Reunion

Mark looked disgusted. "How would any of us know about some geek's sister getting wasted at a party?" he demanded.

"Perhaps because one - or all - of you happened to be at the party at the time?" I suggested sweetly.

Father Dominic looked startled. "Is this true?" He blinked down at the Angels. "Do any of you know anything about this?"

"Of course not," Josh said - too quickly, I thought. Felicia's "As if" was not very convincing, either.

It was Carrie who gave it away, though.

"Even if we did," she demanded with unfeigned indignation, "what would it matter? Just because some stupid wannabe drank herself into a coma at one of our parties, how does that make us responsible?"

I stared at her. Felicia, I remembered, was the National Merit Scholar. Carrie Whitman had only been homecoming queen. Twice.

"How about, just for starters," I said, "making alcohol available to an eighth grader?"

"How were we supposed to know how old she was?" Felicia asked, not very nicely. "I mean, she had enough makeup slathered on, I could have sworn she was forty."

"Yeah," Carrie said. "And that particular party was by invitation only. I certainly never issued an invitation to any eighth grader."

"If you want to hold someone responsible," Felicia said, "how about the idiot who brought her in the first place?"

"Yeah," Carrie said angrily.

"I don't think Susannah is the one holding you responsible for what happened to Michael's sister." Jesse's voice, after the shrillness of the girls, sounded like distant thunder. It shut the others up quite effectively. "Michael, I believe, is the one who killed you for it."

Father Dominic made a soft noise as if Jesse's words had sunk, like a fist, into his stomach.

"Oh, no," he said. "No, surely you can't think - "

"It makes more sense," Jesse said, "than this one's argument" - he nodded briefly at Josh - "that Michael did it out of jealousy because he has no … what is it? Oh, yes. Dates on Saturday night."

Josh looked uncomfortable. "Well," he said, tugging on his evening jacket's lapels. "I didn't know the skank they fished out of Carrie's pool was Meducci's sister."

"This," Father Dominic said, "is too much. Simply too much. I am … I am appalled by all of this."

I glanced at him, surprised by what I heard in his voice. It was - if I wasn't mistaken - pain. Father Dominic was actually hurt by what he'd just heard.

"A young girl is in a coma," he said, his blue-eyed gaze very bright as it bored into Josh, "and you call her names?"

Josh had the grace to look ashamed of himself. "Well," he said, "it's just a figure of speech."

"And you two." Father Dominic pointed at Felicia and Carrie. "You break the law by serving alcohol to minors, and dare to suggest that it is the girl's own fault she was harmed by it?"

Carrie and Felicia exchanged glances.

"But," Felicia said, "nobody else got hurt, and they were all drinking, too."

"Yeah," Carrie said. "Everybody was doing it."

"That doesn't matter." Father Dominic's voice was shaking with emotion now. "If everyone else jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would that make it right?"

Whoa, I thought. Father D obviously needed a little refresher course in student discipline if he thought that old line still had any punch.

And then my eyes widened as I noticed that Father Dominic was now pointing at me. Me? What had I done?

I soon found out.

"And you," Father Dominic said. "You still insist that what happened to these young people was not an accident, but deliberate murder!"

My jaw sagged. "Father D," I managed to say when I'd levered it back into place. "Excuse me, but it's pretty obvious - "

"It isn't." Father Dominic dropped his arm. "It isn't obvious to me. So the boy had motive? That doesn't make him a killer."

I glanced at Jesse for help, but it was apparent from his startled expression that he was as baffled by Father Dominic's outburst as I was.

"But the guardrail," I tried. "The loosened bolts - "

"Yes, yes," Father Dominic said, quite testily for him. "But you're missing the most important point, Susannah. Supposing Michael did lie in wait for them. Perhaps he did intend, when they turned that corner, to ram them. How was he able to tell, in the dark, that he had the right car? Tell me that, Susannah. Anyone could have come around that corner. How could Michael have known he had the right car? How?"

He had me there. And he knew it. I stood there, the wind from the sea whipping hair into my face, and looked at Jesse. He looked back at me, and gave a little shrug. He was at as much of a loss as I was. Father Dom was right. It didn't make any sense.

At least until Josh said, "The Macarena."

We all looked at him.

"I beg your pardon?" Father Dominic said. Even in anger, he was unerringly polite.

"Of course!" Felicia scrambled to her feet, tripping over her evening gown's long skirt. "Of course!"

Jesse and I exchanged yet another confused look. "The what?" I asked Josh.

"The Macarena," Josh said. He was smiling. Smiling, he didn't look anything like the guy who'd tried to drown me earlier that day. Smiling, he looked like what he was - a smart, athletic eighteen-year-old in the prime of his life.

Except that his life was over.

"I was driving my brother's car," he explained, still grinning. "He's away at college. He said I could use it while he was gone. It's bigger than my car. The only thing is, he had this stupid thing put in so that when you honk the horn it plays the Macarena."

"It's so embarrassing," Carrie informed us.

"And the night we were killed," Josh went on, "I laid on the horn as we were turning that corner - the one Michael was waiting behind."

"You're supposed to honk when you go around those hairpin curves," Felicia said, excitedly.

"And it played the Macarena." Josh's smile vanished as if wiped away by the wind. "And that's when he hit us."

"No other car horn on the peninsula," Felicia said, her expression no longer excited, "plays the Macarena. Not anymore. The Macarena was only hot for about the first two weeks after it came out. Then it became totally lame. Now they only play it at weddings and stuff."

"That's how he knew." Josh's voice was no longer filled with indignation. Now he merely sounded sad. His gaze was locked on the sea - a sea that was too dark to be distinguishable from the cloudy night sky. "That's how he knew it was us."

Frantically, I thought back to what Michael had told me, a few hours earlier, in his mother's minivan. They came barreling around that corner. That's what he'd said. Didn't honk. Nothing.

Only now Josh was saying they had honked. That not only had they honked, but that they had honked in a particular way, a way that distinguished Josh's car horn from all others....

"Oh," Father Dominic said, sounding as if he weren't feeling well. "Dear."

I totally agreed with him. Except …

"It still doesn't prove anything," I said.

"Are you kidding?" Josh looked at me as if I were the crazy one - like he wasn't wearing a tuxedo on the beach. "Of course it does."

"No, she's right." Jesse pushed himself off the boulder and came to stand beside Josh. "He has been very clever, Michael has. There is no way to prove - in a court of law, anyway - that he has committed a crime here."

Josh's jaw dropped. "What do you mean? He killed us! I'm standing here telling you so! We honked the horn, and he purposefully rammed us and pushed us over the cliff."

"Yes," Jesse said. "But your testimony will not hold up in a court of law, my friend."

Josh looked close to tears. "Why not?"

"Because it is the testimony," Jesse said evenly, "of a dead man."

Stung, Josh stabbed a finger in my direction. "She's not dead. She can tell them."

"She can't," Jesse said. "What is she supposed to say? That she knows the truth about what happened that night because the ghosts of the victims told her? Do you think a jury will believe that?"

Josh glared at him. Then, his gaze falling to his feet, he muttered, "Well, fine then. We're right back to where we started. We'll just take the matter into our own hands, right, guys?"

"Oh, no, you don't," I said. "No way. Two wrongs do not make a right - and three most definitely don't."

Carrie glanced from me to Josh and back again. "What's she talking about?" she wanted to know.

"You are not," I said, "going to avenge your deaths by killing Michael Meducci. I am sorry. But that is just not going to happen."

Mark, for the first time all evening, rose to his feet. He looked at me, then at Jesse, and then at Father Dom. Then he went, "This is bogus, man," and started stalking off down the beach.

"So the geek's just going to get away with it?" Josh, his jaw set, glared menacingly at me. "He kills four people, and he gets off scot-free?"

"Nobody said that." Jesse, in the firelight, looked more grim-faced than I'd ever seen him. "But what happens to the boy isn't up to you."

"Oh, yeah?" Josh was back to sneering. "Who's it up to, then?"

Jesse nodded at Father Dominic and me. "Them," he said quietly.

"Them?" Felicia's voice rose on a disgusted note. "Why them?"

"Because they are the mediators," Jesse said. In the orange glow from the fire, his eyes looked black. "It's what they do."

CHAPTER 14

The only problem was that the mediators couldn't figure out just how, exactly, to handle the situation.

"Look," I whispered as Father Dominic dropped a white candle into the box I was holding, and dug out a purple one. "Let me just call the police with an anonymous tip. I'll tell them I was driving along Big Sur that night, and that I saw the whole thing, and that it was no accident."

Father Dominic screwed the purple candle into the place where the white one had been.

"And do you think the police follow up on every anonymous tip they receive?" He didn't bother whispering because there was no one to overhear us. The only reason I'd lowered my voice was because the basilica, with all its gold leaf and majestic stained glass, made me really nervous.

"Well, at least maybe they'll get suspicious." I followed Father Dominic as he climbed down from the stepladder, folded it up, and moved to the next Station of the Cross. "I mean, maybe they'll start looking into it a little more, bring Michael in for questioning, or something. I swear he'd crack if they'd just ask the right questions."

Father Dominic lifted the skirt of his black robe as he climbed back onto the ladder.

"And what," he asked, swapping another white candle for one of the purple ones in the box I was holding, "would the right questions be?"

"I don't know." My arms were getting tired. The box I was carrying was really heavy. Normally the novices would have been the ones changing the candles. Father Dominic, however, had been unable to keep still since our little field trip the night before, and had volunteered his services to the monsignor. Our services, I should say, since he'd dragged me out of religion class to help. Not that I minded. Being a devout agnostic, I wasn't getting all that much out of religion class, anyway - something Sister Ernestine hoped to rectify before I graduated.

"I think that the police," Father Dom said as he gave the candle a determined twist since it didn't seem to be fitting too easily into the holder, "can get along fine without our help. If what your mother said was true, the police seem suspicious enough of Michael already that it shouldn't be much longer before they bring him in for questioning."

"But what if my mom's just overreacting?" I noticed a tourist nearby, in madras and an Izod, admiring the stained glass windows, and lowered my voice even more. "I mean, she's a mom. She does that. Supposing the police don't really suspect anything at all?"

"Susannah." The candle successfully in place, Father Dominic climbed back down the ladder, and looked at me with an expression that appeared to be a mingling of exasperation and affection. There were, I noticed, purple shadows under Father Dom's eyes. We had both been pretty wiped after our long hike down to the beach and then back up again - not to mention the emotional wear and tear we'd experienced while we'd been down there.

Still, Father Dominic seemed to have sprung back with more vigor than you might expect for a guy in his sixties. I could barely walk, my shins ached so badly, and I couldn't stop yawning since our little tête-à-tête with the Angels had lasted until well past midnight. Father Dom, except for the shadows beneath his eyes, seemed almost sprightly, bubbling over with energy.

"Susannah," he said again, less exasperatedly, and more affectionately this time. "Promise me you will do nothing of the kind. You will not call the police with any anonymous tips."

I shifted the box of candles in my arms. It had certainly seemed like a good idea when I'd come up with it around four that morning. I'd lain awake almost all night wondering what on earth we were going to do about the RLS Angels and Michael Meducci.

"But - "

"And you will not, under any circumstances" - Father Dominic, apparently noticing my problem with the box, lifted it easily from my arms and set it down on the stepladder's top rung - "attempt to speak with Michael yourself about any of this."

That, of course, had been Plan B. If the whole anonymous tip thing to the cops didn't pan out, I'd planned on cornering Michael and sweet-talking - or beating, whichever proved most effective - a confession out of him.

"You will let me handle this," Father Dominic said loudly enough so that the tourist in the madras, who'd been about to take a picture of the altar, hastily lowered his camera and moved away. "I intend to speak to the young man, and I can assure you that if he is indeed guilty of this heinous crime - " I sucked in my breath, but Father Dominic held up a warning finger.

"You heard me," he said, a bit more quietly, but only because he'd noticed that one of the novices had slipped into the church carrying more black material to drape over the basilica's many statues of the Virgin Mary. They would remain cloaked in that manner, I had gathered, until Easter. Religion. That is some wacky stuff, let me tell you.

"If Michael is guilty of what those young people say he is, then I will convince him to confess." Father Dominic looked like he meant it, too. In fact, I hadn't even done anything, but somehow, looking at his stern expression, I wanted to confess. Once I had taken five dollars from my mother's wallet to buy a jumbo bag of Skittles. Maybe I could confess that.

"Now," Father Dominic said, pulling back the sleeve of his black robe and looking at his Timex. They don't pay priests enough for them to be able to get cool watches. "I am expecting Mr. Meducci to join me here momentarily, so you need to move along. It would be best for him not to see us together, I think."

"Why not? He has no idea we spent most of last night in conversation with his victims."

Father Dominic put a hand in the center of my back and pushed. "Run along now, Susannah," he said in a fatherly sort of voice.

I went, but not very far. As soon as Father D's back was turned, I ducked down into a pew and crouched there, waiting. Waiting for what, I couldn't say. Well, all right, I could say: I was waiting for Michael. I wanted to see if Father D really would be able to get him to confess.

