Ninth Key

  “Oh, God, no,” she said, lifting a knuckle to her mouth, and chewing on it. “No, please.”

  “Okay, then. Chill out a little. Now tell me—”

  But she was already gone.

  A split second later, though, Jesse showed up. He was applauding softly as if he were at the theater.

  “Now that,” he said, putting his hands down, “was your finest performance yet. You seemed caring, yet disgusted.”

  I glared at him. “Don’t you,” I asked, grumpily, “have some chains you’re supposed to be rattling somewhere?”

  He sauntered over to my bed and sat down on it. I had to jerk my feet over to keep him from squashing them.

  “Don’t you,” he countered, “have something you want to tell me?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s two o’clock in the morning, Jesse. The only thing I’ve got on my mind right now is sleep. You remember sleep, right?”

  Jesse ignored me. He does that a lot. “I had a visitor of my own not too long ago. I believe you know him. A Mr. Peter Simon.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  And then—I don’t know why—I flopped back down and pulled a pillow over my head.

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” I said, my voice muffled beneath the pillow.

  The next thing I knew, the pillow had flown out of my hands—even though I’d been clenching it pretty tightly—and slammed down to the floor. As hard as a pillow can slam, anyway, which isn’t very hard.

  I lay where I was, blinking in the darkness. Jesse hadn’t moved an inch. That’s the thing about ghosts, see. They can move stuff—pretty much anything they want—without lifting a finger. They do it with their minds. It’s pretty creepy.

  “What?” I demanded, my voice squeakier than ever.

  “I want to know why you told your father that there’s a man living in your bedroom.”

  Jesse looked mad. For a ghost, he’s actually pretty even-tempered, so when he gets mad, it’s really obvious. For one thing, things around him start shaking. For another, the scar in his right eyebrow turns white.

  Things weren’t shaking right then, but the scar was practically glowing in the dark.

  “Uh,” I said. “Actually, Jesse, there is a guy living in my bedroom, remember?”

  “Yes, but—” Jesse got up off the bed and started pacing around. “But I’m not really living here.”

  “Well,” I said. “Only because technically, Jesse, you’re dead.”

  “I know that.” Jesse ran a hand through his hair in a frustrated sort of way. Have I mentioned that Jesse has really nice hair? It’s black and short and looks sort of crisp, if you know what I mean. “What I don’t understand is why you told him about me. I didn’t know it bothered you that much, my being here.”

  The truth is, it doesn’t. Bother me, I mean. It used to, but that was before Jesse had saved my life a couple of times. After that, I sort of got over it.

  Except it does bother me when he borrows my CDs and doesn’t put them back in the right order when he’s done with them.

  “It doesn’t,” I said.

  “It doesn’t what?”

  “It doesn’t bother me that you live here.” I winced. Poor choice of words. “Well, not that you live here, since…I mean, it doesn’t bother me that you stay here. It’s just that—”

  “It’s just that what?”

  I said, all in a rush, before I could chicken out, “It’s just that I can’t help wondering why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you’ve stayed here so long.”

  He just looked at me. Jesse has never told me anything about his death. He’s never told me anything, really, about his life before his death, either. Jesse isn’t what you’d call really communicative, even for a guy. I mean, if you take into consideration that he was born a hundred and fifty years before Oprah, and doesn’t know squat about the advantages of sharing his feelings, how not keeping things bottled up inside is actually good for you, this sort of makes sense.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t help suspecting that Jesse was perfectly in touch with his emotions, and that he just didn’t feel like letting me in on them. What little I had found out about him—like his full name, for instance—had been from an old book Doc had scrounged up on the history of northern California. I had never really had the guts to ask Jesse about it. You know, about how he was supposed to marry his cousin, who it turned out loved someone else, and how Jesse had mysteriously disappeared on the way to their wedding ceremony….

  It’s just not the kind of thing you can really bring up.

