Twilight

Twilight

By Meg Cabot

It had been a typical Saturday morning in Brooklyn. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to make me suspect it was the day my life was going to change forever. Nothing at all.

I'd gotten up early to watch cartoons. I didn't mind getting up early if it meant I'd get to spend a few hours with Bugs and his friends. It was getting up early for school that I resented. Even back then, I hadn't been too fond of school. My dad had to tickle my feet on weekdays to get me out of bed.

Not on Saturdays, though.

I think my dad felt the same. About Saturdays, I mean. He was always the first one out of bed in our apartment, but he got up extra early on Saturdays, and instead of oatmeal with brown sugar, which he made me for breakfast on weekdays, he made French toast. My mom, who'd never been able to stomach the smell of maple syrup, always stayed in bed until our breakfast plates had been rinsed and put in the dishwasher, and all of the counters were wiped down, and the smell was gone.

That Saturday - the one right after I turned six - my dad and I had cleaned up the syrupy dishes and counters, and then I'd returned to cartoons. I can't remember which one I'd been watching when my dad strode in to tell me good-bye, but it had been a good enough one that I'd wished he'd hurry up and leave already.

"I'm going running," he'd said, planting a kiss on the top of my head. "See ya, Suze."

"Bye," I'd said. I don't think I even bothered to look at him. I knew what he looked like. A big tall guy with a lot of thick dark hair that had gone white in some places. That day, he'd been wearing gray jogging pants and a T-shirt that read HOMEPORT, MENEMSHA, FRESH SEAFOOD ALL YEAR ROUND, left over from our last trip to Martha's Vineyard.

Neither of us had known then they'd be the last clothes anyone would ever see him in.

"Sure you don't want to come to the park with me?" he'd asked.

"Da-ad," I'd said, appalled at the thought of missing a minute of cartoons. "No."

"Suit yourself," he'd said. "Tell your mom there's fresh-squeezed orange juice in the fridge."

"Okay," I said. "Bye."

And he'd left.

Would I have done anything differently, if I'd known it was the last time I'd ever see him again - alive, anyway? Of course I would have. I would have gone to the park with him. I'd have made him walk, instead of run. If I'd known he was going to have a heart attack out there on the running path and die in front of strangers, I'd have stopped him from going to the park in the first place, made him go to the doctor instead.

Only I hadn't known. How could I have known?

How could I?

Chapter one

I found the stone exactly where Mrs. Gutierrez had said it would be, beneath the drooping branches of the overgrown hibiscus in her backyard. I shut off the flashlight. Even though there was supposed to have been a full moon that night, by midnight a thick layer of clouds had blown in from the sea, and a dank mist had reduced visibility to nil.

But I didn't need light to see by anymore. I just needed to dig. I sunk my fingers into the wet soft earth and pried the stone from its resting spot. It moved easily and wasn't heavy. Soon I was feeling beneath it for the tin box Mrs. Gutierrez had assured me would be there. . . .

Except that it wasn't. There was nothing beneath my fingers except damp soil.

That's when I heard it - a twig snapping beneath the weight of someone nearby.

I froze. I was trespassing, after all; the last thing I needed was to be dragged home by the Carmel, California, cops.

Again.

Then, with my pulse beating frantically as I tried to figure out how on earth I was going to explain my way out of this one, I recognized the lean shadow - darker than all the others - standing a few feet away. My heart continued to pound in my ears, but now for an entirely different reason.

"You," I said, climbing slowly, shakily, to my feet.

"Hello, Suze." His voice, floating toward me through the mist, was deep, and not at all unsteady . . . unlike my own voice, which had an unnerving tendency to shake when he was around.

It wasn't the only part of me that shook when he was around, either.

But I was determined not to let him know that.

"Give it back," I said, holding out my hand.

He threw back his head and laughed.

"Are you nuts?" he wanted to know.

"I mean it, Paul," I said, my voice steady, but my confidence already beginning to seep away, like sand beneath my feet.

"It's two thousand dollars, Suze," he said, as if I might be unaware of that fact. "Two thousand."

"And it belongs to Julio Gutierrez." I sounded sure of myself, even if I wasn't exactly feeling that way. "Not you."

"Oh, right," Paul said, his deep voice dripping with sarcasm. "And what's Gutierrez gonna do, call the cops? He doesn't know it's missing, Suze. He never even knew it was there."

"Because his grandmother died before she had a chance to tell him," I reminded him.

"Then he won't notice, will he?" Despite the darkness, I could tell Paul was smiling. I could hear it in his voice. "You can't miss what you never knew you had."

"Mrs. Gutierrez knows." I'd dropped my hand so he wouldn't see it shaking, but I couldn't disguise the growing unsteadiness in my voice as easily. "If she finds out you stole it, she'll come after you."

"What makes you think she hasn't already?" he asked, so smoothly that the hairs on my arms stood up . . . and not because of the brisk autumn weather, either.

I didn't want to believe him. He had no reason to lie. And obviously, Mrs. Gutierrez had come to him as well as me, anxious for any help she could get. How else could he have known about the money?

Poor Mrs. Gutierrez. She had definitely put her trust the wrong mediator. Because it looked as if Paul hadn't just robbed her. Oh, no.

But like a fool, I stood there in the middle of her backyard and called her name just in case, as loudly as I dared. I didn't want to wake the grieving family inside the modest stucco home a few yards away.

"Mrs. Gutierrez?" I craned my neck, hissing the name into the darkness, trying to ignore the chill in the air . . . and in my heart. "Mrs. Gutierrez? Are you there? It's me, Suze. . . . Mrs. Gutierrez?"

I wasn't all that surprised when she didn't show. I knew, of course, that he could make the undead disappear. I just never thought he'd be low enough to do it.

I should have known better.

A cold wind kicked up from the sea as I turned to face him. It tossed some of my long dark hair around my face until the strands finally ended up sticking to my lip gloss. But I had more important things to worry about.

"It's her life savings," I said to him, not caring if he noticed the throb in my voice. "All she had to leave to her kids."

Paul shrugged, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his leather jacket.

"She should have put it in the bank, then," he said.

Maybe if I reason with him, I thought. Maybe if I explain. . . . "A lot of people don't trust banks with their money - "

But it was no use.

"Not my fault," he said with another shrug.

"You don't even need the money," I cried. "Your parents buy you whatever you want. Two thousand dollars is nothing to you, but to Mrs. Gutierrez's kids, it's a fortune!"

"She should have taken better care of it, then," was all he said.

Then, apparently seeing my expression - though I don't know how, since the clouds overhead were thicker than ever - he softened his tone.

"Suze, Suze, Suze," he said, pulling one of his hands from his jacket pocket and moving to drape his arm across my shoulders. "What am I going to do with you?"

I didn't say anything. I don't think I could have spoken if I'd tried. It was hard enough just to breathe. All I could think about was Mrs. Gutierrez, and what he'd done to her. How could someone who smelled so good - the sharp clean scent of his cologne filled my senses - or from whom such warmth radiated - especially welcome, given the chill in the air and the relative thinness of my windbreaker - be so . . .

Well, evil?

"Tell you what," Paul said. I could feel his deep voice reverberating through him as he spoke, he was holding me that close. "I'll split it with you. A grand for each of us."

I had to swallow down something - something that tasted really bad - before I could reply. "You're sick."

"Don't be that way, Suze," he chided. "You have to admit, it's fair. You can do whatever you want with your half. Mail it back to the Gutierrezes, for all I care. But if you're smart, you'll use it to buy yourself a car now that you finally got your license. You could put a down payment on a decent set of wheels with that kind of change, and not have to worry about sneaking your mom's car out of the driveway after she's fallen asleep - "

"I hate you," I snapped, twisting out from beneath his grip and ignoring the cold air that rushed in to meet the place where his body had been warming mine.

"No, you don't," he said. The moon appeared momentarily from behind the blanket of clouds overhead, just long enough for me to see that his lips were twisted into a lopsided grin. "You're just mad because you know I'm right."

I couldn't believe my ears. Was he serious? "Taking money from a dead woman is the right thing to do?"

"Obviously," he said. The moon had disappeared again, but I could tell from his voice that he was amused. "She doesn't need it anymore. You and Father Dom. You're a couple of real pushovers, you know. Now I've got a question for you. How'd you know what she was blathering about, anyway? I thought you were taking French, not Spanish."

I didn't answer him right away. That's because I was frantically trying to think of a reply that wouldn't include the word I least liked uttering in his presence, the word that, every time I heard it or even thought it, seemed to cause my heart to do somersaults over in my chest, and my veins to hum pleasantly.

Unfortunately, it was a word that didn't exactly engender the same response in Paul.

Before I could think of a lie, however, he figured it out on his own.

"Oh, right," he said, his voice suddenly toneless. "Him. Stupid of me."

Then, before I could think of something to say that would lighten the situation - or at least get his mind off Jesse, the last person in the world I wanted Paul Slater to be thinking about - he said in quite a different tone, "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm beat. I'm gonna call it a night. See you around, Simon."

He turned to go. Just like that, he turned to go.

I knew what I had to do, of course. I wasn't looking forward to it . . . in fact, my heart had pretty much slipped up into my throat, and my palms had gone suddenly, inexplicably damp.

But what choice did I have? I couldn't let him walk away with all that money. I'd tried reasoning with him, and it hadn't worked. Jesse wouldn't like it, but the truth was, there was no other alternative. If Paul wouldn't give up the money voluntarily, well, I was just going to have to take it from him.

I told myself I had a pretty good chance at succeeding, too. Paul had the box tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. I'd felt it there when he'd put his arm around me. All I had to do was distract him somehow - a good blow to the solar plexus would probably do the job - then grab the box and chuck it through the closest window. The Gutierrezes would freak, of course, at the sound of the breaking glass, but I highly doubted they'd call the cops . . . not when they found two thousand bucks scattered across the floor.

As plans went, it wasn't one of my best, but it was all I had.

I called his name.

He turned. The moon chose that moment to slip out from behind the thick veil of clouds overhead, and I could see by its pale light that Paul wore an absurdly hopeful expression. The hopefulness increased as I slowly crossed the grass between us. I suppose he thought for a minute that he'd finally broken me down. Found my weakness. Successfully lured me to the dark side.

And all for the low, low price of a thousand bucks.

Not.

The hopeful look left his face, though, the second he noticed my fist. I even thought that, just for a moment, I caught a look of hurt in his blue eyes, pale as the moonlight around us. Then the moon moved back behind the clouds, and we were once again plunged into darkness.

The next thing I knew, Paul, moving more quickly than I would have thought possible, had seized my wrists in a grip that hurt and kicked my feet out from under me. A second later, I was pinned to the wet grass by the weight of his body and his face just inches from mine.

"That was a mistake," he said, way too casually, considering the force with which I could feel his heart hammering against mine. "I'm rescinding my offer."

His breath, unlike my own, wasn't coming out in ragged gasps, though. Still, I tried to hide my fear from him.

"What offer?" I panted.

"To split the money. I'm keeping it all, now. You really hurt my feelings, you know that, Suze?"

"I'm sure," I said as sarcastically as I could. "Now get off me. These are my favorite low-riders, and you're getting grass stains on them."

But Paul wasn't ready to let me go. He also didn't appear to appreciate my feeble attempt to make a joke out of the situation. His voice, hissing down at me, was deadly serious.

"You want me to make your boyfriend disappear," he asked, "the way I did Mrs. Gutierrez?"

His body was warm against mine, so there was no other explanation for why my heart went suddenly cold as ice, except that his words terrified me to the point that my blood seemed to freeze in my veins.

I couldn't, however, let my fear show. Weakness only seems to trigger cruelty, not compassion, from people like Paul.

"We have an agreement," I said, my tongue and lips forming the words with difficulty because they, like my heart, had gone ice cold with dread.

"I promised I wouldn't kill him," Paul said. "I didn't say anything about keeping him from dying in the first place."

I blinked up at him, uncomprehending.

"What . . . what are you talking about?" I stammered.

"You figure it out," he said. He leaned down and kissed me lightly on my frozen lips. "Good night, Suze."

And then he stood up and vanished into the fog.

It took me a minute to realize I was free. Cool air rushed in to all the places where his body had been touching mine. I finally managed to roll over, feeling as if I'd just suffered a head-on collision with a brick wall. Still, I had enough strength left to call out, "Paul! Wait!"

That's when someone inside the Gutierrez household flicked on the lights. The backyard lit up bright as an airport runway. I heard a window open and someone shout, "Hey, you! What are you doing there?"

I didn't stick around to ask whether or not they planned on calling the cops. I peeled myself up from the ground and ran for the wall I'd scaled a half hour ago. I found my mom's car right where I'd left it. I hopped into it and started my long journey home, cursing a certain fellow mediator - and the grass stains on my new jeans - the whole way.

I had no idea that night how bad things were going to get between Paul and me.

But I was about to find out.

Chapter two

He'd done it. Finally. Just like, deep down, I guess I'd always known he would.

You would think, what with everything I'd been through, I'd have seen it coming. I'm not exactly new at this. And it wasn't as if all the warning signs hadn't been there.

Still, the blow, when it came, seemed to strike like a bolt out of the clear blue.

"So where are you going for dinner before the Winter Formal?" Kelly Prescott asked me in fourth period language lab. She didn't even wait to hear what my answer was. Because Kelly didn't care what my answer was. That wasn't the point of her asking me in the first place.

"Paul's taking me to the Cliffside Inn," Kelly went on. "You know the Cliffside Inn, don't you, Suze? In Big Sur?"

"Oh, sure," I said. "I know it."

That's what I said, anyway. Isn't it weird how your brain can slip into autopilot? Like, how you can be saying one thing and thinking something entirely different? Because when Kelly said that - about Paul taking her to the Cliffside Inn - the first thing I thought wasn't Oh, sure, I know it. Not even close. My first thought was more along the lines of What? Kelly Prescott? Paul Slater is taking KELLY PRESCOTT to the Winter Formal?

But that's not what I said out loud, thank God. I mean, considering that Paul himself was sitting just a few study carrels away, futzing with the sound on his tape player. The last thing in the world I wanted was for him to think I was, you know, peeved that he'd asked someone else to the formal. It was bad enough that he noticed I was even looking in his direction, let alone talking about him. He raised his eyebrows all questioningly, as if to say, "May I be of service?"

That's when I saw he still had on his headphones. He hadn't, I realized with relief, heard what Kelly had said. He'd been listening to the scintillating conversation between Dominique and Michel, our little French friends.

"It got five stars," Kelly went on, settling into her carrel. "The Cliffside Inn, I mean."

"Cool," I said, resolutely ripping my gaze from Paul's and pulling out the chair to my own carrel. "I'm sure you two will have a really great time."

"Oh, yeah," Kelly said. She flipped her honey-blonde hair back so she could slip on her headphones. "It'll be so romantic. So where're you going? To eat before the dance, I mean."

She knew, of course. She knew perfectly well.

But she was going to make me say it. Because that's how girls like Kelly are.

"I guess I'm not going to the dance," I said, sitting down at the carrel beside hers and putting on my own headphones.

Kelly looked over the partition between us, her pretty face twisted with sympathy. Fake sympathy, of course. Kelly Prescott doesn't care about me. Or anyone, except herself.

"Not going? Oh, Suze, that's terrible! Nobody asked you?"

I just smiled in response. Smiled and tried not to feel Paul's gaze boring into the back of my head.

"That's too bad," Kelly said. "And it looks like Brad's not going to be able to go, either, what with Debbie being out with mono. Hey, I've got an idea." Kelly giggled. "You and Brad should go to the dance together!"

"Funny," I said, smiling weakly as Kelly tittered at her own joke. Because, you know, there isn't anything quite as pathetic as a girl being taken to the junior-senior Winter Formal by her own stepbrother.

Except, possibly, her not being taken by anyone at all.

I turned on my tape player. Dominique immediately began to complain to Michel about her dormitoire. I'm sure Michel murmured sympathetic replies (he always does), but I didn't hear what they were.

Because it didn't make any sense. What had just happened, I mean. How could Paul be taking Kelly to the Winter Formal when, last time I'd checked, I was the one he was hounding for a date . . . any date? Not that I'd been especially thrilled about it, of course. But I did have to throw him the occasional bone, if only to keep him from doing to my boyfriend what he'd done to Mrs. Gutierrez.

Wait a minute. Was that what was going on? Paul was finally getting tired of hanging around with a girl he had to blackmail into spending time with him?

Well, good. Right? I mean, if Kelly wanted him, she could have him.

The only problem was, I was having a hard time not remembering the way Paul's body had felt as it had lain across mine that night in the Gutierrezes' yard. Because it had felt good - his weight, his warmth - despite my fear. Really good.

Right sensation . . . wrong guy.

But the right guy? Yeah, he wasn't a real pin-the-girl-to-the-grass kind of person. And warmth? He hadn't given off any in a century and a half.

Which wasn't his fault, really. The warmth thing, I mean. Jesse couldn't help being dead any more than Paul could help being . . . well, Paul.

Still, this asking-Kelly-to-the-dance-and-not-me thing . . . it was freaking me out. I'd been bracing myself for his invitation - and his reaction to my turning it down - for weeks. I'd even begun thinking I was finally getting the hang of the back-and-forth nature of our relationship . . . as if it were a tennis game at the resort where we'd met last summer.

Except that now I had a sinking feeling that Paul had just lobbed a ball into my court that I was never going to be able to hit back.

What was that all about?

The words floated before my eyes, scrawled on a piece of paper torn from a notebook, and were waved at me from over the top of the wooden partition separating my carrel from the one in front of it. I pulled the piece of paper from the fingers clutching it and wrote, Paul asked Kelly to the Winter Formal, then slid the page over the partition.

A few seconds later, the paper fluttered back down in front of me.

I thought he was going to ask you!!! my best friend, CeeCee, wrote.

I guess not, I scribbled in response.

Well, maybe it's just as well, was CeeCee's reply. You didn't want to go with him, anyway. I mean, what about Jesse?

But that was just it. What about Jesse? If Paul had asked me to the Winter Formal, and I'd responded with something less than enthusiasm to his invitation, he'd let loose one of his cryptic threats about Jesse - the newest one, in fact, about him apparently having learned of some way to keep the dead from having passed on in the first place. . . . Whatever that meant.

And yet today he'd turned around and asked someone else to go to the dance with him instead. Not just someone else, either, but Kelly Prescott, the prettiest, most popular girl in school . . . but also someone I happened to know Paul despised.

Something wasn't right about any of this . . . and it wasn't just that I was trying to save all my dances for a guy who's been dead for 150-odd years.

But I didn't mention this to CeeCee. Best friend or no, there's only so much a sixteen-year-old girl - even a sixteen-year-old albino who happens to have a psychic aunt - can understand. Yes, she knew about Jesse. But Paul? I hadn't breathed a word.

And I wanted to keep it that way.

Whatever, I scrawled. How about you? Adam ask you yet?

I looked around to make sure Sister Marie-Rose, our French teacher, wasn't watching before I slid the note back toward CeeCee, and instead spotted Father Dominic waving at me from the language lab doorway.

I removed my headphones with no real regret - Dominique's and Michel's whining would hardly have been riveting in English; in French, it was downright unbearable - and hurried to the door. I felt, rather than saw, that a certain gaze was very much on me.

I would not, however, give him the satisfaction of glancing his way.

"Susannah," Father Dominic said as I slipped out of the language lab and into one of the open breezeways that served as hallways between classrooms at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy. "I'm glad I was able to catch you before I left."

"Left?" It was only then that I noticed Father D was holding an overnight bag and wearing an extremely anxious expression. "Where are you going?"

"San Francisco." Father Dominic's face was nearly as white as his neatly trimmed hair. "I'm afraid something terrible has happened."

I raised my eyebrows. "Earthquake?"

"Not exactly." Father Dominic pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles into place at the top of his perfectly aquiline nose as he squinted down at me. "It's the monsignor. There's been an accident and he's in a coma."

I tried to look suitably upset, although the truth is, I've never really cared for the monsignor. He's always getting upset about stuff that doesn't really matter - like girls who wear miniskirts to school. But he never gets upset over stuff that's actually important, like how the hot dogs they serve at lunch are always stone-cold.