I didn't have to wait long. About five minutes later, I heard Michael's voice say, not too far from where I was hiding, "Father Dominic? Sister Ernestine said you wanted to speak to me."

"Ah, Michael." Father Dominic's voice conveyed none of the horror that I knew he felt over the prospect of one of his students being a possible murderer. He sounded relaxed and even jovial.

I heard the box of candles rattle.

"Here," Father Dominic said. "Hold those, will you?"

He had, I realized, just handed Michael the box I'd been holding.

"Uh," Michael said. "Sure, Father Dominic."

I heard the scrape of the stepladder being folded again. Father Dom was picking it up and moving to the next Station of the Cross. I could still hear him, however … barely.

"I've been worried about you, Michael," Father Dominic said. "I understand that your sister isn't showing much sign of improvement."

"No, Father," Michael said. His voice was so soft, I could hardly hear it.

"I'm very sorry to hear that. Lila is a very sweet girl. I know you must love her very much."

"Yes, Father," Michael said.

"You know, Michael," Father Dominic said. "When bad things happen to the people we love, we often … well, sometimes we turn our backs on God."

Aw, geez, I thought, from my pew. That wasn't the way. Not with Michael.

"Sometimes we become so resentful that this terrible thing has happened to someone who doesn't deserve it that we not only turn our backs on God, but we might even begin contemplating … well, things we wouldn't ordinarily contemplate if the tragedy hadn't occurred. Like, for instance, revenge."

All right, I thought. Getting better, Father D.

"Miss Simon."

Startled, I looked around. The novice who had come in to finish draping the statues was staring at me from the end of my pew.

"Oh," I said. I slithered up off of my knees and into the seat. Father Dominic and Michael, I saw, had moved so that their backs were to me. They were too far away to overhear us.

"Hi," I said to the novice. "I was just, um, looking for an earring."

The novice didn't appear to believe me.

"Don't you have religion with Sister Ernestine right now?" she asked.

"Yes, Sister," I said. "I do."

"Well, hadn't you better get to class, then?"

Slowly, I rose to my feet. It wouldn't have mattered, even if I hadn't gotten caught. Father Dominic and Michael had moved too far away for me to have heard anything anyway.

I walked, with what dignity I could, toward the end of the pew, pausing when I reached the novice before moving on.

"Sorry, Sister," I said. Then, striving to break the awkward silence that ensued, during which the novice stared at me in mute disapproval, I added, "I like your, um …"

But since I couldn't remember what they call that dress they all wear, the compliment fell a little flat, even though I thought I'd sort of saved it at the end by gesturing toward her and going, "You know, your thing. It's very figure flattering."

But I guess that's the wrong thing to say to somebody who is in training to be a nun, since the novice got very red in the face and said, "Don't make me have to report you again, Miss Simon."

Which I thought was sort of harsh, considering I'd been trying, anyway, to be nice. But whatever. I left the church and headed back to class, taking the long way, through the brightly sunlit courtyard, so I could soothe my frazzled nerves by listening to the sound of the burbling fountain.

My nerves soon shot back up to frazzled, however, when I spotted another one of the novices standing by the statue of Father Serra, delivering a little lecture to a group of tourists about the missionary's good works. In order to avoid being spotted out of class without a hall pass (why hadn't I thought to ask Father D for one? I'd been thrown by the whole candle thing), I ducked into the girls' room, where I was met by a cloud of gray smoke.

Which meant only one thing, of course.

"Gina," I said, stooping over so I could figure out which stall she was in by looking under the doors. "Are you insane?"

Gina's voice came floating out from one of the stalls on the end, near the window, which she'd strategically opened.

"I do not," she said, throwing open the stall door, and then hanging onto it while she puffed, "believe so."

"I thought you quit smoking."

"I did." Gina joined me on the window sill, onto which I'd hauled myself. The Mission, having been built in like the year 1600 or something, was made of this really thick adobe, so all the windows were set back two feet into the stone. This supplied built-in window seats that, if they were a little high, were at least very cool and comfortable.

"I only smoke now in emergencies," Gina explained. "Like during religion class. You know I am philosophically opposed to organized religion. How about you?"

I raised my eyebrows. "I don't know," I said. "Buddhism has always struck me as kind of cool. That whole reincarnation thing is very appealing."

"That's Hinduism, you dink," Gina said. "And I was talking about smoking."

"Oh. Okay. No, I never got the hang of it. Why?" I grinned at her. "Didn't Sleepy tell you about the time he caught me trying to smoke?"

She frowned prettily. "He did not. And I wish you wouldn't call him that."

I made a face. "Jake, then. He was pretty peeved about it. You better not let him catch you at it, or he'll dump you like a hot potato."

"I highly doubt that," Gina said with a mysterious smile.

She was probably right. I wondered what it would be like to be Gina, and have every boy you met fall madly in love with you. The only boys who fell madly in love with me were boys like Michael Meducci. And he wasn't even technically in love with me. He was in love with the idea that I was in love with him. Something I still couldn't think about, by the way, without shuddering.

I heaved a dejected sigh and looked out the window. About a mile of sloping, cypress-tree-dotted landscape stretched to the sea, teal blue and sparkling in the bright afternoon sunlight.

"I don't see how you can stand it." Gina exhaled a plume of gray smoke. She was back to talking about religion class, I could tell from her tone. "I mean, it must all really seem bogus to you, considering the whole mediator thing."

I shrugged. I had gotten home too late the night before for Gina and I to have our "talk." She'd been sound asleep when I snuck back into the house. Which was just as well, since I'd been exhausted.

Not exhausted enough, however, to fall asleep.

"I don't know," I said. "I mean, I haven't got the slightest idea where the ghosts go after I send them packing. They just … go. Maybe to heaven. Maybe on to their next life. I doubt I'll ever know until I die myself."

Gina aimed her next plume of smoke out the window. "You make it," she said, "sound like a trip. Like when we die, we're just moving to a new address."

"Well," I said. "Personally, I think that's how it works. Just don't ask me to tell you what that address is. Because that I don't know."

"So." Her cigarette finished, Gina stamped it out on the adobe beneath us, then flung the butt expertly over the closest stall door, and into the toilet. I heard the plop, and then the sizzle. "What was that all about last night, anyway?"

I told her. About the RLS Angels, and how they thought Michael had killed them. I told her about Michael's sister, and the accident out on the Pacific Coast Highway. I told her about how Josh and his friends were looking to avenge their deaths, and about how Father Dominic and I had argued with them, long into the night, until we'd finally convinced them to let us try to bring Michael to justice the old-fashioned way - you know, utilizing the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and not a paranormal contract killing.

There was only one thing I didn't tell her, and that was about Jesse. For some reason, I just couldn't bring myself to mention him. Maybe because of what the psychic had said. Maybe because I was afraid Madame Zara was right, that I really was this giant loser who was only going to fall in love with one person my entire life, and that person was a guy who:

(a) did not love me back, and

(b) wasn't exactly someone I could introduce to my mother, since he wasn't even alive.

Or maybe it was simply because … well, maybe because Jesse was a secret I wanted to hug to myself, like some stupid girl with a crush on Carson Daly, or somebody. Maybe someday I'd take to standing underneath my bedroom window with a big sign that says Jesse, will you go to prom with me? like all those girls who stand around outside the MTV studios, though I sincerely hoped someone would shoot me or something before it comes to that.

When I was through, Gina sighed, and said, "Well, it just goes to show. The cute ones always do end up being psychotic murderers."

She meant Michael.

"Yeah," I said. "But he's not even that cute. Except with his clothes off."

"You know what I mean." Gina shook her head. "What are you going to do if he doesn't confess to Father Dominic?"

"I don't know." This was something that had contributed to my insomnia of the night before. "I guess we'll just have to get some proof."

"Oh, yeah? Where you gonna find that? The evidence store?" Gina yawned, looked at her watch, and then hopped off the window sill. "Two minutes until lunch," she said. "What do you think it will be today? Corn dogs again?"

"It always is," I said. The Mission Academy was not exactly known for the culinary excellence of its cafeteria. That was because it didn't have one. We ate lunch outside, out of these vendor wagons. It was bizarre, even to a couple of chicks from Brooklyn who had seen it all … as was illustrated by Gina's total lack of surprise about everything that I'd just told her.

"What I want to know," she said as we made our way out of the girls' room and into the soon-to-be-flooded-with-humanity breezeway, "is why you never said anything about any of this stuff before. You know, the mediator stuff. It wasn't as if I didn't know."

You don’t know, I thought. Not the worst part, anyway.

"I was afraid you'd tell your mother," was what I said out loud. "And that she'd tell my mother. And that my mother would stick me in the loony bin. For my own good, of course."

"Of course," Gina said. She blinked down at me. "You are an idiot. You know that, don't you? I never would have told my mother. I never tell my mother anything, if I can avoid it. And I certainly wouldn't ever have told her - or anybody else, for that matter - about the mediator thing."

I shrugged uncomfortably. "I know," I said. "I guess … well, back then I was pretty uptight about everything. I guess I've loosened up some since then."

"They say California does that to people," Gina observed.

And then the Mission clock struck twelve. All of the classroom doors around us were flung open, and a flood of people started streaming toward us.

It only took about thirty seconds for Michael to find and then glom on to me.

"Hey," he said, not looking at all like somebody who had just confessed to a quadruple murder. "I've been looking for you. What are you doing after school today?"

"Nothing," I said quickly, before Gina could open her mouth.

"Well, the insurance company finally came through with a rental for me," Michael said, "and I was thinking, you know, if you wanted to go back to the beach, or something...."

Back to the beach? Did this guy have amnesia, or what? You'd think after what had happened to him the last time he'd gone to the beach, it'd be the one place he wouldn't want to go.

Still, though he didn't know it, he'd be perfectly safe there. This was on account of Jesse. He was keeping an eye on the Angels while Father Dom and I tried our hand at bringing their alleged killer to justice.

It was as I was mulling over a reply to this offer that I caught a glimpse of Father Dominic as he came toward us down the breezeway. Right before he was pulled into the teachers' lounge by an enthusiastically gesticulating Mr. Walden, he shook his head. Michael was standing with his back to him, so he didn't see. But Father Dom's message to me was clear:

Michael hadn't confessed.

Which meant only one thing: it was time to bring in the professionals.

Me.

"Sure," I said, looking from Father Dom back to Michael. "Maybe you can help me with my geometry homework. I don't think I'm ever going to get the hang of this stupid Pythagorean theorem. I swear I'm going to flunk out after that last quiz."

"The Pythagorean theorem isn't hard," Michael said, looking amused by my frustration. "The sum of the squares of the lengths of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse."

I went, "Huh?" in this helpless way.

"Look," Michael said. "I aced geometry. Why don't you let me tutor you?"

I looked up at him in what I hoped he would mistake for worshipfulness. "Oh, would you?"

"Sure," he said.

"Can we start today?" I asked. "After school?" I should get an Oscar. I really should. I had the whole helpless female thing totally down. "At your house?"

Michael only looked a little taken aback. "Um," he said. "Sure." Then, when he'd recovered from his surprise, he added, slyly, "My parents won't be home, though. My dad'll be at work, and my mom spends most of her time at the hospital. With my sister. You know. I hope that won't be a problem."

I did everything but flutter my eyelashes at him. "Oh, no," I said. "That'll be fine."

He looked pleased - and yet at the same time a little uncomfortable.

"Um," he said, as the hordes of people pushed past us. "Look, about lunch. I can't sit with you today. I've got some stuff to do. But I'll meet you here right after last period. Okay?"

I went, "Okay," in this total imitation of Kelly Prescott at her most school-spirited. It must have worked, since Michael went away looking dazed, but pleased.

That was when Gina grabbed my arm, pulled me into a doorway, and hissed, "What are you, high? You're going to the guy's house? Alone?"

I tried to shake her off. "Calm down, G," I said. Sleepy's nickname for her was kind of catchy, loath as I was to admit anything my stepbrother had come up with might have any sort of merit. "This is what I do."

"Hang out with possible murderers?" Gina looked skeptical. "I don't think so, Suze. Did you clear this with Father Dominic?"

"G," I said. "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

She narrowed her eyes. "You didn't, did you? What are you, freelancing? And don't call me G."

"Look," I said, in what I hoped was a soothing tone. "Chances are, Michael won't say a word about it to me. But he's a geek, right? A computer geek. And what do computer geeks do when they're planning something?"

Gina still looked angry. "I don't know," she said. "And I don't care. I'm telling - "

"They write stuff down," I said calmly. "On their computer. Right? They keep a journal, or they brag to people in chat rooms, or they pull up schematics of the building they want to blow up, or whatever. So even if I can't get him to admit anything, if I can get some time alone with Michael's computer, I bet I can - "

"G!" Sleepy strolled up to us. "There you are. You doing lunch now?"

Gina's lips were pressed together in annoyance with me, but Sleepy did not appear to notice this. Neither did Dopey, who showed up a second later.

"Hey," he said breathlessly. "What are you guys just standing here for? Let's go eat."

