and especially anything about the whole I’m in love with you, only where can it go? Because you’re not even alive and I’m the only one who can see you, and besides, it’s clear you don’t feel the same way about me. Do you? Well, do you? thing - I just said, "Well, I met another mediator today, and I guess that kind of weirded me out."

And then I rolled over and told him about Jack.

Jesse was very interested and told me I ought to call Father Dom with the news. What I wanted to do, of course, was call Father Dom and tell him about the letters. But I couldn't do that with Jesse in the room, because of course he'd know I'd been prying in his personal affairs, which, given his whole secrecy thing about how he'd died, I doubted he'd appreciate.

So I said, "Good idea," and picked up the phone and dialed Father D's number.

Only Father D didn't answer. Instead, a woman did. At first I freaked out, thinking Father Dominic was shacking up. But then I remember that he lives in a rectory with a bunch of other people.

So I went, "Is Father Dominic there?" hoping it was only a novice or something and would go away and get him without comment.

But it wasn't a novice. It was Sister Ernestine, who is the assistant principal of my high school, and who of course recognized my voice.

"Susannah Simon," she said. "What are you doing calling Father Dominic at home at this hour? Do you know what time it is, young lady? It is nearly ten o'clock!"

"I know," I said. "Only - "

"Besides, Father Dominic isn't here," Sister Ernestine went on. "He's on retreat."

"Retreat?" I echoed, picturing Father Dominic sitting in front of a campfire with a bunch of other priests, singing Kumbaya My Lord and possibly wearing sandals.

Then I remembered that Father Dominic had mentioned that he would be going on a retreat for the principals of Catholic high schools. He'd even given me the number there, in case there was some kind of ghost emergency and I needed to reach him. I didn't count discovering a new mediator as an emergency, however . . . though doubtless Father Dom would. So I just thanked Sister Ernestine, apologized for disturbing her, and hung up.

"What is a retreat?" Jesse wanted to know.

So then I explained to him what a retreat is, but the whole time I was sitting there thinking about the time he'd touched my face in the hospital and wondering if it had been because he just felt sorry for me or if he actually liked me (as more than just as a friend - I know he likes me as a friend) or what.

Because the thing is, even though he's been dead for a hundred and fifty years, Jesse is really an extreme hottie - much hotter even than Paul Slater ... or maybe I just think so because I'm in love with him.

But whatever. I mean, he really is like someone straight off the WB. He even has nice teeth for a guy born before they invented fluoride, very white and even and strong-looking. I mean, if there were any guys at the Mission Academy who looked even remotely like Jesse, going to school wouldn't seem at all like the massive waste of time it actually is.

But what good is it? I mean, him looking so good, and all? He's a ghost. I'm the only one who can see him. It's not like I'll ever be able to introduce him to my mother, or take him to the prom, or marry him, or whatever. We have no future together.

I have to remember that.

But sometimes it's really, really hard. Especially when he's sitting there in front of me, laughing at what I'm saying, and petting that stupid, smelly cat. Jesse was the first person I met when I moved to California, and he became my first real friend here. He has always been there when I needed him, which is way more than I can say for most of the living people I know. And if I had to choose one person to be marooned on a desert island with, I wouldn't even have to think about it: of course it would be Jesse.

This is what I was thinking as I explained about retreats. It was what I was thinking as I went on to explain what I knew about the Vietnam War, and then the eventual fall of communism in the former Soviet Union. It was what I was thinking as I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. It was what I was thinking as I said good night to him and crawled under the covers and turned out the light. It was what I was thinking as sleep overcame me and blissfully blotted out all thought whatsoever . . . the time I spend sleeping being the only time, lately, when I can escape thoughts of Jesse.

But let me tell you, it came back in full force when, just a few hours later, I woke with a start to find a hand pressed over my mouth.

And, oh yeah, a knife held to my throat.

CHAPTER 4

Being a mediator, I am not unaccustomed to being woken in, shall we say, a less than gentle manner.

But this was a lot less gentle than usual. I mean, usually when someone wants your help, they go out of their way not to antagonize you . . . which waving a knife around has a tendency to do.

But as soon as I opened my eyes and saw who this knife-wielding individual was, I realized that probably what she wanted was not my help. No, probably what she wanted was to kill me.

Don't ask me how I knew. Undoubtedly those old mediator instincts at work.

Well, and the knife was a pretty significant indicator.

"Listen to me, you stupid girl," Maria de Silva hissed at me. Maria de Silva Diego, I should say, since at the time of her death, she was married to Felix Diego, the slave-runner. I know all this from that book Doc got out of the library called My Monterey, a history of Salinas County from 1800 to 1850. There'd even been that portrait of Maria in it.

Which was how I happened to know who was trying to kill me this time.

"If," Maria hissed, "you don't get your father and brother to stop digging that hole" - um, stepfather and stepbrother, I wanted to correct her, only I couldn't, on account of the hand over my mouth - "I'll make you sorry you were ever born. Got that?"

Pretty tough talk from a girl in a hoop skirt. Because that's what she was. A girl.

She hadn't been when she'd died. When she had died, around the turn of the century - last century, of course, not this one - Maria de Silva Diego had been around seventy or so.

But the ghost on top of me appeared to be my own age. Her hair was black, without a hint of gray, and she wore it in these very fancy ringlets on either side of her face. She appeared to have a lot going on in the jewelry department. There was this big fat ruby hanging from a gold chain around her long, slender neck - very Titanic and all - and she had some heavy-duty rings on her fingers. One of them was cutting into my gums.

That's the thing about ghosts, though - the thing that they always get wrong in the movies. When you die, your spirit does not take on the form your body had at the moment you croaked. You just don't ever see ghosts walking around with their guts spilling out, or their severed head in their hands, or whatever. If you did, Jack might have been justified in being such a little scaredy cat.

But it doesn't happen that way. Instead, your ghost appears in the form your body had when you were at your most vital, your most alive.

And I guess for Maria de Silva, that was when she was sixteen or so.

Hey, it was nice she had an option, you know? Jesse hadn't been allowed to live long enough to have much of a choice. Thanks to her.

"Oh, no, you don't," Maria said, the backs of her rings scraping against my teeth in a manner I would really have to describe as unpleasant. "Don't even think about it."

I don't know how she'd known, but I had been considering ramming my knees into her spine. The knife blade pressing against my jugular soon dissuaded me of that plan, however.

"You're going to make your father stop digging back there, and you're going to destroy those letters, understand, little girl?" Maria hissed. "And you aren't going to say a word about them - or me - to Hector. Am I making myself clear?"

What could I do? She had a knife to my throat. And there was nothing in her manner at all reminiscent of the Maria de Silva who'd written those idiotic letters. This chick was not gushing about her new bonnet, if you get my drift. I hadn't any doubt at all that she not only knew how to use that knife, but that she fully intended to do so, if provoked.

I nodded to show her that I was perfectly willing, under the circumstances, to follow her orders.

"Good," Maria de Silva said. And then she lifted her fingers from my mouth. I could taste blood.

She had straddled me - which accounted for all the lacy petticoat in my face, tickling my nose - and now she looked down at me, her pretty features twisted into an expression of disgust.

"And they said for me to look out," she sneered. "That you were a tricky one. But you aren't so tricky, are you? You're just a girl. A stupid little girl."

She threw back her head and laughed.

And then she was gone. Just like that.

As soon as I felt like I could move again, I got out of bed and went into my bathroom, where I turned on the light and looked at my reflection in the mirror above my sink.

No. It hadn't been a nightmare. There was blood between my teeth where Maria de Silva's ring had cut into me.

I rinsed until all the blood was gone, then turned off the bathroom light and came back into my room. I think I was in a daze or something. I couldn't quite register what had just happened. Maria de Silva. Maria de Silva, Jesse's fiancée - I think it would be safe to say ex-fiancée, under the circumstances - had just appeared in my room and threatened me. Me. Sweet little old me.

It was a lot to process, especially considering it was, oh, I don't know, four in the morning?

And yet it turned out I was in for yet another late-night shock. No sooner had I stepped from the bathroom than I noticed someone was leaning against one of the posts to the canopy over my bed.

Only it wasn't just someone, it was Jesse. And when he saw me, he straightened up.

"Are you all right?" he asked, worriedly. "I thought I ... Susannah, was somebody just here?"

Uh, your knife-wielding ex-girlfriend, you mean?

That's what I thought. What I said was, "No."

Okay. Don't start with me. The reason I didn't tell him had nothing to do with Maria's threat.

No, it was the other thing Maria had said. About telling Andy to quit digging in the backyard. Because that could mean only one thing: that there was something buried in the backyard Maria didn't want anybody to find.

And I had a feeling I knew what that something was.

I also had a feeling that that something was the reason Jesse had been hanging around the Carmel Hills for so long.

I should have blurted this all out to Jesse, right? I mean, come on: he had a right to know. It was something that very directly concerned him.

But it was also something that, I was fairly sure, was going to take him away from me forever.

Yeah, I know: if I really loved him, I'd have been willing to set him free, like in that poem that's always on those posters with the seagulls flying in the wind: If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you.

Let me tell you something. That poem is stupid, all right? And it so totally does not apply in this situation. Because once Jesse gets set free, he is never coming back to me. Because he won't be able to. Because he'll be in heaven, or another life, or whatever.

And then I'll have to become a nun.

God. God, everything sucks.

I crawled back into bed.

"Look, Jesse," I said, pulling the covers up to my chin. I had on a T-shirt and boxers, but, you know, no bra or anything. Not that he could tell, in the dark and all, but you never know. "I'm really tired."

"Oh," he said. "Of course. But ... You're sure there wasn't anyone in here? Because I could swear I - "

I waited expectantly for him to finish. Just how would he end that sentence? I could swear I heard the sweet dulcet tones of the woman I once loved? I could swear I smelled her perfume - which, by the way, was of orange blossoms?

But he didn't say either of those things. Instead, looking really confused, he said, "Sorry," and disappeared, exactly the way his ex-girlfriend had disappeared. In fact, you'd think they might have run into each other, wouldn't you, out there on the spiritual plane, with all of this materializing and dematerializing?

But apparently not.

I won't lie and tell you that I dropped back off to sleep right away. I didn't. I was really, really tired, but my mind just kept repeating what Maria had said, over and over. What on earth was she so hot and bothered about, anyway? Those letters didn't have anything the least bit incriminating in them. I mean, if it's true that she had Jesse iced so she could marry her boyfriend Diego instead of him.

And if those letters were so important, why hadn't she had them destroyed properly all those years ago? Why were they buried in our backyard in a cigar box?

But that wasn't what was really bothering me. What really bothered me was the fact that she wanted me to get Andy to stop digging altogether. Because that could only mean one thing:

There was something even more incriminating back there.

Like a body.

And I didn't even want to think about whose.

And when I woke up again a few hours later, after finally managing to nod off, I still didn't want to think about it.

But one thing I did know: I was not going to ask Andy to stop digging (like he'd even listen to me if I did), nor was I going to destroy those letters. No freaking way.

In fact, I took personal possession of them, just in case, telling Andy that I'd deliver them to the historical society myself. I figured they'd be safe there, in case old Maria Diego got up to anything. Andy looked surprised, but not enough actually to ask me what I was up to. He was too busy yelling at Dopey for shoveling in the wrong place.

When I got to the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort that morning, it was to be greeted by Caitlin with an accusatory, "Well, I don't know what you did to Jack Slater, but his family asked that you be assigned to watch him for the rest of their stay ... until Sunday, actually."

I wasn't surprised. Nor did I mind, particularly. The Paul factor was troubling, of course, but now that I knew the reason behind Jack's odd behavior, I genuinely liked the kid.

And he, it became clear, the moment I set foot inside his family's suite, was wild about me. No more lying on the floor in front of the TV for him. Jack was in his swimsuit and ready to go.

"Can you teach me the butterfly today, Suze?" he wanted to know. "I've always wanted to know how to do the butterfly."

"Susan," his mother said to me, in a whispered aside, right before she ran off to her hair appointment (neither Paul nor his father were around, much to my relief, having had a seven-o'clock tee time). "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for Jack. I don't know what you said to him yesterday, but he is like a different child. I have never seen him so happy. You know, he really is the most remarkably sensitive person. Such an imagination, too. Always thinking he's seeing . . . well, dead people. Has he mentioned this to you?"

I said nonchalantly that he had.

"Well, we've been at our wits' end. We must have had thirty different doctors look at him, and no one - no one - seemed able to get through to him. Then you came along, and ... " Nancy Slater looked down at me with carefully made-up blue eyes. "Well, I don't know how we'll ever be able to thank you, Susan."

You could start, I thought, by calling me by my right name. But I didn't really care. I just said, "No problem, Mrs. Slater," and went and got Jack and headed with him back to the pool.

Jack was like a different kid. There was no denying that. Even Sleepy, roused from his semipermanent doze by Jack's happy splashing, asked me if that was the same boy he'd seen me with the morning before, and when I told him it was, actually looked incredulous for a second or two before going back to sleep. The things that had once frightened Jack - basically, everything - no longer seemed to bother him in the least.