"Wow," I said. "So what happened? Car crash?"

Father Dominic cleared his throat. "Er, no. He, um, choked."

"Somebody strangled him?" I asked hopefully.

"Of course not. Really, Susannah," Father Dom chided me. "He choked on a piece of hot dog at a parish barbecue."

Whoa! Poetic justice! I didn't say so out loud, though, since I knew Father Dom wouldn't approve.

Instead, I said, "Too bad. So how long will you be gone?"

"I have no idea," Father Dom said, looking harassed. "This couldn't have happened at a worse time, either, what with the auction this weekend."

The Mission Academy is ceaseless in its fund-raising efforts. This weekend the annual antique auction would be taking place. Donations had been flooding in all week and were being stashed for safekeeping in the rectory basement. Some of the more notable items that the booster club had received included a turn-of-the-century Ouija board (courtesy of CeeCee's psychic aunt, Pru) and a silver belt buckle - estimated by the Carmel Historical Society to be more than 150 years old - discovered by my stepbrother, Brad, while he was cleaning out our attic, a task assigned to him as punishment for an act of malfeasance, the nature of which I could no longer recall.

"But I wanted to make sure you knew where I was." Father Dominic plucked a cell phone from his pocket. "You'll call me if anything, er, out of the ordinary occurs, won't you, Susannah? The number is - "

"I know the number, Father D," I reminded him. Father Dom's cell phone was new, but not that new. May I just add that it totally sucks that Father Dominic, who has never wanted - nor has the slightest idea how to use - a cell phone has one and I don't? "And by out of the ordinary, do you mean stuff like Brad getting a passing grade on his trig midterm, or more supernatural phenomena, like ectoplasmic manifestations in the basilica?"

"The latter," Father Dom said, pocketing the cell phone again. "I hope not to be gone for more than a day or two, Susannah, but I am perfectly aware that in the past it hasn't taken much longer than that for you to get yourself into mortal peril. Kindly, while I'm away, see to it that you exercise a modicum of caution in that capacity. I don't care to return home, only to find another section of the school blown to kingdom come. Oh, and if you would, make sure that Spike has enough food - "

"Nuh-uh," I said, backing away. It was the first time in a long time that my wrists and hands were free of angry red scratches, and I wanted to keep it that way. "That cat's your responsibility now, not mine."

"And what am I to do, Susannah?" Father D looked frustrated. "Ask Sister Ernestine to look in on him from time to time? There aren't even supposed to be pets in the rectory, thanks to her severe allergies. I've had to learn to sleep with the window open so that that infernal animal can come and go as it pleases without being spotted by any of the novices - "

"Fine," I interrupted him, sighing gustily. "I'll stop by PETCO after school. Anything else?"

Father Dominic pulled a crumpled list from his pocket.

"Oh," he said after skimming it. "And the Gutierrez funeral. All taken care of. And I've put the family on our neediest-case roster, as you requested."

"Thanks, Father D," I said quietly, looking away through the arched openings in the breezeway toward the fountain in the center of the courtyard. Back in Brooklyn, where I'd grown up, November meant death to all flora. Here in California - even though it's northern California - all November apparently means is that the tourists, who visit the Mission daily, wear khakis instead of Bermuda shorts, and the surfers down on Carmel Beach have to exchange their short-sleeved wetsuits for long-sleeved ones. Dazzling red and pink blossoms still fill the Mission's flower beds, and when we're released for lunch each noon, it's still possible to work up a sweat under the sun's rays.

Still, temperatures in the seventies or not, I shivered . . . and not just because I was standing in the cool shade of the breezeway. No, it was a cold that came from inside that was causing the goose bumps on my upper arms. Because, beautiful as the Mission gardens were, there was no denying that beneath those glorious petals lurked something dark and . . .

. . . well, Paul-like.

It was true. The guy had the ability to cause even the brightest day to cloud over. At least, as far as I was concerned. Whether or not Father Dominic felt the same, I didn't know . . . but I kind of doubted it. After his somewhat rocky start to the school year, Paul had ended up not having nearly as much regular contact with the school principal as I did. Which, given that all three of us are mediators, might seem a little strange.

But both Paul and Father D seem to like it that way, each preferring to keep his distance, with me as a go-between when communication is absolutely necessary. This was partly because they were - let's face it - guys. But it was also because Paul's behavior - at school, anyway - had improved considerably, and there was no reason for him to be sent to the principal's office. Paul had become a model student, making impressive grades and even getting appointed captain of the Mission Academy men's tennis team.

If I hadn't seen it for myself, I wouldn't have believed it. But there it was. Obviously, Paul preferred to keep Father D in the dark about his after-school activities, knowing that the priest was hardly likely to approve of them.

Take the Gutierrez incident, for instance. A ghost had come to us for help and Paul, instead of doing the right thing, had ended up stealing two thousand dollars from her. This was not something Father Dominic would have turned a blind eye to, had he known about it.

Only he didn't know about it. Father D, I mean. Because Paul wasn't about to tell him, and, frankly, neither was I. Because if I did - if I told Father Dominic anything that might make Paul seem less than the straight-A-getting jock he was pretending to be - what had happened to Mrs. Gutierrez was going to happen to my boyfriend.

Or, you know, the guy who would be my boyfriend. If he weren't dead.

Paul had me, all right. Right where he wanted me. Well, maybe not exactly right where he wanted me, but close enough. . . .

Which was why I'd had to resort to subterfuge in order to secure some form of justice for the Gutierrezes, who'd been robbed, even if they didn't know it. I couldn't go to the police, of course (Well, you see, officer, Mrs. Gutierrez's ghost told me the money was hidden beneath a rock in her backyard, but when I got there, I found out another mediator had taken it. . . . What's a mediator, you ask? Oh, a person who acts as a liaison between the living and the dead. Hey, wait a minute . . . what're you doing with that strait jacket?).

Instead, I'd placed the family's name on the Mission's neediest list, which had secured Mrs. Gutierrez a decent funeral and enough money for her loved ones to pay off some of her debt. Not two thousand dollars' worth, though, that was for sure. . . .

" - while I'm gone, Susannah."

I tuned in to what Father Dominic was saying to me a little too late. And I couldn't ask, What was that, Father D? Because then he'd want to know what I'd been thinking about, instead of paying attention to what he was saying.

"Do you promise, Susannah?"

Father Dominic's blue-eyed gaze bore into mine. What could I do but swallow and nod?

"Sure, Father D," I said, not having the slightest idea what I was promising.

"Well, I must say, that makes me feel better," he said, and it was true that his shoulders seemed to lose some of the rigidity with which he'd been holding them as we'd talked. "I know, of course, that I can trust the two of you. It's just that . . . well, I would hate for you to do anything - er, stupid - in my absence. Temptation is difficult enough for anyone to resist, particularly the young, who haven't fully considered the consequences of their actions."

Oh. Now I knew what he'd been talking about.

"But for you and Jesse," Father Dominic went on, "there would be especially catastrophic repercussions should the two of you happen to, er - "

" - give in to our unbridled lust for each other?" I suggested when he trailed off.

Father Dominic eyed me unhappily.

"I'm serious, Susannah," he said. "Jesse doesn't belong in this world. With any luck, he won't continue to remain here for much longer. The deeper the attachment you form for each other, the more difficult it's going to be to say goodbye. Because you will have to say good-bye to him one day, Susannah. You can't defy the natural order of - "

Blah blah blah. Father D's lips were moving, but I tuned him out again. I didn't need to hear the lecture again. So things hadn't worked out for Father Dominic and the girl-ghost he'd fallen in love with, way back in the Middle Ages. That didn't mean Jesse and I were destined to follow the same path. Especially not considering what I'd managed to pick up from Paul, who seemed to know a good deal more than Father Dom did about being a mediator. . . .

. . . Particularly the little-known fact that mediators can bring the dead back to life.

There was just one little fly in the ointment: You needed to have a body to put the wrongfully deceased's soul into. And bodies aren't something I happen to stumble across on a regular basis. At least, not ones willing to sacrifice the soul currently occupying them.

"Sure thing, Father Dom," I said as his speech petered out at last. "Listen, have a real good time in San Francisco."

Father Dominic grimaced. I guess people who are going to San Francisco to visit comatose monsignors don't necessarily get a lot of time off for touristy stuff like visiting the Golden Gate Bridge or Chinatown or whatever.

"Thank you, Susannah," he said. Then he pinned me with a meaningful stare. "Be good."

"Am I ever anything but?" I asked with some surprise.

He walked away, shaking his head, without even bothering to reply.

Chapter three

"So what were you and the good father gabbing about during lab today?" Paul wanted to know.

"Mrs. Gutierrez's funeral," I replied truthfully. Well, more or less. I've found it doesn't pay to lie to Paul. He has an uncanny ability to discover the truth on his own.

Not, of course, that it means what I tell him is the strictest truth. I just don't practice a policy of full disclosure where Paul Slater is concerned. It seems safer that way.

And it definitely seemed safer not to let Paul know that Father Dominic was in San Francisco, with no known date of return.

"You're not still upset about that, are you?" Paul asked. "The Gutierrez woman, I mean? The money's going to good use, you know."

"Oh, sure, I know," I said. "Dinner at the Cliffside Inn's got to run, what, a hundred a plate? And I assume you'll be renting a limo."

Paul smiled at me lazily from the pillows he was leaning against.

"Kelly told you?" he asked. "Already?"

"First chance she got," I said.

"Didn't take her long," he said.

"When did you ask her? Last night?"

"That's right."

"So about twelve hours," I said. "Not bad, if you consider that for about eight of them, she was probably sleeping."

"Oh, I doubt that," Paul said. "That's when they do their best work. Succubuses, I mean. I bet Kelly only needs an hour or two of shut-eye a night, tops."

"Romantic." I turned a page of the crusty old book lying between us on Paul's bed. "Calling your date for the Winter Formal a succubus, I mean."

"At least she wants to go with me," Paul said, his face expressionless - with the exception of a single dark brow, which rose, almost imperceptibly, higher than the one next to it. "A refreshing change, I must say, from the usual state of things around here."

"You hear me complaining?" I asked, turning another page. I prided myself that I was maintaining - outwardly, anyway - a supremely indifferent attitude about the whole thing. Inside, of course, it was a whole other story. Because inside, I was screaming, What's going on? Why'd you ask Kelly and not me? Not that I care about the stupid dance, but just what game do you think you're playing now, Paul Slater?

It was amazing how none of this showed, however. At least, so far as I knew.

"It's just that I'd have appreciated some advance notice that I'd been stricken from the agenda," was what I said aloud. "For all you knew, I might have already blown a fortune on a dress."

One corner of Paul's mouth flicked upward.

"You hadn't," Paul said. "And you weren't going to, either."

I looked away. It was hard to meet his gaze sometimes, it was so penetrating, so . . .

Blue.

A strong, tanned hand came down over mine, pinning my fingers to the page I'd been about to turn.

"That's the one." Paul doesn't seem to have the same problem looking into my eyes (probably because mine are green and about as penetrating as, um, algae) that I have looking into his. His gaze on my face was unwavering. "Read it."

I looked down. The book Paul had pulled out for our latest "mediator lesson" was so old, the pages had a tendency to crumble beneath my fingers as I turned them. It belonged in a museum, not a seventeen-year-old guy's bedroom.

But that was exactly where it had ended up, pulled - though I doubted Paul knew I was aware of it - from his grandfather's collection. The Book of the Dead was what it was called.

And the title wasn't the only reminder that all things have an expiration date. It smelled as if a mouse or some other small creature had gotten slammed between the pages some time in the not-so-distant past, left to slowly decompose there.

"If the 1924 translation is to be believed," I read aloud, glad my voice wasn't shaking the way I knew my fingers were - the way my fingers always shook when Paul touched me - '"the shifter's abilities didn't merely include communication with the dead and teleportation between their world and our own, but the ability to travel at will throughout the fourth dimension, as well."

I will admit, I didn't read with a lot of feeling. It wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, going to school all day, then having to go to mediation tutoring. Granted, it was only once a week, but that was more than enough, believe me. Paul's house hadn't lost any of its sterility in the months I'd been coming to it. If anything, the place was as creepy as ever . . .

. . . and so was Paul's grandfather, who continued to live what he'd described, in his own words, as a "half-life," in a room down the hall from Paul's. That half-life seemed to be made up of around-the-clock health attendants, hired to see to the old man's many ailments, and incessant viewing of the Game Show Network. It isn't any wonder, really, that Paul avoids Mr. Slater - or Dr. Slaski, as the good doctor himself had confided to me he was really named - like the plague. His grandfather isn't exactly scintillating company, even when he isn't pretending to be loopy due to his meds.

Despite my less-than-inspired performance, however, Paul released my hand and leaned back once more, looking extremely pleased with himself. "Well?" Another raised eyebrow.

"Well, what?" I flipped the page, and saw only a copy of the hieroglyph they were talking about.

The half smile Paul had been wearing vanished. His face was as expressionless as the wall behind him.

"So that's how you're going to play it," he said.

I had no idea what he was talking about. "Play what?" I asked.

"I could do it, Suze," he said. "It can't be hard to figure out. And when I do . . . well, you won't be able to accuse me of not having stuck by our agreement."

"What agreement?"

Paul set his jaw.

"Not to kill your boyfriend," he said tonelessly.

I just stared at him, genuinely taken aback. I had no idea where this was coming from. We'd been having a perfectly nice - well, okay, not nice, but ordinary - afternoon, and all of a sudden he was threatening to kill my boyfriend . . . or not to kill him, actually. What was going on?

"Wh-what are you talking about?" I stammered. "What does this have to do with Jesse? Is this . . . is this because of the dance? Paul, if you'd asked, I'd have gone with you. I don't know why you turned around and asked Kelly without even - "

The half grin came back, but this time, all Paul did was lean forward and flip the book closed. Dust rose from the ancient pages, almost right up into my face, but I didn't complain. Instead, I waited, my heart in my throat, for him to reply.

I was destined for disappointment, however, since all he said was, "Don't worry about it," then swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. "You hungry?"

"Paul." I followed him, my Stuart Weitzmans clacking loudly on the bare tile floor. "What's going on?"

"What makes you think anything's going on?" he asked as he made his way down the long, shiny hallway.

"Oh, gee, I don't know," I said, fear making me sound waspish. "That crack you made the other night about Jesse. And letting me off the hook for the Winter Formal. And now this. You're up to something."

"Am I?" Paul glanced up at me as he made his way down the spiral staircase to the kitchen. "You really think so?"

"Yes," I said. "I just haven't figured out what yet."

"Do you have any idea what you sound like right now?" Paul asked as he pulled open the Sub-Zero refrigerator and peered inside.

"No," I said. "What?"

"A jealous girlfriend."

I nearly choked. "And how are things on Planet You Wish?"

He found a can of Coke and cracked it open.

"Nice one," he said in reference to my remark. "No, really. I like that. I might even use it myself someday."

"Paul." I stared at him, my throat dry, my heart banging in my chest. "What are you up to? Seriously."

"Seriously?" He took a long swig of soda. I couldn't help noticing how tanned his throat was as I watched him swallow. "I'm hedging my bets."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," he said, closing the refrigerator door and leaning his back against it, "that I'm starting to like it around here. Strange, but true. I never thought of myself as the captain-of-the-tennis-team type. God knows, at my last school" - he took another long pull at the soda - "Well, I won't get into that. The truth is, I'm starting to get into this high school stuff. I want to go to the Winter Formal. Thing is, I figure you won't want to be around me for a while, after I . . . well, do what I plan on doing."

He'd closed the refrigerator door, so that couldn't have been what caused the sudden chill I felt all along my spine. He must have seen me shiver, since he went, with a grin, "Don't worry, Susie. You'll forgive me eventually. You'll realize, in time, that it's all for the be - "

He didn't get to finish. That's because I'd strode forward and knocked the Coke can right out of his hand. It landed with a clatter in the stainless-steel sink. Paul looked down at his empty fingers in some surprise, like he couldn't figure out where his drink had gone.

"I don't know what you're planning, but let me make one thing clear: If anything happens to him," I hissed, not much louder than the soda fizzing from the can in the sink, but with a lot more force, "anything at all, I will make you regret the day you were born. Understand?"

The look of surprise on his face twisted into one of grim annoyance.

"That wasn't part of our deal. All I said was that I wouldn't - "

"Anything," I said. "And don't call me Susie."

My heart was banging so loudly inside my chest that I didn't see how he couldn't hear it - how he couldn't see that I was more frightened than I was angry. . . .

Or maybe he did, since his lips relaxed into a smile - the same smile that had made half the girls in school fall madly in love with him.

"Don't worry, Suze," he said. "Let's just say that my plans for Jesse? They're a lot more humane than what you've got planned for me."

"I - "

Paul just shook his head. "Don't insult me by pretending like you don't know what I mean."

I didn't have to pretend. I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't get a chance to tell him that, though, because at that moment a side door opened, and we heard someone call, "Hello?"

It was Dr. Slaski, along with his attendant, back from one of their endless rounds of doctor's appointments. The attendant was the one who'd let out the greeting. Dr. Slaski - or Slater, as Paul referred to him - never said hello. At least, not when anybody but me was around.

"Hey," Paul said, going out into the living room and looking down at his wheelchair-bound grandfather. "How'd it go?"

"Just fine," the attendant said with a smile. "Didn't it, Mr. Slater?"

Paul's grandfather said nothing. His head was slumped down onto his chest, as if he were asleep.

Except that he wasn't. He was no more asleep than I was. Inside that battered and frail-looking exterior was a mind crackling with intelligence and vitality. Why he chose to hide that fact, I still don't understand. There's a lot about the Slaters that I don't understand.

"Your friend staying for dinner, Paul?" the attendant asked cheerfully.

"Yes," Paul said at the same time I said, "No."

I didn't meet his gaze as I added, "You know I can't."

This, at least, was true. Mealtime is family time at my house. Miss one of my stepfather's gourmet dinners, and you'll never hear the end of it.

"Fine," Paul said through teeth that were obviously gritted. "I'll take you home."

I didn't object. I was more than ready to go.

Our ride should have been a lot more enjoyable than it was. I mean, Carmel is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and Paul's grandfather's house is right on the ocean. The sun was setting, seeming to set the sky ablaze, and you could hear waves breaking rhythmically against the rocks below. And Paul, who isn't exactly painful to look at, doesn't drive any old hand-me-down car, either, but a silver BMW convertible that I happen to know I look extremely good in, with my dark hair, pale skin, and excellent taste in footwear.

But you could have cut the tension inside that car with a knife, nonetheless. We rode in utter silence until Paul finally pulled up in front of 99 Pine Crest Drive, the rambling Victorian house in the Carmel hills that my mother and stepfather had bought more than a year ago, but still hadn't finished refurbishing. Seeing as how it had been built at the turn of the century - the nineteenth, not the twentieth - it needed a lot of refurbishing. . . .

But no amount of recessed lighting could rid the place of its violent past, or the fact that, a few months earlier, they'd dug up my boyfriend's skeleton from the backyard. I still couldn't set foot on the deck without feeling nauseated.

I was about to get out of the car without a word when Paul reached over and put a hand on my arm.

"Suze," he said, and when I turned my head to look at him, I saw that his blue eyes looked troubled. "Listen. What would you say to a truce?"

I blinked at him. Was he kidding? He'd threatened to off my boyfriend; stole from people he'd been asked to help; and neglected to invite me to the school dance, humiliating me in front of the most popular girl in the whole school in the process. And now he wanted to kiss and make up?

"Forget it," I said as I gathered up my books.

"Come on, Suze," he said, flashing me that heart-melting smile. "You know I'm harmless. Well, basically. Besides, what could I do to your boy Jesse? He's got Father D to protect him, right?"

Not really. Not now, anyway. But Paul didn't know that. Yet.

"I'm sorry about the thing with Kelly," he said. "But you didn't want to go with me. Can you blame me for wanting to take someone who . . . well, actually likes me?"

Maybe it was the smile. Maybe it was the way he blinked those baby blues. I don't know what it was, but suddenly, I found myself softening toward him.

"What about the Gutierrezes?" I asked. "You'll give the money back?"