Then he noticed me and sneered. "Suze, where's your shadow?"

I said with a sniff, "Michael will be unable to join us for lunch today, having been unavoidably detained."

"Yeah," Dopey said, and then he made a rude remark pertaining to Michael's having been detained by an inability to get certain parts of his body back into his pants. This was apparently an allusion to Michael's lack of coordination and not an intimation that he was more endowed than the average sixteen-year-old male.

I chose to ignore this remark, as did Gina, though I think this was because she hadn't even heard it.

"I sure hope you know what you're doing," was all she said, and it was clear she was not speaking to either of my stepbrothers, which puzzled them enormously. Why would any girl bother speaking to me when she could be speaking to them ?

"G," I said with some surprise. "What do you take me for? An amateur?"

"No," Gina said. "A fool."

I laughed. I really did think she was just being funny. It wasn't until much later that I realized there wasn't anything amusing about it at all.

Because it turned out Gina was one hundred percent right.

CHAPTER 15

Here's the thing about killers. If you know one, I'm sure you'll agree with me:

They can't help bragging about what they've done.

Seriously. They are totally vain. And that, generally, is their undoing.

Look at it from their point of view: I mean, here they are, and they've gotten away with this terrific crime. You know, something totally ingenious that no one would ever think to pin on them.

And they can't tell anybody. They can't tell a soul.

That's what gets them almost every time. Not telling anyone - not letting anyone in on their brilliant secret - well, that just about kills them.

Don't get me wrong. They don't want to get caught. They just want somebody to appreciate the brilliance of this thing they've done. Yes, it was a heinous - sometimes even unthinkable - crime. But look. Look. They did it without getting caught. They fooled the police. They fooled everybody. They have to tell somebody. They have to. Otherwise, what's the point?

This is just a personal observation, of course. I have met quite a few killers in my line of work, and this is the one thing they all seem to have in common. Only the ones who kept their mouths shut were the ones who managed to keep from getting caught. Everybody else? Slammer city.

So it seemed to me that Michael - who already believed that I was in love with him - just might decide to brag to me about what he'd done. He'd already started to, a little, when he'd told me how Josh and people like him were just a "waste of space." It seemed likely that, with a little prompting, I could get him to elaborate … maybe to the tune of a confession that I could then turn around and give to the police.

What's that you're saying? Guilty? Won't I feel guilty for snitching on this guy who had, after all, only been trying to get back at the kids who'd let his sister hurt herself so badly?

Yeah. Right. Listen, I don't do guilt. In my book, there are two kinds of people. Good ones and bad ones. As far as I was concerned, in this particular case, there wasn't a single good person to be found. Everybody had done something reprehensible, from Lila Meducci crashing that party and getting herself trashed in the process, to the RLS Angels for throwing the drunken free-for-all in the first place. Maybe some of them had committed crimes a little more heinous than the others - Michael's killing four people comes to mind - but frankly, in my mind … they all sucked.

So, in answer to your question, no, I didn't feel guilty about what I was about to do. The way I saw it, the sooner Michael got what was coming to him, the sooner I could get back to what was really important in life: lying on the beach with my best friend, soaking up some rays.

It was as I was in the girls' room just after last period let out, applying eyeliner in the mirror above the sinks - I have found that wringing confessions from potential murderers is easier when I am looking my best - that I got my first indication that the afternoon was not going to go exactly as I'd planned.

The door opened and Kelly Prescott walked in, followed by her shadow, Debbie Mancuso. They were not, apparently, there either to relieve or coif themselves, since all they did was stand there and stare at me in a hostile manner.

I looked at their reflections in the mirror and went, "If this is about funding for a class trip to the wine country, you can forget it. I already spoke to Mr. Walden about it, and he said it was the most ludicrous thing he'd ever heard of. Six Flags Great Adventure, maybe, but not the Napa Valley. Wineries do card, you know."

Kelly's upper lip curled. "This isn't about that," she said in a disgusted tone of voice.

"Yeah," Debbie said. "This is about your friend."

"My friend?" I had extracted a hairbrush from my backpack, and now I ran it through my hair, feigning unconcern. And I wasn't concerned. Not really. I could handle anything Kelly Prescott and Debbie Mancuso dished out. Only I didn't exactly feel like dealing with this, on top of everything else that had happened lately. "You mean Michael Meducci?"

Kelly rolled her eyes. "As if. Why you would ever want to be seen with that, I cannot imagine. But we happen to be talking about this Gina person."

"Yeah," Debbie said, her eyes narrowed to angry little slits.

Gina? Oh, Gina. Gina, who had stolen both Kelly's and Debbie's inamoratos. Suddenly all became clear.

"When is she going back to New York?" Kelly demanded.

"Yeah," Debbie said. "And where is she sleeping? Your room, right?"

Kelly elbowed her, and Debbie went, "Well, don't act like you don't want to know, Kel."

Kelly shot her friend an annoyed look, and then asked me, "There hasn't been any … well, bed-hopping, has there?"

Bed-hopping?

"Not to my knowledge," I said. I thought about messing with them, but the thing was, I really did feel for them. I know if some superhot femme fatale ghost had come along and stolen Jesse from me, I'd have been plenty peeved. Not that Jesse had ever even been mine to begin with.

"No bed-hopping," I said. "Footsie under the dinner table, maybe, but no bed-hopping that I know of."

Debbie and Kelly exchanged glances. I could see they were relieved.

"And she's leaving when?" Kelly asked.

When I said "Sunday," both girls let out a little sigh. Debbie went, "Good."

Now that she knew she wouldn't have to put up with her much longer, Kelly was willing to be gracious about Gina. "It isn't that we don't like her," she said.

"Yeah," Debbie said. "It's just that she's … you know."

"I know," I said in what I hoped was a comforting manner.

"It's just because she's new," Kelly said. Now she was getting defensive. "That's the only reason they like her. Because she's different."

"Sure," I said, putting my hairbrush back.

"I mean, so she's from New York?" Kelly was really warming to her subject. "Big deal. I mean, I've been to New York. It wasn't so great. It was really dirty, and there were these disgusting pigeons and bums everywhere."

"Yeah," Debbie said. "And you know what I heard? In New York, they don't even have fish tacos."

I almost felt sorry for Debbie then.

"Well," I said, shouldering my backpack. "It's been a pleasure. But now I gotta go, ladies."

I left them there, dipping their pinkies into little pots of lip gloss and then leaning into the mirror to apply it.

Michael was waiting for me exactly where he'd said he would be. You could tell the eyeliner was doing its job, since he got very flustered and went, "Hi, uh, do you, uh, want me to take your backpack?"

I cooed, "Oh, that would be lovely," and let him take it. With two backpacks slung over his shoulders, mine and his own, Michael looked a bit odd, but then, he always did - at least with his clothes on - so this was no big surprise. We started down the cool, shady breezeway - empty now that most everybody had left for the day - and then stepped out into the warm yellow sunlight of the parking lot. The sea, just beyond it, winked at us. The sky overhead was cloudless.

"My car's over there," Michael said, pointing at an emerald green sedan. "Well, not my car, really. But the one the rental agency loaned me. It's not a bad little number, actually. Has some punch to it."

I smiled at him, and he tripped over a loose piece of concrete. He would have fallen flat on his face if he hadn't saved himself at the last minute. My lipstick, I could see, was performing as well as the eyeliner.

"Let me just, uh, find the keys," Michael said as he fumbled around in his pockets.

I told him to take his time. Then I pulled out my DKs and turned my face toward the sun, leaning against the hood of his rental car. How, I wondered, to best bring it up? Maybe I should suggest we stop by the hospital to see his little sister? No, I wanted to get to his house as soon as possible so I could start reading his email. Would I even know how to access his email? Probably not. But I could call Cee Cee. She'd know. Could you talk on the phone and access someone's email at the same time? Oh, God, why wouldn't my mom let me get a cell phone? I was practically the only sophomore without one - Dopey excepted, of course.

It was while I was wondering about this that a shadow fell over my face, and suddenly I could no longer feel the warmth of the sun. I opened my eyes, and found myself staring up at Sleepy.

"What," he demanded in the same somnambulistic manner in which he did everything, "do you think you're doing?"

I could feel my cheeks getting red. And it wasn't because of the sun, either.

"Getting a ride home with Michael," I said meekly. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Michael, over on the driver's side of the car, had finally found the keys, and had frozen with them in his hand, the driver side door open.

"No, you're not," Sleepy said.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe he was doing this to me. I was so embarrassed, I thought I was going to die.

"Slee - " I started to say, then stopped myself just in time. "Jake," I said, under my breath. "Cut it out."

"No," Jake said. "You cut it out. You remember what Mom said."

Mom. He'd called my mother Mom. What was going on here?

I lowered my sunglasses and looked past Jake. Gina, along with Dopey and Doc, stood on the far side of the parking lot, leaning against the side of the Rambler and staring in my direction.

Gina. She'd told on me. She'd told on me to Sleepy. I couldn't believe it.

"Slee - I mean, Jake," I said. "I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I can take care of myself - "

"No." And to my surprise, he wrapped a hand around my arm, and started to pull. He was surprisingly strong, for someone who gave the impression of being so tired all the time. "You're coming home with us. Sorry, man." This last he said to Michael. "She's supposed to ride home with me today."

Michael, however, did not appear to find this apology a satisfactory one. He put down both our backpacks, and, slipping his car keys back into his trouser pocket, took a step toward Sleepy.

"I don't think," Michael said in a hard voice I'd never heard him use before, "the lady wants to go with you."

The lady? What lady? Then I realized with a start that Michael meant me. I was the lady!

"I don't care what she wants," Sleepy said. His voice wasn't hard at all. It was simply very matter-of-fact. "She's not getting into a car with you, and that's the end of it."

"I don't think so." Michael took another step toward Sleepy, and that's when I saw that both of his hands were curled into fists.

Fists! Michael was going to fight Sleepy! Over me!

This was very exciting. I'd never had two boys get into a fight over me before. The fact that one of the boys was my stepbrother, however, and held about as much romantic appeal for me as Max, the family dog, somewhat dampened my enthusiasm.

And Michael wasn't much of a catch, either, when you actually thought about it, being a potential murderer, and all.

Oh, why did I have to have such a couple of losers fighting over me? Why couldn't Matt Damon and Ben Affleck fight over me? Now that would be truly excellent.

"Look, buddy," Sleepy said, noticing Michael's fists. "You don't want to mess with me, okay? I'm just going to take my sister here" - he dragged me off the hood of the car - "and go. Got that?"

Sister? Stepsister! Stepsister! God, why can't anyone keep it straight?

"Suze," Michael said. He hadn't taken his eyes off Sleepy. "Just get in the car, okay?"

Well, this, I decided, had gone on long enough. Not only was I completely embarrassed, but I was getting hot, too. That afternoon sun was no joke. Suddenly, I just didn't have any ghost-busting energy left in me.

Plus I guess I didn't want to see anybody get hurt over something so completely lame.

"Look," I said to Michael. "I better go with him. Some other time, okay?"

Michael finally looked away from Sleepy. His gaze, when it landed on me, was odd. It was like he wasn't even really seeing me.

"Fine," he said.

Then he got into his car without another word, and started the engine.

God, I thought. Be a baby about it, why don't you?

"I'll call you when I get home," I shouted to Michael, though I doubt he heard me through the rolled up windows. It would be difficult, I realized, to wring a confession out of him over the phone, but not, I thought, impossible.

Michael's tires squealed on the hot asphalt as he drove away.

"What a freakin' jerk," Sleepy muttered as he dragged me across the parking lot. Only he didn't say freakin'. Or jerk. "And you want to go out with this guy?"

I said sullenly, "We're just friends."

"Yeah," Sleepy said. "Right."

"You," Dopey said to me as Sleepy and I approached the Rambler, "are so busted."

This was one of his favorite things to say to me. He said it, as a matter of fact, whenever he had the slightest chance.

"Not technically, Brad," Doc said thoughtfully. "You see, she didn't actually get into the car with him. And that was what she was forbidden to do. Get into a car with Michael Meducci."

"Shut up, all of you," Sleepy said, heading for the driver's seat. "And get in."

Gina, I noticed, slipped automatically into the front passenger seat. Apparently, she didn't believe that when Sleepy had told us all to shut up, he meant her, too, since she went, "How about we stop somewhere for ice cream on the way home?"

She was trying, I knew, to get me not to be mad at her. As if a chocolate-dipped twist would help. Actually, it sort of would, now that I thought about it.

"Sounds good to me," Sleepy said.

Dopey, on my right - as usual, I'd ended up sitting on the hump in the middle of the backseat - muttered, "I don't know what you see in that headcase Meducci anyway."

Doc said, "Oh, that's easy. Females of any species tend to select the male partner who is best able to provide for her and any offspring which might result from their coupling. Michael Meducci, being a good deal more intelligent than most of his classmates, amply fulfills that role, in addition to which he has what is considered, by Western standards of beauty, an outstanding physique - if what I've overheard Gina and Suze saying counts for anything. Since he is likely to pass on these favorable genetic components to his children, he is irresistible to breeding females everywhere - at least, discerning ones like Suze."