And so when, after burgers at the Pool House, I suggested he and I take the hotel shuttle bus into town, he didn't even protest. He even commented that the plan "sounded like fun."

Fun. From Jack. Really, maybe mediating isn't my calling at all. Maybe I should be a teacher, or a child psychologist, or something. Seriously.

Jack wasn't particularly thrilled, however, when, once we got into town, we headed toward the building that houses the Carmel-by-the-Sea Historical Society. He wanted to go to the beach, but when I told him that it was to help a ghost and that we'd go to the beach afterward, he was okay with it.

I'm not really a historical society type of gal, but even I have to admit it was kind of cool, looking at all the old photos on the walls of the place, photos of Carmel and Salinas County a hundred years earlier, before all the strip malls and Safeways opened, when it was all just fields dotted with cypress trees, like in that book they made us read in the eighth grade, The Red Pony. They had some pretty cool stuff there - not much, really, from Jesse's time, but a lot from later on, like after the Civil War. Jack and I were admiring something called a stereo-viewer, which is what people used for entertainment before movies, when this untidy-looking bald man came out of his office and peered at us through glasses with lenses as thick as Coke bottle bottoms and said, "Yes, you wanted to see me?"

I said we wanted to see someone in charge. He said that was him, and introduced himself as Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D. So I told Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., who I was and where I lived, and took the cigar tin from my JanSport backpack (Kate Spade really doesn't go with pleat-front khaki shorts) and showed him the letters....

And he freaked out.

I mean it. He freaked out. He was so excited, he told the old lady at the reception desk to hold his calls (she looked up, astonished, from the romance novel she was reading; it was clear that Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., must not get many calls) and ushered Jack and me back into his private office....

Where I nearly had a coronary. Because there, above Clive Clemmings's desk, was Maria de Silva's portrait, the one I had seen in that book Doc had taken out of the library.

The painter had done, I realized, an extraordinarily good job. He'd gotten it completely right, down to the artfully ringleted hair and the gold and ruby necklace around her elegantly curved neck, not to mention her snooty expression....

"That's her!" I cried, completely involuntarily, stabbing my finger at the painting.

Jack looked up at me as if I'd gone mental - which I suppose I momentarily had - but Clive Clemmings only glanced over his shoulder at the portrait and said, "Yes, Maria Diego. Quite the jewel in the crown of our collection, that painting. Rescued it from being sold at a garage sale by one of her grandchildren, can you imagine? Down on his luck, poor old fellow. Disgraceful, when you think about it. None of the Diegos ever amounted to much, however. You know what they say about bad blood. And Felix Diego - "

Dr. Clive had opened the cigar box and, using some special tweezery-looking things, unfolded the first letter. "Oh, my," he breathed, looking down at it.

"Yeah," I said. "It's from her." I nodded up at the painting. "Maria de Silva. It's a bunch of letters she wrote to Jesse - I mean, to Hector de Silva, her cousin, who she was supposed to marry, only he - "

"Disappeared." Clive Clemmings stared at me. He had to be, if I guessed, in his thirties or so - despite the very wide spot of bare scalp along the top of his head - and though by no means attractive, he did not look so utterly repulsive just then as he had before. A look of total astonishment, which certainly does not become many, did wonders for him.

"My God," he said. "Where did you find these?"

And so I told him again, and he got even more excited, and told us to wait in his office while he went and got something.

So we waited. Jack was very good while we did so. He only said, "When can we go to the beach already?" twice.

When Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., came back, he was holding a tray and a bunch of latex gloves, which he told us we had to put on if we were going to touch anything. Jack was pretty bored by that time, so he elected to go back out into the main room to play with the stereo-viewer some more. Only I donned the gloves.

But was I glad I did. Because what Clive Clemmings let me touch when I had them on was everything the historical society had collected over the years that had anything whatsoever to do with Maria de Silva.

Which was, let me tell you, quite a lot.

But the things in the collection that most interested me were a tiny painting - a miniature, Clive Clemmings said it was called - of Jesse (or Hector de Silva, as Dr. Clive referred to him; apparently only Jesse's immediate family ever called him Jesse ... his family, and me, of course) and five letters, in much better condition than the ones from the cigar box.

The miniature was perfect, like a little photograph. People could really paint back in those days, I guess. It was totally Jesse. It captured him perfectly. He had on that look he gets when I'm telling him about some great conquest I had made at an outlet - you know, scoring a Prada handbag for fifty percent off, or something. Like he couldn't care less.

In the painting, which was just of Jesse's head and shoulders, he was wearing something Clive Clemmings called a cravat, which was supposedly something all the guys wore back then, this big frilly white thing that wrapped around the neck a few times. It would have looked ridiculous on Dopey or Sleepy or even Clive Clemmings, in spite of his Ph.D.

But on Jesse, of course, it looked great.

Well, what wouldn't?

The letters were almost better than the painting, though, in a way. That's because they were all addressed to Maria de Silva . . . and signed by someone named Hector.

I pored over them, and I can't say that at the time I felt a lick of guilt about it, either. They were much more interesting than Maria's letters - although, like hers, not the least romantic. No, Jesse just wrote - very wittily, I might add - about the goings-on at his family's ranch and the funny things his sisters did. (It turns out he had five of them. Sisters, I mean. All younger, ranging in age, the year Jesse died, from sixteen to six. But had he ever mentioned this to me before? Oh, please.) There was also some stuff about local politics and how hard it was to keep good ranch hands on the job what with the gold rush on and all of them hurrying off to stake claims.

The thing was, the way Jesse wrote, you could practically hear him saying all this stuff. It was all very friendly and chatty and nice. Much better than Maria's braggy letters.

And nothing was spelled wrong, either.

As I read through Jesse's letters, Dr. Clive rattled on about how now that he had Maria's letters to Hector, he was going to add them to this exhibit he was planning for the fall tourist season, an exhibit on the whole de Silva clan and their importance to the growth of Salinas County over the years.

"If only," he said wistfully, "there were any of them left alive. De Silvas, I mean. It would be lovely to have them as guest speakers."

This got my attention. "There have to be some left," I said. "Didn't Maria and that Diego guy have like thirty-seven kids or something?"

Clive Clemmings looked stern. As a historian - and especially a Ph.D. - he did not seem to appreciate exaggeration of any kind.

"They had eleven children," he corrected me. "And they are not, strictly, de Silvas, but Diegos. The de Silva family unfortunately ran very strongly to daughters. I'm afraid Hector de Silva was the last male in the line. And of course we'll never know if he sired any male offspring. If he did, it certainly wasn't in Northern California."

"Of course he didn't," I said, perhaps more defensively than I ought to have. But I was peeved. Aside from the obvious sexism of the whole "last male in the line" thing, I took issue with the guy's assumption that Jesse might have been off procreating somewhere when, in fact, he had been foully murdered. "He was killed right in my own house!"

Clive Clemmings looked at me with raised eyebrows. It was only then that I realized what I had said.

"Hector de Silva," Dr. Clive said, sounding a lot like Sister Ernestine when we grew restless during the begats in Religion class, "disappeared shortly before his wedding to his cousin Maria and was never heard from again."

I couldn't very well sit there and go, Yeah, but his ghost lives in my bedroom, and he told me ...

Instead, I said, "I thought the, um, perception was that Maria had her boyfriend, that Diego dude, kill Hector so she didn't have to marry him."

Clive Clemmings looked annoyed. "That is only a theory put forward by my grandfather, Colonel Harold Clemmings, who wrote - "

"My Monterey," I finished for him. "Yeah, that's what I meant. That guy's your grandfather?"

"Yes," Dr. Clive said, but he didn't look too happy about it. "He passed away a good many years ago. And I can't say that I agree with his theory, Miss, er, Ackerman." I had donated Maria's letters in my stepfather's name, so Dr. Clive, sexist thing that he was, assumed that that was my name, too. "Nor can I say that his book sold at all well. My grandfather was extremely interested in the history of his community, but he was not an educated man, like myself. He did not possess even a B.A., let alone a Ph.D. It has always been my belief - not to mention that of most local historians, with the sole exception of my grandfather - that young Mr. de Silva developed what is commonly referred to as 'cold feet' " - Dr. Clive made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers - "a few days before the wedding and, unable to face his family's embarrassment over his jilting the young woman in such a manner, went off in search of a claim of his own, perhaps near San Francisco...."

It's amazing, but for a moment I actually envisioned sinking those tweezery things Clive Clemmings had made me use to turn the pages of Jesse's letters straight into his eyes. If I could have got them past the lenses of those goobery glasses, that is.

Instead, I pulled myself together and said, with all the dignity I could muster while sitting there in a pair of khaki shorts with pleats down the front, "And do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, Clive, that the person who wrote these letters would do something like that? Go away without a word to his family? To his little sisters, whom he clearly loved, and about whom he wrote so affectionately? Do you really think that the reason these letters turned up in my backyard is because he buried them there? Or do you find it beyond the realm of possibility that the reason they turned up there is because he's buried there somewhere, and if my stepfather digs deep enough, he just might find him?"

My voice had risen shrilly. I supposed I was getting a little hysterical over the whole thing. So sue me.

"Will that make you see that your grandfather was a hundred percent right?" I shrieked. "When my stepfather finds Hector de Silva's rotting corpse?"

Clive Clemmings looked more astonished than ever before. "My dear Miss Ackerman!" he cried.

I think he said this because he'd realized, at the exact same moment as I had, that I was crying.

Which was actually pretty strange, because I am not a crier. I mean, yeah, sure, I cry when I bang my head on one of the kitchen cabinet doors or see one of those drippy Kodak commercials or whatever. But I don't, you know, go around weeping at the drop of a hat.

But there I was, sitting in the office of Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., bawling my eyes out. Good going, Suze. Real professional. Way to show Jack how to mediate.

"Well," I said in a shaky voice as I stripped off my latex gloves and stood up, "allow me to assure you, Clive, that you are very, very wrong. Jesse - I mean Hector - would never do something like that. That might be what she wants you to believe" - I nodded toward the painting above our heads, the sight of which I was now beginning to hate with a sort of passion - "but it isn't the truth. Jesse - I mean, Hector - isn't . . . wasn't like that. If he'd gotten 'cold feet' like you say" - I made the same stupid quotation marks in the air - "then he'd have called the whole thing off. And, yeah, his family might have been embarrassed, but they'd have forgiven him, because they clearly loved him as much as he loved them, and - "

But then I couldn't talk anymore, because I was crying so hard. It was maddening. I couldn't believe it. Crying. Crying in front of this clown.

So instead I turned around and stormed out of the room.

Not very dignified, I guess, considering that the last thing Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., saw of me was my butt, which must have looked enormous in those stupid shorts.

But I got the point across.

I think.

Of course, in the end, it turned out not to matter. But at the time, I had no way of knowing that.

And neither, unfortunately, did poor Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.

CHAPTER 5

God, I hate crying. It's so humiliating. And I swear I hardly ever do it.

I guess, though, that the stress of being assaulted in the dead of night by the knife-wielding ex-girlfriend of the guy I love finally got to me. I pretty much didn't stop crying until Jack, in desperation, bought me a Yoo-hoo from Jimmy's Quik-Mart, on our way down to the beach.

That and a Butterfinger bar soon had me feeling like myself again, and it wasn't long before Jack and I were frolicking in the waves, making fun of the tourists, and placing penny bets on which surfer would be knocked off his board first. We had such a good time that it wasn't until the sun started setting that I realized I had to get Jack back to the hotel.

Not that anybody had missed us, we discovered when we got there. As I dropped Jack off at his family's suite, his mother popped her head in from the terrace, where she and Dr. Rick were enjoying cocktails, and said, "Oh, it's you, is it, Jack? Hurry and change for dinner, will you? We're meeting the Robertsons. Thank you, Susan, and see you in the morning."

I waved and left, relieved that I'd managed to avoid Paul. After my unexpectedly traumatic afternoon, I did not think I could handle a confrontation with Mr. Tennis Whites.

But my relief turned out to be precipitous, since, as I was sitting in the front seat of the Land Rover, waiting for Sleepy to tear himself away from Caitlin, who seemed to have something terribly urgent to discuss with him just as we were leaving, someone tapped on my rolled-up window. I looked around, and there was Paul, wearing a tie, of all things, and a dark blue sports jacket.

I pushed the button that rolled the window down.

"Um," I said. "Hi."

"Hi," he said. He was smiling pleasantly. The last of the day's sunlight picked up the gold highlights in his brown curls. He really was, I had to admit, good-looking. Kelly Prescott would have eaten him up with a spoon. "I suppose you already have plans for tonight," he said.

I didn't, of course, but I replied quickly, "Yes."

"I figured." His smile was still pleasant. "What about tomorrow night?"