"Uh," Paul said. "Well, no. I can't do that."

"Paul, you can. I won't tell, I swear. . . ."

"It's not that. I can't because . . . I, er, need it."

"For what?"

Paul grinned. "You'll find out."

I threw open the car door and got out, my heels sinking deep into the pine-needle-strewn lawn.

"Good-bye, Paul," I said, and slammed the door behind me, cutting off his "No, Suze, wait!"

I turned around and headed toward the house. My stepfather, Andy, had started a fire in one of the house's many fireplaces. The rich smell of burning wood filled the crisp evening air, tinged with the scent of something else. . . .

Curry. It was tandoori chicken night. How could I have forgotten?

Behind me, I heard Paul throw the car into reverse and drive away. I didn't look back. I headed up the stairs to the front door, stepping into the squares of light thrown onto the porch from the living room windows. I opened the door and went inside, calling "I'm home!"

Except that I wasn't, really. Because home meant something else to me now, and had for quite a while.

And he didn't live there anymore.

Chapter four

The handful of pebbles I'd thrown rattled noisily against the heavy, leaded glass. I looked around, worried someone might have heard. But better for them to hear tiny rocks hitting a window than me whispering the name of someone who wasn't even supposed to be living there. . . .

Someone who, technically speaking, wasn't living at all.

He appeared almost at once, not at the window, but by my side. That's the thing about the undead. They never have to worry about the stairs. Or walls.

"Susannah." The moonlight threw Jesse's features into high relief. There were dark pools in the place where his eyes should have been, and the scar in his eyebrow - a dog bite wound from childhood - showed starkly white.

Still, even with the tricks the moon was playing, he was the best-looking thing I had ever seen. I don't think it's just the fact that I'm madly in love with him that makes me think so, either. I'd shown the miniature portrait of him I'd accidentally-on-purpose snagged from the Carmel Historical Society to CeeCee, and she'd agreed. Hottie extraordinaire was how she'd put it, to be exact.

"You don't have to bother with these," he said, reaching out to brush the remaining pebbles from my hand. "I knew you were here. I heard you calling."

Except, of course, that I hadn't. Called him. But whatever. He was here now and that's what mattered.

"What is it, Susannah?" Jesse wanted to know. He'd moved out of the shadows of the rectory, so that I could finally see his eyes. As usual, they were darkly liquid and full of intelligence . . . intelligence, and something else. Something, I like to think, that's just for me.

"Just stopped by to say hi," I said with a shrug. It was chilly enough that when I spoke, I could see my breath fog up in front of me.

This didn't happen when Jesse spoke, however. Because, of course, he has no breath.

"At three in the morning?" The dark eyebrows shot up, but he looked more amused than alarmed. "On a school night?"

He had me there, of course.

"Father D asked me to pick up some cat food," I said, brandishing a bag. "I didn't want Sister Ernestine to see me smuggling it in. She's not supposed to know about Spike."

"Cat food," Jesse said. Now he definitely looked amused. "Is that all?"

It wasn't all and he knew it. But it also wasn't what he thought. At least, not exactly.

Still, when he pulled me toward him, I didn't precisely object. Especially not considering that there's only one place in the world I feel completely safe anymore, and that's where I was just then . . . in his arms.

"You're cold, querida," he whispered into my hair. "You're shivering."

I was, but not because I was cold. Well, not only because I was cold. I closed my eyes, melting in his embrace as I always did, reveling in the feel of his strong arms around me, his hard chest beneath my cheek. I wished I could have stayed that way forever - in Jesse's arms, I mean, where nothing could ever hurt me. Because he'd never let it.

I don't know how long we stood like that in the vegetable garden behind the rectory where Father Dom lived. All I know is that eventually Jesse, who'd been stroking my hair, pulled back a little, so that he could look down into my face.

"What is it, Susannah?" he asked me again, his voice sounding strangely rough, considering the tenderness of the moment. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I lied, because I didn't want it to end . . . the moonlight, his embrace, any of it . . . all of it.

"Not nothing," he said, reaching up and pulling a strand of hair from where the wind had blown it, so that it was sticking to my lip gloss. I always seem to have that problem. "I know you, Susannah. I know there's something the matter. Come."

He took me by the hand and pulled. I went with him, even though I didn't know where we were going. I'd have followed him anywhere, even into the bowels of hell. Only of course he'd never take me there.

Unlike some people.

I did balk a little when I saw where he had led me, though. It wasn't exactly hell, but. . . .

"The car?" I stared at the hood of my mom's Honda Accord.

"You're cold," Jesse said firmly, opening the driver's side door for me. "We can talk inside."

Talking wasn't really what I'd had in mind. Still, I figured we could do what I had had in mind just as easily in the car as in the rectory's vegetable garden. And it would be a lot warmer.

Only Jesse wasn't having any of it. He seized both my hands as I tried to slip them around his neck, and placed them firmly in my lap.

"Tell me," he said from the shadows of the passenger seat, and I could tell by his voice that he was in no mood for games.

I sighed and stared out the windshield. As far as romance went, this was not exactly what I'd call a prime make-out spot. Big Sur, maybe. The Winter Formal, definitely. But the rectory parking lot at the Junipero Serra Mission? Not so much.

"What is it, querida?" He reached out to sweep back some of my hair, which had fallen over my face.

When he saw my expression, however, he pulled his hand back.

"Oh. Him," he said in an entirely different voice.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. That he'd known, I mean, without my having said anything. There was just so much I hadn't told Jesse - so much that I'd decided I didn't dare tell him. My agreement with Paul, for instance: that, in return for Paul not removing Jesse to the great beyond, I'd meet with him after school every Wednesday under the auspices of learning more about our unique skill . . . although truthfully, most of the time it seemed all Paul wanted to do was get his tongue in my mouth, not study mediator lore.

Jesse would not have been particularly enthused had he known of the lessons . . . less so, if he'd had an inkling of what they actually entailed. There was no love lost between Jesse and Paul, whose relationship had been rocky from the start. Paul seemed to think he was superior to Jesse merely because he happened to be alive and Jesse was not, while Jesse disliked Paul because he'd been born with every privilege in the world - including the ability to communicate with the dead - and yet chose to use his gifts for his own selfish purposes.

Of course, their mutual disdain for each other might also have had something to do with me.

Back before Jesse had come into my life, I used to sit around and fantasize about how great it would be to have two guys fighting over me. Now that it was actually happening, though, I realized what a fool I'd been. There was nothing funny about the grounding I'd gotten the last time the two of them had gone at it, destroying half the house in the process. And that fight hadn't even been my fault. Much.

"It's just," I said, careful not to meet his gaze because I knew if I looked into those twin dark pools I'd be lost, as usual, "Paul's been . . . worse than usual."

"Worse?" The glance Jesse shot me was stiletto sharp. "Worse in what way? Susannah, if he's laid a hand on you - "

"Not that," I interrupted quickly, realizing with a sinking heart that the speech I'd been up half the night rehearsing - the speech that I'd convinced myself was so perfect, I needed to hurry right down to the rectory to say it now, at once, even though it was the middle of the night and I'd have to "borrow" my mom's car to get there - wasn't perfect at all. . . . In fact, it was completely wrong. "What I mean is, lately, he's been threatening . . . well, to do something I don't really understand. To you."

Jesse looked amused. Which was not exactly the reaction I'd been expecting.

"So you came rushing down here," he said, "in the middle of the night to warn me? Susannah, I'm touched."

"Jesse, I'm serious," I said. "I think Paul's up to something. Remember Mrs. Gutierrez?"

"Of course." Jesse had translated the dead woman's frantic message for me because my Spanish is pretty much confined to taco and, of course, querida. "What about her?"

Quickly, I told him about having met Paul in Mrs. Gutierrez's backyard. Even though I skimmed over the bit about Paul having stolen the money before I'd been able to get my hands on it, Jesse's outrage was obvious. I saw a glint of steel in his eyes, and he said something in Spanish that I couldn't understand, but I'm guessing it wasn't complimentary to Paul's parentage.

"Father D's going to take care of it," I hastened to assure him, in case Jesse was getting any ideas about trying to take Paul on - something I'd warned him repeatedly would be foolhardy in the extreme. I didn't say that Father D was unaware of Paul's theft . . . only that the Gutierrezes were in need. I knew what Jesse would say if he found out I'd left Father Dominic in the dark about Paul's latest transgression.

I also knew, however, what Paul would do if he found out I'd narced on him.

"But that's not what I'm worried about," I added hastily. "It's something Paul said when I . . . when I tried to get him to give the money back." I thought it better to leave out the part about when I'd gone for Paul's solar plexus. Also the thing Paul had said earlier in the day, about how his plans for Jesse were more humane than my own plans for himself. Because I had a feeling now that I knew what he'd meant by that. Though he couldn't have been more wrong. "It was something about you and what he was going to do you. Not kill you - "

"That," Jesse interrupted dryly, "would be difficult, querida, given that I'm already dead."

I glared at him. "You know what I mean. He said he wasn't going to kill you. He was going to . . . I think he said he was going to keep you from having died in the first place."

Even in the darkness of the car's interior, I saw Jesse's eyebrow go up.

"He has a very high opinion of his own abilities, that one" was all he said, however.

"Jesse," I said. I couldn't believe he wasn't taking Paul's threat seriously. "He really meant it. He's said it to me a couple of times, now. I seriously think he might be up to something."

"Slater is always going to be up to something where you're concerned, Susannah," Jesse said, in a voice that suggested he was more than a little tired of the subject. "He's in love with you. Ignore him, and eventually he'll go away."

"Jesse," I said. I couldn't, of course, tell him that I'd have liked nothing better than to turn my back on Paul and his manipulative ways, but that I couldn't because I'd promised him I wouldn't . . . in return for Jesse's life. Or at least his continued presence in this dimension. "I really think - "

"Ignore him, Susannah." Jesse was smiling a little now as he shook his head. "He's only saying these things because he knows they upset you, and then you pay attention to him. 'Oh, Paul! No, don't, Paul!'"

I looked at him in horror. "Was that supposed to be an imitation of me?"

"Don't gratify him by paying attention," Jesse continued as if he hadn't heard me, "and he'll grow tired of it and move on."

"I don't sound anything like that." I chewed my lower lip uncertainly. "Do I really sound like that?"

"And now, if that's all," Jesse went on, ignoring me exactly the way he'd told me to ignore Paul, "I think you should be getting home, querida. If your mother should wake and find you gone, you know she'll worry. Besides, don't you have school in a few hours?"

"But - "

"Querida." Jesse leaned over the gearshift and slipped a hand behind my neck. "You worry too much."

"Jesse, I - "

But I didn't get to finish what I'd started to say - nor, a second later, could I even recall what I'd meant to tell him. That's because he'd pulled me - gently, but inexorably - toward him, and covered my mouth with his.

Of course, it's impossible when Jesse's lips are on mine to think about anything other than the way those lips make me feel . . . which is unbelievably cherished and desired. I don't have a whole lot of experience in the kissing department, but even I know that what happens every time Jesse kisses me is . . . well, extraordinary.

And not just because he's a ghost, either. All the guy has to do is lower his lips to mine and it's like a Fourth of July sparkler going off deep inside me, flaming brighter and brighter until I can hardly bear the white-hot heat anymore. The only thing that seems as if it might put the fire out is pressing myself closer to him. . . .

But, of course, that only makes it worse, because then Jesse - who usually seems to have a fire of his own burning somewhere - ends up touching me someplace, beneath my shirt, for instance, where, of course, I want to be touched, but where he doesn't think his fingers have any business roaming. Then the kissing ends as Jesse apologizes for insulting me, even though insulted is the last thing I feel, something I've made as clear to him as I can, to no apparent avail.

But that's what I get for falling in love with a guy who was born back when men still treated women as if they were dainty breakable figurines instead of flesh and blood. I've tried to explain to him that things are different now, but he remains stubbornly convinced that everything below the neck is off-limits until the honeymoon. . . .

Except, of course, when we're kissing, like now, and he happens, in the heat of the moment, to forget he's a nineteenth-century gentleman.

I felt his hand move along the waistband of my jeans as we kissed. Our tongues entwined, and I knew it was only a matter of time until that hand slipped beneath my sweater and up toward my bra. I uttered a giddy prayer of thanks that I'd worn the front-closing one. Then, my eyes closed, I did a little exploration of my own, running my palms along the hard wall of muscles I could feel through the cotton of his shirt . . .

. . . until Jesse's fingers, instead of dipping inside my 34 B, seized my hand in a grip of iron.

"Susannah." He was breathing hard and the word came out sounding a little ragged as he rested his forehead against mine.

"Jesse." I wasn't breathing too evenly myself.

"I think you'd better go now."

How had I known he was going to say that?

It occurred to me that we would be able to do this - kiss like this, I mean - a lot more often and more conveniently if Jesse would get over the absurd idea that he has to stay with Father Dominic, now that we are, for want of a better word, an item. It was my bedroom, after all, that he'd been murdered in, way back when. Shouldn't it be my bedroom he continues to haunt?

I didn't couch it in those terms, though, since I knew Jesse, who's an old-fashioned guy, doesn't exactly approve of couples living together before wedlock. I also put resolutely from my mind the warning Father Dominic had given me, just before he'd left for San Francisco, about not giving into temptation where Jesse is concerned. It's all very well for Father D to talk. He's a priest. He has no idea what it's like to be a red-blooded teenage mediator. Of the female variety.

"Jesse," I said, still a little breathlessly, from all the kissing, "I can't help thinking . . . well, this thing with Paul. I mean, who knows if maybe he really has come up with some new way to . . . to keep you and me apart? And now, with Father Dom gone for who knows how long, I . . . Well, don't you think it might be better if you came back to my house for a while?"

Jesse, even though he'd almost just had his hand up my shirt, didn't like that idea at all. "So you can protect me from the nefarious Mr. Slater?" Was it my imagination or did he sound more amused than, er, aroused? "Thank you for the invitation, querida, but I can take care of myself."

"But if Paul finds out Father D is gone, he might come after you. And if I'm not around to stop him - "

"This may come as a surprise to you, Susannah," Jesse said, lifting his head and placing my hand in my lap once more, "but I can handle Slater without your help."

Now he definitely sounded amused.

"And now you're going home," he went on. "Good night, querida."

He kissed me one last time, a brief peck good-bye. I knew that any second he was going to disappear.

But there was still something else I needed to know. Ordinarily, I'd have asked Father Dominic, but since he wasn't around . . .

"Wait," I said. "Before you go . . . one last thing."

Jesse had already started to shimmer. "What, querida?"

"The fourth dimension," I blurted out.

He had begun to dematerialize, but now he looked solid again.

"What about it?" he asked.

"Um," I said. I'm sure he thought I was just asking to keep him there for a few more precious seconds. And truthfully? I probably was. "What is it?"

"Time," Jesse said.

"Time?" I echoed. "That's it? Just . . . time?"

"Yes," Jesse said. "Time. Why do you ask? For school?"

"Sure," I said. "For school."

"The things they teach now," he said, shaking his head.

"Cat food," I said, holding out the bag. "Don't forget."

No wonder we can't seem to make it past second base.

He took the bag from me.

"Good night, querida," he said.

And then he was gone. The only sign that he'd been there at all were the badly fogged windows, steamed by our breath.

Or rather, by my breath, since Jesse doesn't have any.

Chapter five

Mr. Walden held up a stack of Scantron sheets and said, "Number-two pencils only, please."

Kelly Prescott's hand immediately shot up into the air.

"Mr. Walden, this is an outrage." Kelly takes her role as president of the junior class extremely seriously . . . especially when it has to do with scheduling dances. And, apparently, aptitude testing. "We should have been given at least twenty-four hours' notice that we'd be undergoing state testing today."

"Relax, Prescott." Mr. Walden, our homeroom teacher and class advisor, began passing out the Scantron sheets. "They're career aptitude tests, not academic. Your scores won't show up on your permanent record. They're to help you" - he picked up one of the test booklets lying on his desk and read from it aloud - "'determine which careers are best suited to your particular skills and/or areas of interest and/or achievement.' Got it? Just answer the questions." Mr. Walden slapped a pile of answer sheets onto my desk for me to pass down my row. "You've got fifty minutes. And no talking."

"'Which do you enjoy more, working while a) outdoors? or b) indoors?'" I heard my stepbrother Brad read aloud from across the room. "Hey, where's c) heavily intoxicated?"

"You loser,'" Kelly Prescott chortled.

"'Are you a 'night person' or a 'day person'?" Adam McTavish looked mockly shocked. "This test is totally biased against narcoleptics."

"'Do you work best a) alone or b) in a group?'" My best friend, CeeCee, could hardly seern to contain her disgust. "Oh my God, this is so stupid."

"What part of 'no talking,'" Mr. Walden demanded, "do you people not understand?"

But no one paid any attention to him.

"This is stupid," Adam declared. "How is this test going to determine whether or not I'm qualified for a career?"

"It measures your aptitude, stupid." Kelly sounded disgusted. "The only career you're qualified for is working the drive-through window at In-N-Out Burger."

"Where you, Kelly, will be working the fryer," Paul pointed out dryly, causing the rest of the class to crack up. . . .

Until Mr. Walden, who'd settled behind his desk and was trying to read his latest issue of Surf Magazine, roared, "Do you people want to stay after school to finish up those tests? Because I'll be happy to keep you here; I've got nothing better to do. Now, shut up, all of you, and get to work."

That had a significant impact on the amount of chitchat going on around the room.

Miserably, I filled in the little bubbles. My misery didn't just stem, of course, from the fact that I was operating on zero sleep. While that didn't exactly help, there was the more pressing concern than career aptitude tests. Yeah, they don't much apply to me. My fate is already laid out for me . . . has been laid out for me since birth. I'm destined to be one thing when I grow up and one thing only. And any other career I choose is just going to get in the way of my true calling, which is, of course, helping the undead to their final destinations.

I glanced over at Paul. He was bent over his Scantron sheet, filling in the answer bubbles with a little smile on his face. I wondered what he was putting down as fields of interest. I hadn't noticed any entries for extortion. Or felony theft.

Why, I wondered, was he even bothering? It wasn't like it was going to do us any good. We were always going to be mediators first, whatever other careers we might choose. Look at Father Dominic. Oh sure, he had managed to keep his mediator status a secret . . . a secret even from the church, since, as Father D put it, his boss is God, and God invented mediators.

Of course, Father D isn't just a priest. He'd also been a teacher for years and years, winning some awards, even, until he'd been promoted to principal.

But it's different for Father Dom. He really believes that his ability to see and speak to the dead is gift from God. He doesn't see it for what it really is: a curse.

Except . . . except, of course, that without it, I never would have met Jesse.

Jesse. The little blank bubbles in front of me grew decidedly blurry as my eyes filled up with tears.

Oh, great. Now I was crying. At school.

But how could I help it? Here I was, my future laid out in front of me . . . graduation, college, career. Well, you know, pseudo-career, since we all know what my real career was going to be.

But what about Jesse? What future did he have?

"What's wrong with you?" CeeCee hissed.

I reached up and dabbed at my eyes with the sleeve of my Miu Miu shirt. "Nothing," I whispered back. "Allergies."

CeeCee looked skeptical, but turned back to her test booklet.

I'd asked him once what he'd wanted to be. Jesse, I mean. You know, before he'd died. I'd meant what he'd wanted to be as a far as a career went, but he hadn't understood. When I'd finally explained, he'd smiled but in a sad way.

"Things were different when I was alive, Susannah," he'd said. "I was my father's only son. It was expected that I would inherit our family's ranch and work it to support my mother and sisters after my father died."

He didn't add that part of the plan had also included his marrying the girl whose dad owned the farm next door, so that their land would be united into one supersized ranchero. Nor did he mention the fact that she was the one who'd had him killed, because she'd liked another fella better, a fella her dad hadn't exactly approved of. Because I already knew all of that.

Things were tough, I guess, even way back in the 1850s.

"Oh," was what I'd said in response. Jesse hadn't spoken with any detectable rancor, but it seemed like a raw deal to me. I mean, what if he hadn't wanted to be a rancher? "Well, what would you have liked to be? You know, if you'd had a choice?"