There was silence in the car … the kind of silence that usually followed one of Doc's speeches.

Then Gina said reverently, "They really should move you up a grade, David."

"Oh, they've offered," Doc replied, cheerfully, "but while my intellect might be evolved for a boy my age, my growth is somewhat retarded. I felt it was inadvisable to thrust myself into a population of males much larger than I, who might be threatened by my superior intelligence."

"In other words," Sleepy translated for Gina's benefit, "we didn't want him getting his butt kicked by the bigger kids."

Then he started the car, and we roared out of the parking lot at the usual high rate of speed that Sleepy, in spite of my private nickname for him, chooses to employ.

I was trying to figure out how I could make it clear that it wasn't so much that I wanted to breed with Michael Meducci, as get him to confess to having killed the RLS Angels, when Gina went, "God, Jake, drive much?"

Which was sort of amusing since Gina, whose parents very wisely won't let her near their car, has never driven before in her life. But then I looked up and saw what she meant. We were approaching the front gates to the school, which were set at the base of a sloping hill that opened out into a busy intersection, at a higher rate of speed than was usual, even for Sleepy.

"Yeah, Jake," Dopey said from beside me on the backseat. "Slow down, you maniac."

I knew Dopey was only trying to make himself look good in front of Gina, but he did have a point: Sleepy was going way too fast.

"It's not a race," I said, and Doc started to say something about how Jake's endorphins had probably kicked in, due to his fight with me and his near-fight with Michael, and that that would account for his sudden case of lead foot....

At least until Jake said, in tones that weren't in the least drowsy, "I can't slow down. The brakes … the brakes aren't working."

This sounded interesting. I leaned forward. I guess I thought Jake was trying to scare us.

Then I saw the speed with which we were approaching the intersection in front of the school. This was no joke. We were about to plunge into four lanes of heavy traffic.

"Get out!" Jake yelled at us.

At first I didn't know what he meant. Then I saw Gina struggling to undo her seatbelt, and I knew.

But it was too late. We had already started down the dip that led past the gates, and onto the highway. If we jumped now, we'd be as dead as we were going to be the minute we plunged into those four lanes of oncoming traffic. At least if we stayed in the car, we'd have the questionable protection of the Rambler's steel walls around us -

Jake leaned on the horn, swearing loudly. Gina covered her eyes. Doc flung his arms around me, burying his face in my lap, and Dopey, to my great surprise, began to scream like a girl, very close to my ear....

Then we were sailing down the hill, speeding past a very surprised woman in a Volvo station wagon and then a stunned-looking Japanese couple in a Mercedes, both of whom managed to slam on their brakes just in time to keep from barreling into us.

We weren't so lucky with the traffic in the far two lanes, however. As we went flying across the highway, a tractor trailer with the words Tom Cat emblazoned on the front grid came bearing down on us, its horn blaring. The words Tom Cat loomed closer and closer, until suddenly I couldn't see them anymore because they were above the roof of the car....

It was at that point that I closed my eyes, so I wasn't sure if the impact I felt was in my head because I'd been expecting it so strongly, or if we'd really been struck. But the jolt was enough to send my neck snapping back the way it did on roller-coasters when the traincar suddenly took a violent ninety-degree turn.

When I opened my eyes again, however, I started to suspect the jolt hadn't been in my head since everything was spinning around, the way it does when you go on one of those teacup rides. Only we weren't on a ride. We were still in the Rambler, which was spinning across the highway like a top.

Until suddenly, with another sickening crunch, a loud crash of glass, and another very big jolt, it stopped.

And when the smoke and dust settled, we saw that we were sitting halfway in and halfway out of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Tourist Information Bureau, with a sign that said Welcome to Carmel! pressed up against the windshield.

CHAPTER 16

"They killed my car."

That was all Sleepy seemed capable of saying. He had been saying it ever since we'd crawled from the wreckage of what had once been the Rambler.

"My car. They killed my car."

Never mind that it hadn't actually been Sleepy's car. It had been the family car, or at any rate, the kids' car.

And never mind that Sleepy did not seem capable of telling us who this mysterious "they" was, the "they" he suspected of murdering his automobile.

He just kept saying it over and over again. And the thing was, the more he said it, the more the horror of it all sank in.

Because, of course, it wasn't the car someone had tried to kill. Oh, no. It was the people in the car that had been the intended victims.

Or, to be more accurate, one person. Me.

I really don't think I'm being at all vain. I honestly do think that it was because of me that the Rambler's brake line was clipped. Yes, it had been clipped, so all the brake fluid had eventually leaked out. The car, being older, even, than my mother - though not quite as old as Father D - did have only the single brake line, making it vulnerable to just that sort of attack.

Let me see now, who do I know who might like to see me perish in a fiery blaze. … Oh, hang on, I know. How about Josh Saunders, Carrie Whitman, Mark Pulsford, and Felicia Bruce?

Give that girl a prize.

I couldn't, of course, tell anyone what I suspected. Not the police who showed up and took the accident report. Not the EMS guys who couldn't believe that, beyond a few bruises, none of us were seriously hurt. Not the guys from Triple A who came to tow what was left of the Rambler away. Not Michael who, having left the parking lot just moments before us, had heard the commotion and turned back, and had been one of the first to try to help us out of the car.

And certainly not my mother and stepfather, who showed up at the hospital looking tight lipped and pale faced, and kept saying things like, "It's a wonder none of you were hurt," and, "From now on, you're only driving the Land Rover."

Which caused Dopey, anyway, to brighten up. The Land Rover was way roomier than the Rambier had ever been. I suppose he figured he wouldn't have as much trouble getting horizontal with Debbie Mancuso in the Land Rover.

"I just can't understand it," my mother said, much later, after the X-rays and eye tests and poking and prodding were over, and the hospital personnel had finally let us go home. We sat in the dining room of Peninsula Pizza, the place Sleepy worked, which also happened to be one of the only places in Carmel you could get a table for six - seven, if you counted Gina - without a reservation. We must have looked, to an outsider, like one big, happy family (well, except for Gina, who sort of stuck out, though not as much as you might think) celebrating something, like a soccer game victory.

Only we knew that what we were celebrating was the fact that we were all still alive.

"I mean, it must be a miracle," my mother went on. "The doctors certainly think so. That none of you were more seriously hurt, I mean."

Doc showed her his elbow, which he'd scraped on a piece of glass while slithering out of the car after it had come to a standstill. "This could prove to be a very dangerous wound," he said, in a wounded little boy voice, "if it happens to become infected."

"Oh, sweetie." My mother reached out and stroked his hair. "I know. You were so brave when they put in those stitches."

The rest of us rolled our eyes. Doc had been playing up the injury thing all night. But it was making both him and my mother happy. She'd tried that hair-stroking thing with me, and I'd nearly broken my arm trying to get away.

"It wasn't a miracle," Andy said, shaking his head, "but simple dumb luck that you weren't all killed."

"Dumb luck nothing," Sleepy said. "My superlative driving skills are what saved us."

I hated to admit it, but Sleepy was right. (And where did he learn a word like superlative? Had he been studying for his SATs behind my back?) Except for the part where we'd crashed through the plate glass window, he'd driven that tank of a car - brakeless - like an Indy 500 pro. I guess I could sort of see why Gina wouldn't let go of his arm, and kept looking up at him in this worshipful way.

Out of my newfound respect for Sleepy, I didn't even look to see what he and Gina were doing in the back of the Land Rover on the way home.

But Dopey sure did. And whatever he saw back there put him in as foul a mood as I'd ever seen him.

His stomping around and turning up of Marilyn Manson in his room only served to annoy his father, however, who went from grateful humbleness over how close he'd come to losing his "boys - and you, Suze. Oh, and Gina, too," to apoplectic rage upon hearing what he termed "that noxious mind-poison."

Alone in my room - Gina had disappeared to parts of the house unknown; well, okay, I knew where she was, I just didn't want to think about it - I did not mind the noise level in the hallway outside my door. It would keep, I realized, anybody from overhearing the very unpleasant conversation I was about to have.

"Jesse!" I called, switching on my bedroom lights and looking around for him. But both he and Spike were MIA. "Jesse, where are you? I need you."

Ghosts aren't dogs. They won't come when you call them. At least, they never used to. Not for me, anyway. Only lately - and this was something I hadn't exactly talked over with Father Dom. It was a little too weird to think about, if you asked me - the ghosts I knew had been popping up at the merest suggestion of them in my mind. Seriously. It seemed all I had to do was think about my dad, for instance, and poof, there he was.

Needless to say, this was quite embarrassing when I happened to be thinking about him while I was in the shower washing my hair, or whatever.

I kind of wondered if this had something to do with my mediator powers getting stronger with age. But if that were true, then it would stand to reason that Father Dom would be a way better mediator than me.

Only he wasn't. Different, but not better. Certainly not stronger. He couldn't summon a spirit with a single thought.

At least, I didn't think so.

Anyway, so even though ghosts don't come when you call them, Jesse always seemed to lately. He appeared before me with a shimmer, and then stood staring at me like I'd just stepped off the set of Hellraiser III in full costume. But may I say that I did not look half so disheveled as I felt?

"Nombre de Dios, Susannah," he said, paling visibly (well, for a guy who was already dead, anyway). "What happened to you?"

I looked down at myself. All right, so my blouse was torn and dirty, and my thigh-highs had sort of lost their stick. At least my hair had that all-important windswept look.

"As if you didn't know," I said sourly, - sitting down on my bed and slipping out of my shoes. "I thought you said you'd babysit them all day, until Father D and I had a chance to work on Michael."

"Babysit?" Jesse knit his dark brows, revealing that he was unfamiliar with the word. "I stayed with the Angels all day, if that's what you mean."

"Oh, right," I said. "What are you saying? You went with them on their little field trip to the school parking lot to clip the Rambler's brake line?"

Jesse sat down next to me on the bed.

"Susannah." His dark-eyed gaze was riveted to my face. "Did something happen today?"

"You better believe it." I told him what had gone down, though my explanation of exactly what had been done to the car was a little sketchy given my complete ignorance of all things mechanical, and Jesse's particular lack of knowledge about the workings of the automobile. Back when he'd been alive, of course, horse and buggy had been the only way to go.

When I was through, he shook his head.

"But, Susannah," he said, "it could not have been Josh and the others. As I told you, I was with them all day. I only left them now because you called to me. They could not possibly have done what you are describing. I would have seen, and stopped them."

I blinked at him. "But if it wasn't Josh and those guys, then who could it have been? I mean, no one else wants me dead. At least, not at the moment."

Jesse continued to stare down at me. "Are you so sure you were the intended victim, Susannah?"

"Well, of course it was me." I know it sounds weird, but I was almost offended at the idea that there might be someone else on the planet worthier of murdering than myself. I must say, I do pride myself on the number of enemies I've acquired. In the mediator business, I've always considered it a sign that things were going well if there were a bunch of people who wanted me dead.

"I mean, who else but me?" I gave a laugh. "What, you think somebody's out to get Doc?"

Jesse, however, did not laugh.

"Think, Susannah," he urged me. "Isn't there anyone else who was in that car that someone might want to see badly hurt, or even dead?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You know something," I said flatly.

"No." Jesse shook his head. "But - "

"But what? God, I hate when you do the cryptic warning thing. Just tell me."

"No." He shook his head quickly. "Think, Susannah."

I sighed. There was no arguing with him when he got this way. You couldn't really blame him, I guess, for wanting to play Mr. Miyagi to my Karate Kid. It wasn't like he had a whole lot of other stuff to do.

I exhaled gustily enough to send my bangs fluttering.

"Okay," I said. "People who might not be too happy with someone - besides me - in that car. Let me see." I brightened up. "Debbie and Kelly aren't too happy about Gina. They had a nasty little interlude in the girls' room just before it happened. The car thing, I mean."

Then I frowned. "But I hardly think those two would clip a brake line to get her out of the way. In the first place, I doubt they even know what a brake line is, or where to find it. And in the second place, they might mess themselves up climbing under a car. You know, break a nail, or get oil in their hair, or whatever. Debbie probably wouldn't mind, but Kelly? Forget it. Plus they had to know they might end up killing Dopey and Sleepy, and they wouldn't want that."

"Of course not," Jesse said mildly.

It was the very tonelessness with which he uttered the words that cued me in.

"Dopey?" I shot him an incredulous look. "Who'd want Dopey dead? Or Sleepy, for that matter? I mean, those guys are so … dumb."

"Hasn't either of them," Jesse asked in that same toneless manner, "done anything that might make someone angry?"

"Well, sure," I said. "Not Sleepy so much, but Dopey? He's always doing asinine stuff like grabbing people in headlocks and throwing their books everywhere...." My voice trailed off.

Then I shook my head. "No," I said. "That's impossible."

Jesse only looked at me. "Is it?" he said.

"No, you don't understand." I stood up and started pacing my room. At some point during our conversation, Spike had slunk through the window. Now he sat on the floor at Jesse's feet, vigorously lashing himself with his sandpapery tongue.