Look, I know I'm a freak, all right? You don't have to tell me. There I was, and this totally hot, totally nice guy was asking me out, and all I could think about was a guy who, let's face it, is dead. All right? Jesse is dead. It's stupid - stupid, stupid, stupid - of me to turn down a date with a live guy when the only other guy I have in my life is dead.

But that's exactly what I did. I went, "Gee, sorry, Paul. I have plans tomorrow night, too."

I didn't even care if it sounded like I was lying. That's how screwed up I am. I just could not drum up the slightest bit of interest.

But I guess that was a pretty big mistake. I guess Mr. Paul Slater isn't used to girls turning down his invitations to dinner, or whatever. Because he went, no longer smiling pleasantly - or at all, actually: "Well, that's too bad. It's especially too bad considering the fact that now I guess I'm going to have to tell your supervisor about how you took my little brother off hotel property today without my parents' permission."

I just stared at him through the open window. I couldn't even figure out what he was talking about, at first. Then I remembered the shuttle bus, and the historical society, and the beach.

I almost burst out laughing. Seriously. I mean, if Paul Slater thought my getting in trouble for taking a kid off hotel property without his parents' permission was the worst thing that could happen to me - that had even happened to me today - he was way, way off base. For crying out loud, a woman who'd been been dead for nearly a hundred years had held a knife to my throat in my own bedroom, not twenty-four hours earlier. Did he really think I was going to care if Caitlin issued me a reprimand?

"Go ahead," I said. "And when you tell her, be sure to mention that for the first time in his life, your brother actually had a good time."

I hit the button to roll up the window - I mean, really, what was this guy's damage? - but Paul stuck his hand through it and rested his fingers on the glass. I let go of the button. I mean, I just wanted him to go away, not get maimed for life.

"Yeah," Paul said. "I've been meaning to ask you about that. Jack tells me that you told him he's a medium."

"Mediator," I corrected him before I could stop myself. And so much for Jack keeping the whole thing a secret, like I'd advised him to. When was this kid going to learn that going around telling people he can talk to ghosts wasn't going to endear him to anyone?

"Whatever," Paul said. "I guess you must think making fun of someone who has a mental disorder is pretty amusing."

I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't. It was like something out of a TV show. Not on the WB, though, or even Fox. It was totally PAX.

"I do not think your brother has a mental disorder," I said.

"Oh, don't you?" Paul looked all knowing. "He tells you he sees dead people, and you think he's playing with a full deck?"

I shook my head. "Jack might be able to see dead people, Paul. You don't know. I mean, you can't prove he can't see dead people."

Oh, brilliant argument, Suze. Where the hell was Sleepy? Come on, already. Get me out of here.

"Suze," Paul said, looking at me all searchingly. "Please. Dead people? You really believe that? You really believe my brother can see - can speak to-the dead?"

"I've heard of weirder things," I said. I glanced over at Sleepy. Caitlin was smiling up at him and shaking her blond Jennifer Aniston mane all over the place. Oh my God, enough with the flirting already. Just ask him out and get it over with so I can go ...

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't be encouraging him," Paul said. "It's about the worst thing you can do, according to his doctors."

"Yeah?" I was getting kind of pissed off now. I mean, what did Paul Slater know about anything, anyway? Just because his father's a brain surgeon or whatever who can afford a week at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort doesn't make him right all the time. "Well, Jack seems fine to me. You might even learn a thing or two from him, Paul. At least he has an open mind."

Paul just shook his head in disbelief. "What are you saying, Suze? That you believe in ghosts?"

Finally, finally, Sleepy said good-bye to Caitlin and turned back toward the car.

"Yeah," I said. "I do. What about you, Paul?"

Paul just blinked at me. "What about me?"

"Do you believe?"

His curled upper lip was all the reply I needed. Not caring if I severed his hand, I hit the window button. Paul pulled his fingers out just in time. I guess he thought I wasn't the finger-severing type.

Is he ever wrong.

Why are boys so difficult? I mean, really. When they aren't drinking directly out of the carton or leaving the toilet seat up, they are getting all offended because you won't go out with them and threatening to rat you out to your supervisor. Hasn't it occurred to any of them that this is not the way to our hearts?

And the problem is, they are just going to keep on doing it, as long as stupid girls like Kelly Prescott keep agreeing to go out with them anyway, in spite of their defects.

I sulked all the way home. Even Sleepy noticed.

"What's with you?" he wanted to know.

"That stupid Paul Slater's mad because I won't go out with him," I said, even though I generally make it a policy not to share my personal problems with any of my stepbrothers except, occasionally, Doc, and then only because his IQ is so much higher than mine. "He says he's going to tell Caitlin I took his little brother off hotel property without his parents' permission, which I did, but only to take him to the beach." And to the Carmel-by-the-Sea Historical Society. But I didn't mention that.

Sleepy went, "No kidding? That's pretty low. Well, don't worry about it. I'll smooth things over with Caitlin for you, if you want."

I was shocked. I had only mentioned it because I was feeling so down in the dumps. I hadn't actually expected Sleepy to help, or anything.

"Really? You really will?"

"Sure," Sleepy said with a shrug. "I'm seeing her tonight after I get off from delivering." Sleepy lifeguards by day and delivers pizzas by night. Originally he was saving up for a Camaro. Now he is saving up to get his own apartment, since there are no dorms at the community college he'll be attending and Andy says he isn't going to pay for Sleepy to have his own place unless he pulls his grades up.

I couldn't believe it. I said, "Thanks," in a stunned way.

"What's wrong with that Slater guy, anyway?" Sleepy wanted to know. "I thought he'd be just your type. You know, smart and all."

"Nothing's wrong with him," I grumbled, fiddling with my seat belt. "I just ... I sort of like someone else."

Sleepy lifted up his eyebrows behind his Ray Bans. "Oh? Anyone I know?"

I said shortly, "No."

"I don't know, Suze," he said. "Try me. Between the pizza gig and school, I know most everybody."

"You definitely," I said, "do not know this guy."

Sleepy frowned. "Why? Is he some kind of gangbanger?"

I rolled my eyes. Sleepy has been convinced since almost the day we first met that I am in a gang. Seriously. As if gang members wear Stila. I am so sure.

"Does he live in the Valley?" Sleepy wanted to know. "Suze, I'm telling you right now, if I find out you're going out with a gangbanger from the Valley - "

"God," I yelled. "Would you stop? He isn't a gangbanger, and neither am I! And he doesn't live in the Valley. You don't know him, okay? Just forget we had this conversation."

See? See what I mean? See why things will never, ever work out between me and Jesse? Because I can't pull him out and go, Here he is, this is the guy I like, and he isn’t a gangbanger, and he doesn’t live in the Valley.

I have just got to learn to keep my mouth shut, same as Jack.

When we got home, we were informed that dinner wasn't ready yet. That was because Andy was waist-deep in the hole he and Dopey had made in the backyard. I went out and looked at it for a while, chewing on my thumbnail. It was very creepy, looking into that hole. Almost as creepy as the prospect of going to bed in a few hours, knowing that Maria was probably going to show up again.

And that, seeing as how I hadn't done a single thing she'd asked, this time she'd probably cut up a lot more than just my gums.

It was around then that the phone rang. It was my friend Cee Cee, wanting to know if I cared to join her and Adam McTavish at the Coffee Clutch to drink iced tea and talk bad about everyone we know. I said yes right away because I hadn't heard from either of them in so long. Cee Cee was doing a summer internship at the Carmel Pine Cone (the name of the local newspaper; can you imagine?) and Adam had been at his grandparents' house in Martha's Vineyard for most of the summer. The minute I heard her voice I realized how much I'd missed Cee Cee, and how great it would be to tell her about vile Paul Slater and his tricks.

But then, of course, I realized I'd have to tell her the part about Paul's little brother, and how he really can speak to the dead, or the story wouldn't have half as much pathos, and the fact is, Cee Cee is not the type who believes in ghosts, or anything, for that matter, that she can't see with her own two eyes, which makes the fact that she goes to Catholic school problematic, what with Sister Ernestine urging us all the time about Faith and the Holy Spirit.

But whatever. It was better than standing around at home, looking at a giant hole.

I hurried upstairs and slipped out of my uniform and into one of the cute J. Crew slip dresses I'd ordered and never gotten a chance to wear since I've spent the whole summer in my heinous khaki shorts. No sign of Jesse, but that was just as well, as I wouldn't have known what to say to him anyway. I felt totally guilty for having read his letters, even though at the same time I was glad I had done it, because knowing about his sisters and his problems on the ranch and all made me feel closer to him in a way.

Only it was a fake kind of close because he didn't know I knew. And if he had wanted me to know, don't you think he would have told me? But he never wants to talk about himself. Instead, he always wants to talk about things like the rise of the Third Reich and how could we as a country have possibly sat around and let six million Jews get gassed before doing anything about it?

You know. Things like that.

Actually, some of the things Jesse wants to discuss are very hard to explain. I'd have much rather talked about his sisters. For instance, had he found living with five girls as trying as I find living with three boys? I would imagine probably not, given the reverse toilet seat situation. Did they even have toilets back then? Or did they just go in those nasty outhouses, like on Little House on the Prairie?

God, no wonder Maria was in such a bad mood.

Well, that and the whole being dead thing.

Anyway, Mom and Andy let me go out to eat with my friends because there was nothing for dinner anyway. Family meals really weren't the same, anyway, without Doc. I was surprised to find that I actually missed him and couldn't wait for him to come home. He was the only one of my stepbrothers who did not enrage me on any sort of regular basis.

Even though I couldn't really tell Cee Cee about Paul, I did have a good time. It was good to see her, and Adam, who, of all the boys I know, acts the least like one, though he isn't gay or anything, and actually takes great umbrage if you suggest it. So does Cee Cee, who has been in love with Adam since like forever. I had great hopes that Adam might return her feelings, but I could tell things had kind of cooled off - at least on his part - since he'd been away.

As soon as he got up to go to the bathroom, I asked Cee Cee what was up with that, and she launched into this whole thing about how she thinks Adam met someone in Martha's Vineyard. I have to say, it was kind of nice listening to someone else complain for a while. I mean, my life pretty much sucks and all, but at least I know Jesse's not screwing around on me with some girl in Martha's Vineyard.

At least, I don't think so. Who knows where he goes when he isn't hanging around my room? It could be Martha's Vineyard, after all.

See? See how this relationship is never going to work?

Anyway, Cee Cee and Adam and I hadn't seen each other in a long time, so there were quite a few people we needed to say bad things about, primarily Kelly Prescott, so when I got home, it was almost eleven . . . late for me, what with my having to be at work by eight.

Still, I was glad I'd gone out, as it had taken my mind off what I suspected awaited me in a few hours: another visit from the ravishing Mrs. Diego.

But as I was washing my hair before bed, it occurred to me that there was no reason why I had to make things easy on Miss Maria. I mean, why should I be victimized in my own bed?

No reason. No reason at all. I did not have to put up with that kind of nonsense. Because that's what it was. Nonsense.

Well, sort of scary nonsense, but still nonsense, all the same.

So when I turned out the light that night, it was with a definite sense of satisfaction. I was, I felt, well protected from anything Maria might pull. I had with me beneath the covers a veritable arsenal of weapons, including an ax, a hammer, and something I could not identify that I had taken from Andy's workshop, but which had evil-looking spikes on it. Furthermore, I had Max the dog with me. He would, I knew, awaken me as soon as anything otherworldly showed up, being extremely sensitive to such things.

And, oh, yes, I slept in Doc's room.

I know. I know. Cowardly in the extreme. But why should I have stayed in my own bed and waited for her, like a lame duck, when I could sleep in Doc's bed and maybe throw her off the scent? I mean, it wasn't like I was looking for a fight or anything. Well, except for the whole not-doing-a-thing-she-said thing. I guess that was sort of indicative of looking for a fight. But not, you know, actively.

Because, I have to tell you, while ordinarily I might have gone out looking for Maria de Silva's grave, so I could just, you know, have it out with her then and there, this was a little different. Because of Jesse. Don't ask me why, but I just didn't think I had it in me to go and rough up his ex, the way I would have if she didn't have this connection to him. I can't say I'm really used to waiting for ghosts to come to me....

But this. This was different.

Anyway, I had just snuggled down between Doc's sheets (freshly laundered - I wasn't taking any chances. I don't know what goes on in the beds of twelve-year-old boys, and frankly, I don't want to know) and was blinking in the darkness at the odd things Doc has hanging from his ceiling, a model of the solar system and all of that, when Max started to growl.

He did it so low that at first I didn't hear it. But since I had pulled him into bed with me (not that there was a lot of room, what with the ax and the hammer and the spiky thing) I could feel the growl reverberating through his big canine chest.

Then it got louder, and the hair on Max's back started standing up. That's when I knew we were in for either an earthquake or a nocturnal visitation from the former belle of Salinas County.

I sat up, grabbing the spiky thing and holding it like a baseball bat, looking around wildly while saying to Max in a low voice, "Good boy. It's okay, boy. Everything's going to be all right, boy," and telling myself that I believed it.