Jesse had looked thoughtful. "I don't know. It was different then, Susannah. I was different. I did think . . . sometimes . . . that I might have liked to have been a doctor."

A doctor. It made perfect sense - at least to me. All those times I'd staggered home with various parts of me throbbing in pain - whether from poison oak or blisters on my feet - Jesse had been there for me, his touch soft as cashmere. He'd have made a great doctor, actually.

"Why didn't you, then?" I'd wanted to know. "Become a doctor? Just because of your dad?"

"Yes, mostly that," he'd said. "I'd never even dared mention it to anyone. I could barely be spared from the ranch for a few days, let alone the years medical school would have taken. But I would have liked that, I think. Medical school. Though back when I was alive," he'd added, "people didn't know nearly as much about medicine as they do today. It would be more exciting to work in the sciences now, I think."

And he would know. He'd had 150 years to hang around and watch as inventions - electricity, automobiles, planes, computers . . . not to mention penicillin and vaccines for diseases that in the past had routinely killed millions - changed the world into something unrecognizable from the one in which he'd grown up.

But rather than clinging stubbornly to the past, as some would have, Jesse had followed along excitedly, reading whatever he could get his hands on, from paperback novels to encyclopedias. He said he had a lot to catch up on. His favorite books seem to be the nonfiction tomes he borrows from Father Dom, everything from philosophy to explorations on emerging viruses - the kind of books I'd have given to my dad on Father's Day, if my dad wasn't, you know, dead. My stepdad, on the other hand, is more the cookbook type. But you get my drift. To Jesse, stuff that seems dry and uninteresting to me is vitally exciting. Maybe because he'd seen it all unfolding before his eyes.

Sighing, I looked down at the hundreds of career options in front of me. Jesse was dead, but even he knew what he'd wanted to be . . . would have been, if he hadn't died. Or not been, considering what he'd said about his father's expectations for him.

And here I was, with every advantage in the world, and all I could think that I wanted to be when I grew up was . . .

Well, with Jesse.

"Twenty more minutes." Mr. Walden's voice boomed out across the classroom, startling me from my thoughts. I found that my gaze had become fixed on the sea less than a mile from the Mission and viewable through most of the school's classroom windows . . . to the detriment of students like me. I hadn't grown up, like most of my classmates, around the sea. It was a constant source of wonder and interest to me.

Kind of, I realized, like Jesse's fascination with modern science.

Only unlike Jesse, I actually had a chance to do something with my interest.

"Ten more minutes," Mr.Walden announced, startling me again.

Ten more minutes. I looked down at my answer sheet, which was half empty. At the same time, I noticed CeeCee shooting me an anxious look from her desk beside mine. She nodded to the sheet. Get to work, her violet eyes urged me.

I picked up my pencil and began to haphazardly fill in bubbles. I didn't care what answers I chose. Because, truthfully, I didn't care about my future. Without Jesse, I had no future. Of course, with him, I had no future, either. What was he going to do, anyway? Follow me to college? To my first job? My first apartment?

Yeah. That'll happen.

Paul was right. I'm so stupid. Stupid to have fallen in love with a ghost. Stupid to think we had any kind of future together. Stupid.

"Time's up." Mr. Walden pulled his feet from the top of his desk. "Lay your pencils down, please. Then pass your answer sheets to the front."

I wasn't all that surprised when Paul came up to me after Mr. Walden had dismissed us for lunch. "That was pointless," he said in a low voice, as we made our way toward our lockers. "I mean, we have our career paths cut out for us, don't we?"

"Well, you can't really make a living doing what we do," I said, then remembered, too late, that Paul certainly seemed to have managed to.

"An honest living," I amended.

But instead of feeling ashamed of himself, as I'd meant him to, Paul just grinned.

"That's why I've decided on a career in the legal profession," he said. "Your dad was a lawyer, right?"

I nodded. I don't like talking about my dad with Paul. Because my dad was everything that was good. And Paul is everything that . . . isn't.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Paul went on. "Nothing's black and white with the law. It's all sort of gray. So long as you can find a precedent."

I didn't say anything. I could easily see Paul as a lawyer. Not a lawyer like my dad had been, a public defender, but the kind of lawyer who'd defend rich celebrities, people who thought they were above the law . . . and because they had limitless funds to pay for their defense, they were above it, in a way.

"You, on the other hand," Paul said. "I think you're destined for a career in the social services. You're a natural-born do-gooder."

"Yeah," I said, as I stopped beside my locker. "Maybe I'll follow in Father D's footsteps, and become a nun."

"Now that," Paul said, leaning against the locker next to mine, "would just be a waste. I was thinking more along the lines of a social worker. Or a therapist. You're very good, you know, at taking on other people's problems."

Wasn't that the truth? It was the reason I was so bleary-eyed and tired today. Because after I'd left Jesse the night before, I'd driven home and gone up to bed . . . only not to sleep. Instead, I'd lain awake, blinking at the ceiling and mulling over what Jesse had told me. Not about Paul, but about what Paul had made me read aloud earlier that day: The shifter's abilities didn't merely include communication with the dead and teleportation between their world and our own, but the ability to travel at will throughout the fourth dimension as well.

The fourth dimension. Time.

The very word caused the hairs on my arms to stand up, even though it was another typically beautiful autumn day in Carmel and not cold at all. Could it really be true? Was such a thing even possible? Could mediators - or shifters, as Paul and his grandfather insisted on calling us - travel through time as well as between the realms of the living and the dead?

And if - a big if - it were true, what on earth did it mean?

More important, why had Paul been so intent on making sure I knew about it?

"You look strung out," Paul observed as I stowed my books away and reached for the paper bag containing the lunch my stepfather had made me: tandoori chicken salad. "What's the matter? Trouble sleeping?"

"You should know," I said, glaring at him.

"What'd I do?" he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

I don't know if it was my exhaustion, or the fact that that the career aptitude test had got me thinking about my future . . . my future and Jesse's. Suddenly, I was just very tired of Paul and his games. And I decided to call him on the latest one.

"The fourth dimension," I reminded him. "Time travel?"

He just grinned, however. "Oh, good, you figured it out. Took you long enough."

"You really think shifters are capable of time travel?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Paul said. "I know so."

Again, I felt a chill when I shouldn't have. We were standing in the shade of the breezeway, it was true, but just a few feet away in the Mission courtyard, the sun was blazing down. Hummingbirds flitted from hibiscus blossom to hibiscus blossom. Tourists snapped away with their digital cameras.

So what was up with the goose bumps?

"Why?" I demanded, my throat suddenly dry. "Because you've done it?"

"Not yet," he said, casually. "But I will. Soon."

"Yeah," I said, fear making me sarcastic. "Well, maybe you could travel back to the night you stole Mrs. Gutierrez's money and not do it this time."

"God, would you let it go already?" He shook his head. "It was two thousand lousy bucks. You act like it was two million."

"Hey, Paul." Kelly Prescott broke away from her clique - the Dolce and Gabbana Nazis as CeeCee had taken to calling them - and sauntered over, fluttering her heavily mascaraed eyelashes. "You coming to lunch?"

"In a minute," Paul said to her . . . not very nicely, considering she was his date for next weekend's dance. Kelly, though stung, nevertheless pulled herself together enough to send me a withering glance before heading for the yard where we dined daily, al fresco.

"So I don't get it." I stared at him. "What if we can travel through time? Big deal. It's not like we can change anything once we get there."

"Why?" Paul's blue eyes were curious. "Because Doc from Back to the Future said so?"

"Because you can't . . . you can't mess up the natural order of things," I said.

"Why not? Isn't that what you do every day when you mediate? Aren't you interfering with the natural order of things by sending spirits off to their just reward?"

"That's different," I said.

"How so?"

"Because those people are already dead! They can't do anything that might change the course of history."

"Like Mrs. Gutierrez and her two thousand dollars?" Paul's glance was shrewd. "You think if you'd given it to her son, it wouldn't have changed the course of history? Even in some small way?"

"But that's different than entering another dimension to change something that already happened. That's just . . . wrong"

"Is it, Suze?" A corner of Paul's mouth lifted. "I don't think so. And you know what? I think this time, your boy Jesse is going to agree. With me."

And suddenly, it seemed to get even colder than ever under that breezeway.

Chapter six

Please be home, please be home, please be home, I prayed as I waited for someone to answer the doorbell. Please please please please . . .

I don't know if someone heard my prayer, or if it was just that invalid archeologists don't get out that much. In any case, Dr. Slaski's attendant answered the front door, recognition dawning when he saw that it was me who'd been ringing the bell with so much urgency.

"Oh hi, Susan," he said, getting the name wrong, but the face that went with it right. Sort of. "You looking for Paul? Because far as I know, he's still in school - "

"I know he's still at school," I said, stepping hurriedly inside the Slaters' foyer, before the attendant could close the door. "I'm not here to see him. I stopped by to see his grandfather, if that's all right."

"His grandfather?" The attendant looked surprised. And why shouldn't he? For all he knew, his patient hadn't had a lucid conversation with anyone in years.

Except that he had. And it had only been a few months ago. With me.

"You know, Susan, Paul's grandpa isn't . . . He's not real well," the assistant said slowly. "We don't like to talk about it in front of him, but his last round of tests . . . Well, they didn't look so good. In fact, the doctors aren't giving him all that much longer to live . . ."

"I just need to ask him a question," I said. "Just one little question. It'll only take a second."

"But . . ." The attendant, a young guy who, judging from his sun-bleached dreads, probably used whatever spare time he got to hit the waves, scratched his chin. "I mean, he can't . . . he doesn't really talk all that much anymore. The Alzheimer's, you know . . ."

"Can I just try?" I asked, not caring that I sounded like a whacko. I was that desperate. Desperate for answers that I knew only one person on earth could give me. And that person was just right upstairs. "Please? I mean, it couldn't hurt, could it?"

"No," the attendant said slowly. "No, I guess it couldn't hurt."

"Great," I said, slipping past him and starting up the stairs two at a time. "I'll just be a couple of minutes. You won't mind leaving us alone, will you? I'll call you if he looks like he might need you."

The attendant, closing the front door in a distracted sort of way, went, "Okay. I guess. But . . . shouldn't you be in school?"

"It's lunchtime," I informed him cheerfully, as I made my way up the stairs and then down the hall toward Dr. Slaski's room.

I wasn't lying, either. It was lunchtime. The fact that we weren't technically supposed to leave school grounds at lunch? Well, I didn't feel that was important to mention. I was less worried about facing the wrath of Sister Ernestine when she found out I was skipping school than I was about explaining to my stepbrother Brad why I'd so desperately needed the keys to the Land Rover. Just because Brad had happened to get his driver's license about five seconds before I'd gotten mine (well, okay, a few weeks before I'd gotten mine, actually), he seems to feel that the ancient Land Rover, which is supposed to be the "kids' car," belongs solely to him, and that only he's allowed to ferry the two of us, plus his little brother, David, to and from school every day.

I'd had to resort to using the words "feminine hygiene products" and "glove compartment" just to get him to surrender the keys. I had no idea what he was going to do when I didn't return before the end of lunch and he discovered the car was gone. Narc on me, doubtlessly. It seemed to be his one joy in life.

Sadly, I never seem able to return the favor, thanks to Brad generally having some kind of goods on me.

In any case, I wasn't going to squander what precious little time I had wondering what Brad was going to say about my taking the car. Instead, I hurried into Paul's grandfather's bedroom.

As usual, the Game Show Network was on. The attendant had parked Dr. Slaski's wheelchair in front of the plasma screen television. Dr. Slaski himself, however, appeared to be paying no attention whatsoever to Bob Barker. Instead, he was staring fixedly at a spot in the center of the highly polished tile floor.

I wasn't fooled by this, however.

"Dr. Slaski?" I picked up the remote and turned the TV volume down, then hurried to the doctor's side. "Dr. Slaski, it's me, Suze. Paul's friend, Suze? I need to talk to you for a minute."

Paul's grandfather didn't respond. Unless you call drooling a response.

"Dr. Slaski," I said, pulling up a chair so that I could sit closer to his ear. I didn't want the attendant to overhear our discussion, so I was trying to keep my voice low. "Dr. Slaski, your nurse isn't here and neither is Paul. It's just the two of us. I need to talk to you about something Paul's been telling me. About, er, mediators. It's important."

As soon as he heard that neither Paul nor his attendant was nearby, a change seemed to come over Dr. Slaski. He straightened up in his chair, lifting his head so he could fix me with a rheumy-eyed stare. The drooling stopped right away.

"Oh," he said when he saw it was me. He didn't exactly look thrilled. "You again."

I didn't think that was completely fair, seeing as how the last time the two of us had spoken, he had sought me out . . . sought me out to deliver a cryptic warning about his own grandson, whom he'd equated to the devil, no less.

But I decided to let that slide.

"Yes, it's me, Dr. Slaski," I said. "Suze. Listen. About Paul."

"What's that little pisser been up to now?"

Clearly there is very little love lost between Dr. Slaski and his grandson.

"Nothing," I said. "Yet. At least, so far as I can tell. It's what he says he can do."

"What's that, then?" Dr. Slaski asked. "And this better be good. Family Feud comes on in five minutes."

Good God. Was I, I wondered, going to end up wheelchair bound and addicted to game shows when I was Dr. Slaski's age? Because Dr. Slaski - or Mr. Slater, as Paul wanted everyone to think of him - is also a mediator, one who'd gone to the ends of the earth looking to find answers about his unusual talent. Apparently, he'd found what he was looking for in the tombs of ancient Egypt.

Problem is, nobody believed him. Not about the existence of a race of people whose sole duty it was to guide the spirits of the dead to their ultimate destinations, and certainly not that he, Dr. Slaski, was one of them. The old man's many writings on the subject, most of them self-published, went ignored by the scientific and academic communities, and were now gathering dust in plastic bins beneath his grandson's bed.

Worse, Dr. Slaski's own family seem to be trying to sweep him under the bed, as well, Paul's father even having gone so far as to change his name to avoid being associated with the old man.

And what had Dr. Slaski gotten for all his efforts? A terminal illness and his grandson, Paul, for company. The illness, or so Dr. Slaski claimed, had been brought on by spending too much time in the "shadowland" - that way station between this world and the next. And Paul?

Well, he had brought Paul on all by himself.

I guess he had a reason to feel bitterly toward the human race. But why he felt that way toward Paul, I was only just learning.

I tried to start out slowly, so he'd be sure to understand.

"Paul says mediators - "

"Shifters." Dr. Slaski insisted people like him and Paul and me are more properly called shifters, for our (in my case, newly discovered) ability to shift between the dimensions of the living and the dead. "Shifters, girl, I told you before. Don't make me say it again."

"Shifters," I corrected myself. "Paul says that shifters have the ability to time travel."

"Indeed," Dr. Slaski said. "What of it?"

I gaped at him. I couldn't help it. If he'd hit me in the back of the head with a pinata stick, I could not have been more surprised. "You . . . you knew about this?"

"Of course I know about it," Dr. Slaski said acidly. "Who do you think wrote the paper that gave that fool grandson of mine the idea?"

This is what I got for not paying more attention during my mediator sessions with Paul.

"But why didn't you tell me?"

Dr. Slaski looked at me very sarcastically. "You didn't ask," he said.

I sat there like a lump staring at him. I couldn't believe it. All this time . . . all this time I'd had another skill I'd known nothing about. But what would I have ever needed the ability to time travel for, anyway? I guess there were a few bad hair days I wouldn't have minded going back and fixing, but other than that. . . .

Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit me.

My dad. I could go back through time and save my dad.

No. No, it didn't work that way. It couldn't. Because if it could . . . if it could. . . .

Then everything would be different.

Everything.

Dr. Slaski coughed, hard. I shook myself and touched his shoulder.

"Dr. Slaski? Are you all right?"

"What do you think?" Dr. Slaski demanded, not very graciously. "I've got six months to live. Maybe less, if those damned doctors have their way and keep bleeding the life out of me. You think I'm all right?"

"I . . ." It was selfish of me, I knew, but I didn't have time to listen to his health problems. I needed to know more about this new power he - and possibly I - had.

"How?" I demanded eagerly. "How do you do it? Travel through time, I mean."

Dr. Slaski glanced at the TV. Fortunately the credits for The Price Is Right were still rolling. Family Feud hadn't started yet.

"It's easy," he said. "If my idiot grandson can figure it out, any moron can."

We didn't have much time. Family Feud was going to start at any second.

"How?" I asked him again. "How?"

"You need something," the doctor said with exaggerated patience, like he was talking to a five-year-old. "Something of the time you want to go to. To anchor you to it."

I thought of a time-travel movie I had seen. "Like a coin?" I asked.

"A coin would do it," Dr. Slaski said, though he looked skeptical. "Of course, you'd need to use a coin that had once been owned by a specific person who existed in the time you want to go to, and who'd once actually stood where you're standing. And you need to pick a spot you can get back to without shifting onto some innocent bystander."

"You mean - " I blinked. "You mean when you go back, all of you goes back? Not just - "

"Your soul?" Dr. Slaski snorted. "Lot of good that what do, wandering around in some other century without any body. No, when you go, you go. That's why you've got to be smart about it. You can't just go hopping through time and space all willy-nilly, you know. Not if you want to keep your guts from spilling out. You've got to go to a spot where you knew the person once stood, hold the object they once owned, and - "

"And?" I asked breathlessly.

"Close your eyes and shift." Dr. Slaski looked back at the television, bored by the whole conversation.

"And that's it?" It was easy. "You mean I can just pop back through time and visit anyone I want?"

"Of course not," Dr. Slaski said, his gaze glued to the TV screen. It was almost as an afterthought that he added, "He's got to be dead, of course. And someone you've mediated. I never determined why, but it must have something to do with that person's energy, or being. Must be the link . . ." Dr. Slaski trailed off, lost in research done decades before.

"You mean . . ." I blinked in confusion. "We can only go back through time if it's to help a ghost?"

"Give the girl a prize," Dr. Slaski drawled, turning his gaze back toward the television.

For once I didn't mind his sarcasm. Because ghosts? Ghosts I can deal with. Ghosts like . . .

. . . well, my dad, for instance.

And I had plenty of stuff that once belonged to Dad. I still had the shirt he'd been wearing the day he died. I had plucked it from the pile of things the hospital had given us and kept it under my pillow for months after he'd died . . . right up until the day I finally saw him again, when he appeared to me, and told me exactly why it was that I, but not Mom, could see him.

I thought my mom hadn't known about it - the shirt, I mean - but now I knew she must have. She surely would have found it when she was making my bed or playing tooth fairy.

But she had never said anything. To be fair, she couldn't say anything, because she kept Dad's ashes in his favorite beer stein for years before we finally got the guts to scatter them in the park where he'd died, the park he'd loved so much, just before her wedding to Andy.

A park, I realized, I'd have to go to if I wanted to go back through time to save him, because the apartment we'd lived in had been sold and I couldn't very well walk up to the new owners and be all "Can I stand in your living room for a minute? I just need to pop back through time to save my dad's life."

Of course, both the park and the apartment were all the way across the country. But I had some babysitting money saved up. Maybe even enough for a plane ticket. . . .

I could do it. I could totally keep my dad from dying.

"What else?" I asked Dr. Slaski, with a glance at the TV. A commercial, thank God. "When you have the . . . thing that belonged to the ghost, and you're standing in a spot where he once stood? What do you do then?"

Dr. Slaski looked annoyed. "You hold the object - that's your anchor - and nothing else. That's important, you know. You can't be touching anything else or you could end up taking it with you. Then you picture the person. And then you go. Easy as pie." Dr. Slaski nodded at the TV. "Turn it up. Feud'll be on in a minute."

I couldn't believe it was so easy. Just like that, I could go back through time and keep someone I loved from dying.

"Of course," Dr. Slaski said casually, "once you get there - to where you're going - you have to watch yourself. You don't want to be changing history . . . at least, not too much. You have to weigh the consequences of your actions very carefully."

I didn't say anything. What possible consequences could my saving my dad have? Except that my mom, instead of crying into her pillow every night for years after he died - right up until she met Andy, actually - would be happy? That I would be happy?

