Twilight

For a second, the terror that was gripping my heart seemed to squeeze it until it stopped. I thought I would die, right there on the spot.

Jesse wanted to live. My dad, Father Dominic, Dr. Slaski, Paul . . . they had been right. They had all been right, and I was the wrong one, me. Jesse would prefer to live than to have met me, to have known me . . .

. . . to have loved me. . . .

I should have known, of course. And I think deep down, I did know. What kind of person - especially one who'd died the age Jesse had been, just twenty - wouldn't want a chance to go back and live again, if he could? What kind of person wouldn't be willing to give up everything he had for that chance?

And what did Jesse have? Nothing. Nothing at all. Just me.

My dad had accused me long ago of being the thing that was holding Jesse back, keeping him from moving on. Father Dominic had said it, as well . . . that if I really loved him, I'd set him free.

And now I knew. Jesse himself would rather be free than be with me.

God. I'd been such a fool. Such a total fool.

Then Jesse let go of my arm.

But instead of saying what I'd expected him to - You can't go after him, because I want the chance. I want the chance to live again, if I can - he said in a voice gone suddenly as cold as the wind outside, "You can't go after him. He's too dangerous. I'll go. I'll stop him."

I wasn't sure I'd heard him right. Had he said - could he possibly have said - what I thought he'd said?

"Jesse," I said. "I don't think you understand. He wants to save you. To keep you from . . . from dying that night."

"I understand," Jesse said. "I understand that Paul is a fool who thinks he's God. I don't know what makes him think it's his right to play with my destiny. But I do know he's not going to succeed. Not if I can stop him."

My circulation seemed to spring to life. Suddenly, I could breathe again. Relief washed over me in waves.

He wanted to stay. Jesse wanted to stay. He would rather stay than live. He would rather stay - with me - than live.

"You can't," I said, my voice sounding freakishly high-pitched even to my own ears. That was the relief I felt, making me giddy. "You can't stop him, Jesse. Paul will - "

"And just what do you intend to do, Susannah?" he demanded sharply. And if I hadn't been convinced before of the sincerity of his wish to remain in this place and time, his gruff tone then would have been enough. "Talk him out of what he plans? No. It's too dangerous."

But love had given me courage I'd never even known I had. I shrugged into my leather motorcycle jacket and said, "Paul won't hurt me, Jesse. I'm the reason he's doing this, remember?"

"I don't mean Paul," Jesse said. "I mean time traveling. Slaski says it's dangerous?"

"Yes, but - "

"Then you're not doing it."

"Jesse, I'm not afraid - "

"No," Jesse said. There was a look in his eye I had never seen before. "I'm going. You're staying here. Leave everything to me."

"Jesse, don't be - "

But a second later, I saw that I was talking to thin air.

Because Jesse was gone.

I knew where he'd disappeared to, of course. He'd gone to the basilica, to have a word with Paul.

And I was betting that that word would be accompanied by a fist.

I was also betting Jesse was going to be too late. Paul wouldn't be at the Mission anymore by the time Jesse got to him.

Or rather, he would be. But not the basilica as we knew it.

There was only one thing, really, that I could do then. And that wasn't, as Jesse had urged, to leave everything to him. How could I, when I could quite possibly wake up in the morning with no memory of Jesse whatsoever?

I knew what I had to do.

And this time, I wasn't going to make the mistake of consulting with anybody beforehand.

I strode across the room, lifted my pillow, and pulled out the miniature portrait of Jesse - the one he'd given to his one-time fiancée, Maria. The one that I'd been sleeping on since the day I'd stolen - er - been given it.

Looking down into Jesse's dark, confident gaze, I closed my eyes and pictured him . . . pictured Jesse in this very room, only not looking as it did now, with a frilly canopy bed and princess phone (thanks, Mom).

No, instead I pictured it as it must have looked 150 years earlier. No ruffled white curtains over the bay window. No window seat scattered with fluffy pillows. No carpet over the wood floor. No - ack! - bathroom, but maybe one of those, what were they called? Oh yeah, chamber pots.

No cars. No cell phones. No computers. No microwaves. No refrigerators. No televisions. No stereos. No airplanes. No penicillin.

Just grass. Grass and trees and sky and wooden wagons and horses and dirt and . . .

And I opened my eyes.

And I was there.

Chapter thirteen

It was my room, but it wasn't.

Where the canopy had stood sat a bed with a brass stand. The bed was covered with a brightly colored quilt, the kind of quilt that my mom would have gone nuts over if she'd seen it in some craft shop. Instead of my vanity table with its big light-up mirror, was a chest of drawers with a pitcher and bowl on it.

There was no mirror anywhere, but on the floor was a rug woven from . . . well, lots of different stuff. It was kind of hard to see really well, because the only light was what little moonlight spilled in from the bay windows. There was no electric switch. I felt for it instinctively the minute I opened my eyes to so much darkness. Where the light switch had been was just wood.

Which could only have meant one thing.

I'd done it.

Whoa.

But where was Jesse? This room was empty. The bed didn't look as if it had been slept in anytime recently.

Had I come too late? Was Jesse already dead? Or had I come too early and Jesse hadn't yet arrived?

There was only one way to find out. I laid my hand on the doorknob - only, of course, there was no knob now, but a latch instead - and went out into the hallway.

It was nearly pitch-black in the hallway. There was no electric switch here, either. Instead, when I groped for it, my hand touched a framed picture, or something . . .

. . . that promptly fell off the wall with a banging sound, although no glass broke. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't find the thing I'd knocked over, it was too dark. So I continued down the stairs, navigating the various twists and turns by memory alone, since I had no light to guide me.

I saw the glow before I heard the quick footsteps approaching the bottom of the stairs. Someone was coming . . . someone holding a candle.

Jesse? Could it possibly be?

But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw that it was a woman who was coming toward me, a woman holding not a candle but some kind of lantern. At first, I thought she must be enormously fat, and I was like, God, what could she have been eating? It's not like they had Twinkles back in Jesse's day . . . er, now, I mean.

But then I saw that she was wearing some sort of a hoopskirt, and that what I'd taken for girth was really just her clothes.

"Mary, Mother of God," the woman cried when she saw me. "Where did you come from?"

I thought it better to ignore that question. Instead, I asked her as politely as I could, "Is Jesse de Silva here?"

"What?" The woman held the lantern higher and really peered at me. "Faith," she cried. "But you're a girl!"

"Um," I said. I would have thought this was obvious. My hair, after all, is pretty long, and I always wear it down. Plus, as always, I had on mascara. "Yes, ma'am. Is Jesse here? Because I really have to speak to him."

But the woman, instead of appreciating my politeness, pressed her lips together very firmly. Next thing I knew, she was reaching for the door, holding it open, and trying to shoo me through it.

"Out," she said. "Out with you, then. You should know we don't allow the likes of you in here. This is a respectable house, this is."

I just stood there gaping at her. A respectable house? Of course it was. It was MY house.

"I don't mean to cause trouble, ma'am," I said, since I could see how it would be a little weird to find a strange girl wandering around your house . . . even if it was a board-inghouse. That happened to belong to me. Or at least to my mother and her new husband. "But I really need to speak to Jesse de Silva. Can you tell me if he - "

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" the woman demanded not very nicely. "Mr. de Silva wouldn't give the time of day to a . . . creature like you. Need to speak to Jesse de Silva, indeed! Out! Out of my house!"

And then, with a strength surprising for a woman in a hoopskirt, she grabbed me by the collar of my leather motorcycle jacket, and propelled me out the door.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," the woman said and slammed the door in my face.

Not just any door, either. My own door. My own front door, to my house.

I couldn't believe it. From what I'd been led to believe, from Jesse and those Little House on the Prairie books, things back in the 1800s had been all butter churns and reading out loud around the fire. Nothing about mean ladies throwing girls out of their own houses.

Chagrined, I turned around and started down the steps from the front porch . . .

. . . and nearly fell on my face. Because the steps weren't where they used to be. Or would be one day, I mean. And except for the moonlight, which was sadly lacking just then, due to a passing cloud, there was no light whatsoever to see by. I mean it, it was spookily dark. There was no reassuring glow of streetlights - I wasn't even sure there was a street where Pine Crest Road ought to have been.

And, turning my head, I could see no lights on in any nearby windows . . . for all I could tell, there were no nearby windows. The house I was standing in front of might have been the only house for miles and miles . . .

And I'd just been thrown out of it. I was stranded in the year 1850 with no place to go and no way to get there. Except, I guess, the old-fashioned way.

I could, I supposed, have walked to the Mission. That's where Paul had supposedly gone. I craned my neck, looking for the familiar red dome of the basilica, just visible from my front porch, perched as it was in the Carmel Hills.

But instead of seeing Carmel Valley stretched out below me, all winking lights stretching to the vast darkness of the sea, all I saw was dark. No lights. No red dome, lit up for the tourists. Nothing.

Because, I realized, there were no lights. They hadn't been invented yet. At least, not lightbulbs.

God. How could anybody find their way anywhere? What did they use to guide them, freaking stars?

I looked up to check out the star situation, wondering if it would help me, and nearly fell off the porch again. Because there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before in my life. The Milky Way was like a white streak in the sky, so bright it almost put the moon, finally flitting out from behind some clouds, to shame.

Whoa. No wonder Jesse was unimpressed whenever I successfully located the Big Dipper.

I sighed. Well, there was nothing else I could do, I supposed, but start hoofing it in the general direction of the Mission, and hope I ran into Paul - or Jesse . . . Past Jesse, I mean - on the way.

I had just found my way off the porch - down a set of rickety wooden steps, unlike the cement ones in place there now . . . I mean, in the present . . . my present - when it hit me. The first heavy, cold drops of rain.

Rain. I'm not kidding. No sooner had I looked up to see if it was really rain, or someone dumping their chamber pot out on me (ew) from the second floor than I saw the bank of big black clouds rolling in from the sea. I had been so distracted by all the stars, I hadn't noticed them before.

Great. I travel more than a century and a half through time, and what do I get for my efforts? Getting thrown out of my own house, and rain. A lot of it.

Lightning flashed, high up in the sky. A few seconds later, thunder rumbled, long and low.

Fabulous. A thunderstorm. I was stuck in an 1850 thunderstorm with nowhere to go.

Then the wind picked up, carrying with it a scent I couldn't place right away. It took me a minute to remember it. Then, all at once, I did: my occasional forays into Central Park back when I'd lived in Brooklyn.

Horse. There were horses nearby.

Which meant there had to be a barn. Which might be dry. And which might be unguarded by hoopskirted women who consider me bad rubbish.

Ducking my head against the rain, which was coming down harder now, I ran in the direction of the horse smell and soon found myself behind the house, facing an enormous barn, right where Andy had said he was going to have a pool installed one day, after we'd all finished college and he could afford it.

The barn doors were closed. I hurried toward them, praying they wouldn't be locked . . .

They weren't. I heaved one open and slipped inside just as another bolt of lightning streaked through the sky, and thunder sounded again, more loudly, this time.

Inside the barn it was dry, at least. Black as tar, but dry. The horse smell was strong - I could hear them moving uneasily around in their stalls, startled by the thunder - but the smell of something else was stronger. Hay, I think it was. Not exactly being a country girl, I couldn't say for sure. But I thought the stuff that crunched and rolled a little beneath my boots might be hay . . .

Well, this was just great. I'd come to save my boyfriend's life - or rather, to keep someone else from saving it - and all I'd accomplished so far was to enrage his landlady.

Oh and I'd been rained on. And found a barn.

Perfect. Dr. Slaski hadn't been kidding when he'd warned me against time travel. It sure hadn't been any picnic so far.

And when, a second later, I'd reached up to wring some of the water from my hair and felt a heavy hand on my shoulder -

Well, I had definitely had enough of the mid-1800s.

Fortunately for me, a roll of thunder drowned out my scream. Otherwise, the landlady - or worse, her husband, if she had one - would have been out here in a flash. And I probably would have gotten a lot more than just a bad scare.

"Shut up!" Paul whispered. "Do you want to get us both shot?"

I whirled around. I could only dimly make out his figure there in the darkness. But it was enough to send my pulse, which had been racing before, to a near standstill.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, hoping he couldn't hear the confusion in my voice. I was feeling an odd mix of emotions at seeing him: anger, that he'd gotten there before me; fear, that he was there at all; and relief, at seeing a familiar face.

"What do you think I'm doing here?" Paul tossed something rough and heavy at me.

I caught it inexpertly. "What's this?"

"A blanket. So you can dry yourself off."

I gratefully threw the blanket around my shoulders. Even though I still had my motorcycle jacket on, I was shivering beneath the leather. I don't think it was from the rain, either.

The blanket smelled strongly of horse. But not in a bad way. I guess.

"So," Paul said and moved into the sliver of light thrown through the still-open barn door, so that I could finally see his face. "You made it."

I sniffled miserably. I tried not to pay attention to the fact that I was cold, wet, and inside a barn. In the year 1850.

"I can't believe you really thought you would get away with it," I said, glad I'd finally seemed to get the trembling of my voice under control. My chattering teeth were another story. "Did you think I wouldn't try to stop you?"

Paul shrugged. "I figured it was worth a try. And there's still a chance I'll succeed, you know, Suze. He isn't here yet."

"Who isn't?" I asked stupidly. I was still busy trying to figure out how I could possibly ditch Paul and get to Jesse without him noticing.

"Jesse," Paul said as if I were mentally impaired. And you know what? Probably I am. "We're a day early. He gets here tomorrow."

"How do you know?" I asked, wiping my dripping nose on the back of my wrist.

"I talked to that lady," he said. "Mrs. O'Neil. The one who owns your house."

"She talked to you?" I couldn't hide my surprise. "She wouldn't talk to me. She threw me out."

"What'd you do, materialize in front of her?" Paul asked with a sneer.

"No," I said. "Well, not right in front of her."

Paul shook his head. But I could see that he was grinning a little. "Bet you gave her a coronary. What'd she think of your getup?" He gestured at my clothes.

I looked down at myself. In my jeans and motorcycle jacket, I guess I didn't really resemble any nineteenth-century miss I'd ever seen in the movies. Or, more important, in pictures from the era.

"She said she ran a respectable house and I should know better than to show my face there," I admitted and was stung when Paul laughed out loud.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing," Paul said. But he was still laughing.