"I mean, he was there," I explained. "Michael was there, right after it happened. He helped us out of the car. He …" My last sight of Michael that evening had been just as the ambulance doors closed on me and Gina and Sleepy and Dopey and Doc. Michael's face had been pale - even more than usual - and concerned.

No. "That just …" I got as far as Gina's daybed before I spun around to face Jesse again. "That just can't be," I said. "Michael would never do something like that."

Jesse laughed. There was no humor in the sound, however.

"Wouldn't he?" he wanted to know. "I can think of four people who might have a very different opinion on the matter."

"But why would he do it?" I shook my head again, emphatically enough to send the ends of my hair flying. "I mean, Dopey's a butthead, it's true, but enough of one so that someone might feel compelled to murder him? Not to mention a bunch of innocent people along with him? Including me?" I raised my indignant gaze from the sight of Spike chewing on his own foot, trying to get the grime out from between his toes. "Michael couldn't possibly want to see me dead. I'm the best chance he's got for a date to the prom!"

Jesse didn't say anything. And in the silence, I remembered something. And what I remembered took my breath away.

"Oh, God," I said, and, clutching my chest, I sank down onto the daybed.

Jesse's neutral expression sharpened into one of concern.

"What is it, Susannah?" he asked worriedly. "Are you ill?"

I nodded. "Oh, yeah," I said, staring unseeingly at the wall across from me. "I think I'm going to be sick. Jesse … he asked me if I wanted to ride with him. Right before it happened. He was insistent I ride with him. In fact, when Sleepy said I had to go with him or he'd tell Mom, I thought the two of them were going to get into a fist-fight."

"Of course," Jesse said in what was, for him, a very dry tone. "His - what did you call it? Oh, yes - date for the prom was about to be exterminated."

"Oh, God!" I stood up and started pacing again. "Oh, God, why? Why Dopey? I mean, he's a jerk and all, but why would Michael want to kill him?"

Jesse said, quietly, "Perhaps for the same reason he killed Josh and the others."

I stopped dead in my tracks. Slowly, I turned my head to look at him. But I didn't see him. Not really. I was remembering something Dopey had said - weeks ago, it seemed like, but it had actually only been a night or two before. We'd been talking about the accident that had killed the RLS Angels, and Dopey had said something about Mark Pulsford. "We happen to have partied together," he'd said. "Last month, in the Valley."

At the same party in the Valley, I wondered, my blood suddenly running cold, where Lila Meducci had fallen into the pool?

A second later, without another word to Jesse, I'd ripped open the door to my room, taken the three strides across the hall to Dopey's room, and was banging on the door with all my might.

"Chill!" Dopey thundered from inside. "I turned it down already!"

"It's not about the music," I said. "It's about something else. Can I come in?"

I heard the sound of barbells falling back into their stand. Then Dopey grunted, "Yeah. I guess so."

I laid my hand on the knob and turned it.

I'd like to point out something here. I have been in Doc's room. Many times, in fact, as he is always the stepbrother I go to when I have a homework problem I cannot solve, in spite of the fact that he is three grades behind me. And I have even been in Sleepy's room since he usually needs actual physical snaking in order to wake him up in the morning in time to drive us all to school.

But I had never, ever been in Dopey's room before. Truth be told, I had always hoped I might never have a reason to cross that particular threshold.

Now, however, I had a reason. I took a deep breath and went in.

It was dark. This was because of Dopey's decision to paint three of his walls purple and one white, Mission Academy wrestling team colors. He had chosen a purple so dark it was almost black. The darkness of those three walls was only alleviated by the occasional poster of Michael Jordan urging the viewer to Just Do It.

The floor of Dopey's room was a deep carpet of dirty socks and underwear. The odor was pungent - a mixture of sweat and baby powder. Not unpleasant, necessarily, but not an odor I'd particularly want permeating my wardrobe. Dopey, however, did not seem to mind.

"Well?" He was stretched out on his back on a padded bench. Above his chest hung a set of barbells. I would not have liked to hazard a guess as to how much weight he was lifting, but allow me to assure you, with enough reps, I was quite sure he'd have no trouble heaving Debbie Mancuso out the window in the event of a fire. Which is all a girl really needs out of a boyfriend, if you ask me.

"Dope - " I took another deep breath. What was with the baby powder? Wait. Don't tell me. I don't want to know. "Brad. Were you at that party in the Valley where Lila Meducci fell into the pool?"

Dopey had reached up and seized the barbell. Now he heaved it into the air, awarding me a glimpse of his excessively hairy armpits. I tried not to hurl at the sight of them.

"What are you talking about?" he grunted.

"Lila Meducci."

Dopey had lowered the barbell until it was just above his chest. His biceps had bunched up into melon-sized balls. Allow me to point out that normally, the sight of a male bicep that size would have caused my knees to go weak. But then, these biceps were Dopey's, so all I could do was swallow hard and hope the slices of pepperoni pizza I'd downed for dinner would stay where they were.

"Michael's little sister," I elaborated. "She nearly drowned at a party out in the Valley last month. I was wondering if it was the same party you mentioned you'd been to, the one where you'd run into Mark Pulsford."

Up went the barbells.

"Could have been," Dopey said. "I don't know. Why do you care?"

"Brad," I said. "It's important. I mean, if you were there, I think you would know. An ambulance must have shown up."

"I guess," he said between reps. "I mean, I was pretty wasted."

"You guess that a girl almost drowned in front of you?" I don't have much patience for Dopey under the best of circumstances. In this particular case, my tolerance for his stupidity had dipped to an all-time low.

Dopey let the barbell fall back into its stand with a clatter. Then he sat up and regarded me testily.

"Look," he said. "If I tell you I was there, what are you going to do? Go running to Mom and Dad, right? So why would I tell you? I mean, seriously, Suze. Why would I?"

Aside from my great surprise at hearing Dopey, too, mess up and call my mother Mom, I was prepared for the question.

"I won't tell," I said. "I swear I won't tell, Brad. Only I have to know."

He still looked suspicious. "Why? So you can tell that creepy albino friend of yours, and she can put it in the school paper? 'Brad Ackerman stood there like a schmo while a girl almost died.' Is that it?"

"I swear it isn't," I said.

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Fine," he said. "You know what? I don't even care. It's not like my life doesn't already suck. I mean, I haven't got a hope of getting down to one-sixty-eight before sectionals, and it's pretty clear now that your friend Gina likes Jake better 'n me." He eyed me. "Doesn't she?"

I shifted my weight uncomfortably. "I don't know," I said. "I think she likes both of you."

"Yeah," Dopey said sarcastically. "That's why she's in here right now with me instead of locked in with Jake, doing whatever."

"I'm sure they're just talking," I said.

"Right." Dopey shook his head. I was a bit stunned. I had never seen him looking so … human. Nor had I known he had goals. What was this 168 business? And did he really care that much about Gina that he would think his life sucked just because he didn't think she liked him back?

Weird. Really weird stuff.

"You want to know about that party in the Valley?" he asked. "I was there. All right? Are you happy now? I was there. Like I said, I was wasted. I didn't see her fall in. I only noticed her as somebody was pulling her out." Again, he shook his head. "That was really uncool, you know? I mean, she shouldn't have been there in the first place. Nobody invited her. If you can't hold your liquor, you got no business drinking, you know? But some of these girls, they'll do just about anything to get in with us."

I knit my eyebrows. "Us?"

He looked at me like I was stupid. "You know," he said. "The jocks. The popular people. Meducci's sister - I didn't know it was her until your mom said it the other night at the dinner table - she was one of those girls. Always hanging around, trying to get one of us guys from the team to ask her out. So she could be popular, too, see?"

I saw. Suddenly, I saw only too well.

Which was why I left Dopey's room then without another word. What was there to say? I knew what I had to do. I guess I had known it all along. I just hadn't wanted to admit it.

But now I knew. Like Michael Meducci, I thought I had no other choice.

And like Michael Meducci, I needed to be stopped. Only I didn't think so. Not then.

Just like Michael.

CHAPTER 17

Gina was in my room when I came back from my visit to Dopey. Both Jesse and Spike, however, were gone. Which was actually fine by me.

"Hey," Gina said, looking up from the toenail she'd been painting. "Where have you been?"

I strode past her and started wriggling out of my school clothes. "Dopey's room," I said. "Look, cover for me, will you?" I stepped into a pair of jeans, then started lacing up my Timberland boots. "I'm going to be out for a while. Just tell them I'm in the bathtub. It would help if you let the water run. Tell them it's cramps again."

"They're going to start thinking you've got endometriosis, or something." Gina watched as I tugged a black turtleneck sweater over my head. "Where are you really going?"

"Out," I said. I pulled on the windbreaker I'd worn the other night to the beach. This time I tucked a hat into my pocket, along with the gloves.

"Oh, sure. Out." Gina shook her head, looking concerned. "Suze, are you all right?"

"Of course I am. Why?"

"You've got kind of … well, a crazy look in your eye."

"I'm fine," I said. "I figured it out, is all."

"Figured what out?" Gina put the cap on her nail polish and stood up. "Suze, what are you talking about?"

"What happened today." I climbed up onto the window seat. "With the brake line. Michael did it."

"Michael Meducci?" Gina looked at me as if I were nuts. "Suze, are you sure?"

"Sure as I'm standing here talking to you."

"But why? Why would he do that? I thought he was in love with you."

"With me, maybe," I said with a shrug as I pushed the window open wider. "But he's got a pretty big grudge against Brad."

"Brad? What did Brad ever do to Michael Meducci?"

"Stand around," I said, "and let his little sister die. Well, almost, anyway. I'm out of here, okay, Gina? I'll explain everything when I get back."

And then I slipped through the window, and climbed down to the porch roof. Outside, it was dark and cool and silent, except for the chirp of crickets and the far-off sound of the waves hitting the beach. Or was that the traffic down on the highway? I couldn't tell. After listening for a minute to make sure no one downstairs had heard me, I walked down the sloping roof to the gutter, where I squatted, ready to jump, knowing the pine needles below would cushion my landing.

"Suze!" A shadow blocked out the light streaming from the bay windows to my room.

I looked back over my shoulder. Gina was leaning out, looking anxiously after me.

"Shouldn't we - " She sounded, I noted in some distant part of my mind, frightened. "I mean, shouldn't we call the police? If this stuff about Michael is true - "

I stared at her as if she'd suggested I … well, jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.

"The police?" I echoed. "No way. This is between Michael and me."

"Suze - " Gina shook her head so that her springy curls bounced. "This is serious stuff. I mean, this guy is a murderer. I really think we need to call in the professionals here - "

"I am a professional," I said, offended. "I'm a mediator, remember?"

Gina did not look comforted by this piece of information.

"But … well, what are you going to do, Suze?"

I smiled at her reassuringly.

"Oh," I said. "That's easy. I'm going to show him what happens when somebody tries to kill someone I care about."

And then I leaped off of the roof into the darkness.

I couldn't bring myself to take the Land Rover. Oh, sure, I was perfectly willing to commit what pretty much amounted to murder, but drive without a license? No way! Instead, I hauled out one of the many ten speeds Andy had tucked away along the carport wall. A few seconds later, I was flying down the hill from our house, tears streaming from my eyes. Not because I was crying, or anything, but because the wind was so cold on my face as I sailed down into the Valley.

I called Michael from a pay phone outside the Safeway. An older woman - his mother, I suppose - answered. I asked if I could speak to Michael. She said, "Yes, of course," in that pleased way mothers use when their child gets his or her first call from a member of the opposite sex. And I would know. My mother uses that voice every time a boy calls me and she answers. You can't really blame her. It happens so rarely.

Mrs. Meducci must have tipped Michael off that it was a girl, since his voice sounded much deeper than usual when he said hello.

"Michael?" I said, just to be sure it was him and not his father.

"Suze?" he said in his normal voice. "Oh, my God, Suze, I'm so glad it's you. Did you get my message? I must have called about ten times. I followed the ambulance to the hospital, but they wouldn't let me into the emergency room to see you. Only if you were admitted, they said. Which you weren't, right?"

"Nope," I said. "Fit as a fiddle."

"Thank God. Oh, Suze, you don't have any idea how scared I was when I heard that crash and realized it was you - "

"Yeah," I said shortly. "It was scary. Listen, Michael, I'm in a jam of a different kind, and I was wondering if you could help me out."

Michael said, "You know I'd do anything for you, Suze."

Yeah. Like try to kill my stepbrothers and my best friend.

"I'm stranded," I said. "At the Safeway. It's kind of a long story. I was wondering if there was any possible way - "

"I'll be there," Michael said, "in three minutes." Then he hung up.

He was there in two. I'd barely had time to stash the bike between a couple of Dumpsters in the back of the store before I saw him pull up in his green rental sedan, peering into the brightly lit windows of the supermarket as if he expected to see me inside riding the stupid mechanical rocking horse, or whatever. I approached the car from the parking lot, then leaned over to tap on the passenger side window.

