So I said, unfortunately in a very mucusy manner, since by that time the tears were sort of spilling out, “Really? You promise?”

Jesse grinned and let go of my face. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, lace-trimmed thing I recognized. Maria de Silva’s handkerchief. He’d used it before to bind up various cuts and scrapes I’d sustained in the line of mediation duty. Now he used it to wipe my tears.

“I swear,” he said, laughing. But just a little.

In the end, he persuaded me to come back to my own bed. He said he’d make sure his ex-girlfriend didn’t come after me in the night. Only he didn’t call her his ex-girlfriend. He just called her Maria. I still wanted to ask him what he’d been thinking, going out with a ferret-faced ice bitch like her, but there never really seemed to be a right moment.

Is there ever a right moment to ask someone why they were going to marry the person who had had them killed?

Probably not.

I don’t know how Jesse thought he was going to stop Maria if she came back. True, he had been dead a lot longer than she had, so he had had a little more practice at the whole ghost thing. It seemed pretty likely, in fact, that Maria’s haunting of me was her first and only visit back to this world from whatever spiritual plane she’d inhabited since her death. The longer someone has been a ghost, the more powerful they tend to be.

Unless, of course, like Maria, they happened to be filled with rage.

But Jesse and I had, together, fought ghosts every bit as angry as Maria, and won. We would win this time, too, I knew, so long as we stuck together.

It was definitely strange going to bed knowing someone was going to be sitting there, watching me sleep. But after I got used to the idea, it was sort of nice, knowing he was there with Spike on the daybed, reading a book called A Thousand Years he’d found in Doc’s room, by the light of his own spectral glow. It would have been more romantic if he’d just sat there gazing longingly at my face, but beggars can’t be choosers, and how many other girls do you know who have boys perfectly willing to sit in their bedrooms and watch for evil trespassers all night? I bet you can’t even name one.

I suppose eventually I must have fallen asleep, since when I opened my eyes again it was morning, and Jesse was still there. He had finished A Thousand Years and had moved on to a book from one of my shelves called Bridges of Madison County, which he seemed to find excruciatingly amusing, although he was trying not to laugh loud enough to wake me.

God, how embarrassing.

I didn’t realize then that it was the last time I’d ever see him.

chapter

seven

My day pretty much went downhill from there.

I guess while Maria wasn’t that interested in renewing her acquaintance with her ex, she was still plenty interested in torturing me. I got my first inkling of this when I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the brand-new carton of orange juice someone had bought to replace the one finished off by Dopey and Sleepy the day before.

I had just opened it when Dopey stomped in, snatched the carton from me, and lifted it to his lips.

I started to go, “Hey!” in an irritated voice, but the word soon turned into a shriek of disgust and terror when what poured into my stepbrother’s mouth was not juice, but bugs.

Hundreds of bugs. Thousands of bugs. Live bugs, wriggling and crawling and falling from his open mouth.

Dopey realized what was happening about a split second after I did. He threw the carton down and ran to the sink, spitting out as many of the black beetles that had fallen into his mouth as he could. Meanwhile, they were still swarming over the sides of the carton onto the floor.

I don’t know how I summoned the inner strength to do what I did next. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s bugs. Next to poison oak, it is one of the main reasons I spend so little time in the great outdoors. I mean, I do not mind the odd ant drowning in a pool or a butterfly landing on my shoulder, but show me a mosquito or, God forbid, a cockroach, and I am out the door.

Still, despite my near crippling fear of anything smaller than a peanut, I picked up that carton and poured its contents down the sink, then, quicker than you can say Raid, flicked on the disposal.

“Ohmygawd!” Dopey was yelling, as he continued to spit into the sink. “Ohmyfreakingawd.”

Only he didn’t say freaking. Under the circumstances, I didn’t blame him.

Our shrieking had brought Sleepy and my stepfather into the kitchen. They just stood there staring at the hundreds of black beetles that had escaped death by the kitchen drain and were scurrying around the terra-cotta tiles. At least until I yelled, “Step on them!”

Then we all started stomping on as many of the disgusting things as we could.

When we were through, only a couple ended up getting away, the ones that had the sense to make for the crack beneath the fridge, and one or two that made it all the way to the open sliding glass doors to the deck. It had been arduous, disgusting work, and we all stood around panting…except for Dopey, who, with a groan, rushed off into the bathroom, presumably to rinse with Listerine, or maybe to check for any antennas that might have gotten caught between his teeth.

“Well,” Andy said, when I explained what had happened. “That’s the last time I buy organic.”

Which was kind of funny, in a sick way. Except that I happened to know that organic or frozen from concentrate, it wouldn’t have made any difference: A poltergeist had been at work.

Andy looked at the mess on the floor and said in a sort of dazed voice, “We have to get this cleaned up before your mother gets home.”

He had that right. You think I’ve got a thing about bugs? You should see my mother. We are neither of us what you would call nature lovers.

We threw ourselves into our work, scrubbing and scouring bug guts off the tile, while I made subtle suggestions that we order in for all our meals, not just supper, for the time being. I wasn’t sure if Maria had gotten her hands on any other foodstuffs, but I suspected nothing in the pantry or refrigerator was going to be safe.

Andy was only too willing to go along with this, blathering on about how insect infestations can destroy entire crops, and how many homes he’d worked on had been destroyed by termites, and how important it was to have your house regularly fumigated.

But fumigation, I wanted to say to him, doesn’t do any good when the bugs are the result of a vengeful ghost.