Then it hit me. Andy. If my dad had lived, my mother would never have met Andy. Or rather, she might have met him, but she would never have married him.

And then we would never have moved to California.

And I would never have met Jesse.

Suddenly, the full impact of what Dr. Slaski had said sunk in. "Oh," I said.

His gaze - despite the glaucoma that clouded his blue eyes, which otherwise were like a photocopy of Paul's - was sharp.

"I thought there'd be an oh in there somewhere," he said. "Not as easy as you thought, shifting through time, is it? And keep in mind the fact that the longer you stay in a time not your own, the longer your recovery time when you do get back to the present," Dr. Slaski added not very pleasantly.

"Recovery time? You mean like . . . it gives you a headache?" Which was what shifting gave me. Every time.

Dr. Slaski looked amused about something. His gaze wasn't on the television screen, so I knew it was something to do with what I'd just said.

"Little worse than a headache," he said dryly, and patted the mattress beneath him. "Unless you mean that as a euphemism for losing a host of brain cells. And that's the least of what could happen to you. Time shift too many times and you'll be a vegetable before you're old enough to buy beer, I can guarantee."

"Does Paul know that?" I asked. "I mean, about the . . . losing brain cells thing?"

"He should," Dr. Slaski said, "if he read my paper on it."

And yet he still wanted to try it.

"Why would Paul want to go back through time?" I asked. He could hardly be motivated by a desire to help anyone, as the only person Paul Slater had ever been interested in helping was . . . well, Paul Slater.

"How should I know?" Dr. Slaski looked bored. "I don't understand why you spend any time at all with that boy. I told you he was no good. Just like his father, that one is, ashamed of me. . . ."

I didn't pay attention to Dr. Slaski's diatribe against his grandson. I was too busy thinking.

What was it Paul had said the other night, in the Gutierrezes' backyard? That he wouldn't kill Jesse . . .

. . . but that he might do something to keep Jesse from having died in the first place.

That was when it finally dawned on me. Standing there in Dr. Slaski's bedroom, while he fumbled for the remote, found the volume button, and cried, "Damnit, we missed the first category!"

Paul was going back through time. To Jesse's time.

And not to kill him.

To save his life.

Chapter seven

"Father Dominic?" My voice seemed frantic, even to my own ears. "Father D, are you there?"

"Yes, Susannah." Father Dominic sounded frazzled. But then, that could be because he still hadn't figured out how to work his cell phone. "Yes, I'm here. I thought you had to hit the Send button to answer, but apparently - "

"Father Dominic, something terrible has happened." I didn't wait for him to respond, but just plunged ahead. "Paul's figured out a way to go back through time, and he's going to go back to the day Jesse died and save his life."

There was a long pause. Then Father Dominic said, "Susannah. Where are you?"

I looked around. I was standing in Paul's kitchen, using the wall-mounted phone I had found there. I'd asked Dr. Slaski's attendant after I'd left his patient, if I could use the phone. He'd told me to go right ahead.

"I'm at Paul's house," I said. "Father Dominic, did you hear me? Paul's figured out a way to keep Jesse from dying."

"Well," Father Dominic said, "That's wonderful news. But shouldn't you be in school? It's only just a little past one o'clock - "

"Father D!" I practically screamed. "You don't understand! If Paul keeps Jesse from dying, then Jesse and I will never meet!"

"Hmmm." Father Dominic took his sweet time to consider what I'd said. "Altering the course of history is never a good idea, I suppose. Look what happened in that film. What was it? Oh, yes. Back to the Future."

"Father Dominic." I was practically crying with frustration. "Please, this isn't a movie. It's my life. You've got to help me. You've got to come back here and help me stop him. He won't listen to me. I know he won't. But he might listen to you. . . ."

"Well, I couldn't possibly come back now, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "The monsignor isn't - well, the, er, hot dog appeared to be lodged in his throat for longer than anyone thought . . . Susannah, did you say Paul's figured out a way to travel through time?"

"Yes," I said from between gritted teeth. I was beginning to regret having kept Father Dominic in the dark about so much of what I'd learned from Paul during our Wednesday afternoons together.

"Goodness," Father Dominic said. "How interesting. And how do you suppose he does that?"

"All he needs is something old," I said. "Something belonging to the person, you know, he wants to travel back to see. The person has to be a ghost, a ghost that he's met. And then he just has to stand in a place he knows that person will be - in his head, you know - and he's there."

"Good heavens," Father Dominic said. "Do you know what this means, Susannah?"

"Yes," I said, miserably. "It means that I'm going to move to Carmel, and there isn't going to be anybody haunting my bedroom because Jesse will never have been killed there."

"No," Father Dominic said. "Well, I mean, yes, I suppose it does mean that. But more important, it means we could prevent the deaths of all of the ghosts we encounter, just by popping back through time and - "

"We can't," I interrupted flatly. "Unless we want to end up with six months left to live, like Paul's grandfather. It isn't like shifting to the spirit plane. Your whole body goes . . . and, I guess, suffers the consequences. But Paul's just planning the one trip."

"Yes," Father Dominic said, sounding distant - more distant than San Francisco, anyway. "Yes, I see."

"Father Dominic!" I cried. I was losing him . . . and not just because our phone connection wasn't the best. "You've got to stop him!"

"But why should I, Susannah?" Father Dominic asked. "What Paul plans on doing is quite generous, actually."

"Generous?" I cried. "What's so generous about it?"

"He's giving Jesse another chance at life," Father Dominic said. "And, from what you say, risking his own life in the process. I'd say it's quite noble of him, actually."

"Noble!" I couldn't believe my ears. "Father Dom, I can assure you, Paul's motives are far from noble. He's only doing it . . ."

"Yes?" Father Dominic was suddenly all ears.

But how can you explain to a priest that a guy is trying to off your boyfriend so he can get into your pants?

Especially when Paul wasn't trying to off Jesse at all, but to save his life, actually? "It's just . . ." I wasn't making any sense, but I didn't care. "Can't you expel him or something?"

"No, Susannah," Father Dominic said. Was it my imagination or was there a slight chuckle in his voice. "I can't expel him. Not for that, anyway."

"But we have to stop him," I said. My protests, even to my own ears, were starting to grow faint. "It's . . . it's unnatural, what he's planning on doing."

"That may very well be," Father Dominic said, "but it isn't immoral. It isn't even illegal, as far as I can tell."

This had to be a first. Paul doing something that could actually be construed as moral, I mean.

" - But I do wonder," Father Dominic went on thoughtfully, "just how he's planning on accomplishing this little miracle."

"I told you," I said bitterly. "All he has to do is get something the person once owned, and then stand in a place he once stood, and - "

"Yes," Father Dominic said. "But what belonging of Jesse's does Paul have?"

This shut me up for a minute. Because Father Dominic was right. Paul didn't have anything of Jesse's. He couldn't stop Jesse's murder, because he didn't own anything from Jesse's past.

"Oh," I said, beginning to feel a little less like I had a slowly tightening noose around my neck. "Oh. You're right."

"Of course I am," Father Dominic said. Was it my imagination or did he sound distracted? "Although it's something you might think of doing, Susannah. If he'll teach you how, I mean."

"What?" I twisted the phone cord around my finger. "Go back through time and save Jesse from dying?"

"Exactly," Father Dominic said. "It might, for all you know, be the reason why he's still here on earth. Because he was never meant to die in the first place."

I was so appalled that for a moment, I couldn't say anything. Unbidden, my mind flashed back to that poster my ninth grade English teacher had hung up in her classroom, of two seagulls flying over a beach. . . . A poster I always seemed to remember at the most inconvenient moments. IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, LET IT GO, the words beneath the seagulls read. IF IT WAS MEANT TO BE, IT WILL COME BACK TO YOU.

The imaginary noose around my neck tightened to a choking point.

"That's bull, Father D," I yelled into the phone. "Do you hear me? Bull!"

"Susannah - " Father Dominic sounded startled.

"That is NOT why Jesse is still here," I shouted. "It's NOT. Jesse and I are meant to be together, and if you can't see that, well, that's your own damn problem!"

Now Father Dominic sounded more than startled. He sounded angry. "Susannah," he said. "There's no reason to use that kind of language - "

"No, there's not," I agreed with him. "Especially since I have nothing more to say to you." I slammed the phone back down into its cradle. A second later, Dr. Slaski's attendant appeared, looking worried.

"Susan?" he asked. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," I said, horrified to find that my cheeks were damp.

Great. So, on top of everything else, I'd been crying.

"It's just," the attendant said, "I heard shouting. . . ."

"It's nothing," I said. "I'm leaving. Don't worry."

And I did, without saying good-bye to Dr. Slaski. I had no more to say to him than I did to Father Dom. There was only one person, I realized, who could stop Paul from doing what I now knew he was going to do.

And that person was me.

Of course, knowing that fact wasn't the same as actually having a plan for how I was going to stop him. That's what I tried to come up with as I drove back to school. A plan.

It wasn't until I was pulling into the Mission Academy's student parking lot that what Father Dominic had said really began to sink in. Paul didn't have anything of Jesse's that could bring him back to that horrible night when Jesse had died. I was almost sure of it. Jesse had been murdered and his body never found - until recently, that is. His own family had believed he'd run away to escape an unwanted marriage.

What could Paul possibly have of Jesse's that could help him get back to the day leading up to his death? Nothing. Because the only things that still existed from that time were a miniature portrait of Jesse - which I kept safe at home - and some letters he'd written to his fiancée. But those were on display at the Carmel Historical Society museum.

There was nothing of Jesse's that Paul could possibly have that he could use to hurt him. Or rather, to save him. Nothing. Jesse was safe.

Which meant that I was safe.

The relief I felt was short-lived, however. Oh, not my relief about Jesse. That remained. It was as I was attempting to sneak back into school that my newly restored equilibrium was shaken again. Only this time, it wasn't by Paul. No, it was Sister Ernestine who shattered my hard-won sense of calm, just as I was trying to blend in with my fellow students as they made their way to their next class, pretending like I'd been there with them all along.

"Susannah Simon!" The vice principal's shrill voice caused several doves that had been roosting in the beams overhead to take off in startled flight. "Come to my office immediately!"

My youngest stepbrother, David, happened to be nearby. When he heard the sister's command, he visibly paled . . . an accomplishment for him, seeing how pale he was already, being a redhead.

"Suze," he asked me, looking a bit freaked. And why not? Usually when I get into trouble, it isn't for mere tardiness. No, more often, it's along the lines of destruction of property . . . and someone usually ends up unconscious, if not dead. "What did you do now?"

"Never mind," I said, a little chagrined that I'd been busted for so minor an offense as skipping class. I was really losing my touch.

I followed Sister Ernestine into her office, which, unlike Father Dominic's, didn't have any teaching awards on the shelves. No one would consider Sister Ernestine an exemplary educator. She's a disciplinarian, plain and simple.

I got off lightly, I suppose. She'd noticed I'd been gone during religion class, which I was supposed to have right after lunch. I told her I'd had a slight medical emergency, and needed to go to the drugstore, once again invoking the 'crimson tide' in the hopes she'd drop the subject. It didn't have the same effect on Sister Ernestine as it had on Brad, however.

"Then you should have gone to the nurse's office," was Sister Ernestine's terse response.

For my crime, I was assigned to write a thousand-word essay on the importance of honoring one's commitments. Additionally, I was told to be at Saturday's antique auction to help man the eighth graders' bake sale table.

All in all, I suppose it could have been worse.

Or so I thought. Before I ran into Paul Slater.

He was lurking behind one of the stone supports that hold up the breezeway, which is why I didn't spot him on my way from Sister Ernestine's office to my trig class. He stepped out from the shadows just as I was hurrying by.

"The wanderer returneth," he said.

I flattened a hand to my chest, as if doing so would cause my heart, which had practically jumped through my ribs at the sight of him, to beat normally again.

"Why do you have to do that?" I demanded testily. "You scared the pants off me."

"I wish." Paul's smile was decidedly irreligious, considering the fact that we were standing only a few hundred feet away from a church. "So. Where'd you disappear to?"

I could have lied, I suppose. But what would have been the point? He'd learn the truth as soon as he got home and his grandfather's attendant told him I'd stopped by.

So I stuck out my chin and, ignoring my stuttering pulse, plunged. "Your place," I said.

Paul's dark eyebrows came down in a rush as he frowned.

"My place? What'd you go to my place for?"

"To have a chat," I barreled on, "with your grandfather."

Paul's scowl grew even deeper. "My grandfather?" He shook his head. "What the hell would you want to go see him for? The guy's a complete gork."

"He's not well," I agreed. "But he's still capable of carrying on a conversation."

"Yeah," Paul said with a sneer. "About Richard Dawson, maybe."

"Well, that," I said, knowing what I was about to say next would enrage him, but also knowing that really, I didn't have any other choice, "and time travel."

Paul's eyes widened. As I'd expected, I'd shocked him.

"Time travel? You talked about time travel? With Grandpa Gork?"

"With Dr. Slaski," I corrected him. "And yes, I did."

The two words - doctor and Slaski - seemed to hit him like physical blows. He certainly looked as stunned as if I'd hit him.

"Are you . . ." He couldn't seem to find the right words to express himself. "Are you crazy?" is what he seemed to settle for.

"No," I said. "And neither is your grandfather. But I think you might be," I went on - recklessly, I knew, but no longer caring. Not now that I knew what he was after.

"I know your grandfather is Oliver Slaski," I stated. "He told me so himself."

He just stared at me. It was as if, right before his eyes, I was turning into a completely different person than the Suze he'd known. And maybe I was. I was certainly angrier at him than I'd ever been before - more than the first time, even, that he'd tried to get rid of Jesse. Because he hadn't known then what he surely knew by now. . . . That Paul and me?

Yeah, that was never going to happen.

"He didn't talk to you," Paul said linally, his blue eyes flat and cold as the Pacific in November. "He doesn't talk to anybody."

"Not to you, maybe," I said. "Why should he, when you treat him the way you do . . . like he's a big inconvenience, a - what do you call him? - Oh, yeah. A gork. I mean, your own father changed his name, he was so ashamed of him. But if you'd ever taken the time to find out, you'd know Dr. Slaski isn't as far gone as you think . . . and he has some pretty interesting things to say about you."

"I'm sure," Paul said with a smirk. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I can guess. I'm the spawn of Satan. I'm up to no good. And you should stay away from me. That about sum it up?"

"Pretty much," I said. "And considering that you plan on traveling back through time and keeping Jesse from dying? I'd say he's one hundred percent right."

At that, the flatness left his eyes - but not the coldness. He even smiled a little, though it was with just half his mouth. "So you finally figured it out, huh? Took you long enough - "

But I didn't let him finish. I took a step forward until my face was just inches below his, and said as fiercely as I could, "Well, I've figured it out now. And all I can say is that if you think making it so Jesse and I never met will change my feelings about you, you're dreaming."

Paul looked hurt. But I knew it was all just a put-on. Because Paul doesn't have feelings. Not if he really intends to do what I suspect.

But he was doing his best to prove me wrong.

"But, Suze," he said, his blue eyes wide and innocent. "I'm just doing what you want. After that whole thing with Mrs. Gutierrez, you got me thinking. . . . I'm really trying to tread the path of righteousness. And isn't saving Jesse's life the right thing to do? I mean, if you really love him, you must want what's best for him, don't you? And wouldn't his living a long and happy life be what's best for him?"

I blinked at him, completely thrown by the way he'd twisted everything around.

"That isn't - I - " I couldn't seem to get the words out. All I could do was stand there and stammer.

"That's okay, Suze," Paul said, reaching up and laying a hand on my arm - to comfort me, I suppose, in my hour of need. "You don't have to thank me. Now, don't you think we'd better get back? You don't want Sister Ernestine to find you skipping class again, now, do you?"

I stared at him, dumbfounded. I had never in my life met anyone as manipulative as he was . . . with the exception, maybe, of my stepbrother Brad. Only Brad didn't have Paul's smarts and was rarely able to pull off anything more twisted than a house party . . . and even that had gotten busted by the cops.

"You're - you're high," I finally managed to stammer, "if you think saving Jesse that night - the night he died - will guarantee him a long life. Who's to say Diego won't try again the next night? Or the next? What are you going to do, stay in 1850 and become Jesse's personal bodyguard?"

"If that's what it takes," Paul said in a sickeningly sweet voice. "You see, I'd do anything - anything it takes - to make sure Jesse dies peacefully in his sleep at a ripe old age, so that he never, ever has need of a mediator."

The colors in the courtyard - the red roof tiles along the Mission, the pink hibiscus blossoms, the deep green of the palm fronds - spun dizzyingly around me as his words sunk in. I tasted something awful rising in my throat.

"Why are you doing this?" I stared up at him in horror. "You must know it will never work. Getting rid of Jesse won't make me care about you. I don't like you in that way."

"Don't you?" Paul asked with a smile that was as cold as his gaze. "Funny, I could have sworn, the last time we kissed, that you did. At least a little. Enough, anyway - "

His voice trailed off suggestively . . . but just what he was suggesting, I couldn't imagine.

"Enough for what?" I demanded.

"Enough," Paul said, "that you're thinking about transferring my soul out of my body and throwing Jesse's in here instead."

Chapter eight

"Don't bother denying it," Paul said as I stared up at him in utter shock. "I know that's what you've been planning ever since I first made the mistake of telling you about it." The heat from the hand he'd placed on my arm seemed to singe my skin. "My saving Jesse's life is more a preemptive strike than anything else. Because the truth is, I kind of like my body. I don't really want to give it up for him."

My mouth was moving - I know it was, because Paul seemed to be waiting for some kind of reply.

Only I couldn't make a sound. I was that stunned.

Because it finally made sense, now. That accusation Paul had hurled at me the other day in his kitchen. That his plans for Jesse were a lot more humane than what I'd had planned for Paul. Because he was planning on saving Jesse, whereas I, apparently, am planning on killing Paul.

Except, of course, that I'm not.

But that didn't seem to matter to him.

"It's okay," Paul assured me. "I mean, it's kind of flattering in a way, really. That you think I'm hot enough to put your boyfriend's soul into. It proves that, whatever you say, you do like me, a little. Or at least that you like making out with me."

"That is so - " I found my voice at last. Unfortunately, it came out shrill as a banshee's. I didn't care, though. All I cared about was proving to him how very, very wrong he was. " - so untrue! How could you even - what could have given you the idea that I - "

"Oh, come on, Suze," Paul said. "Admit it. With me, it's the real thing. Don't tell me that when you're with Jesse, you aren't thinking about the fact that, cozy as things might get between the two of you, it's all an illusion. That isn't really his heart you hear beating in his chest. His skin isn't really warm. Because he doesn't have skin. It's all in your head. . . . Not like this," he added, gently stroking my arm with his thumb.

Until I wrenched my arm away, that is, and fell back a step. He looked taken aback, but held up both hands to indicate he wouldn't touch me again. "Whoa, okay, Suze. Sorry. But you can't deny it's true that, when we kiss, you don't exactly fight me off. At least, not right away - "

I felt my cheeks flame. I was so embarrassed. I couldn't believe he was bringing this up here, at school, of all places. . . .

Especially considering that Jesse? Yeah, this was his new stomping ground. He was undoubtedly around somewhere nearby.

But I couldn't deny what Paul was saying. I mean, I could, but I'd be lying.

"Of course I like it when you kiss me," I said, though I practically had to cough out every word, they stuck in my throat so badly. "You're a good kisser and you know it." What else could I say? It was true. "But that doesn't mean I like you."

Which was also true.

But it didn't seem to bother Paul.

"Proving my point," he said smugly, "that you want my body, but with Jesse's soul in it."

"I think what happened to Jesse was horrible," I said slowly, referring to the murder. "And okay, there pretty much isn't anything I wouldn't do if I thought it would bring him back to life. But not that."

"Why not?" Paul asked with a shrug. "I mean, what's stopping you? As you've pointed out numerous times, I'm a reprehensible human being with no redeeming qualities . . . except for my kissing abilities, apparently. So why not just give my soul a yank and let the all-perfect Jesse have a second chance at life?"

The truth was, I really was innocent of what he was accusing me. It had never once occurred to me to do what he was insisting I'd been plotting for some time to do. Oh, okay, maybe I'd considered it in passing every now and then. But I'd always instantly dismissed the idea.