  “Of course,” I said, after a short silence, during which it became clear that Jesse wasn’t going to tell me jack, “if you don’t want to discuss it, that’s okay. I would have hoped that we could have, you know, an open and honest relationship, but if that’s too much to ask—”

  “What about you, Susannah?” he fired back at me. “Have you been open and honest with me? I don’t think so. Otherwise, why would your father come after me like he did?”

  Shocked, I sat up a little straighter. “My dad came after you?”

  Jesse said, sounding irritated, “Nombre de Dios, Susannah, what did you expect him to do? What kind of father would he be if he didn’t try to get rid of me?”

  “Oh my God,” I said, completely mortified. “Jesse, I never said a word to him about you. I swear. He’s the one who brought you up. I guess he’s been spying on me or something.” This was a humiliating thing to have to admit. “So…what’d you do? When he came after you?”

  Jesse shrugged. “What could I do? I tried to explain myself as best I could. After all, it’s not as if my intentions are dishonorable.”

  Damn! Wait a minute, though—“You have intentions?”

  I know it’s pathetic, but at this point in my life, even hearing that the ghost of a guy might have intentions—even of the not dishonorable sort—was kind of cool. Well, what do you expect? I’m sixteen and no one’s ever asked me out. Give me a break, okay?

  Besides, Jesse’s way hot, for a dead guy.

  But unfortunately, his intentions toward me appeared to be nothing but platonic, if the fact that he picked up the pillow that he’d slammed onto the floor—with his hands this time—and smashed it in my face was any indication.

  This did not seem like the kind of thing a guy who was madly in love with me would do.

  “So what did my dad say?” I asked him when I’d pushed the pillow away. “I mean, after you reassured him that your intentions weren’t dishonorable?”

  “Oh,” Jesse said, sitting back down on the bed. “After a while he calmed down. I like him, Susannah.”

  I snorted. “Everybody does. Or did, back when he was alive.”

  “He worries about you, you know,” Jesse said.

  “He’s got way bigger things to worry about,” I muttered, “than me.”

  Jesse blinked at me curiously. “Like what?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. How about why he’s still here instead of wherever it is people are supposed to go after they die? That might be one suggestion, don’t you think?”

  Jesse said, quietly, “How are you so sure this isn’t where he’s supposed to be, Susannah? Or me, for that matter?”

  I glared at him. “Because it doesn’t work that way, Jesse. I may not know much about this mediation thing, but I do know that. This is the land of the living. You and my dad and that lady who was here a minute ago—you don’t belong here. The reason you’re stuck here is because something is wrong.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I see.”

  But he didn’t see. I knew he didn’t see.

  “You can’t tell me you’re happy here,” I said. “You can’t tell me you’ve liked being trapped in this room for a hundred and fifty years.”

  “It hasn’t been all bad,” he said with a smile. “Things have picked up recently.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. And since I was afraid my voice might get all squeaky again if I
asked, I settled for saying, “Well, I’m sorry about my dad coming after you. I swear I didn’t tell him to.”

  Jesse said softly, “It’s all right, Susannah. I like your father. And he only does it because he cares about you.”

  “You think so?” I picked at the bedspread. “I wonder. I think he does it because he knows it annoys me.”

  Jesse, who’d been watching me pull on a chenille ball, suddenly reached out and seized my fingers.

  He’s not supposed to do that. Well, at least I’d been meaning to tell him he’s not supposed to do that. Maybe it had slipped my mind. But anyway, he’s not supposed to do that. Touch me, I mean.

  See, even though Jesse’s a ghost, and can walk through walls and disappear and reappear at will, he’s still…well, there. To me, anyway. That’s what makes me—and Father Dom—different from everybody else. We not only can see and talk to ghosts, but we can feel them, too—just as if they were anybody else. Anybody alive, I mean. Because to me and Father Dom, ghosts are just like anyone else, with blood and guts and sweat and bad breath and whatever. The only real difference is that they kind of have this glow around them—an aura, I think it’s called.