Michael whipped around, startled by the sound. When he saw it was me, his face - pastier than ever in the fluorescent lights - relaxed. He leaned over and opened the door.

"Hop in," he said cheerfully. "Boy, you don't know how glad I am to see you in one piece."

"Yeah?" I slid into the front passenger seat, then slammed the door closed after I'd tucked my feet in. "Well, me too. Happy to be in one piece, I mean. Ha ha."

"Ha ha." Michael's laugh, rather than being sarcastic, as mine had been, was nervous. Or at least I chose to think so.

"Well," he said as we sat there in front of the supermarket, the motor running. "You want me to take you, um, home?"

"No." I turned my head to look at him.

You might be wondering what I was thinking at a moment like that. I mean, what goes through a person's head when they know they're about to do something that could result in another person's death?

Well, I'll tell you. Not a whole heck of a lot. I was thinking that Michael's rental car smelled funny. I was wondering if the last person who had used it had spilled cologne in it, or something.

Then I realized the smell of cologne was coming from Michael himself. He had apparently splashed on a little Carolina Herrera For Men before coming to get me. How flattering.

"I have an idea," I said, as if I had only just then thought of it. "Let's go to the Point."

Michael's hands fell off the steering wheel. He hurried to right them, placing them at two and four o'clock, like the good driver he was.

"I beg your pardon?" he said.

"The Point." I thought maybe I wasn't being alluring enough, or something. So I reached over and laid a hand on his arm. He was wearing a suede jacket. Beneath my fingertips, the suede felt very soft, and beneath the suede, Michael's bicep was as hard and as round as Dopey's had looked.

"You know," I said. "For the view. It's a beautiful night."

Michael wasted no more time. He put the car in gear and began pulling out from the parking lot before I even had time to remove my hand.

"Great," he said. His voice was maybe a little uneven, so he cleared his throat, and said, with a little more dignity, "I mean, that sounds all right."

A few seconds later, we were cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway. It was only ten o'clock or so, but there weren't many other cars on the road. It was, after all, a weeknight. I wondered if Michael's mother, before he'd left the house, had told him to be home at a certain time. I wondered if, when he didn't come home by curfew, she'd worry. How long, I wondered, would she wait before calling the police? The hospital emergency rooms?

"So nobody," Michael said as he drove, "was really hurt, right? In the accident?"

"No," I replied. "No one was hurt."

"That's good," Michael said.

"Is it?" I pretended to be looking out the passenger side window. But really I was watching Michael's reflection.

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly.

I shrugged. "I don't know," I said. "It's just that … well, you know. Brad."

"Oh." He gave a little chuckle. There wasn't any real humor in it, though. "Yeah. Brad."

"I mean, I try to get along with him," I said. "But it's so hard. Because he can be such a jerk sometimes."

"I can imagine," Michael said. Pretty mildly, I thought.

I turned in my seat so that I was almost facing him.

"Like, you know what he said tonight?" I asked. Without waiting for a reply, I said, "He told me he was at that party. The one where your sister fell. You know. Into the pool."

I do not think it was my imagination that Michael's grip on the wheel tightened. "Really?"

"Yeah. You should have heard what he said about it, too."

Michael's face, in profile to mine, looked grim.

"What did he say?"

I toyed with the seatbelt I'd fastened around myself. "No," I said. "I shouldn't tell you."

"No, really," Michael said. "I'd like to know."

"It's so mean, though," I said.

"Tell me what he said." Michael's voice was very calm.

"Well," I said. "All right. He basically said - and he wasn't quite as succinct as this, because, as you know, he's pretty much incapable of forming complete sentences - but basically he said your sister got what she deserved because she shouldn't have been at that party in the first place. He said she hadn't been invited. Only popular people were supposed to be there. Can you believe that?"

Michael carefully passed a pickup truck. "Yes," he said quietly. "Actually, I can."

"I mean, popular people. He actually said that. Popular people." I shook my head. "And what defines popular? That's what I'd like to know. I mean, your sister was unpopular why? Because she wasn't a jock? She wasn't a cheerleader? She didn't have the right clothes? What?"

"All of those things," Michael said in the same quiet voice.

"As if any of that matters," I said. "As if being intelligent and compassionate and kind to others doesn't count for anything. No, all that matters is whether you're friends with the right people."

"Unfortunately," Michael said, "that oftentimes appears to be the case."

"Well," I said. "I think it's crap. I said so, too. To Brad. I was like, 'So all of you just stood there while this girl nearly died because no one invited her in the first place?' He denied it, of course. But you know it's true."

"Yes," Michael said. We were driving along Big Sur now, the road narrowing while, at the same time, growing darker. "I do, actually. If my sister had been … well, Kelly Prescott, for instance, someone would have pulled her out at once, rather than stand there laughing at her as she drowned."

It was hard to see his expression since there was no moon. The only light there was to see by was the glow from the console in the dashboard. Michael looked sickly in it, and not just because the light had a greenish tinge to it.

"Is that what happened?" I asked him. "Did people do that? Laugh at her while she was drowning?"

He nodded. "That's what one of the EMS guys told the police. Everybody thought she was faking it." He let out a humorless laugh. "My sister - that was all she wanted, you know? To be popular. To be like them. And they stood there. They all just stood there laughing while she drowned."

I said, "Well. I heard everyone was pretty drunk." Including your sister, I thought, but didn't say out loud.

"That's no excuse," Michael said. "But of course nobody did anything about it. The girl who had the party - her parents got a fine. That's all. My sister may never wake up, and all they got was a fine."

We had reached, I saw, the turn-off to the observation point. Michael honked before he went around the corner. No one was on the other side. He swung neatly into a parking space, but he didn't switch off the ignition. Instead, he sat there, staring out into the inky blackness that was the sea and sky.

I was the one who reached over and turned the motor off. The dashboard light went off a second later, plunging us into absolute darkness.

"So," I said. The silence in the car was pretty deafening. There were no cars on the road behind us. If I opened the window, I knew the sounds of the wind and waves would come rushing in. Instead, I just sat there.

Slowly, the darkness outside the car became less consummate. As my eyes adjusted to it, I could even make out the horizon where the black sky met the even blacker sea.

Michael turned his head. "It was Carrie Whitman," he said. "The girl who had the party."

I nodded, not taking my gaze off the horizon. "I know."

"Carrie Whitman," he said again. "Carrie Whitman was in that car. The one that went off the cliff last Saturday night."

"You mean," I said quietly, "the car you pushed off the cliff last Saturday night."

Michael's head didn't move. I looked at him, but I couldn't quite read his expression.

But I could hear the resignation in his voice.

"You know," he said. It was a statement, not a question. "I thought you might."

"After today, you mean?" I reached down and undid my seatbelt. "When you nearly killed me?"

"I'm so sorry." He lowered his head, and finally, I could see his eyes. They were filled with tears. "Suze, I don't know how I'll ever - "

"There was no seminar on extraterrestrial life at that institute, was there?" I glared at him. "Last Saturday night, I mean. You came out here, and you loosened the bolts on that guardrail. Then you sat and waited for them. You knew they'd come here after the dance. You knew they'd come, and you waited. And when you heard that stupid horn, you rammed them. You pushed them over the side of that cliff. And you did it in cold blood."

Michael did something surprising then. He reached out and touched my hair where it curled out from beneath the knit watch cap I was wearing.

"I knew you'd understand," he said. "From the moment I saw you, I knew you, out of all of them, were the only one who'd understand."

I seriously wanted to throw up. I mean it. He didn't get it. He so didn't get it. I mean, hadn't he thought about his mother at all? His poor mother, who had been so excited because a girl had called him? His mother, who already had one kid in the hospital? Hadn't he thought how his mother was going to feel when it came out that her only son was a murderer? Hadn't he thought about that at all?

Maybe he had. Maybe he had, and he thought she'd be glad. Because he'd avenged what had happened to his sister. Well, almost, anyway. There were still a few loose ends in the form of Brad … and everyone else who'd been at that party, I suppose. I mean, why just stop at Brad? I wondered how he'd managed to secure the guest list, and if he intended to kill everyone on it or just a select few.

"How did you know, anyway?" he asked in what I suppose he meant to be this tender voice. But all it did was make me want to throw up even more. " About the guardrail, I mean? And their car horn. That wasn't in the papers."

"How did I know?" I jerked my head from his reach. "They told me."

He looked a little hurt at my pulling away from him. "They told you? Who do you mean?"

"Carrie," I said. "And Josh and Felicia and Mark. The kids you killed."

His hurt look changed. It went from confused, to startled, and then to cynical, all in a matter of seconds.

"Oh," he said with a little laugh. "Right. The ghosts. You tried to warn me about them before, didn't you? Right here, as a matter of fact."

I just looked at him. "Laugh all you want," I said. "But the fact is, Michael, they've been wanting to kill you for a while now. And after the stunt you pulled today with the Rambler, I am seriously thinking about letting them."

He stopped laughing. "Suze," he said. "Your strange fixation with the spirit world aside, I told you: today was an accident. You weren't supposed to be in that car. You were supposed to ride home with me. Brad was the one. Brad was the one I wanted dead, not you."

"And what about David?" I demanded. "My little brother? He's twelve years old, Michael. He was in that car. Did you want him dead, too? And Jake? He was probably delivering pizzas the night your sister was hurt. Should he die for what happened to her? Or my friend Gina? I guess she deserves to die, too, even though she's never even been to a party in the Valley."

Michael's face was white against the bits of sky I could see through the window behind his head.

"I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt," he said, in an oddly toneless voice. "Anybody except for the guilty, I mean."

"Well, you didn't do a very good job," I said. "In fact, you did a lousy job. You really messed up. And do you know why?"

I saw his eyelids, behind his glasses, narrow.

"I think I'm starting to," he said.

"Because you tried to kill some people I happen to care about." I swallowed. Something hard, that hurt, was growing in my throat. "And that's why, Michael, it's going to stop. Right here. Right now."

He continued to stare at me though those narrowed eyelids.

"Oh," he said in the same expressionless voice. "It's going to stop, all right. Believe me."

I knew what he was driving at. I almost laughed. If it hadn't been for the painful lump in my throat, I would have.

"Michael," I said. "Don't even try. You so don't know who you're messing with."

"No," Michael said quietly. "I guess I don't, do I? I thought you were different. I thought you, out of everyone at school, would be able to see things from my point of view. But I can see now that you're just like everybody else."

"You don't have any idea," I said, "how much I wish I were."

"I'm sorry, Suze," Michael said, undoing his own seatbelt. "I really thought you and I could be … well, friends, anyway. But I am getting the distinct impression that you don't approve of what I've been doing. Even though no one - no one - will miss those people. They really were wastes of space, Suze. They had nothing meaningful to contribute. I mean, look at Brad. Would it be such a tragedy if he simply ceased to exist?"

"It would," I said, "to his father."

Michael shrugged. "I suppose. Still, I think the world would be a better place without all the Josh Saunderses and Brad Ackermans." He smiled at me. There was nothing, however, warm in that smile. "You, however, disagree, I can see. It even sounds to me as if you're contemplating trying to stop me. And I really can't have that."

"So what are you going to do?" I gave him a very sarcastic look. "Kill me?"

"I don't want to," he said. "Believe me."

Then he cracked his knuckles. Can I just tell you, I found this quite creepy. I mean, aside from the fact that cracking your knuckles in front of somebody is creepy, anyway, this was especially disturbing since it drew attention to the fact that Michael's hands were actually quite large, and were attached to these arms that I remembered from the beach were remarkably muscular, and filled with ropy sinews. I'm not exactly a delicate flower, but hands attached to a pair of arms like that could do a girl like me some serious damage.

"But I guess," Michael said, "you haven't left me with much choice, have you?"

Oh, sure. Blame the victim, why don't you?

I don't know if I said the words aloud, or simply thought them. I only know I went, "Now would be a good time for Josh and his friends to show up," and that a second later Josh Saunders, Carrie Whitman, Mark Pulsford, and Felicia Bruce all appeared, standing in the gravel by the passenger side door of Michael's rental car.

They stood there blinking for a second, as if unsure what had happened. Then they looked beyond me, at the boy behind the steering wheel.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

CHAPTER 18

Was it what I intended to happen all along?

I don't know. Certainly there'd been a moment in Dopey's room when I'd been seized by a kind of rage. It was rage, not bicycle pedals, that had propelled me down into the Valley, and rage that had prompted me to put that quarter into that pay phone and call Michael.

Some of that rage, however, dissipated when I spoke to Michael's mother. Yes, he was a murderer. Yes, he'd tried to kill me and a number of people I cared about.

But he had a mother. A mother who loved him enough to be excited because a girl was calling him, maybe for the first time in his life.

Still, I got into that car with him. I told him to drive to the Point, even though I knew what was there waiting for him. And I got him to admit it. All of it. Out loud.

And then I called them. There was no doubt about that. I called the RLS Angels. And when they showed up, all I did was calmly get out of the car.

That's right. I got out of the way. And I let them do what they'd been wanting to do for so long … since the night of their deaths, actually.