"Just tell me."

"Okay. But don't get mad. She thought you were a lady of the evening."

I glared at him. "She did not!"

"She did so. And I told you not to get mad."

"I'm not exactly dressed like a hoochie mama," I pointed out. "I'm wearing pants."

"That's the problem," Paul said. "No respectable woman in this century wears pants. Good thing Jesse didn't see you. He probably wouldn't even have talked to you."

I had had about all I could take of Paul. I said hotly, "He would so. Jesse's not like that."

"Not the Jesse you know," Paul said. "But we're not talking about the one you know, are we? We're talking about the one who's never met you. Who hasn't sat around for a hundred and fifty years, watching the world go by. We're talking about the Jesse who's on his way to Carmel to marry the girl of his - "

"Shut up," I said before he could finish that sentence.

Paul's grin got broader. "Sorry. Well, we've got a while to wait. No sense spending it arguing. Come up to the loft with me, and we'll sit out this storm together."

He slipped back into the shadows, and I heard a foot scrape on a wooden rung. One of the horses whinnied.

"Don't be scared, Suze," Paul called down to me from a few feet in the air. "They're just horses. They won't bite. If you don't get too near them."

That wasn't why I was scared. Not that I was about to admit any such thing to him.

"I think I'll stay down here," I said into the darkness his voice had come from.

"Fine by me," Paul said, "if you want to get caught. It'll just make my job easier. Mr. O'Neil came by a little while ago to check on the horses. I'm sure he wouldn't shoot a girl though. If he realized you were a girl in time, I mean."

This got me moving toward the ladder.

"I hate you," I commented, as I started to climb.

"No, you don't," Paul said from the darkness above me. I could tell by his voice that he was grinning again. "But you go right on telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better.

Chapter fourteen

It was warm in the loft. Warm and dry. And not just because of all the hay. No, also because Paul and I were sitting so close together - for body-heat purposes only, I'd informed him, when he'd shown me the hole he'd dug in the giant pile of hay at one end of the loft.

"Because I don't want to die of hypothermia" was what I'd said, since the horse blanket didn't seem to be doing the job. At least, my teeth hadn't stopped chattering. My jeans weren't drying as fast as I'd have liked them to.

"I'll keep my hands to myself," Paul had assured me.

And so far, he'd been true to his word.

"What I don't get," I said as the rain pelted down outside, with occasional flashes of lightning, though the thunderstorm portion of the evening seemed to be mostly over, "is what you're doing here. Aren't you supposed to be looking for Felix Diego? To stop him?"

"Yeah." In the darkness of the loft, I could only make out Paul's profile by the light that crept in from chinks and knotholes in the wood that made up the barn walls.

"So . . . why aren't you? Unless" - my blood ran cold - "you already found him. But then why - "

"Relax, Simon," Paul said. "I didn't find him. Yet. But we both know he's due to show up here tomorrow, same as Jesse."

I did relax then. Well, just a little. So Paul hadn't gotten to Diego yet. Which meant there was still time . . .

To do what, though? What was I going to do when I found Jesse? I couldn't tell him not to stay at Mrs. O'Neil's boardinghouse or he'd be killed, because the truth was, I wanted him to be killed. How else was I ever going to get to meet him - okay, date him - in the twenty-first century?

I was just going to have to stick to Paul, was all. Stick to Paul and keep him from stopping Diego. Maybe I wouldn't even see Jesse. Which would probably be just as well. Because if I did, what on earth was I going to say to him? What if he, like Mrs. O'Neil, mistook me for some random hoochie mama? I didn't think I could bear it. . . .

Which reminded me . . .

"Are people going to notice we're gone?" I asked. "In our own time, I mean? Or when we get back, will it be like no time has gone by?"

"I don't know." I got the feeling Paul had been trying to get some sleep when I'd shown up. He seemed to be atternpting to get back to it now and my endless questions were only serving to irritate him. "Why didn't you ask my grandfather? You two are so close and all. . . ."

"I didn't exactly get a chance, now, did I?" I stared at him - or tried to, anyway - in the darkness. I still wasn't sure why Dr. Slaski had chosen me as his confidante and not his own grandson. Well, except for the fact that Paul is a user. And a thief. And, oh yeah, had possibly purposefully drugged him.

"He's not who you think he is, Paul," I said, meaning Dr. Slaski. "He's not your enemy. He's just like us."

"Don't say that." Paul's blue-eyed gaze suddenly bore into me from the darkness. "Don't ever."

"Why? He's a mediator, Paul. A shifter. He's probably who you got it from. He knows a lot. And one thing he knows is that the more we play around with . . . with our powers . . . the better our chances of ending up like him - "

"I told you not to say that," Paul snapped.

"But if you'd just give him a chance, instead of calling him a gork and purposefully - "

"We're not like him, all right? You and I? We're nothing like him. He was stupid. He tried to tell people. He tried to tell people that mediators - shifters - whatever - that we exist. And everyone laughed at him. My dad had to change his name, Suze, because no one would take him seriously, knowing he was related to someone they all said was a quack. So don't you ever - ever - say we're like him or that we're going to end up like him. I already know how I'm going to end up."

I just blinked at him. "Oh, really? And how's that?"

"Not like him," Paul assured me. "I'm going to be like my dad."

"Your dad isn't a mediator," I reminded him.

"I mean I'm going to be rich, like my dad," Paul said.

"How?" I asked with a laugh. "By stealing from the people you're supposed to be helping?"

"There you go again," Paul said, shaking his head. "Who told you we're supposed to help the dead, Suze? Huh? Who?"

"You know perfectly well it was wrong of you to take that money. It wasn't yours."

"Yeah," Paul said. "Well, there's more where it came from and, unlike you, I suffer no moral compunctions in taking it. I'm going to be rich someday, Suze. And, unlike Grandpa Gork, in control."

"Not if you kill all your brain cells flitting in and out of the past," I pointed out.

"Yeah, well," Paul said. "This is a one-time trip. After this, I shouldn't need to go back again."

I stared at his profile. Only our sides were touching beneath the horse blanket we shared. Still, Paul radiated a lot of heat. I was getting a little hot under the blanket.

That was when I realized the only other guy I'd ever lain this close to was Jesse, and that the heat he gave off? Yeah, a lot of that was in my mind. Because ghosts can't give off heat. Even to mediators. Even to mediators who happen to be in love with them.

"It's wrong," I said quietly to Paul as I looked at his closed eyelids. "What you're doing to Jesse. He doesn't want it."

Paul's eyes opened at that.

"You told him?"

"Of course I told him," I said. "And he doesn't want it He doesn't want you to interfere, Paul. He was going down to the Mission to stop you when I left."

Paul looked at me for a few seconds, his blue eyes unreadable in the darkness.

"Are you sleeping with him?" he asked bluntly.

I gaped at him, feeling heat flood my cheeks. "Of course not!" Then, realizing what I'd said, stammered, "N-not that it's any of your business."

But Paul, rather than grinning over his so fully discomfiting me, as I would have expected him to, was gazing down at me very seriously.

"Then I don't get it," he said simply. "Why him? Why not me?"

Oh. That.

"Because he's honest," I said. "And he's kind. And he puts me ahead of everything else - "

"So would I," Paul said. "If you'd give me the chance."

"Paul," I said. "If we were in an earthquake or something, and you had a chance to save me but it was at the risk of your own life, you would save yourself, not me."

"I would not! How can even you say that?"

"Because it's true."

"But you're saying that your perfect Jesse would save you, at the risk of his own life?"

"Yes," I said with absolute certainty. "Because he has. In the past."

"No, he hasn't, Suze," Paul said with equal certainty.

"Yes, he has, Paul. You don't even know - "

"Yes, I do know. Jesse could never possibly have risked his own life to save yours, because in all the time you've known him, he's been dead. So he hasn't been risking anything, all those times he's saved you. Has he?"

I opened my mouth to deny to this, then realized that Paul was right. It was the truth. A screwed-up version of the truth, but the truth just the same.

"What have you got to be so bitter about?" I demanded instead. "You've always gotten everything you've ever wanted your whole life. You've only had to ask for it, and it was yours. But it's like it's never enough for you."

"I haven't gotten everything I've ever wanted," Paul said pointedly. "Although I'm working to correct that."

I shook my head, knowing what he meant.

"You only want me because you can't have me, Paul," I said. "And you know it. I mean, my God. You've got Kelly. All the guys in school want her."

"All the guys in school," Paul said, "are idiots."

I ignored that.

"You would be a lot better off," I said, "if you'd just be happy with what you have, Paul, instead of wanting what you'll never get."

But Paul kept right on grinning. Grinning and rolling back over so he could sleep. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, if I were you, Suze," he said in a tone that sounded way too smug to me.

"You - "

"Go to sleep, Suze," Paul said.

"But you - "

"We've got a long day ahead of us. Just sleep."

Amazingly, I did. Sleep, I mean. I hadn't expected that I'd be able to. But maybe Dr. Slaski was right. Traveling through time DOES wear you out. I don't think I'd have fallen asleep otherwise . . . you know, given the hay, the horses, the rain, and, oh yeah, the hot-but-totally-deadly guy lying next to me.

But I laid my head down, and next thing I knew, lights-out.

I woke with a start. I hadn't even realized I'd been asleep. But there was light streaming through the slits between the wood planks that made up the sides of the barn. Not the gray light of dawn, either. It was full-on sunlight, revealing that I'd slept way past 8:00. . . .

And kneeling in front of me was Paul, with breakfast.

"Where'd you get that?" I asked, sitting up. Because in Paul's hands was a pie. A whole pie. Apple, from the smell of it.

And it was still warm.

"Don't ask," he said, pulling, of all things, two forks from his back pocket. "Just eat."

"Paul." I could hear movement below. Paul had been speaking in hushed tones. I knew why now.

We were not alone.

A man's voice said, "Git along there." He appeared to speaking to the horses.

"Did you steal this?" I asked, even as I was taking the fork and digging in. Time travel doesn't just make you sleepy, It makes you hungry, too.

"I told you not to ask," Paul said as he, too, shoveled a forkful of pie into his mouth, Stolen or not, it was good. Not the best I'd ever had, by any means - I don't know if, out in the Wild West, they really had access to the best sugar and stuff.

But it satisfied the rumbling in my stomach . . . and soon made me aware of another urge.

Paul seemed to read my mind.

"There's an outhouse behind the barn," he informed me.

"A what house?"

"You know." Paul grinned. "Watch out for the spiders."

I thought he was joking.

He wasn't. There were spiders. Worse, what they had to use as toilet paper back then? Let's just say that today, it wouldn't be considered fit to write on, let alone . . . you know . . . anything else.

Plus I had to hurry, so no one would see me in my twenty-first-century clothes and ask questions.

But it was hard because once I'd slipped out of the barn, I was flabbergasted by what I saw. . . .

Which was nothing.

Really. Nothing, in all directions. No houses. No telephone poles. No paved roads. No Circle Ks. No In-N-Out Burger. Nothing. Just trees. And a dirt track that I suppose passed for a street.

I could, however, see the red dome of the basilica. There it was, down in the valley below us, with the sea behind it. That, at least, hadn't changed in the last 150 years.

Thank God plumbing has, however.

When I crept back up to the loft, there was no sign of Mr. O'Neil. He appeared to have taken his horses and gone off to do whatever it was men like him did all day in 1850. Paul was waiting for me with an odd look on his face.

"What?" I asked, thinking he was going to tease me about the outhouse.

"Nothing," was all he said, however. "Just . . . I have a surprise for you."

Thinking it was another food-related item, although I was quite full from the pie, I said, "What? And don't tell me it's an Egg McMuffin, because I know they don't have drive-through here."

"It's not," Paul said.

And then, moving faster than I'd ever seen him move before, he took something else from his back pocket - a length of rope. Then he grabbed me.

People have, of course, tied me up before. But never somebody whose tongue was once in my mouth. I really wasn't expecting Paul to do something so underhanded. Save my boyfriend's life so I'd never meet him, yes. But hog-tie my hands behind my back?

Not so much.

I struggled, of course. I got in a few good elbow jabs. But I couldn't scream, not if I didn't want Mrs. O'Neil to show up and go running for the sheriff or whatever. I wouldn't be able to help Jesse from jail.

But it appeared I wouldn't be much help to him for the time being, either.

"Believe me," Paul said as he tightened knots that were already practically cutting off my circulation. "This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you."

"It does not," I said, struggling. But it was hard to struggle when I was on my stomach in the hay, and his knee was in the small of my back.

"Well," he said, going to work on my feet now. "You're right, I guess. Actually, this doesn't hurt me at all. And it'll keep you out of trouble while I go find Diego."

"There's a special place for people like you, Paul," I informed him, spitting out hay. I was getting really sick of hay.

"Reform school?" he asked lightly.

"Hell," I informed him.

"Now, Suze, don't be that way." He finished with my feet and, just to be sure I wouldn't get it into my head to, I don't know, roll out of the hayloft, he tied one end of the rope to a nearby post. "I'll be back to untie you just as soon as I kill Felix Diego. Then we can go home."

"Where I'll never speak to you again," I informed him.

"Sure you will," Paul said cheerfully. "You won't remember any of this. Because we won't have gone back through time to save Jesse. Because you won't even know who Jesse is."

"I hate you," I said, really meaning it this time.

"You do now," Paul agreed. "But you won't when you wake up tomorrow in your own bed. Because without Jesse, I'll be the best thing that ever happened to you. It'll just be you and me, two shifters against the world. Won't that be fun?"

"Why don't you go - "

But I didn't get to finish that sentence, because Paul took something else out of his pocket. A clean white handkerchief. He'd told me once that he always carried one because you never know when you might need to gag someone.

"Don't you dare!" I hissed at him.

But it was too late. He wadded the handkerchief into my mouth and secured it there with another piece of rope.

It I had never hated him before, I did then. Hated him with every bone in my body, every beat of my heart. Especially when he gave me a pat on the head and said, "See ya."

Then disappeared down the ladder to the barn floor.

Chapter fifteen

I don't know how long I lay there like that. Long enough to start wondering whether I could just close my eyes and shift home. Who knew where I'd end up? Somewhere in the backyard, anyway. Possibly in a big bunch of poison oak, since there was no barn there now. But anything had to be better than lying in a very cramped position on the floor of a hayloft, with who knew what crawling through my hair and the blood pounding in my temples.

