Jesse raised his gaze and let it rest expressionlessly on me. “Why didn’t you tell him about me, Susannah?”
I swallowed. What do they do, teach guys that reproachful look at birth, or something? I mean, they all seem to have it so down pat. Except Dopey, that is.
“Look,” I said. “I wanted to. Only I knew he was going to freak out. I mean, he’s a priest. I didn’t figure he’d be too thrilled to hear that I’ve got a guy—even a dead guy—living in my bedroom.” I tried to sound as concerned as I felt. “So, um, I take it you two didn’t hit it off?”
“Between your father and the priest,” Jesse said, wryly, “I would take your father any time.”
“Well,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow I’ll just tell Father Dom about all the times you saved my life, and then he’ll just have to deal.”
He clearly didn’t believe it was going to be that simple if the scowl that appeared on his face was any indication. The sad thing was, he was right. Father D. wasn’t going to be mollified that easily, and we both knew it.
“Look.” I threw back the covers and got up out of bed, padding over to the window seat in my boxers and T-shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Jesse. I should have told him sooner and introduced the two of you properly. It’s my fault.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Jesse said.
“Yes, it is.” I sat down next to him, making sure Jesse was between me and the cat. “I mean, you may be dead, but I haven’t got any right to treat you as if you were. That’s just plain rude. Maybe what we can do is, you and me and Father Dom can all sit down and have lunch together or something, and then he can see what a nice guy you really are.”
Jesse looked at me like I was a mental case. “Susannah,” he said. “I don’t eat, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
Spike butted Jesse in the arm, and he lifted his hand and began scratching the cat’s ears. I felt so bad for Jesse—I mean, think about it: He had been hanging around in that house for a hundred and fifty years before I’d gotten there, with no one to talk to, no one at all—that I suddenly blurted out, “Jesse, if there was any way I could make you not dead, I’d do it.”
He smiled, but at the cat, not at me. “Would you?”
“In a minute,” I said, and then went on, with complete recklessness, “Except that if you weren’t dead, you probably wouldn’t want to hang out with me.”
That made him look at me. He said, “Of course I would.”
“No,” I said, examining one of my bare knees in the moonlight. “You wouldn’t. If you weren’t dead, you’d be in college or something, and you’d want to hang around with college girls, and not boring high school girls like me.”
Jesse said, “You aren’t boring.”
“Oh, yes, I am,” I assured him. “You’ve just been dead so long, you don’t know it.”
“Susannah,” he said. “I know it, all right?”
I shrugged. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better. It’s okay. I’ve come to accept it. There are some things you just can’t change.”
“Like being dead,” Jesse said, quietly.
Well, that certainly put a damper on things. I was feeling kind of depressed about everything—the fact that Jesse was dead, and that in spite of this, Spike still liked him better than me, and stuff like that—when all of a sudden Jesse reached out and took hold of my chin—almost exactly the way Tad had that night in his car—between his index finger and thumb and turned my face toward his.
And things suddenly started looking up.
Instead of collapsing in shock—my first instinct—I lifted my gaze to his face. The moonlight that had been filtering into my room through the bay windows was reflected in Jesse’s soft dark eyes, and I could feel the heat from his fingers coursing through me.
That’s when I realized that in spite of how hard I’d been trying to not to fall in love with Jesse, I wasn’t doing a very good job. I could tell this by the way my heart started thudding very hard against my T-shirt when he touched me. It hadn’t done that when Tad had touched me in the exact same way.
And I could also tell by the way I instantly started worrying about the fact that he had chosen this particular moment to kiss me, the middle of the night, when it had been hours since I’d brushed my teeth and I was sure I probably had morning breath. How appetizing was that?
But I never discovered whether or not Jesse would have been grossed out by my morning breath—or even if he’d really been going to kiss me at all—because at that moment, that crazy woman who kept insisting Red hadn’t killed her suddenly showed up again, shrieking her head off.
I swear I nearly jumped a foot. She was the last person I’d been expecting to see.