That's when someone materialized in front of me. And I swung the spiky thing as I hard as I could.

CHAPTER 6

"Susannah!" Jesse cried from where he'd leaped to avoid being struck. "What are you doing?"

I nearly dropped the spiky thing, I was so relieved it was him.

Max went wild with whining and growling. The poor thing was clearly having some sort of doggie nervous breakdown. In order not to risk his waking everyone in the house, and then having to explain why I was sleeping in my stepbrother's bed with a bunch of Andy's tools, I let him out of the room. As I did so, Jesse took the spiky thing from me and looked down at it curiously.

"Susannah," he said when I'd closed the door again, "why are you sleeping in David's room, armed with a pick?"

I raised my eyebrows, looking way more surprised than the occasion warranted. "Is that what that is? I was wondering."

Jesse just shook his head at me. "Susannah," he said, "tell me what is going on. Now."

"Nothing," I said, my voice sounding too squeaky and high-pitched even to my own ears. I hurried forward and got back into Doc's bed, stubbing my toe on the hammer but not saying anything, since I didn't want Jesse to know it was there. Finding me in my stepbrother's bed with a pick was one thing. Finding me in my stepbrother's bed with a pick, an ax, and a hammer was something else entirely.

"Susannah." Jesse sounded really mad, and he doesn't get mad all that often. Except, of course, when he finds me sucking face with strange boys in the driveway, that is. "Is that an ax?"

Damn! I shoved it back down beneath the covers. "I can explain," I said.

He leaned the pick against the side of the bed and folded his arms across his chest. "I'd like to hear it," he said.

"Well." I took a deep breath. "It's like this."

And then I couldn't think of any way to explain it, other than the truth.

And I couldn't tell him that.

Jesse must have read in my face the fact that I was trying to think up a lie, since he suddenly unfolded his arms and leaned forward, placing one hand on either side of the headboard behind me, and sort of capturing me between his arms, though he wasn't actually touching me. This was very unnerving and caused me to slump down very low against Doc's pillows.

But even that didn't really do any good, since Jesse's face was still only about six inches from mine.

"Susannah," he said. He was really mad now. Fed up, even, you might say. "What is happening here? Last night I could swear I felt ... a presence in your room. And then tonight you are sleeping in here, with picks and axes? What is it that you aren't telling me? And why? Why can't you tell me?"

I had sunk down as low as I could, but there was no escaping Jesse's angry face, unless I threw the sheet up over my head. And that, of course, wouldn't be at all dignified.

"Look," I said as reasonably as I could, considering that there was a hammer digging into my foot. "It's not that I don't want to tell you. It's just that I'm afraid that if I do ... "

And then, don't ask me how, the whole thing just came tumbling out. Really. It was incredible. It was like he'd pushed a button on my forehead that said Information Please, and out it all came.

I told him everything, about the letters, the trip to the historical society, everything, finishing up with, "And the thing is, I didn't want you to know, because if your body really is buried out there, and they find it, well, that means that there's no reason for you to hang around here anymore, and I know it's selfish, but I would really miss you, so I was hoping if I didn't mention it you wouldn't find out and everything could just go on like normal."

But Jesse didn't have at all the sort of reaction to this information that I thought he would. He didn't sweep me into his arms and kiss me passionately like in the movies, or even call me querida, whatever it means, and stroke my hair, which was wet from my shower.

Instead, he just started laughing.

Which I didn't really appreciate. I mean, after everything I had gone through for him in the past twenty-four hours, you would think he would show a bit more gratitude than to sit there and laugh. Especially when my life might very well be in mortal peril.

I mentioned this to him, but that only made him laugh harder.

Finally, when he was through laughing - which didn't happen until I'd pulled the hammer out from under the covers, something that sent him into fresh peals, but what was I supposed to do? it was still digging into me - he did reach out and sort of ruffle my hair, but there wasn't anything the least bit romantic about it, since I had put Kiehl's leave-in conditioner on it and I'm pretty sure it got on his fingers.

That just made me madder at him than ever, even though technically it wasn't his fault. So I took the ax out from beneath the sheets, too, and then pulled the covers up over my head and rolled over and wouldn't talk to him anymore. Or look at him. Very mature, I know, but I was peeved.

"Susannah," he said in a voice that was a little hoarse from all the laughing he'd been doing. I felt like punching him. I really did. "Don't be like that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I laughed. It's just that I didn't understand a word you just said, you were talking so fast. And then when you pulled out that hammer - "

"Go away," I said.

"Come on, Susannah," Jesse said in his silkiest, most persuasive voice - which he was using on purpose to make me go all squishy. Except that it wasn't going to work this time. "Let go of the sheet."

"No," I said, clutching the sheet tighter as he plucked at it. "I said go away."

"No, I won't go away. Sit up. I want to talk to you seriously now, but how can I do that when you won't look at me? Turn around."

"No," I said. I was really mad. I mean, you would have been, too. That Maria was one scary individual. And he'd been going to marry her! Well, a hundred and fifty years ago, anyway. Had he even known her? Known that she wasn't anything like the girl who'd written those idiotic letters to him? What had he been thinking, anyway?

"Why don't you just go hang out with Maria," I suggested to him acidly. "Maybe you two could sit around and sharpen her knives together and have some more laughs at my expense. Ha ha, you could say. That mediator is so funny."

"Maria?" Jesse pulled on the sheet some more. "What are you talking about, knives?"

Okay. So I hadn't been totally up front with him. I hadn't told him the whole story. Yeah, the part about the letters and the historical society and the hole and all. But the part about Maria showing up with the knife - the reason, in fact, that I was sleeping in Doc's bed with a bunch of tools? Hadn't mentioned that part.

Because I'd known how he was going to react. Exactly the way he did.

"Maria and knives?" he echoed. "No. No."

That did it. I rolled over and said to him, very sarcastically, "Oh, okay, Jesse. So that knife she held to my throat last night, that must have been an imaginary knife. And I must have imagined it when she threatened to kill me, too."

I started to roll back over in a huff, but this time he caught me before I got turned all the way and swung me back around to face him. He wasn't, I saw with some satisfaction, laughing now. Or even smiling.

"A knife?" He was looking down at me like he wasn't sure he'd heard me right. "Maria was here? With a knife? Why?"

"You tell me," I said, even though I knew the answer perfectly well. "Someone's been dead and gone for as long as she has, it would have to take something pretty big to bring her back."

Jesse just stared down at me with those dark, liquid eyes of his. If he knew anything, he wasn't saying. Not just yet.

"She - she tried to hurt you?"

I nodded, and had the satisfaction of feeling his grip on my shoulders tighten.

"Yes," I said. "And she held it right here" - I pointed to my jugular - "and she said if I didn't tell Andy to stop digging, she was going to k - "

Kill me, was what I was going to say, but I didn't get a chance to, because Jesse snatched me up - really, snatched, that's the only way to describe it - and held onto me very tightly for someone who had thought the whole thing a big funny joke just a few seconds before.

This was, I must say, extremely gratifying. It got even more gratifying when Jesse said some stuff - though I didn't know what it was, because it was in Spanish - into my wet hair.

But that death grip (excuse the pun) he had me in didn't need any translating: he was scared. Scared for me.

"It was a really large knife," I said, enjoying the feel of his big strong shoulder beneath my cheek. I could totally get used to this. "And very pointy."

"Querida," he said. Okay, that word I understood. Well, sort of. He kissed the top of my head.

This was good. This was very good. I decided to go in for the kill.

"And then," I said, doing a very good imitation of sounding like I was crying, or at least, was pretty close to doing so, "she put her hand over my face to keep me from screaming, and one of her rings cut me and made my mouth all bloody."

Oops. This one did not have the desired effect. I should probably not have brought up my bloody mouth, since instead of kissing me there, which was what I'd been aiming for, he pulled me away from him so he could look down into my face.

"Susannah, why didn't you tell me any of this last night?" He looked genuinely baffled. "I asked you if something was wrong, and you never said a word."

Hello? Hadn't he heard anything I just said?

"Because." I was speaking through gritted teeth, but you would have, too, if the man of your dreams was holding you in his arms and all he wanted to do was talk. And about his ex-girlfriend's attempt to murder you, no less.

"It obviously has something to do with why you're here," I said. "Why you're still here, I mean, in this house, and why you've been here so long. Jesse, don't you see? If they find your body, that proves you were murdered, and that means Colonel Clemmings was right."

Jesse's bewilderment seemed to increase, rather than lessen, thanks to this explanation.

"Colonel who?" he said.

"Colonel Clemmings," I said. "Author of My Monterey. His theory of why you disappeared is not that you got cold feet about marrying Maria and went off to San Francisco to stake a claim, but that that Diego guy killed you so he could marry Maria himself. And if they find your body, Jesse, that will prove you were murdered. And the most likely suspects are, of course, Maria and that Diego dude."

But instead of being dazzled by my excellent sleuthing skills, Jesse asked, in a shocked voice, "How do you know about him? About Diego?"

"I told you." God, this was irritating. When were we going to get to the kissing? "It's from a book Doc got out of the library. My Monterey, by Colonel Harold Clemmings."

"But Doc - I mean, David - is at camp, I thought."

I said, frustratedly, "This was a long time ago. When I first got here. Last January."

Jesse didn't let go of me or anything, but he had an extremely odd look on his face.

"Are you saying that you've known about this ... how I died ... all along?"

"Yes," I said, a little defensively. I was getting the feeling that maybe he thought I'd done something wrong, prying into his death. "But, Jesse, that's my job. That's what mediators do. I can't help it."

"Why did you keep asking me about how I died, then," he demanded, "if you already knew?"

I said, still on the defensive side, "Well, I didn't know. Not for sure. I still don't. But Jesse - " I wanted to make sure he understood this part, so I pulled back (and he unfortunately let go of me, but what could I do?) and sat up on my heels and said, very slowly and carefully, "If they find your body out there, not only is Maria going to be really mad, but you . . . you're going to move on. You know? From here. Because that's what's been holding you back, Jesse. The mystery of what happened to you. Once your body is found, though, that mystery will be solved. And you'll go. And that's why I couldn't tell you, you see? Because I don't want you to go. Because I I - "

Oh my God, I almost said it. I can't even tell you how close I came to saying it. I got out the L and then the O just seemed to follow.

But at the last minute I was able to save it. I turned it to " - like having you around and I would really hate not seeing you anymore."

Swift, huh? That was a close one.

Because one thing I know for sure about guys, along with their inability to use a glass and lower the toilet seat and refill ice trays once they are empty: they really cannot handle the L word. I mean, it says so in just about every article I've ever read.

And you have to figure this is true of all guys, even guys who were born a hundred and fifty years ago.

And I guess my not using the L word paid off, since Jesse reached out and touched my cheek with his fingertips - just like he had done that day in the hospital.

"Susannah," he said. "Finding my body is not going to change anything."

"Um," I said. "Excuse me, Jesse, but I think I know what I'm talking about. I've been a mediator for sixteen years."

"Susannah," he said. "I have been dead for a hundred and fifty years. I think I know what I am talking about. And I can assure you, this mystery about my death you speak of ... that is not why I, as you put it, am hanging around here."

A funny thing happened then. Just like in Clive Clemmings's office, earlier that day, I just started crying. Really. Just like that.

Oh, I wasn't sobbing like a baby or anything, but my eyes filled up with tears and I got that bad prickly feeling behind my nose, and my throat started to hurt. It was weird, because I'd just, you know, been trying to act as if I were crying, and then all of a sudden, I really was.

"Jesse," I said in this horrible sniffly kind of voice (acting like you're going to cry is way preferable to actually crying, as there is much less mucus involved), "I'm sorry, but that's just not possible. I mean, I know. I've done this a hundred times. When they find your body out there, that is it. You're gone."

"Susannah," he said again. And this time he didn't just touch my cheek. He reached up and cupped the side of my face with one hand ...

Although the romantic effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that he was half laughing at me. To give him credit, though, he looked as if he were trying just as hard not to laugh as I was trying not to cry.

"I promise you, Susannah," he said, with a lot of pauses between the words to give them emphasis, "that I am not going anywhere, whether or not your stepfather finds my body in the backyard. All right?"

I didn't believe him, of course. I wanted to and all, but the truth is, he didn't know what he was talking about.

What could I do, though? I had no choice but to be brave about it. I mean, I couldn't very well just sit there and cry my eyes out over it. What kind of fool would I seem then?

So I said, unfortunately in a very mucusy manner, since by that time the tears were sort of spilling out, "Really? You promise?"

Jesse grinned and let go of my face. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, lace-trimmed thing I recognized. Maria de Silva's handkerchief. He'd used it before to bind up various cuts and scrapes I'd sustained in the line of mediation duty. Now he used it to wipe my tears.

"I swear," he said, laughing. But just a little.