But a world without Jesse? Because that's what I'd be guaranteeing myself if I gave up now. A world without my one purpose for living. Well, more or less. I mean, I know women need men like fish need bicycles, and all of that. Except . . .

Except I love him.

I couldn't do it. I was too selfish. I wasn't going to give up. Not yet. There were still plenty of hours of daylight left, or at least, there had been when Paul had left. The shadows, I couldn't help noticing, were growing longer.

Still, if Mrs. O'Neil had told Paul the truth, and Jesse was expected that night, there was still time. Paul might not find Diego. He might have to come back with his task unaccomplished. And when he did, and he untied me . . .

Well, he was going to learn a lot about pain, that was for sure. Because this time, I'd be ready for him.

I don't know how much time passed while I lay there, plotting my revenge on Paul Slater. Death was too good for him, of course. An eternity as a ghost - floating shiftlessly through this dimension and the next - was what would suit him best. Give him a little taste of what it had been like for Jesse all of these years. That ought to teach him . . .

I could do it, too. I could pull Paul's soul out of his body and make it so that he could never return to it . . .

. . . by giving that body to someone else. Someone who deserved a chance to live again . . .

But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. I couldn't kiss Paul's lips, even if I knew it was Jesse inside them, kissing me back. It was just too . . . gross.

It was as I was lying there thinking this that I heard it, a sound my ears had become so finely attuned to over the past year that I could have been at the Super Bowl, a million rows away, and I still would have heard it.

Jesse's voice.

He was calling to someone. I couldn't hear what, exactly, he was saying. But he sounded, I don't know. Different, somehow.

He was getting closer, too. His voice, I mean.

He was coming toward the barn.

He'd found me. I don't know how - Dr. Slaski hadn't said anything about ghosts being able to travel through time, But maybe they could. Maybe they could, just like shifters, and Jesse had done it, he'd come back through time looking for me. To save me. To help me save him.

I closed my eyes, thinking his name as hard as I could. This worked, more often than not. Jesse would materialize in front of me, wondering what on earth was so urgent.

Only he didn't. Not this time. I opened my eyes, and . . . nothing.

Only I could still his voice below me. He was saying, "No, no, it's all right, Mrs. O'Neil."

Mrs. O'Neil. Mrs. O'Neil could see Jesse?

The barn door opened. I heard it creak. Then . . .

Footsteps.

But how could Jesse have footsteps? He's a ghost.

Wriggling as far toward the edge of the hayloft as I could, I craned my neck, trying to see what I could only hear. But the rope Paul had used to tie my feet to the post wouldn't let me wiggle more than a few feet from my original position. I could hear him now, though - really hear him. He was speaking in a soft, soothing tone to . . . to . . .

To his horse.

Jesse was talking to a horse. I heard it whinny softly in reply.

Which was when I finally knew. This wasn't Ghost Jesse, come to rescue me. This was Alive Jesse, who didn't even know me. Alive Jesse, come to meet his fate in my room tonight.

I froze, feeling pins and needles all over - and not just because I'd been lying in such a cramped position for so long. I needed to see him. I needed to see him. Only how?

Then he moved and I turned my head, following the sound . . .

. . . and saw, through a chink in the floorboards of the loft, a spot of color. His horse. It was his horse. I saw his hands moving over the saddle, unstrapping it. It was Jesse. He was right beneath me. He was -

Why I did what I did next, I'll never know. I didn't want Jesse to know I was there. If Jesse found me, it could throw off everything. Who knew, he might not even be murdered that night. And then I'd never get to meet him.

But the urge to see him - alive - was so strong, that without even thinking about it, I banged my feet as hard as I could on the hayloft floor.

The hands moving over the saddle grew suddenly still. He'd heard me. I tried to call to him, but all that came out, thanks to Paul's gag, was gnnh, gnnh.

I banged my feet harder.

"Is someone there?" I heard Jesse call.

I banged again.

This time, he didn't call out. He started climbing the ladder to the loft. I heard the wood strain beneath his weight.

His weight. Jesse had weight.

And then I saw his hands - his large, brown, capable hands - on the top rung of the ladder, followed, a second later, by his head. . . .

The breath froze in my lungs.

Because it was him. It was Jesse.

But not Jesse as I'd ever seen him before. Because he was alive. He was . . . there. He was so solidly and unquestionably there, taking up space like he owned it, like the space better get out of his way, as opposed to the other way around.

He wasn't glowing. He was radiating. Not the spectral glow I was used to seeing around him, either, but instead an undeniable aura of health and vitality. It was like the Jesse I had known was a pale replica - a reflection - of the one I was looking at now. Never had I been so aware of the way his dark hair curled against the back of his tanned neck; the deep brown of his eyes; the whiteness of his teeth; the strength in those long legs as he knelt down beside me; the tendons in the back of his brown hands; the sinews in his bare arms, . . .

"Miss?"

And his voice. His voice! So deep, it seemed to reverberate down my spine. It was Jesse's voice all right, but suddenly, it was in surround sound, it was THX, it was . . .

"Miss? Are you all right?"

Jesse was gazing down at me, his dark eyes filled with concern. One of his hands moved to his boot, and the next thing I knew, a long and shiny blade was gleaming in his hand. I watched in fascination as the blade came nearer and nearer to my cheek.

"Don't be afraid," Jesse was saying. "I'm going to untie you. Who did this to you?"

Suddenly, the gag was gone. My mouth was raw from where the rope had cut into it. Then my hands were free. Sore, but free.

"Can you speak?" Jesse's hands were on my feet now, his knife neatly slicing through the ropes Paul had tied me with. "Here."

He laid the knife aside and lifted something else toward my face. Water. From a flask. I took it from him and sucked greedily. I'd had no idea how thirsty I'd been.

"Easy," Jesse said in that voice - that voice! "I can get you more. Stay here and I'll get help - "

On the word help, however, my hands, as if of their own volition, dropped the flask and flew out to seize his shirt-front instead.

It wasn't the shirt I was used to seeing Jesse in. It was similar, the same soft, white linen. But this one was higher at the neck. He was wearing a vest, too - a waistcoat, I think they were called back then - of a sort of watered silk.

"No," I croaked and was startled at how raspy my voice sounded. "Don't go."

Not, of course, because I was worried he was going to go and get Mrs. O'Neil, who'd recognize me as the strumpet she'd found wandering around her front parlor the night before. But because I couldn't bear the thought of him leaving my sight. Not now. Not ever.

This was Jesse. This was the real Jesse. This was who I loved.

And who was going to die shortly.

"Who are you?" Jesse asked, lifting the flask I'd dropped and, finding it not quite empty, handing it back to me. "Who did this - left you here like this?"

I drank what was left of the water. I'd known Jesse long enough to see that he was outraged - outraged at whoever had left me like that.

"A . . . a man," I said. Because, of course, Jesse - this Jesse - wouldn't know who Paul was. . . . Didn't know who I was, clearly.

His eyebrows furrowed, the one with the scar in it looking particularly adorable. The scar wasn't as obvious, I noticed, on Live Jesse as it was on Ghost Jesse.

"And did this same man put you in these outlandish clothes?" Jesse wanted to know, looking critically at my jeans and motorcycle jacket.

Suddenly, I wanted to laugh. He seemed like a different Jesse entirely - or rather, a hundred times more real than the Jesse I had known - but his disgust with my wardrobe? That hadn't changed a bit.

"Yes," I said. I figured it would be more believable to him than the real explanation.

"I'll see him horsewhipped," Jesse said as matter-of-factly as if he had people horsewhipped for dressing girls up in odd outfits and leaving them tied up in haylofts every day of the week. "Who are you? Your family must be looking for you - "

"Um," I said. "No, they aren't. I mean . . . I doubt it. And my name is Suze."

Again the dark brow furrowed. "Soose?"

"Suze," I said with a laugh. I couldn't help it. Laughing, I mean. It was so wonderful to see him like this. "Susannah. As in 'Oh, Susannah, Don't You Cry for Me.'"

It was what I had said to him, I realized with a pang, back in my bedroom, the very first time I'd met him, the day I'd arrived in Carmel. I hadn't known then what I knew now - that that moment had been a turning point in my life - everything before it was BJ: Before Jesse. Everything afterward, AJ: After Jesse. I hadn't known then that this guy in the puffy shirt with the tight black pants would one day mean more to me than my own life. . . . Would one day be my everything.

But I knew it now, just as I knew something else:

I had it wrong. I had it all wrong.

But it wasn't, I knew, too late to fix it. Thank God.

"Susannah," Jesse said, as he sat beside me in the straw. "Susannah O'Neil, perhaps? You are related to Mr. and Mrs. O'Neil? Let me get them. I know they'll want to see that you're safe - "

"No," I said, shaking my head. "My, um, family is far away." Really far away. "You can't get them. I mean, thank you, but . . . you can't get them."

"Then this man . . ." Jesse looked excited. And why not? It probably wasn't every day the guy stumbled over a sixteen-year-old girl who'd been left bound and gagged in a hayloft. "Who is he? I'll fetch the sheriff. He must pay for what he's done."

Much as I would have liked to sic Jesse - Live Jesse - on Paul, it didn't seem like the appropriate thing to do. Not when Jesse was going to have so many problems of his own to handle very soon. Paul was my problem, not his.

"No," I said. "No, that's okay." Then, seeing his puzzled look, I said, "I mean, that's all right. Don't get the sheriff - "

"You needn't fear him anymore, Susannah," Jesse said, gently. He clearly did not know he was speaking to a girl who had kicked a lot of butt in her day. Ghost butt, mostly, but whatever. "I won't let him hurt you again."

"I'm not afraid of him, Jesse," I said.

"Then - " Jesse's face clouded suddenly. "Wait. How did you know my name?"

Ah. Well, there was the rub, wasn't it?

Jesse was looking at me curiously, that dark-eyed gaze raking my face. I'm sure I must have looked a picture. I mean, what girl wouldn't after having been left for hours with her head in the straw and her mouth gagged?

It didn't matter, of course. What Jesse thought of me. But I felt self-conscious just the same. I reached up and shoved some hair out of my eyes, trying to tuck it back behind an ear. Just my luck, the first time I meet my boyfriend - while he's still living - and I look like a complete train wreck.

"Do I know you?" Jesse asked, his gaze searching. "Have we met? Are you . . . are you one of the Anderson girls?"

I had no idea who the Anderson girls might be, but I felt a stab of envy for them, whoever they were. Because they were girls who'd gotten to know Jesse - Live Jesse. I wondered if they knew how lucky they were.

"We haven't met," I said. "Yet. But . . . I know you. I mean, I know . . . about you."

"You do?" Recognition dawned at last in his gaze. "Wait . . . yes! Now I know. You're friends with one of my sisters From school? Mercedes? You know Mercedes?"

I shook my head, fumbling around in the pocket of my leather jacket.

"Josefina, then?" Jesse studied me some more. "You must be close to her age, fifteen, yes? You don't know Josefina? You can't know Marta, she's too old - "

I shook my head again, then held out what I'd fished from my pocket.

He looked down at what I held in my hand.

"Nombre de dios," he said softly, and took it from me.

It was the miniature portrait of Jesse, the one I'd stolen from the Carmel Historical Society. I saw now how poor a portrait it actually was. Oh, the painter had gotten the shape of Jesse's head right and his eye color and expression were close enough.

But he'd completely failed to capture what it was that made Jesse . . . well . . . Jesse. The keen intelligence in his dark brown eyes. The confident twist of his wide, sensuous mouth. The gentleness of his cool, strong hands. The power - just now leashed, but coiled so close to the surface, it might rise up at any moment - of those muscles, honed from years of working alongside his father's ranch hands, beneath that soft linen shirt and black pants.

"Where did you get this?" Jesse demanded, his fist closing over the portrait. Sparks seem to fly from his dark eyes, he was that angry. "Only one person has a portrait like this."

"I know," I said. "Your fiancée, Maria. You're here to marry her. Or at least, that's the plan. You're on your way to see her now, but her father's ranch is still pretty far off, so you're staying here for the night before you go on to her place in the morning."

Anger turned to bewilderment as Jesse lifted his free hand and raked his fingers through his thick dark hair - a gesture I had seen him perform so many times when he was completely frustrated with me, that tears actually sprang to my eyes, it was so familiar . . . and so adorable.

"How do you know all this?" he asked desperately. "You're . . . you're friends with Maria? Did she . . . give you this?"

"Not exactly," I said.

And took a deep breath.

"Jesse, my name is Susannah Simon," I said all in a rush, wanting to get it out before I changed my mind. "I'm what's called a mediator. I'm from the future. And I'm here to keep you from being murdered tonight."

Chapter sixteen

Because, in the end, I couldn't do it.

I thought I could. I really did think I could sit back and let Jesse be murdered. I mean, if the alternative was never to meet him? Sure, I could do it. No problem.

But that had been before. Before I'd seen him. Before I'd spoken to him. Before he'd touched me. Before I'd known what he was, what he could have been, if he'd only lived.

I knew now I could no more stand by and let Jesse be killed than I could have . . . well, shoved my little stepbrother David out in front of a speeding car or fed my mother poison mushroom caps. I couldn't let Jesse die, even if meant never seeing him again. I loved him too much.

It was as simple as that.

Oh, I knew I was going to hate myself later. I knew I was going to wake up and, if I even remembered what I'd done, hate myself for the rest of my natural life.

But what else could I do? I couldn't stand idly by while someone I loved was walking into mortal danger. Father Dominic, my dad, all of them - even Paul - were right. I had to save Jesse, if I could.

It was the right thing to do.

But not, of course, the easy thing The easy thing would have been to point a finger in his face as he stared down at me, completely disbelieving, and gone, "Ha! Fooled ya! Just kidding."

Instead, I said, "Jesse. Did you hear me? I said I'm here from the future to save you from being - "

"I heard what you said." Jesse smiled at me gently. "Do you know what I think would be best? If you would let me get Mrs. O'Neil. She'll take good care of you while I go to town to get the doctor. Because I think the man who did this to you - tied you like this - might also have hit you on the head - "

"Jesse," I said flatly. I couldn't believe this. Here I was, making this tremendous sacrifice, saving the love of my life and knowing that I would never be with him again, and he was accusing me of being bonkers. "Paul didn't hit me in the head. All right? I'm fine. A little thirsty still, but otherwise fine. I just need you to listen to me. Tonight Felix Diego is going to sneak into your room here at the boardinghouse and strangle you to death. Then he's going to throw your body into a shallow grave, and no one is going to find it until a century and a half later, when my stepdad installs a hot tub on our deck."