But now - perhaps because he was goading me into it - a part of me actually seemed to perk up and go Why not? Paul didn't deserve all the great things he had. He didn't even appreciate them! He stole from people less fortunate than he was, he didn't treat his family with anything like respect, and he certainly hadn't been very nice to me . . . or to Jesse.

Why couldn't I send Paul off to the great unknown, and let Jesse have Paul's body . . . and his life? Jesse deserved a second chance, and he'd certainly be a better Paul Slater than Paul had ever been. . . .

Of course, Jesse wouldn't like it. He would definitely think it was wrong to rob Paul of the life that was rightfully his, just so he could have a chance to live again.

And it would be weird, looking into Paul's blue eyes and knowing Jesse was looking out of them.

But it wouldn't really be like I was killing Paul. His body would still be alive. And his soul would be. . . . well, right where Jesse's was now, aimlessly wandering the earth, with no idea what was going to happen to him next.

But then sanity returned, cold and dampening as the water burbling in the fountain in the center of the Mission's courtyard. And I heard myself answering Paul's question - So why not just give my soul a yank and let the all-perfect Jesse have a second chance at life? - every bit as coolly as he'd asked it.

"Um," I said sarcastically, "because that would be murder, maybe?"

Some muscles in Paul's jaw tightened. "Justifiable homicide at best," he said. "And we both know I wouldn't really be dead. And I would deserve it, wouldn't I? For my sins?"

"Maybe so," I said, feeling the way I usually did after long session with my kickboxing exercise video. You know, the endorphins rushing in. Because I really had, in a way, just had a major workout. This one just happened to be an emotional one. "But the fact is, I'm not the one to judge."

"Why not?" Paul asked. "You don't seem to have a problem when it comes to judging me."

But he wasn't going to get me with that one. "Your grandfather warned me once that when he'd realized all the things we mediators could do, he'd made the mistake of thinking he was God," I told him. "And look where that got him. I won't be making the same mistake."

Paul just blinked at me. I really think he'd believed I'd meant to do it. The soul transference thing, I mean. Now that I'd taken all the wind out of his sails, he seemed . . . well, as stunned as I'd been earlier.

"So you see," I said while I still had the advantage, "your whole going-back-through-time-to-save-Jesse scheme? It's kind of pointless. Because for one thing, you can't travel back through time unless the person you're going back to see actually wants your help . . . which Jesse most definitely does not. And, for another, I was never going to steal your body and give it to Jesse, Paul. But, you know, you can keep on flattering yourself that I was, if it makes you happy."

I shouldn't, I realized a moment too late, have been quite so flippant. At least not then. Because when I attempted to stroll by him after that last remark - even giving my hair a toss to show my disdain for him - something inside him seemed to snap. Next thing I knew, his hand had shot out and caught my arm in a grip that hurt.

"Oh no, you don't," he snarled. "You're not getting away that easily - "

But he was wrong. Because the very next second, Paul's hand had been pried off me and his arm was bent behind his back in what looked to be a pretty painful position.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you," Jesse asked, in a semi-amused voice, "that a gentleman never lays a hand on a lady?"

Which I thought was kind of funny, considering where Jesse had had his hand the last time I'd seen him. But I thought it better to let that slide.

"Jesse," I said. "I'm okay. You can let him go."

But Jesse didn't loosen his grip. If anyone had happened to walk by, they'd have seen Paul bent over at a peculiar angle, his face white with pain. Because of course, only he and I could see the ghost who had hold of him.

"I wasn't gonna do anything to her," Paul insisted in a strangled voice. "I swear!"

Jesse looked at me for confirmation of this.

"Did he hurt you, Susannah?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I'm all right," I said.

Jesse held on to Paul for a second or two longer - just, I think, to prove he could - then he let go, so suddenly that Paul lost his balance and fell to his hands and knees, onto the stone slabs that made up the floor of the breezeway.

"You didn't have to call him," Paul said to me, with wounded dignity.

"I didn't." I was telling the truth, too.

"She didn't have to," Jesse said, going to lean against one of the breezeway's support pillars. He folded his arms across his chest and looked at Paul dispassionately as he climbed to his feet and brushed himself off.

"What'd you, sense a disturbance in the Force, or something?" Paul asked testily.

"Something like that." Jesse looked from Paul to me and then back again. "Is there anything going on here that I should know about?"

"No," I said quickly. Too quickly, maybe, since one of Jesse's eyebrows - the one with the scar through it - went up inquisitively.

Paul, to my fury, burst out into scornful laughing.

"Oh yeah," he said. "You two have a great relationship. It's really great how honest you are with each other."

Jesse narrowed his dark eyes in Paul's direction. That seemed to cause some of his laughter to dry up, without Jesse even having to say a word.

Then Jesse turned his penetrating gaze on me.

"It's nothing," I blurted, feeling a little panicky all of a sudden. "Paul was just . . . he was thinking of doing something to you. But he changed his mind. Didn't you, Paul?"

"Not really," Paul said. "Hey, I have an idea. Let's ask Jesse what he'd want, shall we? Say, Jesse, how would feel if I told you I could - "

"No," I interrupted with a gasp. Suddenly, it was getting very difficult to breathe. "Paul, really, that's not necessary. Jesse won't - "

"Now, Suze," Paul said as if he were speaking to a three-year-old. "Let's allow Jesse to decide. Jesse, what if I told you that in addition to all the many other wonderful things that we mediators can do, it turned out we can also travel through time? And that I had generously offered to travel back to your time - the night you died, I mean - and save your life. What would you say to that?"

Jesse's dark gaze didn't leave Paul's face, nor did his expression waver from cold disdain. Not even for a second.

"I would say that you're a liar" was Jesse's preternaturally calm response.

"See, I thought you might say that." Paul had the smooth patter and the self-confidence of a traveling salesman giving his spiel. "But I'm here to tell you it's the absolute truth. Think about it, Jesse. You didn't have to die that night. I can go back through time and warn you. Well, you won't know me, of course, but I think if I tell you - the past you - that I'm from the future and that you're going to die if you don't do what I tell you, you'll believe me."

"Do you?" Jesse asked in the same deadly calm voice. "Because I don't."

That stumped Paul for a second or two, during which my breathing became easy again. My heart swelled with affection for the man leaning against the stone pillar beside me. I shouldn't have worried about hiding this from Jesse. Jesse would never choose life over me. Never. He loves me too much.

Or so I thought, before Paul started his patter once again.

"I don't think you understand what I'm saying here." Paul shook his head. "I'm talking about giving you back your life, Jesse. None of this wandering around in a sort of half-life for a hundred and fifty years, watching the people you love grow older and die, one by one. No way. You'll live. To a ripe old age, if I can, you know, get rid of that Diego guy who killed you. I mean, how can you say no to an offer like that?"

"Like this," Jesse said tonelessly. "No."

Yes! I thought, flushing with joy. Yes!

Paul blinked. Once. Twice.

Then he said, his voice devoid of the friendliness that had been in it moments before, "Don't be an idiot. I'm offering you a chance to live again. Live. What are you going to do, hang around here for the rest of eternity? Are you going to watch her get old" - he thrust a finger at me - "and eventually turn to dust like you did with your family? Don't you remember how that felt? You want to go through all that again? You want her to sacrifice having a normal life - marriage, kids, grandkids - just to be with you, when you can't even support her, can't even - "

"Paul, stop it," I commanded because I could see Jesse's face growing less and less expressionless with every word.

But Paul wasn't done. Not by a long shot.

"You think you're doing her any favors by sticking around?" he demanded. "Man, you're only keeping her from leading a normal life - "

"Stop it!" I shouted at Paul as I reached out and grasped Jesse by the arm. Two things happened at once then. The first was that classroom doors suddenly flew open all around us and students began streaming out into the breezeway as they changed classes for the next period.

The next was that I seized Jesse's arms with both my hands and, looking up anxiously into his face, said, "Don't listen to him. Please. I don't care about those things, marriage and kids. All I want is you."

But it was too late. I could tell it was too late. Some of what Paul had said was already starting to sink in. Jesse's expression had grown troubled, and he seemed unable to look me in the eye.

"I mean it," I said, giving him a frustrated shake. "Don't pay attention to a word he says!"

"Um, hello, Suze." Kelly Prescott's voice rose above the noise of slamming lockers and chitchat. "Talk to the wall much?"

I flung a glance over my shoulder and saw her standing there with the rest of the Dolce and Gabbana Nazis, smirking at me. I knew, of course, what they were seeing. Me with hands raised, clutching nothing but air, and speaking to one of the pillars in the breezeway.

Like I don't have enough of a reputation for being a freak. Now I really looked like I was going around the bend.

But when I turned my head back to tell Jesse we'd finish this conversation later, I saw that I was too late. He'd already disappeared.

I dropped my hands and turned to face Paul, who still stood there looking angry and defensive and pleased with himself at the same time.

"Thanks a lot," I said to him.

"Don't mention it." He walked away, whistling to himself.

Chapter ten

"Is there wheat in this?" a petite woman in a China chop and huge dark sunglasses asked me as she held up a chocolate chip cookie.

"Yes," I said.

"What about this?" She held up a brownie.

"Yes," I said.

"What about this?" A Mexican wedding cookie.

"Yes."

"Are you telling me," she demanded, looking outraged, "that there is wheat in all of these baked goods?"

I lowered my chair. I'd been tilting it out of boredom, to see how far back I could lean without falling.

"Because Tyler doesn't eat wheat," the woman went on, her hand going to cradle the chubby-cheeked face of a kid standing beside her. His blue eyes blinked out at me past his mother's perfectly manicured nails. "I'm raising him on a gluten-free diet."

"Try one of those," I said, pointing to some lemon bars.

"Is there dairy in it?" the woman asked suspiciously. "Because I'm raising Tyler lactose-free, as well."

"Dairy- and gluten-free, I promise," I said.

The woman slipped me a dollar, and I handed her the lemon bars. She passed one to Tyler, who inspected it, bit into it . . . then gave me a dazzling smile - his first of the day, no doubt - as his mother took his hand and led him away. Beside me, Shannon, my fellow bake sale attendant, looked appalled.

"There's wheat and dairy in those lemon bars," she said.

"I know." I rocked my chair back again. "I felt bad for the little guy."

"But - "

"She didn't say he was allergic. She just said she was raising him without it. Poor kid."

"Suu-uuze," the eighth grader said, giving my name multiple syllables. "You are so cool. Your brother Dave said you were cool, but I didn't believe him."

"Oh, I'm cool, all right," I assured her. It was weird to hear someone call David "Dave." He was such a David to me.

"You so are," Shannon said with perfect seriousness.

Whatever. It was so the story of my life to be stuck running a school bake sale while the rest of the world was enjoying such a perfect Saturday. The sky overhead was so blue and cloudless, it was almost painful to look at. The temperature was hovering at an extremely comfortable seventy degrees. A beautiful day for the beach or cappuccino at an outdoor cafe, or even just a walk.

And where was I? Yeah, that'd be manning the eighth grade bake sale booth at the Mission's charity antique auction.

"I couldn't believe it when Sister Ernestine told us you would be helping out at the booth," Shannon was saying. Shannon, I'd discovered, was not shy. She likes to talk. A lot. "I mean, you being an eleventh grader and all. And, you know. So cool."

Cool. Yeah, right.

I hadn't expected so many people to show up at the auction. Oh, sure, a few parents, eager to look like they cared about their kids' school. But not, you know, hordes of eager antique collectors.

But that's exactly who was here. There were people everywhere, people I'd never seen before, all wandering around, peering at the items that would be auctioned off, and whispering conspiratorially to one another. Occasionally, some of them stopped by our booth and shelled out a buck for a Rice Krispies treat or whatever. But mostly they had their eyes on the prize. . . . in this case, a hideously ugly wicker birdcage, or some old Mickey Mouse watch, or a snow globe of the Golden Gate Bridge, or some other equally non-designer thing.

The bidding got started late because the monsignor was supposed to have been acting as auctioneer. Because he was still in a coma up in San Francisco, there appeared to have been some frantic phone calls on the part of Sister Ernestine, as she looked for someone worthy to fill in.

You can imagine my surprise when she got up onto the dais at the end of the courtyard and announced into the microphone, in front of all the many antique collectors gathered there, that in the monsignor's absence, the auction would be called by none other than Andy Ackerman, well-known host of a home repair show on cable . . .

. . . and my stepdad.

I saw Andy climb the dais, waving modestly and looking abashed at all the applause he was getting. Not sure if there could possibly be anything more embarrassing than this, I started to slink down in my chair. . . .

Oh but wait, there was something more embarrassing than my stepfather calling the school antique auction. There was also the fact that most of the applause he was getting was coming from a woman in the front row.

My mother.

"Hey," Shannon said. "Isn't that - "

"Yes," I interrupted her. "Yes, it is."

A few minutes later the auction began, with Andy doing a very good imitation of those auctioneers you see on TV, the ones who talk really fast. He was gesturing to an ugly orange plastic chair and declaring it "authentic Eames" and asking if anyone would be willing to bid a hundred dollars for it.

A hundred dollars? I wouldn't have traded a Rice Krispies treat for it.

But wouldn't you know it, people in the audience were lifting their paddles, and soon the chair went for 350 bucks! And nobody even complained about what a rip-off it was.

Clearly Sister Ernestine had impressed upon this audience just how badly the school needed its basketball court repaved, because people were just throwing their money away on the most worthless pieces of garbage ever. I saw CeeCee's aunt Pru and my own homeroom teacher Mr. Walden both bidding against each other for an extremely hideous lamp. Aunt Pru finally won it - for 175 bucks - then walked over to Mr. Walden, apparently to gloat. Except that a few minutes later, I saw them having lemonade together and overheard them laughing about sharing custody of the lamp, like it was a kid in a divorce settlement. Shannon, observing this, went, "Aw, isn't that cute?"

Except that it totally wasn't. It totally isn't cute when your best friend's weird aunt and your homeroom teacher make a love connection, and you yourself can't get the guy you like to call you, because, oh guess what, he's a ghost and doesn't have a phone.

Not that if Jesse'd call, I'd have had anything much to say to him. What was I going to do, be all "Oh, yeah, by the way, Paul wants to travel through time and make it so you never died. But I plan on stopping him. Because I want you to roam around in the netherworld for a hundred and fifty years so you and I can make out in my mom's car. Okay? Buh-bye."

Besides, it wasn't like it was going to happen. Paul going back through time, I mean. Because he didn't have that anchor thing his grandpa had been talking about. The thing to anchor him to the night Jesse died.

Or that's what I was telling myself - reassuring myself - right up until Andy held up the silver belt buckle Brad had found while he'd been cleaning out the attic. When he'd found it - wedged between the floorboards beneath the attic window - it had been this tarnished, crusty old thing I'd barely glanced at twice. Andy had thrown it into the box marked MISSION AUCTION, and I hadn't really thought about it again.

When he held it up now, I saw it winking in the afternoon sunlight. Someone had washed and polished it. And now Andy was going on about how it was an artifact from when our house had been the area's only hotel - a fancy way of saying what it had really been a boardinghouse - and that the Carmel Historical Society had put its age at close to 150 years.

About as long, actually, as my boyfriend had been dead.

"What'll I get for this sterling silver buckle?" Andy wanted to know. "A real piece of old-fashioned craftsmanship. Look at the detail in the ornate D carved into it."

Shannon, sitting beside me, suddenly went, "Does your brother ever talk about me? Dave, I mean."

I was idly watching my stepfather. The sun was beating down on us kind of hard, and it was difficult to think about anything except how much I wished I were at the beach.

"I don't know," I said. I could understand Shannon's pain, of course. She had a crush on a guy. All she wanted to know was whether or not she was wasting her time.

As the sister of the object of her affections, however, all I could think was . . . ew. Also, that David is way too young to have a girlfriend.

"One of the members of the historical society - don't think I don't see you there, Bob," Andy went on laughingly, "even ventured that this belt buckle might have belonged to someone in the Diego clan, a very old, very respected family that settled in this area nearly two hundred years ago."

Respected, my butt. The Diegos - or at least, the ghost of the one member of the family I had had the misfortune to meet - had all been thieves and murderers.

"I believe that for that reason and not just because of its intricate beauty," Andy continued, "this piece is going to be highly sought after by collectors someday . . . and, who knows, maybe even today!"

"David doesn't really talk about girls at home all that much," I said to Shannon. "At least, not to me."

"Oh." Shannon looked dejected. "But do you think . . . well, do you think if Dave did like a girl, it'd be, you know, someone like me?"

"Let's start the bidding for this fine piece of authentic period jewelry at a hundred dollars," Andy said. "A hundred dollars. Okay, we have a hundred. How about a hundred and twenty-five? Does anybody bid a hundred and twenty-five?"

I thought about what Shannon had asked me. David, a girlfriend? The youngest of my stepbrothers, I could no more picture David with a girlfriend than I could picture him behind the wheel of a car or even playing soccer. He just isn't that kind of guy.

"Three fifty," I heard Andy say. "Do I hear three fifty?"

But I supposed that one day David would drive a car. I mean, I could drive now, and there'd been a time when my whole family had despaired of that ever happening. It made sense that someday David would be sixteen and do all the same things that his older brothers Jake and Brad and I were doing. . . . You know, drive. Take trig. Make out with members of the opposite sex.

"My goodness, Bob," Andy said into the microphone. "You weren't kidding when you mentioned how important you thought this piece was going to be to our auction today, were you? I have seven hundred dollars. Does anyone - Okay, seven fifty. Do I hear eight?"

"Sure," I said to Shannon. "I mean, why wouldn't David like you? I mean, if he liked anyone better than anybody else. Which I'm not saying he does. That I know of."

"Really?" Shannon looked worried. "Because Dave's really smart. And I think he'd probably only like smart girls. But I'm not doing all that well in math."

"I'm sure David wouldn't care about something like that," I said even though I wasn't sure of it at all. "So long as, you know, you're a nice person, and all."

"Really?" Shannon flushed prettily. "Do you really think so?"

My God, what had I said?

Fortunately at that moment, Andy brought his auctioneer's hammer down hard, and distracted Shannon by shouting, "Sold for eleven hundred dollars!"

"Wow," Shannon said. "That's a lot of money."

She wasn't the only one in shock. There was an astonished hum through the crowd. Eleven hundred dollars was the most any item on the block had brought in so far. I craned my neck to see what kind of fool had that much money to burn on a piece of junk, and was a little startled to see that Andy was still holding up the belt buckle Jake had found in the attic . . .

. . and that Paul Slater, of all people, was striding up through the crowd to claim it.

I watched as Paul, looking pleased, shook Andy's hand, took the belt buckle, then whipped out his checkbook. What a loser, I thought. I mean, I had known Paul was a weirdo for a long time. But to throw away his hard-earned money - well, not so hard-earned, actually, because I was pretty sure he was paying for the belt buckle with funds stolen from the Gutierrezes - on a piece of junk like that. . . . Well, that was just insane.

It didn't make any sense. Why would Paul Slater spend 1,100 bucks on a banged-up old belt buckle . . . even if it had been polished and its linage could be traced back to its original owner, someone in the Diego clan?

And then, as if someone had brought Andy's auctioneer's hammer down on my head, finally banging some sense into me, it all became clear.

And I began to feel as if I might throw up all those baked goods we'd secretly been scarfing down behind Sister Ernestine's back. I guess it must have shown on my face, since Shannon suddenly sucked in her breath and went, "Are you all right?"

"Bad lemon bar," I said. "I'll be right back." I got up and hurried away from the bake sale table, around the back of the rows of folding chairs, and then up the aisle, toward the dais where Paul was standing, collecting his bounty.

But before I could get anywhere close to him, someone grabbed me by the arm.

My heart was beating so fast on account of the whole Paul-trying-to-keep-my-boyfriend-from-dying thing, that I almost jumped a mile in the air, I was so startled.

But it turned out it was only my mother.

"Susie, honey," she said, smiling beatifically up at Andy, behind his podium. "Isn't this fun? Isn't Andy doing great?"

"Uh," I said, "yeah, Mom."

