Because even though ghosts are, of course, already dead, they can still feel pain, just as people who lose a limb can still feel it itching from time to time. Ghosts know, when you plunge a knife into their sternum, that it should hurt, and so it does. The wound will even bleed for a while.

Then, of course, they get over the shock of it, and the wound disappears. Which is discouraging, since the wounds they, in their turn, inflict upon me do not heal half so fast.

But whatever. It works. More or less.

The wound Maria de Silva had inflicted on me wasn’t visible, but that didn’t matter. What I was going to do to her certainly would be. With any luck, that husband of hers would be around and I could do the same to him.

And what was going to happen if things didn’t work out that way, and the two of them got the best of me?

Well, that was the coolest part of the whole thing: I didn’t even care. Really. I had cried out every last ounce of emotion in me, and now, I simply didn’t care. It didn’t matter. It really didn’t.

I was numb.

So numb that, when I swung my legs out my bedroom window and landed on the roof of the front porch—my usual form of exit when I didn’t want anyone inside to be aware I was up to something—I didn’t even care about the things that normally really mean stuff to me, like the moon, for instance, hanging over the bay, casting everything into black-and-gray shadow, and the scent of the giant pine to one side of the porch. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

I had just crossed the porch roof and was preparing to swing down from it when a glow that was brighter than the moon but much weaker than, say, the overhead in my bedroom, appeared behind me.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I thought it was Jesse. Don’t ask me why. I mean, it went against all logic. But whatever. My heart gave a happy lurch and I spun around….

Maria was standing not five feet from me on the sloping, pine needle-strewn roof. She looked just as she had in that portrait over Clive Clemmings’s desk: elegant and otherworldly.

Well, and why not? She isn’t of this world, now, is she?

“Going somewhere, Susannah?” she asked me in her brittle, only slightly accented English.

“I was,” I said, pushing my sweatshirt hood back. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail. Unattractive, I know, but I needed all the peripheral vision I could get. “But now that you’re here, I see I don’t have to. I can kick your bony butt here just as well as down at your stinking grave.”

Maria raised her delicately arched black eyebrows. “Such language,” she said. I swear, if she’d had a fan on her, she’d have been using it, just like Scarlett O’Hara. “And what could I possibly have done to warrant such an unladylike tongue-lashing? You’ll catch more flies with honey, you know, than vinegar.”

“You know good and well what you did,” I said, taking a step toward her. “Let’s start with the bugs in the orange juice.”

She reached up and coyly smoothed back a strand of shining black hair that had escaped from her side ringlets.

“Yes,” she said. “I thought you might like that one.”

“But killing Dr. Clemmings?” I took another step forward. “That was even better. Because I imagine you didn’t have to kill him at all, did you? You just wanted the painting, right? The one of Jesse?”

She made what in magazines they call a moue out of her mouth: You know, she kind of pursed her lips and looked pleased with herself at the same time.

“Yes,” she said. “At first I wasn’t going to kill him. But when I saw the portrait—my portrait—above his desk, well, how could I not? He is not even related to me. Why should he have such a fine painting—and in his miserable little office, as well? That painting used to grace my dining room. It hung in splendor over a table with seating for twenty.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “My understanding is that none of your descendants wanted it. Your kids turned out to be nothing but a bunch of lowlifes and goons. Sounds like your parenting skills left a bit to be desired.”

For the first time, Maria actually looked annoyed. She started to say something, but I interrupted her.

“What I don’t get,” I said, “is what you wanted the painting for. The one of Jesse. I mean, what good is it to you? Unless you only took it to get me in trouble.”

“Wouldn’t that be reason enough?” Maria inquired with a sneer.

“I suppose so,” I said. “Except that it didn’t work.”

“Yet,” Maria said, with a certain amount of emphasis. “There is still time.”

I shook my head. I just shook my head as I looked at her. “Gosh,” I said, mostly to myself. “Gosh, I’m going to hurt you.”

“Oh, yes.” Maria tittered behind one lace-gloved hand. “I forgot. You must be very angry with me. He’s gone, isn’t he? Hector, I mean. That must be a great blow for you. I know how fond you were of him.”

I could have jumped her right then. I probably should have. But it occurred to me that she might, you know, have some information on Jesse—how he was, or even where he was. Lame, I know, but look at it this way: On top of the whole, you know, love thing, he was one of the best friends I ever had.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I guess slave-runners aren’t really my cup of tea. That is who you married instead, right? A slave-runner. Your father must have been so proud.”

That wiped the grin right off her face.

“You leave my father out of this,” she snarled.

“Oh, why?” I asked. “Tell me something, is he sore at you? Your dad, I mean. You know, for having Jesse killed? Because I imagine he would be. I mean, basically, thanks to you, the de Silva family line ran out. And your kids with that Diego dude turned out to be, as we’ve already discussed, major losers. I bet whenever you run into your dad out there, you know, on the spiritual plane, he doesn’t even say hi anymore, does he? That’s gotta hurt.”

I’m not sure how much of that, if any, Maria actually understood. Still, she seemed plenty mad.

“You!” she cried. “I warned you! I told you to make your family stop with their digging, but did you listen to me? It is your fault you’ve lost your precious Hector. If you had only listened, he would be here still. But no. You think, because you are this mediator—this special person who can communicate with spirits—that you are better than us…better than me! But you are nothing—nothing, do you hear? Who are the Simons? Who are they? No one! I, Maria Teresa de Silva, am a descendant of royalty—of kings and princes!”