Jesse just looked down at me. I couldn't be sure, but I think I saw pity in his gaze.

"Jesse, I'm serious," I said. "You've got to go home. Okay? Just get back on your horse and turn around and go home, and don't even think about marrying Maria de Silva."

"Maria did send you," Jesse said, finally. His face darkened with a sudden anger. "This is her way of trying to save face, is it? Well, you can go back to your mistress and tell her it won't work. I won't have her family thinking I wasn't gentleman enough to break it off in person - no matter who she sends with strange tales to frighten me off. I'm going to see her tomorrow whether she likes it or not."

I blinked up at him, completely dumbfounded. What was he talking about?

Then, too late, I remembered the secret Jesse had once confided in me, the secret only I knew . . . that he had been on his way to the de Silva ranch all those years ago not to marry Maria, but to break things off with her . . .

. . . Which explained why all of her letters to him had been discovered alongside his remains last summer, when my stepbrother accidentally dug them up. Nineteenth-century manners demanded that couples breaking off their engagements returned the letters each had written the other. Diego had murdered Jesse before such an exchange could take place in order to prevent Maria's father from asking any uncomfortable questions concerning the breakup - like what Jesse had heard about his fiancée that had made him want to end their engagement.

"Wait," I said. "Hold on. Jesse, Maria didn't send me. I don't even know Maria. Well, I mean, we've met, but - "

"You have to know her." Jesse looked down at the framed portrait in his hand. "She gave this to you. She must have. How else could you have gotten it?"

"Um," I said, with a shrug. "Actually, I stole it." Then I saw his face change, and knew I'd made a mistake.

"Oh, no," I said, holding up both hands, palms toward him. "Down, boy. I didn't steal it from your precious Maria, believe me. I stole it from the Carmel Historical Society, okay? A museum, where it had been sitting for God knows how long. In fact, I bet if you check with good old Maria, she still has hers. Her portrait of you, I mean."

"There were no duplicates made," Jesse said, in a hard voice.

"I know that." God, this was hard. "But look at the one you're holding, Jesse. Look how old it looks, how cracked the paint is, how tarnished that frame's gotten. That's because it's nearly two hundred years old. I stole it in the future, Jesse. I used it to help me get back here, to the past, so I could warn you . . ." This wasn't strictly true, of course, but close enough. "You've got to believe me, Jesse. Paul - the guy who tied me up - will back me up on this. He's out looking for Felix Diego right now to try to stop him before he can get to you - "

Jesse shook his head.

"I don't know who you are," he said in a low, even tone unlike any he'd ever used with me before. "But I'm returning this - " He dangled his portrait in my face. " - to its rightful owner. Whatever game you're playing, it ends now. Do you understand?

Game? I couldn't believe this. Here I was, risking my neck for him, and he was mad at me for stealing a stupid portrait of him? "There's no game, Jesse, okay? If this were just a game - if Maria really did send me - how would I know the stuff I know? How would I know that Maria and Diego are secretly in love? How would I know that your girlfriend - who is quite the skank, by the way - doesn't want to marry you at all? And that her dad doesn't approve of Diego and thinks if she marries you she'll forget about him eventually? How do I know that the two of them have cooked up a scheme to kill you tonight and hide your body so it looks as though you skipped out on the engagement - "

"Nombre de dios." Jesse was on his feet and swearing. I couldn't help noticing how the loft shook a little under his footsteps. This was not something that would have happened with Ghost Jesse, and was just more proof of how very far I'd come from the world I knew.

But that wasn't the only thing that wouldn't have happened with Ghost Jesse. I realized this a second later when Alive Jesse bent down and siezed me by my arms, and gave me a frustrated shake.

"You know all this because Maria told you!" he said, from between gritted teeth. "Admit it! She told you!" As quickly as he'd snatched me up, he let go and turned away. Uttering a groan of pent-up annoyance, Jesse dragged a hand through his hair.

My arms, where he'd touched me, tingled.

"Look, I'm sorry," I said, meaning it. I knew how he felt, after all. His wasn't the only heart in that barn that was breaking. "I mean, about your girlfriend wanting to kill you and all. Even if you were going to, you know, break up and all. But if it's any consolation, I do think you're a lot better off without her. I mean, the only times I ever met her, she was trying to kill me, too, but still. Better you find out she's a skank now, you know, and break it off cleanly, than find out after you're married. Because I don't even know if they let people get divorced in, you know, your time."

"Stop saying that!" Both of Jesse's hands went to grasp his hair now.

"What? Skank?" Maybe I was being a little harsh. "Well, okay. But the girl seems like major bad news."

"No." Jesse turned around to stare down at me, and I was surprised at the intensity with which his gaze burned into mine. "Your time. The future. You . . . you . . . I'm sorry, Miss Susannah. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to get the sheriff after all. Because you are very clearly not right in the head."

"Miss Susannah!" To my utter horror, tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. But I couldn't help it. It was just so . . . so . . .

Unfair.

"So it's Miss Susannah, is it?" I asked him, ignoring my tears. "Oh, that's just great. I come all the way back here, risking major brain cell burnout, and you don't even believe me? I'm basically guaranteeing myself a lifetime of heartbreak, and all you have to say is that you think I'm not right in the head? Thanks a lot, Jesse. No, really. That's just fine."

I broke off with a sob. Suddenly, it was all too much. I couldn't even look at him, because every time I did, he dazzled my eyes, like he was the most glorious Christmas tree that had ever existed. I buried my face in my hands and wept.

Maybe I had done enough, I told myself. Maybe tipping him off about Maria and Diego's plan would make him turn around tonight and go home. Even though the tip had come from what he obviously considered an unreliable source. I couldn't do anything more, could I? I mean, how else could I get him to believe me?

Then I remembered.

I dropped my hands from my face and looked up at him, not caring if he saw my tears.

"Doctor," I said.

"Yes." Jesse had fished a handkerchief from somewhere and handed it to me, his anger apparently dissipated. "Let me get one for you. I really feel that, despite what you say, Miss Susannah, you are unwell - "

"No." I pushed the handkerchief away impatiently. "Not for me. You."

A small smile appeared at the corners of his lips. "I need a doctor? I assure you, Miss Susannah, I have never felt fitter in my life."

"No." I stumbled to my feet. It was the first time I'd tried to stand since he'd untied me, and I wasn't exactly steady.

Still, I managed to get up without his help. Now I stood in front of him, breathing hard - but from emotion not exertion.

"A doctor," I said, looking up into his confident, concerned face. He was a good six inches taller than me, but I didn't care. I kept my chin up.

"You secretly want to be a doctor," I said. "You haven't asked him, but you know your father won't let you. He needs you to run the ranch, because you're the only boy. They couldn't spare you long enough for you to get through medical school, anyway."

Something happened to Jesse's face then. The glint of suspicion that I'd seen in his eye since I'd shown him the miniature portrait dropped away, and in its place came something else. . . .

Something like wonder.

"How . . . ?" Jesse stared down at me in utter incredulity. "How could you possibly have . . . ? I have never told anyone that."

I reached out and took one of his hands . . .

. . . and was shocked by how warm it felt in mine. All those times Jesse had held me . . . all those times he'd stroked my hair and I'd marveled at his heat . . . I knew now it hadn't been real, that heat. It had all been in my head. This, this heat was real. This hand was real. The hard calluses I knew so well . . . they were real. Really Jesse.

"You told me," I said to him. "You told me in the future."

Jesse shook his head, but not hard. Just a little.

"That . . . that's not possible," he said.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, it is. You see, what happens tonight is that Diego kills you. But only your body dies, Jesse. Your soul doesn't go anywhere, because . . . well, because I think it wasn't supposed to happen like that." I gazed up at him tenderly, still holding his hand. "I think you were supposed to live. But you didn't. So your soul hung around until I came along, about a hundred and fifty years later. I'm someone who helps . . . well, people who've died. You told me you wanted to be a doctor, Jesse. You told me in the future. Do you believe me now? Will you please go away from here and never come back?"

Jesse looked down at our entwined fingers, mine so pale against his sun-darkened skin, so soft against his calluses. He didn't say anything. What could he have said, really?

But because he was Jesse, he thought of something to say . . . the exact right thing to say.

"If you know something like that about me," he said softly, "about my wanting to be a doctor - something I have never told Maria - or any living person - then I must . . . I suppose I must . . . believe you."

"So," I said. "Now you know. You've got to get out of here, Jesse. Just get on your horse and ride."

"I will," he said.

We were standing so close, all he'd have had to do was reach out, and he could have cupped my face in his hand.

He didn't, of course.

But I could feel the warmth radiating from him, not just from the hand I held, but along the course of his entire body. He was so vibrant, so alive, that he made me feel aware of every hair on my head, every corpuscle in my skin. I loved him so much . . .

. . . and he'd never, ever know it.

But that was all right. Because at least he'd be able to go on living.

"But not," Jesse said, suddenly dropping my hand and turning away, "tonight."

I stood there, feeling as if I'd been kicked. Cool air rushed into all the places that, moments before, had been warmed by his body heat.

"W-what?" I stammered stupidly. "Not what?"

"Not tonight," Jesse said with a nod toward the barn doors, through which, I could see, the lengthening shadows were gone. The sun had set. There were no shadows anymore. "Tomorrow I will ride to the de Silvas' ranch to speak with Maria and her father. But not tonight. It's growing late. Too late to travel. I'll stay here tonight, and leave in the morning."

"But you can't!" The words were wrenched from the depths of my soul. "You've got to leave now, Jesse, tonight! You don't understand, it's too dangerous - "

An all-too-familiar smile crept across those lips I knew so well. "I can take care of myself, Miss Susannah," he said. "I am not afraid of Felix Diego."

I couldn't believe what was happening right before my eyes.

"Well, you should be!" I practically screamed. "Considering that he kills you!"

"Ah," Jesse said. "But if I understand you correctly, that was before you came to warn me . . . for which I thank you."

I couldn't believe how badly this was going.

"Jesse," I said, making one last desperate attempt to reason with him. "You can't spend the night in that house. Do you understand? It's way, way too dangerous."

But Jesse surprised me. Well, why not? He always had.

"I understand," he said.

"You do?" I stared at him. "Really? Then you'll go?"

"No," he said, "I won't go."

"But - "

"I will stay here," he said, nodding to indicate the loft. "With you. Until morning."

I gaped at him.

"Here?" I echoed. "Here . . . in the barn?"

"With you," Jesse said.

"With me?"

"Yes," he said.

It took me until that moment to realize what he was doing. Here I was, traveling back 150 years to protect him - well, now that's what I was doing, anyway - and he was trying to protect me.

That was just so pure Jesse that I almost started to cry. Really.

But only almost.

Because his next question distracted me. "I have to ask, though. . . . Why?" His dark-eyed gaze raked my face.

"Why what?" I murmured, hypnotized as ever, by his gaze on mine.

"Why did you do this - come all this way - to warn me about Diego?"

Because I love you.

Four simple words. Four simple words that there was no way I could say. Not to this Jesse, who was virtually a stranger to me. He already thought I was nuts. I didn't want to make things even worse.

"Because it isn't right, what happened to you. That's all." That's what I started to say, anyway, when a man's voice called, "Senor de Silva?"

And let's just say that it wasn't Mr. O'Neil.

Chapter seventeen

I felt the blood in my veins run cold.

I knew that voice. Knew it only too well. The man who owned it had tried to kill me once.

"It's him," I whispered. Unnecessarily, of course, since Jesse obviously knew perfectly well who it was.

Jesse stood up and moved from the shadows that had cloaked his face. He wore an expression, I was relieved to see, of intense distrust. He was starting to believe me now.

"Who's there?" he called, lifting the lantern and turning a knob that brought what had been a tiny flame to a more powerful one.

The man below said something in Spanish that I didn't understand. Except tor the last two words. And they were easy enough for even me to decipher.

Felix Diego.

This is it, I thought. There was no going back now.

Jesse said something in Spanish to Diego, who replied in tones that, though I could not understand the words he spoke, sounded too silky-smooth to be trustworthy. He appeared to be inviting Jesse to do something.

And Jesse, for his part, was clearly declining.

"Well?" I whispered anxiously when the conversation ended and I heard Diego finally leave.

Jesse held up a hand, though, clearly not as convinced as I was that the man was well and truly gone.

Then, as the evening turned irrevocably to night and I could no longer see beyond the golden rays shooting out from the lamp Jesse held, he said, "It was Felix Diego. He said his master - Maria's father - had sent him to see that I had everything I needed to be comfortable and to escort me on the remainder of my journey tomorrow."

"Has Maria's father ever done that when you've come to visit before?" I asked.

"No" was Jesse's terse reply to that question.

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him that I was fine," Jesse said. He was answering my questions, but it was clear from the expression on his face that his mind was a thousand miles away. He was putting the extraordinary tales I'd been telling him together with what had just happened, and not liking what he was coming up with.

"I told him I'd be here all night," he went on. "Because my horse was sick. He said my horse looked fine to him and suggested I join him outside for a bottle - "

I sucked in my breath. "You didn't say yes, did you?"

"Of course not." For the first time, Jesse seemed really to see me as he looked at me. "I think you're right. I think he does mean to kill me."

I didn't reply with a hearty Told you so, because what would have been the point? Besides, Jesse looked upset enough. Not upset really - stunned. And something else, too. Something I couldn't put my finger on. . . .

At least, not until a second later, when I heard footsteps scrape for a second time on the ladder to the loft. Thinking it was Diego returning, I started toward the ladder, ready to fling the guy's soul back to kingdom come. . . .

But Jesse stepped in front of me, throwing out an arm to stop me from coming any closer.

And I realized what that "something" was that I'd seen in his eye.

But it turned out the person climbing toward us wasn't Felix Diego after all.

"Oh, great," Paul said, when he finally pulled himself up to the top of the ladder and saw us. "Oh, this is just great. What's he doing here?" Paul was glaring at Jesse, who glared right back.