In the end, he persuaded me to come back to my own bed. He said he'd make sure his ex-girlfriend didn't come after me in the night. Only he didn't call her his ex-girlfriend. He just called her Maria. I still wanted to ask him what he'd been thinking, going out with a ferret-faced ice bitch like her, but there never really seemed to be a right moment.

Is there ever a right moment to ask someone why they were going to marry the person who had had them killed?

Probably not.

I don't know how Jesse thought he was going to stop Maria if she came back. True, he had been dead a lot longer than she had, so he had had a little more practice at the whole ghost thing. It seemed pretty likely, in fact, that Maria's haunting of me was her first and only visit back to this world from whatever spiritual plane she'd inhabited since her death. The longer someone has been a ghost, the more powerful they tend to be.

Unless, of course, like Maria, they happened to be filled with rage.

But Jesse and I had, together, fought ghosts every bit as angry as Maria, and won. We would win this time, too, I knew, so long as we stuck together.

It was definitely strange going to bed knowing someone was going to be sitting there, watching me sleep. But after I got used to the idea, it was sort of nice, knowing he was there with Spike on the daybed, reading a book he'd found in Doc's room called A Thousand Years by the light of his own spectral glow. It would have been more romantic if he'd just sat there gazing longingly at my face, but beggars can't be choosers, and how many other girls do you know who have boys perfectly willing to sit in their bedrooms and watch for evil trespassers all night? I bet you can't even name one.

I suppose eventually I must have fallen asleep, since when I opened my eyes again it was morning, and Jesse was still there. He had finished A Thousand Years and had moved on to a book from one of my shelves called Bridges of Madison County, which he seemed to find excruciatingly amusing, although he was trying not to laugh loud enough to wake me.

God, how embarrassing.

I didn't realize then that it was the last time I'd ever see him.

CHAPTER 7

My day pretty much went downhill from there.

I guess while Maria wasn't that interested in renewing her acquaintance with her ex, she was still plenty interested in torturing me. I got my first inkling of this when I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the brandnew carton of orange juice someone had bought to replace the one finished off by Dopey and Sleepy the day before.

I had just opened it when Dopey stomped in, snatched the carton from me, and lifted it to his lips.

I started to go, "Hey!" in an irritated voice, but the word soon turned into a shriek of disgust and terror when what poured into my stepbrother's mouth was not juice, but bugs.

Hundreds of bugs. Thousands of bugs. Live bugs, wriggling and crawling and falling from his open mouth.

Dopey realized what was happening about a split second after I did. He threw the carton down and ran to the sink, spitting out as many of the black beetles that had fallen into his mouth as he could. Meanwhile, they were still swarming over the sides of the carton onto the floor.

I don't know how I summoned the inner strength to do what I did next. If there's one thing I hate, it's bugs. Next to poison oak, it is one of the main reasons I spend so little time in the great outdoors. I mean, I do not mind the odd ant drowning in a pool or a butterfly landing on my shoulder, but show me a mosquito or, God forbid, a cockroach, and I am out the door.

Still, despite my near crippling fear of anything smaller than a peanut, I picked up that carton and poured its contents down the sink, then, quicker than you can say Raid, flicked on the disposal.

"Ohmygawd!" Dopey was yelling, as he continued to spit into the sink. "Ohmyfreakingawd."

Only he didn't say freaking. Under the circumstances, I didn't blame him.

Our shrieking had brought Sleepy and my stepfather into the kitchen. They just stood there staring at the hundreds of black beetles that had escaped death by the kitchen drain and were scurrying around the terra-cotta tiles. At least until I yelled, "Step on them!"

Then we all started stomping on as many of the disgusting things as we could.

When we were through, only a couple ended up getting away, the ones that had the sense to make for the crack beneath the fridge, and one or two that made it all the way to the open sliding glass doors to the deck. It had been arduous, disgusting work, and we all stood around panting . . . except for Dopey, who, with a groan, rushed off into the bathroom, presumably to rinse with Listerine, or maybe to check for any antennas that might have gotten caught between his teeth.

"Well," Andy said, when I explained what had happened. "That's the last time I buy organic."

Which was kind of funny, in a sick way. Except that I happened to know that organic or frozen from concentrate, it wouldn't have made any difference: a poltergeist had been at work.

Andy looked at the mess on the floor and said in a sort of dazed voice, "We have to get this cleaned up before your mother gets home."

He had that right. You think I've got a thing about bugs? You should see my mother. We are neither of us what you would call nature lovers.

We threw ourselves into our work, scrubbing and scouring bug guts off the tile, while I made subtle suggestions that we order in for all our meals, not just supper, for the time being. I wasn't sure if Maria had gotten her hands on any other foodstuffs, but I suspected nothing in the pantry or refrigerator was going to be safe.

Andy was only too willing to go along with this, blathering on about how insect infestations can destroy entire crops, and how many homes he'd worked on had been destroyed by termites, and how important it was to have your house regularly fumigated.

But fumigation, I wanted to say to him, doesn't do any good when the bugs are the result of a vengeful ghost.

But of course I didn't mention this. I highly doubt he would have understood what I was talking about. Andy doesn't believe in ghosts.

Must be nice to have that luxury.

When Sleepy and I finally got to work, it appeared briefly that things were looking up, since we did not even get in trouble for being late. This was, of course, on account of Sleepy having Caitlin so firmly in his thrall. So you see, there are some advantages to having stepbrothers.

There did not even seem to have been a complaint from the Slaters about my having taken Jack off hotel property without their permission, since I was told to go straight to their suite. This, I thought to myself as I made my way down the thickly carpeted hotel corridors to their rooms, really is too good to be true, and just goes to show that behind every cloud is a slice of clear blue sky.

At least, that's what I was thinking as I knocked on their door. When it swung open, however, to reveal not just Jack, but both Slater brothers dressed in swimwear, I began to have my doubts.

Jack pounced on me like a kitten on a ball of yarn.

"Guess what?" he cried. "Paul's not playing golf or tennis or anything today. He wants to spend the whole day with us. Isn't that great?"

"Um," I said.

"Yeah, Suze," Paul said. He had on long baggy swimtrunks (proving that it could have been worse: he could have been wearing one of those micro Speedos) and a towel wrapped around his neck and nothing else, except a smirk. "Isn't that great?"

"Um," I said. "Yeah. Great."

Dr. and Mrs. Slater scooted past us in their golf clothes. "You kids have fun now," Nancy called. "Suze, we've got lessons all day. You'll stay until five, won't you?" Then, without waiting for an answer, she said, "Okay, buh-bye," took her husband by the arm, and left.

Okay, I said to myself. I can handle this. Already that morning I'd handled a swarm of bugs. I mean, despite the fact that every once in a while I thought I felt one crawling on me and jumped, only to find it was just my own hair or whatever, I had recovered pretty well. Far better, probably, than Dopey ever would.

So I could certainly handle having Paul Slater around all day bugging me. Um, I mean bothering me.

Right? No problem.

Except that it was a problem. Because Jack kept wanting to talk about the whole mediator thing, and I kept muttering for him to shut up, and then he'd go, "Oh, it's okay, Suze, Paul knows."

Which was the point. Paul wasn't supposed to know. It was supposed to be our secret, mine and Jack's. I didn't want stupid, non-believing,, since-you-won't-go-out-with-me-I'm-telling-on-you Paul to have any part of it. Especially since every time Jack mentioned anything about it, Paul lowered his Armanis and looked at me over the top of the frames, all expectantly, waiting to hear what I'd say.

What could I do? I pretended I didn't know what Jack was talking about. Which was frustrating to him, of course, but what else was I supposed to do? I didn't want Paul knowing my business. I mean, my own mother doesn't know. Why on earth would I tell Paul?

Fortunately, after the first six or seven times Jack tried to mention anything mediator related and I ignored him, he seemed to get the message and shut up. It helped that the pool had gotten very crowded with other little kids and their parents and sitters, so he had plenty to distract him.

But it was still a little unnerving, leaning there against the side of the pool with Kim, who'd shown up with her charges, to glance at Paul every so often and see him stretched out on a deck chair, his face turned in my direction. Especially since I had the feeling that Paul, unlike Sleepy, up in his chair, was wide awake behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

Then again, as Kim put it, "Hey, if a hottie like that wants to look at me, he can look all he wants."

But of course, it's different for Kim. She doesn't have the ghost of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old hottie living in her bedroom.

All in all, I would say the morning turned out pretty wretchedly, considering. I figured that, after lunch, the day could only get better.

Was I ever wrong. After lunch was when the cops showed up.

I was stretched out on a lounge chair of my own, keeping one eye on Jack, who was playing a pretty rambunctious game of Marco Polo with Kim's kids, and another on Paul, who was pretending to read a copy of The Nation, but who was, as Kim pointed out, spying on us over the top of the pages, when Caitlin appeared, looking visibly upset, followed by two burly members of the Carmel police.

I assumed that they were merely passing through, on the way to the men's locker room, where there'd been an occasional break-in. Imagine my great surprise when Caitlin led the cops right up to me and said in a shaking voice, "This is Susannah Simon, Officers."

I hurried to climb into my hideous khaki shorts, while Kim, in the lounge chair beside mine, gaped up at the cops like they were mermen risen from the sea or something.

"Miss Simon," the taller of the cops said. "We'd just like a word with you for a moment, if you don't mind."

I've talked to more than my fair share of cops in my time. Not because I hang out with gang-bangers, as Sleepy likes to think, but because in mediating, one often is forced to, well, bend the law a little.

For instance, let's say Marisol had not turned that rosary over to Jorge's daughter. Well, in order to carry out Jorge's last wishes, I would have been forced to break into Marisol's home, take the rosary myself, and mail it to Teresa anonymously. Anyone can see how something like that, which is really for the greater good in the vast scheme of things, might be misinterpreted by local law enforcement as a crime.

So, yes, the fact of the matter is, I have been hauled before the cops any number of times, much to my poor mother's chagrin. However, with the exception of that unfortunate incident that had landed me in the hospital some months previously, I had not done anything lately, that I could think of, that could even remotely be construed as unlawful.

So it was with some curiosity, but little trepidation, that I followed the officers - Knightley and Jones - out of the pool area and behind the Pool House Grill, near the Dumpsters, the closest area where, I suppose, the officers felt we could be assured total privacy for our little chat.

"Miss Simon," Officer Knightley, the taller policeman, began, as I watched a lizard dart out of the shade of a nearby rhododendron, look at us in alarm, and then dart back into the shadows. "Are you acquainted with a Dr. Clive Clemmings?"

I was shocked into admitting that I was. The last thing I had expected Officer Knightley to mention was Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D. I was thinking something more along the lines of, oh, I don't know. Taking an eight-year-old off hotel property without his parents' permission.

Stupid, I know, but Paul had really rattled me with that one.

"Why?" I asked. "Is he - Mr. Clemmings - all right?"

"Unfortunately, no," Officer Jones said. "He's dead."

"Dead?" I wanted to reach out for something to hold onto. Unfortunately there wasn't anything to grab except the Dumpster, and since it was filled with the remains of that afternoon's lunch, I didn't want to touch it.

I settled for sinking down onto the curb.

Clive Clemmings? My mind was racing. Clive Clemmings dead? How? Why? I hadn't liked Clive Clemmings, of course. I'd been hoping that when Jesse's body turned up, I could go back to his office and rub it in his face. You know, the whole part about Jesse having been murdered after all.

Only now it looked as if I wouldn't get the chance.

"What happened?" I asked, gazing up at the cops bewilderedly.

"We're not sure, precisely," Officer Knightley said. "He was found this morning at his desk at the historical society, dead from an apparent heart attack. According to the receptionist's sign-in log, you were one of the few people who saw him yesterday."

Only then did I remember that the lady behind the reception desk had made me sign in. Damn!

"Well," I said, heartily - but not too heartily, I hoped. "He was fine when I talked to him."

"Yes," Officer Knightley said. "We're aware of that. It's not Dr. Clemmings's death we're here about."

"It isn't?" Wait a minute. What was going on?

"Miss Simon," Officer Jones said. "When Dr. Clemmings was found this morning, it was also discovered than an item of particular value to the historical society was missing. Something you apparently looked at, with Dr. Clemmings, just yesterday."

The letters. Maria's letters. They were gone. They had to be. She had come and taken them, and Clive Clemmings had caught a glimpse of her somehow and had had a heart attack from the shock of seeing the woman in the portrait behind his desk walking around his office.

"A small painting." Officer Knightley had to refer to his notepad. "A miniature of someone named Hector de Silva. The receptionist, Mrs. Lampbert, says Dr. Clemmings told her you were particularly interested in it."

This information, so unexpected, shook me. Jesse's portrait? Jesse's portrait was gone from the collection? But who would have taken that? And why?

I did not have to feign my innocence for once as I stammered, "I - I looked at the painting, yes. But I didn't take it or anything. I mean, when I left, Mr. - Dr. Clemmings was putting it away."

Officers Knightley and Jones exchanged glances. Before they could say anything more, however, someone came around the corner of the Pool House.

It was Paul Slater.