“Oh my God,” I cried, slapping my hands over my ears as she let loose like some kind of smoke detector. “What’s the matter?”
The woman had been wearing the hood of her gray sweatshirt. Now she pushed it back, and in the moonlight, I could see the tears that had made tracks down her thin, pale cheeks. I couldn’t believe I had mistaken her for Mrs. Fiske. This woman was years and years younger, and a heck of a lot prettier.
“You didn’t tell him,” she said, between sobbing wails.
I blinked. “Yes, I did.”
“You didn’t!”
“No, I did, I really did.” I was shocked by this unfair accusation. “I told him a couple of days ago. Jesse, tell her.”
“She told him,” Jesse assured the dead woman.
You would think one ghost would take the word of another. But she wasn’t having any of it. She cried, “You didn’t! And you’ve got to tell him. You’ve just got to. It’s tearing him up inside.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Red Beaumont is the Red you’re talking about, right? Isn’t he the one who killed you?”
She shook her head so hard, her hair smacked her cheeks and then stuck there, glued to her skin by her tears. “No,” she said. “No! I told you Red didn’t do it.”
“Marcus, I mean,” I amended, quickly. “I know Red didn’t do it. He just blames himself for it, right? That’s what you want me to tell him. That it wasn’t his fault. It was his brother, Marcus Beaumont, who killed you, wasn’t it?”
“No!” She looked at me like I was a moron. And I was starting to feel like one. “Not Red Beaumont. Red. Red! You know him.”
I know him? I know someone named Red? Not in this life.
“Look,” I said. “I need a little more info than that. Why don’t we start with introductions. I’m Susannah Simon, okay? And you are…?”
The look she gave me would have broken the heart of even the coldest mediator.
“You know,” she said, with an expression so wounded, I had to look away. “You know….”
And then, when I risked another glance in her direction, she was gone again.
“Um,” I said, uncomfortably, to Jesse. “I guess I got the wrong Red.”
Chapter
Seventeen
Okay, I admit it: I wasn’t happy.
I mean, seriously. I had invested all that time and effort in Red Beaumont, and he hadn’t even been the right guy.
Okay, yeah, so he—or his brother; my money was on his brother—had apparently killed a bunch of people, but I’d stumbled over this fact completely by accident. The ghost who’d originally come to me for help didn’t have anything to do with Red Beaumont or even with his brother, Marcus. Her message remained undelivered because I couldn’t figure out who she was, even though, apparently, I knew her.
And meanwhile, Mrs. Fiske’s killer was still walking around free.
And as if all of that weren’t enough, my midnight caller showing up the way she did had completely killed the mood between Jesse and me. He so totally did not kiss me after that. In fact, he acted like he’d never intended to kiss me in the first place, which, considering my luck, is probably the truth. Instead, he asked how my poison oak was progressing.
My poison oak! Yeah, thanks, it’s gr
eat.
God, I am such a loser.
But you know, I pretended like I didn’t care. I got up the next morning and acted like nothing had happened. I put on my best butt-kicking outfit—my black Betsey Johnson miniskirt with black ribbed tights, sidezip Batgirl boots, and purple Armani sweater set—and strutted around my room like all I was thinking about was how I was going to bring Marcus Beaumont to justice. The last thing on my mind, I pretended, was Jesse.
Not like he noticed. He wasn’t even around.
But all my strutting around had made me late, and Sleepy was standing at the bottom of the stairs bellowing my name, so even if he’d wanted to, it wouldn’t have been such a good thing for Jesse to materialize just then, anyway.
I grabbed my leather jacket and came pounding down the stairs to where Andy was standing shelling out lunch money to each of us as we came by.
“My goodness, Suze,” he said when he saw me.
“What?” I demanded, defensively.
“Nothing,” he said, quickly. “Here.”
I plucked the five-dollar bill from his hand and, casting him one last, curious glance, followed Doc down to the car. When I got there, Dopey took one look at me and let out a howl.