"He just found me, Paul," I said. I didn't mention the part where I'd sort of made him find me.

Paul just glared at Jesse some more. If he noticed how different Jesse looked alive than he did dead, he didn't exactly mention it.

Jesse, for his part, simply nodded to Paul and asked me, "Is this him? The man who tied you up?"

I should have said no, of course. I should have seen what was coming.

But I didn't think. I just went, "Yeah, that's him."

It wasn't until I saw Jesse's hands clench into fists that I realized what I'd done. "No, wait!" I started to cry.

But it was too late. Jesse had launched himself at Paul like a linebacker, tackling him to the floor of the hayloft, and causing an enormous crash that sent the horses below whinnying and thumping around in their stalls.

"Stop it!" I cried, darting forward and trying separate them.

But it was like trying to pull apart a couple of mountains.

Paul, at least, wasn't as into the fight as Jesse was, since I could hear him crying, "Get him off me! Suze, get him off - "

On the word off, Jesse let go of his own accord and backed away, breathing hard. His shirt had gotten unbuttoned a little in the melee, and I caught a glimpse of his strong hard abs. It was impossible, even given the gravity of the situation, not to appreciate the sight.

"What the - " Paul scrambled up from the hay, brushing bits of it off him. "God, Suze. What did you tell him about me? Doesn't he know I'm the good guy here? You're the one who was going to let him get - "

"He knows," I interrupted, quickly.

Paul quit brushing himself and sent me a quizzical look. "He knows?" he echoed. "As in . . . knows knows?"

"He knows," I repeated grimly.

"Well," Paul said, looking intrigued. "What brought about that little change of heart? I thought - "

"That was before," I said quickly.

"Before what?" Paul found a piece of straw in his hair and pulled it out.

"Before I saw him," I said softly, not looking at either of them.

Paul didn't say anything - which for him was unusual. Jesse, of course, didn't know what we were talking about. He was still mad at Paul for tying me up.

"I don't know if it's considered normal in the time you come from to leave women bound and gagged," Jesse said severely. "But in this day and age, allow me to assure you that such behavior would generally land a gentleman in jail."

Jesse said the word gentleman like it was the last thing he actually thought Paul was.

Paul just looked at him. "You know," he said. "I think I like your ghost better."

I felt it wise to change the subject. "He's here," I said to Paul. "Felix Diego, I mean."

"I know," Paul said. "I followed him back here."

"I thought you were going to get rid of him!"

"Yeah, well, I couldn't just walk up to him and suck out his soul in front of everyone."

"Why not?"

"Because I would've gotten shot, that's why not."

"But you could just have shifted back to the future - "

"Uh, and left you tied up in Mrs. O'Neil's hayloft? I don't think so. I'd have had to come back and rescue you." His gaze shifted toward Jesse's. "I didn't know, of course, that Prince Charming here had come along and done it for me."

"So what are we going to do?" I asked. Paul looked at Jesse.

"Well," he said. "What does Wonderboy want to do?"

"Wonderboy?" Jesse glared menacingly in Paul's direction. "Is this person a friend of mine in the future?" he asked me.

"No," I said to Jesse. To Paul I said, "I tried to get him to leave, but he won't go."

Paul looked at Jesse. "Buddy," he said. "I'm not telling you this because I like you. Believe me. But if you stay here, you're gonna get iced. Simple as that. That Diego guy? He means business."

"I'm not afraid of him," Jesse said as if we were morons for not believing him.

"See what I mean?" I said, to Paul.

"Great." Paul sat down on a hay bale, looking pained. "This is just great. So when Diego comes to kill him, he can take a crack at you and me, too."

I opened my mouth to insist this wouldn't happen, but Jesse interrupted.

"If you think I would leave you alone with her again," he said, his gaze never wavering from Paul's face, "you don't know me at all in this future you speak of."

"Don't worry," Paul said, holding up a hand wearily. "I wouldn't expect anything else from you, Jesse. Well, that's it then." Paul leaned back in the hay, making himself more comfortable. "We wait. And if he comes back, thinking you've fallen asleep and he can do the job out here, we take him."

"No." Jesse's jaw was set. He didn't raise his voice. Not at all. His tone was hard as steel, however. "I will take him."

"Uh, no offense," Paul said, "but Suze and I, we came here especially just to - "

"I said I'll do it," Jesse said in that same ice-cold voice - the one I had come to recognize as the voice Jesse used only when he was truly angry about something. "I'm the one he's come to kill. I am the one who will stop him."

Paul and I exchanged glances. Then Paul sighed, lifted the horse blanket, and stretched out across the hay in a dark corner of the loft.

"Fine," he said. "Wake me when it's time to shift home."

And to my utter disbelief, he closed his eyes and seemed to doze off.

I glanced at Jesse and saw that he was eyeing Paul with distaste. When he noticed the direction of my gaze, he asked, his tone less hard than before, "You two are friends in the place you come from?"

"Uh," I said. "Not really. More like . . . colleagues. We both have the same . . . gift, I guess you'd call it."

"For traveling through time," Jesse said.

"Yes," I said. "And . . . other things."

"And when I kill Diego" - I noticed he said when and not if - "you'll go back where you came from?"

"Yes," I said, trying not to think about how incredibly hard that moment was going to be.

"And you want to help me," Jesse said, just as quietly as I'd spoken to him, "because . . . ?"

I realized I hadn't actually answered his question the first time he'd asked it. In the soft glow of the lamp - he'd turned the flame down to make sure Diego really did think he was sleeping, so he could take him unawares - Jesse had never looked as handsome as he did then. Because, of course, he'd never been alive any other time I'd seen him. His brown eyes looked soft, the lashes around them dark as the shadows all through the loft. His lips - those strong, soft lips that hadn't kissed mine nearly as often as I'd have liked, and, in all likelihood, never would again - looked hypnotically appealing. I had to tear my gaze from them and keep it instead on a threadbare spot on the knee of my jeans.

"Because it's what I do," I said, only something was happening in my throat, making the words come out more huskily than I'd intended them to.

I coughed.

"And you do this - " Jesse seemed to mean travel back through time to warn potential murder victims of their impending doom. " - for all who die before their time?"

"Uh, not exactly," I said. "Yours is kind of . . . a special case."

"And are all girls from your time," Jesse went on, thoughtfully, apparently not noticing my discomfort or my fascination with his mouth, "like you?"

"Like me? Like . . . that they're mediators?"

"No." Jesse shook his head. "Unafraid, like you. Brave, like you."

I smiled a little ruefully. "I'm not brave, Jesse," I said.

"You're staying here," he said, indicating the loft. "Even though you know - or think you know - something terrible is going to happen."

"Well, sure," I said. "Because that's the whole reason I came. To make sure it doesn't. Although, to be truthful . . ." I threw a cautious glance at Paul, in case - and he probably was - he was listening. " - really I came here to stop him. Paul, I mean. From stopping Diego. Because you see, if you don't die tonight, you and I - in the future, where I come from - will never meet. And I couldn't bear to let that happen. And you even - in the future - said you didn't want that to happen. Only . . . only . . . here I am, letting it happen. So you see, I'm not brave at all."

I doubt he'd understood a word I'd said. It didn't matter, though. It was as close to an apology as the Jesse I had known and loved was going to get. And I felt I owed him one. An apology. For what I had done.

Which was destroy everything we'd had together.

"I think you're wrong," Jesse said. About my not being brave.

But what did he know about any of it, really?

I just smiled at him.

Which is when I heard it.

Chapter eighteen

Don't ask me how. I wasn't born with superheating or anything. I just . . . heard it.

The scrape of the barn door.

And Jesse, over by the ladder, froze. He had heard it, too. A second later, I saw Paul sit up. He hadn't been sleeping. Not at all.

We waited in tense silence, each of us hardly daring to breathe.

Then I heard another scrape. This time, it was of a boot on a ladder rung.

Diego. It had to be. Diego was coming to kill Jesse.

Jesse must have sensed my unease, since he lifted a single hand toward me, palm out, in the universal signal for "Stay." He wanted Paul and me to leave Diego to him.

Yeah. Right.

And then I saw them - Diego's head and shoulders, looming massive and black against the lighter dark of the rest of the barn. His head was turned in the direction of Jesse's supine form - he didn't see anything else.

Slowly, obviously fearful of waking his prey, Diego climbed into the loft, his footfalls softened by all the hay. As he crept closer and closer - now he was five feet away . . . now four . . . now three - I leaned forward, ready to pounce. I had no idea what I was going to do to stop him. He was not a small man, and I'm no black belt. But shifting definitely came to mind.

Paul had his hand on me now, though, holding on to the sleeve of my motorcycle jacket, keeping me back so that Jesse could have a chance at taking care of the problem himself. Funny how in this one thing, Paul should be on Jesse's side, when he'd never taken Jesse's side on any other occasion.

One foot. Diego was now one foot from Jesse's supposedly sleeping form. He reached for something at his waist - his belt. I saw the gleam of his buckle . . . the same buckle that, in my own time, had somehow ended up in the attic . . .

Then, just as Diego had wrapped both ends of the belt around either fist and yanked the part in the middle taut, to use as a kind of garrote, Jesse's voice, cool and assured, cut through the silence.

In Spanish. He said something in Spanish.

Why? Why had I taken French and not Spanish?

Diego, caught totally off guard, stumbled back a step.

I couldn't stand it.

"What did he say?" I hissed at Paul.

Paul, not looking too happy about playing translator, said, "He said, 'So it IS true.' Now shut up so I can hear."

Diego recovered nicely, however. He didn't lower the hands that clutched the belt. Instead, he said something.

In Spanish.

This time, Paul didn't need any urging.

"He said, 'So you know. Yes, it's true. I'm here to kill you.'"

Jesse said something else. The only word I recognized was a name.

"He said, 'Maria sent you?'"

Diego laughed. Then he nodded. Then he lunged.

I don't think I screamed. I know I sucked in a ton of air and was going to let it out in a shriek. But I found myself holding my breath instead. Because Jesse, instead of rolling out from under Diego, as I would have done, rose up to meet his assailant.

The two men teetered dangerously on the edge of the hayloft floor, just before the twelve-foot drop to the ground below. It was hard to see exactly what was happening in the semidarkness, but one thing was certain: Diego had the advantage, weight-wise.

Now Paul and I were on our feet, completely unnoticed by the two men struggling at the edge of the loft. I tried to rush forward to help, but again Paul wouldn't let me.

"It's a fair fight," he said to me.

But when, a second later, the two men broke apart, and Diego threw aside his belt with a chuckle, I saw that there was nothing fair about the fight at all. Because Diego had suddenly produced a knife. It gleamed wickedly in the light from the lantern, sitting on the loft floor a few feet away from them.

Now the air in my lungs came out in a rush. "Jesse!" I shrieked. "Knife!"

Diego whirled. "Who's there?" he asked in English.

The distraction gave Jesse just enough time to pull from his boot his own knife . . . the one he'd used to cut me loose from Paul's ropes.

"Okay, that's it," I said when I saw this. "Somebody's going to get - "

"That's what we want," Paul said, keeping a firmer grip on me than ever. "So long as it's the right guy."

I couldn't understand what Paul was doing, what he was thinking. Jesse and Diego were circling each other warily now, coming within inches with every other step of the loft ledge. We could stop it. We could stop it so easily. Why wasn't he -

Then it hit me. Was Paul on Diego's side? Was this whole thing some kind of weird setup? Had he really failed to find Diego during the day or had he only pretended to go and look for him, so he could have the pleasure of watching Jesse die later? Because that could be the only reason he'd have gone to these elaborate lengths - so that he could watch Jesse die -

I wrenched myself free of him.

"You want Jesse to die," I shrieked at him. "You want him to, don't you?"

Paul looked at me like I was nuts. "Are you kidding? The whole reason I came back was to make sure he didn't."

"Then why aren't you helping him?"

"I don't need - " Jesse ducked as Diego took a swing at him. " - any help!"

"Who are those people?" Diego snarled, lunging at Jesse again.

"No one," Jesse said. "Pay no attention to them. This is between you and me."

"See?" Paul said to me, not without some self-righteousness. "Would you chill?"

But how could I, when I was standing there watching my boyfriend - okay, well, he wasn't exactly my boyfriend, yet - in a struggle for his life? I stood there, my heart in my mouth, barely able to breathe, watching the flash of cold hard metal as the two men circled each other. . . .

And then it happened. Diego suddenly reached behind him, and in a flash had grabbed hold of -

Me.

I was caught so off guard, I couldn't think. All I knew was that one minute I was standing there next to Paul, barely able to watch what was happening, I was so scared .

. . . and the next, I was in the middle of it, an arm crushing my throat as Diego held me in front of him, the tip of his silver blade at my neck.

"Drop the knife," he said to Jesse. He was standing so close to me, I could feel his voice reverberating through his body. "Or the girl dies."

I saw Jesse blanch. But he never hesitated. He dropped his knife.

Paul screamed, "Suze! Shift!"

It took me a second to realize what he meant. Diego was touching me. Diego was touching me. All I had to do was picture that hallway I hated so much - that way station between existences - and he and I would both be transported there . . .

. . . and we'd be rid of him forever.

But before I could so much as close my eyes, Diego threw me away from him and lunged at Jesse. I tried to scream as I fell, but my throat was so sore from the force with which he'd held me, nothing came out.

I didn't fall from the loft, however. Instead, I fell against something metal - and glass. Something that broke beneath my weight. Something that soaked the straw beneath me.

Something that burst into flames.

The lantern. I'd fallen on the lantern, and broken it. And set the hay on fire.

The flames broke out more quickly than I ever could have imagined they would. Suddenly, I was separated from the others by a wall of orange. I could see them standing on the other side, Paul staring at me in dumb horror, while Jesse and Diego -

Well, Jesse was trying to keep Diego from plunging a knife into his heart.

"Paul," I shrieked. "Help him! Help Jesse!"

But Paul just stood there looking at me for some reason. It was Jesse who finally broke Diego's grip on him. Jesse who twisted the arm that held the knife until Diego, with a cry of pain, let go of it. And Jesse who hauled off and struck Diego with a blow to the face that sent him reeling -

Right over the ledge.

I heard his body hit the barn floor, heard the unmistakable snap of breaking bones . . . breaking neck bones.