"Is there a problem with my brother's baby-sitter. Officers?" he demanded in a bored voice that suggested - to me, anyway - that the Slater family's employees were often being dragged off for questioning by members of law enforcement.

"Excuse me," Officer Knightley said, sounding really very offended. "But as soon as we are done questioning this witness, we - "

Paul whipped off his sunglasses and barked, "Are you aware that Miss Simon is a minor? Shouldn't you be questioning her in the presence of her parents?"

Officer Jones blinked a few times. "Pardon me, uh, sir," he began, though it was clear he didn't really consider Paul a sir, seeing as how he was under eighteen and all. "The young lady isn't under arrest. We're just asking her a few - "

"If she isn't under arrest," Paul said swiftly, "then she doesn't have to speak to you at all, does she?"

Officers Knightley and Jones looked at one another again. Then Officer Knightley said, "Well, no. But there has been a death and a theft, and we have reason to believe she might have information - "

Paul looked at me. "Suze," he said, "have these gentlemen read you your rights?"

"Um," I said. "No."

"Do you want to talk to them?"

"Um," I said, glancing nervously from Officer Knightley to Officer Jones, and then back again. "Not really."

"Then you don't have to."

Paul leaned down and took hold of my arm.

"Say good-bye to the nice police officers," he said, pulling me to my feet.

I looked up at the police officers. "Uh," I said to them. "I'm very sorry Dr. Clemmings is dead, but I swear I don't know what happened to him, or that painting, either. Bye."

Then I let Paul Slater pull me back out to the pool.

I am not normally so docile, but I have to tell you, I was in shock. Maybe it was post-being-questioned-by-the-police-but-not-taken-down-to-the-station-house exhilaration, but once we were out of the sight of Officers Knightley and Jones, I whirled around and grabbed Paul's wrist.

"All right," I said. "What was all that about?"

Paul had put his sunglasses back on, so it was hard to read the expression in his eyes, but I think he was amused.

"All what?" he asked.

"All that," I said, nodding toward the back of the Pool House. "That whole Lone-Ranger-to-the-rescue thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just yesterday that you were going to turn me over to the authorities yourself? Or rat me out to my boss, anyway?"

Paul shrugged. "Yes," he said. "A certain someone pointed out to me, however, that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."

At the time, all I felt was a little miffed at being called a fly. It didn't even occur to me to wonder who that "certain someone" might have been. It wasn't long before I found out, however.

CHAPTER 8

Okay, so I went out with him.

So what?

So what does that make me? I mean, the guy asked me if I wanted to go with him for a burger after I dumped his brother back off with his parents at five, and I said yes.

Why shouldn't I have said yes? What did I have to look forward to at home, huh? Certainly not any hope of dinner. Roach à la mode? Spider fricassee?

Oh, yeah, and a ghost who had her fiancé murdered and was going to try to off me next, at her earliest opportunity.

I thought maybe I'd misjudged Paul. Maybe I hadn't been fair. I mean, yeah, he had been kind of stalkerish the day before, but he more than made up for it with the whole rescuing-me-from-the-police thing.

And he didn't make a single move on me. Not one. When I said I wanted to go home, he said no problem, and took me home.

It certainly wasn't his fault that when we drove up to my house, he couldn't pull into the driveway on account of all the police cars and ambulances parked there.

I swear, one thing I am getting with my summer job money is a cell phone. Because stuff keeps on happening, and I have no idea, because I'm off having burgers with someone at Friday's.

I jumped out of the car and ran up to where I saw all the people standing. When I reached the caution tape, which was strung up all around the hole where the hot tub was supposed to go, someone grabbed me by the waist and spun me around before I had a chance to do what I intended, which was, although I'm not too clear on this, scramble down into the hole, to join the people I saw down at the bottom of it, bending over something that I was pretty sure was a body.

But, like I said, someone stopped me.

"Whoa, tiger," that someone said, swinging me around. It turned out to be Andy, looking extremely dirty and sweaty and unlike his normal self. "Hang on. Nothing for you to see there."

"Andy." The sun hadn't quite set, but I was having trouble seeing anyway. It was like I was in a tunnel, and all I could see was this bright pinprick of light at the end of it. "Andy, where's my mom?"

"Your mom's fine," Andy said. "Everyone's fine."

The pinprick started getting a little wider. I could see my mom's face now, peering at me worriedly from the deck, with Dopey behind her, wearing his usual sneer.

"Then what - " I saw the men in the bottom of the hole lift up a stretcher. On the stretcher was a black body bag like the kind you always see on TV. "Who is that?" I wanted to know.

"Well, we're not sure," my stepfather said. "But whoever he is, he's been there a very long time, so chances are, he isn't anyone we know."

Dopey's face loomed large in my line of vision.

"It's a skeleton," he informed me with a good deal of relish. He appeared to have gotten over the fact that only that morning he'd had a mouth full of beetles, and was back to his normal insufferable self. "It was totally awesome, Suze, you should have been here. My shovel went right through his skull. It cracked like it was an egg or something."

Well, that was enough for me. My tunnel vision came right back, but not soon enough to miss something that tumbled from the stretcher as it went past me. My gaze locked on it and followed it as it fluttered to the ground, landing very near my feet. It was only a deeply stained and extremely threadbare piece of material, no bigger than my hand. A rag, it looked like, though you could see that at one time it had had lace around its edges. Little bits of lace still clung to it like burrs, especially around the corner where, very faintly, you could read three embroidered initials:

MDS.

Maria de Silva. It was the handkerchief Jesse had used last night to dry my tears. Only it was the real handkerchief, frayed and brown with age.

And it had fallen out of the jumble of decaying material holding Jesse's bones together.

I turned around and threw up Friday's bacon cheeseburger and potato skins all over the side of the house.

Needless to say, no one except my mother was very sympathetic about this. Dopey declared it the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. Apparently he'd forgotten what he'd had in his mouth less then twelve hours before. Andy simply went and got the hose, and Sleepy, equally unimpressed, said he had to get going or he'd be late delivering 'za.

My mother insisted on putting me to bed, even though having her in my room just then was about the last thing I wanted. I mean, I had just seen them removing Jesse's body from my backyard. I would have liked to have discussed this disturbing sight with him, but how could I do that with my mother there?

I figured if I just let her fuss over me for half an hour, she'd go. But she stayed much longer than that, making me take a shower and change out of my uniform and into a silky pair of lounging pajamas she'd bought me for Valentine's Day (pathetically, it was the only Valentine I received). Then she insisted on combing my hair out, like she used to when I was a little kid.

She wanted to talk, too, of course. She had plenty to say on the subject of the skeleton Andy and Dopey had found, insisting it was only "some poor man" who had gotten killed in a shoot-out back in the days when our home was a boarding-house for mercenaries and gunslingers and the odd rancher's son. She said the police would insist on treating it as a homicide until the coroner had determined how long the body had been there, but since, she went on, the fellow still had his spurs on (spurs!) she assumed they would come to the same conclusion she had: that this guy had been dead for a lot longer than any of us had been alive.

She tried to make me feel better. But how could she? She didn't have any idea why I was so upset. I mean, I'm not Jack. I had never blabbed to her about my secret talent. My mom didn't know that I knew whose skeleton that was. She didn't know that just twelve hours ago he had been sitting on my daybed, laughing at Bridges of Madison County. And that a few hours before that, he had kissed me - albeit on the top of my head, but still.

I mean, come on. You'd be upset, too.

Finally, finally she left. I heaved a sigh of relief, thinking I could relax, you know?

But no. Oh, no. Because my mother didn't retreat with the intention of leaving me alone. I found that out the hard way a couple of minutes later when the phone rang, and Andy hollered up the stairs that it was for me. I really did not feel like talking to anyone, but what could I do? Andy had already said I was home. So I picked up, and whose cheerful little voice do I hear on the other end?

That's right.

Doc's.

"Suze, how are you doing?" my youngest stepbrother wanted to know. Although clearly he already knew. How I was doing, I mean. Obviously, my mother had called him at camp - who gets calls from their stepmother at camp, I ask you? - and told him to call me. Because of course she knows. She knows he's the only one of my stepbrothers I can stand, and I'm sure she thought I might tell him whatever it was that was bothering me, and then she could pump him for information later.

My mother isn't an award-winning television news journalist for nothing, you know.

"Suze?" Doc sounded concerned. "Your mom told me about . . . what happened. Do you want me to come home?"

I flopped back down on my pillows. "Home? No, I don't want you to come home. Why would I want you to come home?"

"Well," Doc said. He lowered his voice as if he suspected someone was listening in. "Because of Jesse."

Out of all the people I live with, Doc was the only one who had the slightest idea that We Are Not Alone. Doc believed ... and he had good reason to. Once when I'd been in a real jam, Jesse had gone to him. Scared out of his wits, Doc had nevertheless come through for me.

And now he was offering to do so again.

Only what could he do? Nothing. Worse than nothing, he could actually get hurt. I mean, look at what had happened to Dopey that morning. Did I want to see Doc with a faceful of bugs? No way.

"No," I said, quickly. "No, Doc - I mean, David. That isn't necessary. You stay where you are. Things are fine here. Really."

Doc sounded disappointed. "Suze, things are not fine. Do you want to talk about it, at least?"

Oh, yeah. I want to discuss my love life - or lack thereof - with my twelve-year-old stepbrother.

"Not really," I said.

"Look, Suze," Doc said. "I know it had to be upsetting. I mean, seeing his skeleton like that. But you've got to remember that our bodies are simply the vessel - and a very crude one, at that - in which our souls are carried while we're alive on earth. Jesse's body . . . well, it doesn't have anything to do with him anymore."

Easy for him to say, I thought miserably. He'd never gotten a look at Jesse's abs.

Not that, if he had, they would have interested Doc much, of course.

"Really," Doc went on, "if you think about it, that's probably not the only body Jesse's going to have. According to the Hindus, we shed our outer shells - our bodies - several times. In fact, we keep doing so, depending on our karma, until we finally get it right, thus achieving liberation from the cycle of rebirth."

"Oh?" I stared at the canopy over my bed. I really could not believe I was having this conversation. And with a twelve-year-old. "Do we?"

"Sure. Most of us, anyway. I mean, unless we get it right the first time. But that hardly ever happens. See, what's going on with Jesse is that his karma is all messed up, and he got bumped off the path to nirvana. He just needs to find his way back into the body he's supposed to get after, you know, his last one, and then he'll be fine."

"David," I said. "Are you sure you're at computer camp? Because it sounds to me like maybe Mom and Andy dropped you off at yoga camp by mistake."

"Suze," Doc said with a sigh. "Look. All I'm saying is, that skeleton you saw, it wasn't Jesse, all right? It has nothing to do with him anymore. So don't let it upset you. Okay?"

I decided it was high time to change the subject.

"So," I said. "Any cute girls at that camp?"

"Suze," he said severely. "Don't - "

"I knew it," I said. "What's her name?"

"Shut up," Doc said. "Look, I gotta go. But remember what I said, will you? I'll be home Sunday, so we can talk more then."

"Fine," I said. "See you then."

"See you. And Suze?"

"Yeah, Doc - I mean, David?"

"Be careful, okay? That Diego - the guy from that book, who supposedly killed Jesse? - he seemed kind of ... mean. You might want to watch your back or ... well, whatever."

Whatever was right.

But I didn't say so to Doc. Instead, I said goodbye. What else could I say? Felix Diego isn't the half of it, sonny? I was too upset even to entertain the idea that I might possibly have a second hostile spirit to deal with.

But I didn't even know what upset was until Spike came scrambling through my open window, looked around expectantly, and meowed....

And Jesse didn't show up.

Not even after I called out his name.

They don't, as a rule. Ghosts, I mean. Come when you call them.

But for the most part, Jesse does. Although lately he's been showing up before I even had a chance to call him, when I've only thought about calling him. Then wham, next thing I knew, there he was.

Except not this time.

Nothing. Not a flicker.

Well, I said to myself as I fed Spike his can of food and tried to remain calm. That's okay. I mean, it doesn't mean anything. Maybe he's busy. I mean, that was his skeleton down there. Maybe he's following it to wherever they're taking it. To the morgue or whatever. It's probably very traumatic, watching people dig up your body. Jesse didn't know anything about Hinduism and karma. At least, that I knew of. To him, his body had probably been a lot more than just a vessel for his soul.

That's where he was. The morgue. Watching what they did with his remains.

But when the hours passed, and it got dark out, and Spike, who usually goes out prowling at night for small vermin and any Chihuahuas he can find, actually climbed onto my bed, where I sat leafing sightlessly through magazines, and butted his head against my hand....

Well, that's when I knew.

That's when I knew something was really, really wrong. Because that cat hates my guts, even though I'm the one who feeds him. If he's climbing up onto my bed and butting his head against my hand, well, I'm sorry, that means the universe as I know it is crumbling.

Because Jesse isn't coming back.

Except, I kept telling myself as my panic mounted, he promised. He swore.