  Oh, and did I mention that a lot of them have superhuman strength? I usually forget to mention that. That’s how come, in my line of work, I frequently get the you-know-what knocked out of me. That’s also why it kind of freaks me out when one of them—like Jesse was doing just then—touches me, even in a nonaggressive way.

  And I mean, seriously, just because, to me, ghosts are as real as, say, Tad Beaumont, that doesn’t mean I want to go around slow dancing with them or anything.

  Well, okay, in Jesse’s case, I would, except how weird would that be to slow dance with a ghost? Come on. Nobody but me’d ever be able to see him. I’d be like, “Oh, let me introduce you to my boyfriend,” and there wouldn’t be anybody there. How embarrassing. Everyone would think I was making him up like that lady on that movie I saw once on the Lifetime channel who made up an extra kid.

  Besides, I’m pretty sure Jesse doesn’t like me that way. You know, in the slow dancing way.

  Which he unfortunately proved by flipping my hands over and holding them up to the moonlight.

  “What’s wrong with your fingers?” he wanted to know.

  I looked up at them. The rash was worse than ever. In the moonlight I looked deformed, like I had monster hands.

  “Poison oak,” I said, bitterly. “You’re lucky you’re dead and can’t get it. It bites. Nobody warned me about it, you know. About poison oak, I mean. Palm trees, sure, everybody said there’d be palm trees, but—”

  “You should try putting a poultice of gum flower leaves on them,” he interrupted.

  “Oh, okay,” I said, managing not to sound too sarcastic.

  He frowned at me. “Little yellow flowers,” he said. “They grow wild. They have healing properties, you know. There are some growing on that hill out behind the house.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You mean that hill where all the poison oak is?”

  “They say gunpowder works, too.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You know, Jesse, you might be surprised to learn that medicine has advanced beyond flower poultices and gunpowder in the past century and a half.”

  “Fine,” he said, dropping my hands. “It was only a suggestion.”

  “Well,” I said. “Thanks. But I’ll put my faith in hydrocortisone.”

  He looked at me for a little while. I guess he was probably thinking what a freak I am. I was thinking how weird it was, the fact that this guy had held my scaly, poison-oaky hands. Nobody else would touch them, not even my mother. But Jesse hadn’t minded.

  Then again, it wasn’t as if he could catch it from me.

  “Susannah,” he said, finally.

  “What?”

  “Go carefully,” he said, “with this woman. The woman who was here.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “I mean it,” Jesse said. “She isn’t—she isn’t who you think she is.”

  “I know who she is,” I said.

  He looked surprised. So surprised it was kind of insulting, actually. “You know? She told you?”

  “Well, not exactly,” I said. “But you don’t have to worry. I’ve got things under control.”

  “No,” he said. He got up off the bed. “You don’t, Susannah. You should be careful. You should listen to your father this time.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, very sarcastically. “Thanks. Do you think maybe you could be creepier about it? Like, could you drool blood, or something, too?”

  I guess maybe I’d been a little too sarcastic, though, because instead of replying he just disappeared.

  Ghosts. They just can’t take a joke.

  Chapter

  Six

  “You want me to what?”

  “Just drop me off,” I said. “On your way to work. It’s not out of your way.”

  Sleepy eyed me as if I’d suggested he eat glass or something. “I don’t know,” he said slowly as he stood in the doorway, the keys to the Rambler in his hand. “How are you going to get home?”

  “A friend is coming to pick me up,” I said, brightly.

  A total lie, of course. I had no way of getting home.

  But I figured in a pinch, I could always call Adam. He’d just gotten his license as well as a new VW Bug. He was so hot to drive, he’d have picked me up from Albuquerque if I’d called him from there. I didn’t think he’d mind too much if I called him from Thaddeus Beaumont’s mansion on Seventeen Mile Drive.

  Sleepy still looked uncertain. “I don’t know….” he said, slowly.

