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  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-and-not-me-to-the-dance 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 wa
s 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…