“Suze asked you to bless my room?” I could hear Dopey’s voice all the way down the hall, in my own room. I’m sure neither of them knew I was listening.

“She asked me to bless the house,” Father Dominic said. “She was very disturbed by the discovery of the skeleton in your backyard, as I’m sure you know. I would greatly appreciate it if you would show her a little extra kindness for the next few days, Bradley.”

Bradley! In my room, I started cracking up. Bradley! Who knew?

I don’t know what Dopey said in reply to Father Dom’s suggestion that he be nicer to me, because I took the opportunity to shower and change into civilized clothing. I figured twelve hours was more than enough to go around in sweats. Any more than that and you are, quite frankly, wallowing in your own sorrow. Jesse would not want my grieving over him to affect my by-now-famous sense of fashion.

Besides, I had a plan.

So it was that, showered, made up, and attired in what I considered to be the height of mediator chic in the form of a slip dress and sandals, I felt prepared to take on not only the minions of Satan but the staff at the Carmel Pine Cone, in front of whose office Father D. had promised to drop me. I had not only figured out, you see, a way to get Jesse back: I’d figured out a way to avenge Clive Clemmings’s death, not to mention his grandfather’s.

Oh, yes. I still had it. But good.

“It is out of the question, Susannah,” Father Dominic said. “So put the idea from your head. Wherever he is now, Jesse is in a better place than he was. Let him rest there.”

“Fine,” I said. We pulled up in front of a low building, heavily shaded by pine trees. The offices of the local rag.

“Fine,” Father Dominic said, putting his car into park. “I’ll wait out here for you. It would probably be better if I didn’t come in, I suppose.”

“Probably,” I said. “And there’s no need to wait. I’ll find my own way home.” I undid my seat belt.

“Susannah,” Father Dominic said.

I lifted my sunglasses and peered at him. “Yes?”

“I’ll wait here for you,” he said. “We still have a good deal of work to do, you and I.”

I screwed up my face. “We do?”

“Maria and Diego,” Father D. reminded me gently. “You are protected from them at home now, but they are still at large and will, I think, be excessively angry when they realize you are not dead.”—I had finally broken down and explained to him what had happened to my head—“We need to make preparations, you and I, to deal with them.”

“Oh,” I said. “That.”

I had, of course, forgotten all about it. Not because I did not feel Maria and her husband needed to be dealt with, but because I knew my idea of dealing with them and Father D.’s idea were not exactly going to gel. I mean, priests aren’t really big on beating adversaries into bloody pulps. They’re more into gentle reasoning.

“Sure,” I said. “Yeah. We should get right on that.”

“And, of course—” Father D. looked really odd. I realized why when the next words that came out of his mouth were, “We’ve got to decide what’s to be done with Jesse’s remains.”

Jesse’s remains. The words hit me like twin punches. Jesse’s remains. Oh, God.

“I was thinking,” Father Dominic said, still choosing his words with elaborate care, “of putting in a formal request with the coroner’s office to have the remains transferred to the church for burial in the Mission cemetery. Do you agree with me that that would be appropriate?”

Something hard grew in my throat. I tried to swallow it down.

“Yes,” I said. It came out sounding funny, though. “What about a headstone?”

Father Dominic said, “Well, that might be difficult, seeing as how I highly doubt the coroner will be able to make a positive identification.”

Right. They didn’t have dental X rays back when Jesse’d been alive.

“Maybe,” Father Dominic said, “a simple cross… ”

“No,” I said. “A headstone. I have three thousand dollars.” More if I took back all those Jimmy Choos. Good thing I’d saved the receipts. Who needed a fall wardrobe, anyway? “Do you think that would cover it?”

“Oh,” Father Dominic said, looking taken aback. “Susannah, I—”

“You can let me know,” I said. Suddenly, I didn’t think I could sit there on the street anymore, discussing this with him. I opened the passenger door. “I better go. See you in a few.”

And I started to get out of the car.

But not soon enough. Father D. called my name again.

“Father D.,” I began impatiently, but he held up a hand.

“Just hear me out, Susannah,” he said. “It isn’t that I don’t wish there was something we could do to bring Jesse back. I, too, wish that he could, as you said, have found his own way to wherever it was he was supposed to have gone after death. I do. I truly do. I just don’t think that going to the extreme you’re suggesting is…well, necessary. And I certainly don’t think it’s what he would have wanted, your risking your life for his sake.”

I thought about that. I really did. Father D. was absolutely right, of course. Jesse would not have wanted me to risk my life for him, not ever. Especially considering the fact that he doesn’t even have one anymore. A life, I mean.

But let’s face it, Jesse’s from a slightly different era. Back when he was born, girls spent all their time at quilting bees. They didn’t exactly go around routinely kicking butt the way we do now.

And even though Jesse’s seen me kick butt a million times, it still makes him nervous, you can totally tell. You would think he’d be used to it by now, but no. I mean, he was even surprised when he heard about Maria and her knife. I guess that’s kind of understandable. Come on, little Miss Hoopskirt, poppin’ a blade?

Still, even after a century and a half of knowing she was the one who had ordered the hit on him, that completely blew his mind. I mean, that sexism thing, they drive that stuff down deep. It hasn’t been easy, curing him of it.

Anyway, all I’m saying is, Father D.’s right: Jesse definitely would not want me to risk my life for him.

But we don’t always get what we want, do we?