But as the minutes ticked past and there was still no sign of him, I knew. I just knew. He was gone. They'd found his body, and that meant he was no longer missing, and that meant there was no need for him to hang around my room. Not anymore, just like I'd tried to explain to him last night.

Only he had sounded so sure ... so sure that that wasn't it. He had laughed. He had laughed when I first said it, like it was ridiculous.

But then where was he? If he wasn't gone - to heaven, or to his next life (not to hell; there's no place, I'm sure, for Jesse in hell, if there is a hell) - then where was he?

I tried calling my dad. Not on the phone or anything, because of course my dad can't be reached that way, being dead. I tried calling to him wherever he was, out there on the astral plane.

Only of course he didn't come, either. But then, he never does. Well, sometimes he does. But rarely, and not this time.

I just want you to know that I don't normally freak out like this. I mean, normally, I am very much a woman of action. Something happens and, well, I go kick some butts. That's how it usually works.

But this ...

For some reason, I couldn't think straight. I really couldn't. I was just sitting there in my hunter green lounging pajamas, going, What should I do? What should I do?

Seriously. It was not good.

Which was why I did what I did next. If I couldn't figure out what to do myself, well, I needed someone to tell me what to do. And I knew just the someone who could.

I had to talk quietly because of course by that time it was past eleven, and everyone in the house but me was asleep.

"Is Father Dominic there?" I asked.

The person on the other end of the phone - an older man, from the sound of it - went, "What's that, honey? I can barely hear you."

"Father Dominic," I said, speaking as loudly as I dared. "Please, I need to speak to Father Dominic right away. Is he there?"

"Sure, honey," the man on the phone said. Then I heard him yell, "Dom! Hey, Dom! Phone for you!"

Dom? How dare that man call Father Dominic Dom? Talk about disrespectful.

But all my indignation melted when I heard Father Dominic's soft, deep voice. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed him, not seeing him every day over the summer like I do during the school year. "Hello?"

"Father Dom," I said. No, I didn't say it. I'll admit it: I wept it. I was a basket case.

"Susannah?" Father Dominic sounded shocked. "What's wrong? Why are you crying? Are you all right?"

"Yes," I said. All right, not said: sobbed. "It's not me. It's J-Jesse."

"Jesse?" Father Dom's voice took on the note it always did when the subject of Jesse came up. It'd taken him awhile to warm up to Jesse. I guess I could see why. Father D is not only a priest, he's also the principal of a Catholic school. He's not supposed to approve of stuff like girls and guys sharing a bedroom . . . even if the guy is, you know, dead.

And I could understand it, because it's different with mediators than it is with everyone else. Everyone else just walks through ghosts. They do it all the time, and they don't even know it. Oh, maybe they feel a cold spot, or they think they've glimpsed something out of the corner of their eye, but when they turn around, no one is there.

It's different for mediators. For us, ghosts are made up of matter, not shrouds of mist. I can't put my hand through Jesse, though anyone else could. Well, anyone else but Jack and Father Dom.

So it's understandable why Father Dom's never been too wild about Jesse, even though the guy's saved my life more times than I can count. Because whatever else he is, Jesse's still a guy, and he's living in my bedroom, and . . . well, you get the picture.

Not, of course, that there'd been anything going on - much to my chagrin.

The thing was, now there never would be. I mean, now I'd never even know if something could have happened. Because he's gone.

I didn't mention any of this to Father Dom, of course. I just told him what had happened, about Maria and the knife and the bugs, and about Clive Clemmings being dead and the missing portrait, and how they'd found Jesse's body and now he was gone.

"And he promised me," I finished, somewhat incoherently, because I was crying so hard. "He swore that wasn't it, that that wasn't what was holding him here. But now he's gone, and - "

Father Dominic's voice was soothing and controlled in comparison to my hiccupy ramblings.

"All right, Susannah," he said. "I understand. I understand. Obviously there are forces at work here that are beyond Jesse's control and, well, beyond yours, too, I might add. I'm glad you called me. You were right to call me. Listen, now, and do exactly as I say."

I sniffled. It felt so good - I can't even describe to you how good it felt - to have someone telling me what to do. Really. Ordinarily the last thing I want is to be told what to do. But in this case, I really, really appreciated it. I clung to the phone, waiting breathlessly for Father Dominic's instructions.

"You're in your room, I suppose?" Father D said.

I nodded, realized he couldn't see me, and said, "Yes."

"Good. Wake your family and tell them exactly what you just told me. Then get out of the house. Get out of that house, Susannah, just as quickly as you can."

I took the phone away from my ear and looked at the receiver as if it had just started bleating in my ear like a sheep. Seriously. Because that would have made about as much sense as what Father Dom just said.

I put the receiver back to my ear.

"Susannah?" Father Dom was saying. "Did you hear me? I am perfectly serious about this. One man is already dead. I do not doubt that someone in your family will be next if you do not get them out of there."

I know I was a wreck and all. But I wasn't that much of a wreck.

"Father D," I said. "I can't tell them - "

"Yes, you can, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "I always thought it was wrong of you to keep your gift a secret from your mother all these years. It's time you told her."

"As if," I said, into the phone.

"Susannah," Father D said. "The insects were only the beginning. If this de Silva woman is taking demonic possession of your household, horrors such as ... well, horrors such as you or I could never even imagine are going to begin - "

"Demonic possession of my household?" I gripped the phone tighter. "Listen, Father D, she may have got my boyfriend, but she is not getting my house."

Father Dominic sounded tired. "Susannah," he said. "Please, just do as I say. Get yourself and your family out of there, before harm comes to any of you. I understand that you are upset about Jesse, but the fact is, Susannah, that he is dead and you, at least for the time being, are still alive. We've got to do whatever we can to see that you remain that way. I will leave here now, but I'm a six-hour drive away. I promise I will be there in the morning. A thorough administration of holy water should drive away any evil spirits remaining in the house, but - "

Spike had padded across the room toward me. I thought he was going to bite me, as usual, but he didn't. Instead, he trotted right up to my face and let out a very loud, very plaintive cry.

"Good God," Father Dominic cried into the phone. "Is that her? Is she there already?"

I reached out and scratched Spike behind his one remaining ear, amazed he was even letting me touch him. "No," I said. "That was Spike. He misses Jesse."

Father Dominic said, "Susannah, I know how painful this must be for you. But you must know that wherever Jesse is now, he's better off than he's been for the past hundred and fifty years, living in limbo between this world and the next. I know it's difficult, but you must try to be happy for him, and know that, above all, he would want you to take care of yourself, Susannah. He would want you to keep yourself and your family safe - "

As I listened to Father Dom, I realized he was right. That was what Jesse would have wanted. And there I was, sitting around in a pair of lounging pajamas when there was work to be done.

"Father D," I said, interrupting him. "In the cemetery, over at the Mission. Are there any de Silvas buried there?"

Father Dominic, startled from his safety-first lecture, said, "I - de Silva? Really, Susannah, I don't know. I don't think - "

"Oh, wait," I said. "I keep forgetting, she married a Diego. There's a Diego crypt, isn't there?" I tried to picture the cemetery, which was a small one, surrounded by high walls, directly behind the basilica down at the Mission where Father Dominic works and I go to school. There are only a small number of graves there, mainly of the monks who had first worked with Junipero Serra, the guy who'd founded the Carmel Mission back in the 1700s.

But a few wealthy landowners in the 1800s had managed to get a mausoleum or two squeezed in by donating a sizeable portion of their fortunes to the church.

And the biggest one - if I remembered correctly from the time Mr. Walden, our World Civ teacher, had taken us to the cemetery to give us a taste of our local history - had the word Diego carved into the door.

"Susannah," Father Dominic said. For the first time, there was a note of something other than urgency in his voice. Now he sounded frightened. "Susannah, I know what you are thinking, and I. . . I forbid it! You are not to go near that cemetery, do you understand me? You are not to go near that crypt! It is much too dangerous...."

Just the way I like it.

But that's not what I said out loud. Aloud I said, "Okay, Father D. You're right. I'll wake my mom up. I'll tell her everything. And I'll get everyone out of the house."

Father Dominic was so astonished, he didn't say anything for a minute. When he was finally able to find his voice, he said, "Good. Well . . . good, then. Yes. Get everyone out of the house. Don't do anything foolish, Susannah, like call upon the ghost of this woman, until I get there. Promise me."

Promise me. Like promises mean anything anymore. Look at Jesse. He'd promised me he wasn't going to go away, and where was he?

Gone. Gone forever.

And I'd been too much of a coward ever to tell him how I really felt about him.

And now I'd never get the chance to.

"Sure," I said to Father Dominic. "I promise."

But I think even he knew I didn't mean it.

CHAPTER 9

Ghost busting is a tricky business.

You'd think it would be easy, right? Like if a ghost's bothering you, you just, you know, bust its chops and it'll go away.

Yeah. Doesn't work that way much, unfortunately.

Which is not to say that busting someone's chops does not have therapeutic value. Especially for someone who, like me, might be grieving. Because that's what I was doing, of course. Grieving for Jesse.

Except - and I don't know if this applies to all mediators or just me - I don't really grieve like a normal person. I mean, I sat around and cried my eyes out after the realization first hit me that I was never going to see Jesse again.

But then something happened. I stopped feeling sad and started feeling mad.

Really mad. There I was, and it was after midnight, and I was extremely angry.

It wasn't that I didn't want to keep my promise to Father D. I really did. But I just couldn't.

Any more than Jesse could apparently keep his promise to me.

So it was only about fifteen minutes after my phone call to Father D that I emerged from my bathroom - Jesse was gone, of course, so I could have changed in my room, but old habits die hard - in full ghost-busting regalia, including my tool belt and hooded sweatshirt, which even I will admit might seem a bit excessive for California in July. But it was nighttime, and that mist rolling in from the ocean in the wee hours can be chilly.

I don't want you to think I didn't give serious thought to what Father D had said about my telling my mom everything and getting her and the Ackermans out of there. I really did think about it.

It's just that the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. I mean, first of all, my mom is a television news journalist. She simply is not the type to believe in ghosts. She only believes in what she can see or, barring that, what has been proven to exist by science. The one time I did try to tell her, she totally did not understand. And I realized then that she never would.

So how could I possibly go busting into her bedroom and tell her and her new husband that they have to get out of the house because a vengeful spirit is after me? She would be on the phone to her therapist back in New York, looking for communities where I could go to "rest," so fast you wouldn't believe it.

So that plan was out.

But that was all right, because I had a much better one. One that, really, I should have thought of right away, but I guess that whole seeing-the-skeleton-of-the-guy-I-love-being-hauled-out-of-a-hole-in-my-backyard thing really got to me, and so I didn't think of it until I was on the phone with Father D.

But once I'd come up with it, I realized it really was the perfect plan. Instead of waiting for Maria to come to me, I was simply going to go to her and, well. . .

Send her back from where she came.

Or reduce her to a mound of quivering gelatinous goo. Whichever came first.

Because even though ghosts are, of course, already dead, they can still feel pain, just as people who lose a limb can still feel it itching from time to time. Ghosts know, when you plunge a knife into their sternum, that it should hurt, and so it does. The wound will even bleed for a while.

Then, of course, they get over the shock of it, and the wound disappears. Which is discouraging, since the wounds they, in their turn, inflict upon me do not heal half so fast.

But whatever. It works. More or less.

The wound Maria de Silva had inflicted on me wasn't visible, but that didn't matter. What I was going to do to her certainly would be. With any luck, that husband of hers would be around and I could do the same to him.

And what was going to happen if things didn't work out that way, and the two of them got the best of me?

Well, that was the coolest part of the whole thing: I didn't even care. Really. I had cried out every last ounce of emotion in me, and now, I simply didn't care. It didn't matter. It really didn't.

I was numb.

So numb that, when I swung my legs out my bedroom window and landed on the roof of the front porch - my usual form of exit when I didn't want anyone inside to be aware I was up to something - I didn't even care about the things that normally really mean stuff to me, like the moon, for instance, hanging over the bay, casting everything into black and gray shadow, and the scent of the giant pine to one side of the porch. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

I had just crossed the porch roof and was preparing to swing down from it when a glow that was brighter than the moon but much weaker than, say, the overhead in my bedroom, appeared behind me.

Okay, I'll admit it. I thought it was Jesse. Don't ask me why. I mean, it went against all logic. But whatever. My heart gave a happy lurch and I spun around....

Maria was standing not five feet from me on the sloping, pine needle-strewn roof. She looked just as she had in that portrait over Clive Clemmings's desk: elegant and otherworldly.

Well, and why not? She isn't of this world, now, is she?

"Going somewhere, Susannah?" she asked me in her brittle, only slightly accented English.

"I was," I said, pushing my sweatshirt hood back. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail. Unattractive, I know, but I needed all the peripheral vision I could get. "But now that you're here, I see I don't have to. I can kick your bony butt here just as well as down at your stinking grave."