  I could tell he thought I was headed for a gang meeting, or something. Sleepy has never seemed all that thrilled about me, especially after our parents’ wedding when he caught me smoking outside the reception hall. Which is so totally unfair since I’ve never touched a cigarette since.

  But I guess the fact that he’d recently been forced to rescue me in the middle of the night when this ghost made a building collapse on me didn’t exactly help form any warm bond of trust between us. Especially since I couldn’t tell him the ghost part. I think he believes I’m just the type of girl buildings fall on top of all the time.

  No wonder he doesn’t want me in his car.

  “Come on,” I said, opening up my camel-colored calf-length coat. “How much trouble could I get up to in this outfit?”

  Sleepy looked me over. Even he had to admit I was the epitome of innocence in my white cable-knit sweater, red plaid skirt, and penny loafers. I had even put on this gold cross necklace I had been awarded as a prize for winning an essay contest on the War of 1812 in Mr. Walden’s class. I figured this was the kind of outfit an old guy like Mr. Beaumont would appreciate: you know, the sassy schoolgirl thing.

  “Besides,” I said. “It’s for school.”

  “All right,” Sleepy said at last, looking like he really wished he were someplace else. “Get in the car.”

  I hightailed it out to the Rambler before he had a chance to change his mind.

  Sleepy got in a minute later, looking drowsy, as usual. His job, for a pizza stint, seemed awfully demanding. Either that or he just put in a lot of extra shifts. You would think by now he’d have saved enough for that Camaro. I mentioned that as we pulled out of the driveway.

  “Yeah,” Sleepy said. “But I want to really cherry her out, you know? Alpine stereo, Bose speakers. The works.”

  I have this thing about boys who refer to their cars as “she,” but I didn’t figure it would pay to alienate my ride. Instead, I said, “Wow. Neat.”

  We live in the hills of Carmel, overlooking the valley and the bay. It’s a beautiful place, but since it was dark out all I could see were the insides of the houses we were driving by. People in California have these really big windows to let in all the sun, and at nighttime, when their lights are on, you can see practically everything they’re doing, just like in Brooklyn, where nobody ever pulled down
their blinds. It’s kind of homey, actually.

  “What class is this for, anyway?” Sleepy asked, making me jump. He so rarely spoke, especially when he was doing something he liked, like eating or driving, that I had sort of forgotten he was there.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This paper you’re doing.” He took his eyes off the road a second and looked at me. “You did say this was for school, didn’t you?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sure. Uh-huh. It’s, um, a story I’m doing for the school paper. My friend CeeCee, she’s the editor. She assigned it to me.”

  Oh my God, I am such a liar. And I can’t leave at just one lie, either. Oh, no. I have to pile it on. I am sick, I tell you. Sick.

  “CeeCee,” Sleepy said. “That’s that albino chick you hang out with at lunch, right?”

  CeeCee would have had an embolism if she’d heard anyone refer to her as a chick, but since, technically, the rest of his sentence was correct, I said, “Uh-huh.”

  Sleepy grunted and didn’t say anything else for a while. We drove in silence, the big houses with their light-filled windows flashing by. Seventeen Mile Drive is this stretch of highway that’s supposed to be like the most beautiful road in the world, or something. The famous Pebble Beach Golf Course is on Seventeen Mile Drive, along with about five other golf courses and a bunch of scenic points, like the Lone Cypress, which is some kind of tree growing out of a boulder, and Seal Rock, on which there are, you guessed it, a lot of seals.

  Seventeen Mile Drive is also where you can check out the colliding currents of what they call the Restless Sea, the ocean along this part of the coast that’s too filled with riptides and undertows for anyone to swim in. It’s all giant crashing waves and tiny stretches of sand between great big boulders on which seagulls are always dropping mussels and stuff, hoping to split the shells open. Sometimes surfers get split open there, too, if they’re stupid enough to think they can ride the waves.

  And if you want, you can buy a really big mansion on a cliff overlooking all this natural beauty, for a mere, oh, zillion dollars or so.