Look, I'm not proud of it. And I can't say that I stood there and watched it with any relish. When the seatbelt Michael had removed suddenly wrapped around his throat, and his adjustable car seat started creeping inexorably toward the steering wheel, crushing his legs, I didn't feel good about it.

The Angels sure seemed to, however.

And they probably should have. Their telekinetic powers, I could see, had come a long way. They weren't messing around with any seaweed ropes or mardi gras decorations now. The force of their combined power was strong enough to have flicked on the rental car's lights and windshield wipers. Through the rolled up windows, I could hear the radio blare to life. Britney Spears was bemoaning her latest heartache as Michael Meducci clawed at the seatbelt around his neck. The car had begun to rock and was lit eerily from inside, almost as if the dashboard lights were halogens that someone had set on bright.

And all the while, the RLS Angels stood there in eerie silence, their hands stretched out toward the car, and their gazes fixed on Michael. I mean, even for ghosts they looked spooky, glowing in that unearthly way, the girls in their long dresses and wrist corsages, and the boys in their tuxes. I shuddered, watching them, and it wasn't just from the cold breeze coming off the ocean, either.

I hate to say it, but it was Britney that broke the spell for me. I mean, she's likable enough, but to have to die while listening to her? I don't know. It just seemed a bit harsh, somehow.

And then there was poor Mrs. Meducci. She had already lost one child - well, more or less. Could I really just stand there and watch her lose another?

Minutes - maybe even seconds - before, the answer to that question might have been yes. But when it came down to it, I just couldn't. I couldn't, in spite of what Michael had done. I simply had too many years of mediation behind me. Too many years, and too many deaths. I couldn't stand there and allow yet another one to occur right before my eyes.

Michael's face was contorted and purple, his glasses askew, when I finally shouted, "Stop!"

Instantly, the car stopped rocking. The windshield wipers stilled. Britney's voice was cut off mid-note, and Michael's car seat started sliding slowly back. The seatbelt loosened around his neck enough to allow him to gasp for air. He collapsed against the back of the seat, looking confused and frightened, his chest heaving.

Josh blinked at me like someone newly wakened from a trance. "What?" he said, sounding annoyed.

I said, "I'm sorry. But I can't let you do this."

Josh and the others exchanged glances. Mark was the first to speak. He gave a little laugh and went, "Oh, right."

Then the radio blared to life again, and suddenly, the car was rocking on its shocks.

I reacted swiftly and decisively by hammering a fist into Mark Pulsford's gut. This threw off the Angels' concentration enough so that Michael was able to scrape open the driver's side door and throw himself out of the car before anything else could start strangling him. He lay in the gravel, moaning.

Mark, on the other hand, recovered all too quickly from my assault.

"You bitch," he said, looking mightily offended. "What gives?"

"Yeah." Josh was clearly livid. His blue eyes were like shards of ice as they glinted at me. "First you say we can't kill him. Then you say we can. Then you say we can't. Well, guess what? We're tired of this mediation crap. We're killing him, and that's the end of it."

That was when the car started rocking with enough energy that it looked as if it was going to flip over, right on top of Michael.

"No!" I cried. "Look, I was wrong, all right? I mean, he tried to kill me, too, and I'll admit, I went a little wacko. But believe me, this isn't the way - "

"Speak for yourself," Josh said.

And a second later, I was flying backward through the air, blown off my feet by a blast of energy so strong, I was convinced Michael's car had blown up.

It wasn't until I landed hard in the dirt on the far side of the parking area that I realized it hadn't been the car exploding at all. It had merely been the combined force of the Angels' psychic power, thrown casually my way. I had been tossed aside as easily as an ant flicked off a picnic table.

I guess that's when I knew I was in some real trouble. I had, I realized, unleashed a monster. Or four of them, I should say.

I was struggling to get back up to my feet when Jesse materialized beside me, looking almost as angry as Josh.

"Nombre de Dios," I heard him breathe as he took in the sight before him. Then he looked down at me. "What is happening here?" he demanded, holding out a hand to help me up. "I turn around for one second, and they are gone. Did you call them?"

Flinching - and not from pain - I took his hand, and let him pull me up.

"Yes," I admitted, brushing myself off. "But I didn't … well, I didn't mean for this to happen."

Jesse looked at Michael, who was crawling across the parking lot, trying to get away from his gyrating car.

"Nombre de Dios, Susannah," Jesse said again, incredulously. "What did you expect to happen? You bring that boy here, of all places? And now you ask them not to kill him?" Shaking his head, Jesse started striding toward the Angels.

"You don't understand," I protested, trotting after him. "He tried to kill me. And Doc and Gina and Dopey and - "

"So you do this? Susannah, don't you know by now that you are not a killer?" Jesse's dark-eyed gaze bored into me. "Kindly don't try to act like one. The only person who will end up getting hurt by it is you."

I was so taken aback by the rebuke in his tone, tears filled my eyes. I mean it. Actual tears. Furious. That's what I told myself. I was crying because I was furious with him. Not because he'd hurt my feelings. Not at all.

But Jesse didn't notice my fury. He'd turned his back on me, and now he strode up to the Angels. A second later, the car stopped rocking, the windshield wipers and radio stilled, and the lights went dead. The Angels were strong, it was true. But Jesse had been dead a lot longer than they had.

"Get back to the beach," Jesse said to them.

Josh actually laughed out loud.

"You're kidding me, right?" he said.

"I am not kidding you," Jesse said.

"No way," Mark Pulsford said.

"Yeah." Carrie pointed at me. "I mean, she called us. She said it was all right."

Jesse did not turn his head in the direction Carrie was pointing. It was pretty clear he was disgusted with me.

"Now she says it is not," Jesse informed them. "You will do as she says."

"Don't you get it?" Josh's eyes were flashing again, flashing with the psychic energy he was so filled with. "He killed us. He killed us."

"And he will be punished for it," Jesse said evenly. "But not by you."

"By who, then?" Josh demanded.

"By," Jesse said, "the law."

"Bullshit!" Josh exploded. "That is bullshit, man! We've been waiting all day for the law! The old man said that was what was going to happen, but I don't see this kid being taken away by any boys in blue. Do you? I don't think it's going to happen. So let us teach him a lesson our way."

Jesse shook his head. It was a dangerous move with four angry, out-of-control young ghosts bearing down on him. But he did it anyway.

I took a step closer to Jesse as I saw the RLS Angels shimmer with rage. I stood on tiptoe so he could hear me when I whispered, "I'll take the girls. You take the boys."

"No." Jesse's expression was grim. "Leave, Susannah. While they are occupied with me, run for the road and flag down the next automobile you see. Then go with them to safety."

Uh, yeah. Right.

"And leave you to deal with them alone?" I glared at him. "What are you, nuts?"

"Susannah," he hissed. "You don't understand. They'll kill you - "

I laughed. I actually laughed, all my anger with him gone.

Jesse was right. I didn't understand.

"Let them try," I said.

That's when they rushed us.

I guess the Angels must have agreed upon an arrangement amongst themselves that was similar to the one I'd tried to make with Jesse, since the girls came at me and both boys went for Jesse. I wasn't too dismayed. I mean, two on one is kind of unfair, but, except for the whole telekinetic power thing, I felt we were pretty even. Carrie and Felicia hadn't been fighters when they'd been alive - that much was clear from the very first moment they tackled me - so they didn't have a real solid idea of where it was best to apply a fist in order to cause the most pain.

At least, that's what I thought before they started hitting me. The thing I hadn't counted on was the fact that these girls - and their boyfriends, too - were really, really mad.

And if you think about it, they had a right to be. Okay, maybe they had been jerks when they'd been alive - they didn't exactly strike me as the kind of people I'd want to hang out with, with their obsession with partying and their elitist attitudes - but they'd been young. They would likely have grown into, if not thoughtful, then at least productive citizens.

Michael Meducci had put a stop to that, though. And they were spitting mad about it.

I guess you could argue that their own behavior hadn't exactly been above reproach. I mean, they had thrown that party where Lila Meducci had been so seriously hurt, due not only to her own stupidity, but also their - and their parents' - negligence.

But that didn't seem to occur to them. No, as far as the RLS Angels were concerned, they'd been cheated. Cheated from their lives. And somebody was going to have to pay for that.

That someone was Michael Meducci. And anyone who tried to stand in the way of their achieving that goal.

Their wrath was exquisite. Really. I don't think I've ever been as completely, one hundred percent angry as those ghosts were. Oh, I've been mad, sure. But never that mad, and never for that long.

The RLS Angels were furious. And they took that fury out on Jesse and me.

I didn't even see the first blow. It spun me around the way that semi truck had spun the Rambler. I felt my lip split. Blood flew out in a fountain from my face. Some of it landed on the girls' evening gowns.

They didn't even notice. They just hit me again.

I don't want you to think I didn't hit back. I did. I was good. Really good.

Just not good enough. I had to reassess my whole theory on that two-on-one thing. It wasn't fair. Felicia Bruce and Carrie Whitman were killing me.

And there wasn't a blessed thing I could do about it.

I couldn't even look over to see if Jesse was bearing up any better than I was. Every time I turned my head, it seemed, another fist connected with it. Soon I couldn't see at all. My eyes had filled up with blood, which appeared to be streaming from a cut in my forehead. Either that or some blood vessels in my eyes had burst from the force of some of those blows. I hoped Jesse, at least, would be all right. It wasn't like he could die, or anything. Not like I could. The one thing that kept going through my head was, Well, if they kill me, then I'll finally know where everybody goes. Once a mediator has sent them packing, I mean.

At one point during Felicia and Carrie's assault, I tripped over something - something that was warm and somewhat soft. I wasn't sure what it was - I couldn't see it, of course - until it moaned my name.

"Suze," it said.

At first I didn't recognize the voice. Then I realized Michael's throat must have been crushed by that seatbelt. All he could do was croak.

"Suze," he wheezed. "What's happening?"

The terror in his voice, I thought, showed that he was probably as frightened now as Josh, Carrie, Mark, and Felicia had been when he'd rammed their car and sent them plummeting to their deaths. It served him right, I thought, in some distant part of my mind that wasn't concentrating on trying to escape the blows that were raining down on me.

"Suze," Michael moaned, beneath me. "Make it stop."

As if I could. As if I had anything like control over what was happening to me. If I lived through this - which didn't seem likely - some big changes were going to be made. First and foremost, I was going to practice my kick-boxing a lot more faithfully.

And then something happened. I can't tell you what it was because, like I said, I couldn't see.

But I could hear. And what I heard was perhaps the sweetest sound I'd ever heard in my life.

It was a siren. Police or firetruck, ambulance or paramedic, I couldn't tell. But it was coming closer, and closer, and closer still, until suddenly, I could hear the vehicle's tires crunching on the gravel in front of me. The blows that had been raining down on me abruptly ceased, and I sagged against Michael, who was pushing at me feebly, saying, "The cops. Get off me. It's the cops. I gotta go."

A second later, hands were touching me. Warm hands. Not ghost hands. Human hands.

Then a man's voice was saying, "Don't worry, miss. We've got you. We've got you. Can you stand up?"

I could, but standing caused waves of pain to go shooting through me. I recognized that pain. It was the kind of pain that was so intense, it seemed ridiculous … so ridiculous, I started to giggle. Really. Because it was just funny that anything could hurt that much. It meant, pain like that, that something, somewhere, was broken.

Then something soft was pressed beneath me, and I was told to lie down. More pain - burning, searing pain that left me chuckling weakly. More hands touched me.

Then I heard a familiar voice calling my name as if from somewhere very far away.

"Susannah. Susannah, it's me, Father Dominic. Can you hear me, Susannah?"

I opened my eyes. Someone had wiped the blood from them. I could see again.

I was lying on an ambulance gurney. Red and white lights were flashing all around me. Two emergency medical technicians were messing with the wound in my scalp.

But that wasn't what hurt. My chest. Ribs. I'd cracked a few. I could tell.

Father Dominic's face loomed over my gurney. I tried to smile - tried to speak - but I couldn't. My lip was too sore to move it.

"Gina called me," Father Dominic said, I suppose in answer to the questioning look I'd given him. "She told me you were going to meet Michael. I guessed - after she told me what you'd said about the accident today - that this was where you'd bring him. Oh, Susannah, how I wish you hadn't."

"Yeah," one of the EMTs said. "Looks like he worked her over pretty good."

"Hey." His partner was grinning. "Who you kidding? She gave as good as she got. Kid's a mess."

Michael. They were talking about Michael. Who else could they be talking about? None of them - except Father Dominic - could see Jesse, or the RLS Angels. They could see only the two of us, Michael and me, both beaten, apparently, almost to death. Of course they assumed we'd done it to each other. Who else was there to blame?

Jesse. Reminded of him, my heart began to hammer in my broken chest. Where was Jesse? I lifted my head, looking around for him frantically in what had become a sea of uniformed police officers. Was Jesse all right?

Father Dominic misread my panic. He said, soothingly, "Michael's going to be all right. A severely bruised larynx, and some cuts and bruises. That's all."