"He's a real natural, isn't he?" She's so in love with this guy. It's totally gross. In, like, a nice way, I guess. But still gross.

"Yeah," I said. "Look, I have to - "

But I shouldn't have worried. Because Paul found me.

"Suze," he said, coming down the steps from the dais. I was too late. The transaction had been completed. In his hand was the belt buckle. "Fancy meeting you here."

"I need to talk to you," I said more intensely than I'd meant to, because both my mother and Sister Ernestine, who was standing nearby with Paul's check still hot in her hands, turned to look at me.

"Susie, honey," my mom said. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," I said quickly. Could they tell? Could they tell my heart was hammering a mile a minute and that my mouth was as dry as sand? "I just need to talk to Paul really fast."

"And who is minding the bake sale table?" Sister Ernestine wanted to know.

"Shannon's got it under control," I said, reaching out and taking Paul's arm. He was watching us - my mom, Sister Ernestine, and me - with a slightly sardonic smile, as if everything we were saying was amusing him very much.

"Well, don't leave her alone too long," Sister Ernestine said severely. I could tell that wasn't what she'd wanted to say, but just as far as she was willing to go in front of my mom.

"I won't, Sister," I said.

And then I dragged Paul away from the dais and folding chairs, and over behind one of the display tables holding the rest of the stuff that was to be auctioned.

"What do you think you're doing?" I hissed at him the moment we were out of earshot.

"Well, hey, Suze," he said, looking as if he were still finding plenty about the situation to amuse him. "Nice to see you, too."

"Don't give me that," I said. It was kind of hard to talk with my mouth feeling so dry and all, but I wasn't about to give up. "What did you buy that belt buckle for?"

"This?" Paul opened his fist and I saw silver flash in the bright sun for a second before his fingers closed over it again. "Oh, I don't know. I just thought it was pretty."

"Eleven hundred dollars' worth of pretty?" I glared at him, hoping he couldn't see how badly I was shaking. Come on, Paul, I'm not stupid. I know why you bought that thing."

"Really?" Paul's grin was more infuriating than ever. "Enlighten me."

"Only it's not going to work." My heart was slamming into my ribs now, but I knew there was no going back. "Jesse's last name is de Silva. That's an S, not a D. That isn't his buckle."

I'd expected this news to wipe the insufferable smile right off Paul's face.

Only it didn't. The corners of his mouth didn't even waver.

"I know it isn't Jesse's buckle," he said evenly. "Anything else, Suze? Or can I go now?"

I stared at him. I could feel my pulse slowing down, and the roaring sound that had filled my ears since I'd realized he was the buckle's new owner suddenly disappeared. For the first time in several minutes, I was able to take a deep breath. Before, I'd only been able to manage shallow ones.

"Then . . . then you know," I said, feeling ridiculously relieved, "you know you won't be able to use that to go . . . to go back through time to save Jesse."

"Of course," Paul said, his smile growing broader than ever. "Because I'm going to use it to go back through time to stop Jesse's murderer. See you, Suze."

Chapter ten

Diego. Felix Diego, the man who'd killed Jesse, because Jesse's fiancée, the heinous Maria, asked him to. She had wanted to marry Diego, a slave-runner and mercenary, rather than the man her father had picked out tor her to marry, her cousin (ew) Jesse.

But Jesse never made it to the wedding. That's because he was killed on his way there. Killed by Felix Diego, though no one at the time knew that. His body was never found. People - Jesse's own family, even - assumed that he'd chosen to run away rather than marry a girl he didn't love and who didn't love him. Maria had gone on to marry Felix, and they'd produced a whole bunch of kids who later grew up to be murderers and thieves themselves.

And, not too long ago, the pair of them had paid a little visit to me, at Paul's behest. He'd met Diego's ghost. In fact, Paul was the one who'd summoned him.

Now Paul was going to stop Diego from killing Jesse . . . probably by killing Diego himself. It's easy for shifters to kill people. All we have to do is remove their souls from their bodies, escort them to that spiritual way station where their fate - whatever it was, heaven, hell, next life - was decided, and boom: back on earth, another unexplained death, another body in the morgue.

Or, in Diego's case, the icehouse, because they didn't have morgues in California circa 1850.

Except that it wasn't going to happen like that. I wasn't going to let Paul do it. Oh sure, Diego deserved to die. He was the scum of the earth. He'd killed my boyfriend, after all.

But if Diego died, that meant Jesse wouldn't.

And then I'd never meet him.

I knew, of course, that I couldn't stop Paul on my own - short of killing him myself. I needed backup.

Fortunately, I knew just where to find it. As soon as the auction was over, and Sister Ernestine dismissed Shannon and me with a curt, "You may go now," I booked for my mom's car, which she'd graciously allowed me to borrow for the day, in light of my "volunteering" to help out at the Mission. Paul had left the second after he'd dropped his little bomb about stopping Felix Diego. I had no way of knowing, really, where he'd disappeared to.

But I had a pretty good idea who might know.

The sun was just starting to set as I pulled out onto Scenic Drive, painting the western sky a deep burnt orange, and turning the sea the color of flames. The windows in the expensive seaside homes I passed reflected the light from the setting sun, so you couldn't see inside them.

But I knew that behind the glowing glass, families were just sitting down to dinner . . . families like my own. I was going to be in big trouble for what I was doing . . . not for trying to keep Paul from saving my boyfriend's life, but for missing dinner. Andy's a real stickler about family mealtimes.

But what choice did I have? There was a life at stake here. And okay, so the life belonged to a heinous killer who deserved to die. That was beside the point. Paul had to be stopped.

And I knew of only one person he might possibly listen to.

But when I pulled into the Slaters' driveway, I saw that my panic had been for nothing. Not only was Paul's silver BMW convertible there, but it had been joined by a red Porsche Boxster that I recognized only too well.

Paul wouldn't, I knew, be hurtling through alternative dimensions any time soon.

I parked behind the Boxster, then hurried up the long flight of stone steps to the modern house's front door, where I leaned on the bell. A cool, crisp breeze was blowing in from the sea. Inhaling it, you almost felt like all was right with the world . . . anything that could smell that clean and fresh had to be good, right?

Wrong. So wrong. The water in Carmel Bay can be treacherous, with dangerous riptides that had swept hundreds of hapless vacationers to their deaths. It was fitting that Paul would live just yards away from something so deadly.

Paul answered the door himself. You could tell he was expecting some kind of food delivery, and not me, because he had his wallet out.

To his credit, when he saw it was me, and not, say, my stepbrother Jake delivering a pie from Peninsula Pizza, Paul didn't skip a beat. He slipped his wallet back into the pocket of his perfectly pressed chinos and said with a slow smile, "Suze. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Don't get your hopes up," I said. With luck he'd mistake my sudden hoarseness for gruff disconcern, and not what it actually was, which was fear. "I'm not here to see you."

"Paul?" A familiar voice tinkled like wind chimes from somewhere deep in the house. "Make sure he gives you extra of those, you know. Whaddyacall'ems. Hot sprinkles."

Paul looked over his shoulder, and I saw Kelly Prescott - barefoot, with the straps of her extremely skimpy Betsey Johnson dress slipping off her shoulders - coming down the stairs.

"Oh," she said when she saw it was me at the door and not a pizza. "Suze. What are you doing here?"

"Sorry to interrupt," I said, hoping they couldn't see how fast my heart was racing beneath the conservative white blouse I'd worn to appease Sister Ernestine. "But I really need to have a word with Paul's grandfather."

"Grandpa Gork?" Kelly looked up at Paul inquisitively. "You told me he couldn't talk!"

"Apparently," Paul said, the amused smile never leaving his face, "he does. But only to Suze."

Kelly flicked a scathing glance at me. "Geez, Suze," she said. "I didn't know you were so into old people."

"That's me," I said with a laugh I hoped didn't sound as nervous to their ears as it did to my own. "Friend to the old people. So . . . can I come in?"

I half expected Paul to say no. I mean, he had to have known why I was there. He had to have known I only wanted to talk to Dr. Slaski so I could see if he knew of some way I could stop his grandson from playing with the past . . . and messing up my present.

But instead of looking angry about it or even mildly annoyed, Paul opened the door wider and said, "Be my guest."

I stepped inside and managed a smile at Kelly as I went by her and up the stairs to the main floor. Kelly didn't return the smile. I could see why when I stepped into the living room. There was a fire going in the fireplace and, from the placement of the brandy snifters on the chrome-and-glass coffee table in front of the long low couch, it appeared that I'd interrupted a "moment" between her and Paul.

I tried not to take it personally that Paul had never broken out the brandy or firewood during the many times I'd been over. I am, after all, taken. Still, the whole thing smacked of overkill. Kelly had been warm for Paul's form for so long, she'd have been happy with beef jerky and a Slurpee, let alone a fire and Courvoisier.

I hurried past the living room and down the long hallway that led to Dr. Slaski's room. I could hear the Game Show Network blaring away. That must have been a nice accompaniment to Kelly and Paul's make-out session. The dulcet tones of Bob Barker. Smack, smack.

When I got to Dr. Slaski's room, I stopped and knocked, just to make sure I wasn't interrupting a sponge bath or anything. When no one called for me to come in, I went ahead and pushed the partly open door. Dr. Slaski's attendant was sprawled in a chair in one corner, taking what was probably a well-earned nap. Dr. Slaski himself, propped up in his hospital bed, appeared to be dozing as well.

I hated to wake him, of course, but what choice did I have? Was I wrong in thinking that he might want to know that his own grandson was thinking of tampering with the course of history, something he himself had warned me was perilous in the extreme?

"Dr. Slaski?" I whispered, since I didn't want to wake the attendant, as well. "Dr. Slaski? Are you awake? It's me, Suze. Suze Simon. I have something really important I need to ask you."

Dr. Slaski opened one eye and looked at me. "This," he wheezed - his breathing didn't sound right - "had better be good."

"It's not," I assured him. "I mean, it's not good news, anyway. It's about Paul."

Dr. Slaski looked toward the ceiling. "Why am I not surprised?"

"It's just," I said, slipping onto the chair beside his bed, "that I found out why Paul wants to go back through time."

Dr. Slaski's eyelids opened a little wider. "To save mankind from the atrocities of Stalin?" he rasped.

"Um," I said. "No. To keep my boyfriend from dying."

Paul's grandfather blinked his rheumy eyes at me. "And this is a bad thing because . . . ?"

"Because if Paul goes back through time and saves Jesse," I whispered, to keep the attendant from overhearing, "I'll never meet him!"

"Paul?"

"No." I couldn't believe this. "Jesse!"

Dr. Slaski licked his cracked lips. "Because," he wheezed, "Jesse is. . . ."

"Dead, all right?" I shot the still-dozing attendant a careful look. "Jesse is dead. My boyfriend is a ghost."

Slowly, Dr. Slaski closed his eyes. "I don't," he sighed, "have the patience for this. I'm not feeling very well today."

"Dr. Slaski!" I leaned forward and prodded his arm. "Please, you have to help me. Tell Paul he can't do this. Tell him he can't play around with time travel, the way you told me. Tell him it's dangerous, that he'll end up like you. Tell him something, anything. But you've got to get him to stop before he ruins my life!"

Dr. Slaski, his eyes still closed, shook his head slowly from side to side. "You've come to the wrong person," he said. "I can't control that boy. Never could. Never will."

"But you can still try, Dr. Slaski," I cried. "Please, you've got to! If he saves Jesse . . . if he succeeds. . . ."

"Your heart will break." Dr. Slaski had opened his eyes and was gazing at me. "Your life will be over."

"Yes!"

"How old are you?" Dr. Slaski wanted to know. "Fifteen? Sixteen? You really think your life will be over if a boy you have a crush on - not even a boy, a ghost! - happens to disappear? Next year, you wouldn't remember him, anyway."

"That isn't true," I hissed at him through gritted teeth. "What Jesse and I have . . . it's something special. Paul knows that. That's why he's trying to ruin it."

Dr. Slaski looked interested in that.

"Is he?" he said with a little more animation. "And why would he want to do that, do you think?"

"Because . . ." I was embarrassed to admit it, but what choice did I have, really? I took a deep breath. "Because he thinks we should be together. Him and me. Because we're mediators."

A slow smile broke out across Dr. Slaski's dry, liver-spotted lips.

"Shifters," he corrected me.

"Shifters," I said. "Whatever. Dr. Slaski, it's not right, and you know it."

"On the contrary," Dr. Slaski said with a phlegmy cough. "It's probably the smartest thing that boy's ever done. Romantic, too. Almost gives me faith in him."

"Dr. Slaski!"

"What's so wrong with it, anyway?" Dr. Slaski glared at me. "Sounds to me like he's doing you a favor. Or the boyfriend, anyway. You think this Jessup - "

"Jesse."

"You think this Jesse likes being a ghost? Hanging around tor all eternity, watching you live your life, while he hovers in the background, never aging, never feeling an ocean breeze on his face, never again tasting blueberry pie. Is that the kind of life you wish for him? You must love him a lot, if that's true."

I felt heat rising in my cheeks at his tone.

"Of course that's not what I want for him," I said fiercely. "But if the alternative is never having known him at all - well, I don't want that, either. And neither would he!"

"But you haven't asked him, have you?"

"Well, I - "

"Have you?"

"Well." I looked down, unable to meet his gaze. "No. No, I haven't."

"I didn't think so," Dr. Slaski said. "And I know why, too. You're afraid of what he'll say. You're afraid he'll say he'd rather live."

I looked up sharply. "That isn't true!"

"It is and you know it. You're afraid he'd say he'd rather live out the rest of his life, the way he was supposed to, never having known you - "

"There has to be another way!" I cried. "It can't just be one thing or the other. Paul said something about soul transference - "

"Ah," Dr. Slaski said. "But for that, you need to have a body available to take the soul you want to transfer into it."

I thought darkly of Paul. "I think I know of one," I said.

As if he'd read my thoughts, Dr. Slaski said, "But you won't do that."

I raised my eyebrows. "Won't I?"

"No," he said. His voice was beginning to sound fainter and fainter. "No, you won't. He would. If he thought it'd get him what he wanted. But not you. You don't have it in you."

"I do," I said as fiercely as I was able.

But Dr. Slaski only shook his head again. "You're not like him," he said. "Or me. No need to get huffy about it. It's a good thing. You'll live longer."

"Maybe," I said, tears filling my eyes as I looked down at my hands. "But what's the point, if I'm not happy?"

Dr. Slaski didn't say anything for a while. His breathing had grown so raspy, that after a minute or so, I began to think he was snoring, and looked up, fearing he'd fallen asleep.

But he hadn't. His gaze on me was steady.

"You love this boy?" Dr. Slaski asked finally.

"Jesse?" I nodded, unable to say more.

"There is one thing you could do," he wheezed. "Never tried it myself, but I heard it could be done. Wouldn't recommend it, of course. Probably put you into an early grave, like I'll be, soon enough."

I leaned forward in my chair.

"What is it?" I cried. "Tell me, please. I'll do anything . . . anything!"

"Anything that doesn't involve killing someone, you mean," Dr. Slaski said and broke down into a coughing fit from which it seemed to take him ages to recover. Finally, lying back on his hospital bed, the horrible, body-wracking spasms finished, he wheezed, "When you go back . . ."

"Back? Through time, you mean?"

He didn't respond. He just looked up at the ceiling.

"Dr. Slaski? Go back through time? Is that what you meant?"

But Dr. Slaski never finished that sentence. Because midway through it, his jaw went slack, his eyes closed, and he fell sound asleep.

Or at least that's what I assumed.

I couldn't believe it. He's about to give me some really valuable tip on how I might be able to save Jesse, and suddenly his Excedrin PM kicks in? What's the deal with that?

I reached out to touch his hand, hoping that might wake him. "Dr. Slaski?" I called a little more loudly. When he still didn't respond, panic set in.

"Dr. Slaski?" I cried. "Dr. Slaski, wake up!"

My scream brought the attendant snorting back into consciousness. He was up and out of his chair at once, crying, "What? What is it?"

"I don't know," I stammered. "He - he won't wake up."

The attendant's fingers flew over Paul's grandfather's body, feeling for a pulse, adjusting IVs. . . .

Next thing I knew, he'd straddled the old man and was pounding on his chest.

"Call nine-one-one," he yelled at me.

I just stood there, not understanding. "He was just talking to me," I said. "We were having a totally normal conversation. I mean, he was coughing a lot, but . . . but he was fine. And then all of a sudden - "

The attendant had to say it twice.

"Call nine-one-one! Get an ambulance!"

That's when I noticed that there was a phone right there in the room. I picked it up and dialed. When the operator came on, I told her that we needed an ambulance and gave her the address. Meanwhile, behind me, the attendant had placed an oxygen mask over Dr. Slaski's face, and was filling a syringe with something.

"I don't understand this," he kept saying. "He was fine an hour ago. Just fine!"

I didn't understand it, either. Unless Dr. Slaski was much more ill than he'd ever let on.

There didn't seem to be much else I could do to help, so I figured I'd better go and tell Paul his grandfather had had some sort of attack. I got back to the living room just in time to see Kelly, seated beside Paul on the couch, her legs draped over his like a throw, stick her tongue in his mouth. . . . A sight I actually would have paid money to have been spared.

"Ahem," I said, from the hallway.

Kelly pulled her face off Paul's and looked at me sourly.

"What do you want?" she demanded. Given her animosity toward me, you'd hardly have guessed that we were currently president and vice-president of the junior class, and had to work daily (well, weekly) together in order to decide such important issues as where to go for a class trip and what kind of flowers to order for the spring formal.

Ignoring Kelly, I said, "Paul, your grandfather appears to be having a heart attack or something."

Paul looked at me through eyes that were half lidded. That Kelly sure has some sucking power.

"What?" he said stupidly.

"Your grandfather." I lifted a hand to push some hair from my eyes. I hoped he didn't notice how much my fingers were shaking. "An ambulance is on the way. He's had like a stroke or something."

Paul didn't look surprised. He said, "Oh," in kind of a disappointed voice . . . but more like he was bummed that his make-out session with Kelly had been interrupted than that his grandfather was, for all we knew, dying.

"Be right there," Paul said and started to disentangle himself from Kelly's legs.

"Paul," Kelly cried. She managed to give his name two syllables, so it came out sounding like Paw-wol.

"Sorry, Kel," Paul said, giving one of her calves a good-natured pat. "Grandpa Gork's OD'd on his meds again. Gotta go take care of business."

Kelly pouted prettily. "But the pizza's not even here yet!"

"We'll have to take a rain check, babe," he said.

Babe. I shuddered.

Then realized what he'd said. As he moved past me to get to his grandfather's room, I reached out and seized his arm. "What do you mean, he's OD'd on his meds?" I hissed.

"Uh," Paul said, looking down at me with a half smile. "Because that's what happened?"

"How do you know? You haven't even seen him yet!"

"Uh," he said, the smile growing broader. "Because maybe I helped make it happen."

I dropped my hand as if his skin had suddenly burst into flames. "You did this?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Except that I should have. I really should have. Because it was Paul.

"For God's sake, Paul, why?"

"I knew you'd be coming over to see him after what happened today at the auction," he said with a shrug. "And frankly, I didn't need the hassle from the old man. Now if you'll excuse me . . ."

He went sauntering down the hall in the direction of his grandfather's room. I stared after him, not quite believing what I'd just heard.

And yet . . .

And yet it made sense. It was Paul, after all. Paul, a guy whose morals were more than a little askew.

Feeling numb, I wandered back out into the living room, where Kelly was pulling on her shoes and squawking into her cell phone. "No, I'm telling you, she came busting in here, demanding to know what I was doing with her boyfriend. Well, okay, she didn't say it quite like that. She made up some story about wanting to talk to Paul's grandfather. Yeah, I know, the one who can't talk. I know, have you ever heard a lamer excuse? Then she - " Looking up, Kelly saw me. "Oh, sorry, Deb, gotta go, call you later." She hung up and just stood there, glaring at me. "Thanks," she said finally, "for spoiling what otherwise might have been a really nice evening."

I was tempted to tell her the truth - that I hadn't spoiled anything. Paul was the one who'd apparently overmedicated his grandfather. At least, that seemed to be what he wanted me to believe.