“Oh my God,” he cried, pointing at me. “Run for your lives!”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Do you have a problem?” I asked him, coldly.
“Yeah, I do,” he sneered at me. “I didn’t know it was Halloween.”
Doc said, knowingly, “It isn’t Halloween, Brad. Halloween isn’t for another two hundred and seventy-nine days.”
“Tell that to the Queen of the Undead,” Dopey said.
I don’t know what made me do it. I was in a bad mood, I guess. Everything that had happened the night before, from stabbing Mr. Beaumont to finding out I’d had the wrong man all along—not to mention my discovery that my feelings about Jesse weren’t exactly what I’d have liked them to be—came back to me.
And the next thing I knew, I’d turned around and sunk my fist into Dopey’s stomach.
He let out a groan and pitched forward, then sprawled out into the grass, gasping for air.
Okay, I admit it. I felt bad. I shouldn’t have done it.
But still. What a baby. I mean, seriously. He’s on the wrestling team. What are they teaching these wrestlers, anyway? Clearly not how to take a punch.
“Whoa,” Sleepy said when he noticed that Dopey was on the ground. “What the hell happened to you?”
Dopey pointed at me, trying to say my name. But all that came out were gasps.
“Aw, Jesus,” Sleepy said, looking at me disgustedly.
“He called me,” I said, with all the dignity I could muster, “the Queen of the Undead.”
Sleepy said, “Well, what do you expect him to say? You look like a hooker. Sister Ernestine’s going to send you home if she sees you in that skirt.”
I sucked in my breath, outraged. “This skirt,” I said, “happens to be by Betsey Johnson.”
“I don’t care if it’s by Betsy Ross. And neither will Sister Ernestine. Come on, Brad, get up. We’re going to be late.”
Brad got up with elaborate care, as if every movement was causing him excruciating pain. Sleepy didn’t look as if he felt too sorry for him. “I told you not to mess with her, sport,” was all he said as he slid behind the wheel.
“She sucker-punched me, man,” Brad whined. “She can’t get away with that.”
“Actually,” Doc said pleasantly, as he climbed into the backseat and fastened his seatbelt, “she can. While statistics concerning domestic violence are always difficult to obtain due to low reportage, incidents in which females batter male family members are reported even less, as the victims are almost always too embarrassed to tell members of law enforcement that they have, in fact, been beaten by a woman.”
“Well, I’m not embarrassed,” Dopey declared. “I’m telling Dad as soon as we get home.”
“Go ahead,” I said, acidly. I was in a really bad mood. “He’s just going to ground you again when I tell him you went ahead and snuck out the night of Kelly Prescott’s pool party.”
“I did not,” he practically screamed in my face.
“Then how is it,” I inquired, “that I saw you in her pool house giving Debbie Mancuso’s tongue a Jiffy Lube?”
Even Sleepy hooted at that one.
Dopey, completely red with embarrassment, looked as if he might start crying. I licked my finger and made a little slashing motion in the air as if I were writing on a scoreboard. Suze, one. Dopey, zero.
But Dopey, unfortunately, was the one who had the last laugh.
We were approaching our lines for Assembly—they seriously make every single grade stand outside the school in these lines separated by sex, boys on one side, girls on the other, for fifteen minutes before class officially starts, so they can take attendance and read announcements—when Sister Ernestine blew her whistle at me, and signaled for me to come over to her, where she was standing by the flagpole.
Fortunately, she did this in front of the entire sophomore class—not to mention the freshmen—so that every single one of my peers had the privilege of seeing me get bawled out by a nun for wearing a miniskirt to school.
The upshot of it all was that Sister Ernestine said I had to go home and change.
Oh, I argued. I insisted that a society that valued its members solely for their outward appearance was a society destined for destruction, which was a line I’d heard Doc use a few days earlier when she’d busted him for wearing Levi’s—there’s a strict anti-jeans rule at the Academy.
But Sister Ernestine didn’t go for it. She informed me that I could go home and change, or I could sit in her office and help grade the second graders’ math quizzes until my mother arrived with a pair of slacks for me.