"Hey." The EMT straightened. They were getting ready to load me into the ambulance. "Don't sell yourself short, kid." He was talking to me. "You got him real good. He won't be forgetting this little escapade for a long time to come, believe me."

"Not with all the time he's going to be spending behind bars for this," his partner said with a wink.

And sure enough, as they lifted me into the ambulance, I could see that Michael was sitting not, as I'd expected, in an ambulance of his own, but in the back of a squad car. His hands appeared to be cuffed behind his back. His throat may have been hurting him, but he was speaking. He was speaking rapidly and, if the expression on his face was any indication, urgently to a man in a suit I could only assume was a police detective of some kind. Occasionally, the man in the suit jotted something down on a clipboard in front of him.

"See?" The first EMT grinned down at me. "Singing like a canary. You're not going to have to worry about running into him in school on Monday. Not for a real long time."

Was Michael confessing? I wondered. And if so, what about? About the Angels? About what he'd done to the Rambler?

Or was he merely explaining to the detective what had happened to him? That he'd been attacked by some unseen, unmanageable force - the same force that had broken my ribs, split open my head, and busted my lip?

The detective didn't look as if anything Michael was telling him was all that extraordinary. But I happen to know from experience that this is the way detectives always look.

Just as they were closing the ambulance doors, Father Dominic cried, "Don't worry, Susannah. I'll tell your mother where to find you."

Can I just tell you that if this was supposed to comfort me, it totally didn't.

But right after that the morphine kicked in. And I found that, happily, I didn't care anymore.

CHAPTER 19

"This," Gina said, "is so not how I pictured spending my spring break."

"Hey." I looked up from the copy of Cosmo she'd brought me. "I said I was sorry. What more do you want?"

Gina seemed surprised by the vehemence in my tone.

"I'm not saying I haven't had fun," she said. "I'm just saying it's not how I pictured it."

"Oh, right." I tossed the magazine aside. "Yeah, it's been real fun, visiting me in the hospital."

I couldn't talk very fast with the stitches in my lip. Nor could I enunciate too well, either. I had no idea how I looked - my mother had instructed everyone, including the hospital staff, not to allow me access to mirrors, which of course led me to believe that I looked hideous; it had probably been a wise move, however, considering how I get when all I've got is a zit. Still, one thing for sure, I certainly sounded stupid.

"It's just for a few more hours," Gina said. "Until they get the results of your second MRI. If it comes out normal, you're free to go. And you and I can hit the beach again. And this time" - she glanced at the door to my private room to make sure it was all the way closed and no one could overhear her - "there won't be any pesky ghosts to ruin everything."

Well, that much was true, anyway. Michael's arrest, while anticlimactic, had nevertheless satisfied the Angels. They probably would have preferred to see him dead, but once Father Dominic convinced them of how miserable a sensitive boy like Michael was going to find the California penal system, they snapped right out of their murderous rage. They even asked Father Dominic to tell Jesse and me that they were sorry about the whole beating us into a bloody pulp thing.

I, for one, was not exactly ready to forgive them, even after Father D had assured me that the Angels had moved on to their afterlife destinations - whatever those might be - and would be troubling me no more.

Jesse's opinion on the matter I did not know. He had not deigned to grace either Father Dom or me with his presence since the night the Angels had attacked us. He was, I feared, extremely upset with me. Seeing as how the whole thing had been my fault, I didn't exactly blame him. Still, I wished he'd stop by, if only to yell at me some more. I missed him. More, I knew, than was probably healthy.

Damn that Madame Zara, anyway, for being right.

"You should hear what everyone at school is saying about you," Gina said. She was perched on the end of my hospital bed, already clad in her bikini, over which she'd thrown a leopard print baby doll dress. She wanted to waste as little time as possible when we finally got to the beach.

"Oh, yeah?" I tried to drag my thoughts from Jesse. It wasn't easy. "What are they saying?"

"Well, your friend Cee Cee's writing this story about you in the school paper … you know, the whole amateur sleuth angle of it all, how you caught on that it was Michael who'd committed all these heinous crimes and set out to trap him - "

"Something," I said drily, "that I'm sure she heard from you."

Gina looked innocent. "I don't know what you're talking about. Adam sent you those" - Gina pointed at an enormous bouquet of pink roses on the window sill - "and Mr. Walden, according to Jake, is taking up a collection to get you a complete set of Nancy Drew books. He apparently thinks you have a crime-solving fixation."

Mr. Walden was right about that. But my fixation wasn't on solving crimes.

"Oh, and your stepdad's thinking about buying a Mustang to replace the Rambler," Gina informed me.

I made a face, then regretted it. It was hard to make expressions of any kind with my sore lip, not to mention the stitches in my scalp.

"A Mustang?" I shook my head. "How are we all supposed to fit into a Mustang?"

"Not for you guys. For himself. He's giving you guys the Land Rover."

Well, that, at least, made sense.

"What about …" I wanted to ask her about Jesse. After all, she was sharing a room with him - alone, thanks to my being held overnight in the hospital for observation. The thing is, she didn't know it. About Jesse, I mean. I still hadn't told her about him.

And now, well, there didn't seem to be any reason to. Not now that he wasn't speaking to me anymore.

"What about Michael?" I asked instead. None of my other visitors - my mother and stepfather; Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc; Cee Cee and Adam; even Father Dom - would tell me anything about him. The doctors had advised them that the topic might be "too painful" for me to discuss.

As if. You want to know what's painful? I'll tell you what's painful. Having two broken ribs, and knowing that for weeks, you're going to have wear a one-piece to the beach in order to hide the black and blue marks.

"Michael?" Gina shrugged. "Well, you were right. What you said about him keeping stuff on his computer. The police got a warrant and confiscated his PC, and it was all there - journals, emails, the schematics of the Rambler's brake system. Plus they found the wrench he used. You know, on the bolts that held the guardrail in place? They matched the metal tracings. And the clippers he used to snip the Rambler's brake line. They got brake fluid off the blades. The boy didn't do such a good job cleaning up after himself, it appears."

I'll say.

He was arrested on four counts of first-degree murder - the RLS Angels - and six counts of attempted murder: five for those of us who'd been in the Rambler the afternoon the brakes had given out, and one for what the police were convinced Michael had done to me out at the Point.

I didn't correct them. I mean, it wasn't like I was about to sit there and go, "Uh, yeah, about my injuries? Yeah, Michael didn't inflict them. No, the ghosts of his victims did that because I wouldn't let them kill him."

I figured it was just as well to let them go on thinking it was Michael who was responsible for my broken ribs and the fourteen stitches in my scalp … not to mention the two in my lip. I mean, after all, he'd been going to kill me. The Angels had just interrupted him. If you thought about it, they'd actually saved my life.

Yeah. So they could kill me themselves.

"So listen," Gina was saying. "Your grounding - you know, for sneaking out and getting into a car with Michael when your mother had told you expressly not to - isn't supposed to start until after I leave. I say we spend the next four days at the beach. I mean, there's no way you're going to school. Not with broken ribs. You wouldn't be able to sit down. But you can certainly lie down, you know, on a towel. I should be able to talk your mom into letting you do that, at least."

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"Ex," Gina said. She apparently meant excellent, only she'd shortened it - much in the way Sleepy often shortened words because he was too lazy to say all the syllables. Thus pizza became " 'za," Gina became "G." She had, I realized, more in common with Sleepy than I'd ever guessed.

"I'm going to get a Diet Coke," she said, climbing down from my bed - careful not to jostle the mattress since the nurse had already come in twice and warned her not to. Like I hadn't consumed enough Tylenol with codeine to block out the pain. Somebody could have dropped a safe on my head and I probably wouldn't have felt it.

"You want?" Gina asked, pausing by the door.

"Sure," I said. "Just make sure - "

"Yeah, yeah," she said over her shoulder as the door swung slowly shut behind her. "I'll find a straw somewhere."

Alone in my room, I adjusted the pillows behind me carefully, and then sat there, staring at nothing. People who are on as many painkillers as I was tend to do that a lot.

But I wasn't thinking about nothing. I was thinking, actually, about what Father Dominic had told me when he'd visited a few hours ago. In what could only be the cruelest of ironies, the morning after Michael's arrest, his sister, Lila Meducci, had wakened from her coma.

Oh, it wasn't like she'd sat up and asked for a bowl of Cheerios, or anything. She was still severely messed up. According to Father D, it was going to take her months, even years, of rehabilitation to get her back to the way she'd been before the accident - if ever. It would be a long, long time before she'd be able to walk, talk, even eat on her own again like she used to.

But she was alive. She was alive and she was conscious. It wasn't much of a consolation prize for poor Mrs. Meducci, but it was something.

It was as I was reflecting over the vagaries of life that I heard a rustle. I turned my head just in time to catch Jesse trying to dematerialize.

"Oh, no, you don't," I said, sitting up - and jolting my ribs quite painfully, I'd like to add. "You come back here right now."

He came back, a sheepish expression on his face.

"I thought you were asleep," he said. "So I decided to come back later."

"Baloney," I said. "You saw I was awake, so you decided to come back later when you were sure I was asleep." I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I'd caught him trying to do. This hurt, I discovered, way more than my ribs. "What, you're only going to visit me when I'm unconscious now? Is that it?"

"You've been through an ordeal," Jesse said. He looked more uncomfortable than I'd ever seen him. "Your mother - back at the house - I heard her tell everyone they weren't to do anything to upset you."

"Seeing you won't upset me," I said.

I was hurt. I really was. I mean, I'd known Jesse was mad at me for what I'd done - you know, that whole tricking-Michael-into-coming-out-to-the-Point-so-the-RLS-Angels-could-kill-him thing - but not even to want to talk to me anymore....

Well, that was harsh.

The hurt I felt must have shown in my face since when Jesse spoke, it was in the gentlest voice I'd ever heard him use.

"Susannah," he said. "I - "

"No," I interrupted him. "Let me go first. Jesse, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that whole thing last night. It was all my fault. I can't believe I did it. And I'll never, ever forgive myself for dragging you into it."

"Susannah - "

"I am the worst mediator," I went on. Once I had the ball rolling, I found it was hard to stop it. "The worst one that ever lived. I should be thrown out of the mediator organization. Seriously. I can't believe I actually did something that stupid. And I wouldn't blame you if you never spoke to me again. Only - " I looked up at him, aware that there were tears in my eyes. Only this time, I wasn't ashamed to let him see them. "It's just that you've got to understand: he tried to kill my family. And I couldn't let him get away with that. Can you understand that?"

Jesse did something then that he'd never done before. I doubt he'll ever do it again, either.

And it happened so fast, I wasn't even sure afterward if it had really happened, or if, in my drugged-out state, I imagined it.

But I'm pretty sure he reached out and touched my cheek.

That's all. Sorry if I got your hopes up. He just touched my cheek, the only part of me, I imagine, that wasn't scraped, bruised, or broken.

But I didn't care. He'd touched my cheek. Grazed it, actually, with the backs of his fingers, not the tips. Then he dropped his hand.

"Yes, querida," he said. "I understand."

My heart started beating so fast, I was certain he could hear it. Plus, I probably don't need to tell you, my ribs really, really ached. Each pulse seemed to send my heart slamming into them.

"And the only reason I got so angry was because I didn't want to see this happen to you."

On the word this, he gestured toward my face. I must, I realized, have looked pretty bad.

But I didn't care. He'd touched my cheek. His touch had been gentle, and, for a ghost, warm.

Am I pathetic, or what, that a simple gesture like that could make me so head-over-heels happy?

I said, idiotically, "I'll be all right. I won't even need any plastic surgery, they said."

As if a guy born in 1830 even knows what plastic surgery is. God, can I spoil a mood, or what?

Still, Jesse didn't exactly draw away. He stood there looking down at me like he wanted to say more. I was perfectly willing to let him, too. Especially if he called me querida again.

Only it turned out he didn't call me anything. Because at that moment Gina came bursting back into the room clutching two cans of soda in her hands.

"Guess what?" she said as Jesse shimmered, and then, with a smile to me, disappeared. "I ran into your mom in the hallway, and she said to tell you your second MRI came out normal, and you can start getting ready to go home. She's having all the paperwork done right now. Isn't that great?"

I grinned at her, even though doing so hurt my split lip.

"Great," I said.

Gina looked at me curiously. "What are you so happy about?" she wanted to know.

I continued to grin at her. "You just said I get to go home."

"Yeah, but you looked happy before I said that." Gina narrowed her eyes at me. "Suze. What gives? What's going on?"

"Oh," I said, still smiling. "Nothing."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JENNY CARROLL has lived in Indiana, California, and France, and has worked as an assistant dorm manager at a large urban university, an illustrator, and a writer of historical romance novels (under a pseudonym). In addition to The Mediator, she is the author of the series 1-800-Where-R-You and, under the name of Meg Cabot, The Princess Diaries, now a major motion picture from Walt Disney Co. She currently resides in New York City with her husband and a one-eyed cat named Henrietta. Be sure to visit Jenny at her Web site, www.jennycarroll.com