The horses heard it as well. They whinnied shrilly and kicked at the doors to their stalls. They could smell the smoke.

So, I realized, could the O'Neils. I heard shouts coming from outside the barn.

"You did it," I cried, gazing at a panting Jesse through the smoke and fire. "You killed him!"

"Suze." Paul was still staring at me. "Suze."

"He did it, Paul!" I couldn't believe it. "He's going to live." To Jesse, I said, joyfully, "You're going to live!"

Jesse didn't look too happy about it, though. He said, "Susannah. Stay where you are."

Then I saw what he meant. The fire had completely cut me off from the rest of the loft. Even from the ledge. I was cornered by flames. And smoke. Smoke that was getting so thick, I could barely see them.

No wonder Paul had been staring at me. I was caught in a fire trap.

"Suze," Paul said. But his voice sounded faint. Then he cried, "Jesse, no - "

But it was too late. Because the next thing I knew, a large object hurtled at me through the smoke and flame - hit me, as a matter of fact, and knocked me to the ground. It took me a second to realize the object was Jesse and that he'd wrapped himself in the horse blanket I'd slept under the night before. . . .

A horse blanket that was now smoldering.

"Come on," Jesse said, throwing down the blanket, then grabbing my hand and pulling me back to my feet. "We haven't much time."

"Suze!" I heard Paul yelling. I could no longer see him, the smoke was so thick.

"Get down," Jesse yelled to Paul. "Get down and help them with the horses."

But Paul didn't appear to be listening.

"Suze," he yelled. "Shift! Do it now! It's your only chance!"

Jesse had turned and was kicking at the planks that made up the closest wall. The boards shuddered under the assault.

Shift? My mind seemed to be working only murkily, maybe due to all the smoke. But it didn't seem like I could shift just then. What about Jesse? I couldn't leave Jesse. I hadn't gone to all this trouble to save him from Diego just to have him die in a barn fire.

"Suze," Paul yelled once more. "Shift! I'm doing it, too. I'll meet you on the other side!"

Other side? What was he talking about? Was he insane?

Oh, right. He was Paul. Of course he was insane.

I heard a crash. Then Jesse was taking my hand.

"We're going to have to jump," he said, his face very close to mine.

I felt something cool lick my face. Air. Fresh air. I turned my head and saw that Jesse had kicked out enough boards in the barn wall for a person to squeeze through. It was dark through that hole. But lifting my face a little to better feel the deliriously cool breeze, I saw stars in the night sky.

"Do you understand me, Susannah?" Jesse's face was very close to mine. Close enough to kiss me. Why didn't he kiss me? "We'll jump together, on the count of three."

I felt him reach out and grab me by the waist, bringing me close to him. Well, that was better. Much better for kissing -

"One . . ."

I could feel his heart drumming hard against mine. Only how was that possible? Jesse's heart had stopped beating 150 years ago.

"Two . . ."

Hot flames were licking mv heels. I was so hot. Why didn't he hurry up and kiss me already?

"Three . . ."

And then we were flying through the air. Not because he was kissing me, I realized. No, because we were really flying through the air.

And as if the fresh cool wind had cleared the smoke from my brain, I realized what was happening. Jesse and I were hurtling toward the ground, which looked extremely far away.

And so I did the only thing I could. I clung to him, closed my eyes, and thought of home.

Chapter nineteen

I landed with such force, all the wind was knocked out of me. It was like being hit in the back with a railroad tie - which has actually happened to me before, so I would know. I lay there, completely stunned, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything but be aware of the pain.

Then, slowly, consciousness returned. I could move my legs. This was a good sign. I could move my arms. Also good. Breathing returned - painfully, but there, none the less.

Then I heard it.

Crickets.

Not the shrieks of horses as they protested being dragged from their burning stalls. Not the roaring of fire all around me. Not even my own labored breathing.

But crickets, chirping away like they had nothing better to do.

I opened my eyes.

And instead of smoke and fire and burning barn, all I saw were stars, hundreds of them, glowing coldly millions of miles away.

I turned my head.

And saw my house.

Not Mrs. O'Neil's boardinghouse, either. But my house. I was in the backyard. I could see the deck Andy had built. Someone had left the lights on in the hot tub.

Home. I was home.

And I was alive. Barely, but alive.

And I was not alone. Suddenly, someone was kneeling beside me, blocking my view of the hot tub lights, and saying my name.

"Suze? Suze, are you all right?"

Paul was tugging on me, pushing me in places that hurt. I tried to slap his hands away, but he just kept doing it until finally I said, "Paul, quit it!"

"You're okay." He sank down into the grass beside me. His face in the moonlight looked pale. And relieved. "Thank God. You weren't moving before."

"I'm fine," I said.

Then remembered that I wasn't. Because . . . Jesse . . . I had lost Jesse. We had saved him, so that I could lose him forever. Pain - much worse pain than I'd felt during my landing on the cold hard ground - gripped me like a vise.

Jesse. He was gone. Gone for good . . .

Except . . .

Except if that were true, why did I remember him?

I rose up onto my elbows, ignoring the jolt of pain that rose from my ribs when I did so.

That's when I saw him. He was lying on his stomach in the grass a few feet away, totally unmoving, totally not . . .

Glowing.

He wasn't glowing.

I looked at Paul. He blinked back at me.

"I don't know," he said as if the words had been wrung from him. "All right, Suze? I don't know how it happened. You were both here when I showed up just now. I don't know how it happened - "

And then I was on my hands and knees, crawling through the wet grass toward him. I think I was crying. I don't know for sure. All I know was, it was hard to see all of a sudden.

"Jesse!" I reached his side.

It was him. It was really him. The real Jesse, Alive Jesse.

Only he didn't seem too alive just then. I reached out and felt for a pulse on his throat. There was one - my breath caught as I felt it - but it was faint. He was breathing, but barely. I was afraid to touch him, afraid to move him. . . .

But more afraid not to.

"Jesse!" I cried, rolling him over and shaking him by the shoulders. "Jesse, it's me, Suze! Wake up. Wake up, Jesse!"

"It's no good, Suze," Paul said. "I already tried. He's there . . . but he's not. Not really."

I had Jesse's head in my arms. I cradled it, looking down at him. In the moonlight, he looked dead.

But he wasn't. He wasn't dead. I'd have known if he was.

"I think we screwed up, Suze," Paul said. "You weren't - you weren't supposed to bring him back."

"I didn't mean to," I said. My voice was so faint, it was practically drowned out by the crickets. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"I know," Paul said. "But . . . I think maybe you need to put him back."

"Put him back where?" I raged. Now my voice was much louder than the crickets. So loud, in fact, that the crickets were startled into silence. "In the middle of that fire?"

"No," Paul said. "I just - I just don't think he can stay here, Suze, and . . . live."

I continued to cradle Jesse's head, thinking furiously. This wasn't fair. No one had warned us about this. Dr. Slaski hadn't said a word. All he'd said was to picture in your head the time and place you wanted to be in, and . . .

And not to touch anything you didn't want to bring through time with you.

I groaned and dropped my face to Jesse's. It was my fault. It was all my fault.

"Suze." Paul reached out and rested a hand on my shoulder. "Let me try. Maybe I can get him back - "

"You can't." I lifted my head, my voice cold as the blade Diego had pressed to my throat. "It'll kill him. He's not like us. He's not a mediator. He's . . . he's human."

Paul shook his head. "Maybe he was meant to die, then, Suze," he said. "Like you said. Maybe we aren't supposed to mess with this stuff, just like you warned me."

"Great." I let out a bitter little laugh. "That's just great, Paul. Now you agree with me?"

Paul just stood there, looking anxious. If I could have been capable of feeling anything except despair, at that point, I would have hated him.

But I couldn't. I couldn't hate him. I couldn't think of anything but Jesse. I had not, I told myself, saved him just so I could sit and watch him die.

"Go to the carport," I said in a low, even voice. "And inside the house through the door there. They never remember to lock it. Hanging on a hook by the door are my mom's car keys. Get them and then come back and help me take him to the car."

Paul looked down at me like I was a crazy woman.

"The car?" He sounded dubious. "You're going to . . . drive him somewhere?"

"Yes, you fool," I snarled. "To the hospital."

"The hospital." Paul shook his head. "But Suze - "

"Just do it!"

Paul did it. I know he thought it was futile, but he did it. He got the keys, then came back and helped me carry Jesse to my mom's car. It wasn't easy, but between the two of us, we managed. I'd have dragged him the whole way by myself if I'd had to.

Then we were on the road, Paul driving while I continued to hold Jesse's head in my arms. I didn't think then that what I was doing was futile. Maybe, I kept thinking, the hospital could save him. Medicine had made so many advances in the past 150 years. Why couldn't it save a man who'd just traveled to another time, through another dimension? Why couldn't it?

Except that it couldn't.

Oh, they tried. At the hospital. They came running out with a gurney when Paul went in to tell them we had an unconscious man in the car. They hooked Jesse up to an oxygen mask while the emergency room doctor grilled me. Had he taken drugs? Had too much to drink? Had a seizure? A headache? Complained of pain in his arm?

There was no medical explanation for the coma Jesse was in. That's what the doctor came out and told me, hours later. None that he had been able to determine so far. A CT scan might tell him more. Did I happen to know what kind of insurance Jesse had? His Social Security number, maybe? A phone number for his next of kin?

At 6:00 in the morning, they admitted him. At 7:00, I called my mother, and told her where I was - at the hospital with a friend. At 8:00, I phoned the only person I could think of who might possibly have some idea what to do.

Father Dominic had gotten back from San Francisco the night before. He listened to what I had to say without remark. "Father Dominic, I did . . . I think I did something awful. I didn't mean to, but . . . Jesse's here. The real Jesse. The live one. We're at the hospital. Please come."

He came. When I saw his tall, strong figure approaching the hard plastic seat I'd been sitting in for hours, I nearly collapsed all over again.

But I didn't. I stood up and, a second later, was in his arms.

"What did you do?" he kept murmuring over and over. He wasn't talking to just me, either. Paul was there, too. "What did you two do?"

"Something bad," I said, lifting my tear-stained face from his shirt. "But we didn't mean it."

"We were trying to save him," Paul said sheepishly. "His life. We almost did - "

"Until I brought him back," I said. "Oh, Father Dominic - "

He shushed me and went into the room where Jesse lay, so still, the blanket over him barely stirring with each shallow breath. Ghost Jesse, I now realized, would have looked better - more alive - than Alive Jesse did.

Father Dominic crossed himself, he was so startled by what he saw. A nurse was there, taking Jesse's pulse and writing the results down on a clipboard. She smiled sadly when she saw Father Dominic, then left the room.

Father Dominic looked down at Jesse. For the first time, I noticed that the lenses of his glasses were kind of fogged up.

He didn't say anything.

"They want to know what kind of insurance he has," I said bitterly, "before they do more tests."

"I . . . see," Father Dominic said.

"I don't see what more tests are going to tell them," Paul said.

"You don't know," I snapped, lashing out at Paul because I couldn't lash out at the person who most deserved it . . . myself. "Maybe there's something they can do. Maybe there's - "

"Isn't your grandfather here somewhere?" Father Dominic asked Paul.

Paul lifted his gaze from Jesse's unconscious form.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, yes, sir. I think so."

"Perhaps you should go and pay him a visit." Father Dominic's voice was calm. His presence, I had to admit, was soothing. "If he's conscious, perhaps he'll be able to offer us some advice."

Paul's chin slid out truculently. "He won't talk to me," Paul insisted. "Even if he is awake - "

"I think," Father Dominic said quietly, "that if there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, it's that life is fleeting and if there are fences to mend, you had best mend them quickly, before it's too late. Go and make amends with your grandfather."

Paul opened his mouth to protest, but Father Dominic shot him a look that snapped his lips shut. With one final glance at me, Paul left the room, looking aggrieved.

"Don't be too angry with him, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "He thought he was doing right."

I was too tired to argue. Much.

"He thought he was robbing me of Jesse," I said. "Even his memory."

Father Dominic shrugged. "In the end, Susannah, that might actually have been kinder, don't you think? Kinder than this, anyway." He nodded his head at Jesse's unconscious form.

Well, that much was true.

"He would have had to leave, anyway, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Someday."

"I know." The knot in my throat throbbed.

Which was when I remembered. There'd been a ghost in Father Dom's life, as well. The ghost of a girl he'd loved, maybe even as much as I loved Jesse.

"I . . ." I could barely speak, the lump in my throat had swelled to such gigantic proportions. "I'm sorry, Father Dominic. I forgot."

Father Dom just smiled sadly and touched my arm.

"Don't be too hard on him," he said, meaning Paul. Then, with a final glance at Jesse, he said, "There isn't much I can think of to do. But the insurance situation. That I think I can take care of. I'll be back soon. Can I bring you anything? Have you eaten?"

The thought of trying to swallow anything down past the mass in my throat was so ludicrous, I actually laughed a little.

"No, thanks," I said.

"All right." Father Dominic started from the room. At the doorway, however, he paused and looked back.

"I'm sorry, Susannah," he said quietly. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when . . . it happened. And I'm more sorry than I can say that it had to end this way."

And with that, he was gone.

I stood there for a moment, not doing anything, not thinking a thing. Then the true meaning of his words sunk in.

And I lost it.

Because Father Dominic was right. This was the end. I could deny it as much as I wanted, but this was it. Jesse was dying, right before my eyes, and there was nothing, nothing on earth, that I could do for him.

And it was my fault. My own fault he was leaving me. Sure, I could comfort myself that wherever he was, it had to be better than the half-life he'd had with me.

But that didn't make it hurt any less.

I fell into the chair beside Jesse's hospital bed. I couldn't see, I was crying so hard. Not out loud. I didn't want any nurse to come running with a bunch of tranquilizers or anything. What I really wanted, I realized, was my mom. No, not my mom. My dad. Where was my dad now, when I really needed him?

"Susannah."

I thought about Jesse's grave, the one marked by the headstone Father Dominic and I had paid for. What was in that grave now, if Jesse's body was here? Nothing. It was empty.

But not for long. No, not for long.

"Susannah."