Maria raised her delicately arched black eyebrows. "Such language," she said. I swear, if she'd had a fan on her, she'd have been using it, just like Scarlett O'Hara. "And what could I possibly have done to warrant such an unladylike tongue-lashing? You'll catch more flies with honey, you know, than vinegar."

"You know good and well what you did," I said, taking a step toward her. "Let's start with the bugs in the orange juice."

She reached up and coyly smoothed back a strand of shining black hair that had escaped from her side ringlets.

"Yes," she said. "I thought you might like that one."

"But killing Dr. Clemmings?" I took another step forward. "That was even better. Because I imagine you didn't have to kill him at all, did you? You just wanted the painting, right? The one of Jesse?"

She made what in magazines they call a moue out of her mouth: you know, she kind of pursed her lips and looked pleased with herself at the same time.

"Yes," she said. "At first I wasn't going to kill him. But when I saw the portrait - my portrait - above his desk, well, how could I not? He is not even related to me. Why should he have such a fine painting - and in his miserable little office, as well? That painting used to grace my dining room. It hung in splendor over a table with seating for twenty."

"Yeah, well," I said. "My understanding is that none of your descendants wanted it. Your kids turned out to be nothing but a bunch of lowlifes and goons. Sounds like your parenting skills left a bit to be desired."

For the first time, Maria actually looked annoyed. She started to say something, but I interrupted her.

"What I don't get," I said, "is what you wanted the painting for. The one of Jesse. I mean, what good is it to you? Unless you only took it to get me in trouble."

"Wouldn't that be reason enough?" Maria inquired with a sneer.

"I suppose so," I said. "Except that it didn't work."

"Yet," Maria said, with a certain amount of emphasis. "There is still time."

I shook my head. I just shook my head as I looked at her. "Gosh," I said, mostly to myself. "Gosh, I'm going to hurt you."

"Oh, yes." Maria tittered behind one lace-gloved hand. "I forgot. You must be very angry with me. He's gone, isn't he? Hector, I mean. That must be a great blow for you. I know how fond you were of him."

I could have jumped her right then. I probably should have. But it occurred to me that she might, you know, have some information on Jesse - how he was, or even where he was. Lame, I know, but look at it this way: on top of the whole, you know, love thing, he was one of the best friends I ever had.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, I guess slave-runners aren't really my cup of tea. That is who you married instead, right? A slave-runner. Your father must have been so proud."

That wiped the grin right off her face.

"You leave my father out of this," she snarled.

"Oh, why?" I asked. "Tell me something, is he sore at you? Your dad, I mean. You know, for having Jesse killed? Because I imagine he would be. I mean, basically, thanks to you, the de Silva family line ran out. And your kids with that Diego dude turned out to be, as we've already discussed, major losers. I bet whenever you run into your dad out there, you know, on the spiritual plane, he doesn't even say hi anymore, does he? That's gotta hurt."

I'm not sure how much of that, if any, Maria actually understood. Still, she seemed plenty mad.

"You!" she cried. "I warned you! I told you to make your family stop with their digging, but did you listen to me? It is your fault you've lost your precious Hector. If you had only listened, he would be here still. But no. You think, because you are this mediator - this special person who can communicate with spirits - that you are better than us ... better than me! But you are nothing - nothing, do you hear? Who are the Simons? Who are they? No one! I, Maria Teresa de Silva, am a descendant of royalty - of kings and princes!"

I just laughed. I mean, seriously. Come on.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "And that sure was some princely behavior, killing your boyfriend like that."

Maria's scowl was like a dark storm cloud over her head. "Hector died," she hissed in a scary voice, "because he dared to break off our betrothal. He thought to disgrace me in front of everyone. Me! Knowing, as he did, of the royal lineage running through my blood. To suggest that I would - "

Whoa. This was a new one. "Wait a minute. He did what?"

But Maria was off on a rant.

"As if I, Maria de Silva, would allow myself to be so humiliated. He sought to return my letters and asked for his own - and his ring - back. He could not, he said, marry me, after what he had heard about me and Diego." She laughed, not pleasantly. "As if he did not know to whom he was speaking! As if he did not know he was speaking to a de Silva!"

I cleared my throat. "Um," I said. "I'm pretty sure he knew. I mean, that was his last name, too. Weren't the two of you cousins or something?"

Maria made a face. "Yes. I am ashamed to say I shared a name - and grandparents - with that - " She called Jesse something in Spanish that did not sound at all flattering. "He did not know with whom he was trifling. There was not a man in the county who would not have killed for the honor of marrying me."

"And it certainly appears," I couldn't help pointing out, "that at least one man in the county was killed for refusing that honor."

"Why shouldn't he have died?" Maria demanded. "For insulting me in such a manner?"

"Um," I said, "how about because murder is illegal? And because having a guy killed because he doesn't want to marry you is the act of a freaking lunatic, which is exactly what you are. Funny how that part didn't trickle down through the annals of history. But don't worry. I'll make sure I get the word out."

Maria's face changed. Before, she'd looked disgusted and irritated. Now she looked murderous.

Which was kind of funny. If this chick thought anybody in the world cared about what some prissy broad had done a century and a half ago, she was mightily mistaken. She had managed to kill the one person to whom this piece of information might have been remotely interesting - Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.

But she was still apparently high on the whole "we de Silvas are descended from Spanish royalty" thing, since she whirled on me, petticoats flying, and went, in this scary voice, "Stupid girl! I said to Diego that you were far too much of a fool to cause trouble for us, but I see now that I was wrong. You are everything I have heard about mediators - interfering, loathsome creature!"

I was flattered. I truly was. No one had ever called me loathsome before.

"If I'm loathsome," I said, "what does that make you? Oh, wait, don't tell me, I already know. A two-faced backstabbing bitch, right?"

The next thing I knew, she'd pulled that knife from her sleeve and was once more pointing it at my throat.

"I will not stab you in the back," Maria assured me. "It is your face I intend to carve."

"Go ahead," I said. I reached out and seized the wrist of the hand that was clutching the knife. "You want to know what your big mistake was?" She grunted as, with a neat move I'd learned in tae kwan do, I twisted her arm behind her back. "Saying my losing Jesse was my fault. Because I was feeling sorry for you before. But now I'm just mad."

Then, sinking one knee into Maria de Silva's spine, I sent her sprawling, facedown, onto the porch roof.

"And when I'm mad," I said as I pried the knife from her fingers with my free hand, "I don't really know what comes over me. But I just sort of start hitting people. Really, really hard."

Maria wasn't taking any of this quietly. She was shrieking her head off - mostly in Spanish, though, so I just ignored her. I was the only one who could hear her, anyway.

"I told my mom's therapist about it," I informed her as I flung the knife, as hard as I could, into the backyard, still keeping her pinned down with the weight of my knee. "And you know what she said? She said the trigger to my rage mechanism is oversensitive."

Now that I was rid of the knife, I leaned forward and, with the hand I wasn't using to keep Maria's arm bent back against her spine, I seized a handful of those glossy black ringlets and jerked her head toward me.

"But you know what I said to her?" I asked Maria. "I said, it's not that the trigger to my rage mechanism is oversensitive. It's that people . . . just ... keep ... pissing ... me ... off."

To emphasize each of the last six syllables of that sentence, I rammed Maria de Silva's face into the roof tiles. When I dragged her head up after the sixth time, she was bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. I observed this with great detachment, like it was someone else who had caused it and not me.

"Oh," I said. "Look at that. That is just so interfering and loathsome of me."

Then I smashed her face against the roof a few more times, saying, "This one is for jumping me while I was asleep and holding a knife to my throat. And this one is for making Dopey eat bugs, and this one is for making me have to clean up bug guts, and this one is for killing Clive, and oh yeah, this one is for Jesse - "

I won't say I was out of my mind with rage. I was mad. I was plenty mad. But I knew exactly what I was doing.

And it wasn't pretty. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that. I mean, violence is never the answer, right? Unless of course the person you're beating on is already dead.

But just because a hundred and fifty years ago this chick had had a good friend of mine offed, for no other reason than that he had very rightly wanted out of a marriage with her, she didn't deserve to have her face bashed in.

No way. What she deserved was to have every bone in her body broken.

Unfortunately, however, when I finally let go of Maria's hair and stood up to do just that, I noticed a sudden glow to my left.

Jesse, I thought, my heart doing another one of those speeding-up, skidding things.

But of course it wasn't Jesse. When I turned my head, what I saw materializing there was a very tall man in a dark mustache and goatee, dressed in clothes that were somewhat similar to Jesse's, only a lot fancier - like he was a costume party Zorro or something. His snug black trousers had this elaborate silver filigree pattern going down the side of each leg, and his white shirt had those puffy sleeves pirates always wear in movies. He had a lot of silver scrollwork on his holster, too, and all around the brim of his black cowboy hat.

And he didn't look very happy to see me.

"Okay," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "Wait, don't tell me. Diego, am I right?"

Under the pencil-thin mustache, his upper lip curled.

"I thought I told you," he said to Maria, who was sitting up and holding her sleeve to her bleeding nose, "to leave this one to me."

Maria was making a lot of very unattractive snuffling noises. You could tell she'd never had her nose broken before, because she wasn't tipping her head back to stop the bleeding.

Amateur.

"I thought she might be more amusing," Maria said in a voice laced with pain - and regret - "to play with."

Diego shook his head disgustedly. "No," he said. "With mediators we do not play. I thought that was made clear to you from the start. They are entirely too dangerous."

"I'm sorry, Diego." Maria's voice took on a whiny quality I had not heard before. I realized she was one of those girls who has a "guy" voice, one she uses only when men are around. "I should have done as you said."

It was my turn to be disgusted.

"Hello," I said to Maria. "This is the twenty-first century. Women are allowed to think for themselves now, you know."

Maria just glared at me over the sleeve she was holding to her bleeding nose.

"Kill her for me," she said in that whiny little-girl voice.

Diego took a step toward me, wearing an expression that told me he was only too happy to oblige his lady love.

"Oh, what?" I said. I wasn't even scared. I didn't care anymore. The numbness in my heart had pretty much taken over my whole body. "You always do what she tells you? You know, we have a word for that now. It's called being whipped."

Apparently he was either unacquainted with this expression, or he just didn't care, since he kept coming at me. Diego was wearing spurs, and they clanged ominously against the roof tiles as he approached.

"You know," I said, holding my ground. "I gotta tell you. The goatee thing? Yeah, way over. And you know a little jewelry really does go a long way. Just something you might want to consider. I'm actually glad you stopped by, because I have a couple things I've been meaning to say to you. Number one, about your wife? Yeah, she's a skank. And number two, you know that whole thing where you killed Jesse and then buried his remains out back there? Yeah, way un-cool. Because you see, now I have to - "

Only I never got a chance to tell Felix Diego what I was going to have to do him. That's because he interrupted me. He said, in this deep and surprisingly menacing voice, for a guy with a goatee, "It has long been my conviction that the only good mediator is a dead one."

Then, before I could so much as twitch, he threw his arms around me. I thought he was trying to give me a hug or something, which would have been pretty weird.

But that wasn't what he was doing at all. No, what he was doing, actually, was throwing me off the porch roof.

Oh, yes. He threw me right into the hole where the hot tub was supposed to go. Right where they'd uncovered Jesse's remains, just that afternoon....

Which I thought was kind of ironic, actually. At least, while I was still capable of thought.

Which wasn't for long, since I lost consciousness shortly after slamming into the ground.

CHAPTER 10

Here's the thing about mediators:

We're hard to kill.

I'm serious. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've been knocked down, dragged, stomped on, punched, kicked, bitten, clawed, whacked on the head, held underwater, shot at, and, oh, yeah, thrown off roofs.

But have I ever died? Have I ever sustained a life-threatening injury?

No. I've broken bones - plenty of them. I've got scars galore.

But the fact is, whoever - or whatever - created us mediators did give us one natural weapon, at least, in our fight against the undead. No, not superhuman strength, though that would have been handy. No, what we've got, Father Dom and I - and Jack, too, probably, although I doubt he's had an opportunity to test it out yet - is a hide tough enough to take all the abuse that gets heaped on us and then some.

Which was why even though by rights a fall like the one I took should have killed me, it didn't. Not even close.

Not, of course, that Maria de Silva and her paramour didn't think they'd been successful. They must have, or they'd have stuck around to finish the job. But when I woke up hours later, groggy and with a headache you would not believe, they were nowhere to be seen.

Clearly, I had won the first round. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway. I mean, I wasn't dead, and that, in my book, is always a plus.

What I was, was concussed. I knew right away because I get them all the time. Concussions, I mean.

Well, all right, twice.

Anyway, it's not so pleasant, being concussed. Basically, you feel pukey and sore all over, but, not surprisingly, your head really hurts more than anything. In my case, it was even worse in that I'd been lying at the bottom of that hole for so long, the dew had had a chance to fall. It had collected on my clothes and soaked them through and made them feel very heavy. So dragging myself out of that pit Andy and Dopey had dug became a real chore.