But what would have been the point? She wouldn't have believed me, anyway.

"Sorry" was all I said and started for the door.

When I opened it, however, I saw my stepbrother Jake standing there, a pizza box in his hand.

"Peninsula Pizza, that'll be twenty-seven ninety. . . ." His voice trailed off as he recognized me. "Suze? What are you doing here?"

"Just leaving," I said.

"Yeah, well, you'd better." Jake glanced at his watch. "You're gonna be late for dinner. Dad'll kill you."

Yet another thing to look forward to.

"Kelly," I called up the stairs. "Your pizza's here!" To Jake I said, "Hope you remembered the hot pepper flakes."

Then I left.

Chapter eleven

Because of the auction, Andy was late putting dinner on the table, so I ended up getting home just in time. My mom couldn't understand why I was so quiet during the meal, though. She thought maybe I'd gotten too much sun sitting out at the bake sale table.

"Sister Ernestine should at least have given you an umbrella," she said as she dug into the pork tenderloin Andy had prepared. "That little girl you were sitting with . . . what was her name again?"

"Shannon."

Only it wasn't me who said it. It was David.

"Yes, Shannon," my mother said. "She's a redhead, like David. That much sun can be very damaging to redheads. I hope she was wearing sunscreen."

I half expected David to come up with one of his usual comments - you know, the exact statistical incidents of skin cancer occurring in eighth graders in northern California, or something. His head was filled with all sorts of useless information like that. Instead, he just flicked his mashed potatoes around his plate, until Brad, who'd finished all of his own mashed potatoes, as well as what was left in the bowl, went, "Man, are you going to eat that or play with it? Because if you don't want it, give it to me."

"David," Andy said. "Finish what's on your plate." David picked up a spoonful of mashed potatoes and ate it.

Brad's gaze immediately flickered over to my plate. But the hopeful look in his eye faded when he saw how clean it was. Not, of course, that I'd felt like eating. At all.

But I had Max, the family dog-slash-garbage disposal, by my side, and I'd grown expert at slipping him what I couldn't choke down myself.

"May I be excused?" I asked. "I think maybe I did get a little too much sun - "

"It's Suze's turn to put the plates in the dishwasher," Brad declared.

"No, it isn't." I couldn't believe this. Didn't these people realize I had way more important things to do than worry about household chores? I had to make sure my boyfriend died, like he was supposed to. "I did it last week."

"Nuh-uh," Brad said. "You and Jake traded weeks, remember? Because he had to work the dinner shift this week."

Since this was indisputably true - I'd seen the evidence myself over at Paul's - I couldn't argue anymore.

"Fine," I said, scooting my chair back, nearly running over Max in the process, and standing up. "I'll do it."

"Thank you, Susie," my mom said with a smile as I took her plate.

My reply wasn't exactly gracious. I muttered, "Whatever," and went into the kitchen with everybody's plates, Max following closely at my heels. Max loves it when I have plate-clearing duty, because I just scrape everything into his bowl, rather than into the trash compactor.

But on that night, Max and I weren't alone in the kitchen.

Even though I didn't notice anyone else in there right away, I knew something was up when Max suddenly lifted his head from his bowl and fled, his food only half finished, and his tail between his legs. Only one thing had the power to make Max leave pork uneaten, and that was a visitor from beyond.

He materialized a second later.

"Hey, kiddo," he said. "How's it going?"

I didn't scream or anything. I just poured Lemon Joy into the pot Andy had used to cook the potatoes, then filled it with hot water.

"Nice timing, Dad," I said. "You just stop by to say hi, or did someone on the ghost grapevine alert you to my extreme mental anguish?"

He smiled. He looked no different than he had the day he died. . . . No different from the dozens of times he'd visited me since then. He was still wearing the shirt he'd died in - the shirt I'd slept with for so many years.

"I heard you were having some . . . issues," my dad said.

That's the problem with ghosts. When they aren't haunting people, they sit around in the spectral plane, gossiping. Dad had even met Jesse. . . . A prospect I found too horrifying to even contemplate sometimes.

And of course, when you're dead . . . well . . . there isn't a whole lot to do. I knew my dad spent a goodly portion of his free time basically spying on me.

"Been a while since we had a chat," Dad went on, looking around the kitchen appreciatively. His gaze fell on the sliding glass doors and he noticed the hot tub. He whistled appreciatively. "That's new."

"Andy built it," I said. I started in on the glass dish Andy had roasted the pork in.

"Is there anything that guy can't do?" my dad wanted to know. But he was, I knew, being sarcastic. My dad doesn't like Andy. At least, not that much.

"No," I said. "Andy is a man of many talents. And I don't know what you've seen - or heard - but I'm fine, Dad. Really."

"Wouldn't expect you to be anything else." My dad looked more closely at the kitchen counters. "Is that real granite? Or imitation?"

"Dad." I nearly threw the dish towel at him. "Quit stalling and say what you came to say. Because if it's what I think you're here to say, no deal."

"And what do you think that is?" Dad wanted to know, folding his arms and leaning back against the kitchen counter.

"I'm not going to let him do it, Dad," I said. "I'm not."

My dad sighed. Not because he was sad. He sighed with happiness. In life, Dad had been a lawyer. In death, he still relished a good argument.

"Jesse deserves another chance," he said. "I know it. You know it."

"If he doesn't die," I said, attacking the potato pot with perhaps more energy than was strictly necessary, "I'll never meet him. Same with you."

Dad raised his eyebrows. "Same with . . . oh, you mean you thought about saving me?" He looked pleased. "Suze, that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."

That did it. Just those ten little words. Suddenly, something inside of me seemed to break, and a second later, I was sobbing in his arms . . . only silently, so no one else in the house could hear.

"Oh, Dad," I wept into his shirtfront. "I don't know what to do. I want to bring you back. I do, I really do."

Dad stroked my hair and said in the kindest voice imaginable, "I know. I know you do, kiddo."

That just made me cry harder. "But if I save you," I choked, "I'll never meet him."

"I know," my dad said again. "Susie, I know."

"What should I do, Dad?" I asked, lifting my head from his chest and attempting to control myself - his shirt was practically soaked already. "I'm so confused. Help me. Please."

"Susie." Dad grinned down at me, still tenderly brushing back my hair with his hands. "I never thought I'd see the day when you, of all people, would actually admit you need help. Especially from me."

I used a fist to swipe at the tears that were still rolling down my face. "Of course I need you, Dad," I whispered. "I've always needed you. I always will."

"I don't know about that." My dad, instead of stroking my hair, rumpled it now. "But I do know one thing. This time-shifting thing. It's dangerous?"

I sniffled. "Well," I said. "Yeah."

"And do you really think," Dad went on, the skin around his eyes crinkling, "that I'd let my little girl risk her life to save mine?"

"But, Dad - "

"No, Suze." The crinkles deepened and I could tell he was more serious than he'd been in a long time. "Not for me. I'd give anything to live again" - and now I saw that, along with the crinkles, there was moisture there, as well - "but not if it means anything bad might happen to you."

I gazed up at him, my eyes as bright with tears as his own.

"Oh, Dad," I said, unable to keep the throb from my throat.

He reached up to lay a hand on either side of my wet face.

"And I wouldn't presume to speak for Jesse," he said, tilting my head so that we were looking straight into each other's eyes. "But I think I can safely say that he's not going to like the idea of you risking your life to save his any more than I do. Knowing him, in fact, he'll probably like it even less."

I reached up and placed my hands over his own. Then I said, "I get it, Dad. Really, I do. And I won't go back for you if you really don't want me to. But . . . I still can't let him do it, Dad. Paul, I mean."

"Can't let him save the life of the guy you supposedly love," Dad said, not looking too happy to hear it. "Something's very wrong with that picture, Suze."

"I know, Dad," I said, "but I love him. You know it. You can't ask me to just sit back and let Paul do this. If he succeeds I won't even remember having met Jesse."

"Right," my dad said reasonably. "So it won't hurt."

"It will," I insisted, "It will hurt, Dad. Because deep down, I'll know. I'll know there was someone . . . someone I was supposed to have met. Only I'll never meet him. I'll go through my whole life waiting for him to come along, only he never will. What kind of life is that, Dad, huh? What kind of life is that?"

"And what kind of life," my dad asked gently, "is it for Jesse to spend all of eternity as a ghost - especially if something goes wrong and you end up dead right along with him?"

"Then," I said with a feeble attempt at humor, "at least we'll be able to haunt people together for the rest of eternity."

"With Jesse having to live forever with the guilt of knowing he's the reason you died in the first place? I don't think so, Suze."

He had me there. I stared up at him, unable to think of a single thing to say in reply.

"Suze, your whole life," my dad went on, not without sympathy, "you've always made the right decisions. Not nessarily the easiest ones. The right ones. Don't mess that up now, when you're facing what's probably the most important decision you'll ever have to make."

I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong . . . that I was making the right decision . . . that I was doing what I knew Jesse would want . . . .

Only I knew there was no point.

So instead I said, "All right, Dad. But there's just one thing I don't understand."

He nodded. "Why Maroon 5 is so popular?"

"Um," I said, grinning in spite of myself. "No. I don't understand why, if you feel that way . . . that you had a good life and that you've learned so much since you died . . . If you really feel that way, then why are you still here?"

"You should know," he said.

I blinked at him. "I should? How?"

"Because you said it yourself."

"When did I - "

"Um . . . Suze?"

I whirled around and found myself looking not into my dad's gentle brown eyes but David's anxious blue ones.

"Are you okay?" David's pale face was pinched with concern. "Were you . . . were you just crying?"

"Of course not," I said, hastily snatching up a dish towel - seeing, as I did so, that my dad had vanished - and scrubbing my cheeks with it. "I'm fine. What's up?"

Um . . ." David looked around the kitchen, his eyes wide. "Are you . . . are you not alone?"

Outside of my dad, David is the only one in my family who knows the truth about me . . . or at least, most of the truth. If I had told him all of it . . . well, he'd probably be able to handle it, with his scientific, orderly mind.

But I don't think he'd have liked it.

"I am now," I said, knowing what he meant.

"I just came in for dessert," David said. "Dad said . . . Dad said he made a fruit tart."

"Right," I said. "Well. I'm through here. I'll just be going upstairs."

I turned to go, but David's voice - it had changed lately, gone from squeaky to deep in the course of a few months - stopped me by the door. "Suze. Are you sure you're all right? You seem . . . sad."

"Sad?" I looked back at him over my shoulder. "I'm not sad. Well, not that sad. Just . . . there's just something I have to do." Because I had already decided that, despite my dad's concerns, I wasn't giving Jesse up just yet. Not without a fight. "Something I'm not exactly looking forward to."

"Oh," David said. Then his face brightened. "Then just do it quick. You know, like pulling off a Band-Aid."

Do it quick. I'd have loved to. But I had no way of knowing when Paul was going to make his trip back through time. For all I knew, I could wake up tomorrow with no memory of Jesse whatsoever.

"Thanks," I said to David, managing a semblance of a smile. "I'll keep that in mind."

But I wasn't smiling a half hour later, when I finally managed to get Father Dominic - my last hope - on the phone.

Father Dom wasn't exactly as sympathetic to my plight as I'd hoped he be. I'd thought the information I had to impart - about Paul buying Felix Diego's belt buckle, and then possibly drugging his own grandfather - would spark a little righteous indignation in the old guy.

But Father Dominic's sentiments seemed right in line with my dad's. Jesse had died too young, too violently. He had a right to a second chance at life. It was morally reprehensible of me to stand in the way of that.

Maybe Father D had other reasons to be feeling upbeat. The monsignor had come out of his coma and seemed to be recuperating nicely.

"Huh," I said as Father D imparted this supposedly joyous news. "That's great, Father D. Now, about Paul - "

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, Susannah," he said. "I'll admit it was wrong, what he did to his grandfather - if, indeed, he really did - "

"He said he did, Father D," I interrupted. "Well, almost."

"Yes," Father Dominic said. "Well, the two of you do have a tendency to, er, exaggerate the truth somewhat - "

"Father Dom," I said, my fingers tightening on the receiver. "I called the ambulance myself."

"So you said. Still, Susannah, for Paul to do this thing - this time-travel thing you spoke of - I understand he'd have to put himself in the exact spot where the person he wishes to see was once standing during the exact time he wishes to travel back to."

"Yeah," I said. "So?" I wasn't usually so rude to Father Dom, but this was, you have to admit, an extenuating circumstance.

"So wouldn't that mean Paul would have to travel from your bedroom?" Father Dominic sounded a bit distracted. That's because he was. He was packing to come back home. He was planning on driving back to Carmel that very night. "Isn't that where Diego killed Jesse? Your room? It's rather unlikely Paul is going to be able to get into your bedroom, Susannah," he went on. "Not without your permission."

I nearly dropped the phone. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe this hadn't occurred to me before.

Because Father Dominic was right, There was no way Paul was traveling back to the night Jesse died . . . not unless he did a little breaking and entering. Because that was the only way he was getting into my room. The only way.

"I hadn't thought of that," I said with a growing feeling of relief. "But you're right. Oh my God, you're totally right. Father Dominic, you're a genius!"

"Er," Father Dominic said. "Thank you, Susannah. I suppose. Although if you were to do the right thing, you'd allow Paul in and let Jesse live out his life naturally, as he was meant to - "

"Um," I said. I'd heard this tune before, one too many times. Fortunately, the call-waiting went off at that very moment. Perfect timing.

"Oops, that's my other line, Father D," I said. "Gotta go. See you when you get back."

I hung up the phone, feeling better than I had since . . . well, since the auction that afternoon. Jesse was safe. Paul couldn't make him disappear, because to do so, he'd have to have access to my bedroom. How else was he going to find his way back to 1850?

He needed to have a place to stand, somewhere that existed in both 1850 and the present. Somewhere Felix Diego had once stood. Where was he going to go? The mall?

"Hello?" I said, clicking over to the other call.

"Suze?" It was CeeCee, sounding breathless with excitement. "Oh my God, you'll never believe what just happened."

"What?" I asked, not actually paying attention. Because, really, where else could Paul go, if not my bedroom?

"He asked me." CeeCee's voice was actually trembling. "Adam. Adam asked me to the Winter Formal. We're just at the Coffee Clutch, you know, having cappuccinos - we'd have asked you, only I know you were at the auction all day - "

"Uh-huh," I said.

" - and he just asked me. Out of the blue. I had to run outside and call you. He's still inside. I just . . . Oh, my God. I had to tell someone. He asked me."

Besides, it isn't like Paul is going to be able to do it anytime soon, anyway. Go back through time, I mean. Not with his grandfather in the hospital.

"That is so great, CeeCee," I said into the phone. "I guess I should go back in and say yes," CeeCee said. I should say yes, right? Or should I play hard to get? I don't want him to think I'm too eager. And it is next weekend. Technically, he should have asked me a long time ago - "

Suddenly, I focused on what CeeCee was saying.

And laughed.

"CeeCee," I said. "Are you nuts? Hang up the phone, go inside, and say yes."

"I should, shouldn't I? I just . . . I mean, I've been wanting this to happen for so long, and now it is, and I . . . well, I just can't believe it. . . ."

"CeeCee."

"Hanging up now," CeeCee said. And the line clicked.

He and Kelly had looked pretty . . . friendly on that couch. Maybe he'd given up. Maybe he was over the whole "us" thing.

Maybe now my life would go back to normal.

Maybe . . .

Chapter twelve

"This is by the same director who made Jaws?" Jesse wanted to know. "I don't believe it."

Saturday night. Date night.

And, okay, though technically Jesse and I can't exactly go out (how could we, really?), Jesse does come over most Saturday nights. True, it isn't as romantic as dinner and a movie. And true, we have to be really quiet, so my family won't suspect I'm not alone in my room.

But at least we get to be together.

And yeah, on this particular Saturday night, I had a lot on my mind, none of which I had any intention of mentioning to Jesse.

But that didn't mean we couldn't spend a couple of hours watching videos. Jesse has a lot of catching up to do, movie-wise, considering the fact that they hadn't even been invented back when he'd been alive.

His favorite so far is The Godfather. I was hoping to cure him of this weakness by showing him E.T. How could anyone prefer Don Corleone over a six-year-old Drew Barrymore?

But Drew barely managed to hold Jesse's attention.

"Jaws is much better than this," Jesse said.

Jaws is another one of Jesse's favorites. He doesn't even like the right parts, either. He likes the part where all the men are showing one another their scars. Don't ask me why. I guess it's a guy thing.

Finally, I turned E.T. off and went, "Let's just talk."

By which, of course, I meant "Let's make out."

Which was working out very nicely until Jesse quit kissing me at one point and said, "I almost forgot. What was Paul doing at the Mission tonight? Has he found religion?"

This was so outlandish that I pulled my arms from around his neck and went, "What?"

"Your friend Paul," Jesse said. I may have let go of him, but he wasn't letting go of me. While this was nice, it was also just a little distracting. Especially the way his lips were still moving along mine. "I saw him a little while ago in the basilica . . . which was closed, you know. Why would he be there after hours, do you think? He hardly seems the type to be considering a career in the priesthood. Unless he suddenly received his calling. . . ."

I wrenched myself away from him.

Well, if you'd suddenly been seized by stark white terror, you'd have done the same thing.

"Susannah?" Jesse stared at me, concern filling his dark brown eyes where just a few seconds earlier there'd been . . . well, not concern. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, God." How could I have been so stupid? How, how, how? Here I was, watching movies - movies - with my boyfriend, never suspecting a thing. Thinking Paul would have to come here to the house if he wanted to travel back to Jesse's time. Thinking he wouldn't be able to go back if he didn't. Thinking he wouldn't dream of going back tonight, with his grandfather in the hospital. Thinking he and Kelly were together now, so why would he bother?

Paul didn't care about his grandfather. He didn't care about anyone in his family and never had.

And he certainly didn't care about Kelly. Why should he? Kelly didn't understand him, Kelly didn't know what he really was. . . .

And, of course, there was another landmark in this century that had existed in Jesse's as well. A place Felix Diego had probably gone often, during his day.

The Mission. The Junipero Serra Mission, which had been built back in the 1700s.

"I have to go," I said, stumbling to my feet and diving for my jacket. I felt sick to my stomach. "I'm sorry, Jesse, but I have to - "

"Susannah." Jesse was on his feet as well, taking hold of my arm in a grip that was as strong as it was gentle. Jesse would never hurt me. On purpose. "What is it? What is this about? Why do you care if Paul is in the basilica?"

"You don't understand," I said. I really did think I was going to be sick. I really did. It must have shown on my face because Jesse's grip on my arm suddenly got a good deal tighter . . .

. . . just as the expression his face got a lot grimmer.

"Try me, querida," he said in a voice that was as hard as his grasp.

And then - don't ask me how or what I was thinking because, truthfully, I don't think I was - it all came spilling out.

I hadn't wanted to tell him. Not because I didn't want to upset him. God, nothing like that. No, I didn't want him to find out for the most selfish of all reasons: I hadn't wanted to tell him for fear he'd agree with Father Dominic and my dad - that he'd prefer another chance at life than eternity as a ghost.

But out it poured, everything, from what Dr. Slaski had told me to what Father Dom had said on the phone just a few hours ago. It was a raging flood that couldn't be stopped, the torrent of words coming from my mouth. I wanted to stuff them back as quickly as they spilled out.

But it was too late. It was way too late.

Jesse listened unflinchingly, not interrupting me, even when I told him the part about my deal with Paul: our secret arrangement in which I endured Wednesday afternoon 'mediator lessons' with him in exchange for his not sending my boyfriend to the netherworld.

"Only now he doesn't want to kill you, Jesse," I told him bitterly. "He wants to save you, save your life. He's going back through time to stop Felix Diego from killing you. And if he does that . . . if he does that . . ."

"You and I will never meet." Jesse's expression was calm, his voice its normal deepness.

Never had any statement sounded as chilling to me. It felt like a stab wound to the heart.

"Yes," I said frantically. "Can't you see, I've got to go down there - now. Right now - and stop him."

"No, querida," Jesse said, still in that unhurried voice. "You can't do that."