Oh, that wouldn’t be too embarrassing.
Given the alternative, I elected to go home and change—although I argued strenuously on behalf of Ms. Johnson and her designs. A skirt however, with a hem higher than three inches above the knee, is not considered appropriate Academy attire. And my skirt, unfortunately, was more than four inches above my knees. I know because Sister Ernestine took out a ruler and showed me. And the rest of the sophomore class, as well.
And so it was that, with a wave to CeeCee and Adam, who were leading the class’s shouts of encouragement to me—which fortunately drowned out the catcalls Dopey and his friends were making—I shouldered my backpack and left the school grounds. I had, of course, to walk home, since I could not face the indignity of calling Andy for a ride, and I still hadn’t figured out whether or not there was such a thing as public transportation in Carmel.
I wasn’t too deeply bummed. After all, what had I had to look forward to? Oh, just Father Dominic reaming me out for not telling him about Jesse. I could, I suppose, have distracted him by telling him how wrong he’d been about Tad’s dad being a vampire—he just thinks he’s one—and what CeeCee had discovered about his brother, Marcus. That certainly would have gotten him off my back…for a little while, anyway.
But then what? So a couple of environmentalists were missing? That didn’t prove anything. So a dead lady had told me a Mr. Beaumont had killed her? Oh, yeah, that’d stand up in court, all right.
Not a lot to go on. We had, in fact, nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Which was what I was feeling like as I strolled along. A big miniskirted zero.
As if whoever was in charge of the weather agreed with me about my loser status, it was sort of raining. It was foggy every morning along the coast in northern California. The fog rolled in from the sea and sat in the bay until the sun burned it all off.
But this morning, on top of the fog, there was this light drizzle coming down. It wasn’t so bad at first, but I hadn’t gotten farther than the school gates before my hair started curling up. After all the time I’d spent that morning straightening it. I didn’t, of course, have an umbrella. Nor, it seemed, did I have much of a ch
oice. I was going to be a drenched, curly-haired freak by the time I walked the two miles—mostly uphill—to the house, and that was the end of it.
Or so I thought. Because as I was passing the school gates, a car pulling in between them slowed.
It was a nice car. It was an expensive car. It was a black car with smoked windows. As I looked at it one of those windows lowered and a familiar face peered out at me from the backseat.
“Miss Simon,” Marcus Beaumont said pleasantly. “Just the person I was looking for. May I have a word?”
And he opened the passenger door invitingly, beckoning for me to come in out of the rain.
Every single one of my mediator neurons fired at once. Danger, they screamed. Run for it, they shrieked.
I couldn’t believe it. Tad had done it. Tad had asked his uncle what I’d meant.
And Marcus, instead of shrugging it off, had come here to my school in a car with smoked windows to “have a word” with me.
I was dead meat.
But before I had a chance to spin around and hightail back into the school, where I knew I’d be safe, the passenger doors of Marcus Beaumont’s sedan sprang open and these two guys came at me.
Let me just say in my defense that deep down, I never thought Tad would have the guts to do it. I mean, Tad seemed like a nice enough guy, and God knew he was a great kisser, but he didn’t seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean. This, I imagine, is why a girl like Kelly Prescott would find him so appealing: Kelly’s used to being the Wüsthof. She doesn’t welcome competition in that capacity.
But I had obviously underestimated Tad. Not only had he gone to his uncle as I’d suggested, but he’d evidently managed to raise Marcus’s suspicions that I knew more than I’d let on.
Way more if the two thugs who were circling me, cutting off any possible chance at escape, were any indication.
My option for flight pretty much voided by these two clowns, I saw that I was going to have to fight. I do not consider myself a slouch in the fighting department. I actually kind of like it, if you haven’t figured that out already. Of course, usually I’m fighting ghosts, and not live human beings. But if you think about it, there’s not really that much of a difference. I mean, nasal cartilage is nasal cartilage. I was willing to give it a go.