And back in his own time? What were Mr. and Mrs. O'Neil doing right now? Probably combing through the rubble of what had been their barn. They'd find one skeleton for sure. But would they know it wasn't Jesse's? Would Jesse's family have closure or would they wonder forever what had happened to their beloved son and brother?

No. They had no way of knowing the body was Diego's. They'd think it was Jesse. The de Silvas would have a funeral. But for the wrong man.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Great. Someone was there. Someone was watching me cry my eyes out. Nice. Let the girl have a little time to grieve, would you, please?

"Go away," I snapped, lifting my head. "Can't you see I'm - "

That's when I noticed that the figure beside me was glowing.

Chapter twenty

I must have jumped about a mile and a half into the air, I was that startled. I know I sprang from the chair, so fast that I knocked it over. I stood there, my chest heaving, my eyes suddenly bone dry, and stared.

Because standing there beside the bed, looking down at Jesse's prone body, was . . .

Jesse.

I looked from one Jesse to the other, not quite believing what I was seeing.

But it was true. There were two Jesses, the dead one and the live one.

Or, I suppose it would have been more correct to say the dead one and the dying one.

"J-Jesse?" I swiped at the tears coating my cheeks with the back of my smoky sleeve.

But Jesse wasn't looking at me. He was staring down at . . . well, at himself, on the bed.

"Susannah," he whispered. "What . . . what did you do?"

I was so overjoyed to see him, I wasn't thinking straight. I went to him and grabbed his hand.

"Jesse, I went. Back through time, I mean," I babbled.

He tore his gaze from the tigure on the bed and focused all of that intense dark gaze on me. He didn't look too happy.

"You went?" He glared at me. "You went after Slater? After I told you I could take care of myself?"

He was furious. I was so happy to see that fury, however, that I let out a little burble of laughter. I didn't realize, then, what seeing him here in the hospital meant.

"You did take care of yourself," I assured him. "I-I told you - the past you - about Diego, and he didn't kill you, Jesse. You killed him. But then . . . then . . . there was a fire." I swallowed, not feeling like laughing anymore. "In the barn. The O'Neils' barn . . ."

His eyes narrowed.

"The O'Neils," he murmured. He appeared to be in as much of a daze as I was. "I remember them."

"Yes," I said. "There was a fire, and Jesse . . . Jesse, you saved me. Or, at least, you tried to. But . . . but . . ."

My voice trailed off. Jesse had dropped my hand. He was moving closer to the bed, looking down at the body that lay there, barely breathing.

"I don't understand," Jesse said. "How did this happen?"

I bit my lip. There was no time for explanations. Not when, any minute, I knew we were going to have to be saying good-bye . . .

"I did it," I blurted. "I didn't mean to. I meant to save you, Jesse, not . . . not this. But I was still touching you when I shifted back to the future, and you . . . you just got caught."

Jesse finally looked at me like he was really seeing me, maybe for the first time since he'd come into the room.

"You really went back?" He stared at me. "To the past? My past?"

I nodded. What was there to say?

He shook his head. "And Paul? I went to the basilica to look for him, but he was gone. You followed him?"

I nodded again.

"I wanted to stop him," I said. "From . . . from keeping you from dying. But in the end . . . I couldn't, Jesse. It wasn't right. What Diego did to you. I couldn't let it happen again. So I told you. And you killed him. You killed Diego. But then there was the fire and . . ." I looked down at the figure in the bed. I couldn't stifle a sob. "And now I think this is good-bye. I'm sorry, Jesse. I'm so, so sorry."

My vision clouded over again with tears. I couldn't believe any of this was happening. I had always thought of my "gift" as a curse, but never, never had I hated it as much as I did just then. I wished I had never heard of mediators. I wished I had never seen a single ghost. I wished I had never been born.

Then I felt Jesse's hand on my cheek.

"Querida," he said.

He placed his other hand on the bed to balance himself as he leaned across it to kiss me. One last kiss before he was ripped from me forever. I closed my eyes, anticipating the feel of those cool lips against mine. Good-bye, Jesse. Goodbye.

His mouth had barely touched mine, however, when I heard him gasp. He jerked his head from mine and looked down.

His hand had touched his living body's leg.

Something seemed to jolt through him, then. He flared more brightly for a second, his gaze on mine more intense than it had ever been in all the time I'd known him.

And then he was sucked down into his body, like smoke pulled into a fan.

And was gone.

Oh his body was still there. But the ghost of Jesse - the ghost I had loved - was gone. In his place was. . . .

Nothing. I reached out, desperate to grab some small piece of him, but my hand clutched only air.

Jesse was gone. He was truly gone. He was back inside the body he'd left so long ago . . . the body that, even as I watched, shuddered all over as if to reject the soul that had just entered it. . . .

Then went still as death.

I knew then what had happened. Jesse's body had come forward through time, yes. But not his soul, because two of the same souls could not exist in the same dimension. Jesse's body had been without a soul just as, for so many years, Jesse's soul had been without a body.

Now the two were united at last. . . .

But too late. And now I was going to lose them both.

I don't know how long I must have stood there, holding Jesse's hand, gazing down at him in utter despair. Long enough, I know, that Father Dominic came back, and said, "Don't worry, Susannah, it's all taken care of. Jesse will get the tests he needs."

"It doesn't matter," I murmured, still holding his hand . . . his cold hand.

"Don't give up hope, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Never give up hope."

I let out a bitter laugh. "And why is that, Father D?"

"Because it's all we have, you know." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "You did what you did because you loved him, Susannah. You loved him enough to let him go. There's no greater gift you could have given him."

I shook my head, my vision still blurred with tears.

"That's not how it's supposed to go, Father Dominic."

"What's not, Susannah?" he asked gently.

"The saying. It's supposed to be, If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. Don't you know? Haven't you read it?"

When I looked up at Father Dominic to see what he thought of this, I saw that he wasn't even looking at me. He was staring down at Jesse on the bed. Father Dominic's blue eyes, I noticed, were as tear-filled as my own.

"Susannah," he said in a strangled voice. "Look."

I looked. And as I moved my head, felt the fingers of the hand I was holding suddenly tighten around mine.

Color that hadn't been there a minute before had flooded Jesse's face. His face was no longer the same color as the sheets. His skin was the same olive tone it had been when I'd first seen him, back in the O'Neils' barn.

And that wasn't all. His chest was rising and falling visibly now beneath the blanket that covered him. A pulse thrummed visibly in his neck.

And, as I stood there, staring down at him, his eyelids lifted . . .

. . . and I was falling, as hard as I did every time he looked at me, into the deep dark pools that were Jesse's eyes . . eyes that weren't just seeing me, but knew me. Knew my soul.

He lifted the hand I wasn't clutching, plucked aside the oxygen mask that had been covering his nose and mouth, and said just one word.

But it was a word that set my heart singing.

"Querida."

Chapter twenty-one

"Suze!"

I heard my mothers voice calling from downstairs.

"Suze!"

I was sitting at my dressing table, admiring my blowout. CeeCee and I had spent the afternoon getting our hair and nails done. CeeCee hadn't needed a blow-out . . . her white-blonde hair is straight on its own. But she'd gotten an updo, then fretted all afternoon that it wouldn't hold.

My blow-out, however, apparently had staying power, because my hair looked as dark and shimmery as it had when I'd stepped from the salon.

"Suze!" my mom called a third and final time.

I glanced at the clock. I'd made him wait nearly five minutes. That seemed long enough.

"Coming," I yelled and grabbed my evening bag and the filmy white stole that went with my dress.

I went to my bedroom door and threw it open. Coming up the stairs as I was about to head down them was Jake, carrying a heavy backpack filled with books. From the library.

"Has hell frozen over?" I asked him as he went by me on his way to his room.

"Don't start with me, I've got finals," he growled. Then, just as he was to the door of his room, he turned and, with all apparent sincerity, said, "Nice dress," and disappeared into the confines of his bachelor cave.

I couldn't help smiling. It was the first compliment I'd ever managed to wring from Jake.

I started down the stairs, one hand lifting the hem of my gown. They were the exact same stairs, I realized, as the ones Mrs. O'Neil had chased me down about, oh, 150-something years ago. I wondered if, in my current ensemble, she'd have mistaken me for a hoochie mama. Somehow, I doubted it.

It's nice, I thought, that we have stairs like this. Stairs a girl can really make an entrance on. I got to the last landing, the one that basically served as a stage for girls who were going to their first Winter Formal to pivot and show off their dress to the people waiting in the living room, and paused, preparing to do just that.

But it was no use. I saw that at once. My stepfather was running around with a spoon filled with something green, urging everyone he encountered to taste it, just taste it. My mom was trying to figure out how her new digital camera worked and not doing the world's best job at it. My youngest stepbrother, David, was talking a mile a minute to my date about some new advances in aeronautics he'd seen on the Discovery Channel.

And Max, the family dog, had his nose buried in the front of my date's tuxedo pants.

I guess it was a pretty typical familial scene, one that I'm sure occurs in millions of homes every night.

So why did tears spring to my eyes at the sight of it?

Oh, not at Andy and his spoon, or my mom and her camera, or David and his complete conviction that anyone wanted to hear the entire transcript of the show he'd watched.

No, it was the fact that the family dog kept thrusting his nose into inappropriate places on my date, and that my date had to keep shoving Max away, that made the tears well up.

Because Max could smell my date. Max could finally smell Jesse.

David noticed me standing there on the landing first. His voice trailed off and he dried up, and just stood there staring. After a minute, everyone was staring.

I hastily blinked my tears away. Especially when Max rushed over and tried to thrust his big furry head beneath my skirt.

"Oh, Susie," my mom cooed and to everyone's surprise - especially her own - managed to snap a picture. "You look beautiful."

Andy, spying another victim, raised his spoon toward me, but my mother cut him off at the pass.

"Andy, don't you go near her with that stuff while she's in that dress," she warned.

That made me smile. When I looked at Jesse, I saw he was smiling, too. A secret smile, just for me - even though now, of course, everyone else could see it, too.

It still took my breath away, same as ever.

"So," I said as casually as I could with a giant lump in my throat. But this one was from joy. "I see you've met Jesse."

Andy summed up their introduction in two words before heading back to the kitchen with his spoon. "He'll do."

My mother was beaming. "So nice to meet you," she said to Jesse. "Now come down here, I want to get your picture together."

I came down the rest of the stairs and went to stand by Jesse's side in front of the fireplace. He looked so tall and handsome in his tux, I could hardly stand it. I didn't even care that my mother was completely mortifying me in front of him. I guess those kind of things don't really matter when you nearly lose your reason for living, then get it back again, against all odds.

"This is for you," Jesse said when I came close enough. He handed me something he'd been holding. It was a single white orchid, the kind you usually only see at funerals. Or on graves.

I took it from him with a wry smile. Only he and I realized the flower's significance. To my mother, who came rushing over to pin it to my dress before she took the picture, it was just a corsage.

"Now, say cheese," she said and took the picture, thankfully without actually making us say it.

Andy reemerged from the kitchen, this time without his spoon, and started looking parental.

"Now, you have her home by midnight, understand, young man?" he said, clearly enjoying being father to a girl instead of a boy for a change.

"I will, sir," Jesse replied.

"One," I said to Andy.

"Twelve thirty," Andy countered.

"Twelve thirty," I agreed. I'd only argued because, well, that's what you do. It didn't really matter what time Jesse had to bring me home by. Not when we had our whole lives together ahead of us.

"Suze," my mom whispered as she fussed with my shawl, "we like him, don't get us wrong. But isn't he a little, well, old for you? After all, he's in college - Jake's age."

If only she knew.

"That makes us about even," I assured her. "Girls mature faster than boys."

Brad chose that moment to come barreling in from the TV room, where he'd been playing video games. When he saw we were still in the doorway, his face twisted with annoyance.

"Haven't you guys left yet?" he demanded and stormed back into the kitchen.

I looked at my mother.

"I see what you mean," she said and patted me on the back. "Have a nice time."

Outside in the crisp evening air, Jesse looked over his shoulder to make sure my parents weren't watching. Then he took my hand.

"Between doing that again and an eternity in hellfire," he said, "I'd take the hellfire."

"Well, you'll never have to do it again," I said with a laugh. "Now that they know you. And besides, they liked you."

"Your mother didn't," Jesse assured me.

"Yes, she did," I said. "She just thinks you're a little old for me."

"If only she knew," Jesse said, voicing, as he so often did, exactly what I'd been thinking.

"Your stepfather, on the other hand, invited me to dinner tomorrow night."

"Sunday dinner?" I was impressed. "He really must like you."

We'd reached Jesse's car - well, really, it was Father Dom's car. But Father D was letting Jesse borrow it for the occasion. Not, of course, that Jesse had a license. Father Dom was still working on getting him a birth certificate . . . and a Social Security card . . . and school transcripts, so he could start applying for colleges and for student loans.

But, the good father had assured us, it wouldn't be hard. "The church," he'd said, "had ways."

"Madam," Jesse said, opening the front passenger door for me.

"Why, thank you," I said, and slid in.

Jesse went around to the driver's seat, slid into it, then reached for the ignition.

"You're sure you know how to drive one of these things?" I asked him, just to make sure.

"Susannah." Jesse started the engine. "I did not sit idly by eating bonbons for the 150 years I was a ghost. I did make a few observations now and then. And I most definitely know - " He started backing the car out of the driveway. " - how to drive."

"Okay. Just checking. Because I could always take over if you need - "

"You will sit where you are," Jesse said, turning onto Pine Crest Road without nearly hitting the mailbox, which was something even I, a driver with an actual license, rarely managed to do, "and look pretty, as a young lady ought to."

"Wait, which century is this?"

"Humor me," he said, looking pained. "I'm doing it for you, in this monkey suit."

"Penguin."

"Susannah."

"I'm just saying. That's what it's called. You need to get hip with the lingo if you're going to fit in."

"Whatever," Jesse said in such a perfect imitation of - well, me - that I was forced to mock punch him in the arm.

I sat and looked pretty for the entire rest of the two-mile ride to the Mission. When we got there, I even waited and let him come around to open the car door for me. Jesse thanked me, mentioning that his male ego had taken enough blows over the past week.

I knew what he meant and didn't blame him a bit for feeling that way. He had basically walked out of the Carmel Hospital a man newly born, without a past, at least, not one that was going to help him in this century, without family - except for me, of course, and Father Dominic - and without a cent to his name. If it hadn't been for Father Dominic, in fact, who knew what might have happened? Oh, I suppose my mom and Andy might have let him move in with us. . . .

