"Forget it," I said as I gathered up my books.
"Come on, Suze," he said, flashing me that heart-melting smile. "You know I'm harmless. Well, basically. Besides, what could I do to your boy Jesse? He's got Father D to protect him, right?"
Not really. Not now, anyway. But Paul didn't know that. Yet.
"I'm sorry about the thing with Kelly," he said. "But you didn't want to go with me. Can you blame me for wanting to take someone who . . . well, actually likes me?"
Maybe it was the smile. Maybe it was the way he blinked those baby blues. I don't know what it was, but suddenly, I found myself softening toward him.
"What about the Gutierrezes?" I asked. "You'll give the money back?"
"Uh," Paul said. "Well, no. I can't do that."
"Paul, you can. I won't tell, I swear. . . ."
"It's not that. I can't because . . . I, er, need it."
"For what?"
Paul grinned. "You'll find out."
I threw open the car door and got out, my heels sinking deep into the pine-needle-strewn lawn.
"Good-bye, Paul," I said, and slammed the door behind me, cutting off his "No, Suze, wait!"
I turned around and headed toward the house. My stepfather, Andy, had started a fire in one of the house's many fireplaces. The rich smell of burning wood filled the crisp evening air, tinged with the scent of something else. . . .
Curry. It was tandoori chicken night. How could I have forgotten?
Behind me, I heard Paul throw the car into reverse and drive away. I didn't look back. I headed up the stairs to the front door, stepping into the squares of light thrown onto the porch from the living room windows. I opened the door and went inside, calling "I'm home!"
Except that I wasn't, really. Because home meant something else to me now, and had for quite a while.
And he didn't live there anymore.
Chapter four
The handful of pebbles I'd thrown rattled noisily against the heavy, leaded glass. I looked around, worried someone might have heard. But better for them to hear tiny rocks hitting a window than me whispering the name of someone who wasn't even supposed to be living there. . . .
Someone who, technically speaking, wasn't living at all.
He appeared almost at once, not at the window, but by my side. That's the thing about the undead. They never have to worry about the stairs. Or walls.
"Susannah." The moonlight threw Jesse's features into high relief. There were dark pools in the place where his eyes should have been, and the scar in his eyebrow - a dog bite wound from childhood - showed starkly white.
Still, even with the tricks the moon was playing, he was the best-looking thing I had ever seen. I don't think it's just the fact that I'm madly in love with him that makes me think so, either. I'd shown the miniature portrait of him I'd accidentally-on-purpose snagged from the Carmel Historical Society to CeeCee, and she'd agreed. Hottie extraordinaire was how she'd put it, to be exact.
"You don't have to bother with these," he said, reaching out to brush the remaining pebbles from my hand. "I knew you were here. I heard you calling."
Except, of course, that I hadn't. Called him. But whatever. He was here now and that's what mattered.
"What is it, Susannah?" Jesse wanted to know. He'd moved out of the shadows of the rectory, so that I could finally see his eyes. As usual, they were darkly liquid and full of intelligence . . . intelligence, and something else. Something, I like to think, that's just for me.
"Just stopped by to say hi," I said with a shrug. It was chilly enough that when I spoke, I could see my breath fog up in front of me.
This didn't happen when Jesse spoke, however. Because, of course, he has no breath.
"At three in the morning?" The dark eyebrows shot up, but he looked more amused than alarmed. "On a school night?"
He had me there, of course.
"Father D asked me to pick up some cat food," I said, brandishing a bag. "I didn't want Sister Ernestine to see me smuggling it in. She's not supposed to know about Spike."
"Cat food," Jesse said. Now he definitely looked amused. "Is that all?"
It wasn't all and he knew it. But it also wasn't what he thought. At least, not exactly.
Still, when he pulled me toward him, I didn't precisely object. Especially not considering that there's only one place in the world I feel completely safe anymore, and that's where I was just then . . . in his arms.
"You're cold, querida," he whispered into my hair. "You're shivering."
I was, but not because I was cold. Well, not only because I was cold. I closed my eyes, melting in his embrace as I always did, reveling in the feel of his strong arms around me, his hard chest beneath my cheek. I wished I could have stayed that way forever - in Jesse's arms, I mean, where nothing could ever hurt me. Because he'd never let it.
I don't know how long we stood like that in the vegetable garden behind the rectory where Father Dom lived. All I know is that eventually Jesse, who'd been stroking my hair, pulled back a little, so that he could look down into my face.
"What is it, Susannah?" he asked me again, his voice sounding strangely rough, considering the tenderness of the moment. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I lied, because I didn't want it to end . . . the moonlight, his embrace, any of it . . . all of it.
"Not nothing," he said, reaching up and pulling a strand of hair from where the wind had blown it, so that it was sticking to my lip gloss. I always seem to have that problem. "I know you, Susannah. I know there's something the matter. Come."
He took me by the hand and pulled. I went with him, even though I didn't know where we were going. I'd have followed him anywhere, even into the bowels of hell. Only of course he'd never take me there.
Unlike some people.
I did balk a little when I saw where he had led me, though. It wasn't exactly hell, but. . . .
"The car?" I stared at the hood of my mom's Honda Accord.
"You're cold," Jesse said firmly, opening the driver's side door for me. "We can talk inside."
Talking wasn't really what I'd had in mind. Still, I figured we could do what I had had in mind just as easily in the car as in the rectory's vegetable garden. And it would be a lot warmer.
Only Jesse wasn't having any of it. He seized both my hands as I tried to slip them around his neck, and placed them firmly in my lap.
"Tell me," he said from the shadows of the passenger seat, and I could tell by his voice that he was in no mood for games.
I sighed and stared out the windshield. As far as romance went, this was not exactly what I'd call a prime make-out spot. Big Sur, maybe. The Winter Formal, definitely. But the rectory parking lot at the Junipero Serra Mission? Not so much.
"What is it, querida?" He reached out to sweep back some of my hair, which had fallen over my face.
When he saw my expression, however, he pulled his hand back.
"Oh. Him," he said in an entirely different voice.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. That he'd known, I mean, without my having said anything. There was just so much I hadn't told Jesse - so much that I'd decided I didn't dare tell him. My agreement with Paul, for instance: that, in return for Paul not removing Jesse to the great beyond, I'd meet with him after school every Wednesday under the auspices of learning more about our unique skill . . . although truthfully, most of the time it seemed all Paul wanted to do was get his tongue in my mouth, not study mediator lore.
Jesse would not have been particularly enthused had he known of the lessons . . . less so, if he'd had an inkling of what they actually entailed. There was no love lost between Jesse and Paul, whose relationship had been rocky from the start. Paul seemed to think he was superior to Jesse merely because he happened to be alive and Jesse was not, while Jesse disliked Paul because he'd been born with every privilege in the world - including the ability to communicate with the dead - and yet chose to use his gifts for his own selfish purposes.