But they wouldn't have been wild about it. But Father Dominic had found Jesse a small - but clean and nice - apartment, and he was looking into a job. College would come later, after Jesse had studied for and taken the SATs. But when we ran into Father D at the entrance to the dance - it was being held in the Mission courtyard, which had been transformed for the occasion into a moonlit oasis, complete with white fairy lights twisted around every palm tree and multicolored gels over the lights in the fountain - he pretended he and Jesse were meeting for the first time, for the sake of Sister Ernestine, who was standing nearby.

"Very nice to meet you," Father Dominic said, shaking Jesse's hand.

Jesse was unable to keep a smile from his face. "Same with you, Father," he said.

After Sister Ernestine left with a sniff at my dress - I suppose she'd been waiting for me to show up in something slit to my navel, not the very demure white Jessica McClintock number I was wearing instead - Father Dominic dropped the pretense and said to Jesse, "I have good news. The job's come through."

Jesse looked excited. "Really? What is it? When do I start?"

"Monday morning, and though the pay won't be much, it's something I think you'll be unusually well-suited for - giving talks about old Carmel at the Historical Society Museum. Do you think you can stand to do that for a while? Until we can get you into medical school, anyway?"

Jesse's grin seemed - to me, anyway - even more brilliant than the moon.

"I think so," he said.

"Excellent." Father Dominic pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled at us. "Have a nice evening, children."

Jesse and I assured him we would, then went into the dance.

It wasn't any mid-nineteenth-century ball or anything, but it was still very nice. There were punch and cookies and chaperones. And okay, there was also a DJ and a smoke machine, but whatever. Jesse seemed to be enjoying himself, especially when CeeCee and Adam came up to us, and he was able to shake both their hands and say, "I've heard a lot about you both."

Adam, who'd had no idea about Jesse's existence, scowled.

"Can't say I can return the compliment," he said.

But CeeCee, who'd turned pale as her dress when she heard me say Jesse's name, was more friendly. Or at least enthusiastic.

"B-but," she stammered, looking from Jesse's face to mine and then back again, "are - aren't you - "

"Not anymore," I said to her and, though she still looked confused, she smiled.

"Well," she said. Then, more loudly, "Well! That's wonderful!"

That's when I noticed her aunt standing nearby, chatting with Mr. Walden.

"What's she doing here?" I asked CeeCee.

Adam laughed and, before CeeCee could say a word, explained, "Mr. Walden's chaperoning. And guess who he brought as his date?"

"They aren't dating," CeeCee insisted. "They're just friends."

"Right," Adam said with a grin.

"Suze." CeeCee pulled her lace shawl more tightly over her bare shoulders. "Come to the ladies' room with me?"

"I'll be right back," I said to Jesse.

"How - " CeeCee began as soon as she'd dragged me into the ladies.

But she couldn't get out anything more than that, because a bunch of giggling freshmen came in and crowded around the mirror over the sink, checking their hair.

"I'll tell you someday," I said to her with a laugh.

CeeCee screwed up her face. "Promise?"

"If you'll tell me how it's going with Adam."

CeeCee sighed and checked out her own reflection. "Dreamy," she said. Then looked at me. "It is for you, too. I can tell by your face."

"Dreamy's a good word for it," I said.

"I thought so. Well, come on. No telling what Adam might be saying to him."

We turned to leave just as the bathroom door swung open, and Kelly Prescott came in. She shot me a supremely dirty look, which I didn't understand until she was followed by Sister Ernestine, who had a measuring tape in her hand. That's when I saw the slit in Kelly's designer gown. It was much higher than the regulation knee-length.

CeeCee and I slipped past the nun and fell giggling into the breezeway.

At least, I was giggling until I saw Paul.

He was standing in the shadows, looking coolly handsome in his tuxedo. He was obviously waiting for Kelly to emerge with her slit adjusted. He straightened when he saw me.

"Uh, tell Jesse I'll be right there, will you, Cee?" I said.

CeeCee nodded and went back to the dance. I walked up to where Paul was leaning against one of the stone pillars, and said, "Hi."

Paul took his hands from his pockets. "Hi," he said.

Then neither of us seemed to be able to think of anything to say.

Finally, Paul said, "I ran into Jesse out there."

I raised my eyebrows. "I ran into Kelly in there."

"Yeah," Paul said, flicking a glance at the door to the ladies' room. Then he said, "I . . . my grandfather asked about you."

"Really?" I had heard Dr. Slaski had come home from the hospital. "Is he - "

"He's better," Paul said. "A lot better. And . . . and you were right about him. He isn't crazy. Well, he is, but not in the way I thought. He actually knows a lot of stuff about . . . people like us."

"Yeah," I said. "Well, tell him I said hi."

"I will." Paul looked incredibly uncomfortable. I couldn't blame him, really. It was the first time we'd been alone together since the fire . . . and the hospital. I'd seen him in school the following week, but he'd seemed to do everything possible to avoid me. Now he looked very much like he'd have liked to run away.

But he didn't. Because it turned out he still had something to say.

"Suze. About . . . what happened."

I smiled at him. "It's all right, Paul," I said. "I already know."

He looked confused. "Know? About what?"

"About the money," I said. "The two thousand dollars you donated anonymously to the church's neediest fund, specially earmarked for the Gutierrezes. They got it and, according to Father Dominic, they were deeply grateful."

"Oh," Paul said. And he actually blushed. "Yeah. That. That's not what I meant. What I meant is . . . you . . . you were right."

I blinked at him. "I was? About what?"

"My grandfather." He cleared his throat. I could tell how much it was costing him to admit this. I could also tell, however, that he needed to say it, very badly. "Well, not just about my grandfather, but about . . . well, everything."

I raised my eyebrows. This was more than I'd ever dared hope for.

"Everything?" I echoed, hoping he meant what I thought he meant.

He seemed to. "Yeah. Everything."

"Even about" - I had to be sure - "you and me?"

He nodded, but not very happily.

"I should have known it all along," he said slowly, as if the words were being forced out of him by some unseen force. "How you felt about him, I mean. You told me enough times. But it didn't . . . it didn't really hit me until that night in the barn, when you . . . you told him. Why we were there. The fact that you'd have rather let him live - "

"We don't need to talk about this," I said, because just thinking about that night made my chest feel tight. "Really."

"No," Paul said, his blue-eyed gaze boring into me. "You don't understand. I've got to. I've never - Suze, I've never felt that way about anybody. Not even you. Which you, uh, probably noticed. When I didn't exactly come to your rescue. During the fire and all."

"But you were great afterward," I said, sticking up for him, because I felt like somebody should. "Helping me get Jesse to the hospital and all."

He shrugged miserably. "That was nothing. What Jesse did - jumping through those flames - and he barely even knew you - "

"It's all right, Paul," I said. "Really."

He didn't look convinced. "Really?"

"Really," I said, meaning it. Then I nodded toward the ladies' room door. "Besides, I always thought you two are much better suited, anyway."

"Yeah," Paul said, following my gaze. "I guess."

Then, to my surprise, he stuck out his right hand. "No hard feelings, Simon?"

I looked down at his hand. It seemed incredible, but I really didn't have any. Hard feelings toward him, I mean. Not now. Not anymore.

I slipped my fingers into his.

"No hard feelings," I said.

Then the bathroom door burst open and Kelly came out, her gait considerably altered because Sister Ernestine had stitched the slit in her dress to just above the knee.

Kelly had some pretty unpleasant things to say about the nun as she approached us.

"But at least she didn't make you go home and change," I interrupted her to point out.

Kelly just blinked at me. "Who's that guy?" she wanted to know.

I looked over my shoulder. Jesse was approaching us from down the breezeway. My heart, as always when I saw him, turned over in my chest.

"Oh, him?" I said casually. "That's just Jesse, my boyfriend."

My boyfriend. My boyfriend.

Kelly's eyes widened to their limits as Jesse stepped into the pool of moonlight in which we were standing, and took my hand.

"Paul," he said with a nod.

"Hey, Jesse," Paul said, looking uncomfortable. Then, remembering Kelly, he made uneasy introductions.

"Very nice to meet you," Jesse said, shaking Kelly's hand.

She, however, seemed too stunned to reply. She was just staring up at Jesse as if she'd seen . . .

Well, not a ghost, exactly. More like something she couldn't quite understand. I could almost hear her wondering, What's a guy like that doing with Suze Simon?

Hey, she didn't know what I'd been through for the guy . . . or what he'd been through for me.

Trying not to look too smug, I took Jesse's arm and said, "Well, see you around." And led him to the dance floor.

"Things with Paul are . . . ?" Jesse raised his eyebrows questioningly as I slid my arms around his neck.

"Fine," I said.

"And you know that because . . . ?"

"He told me."

"And you believe him?"

"You know what?" I lifted my head from where I'd been resting it on Jesse's shoulder. "I do."

"I see." Jesse stood there as I swayed to the music. "Susannah? What are you doing?"

"I'm dancing with you."

Jesse looked down at our feet, but couldn't see them, because my long skirt was swaying above them.

"I don't know this dance," he said.

"It's easy," I said. I let go of his neck and took his hands and brought them around my waist. Then I put my arms back around his neck. "Now sway."

Jesse swayed.

"See?" I said. "You're doing it."

Jesse's voice in my ear sounded a bit strangled. "What's this dance called?" he asked.

"Slow," I said. "It's called a slow dance."

Jesse didn't say anything much after that. He really was catching on fast to twenty-first-century social customs.

I don't know how much later it was that I lifted my head and saw my dad standing there.

This time, I didn't jump out of my skin. I'd sort of been expecting to see him.

"Hey, kiddo," he said.

I stopped dancing and said to Jesse, "Could you just excuse me a minute? There's just somebody I have to, um, have a word with."

Jesse smiled. "Of course."

My heart swelling with adoration for him, I hurried over to the palm tree my dad was lurking behind.

"Hey," I said to him, a little breathlessly. "You came."

"Of course I came," Dad said. "My little girl's first real dance? You think I'd miss it?"

"That's not why I'm glad you came," I said, reaching out to take his hand. "I wanted to say thanks."

"Thanks?" Dad looked bewildered. "For what?"

"For what you did for Jesse."

"For Jesse?" Then comprehension dawned and he made as if to drop my hand, looking embarrassed. "Oh. That."

"Yes, that," I said, holding his fingers more tightly. "Dad, Jesse told me. If you hadn't made him come to the hospital when you did, I'd have lost him forever."

"Well," he said, looking as if he wished he were someplace - anyplace - else. In fact, he looked . . . well, almost as if he already were someplace else. He was much less opaque than usual. "I mean, you were crying. And calling me. When it was Jesse you should have been calling."

"I thought Jesse was gone," I said. "So I called you. Because you've always been there when I really needed you. And you were there for me then, too. You saved him, Dad. And I just wanted to let you know how much that meant to me. Especially since I know you didn't agree with my going - you know - in the first place."

My dad reached up to straighten my orchid. But for some reason, instead of being able to grab onto it, his fingers seemed to go right through the waxy petals. Suddenly, I realized what was happening. And there was nothing I could do but stand there, looking up at him, tears gathering beneath my eyelids.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Dad went on, meaning our disagreement about my going back through time to "save" Jesse. He was growing physically fainter and fainter with every word. And it wasn't just because I was looking at him through a veil of tears. "It's just that if you'd gone back and saved my life, it would have been like . . . well, like I'd died - and been hanging around for the past ten years for nothing."

"It wasn't for nothing, Dad," I said, holding as tightly as I could to the hand that, even as I spoke, I could feel slipping away. "It was for Jesse. And for me. That's why you're finally ready to move on. See for yourself."

Dad looked down at himself and then at me, clearly stunned.

"It's okay, Dad," I said, reaching up with my free hand to wipe the tears from my face.

He was almost impossible to see now . . . just a shimmer of color and light, and a faint pressure on my hand. But I could tell he was grinning. Grinning and crying at the same time. Just like I was. "I'll miss you."

"Take care of your mother for me," he said quickly, as if he were afraid of being snatched away before he could get the words out.

"I will," I promised.

"And be good," he said.

"Am I ever anything but?" I asked, my voice breaking.

Then, with a shimmer, he disappeared.

Forever.

It was a long time before I could go back to where Jesse was standing. I'd had to cry for a while behind one of the palm trees, then repair the damage those tears had done with the makeup from my bag. When I finally returned to Jesse's side, he looked down at me, and smiled.

"He's gone?" he asked.

"He's gone," I said automatically. Then I gasped.

"Jesse . . ." I stared up at him. "Can you . . . did you . . . ?"

"See you talking to your father just then?" he asked, the corners of his lips twitching a little. "Yes."

"Then you can . . ." I was completely dumbfounded. "You can . . ."

"See and speak to ghosts?" Jesse grinned in the moonlight. "Apparently so. Why? Is that a problem?"

"No. Except that . . . that would mean - " I could barely believe what I was saying. "That means you're a - "

"Querida," Jesse said, pulling me toward him. "Let's just dance."

But I was still too stunned to think of anything else. Jesse - my Jesse - was no longer a ghost. He was a mediator.

Like me.

"The only thing I don't understand," Jesse was saying, his breath warm in my ear, "is why it took him all this time."

I swayed in Jesse's arms, barely registering what he was saying. Jesse is a mediator, was all I could think. Jesse's a mediator now.

"Your father," Jesse said. "His moving on, I mean. Why now?"

I put my arms around his neck. What else could I do?

"Do you really not know?" I asked him.

He shook his head.

I smiled because I felt as if my heart might burst with joy.

About the Author

Meg (a.k.a.) Meggin Cabot is the author of the bestselling, critically acclaimed, immensely popular Princess Diaries novels - Volumes I-III ( The Princess Diaries; Princess in the Spotlight; and Princess in Love ) are published by PerfectBound, along with All-American Girl and two adult contemporary books, The Boy Next Door and Boy Meets Girl. She is also the author of (among many, many other books, including even more Princess Diaries titles) She Went All the Way ; Haunted: A Tale of the Mediator ; and two Regency-era novels, Nicola and the Viscount and Victoria and the Rogue . Meg lives with her husband in New York City. Please visit www.megcabot.com.