Caitlin glanced at my forehead again. “You’re not on any kind of painkiller for that, are you? Because I can’t have you babysitting all whacked up on Scooby Snacks.”

I held up the first three fingers of my right hand in the international symbol for scouting.

“On my honor,” I said, “I am not whacked up on Scooby Snacks.”

Caitlin glanced at the closed door to Jack’s room. “Well,” she said hesitantly.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I could really use the dough. And don’t you and Jake have a date tonight?”

Her gaze skittered toward me. “Well,” she said, blushing.

Seriously. She blushed.

“Yeah,” she said. “Actually, we do.”

God. It had only been a guess.

“Don’t you want to cut out a little early,” I said, “to make yourself, you know, all glam for him?”

She giggled. Caitlin actually giggled. I am telling you, my stepbrothers ought to come with government warning labels: Caution, hazardous when mixed with estrogen.

“Okay,” she said, and started heading for the door. “My boss’ll kill me, though, if he sees you without your uniform, so you’ve got to stay in the room. Promise?”

I had made and broken so many promises in the past twenty-four hours, I didn’t think one more could hurt. I went, “Sure thing, Caitlin.”

And then I walked her to the door.

As soon as she was gone, I put down my purse and went into Jack’s room. I did not knock first. There is nothing an eight-year-old boy’s got that I haven’t seen before. Besides, I was still a bit hacked with the little creep.

Jack may have been told to take a nap, but he certainly wasn’t doing so. When I walked into his room, he thrust whatever it was he’d been playing with under the blankets and lifted his head from the pillow with his face all screwed up like he was sleepy.

Then he saw it was me, threw the covers back, and revealed that not only was he fully dressed, but that he’d been playing with his GameBoy.

“Suze!” he shouted, when he saw me. “You came back!”

“Yeah,” I said. It was dark in his room. I went to the French doors and threw open the heavy drapes to let in the sunlight. “I came back.”

“I thought,” Jack said, jumping up and down excitedly on the bed, “that you were mad at me.”

“I am mad at you,” I said, turning around to look at him. The sight of that sparkling sea had dazzled my eyes, though, so I couldn’t see him very well.

“What do you mean?” Jack stopped jumping. “What do you mean you’re mad at me?”

Look, I wasn’t going to screw around with the kid, okay? I just wish everyone had been as straight with me when I was his age. It is possible I wouldn’t be so quick with my fists if I didn’t have this pent-up inner rage from having been lied to so much as an eight-year-old. Yes, Suze, of course there’s really a Santa Claus, but No, there’s no such thing as ghosts. And then the clincher, No, this shot I’m about to give you isn’t going to hurt a bit.

“That ghost you exorcised?” I said, facing him with my hands on my hips. “He was my friend. My best friend.”

I wasn’t going to say boyfriend, or anything, because that wasn’t true. But the hurt I was feeling must have shown in my voice, since Jack’s lower lip started to jut out a little.

“What do you mean?” he wanted to know. “What do you mean, he was your friend? That’s not what that lady said. The lady said—”

“That lady is a liar. That lady,” I said, coming swiftly toward the bed and lifting up my bangs, “did this to me last night. See? Or at least, her husband did. All she tried to do was stab me with a knife.”

Jack, standing on the bed, was taller than I was. He looked down at the bruise on my forehead with something like horror.

“Oh, Suze,” he breathed. “Oh, Suze.”

“You screwed up,” I said to him, dropping my hand. “You didn’t mean to. I understand that Maria tricked you. But you still screwed up, Jack.”

Now his lower lip was trembling. So was his whole chin, actually. And his eyes had filled up with tears.

“I’m sorry, Suze,” he said. His voice had gone about three pitches higher than usual. “Suze, I’m so sorry!”

He was trying really hard not to cry. He wasn’t succeeding, though. Tears were spilling out of his eyes and rolling down his chubby cheeks…the only part of him that was chubby, except maybe for his Albert Einstein hair.

And even though I didn’t want to, I found myself wrapping my arms around him and patting him on the back as he sobbed into my neck, telling him everything was going to be all right.

Just like, I realized, with something akin to horror, Father Dominic had done to me!

And just like him, I was completely lying. Because everything was not going to be all right. Not for me, at least. Not ever again. Unless I did something about it, and fast.

“Look,” I said, after a few minutes of letting Jack wail. “Stop crying. We have work to do.”

Jack lifted his head from my shoulder—which he had, by the way, gotten all wet with snot and tears and stuff, since my dress was sleeveless.

“What…what do you mean?” His eyes were red and squinty from crying. I was lucky nobody walked in right then. I definitely would have been convicted of child abuse or something.

“I’m going to try to get Jesse back,” I explained, swinging Jack down from the bed. “And you’re going to help me.”

Jack went, “Who’s Jesse?”

I explained. At least, I tried to. I told him that Jesse was the guy he had exorcised, and that he had been my friend, and that exorcising people was wrong, unless they’d done something very very bad, such as tried to kill you, which was, Jack explained, what Maria had told him Jesse’d tried to do to me.

So then I told Jack that ghosts are just like people; some of them are okay, but some of them are liars. If he had ever met Jesse, I assured him, he’d have known right away he was no killer.

Maria de Silva, on the other hand…

“But she seemed so nice,” Jack said. “I mean, she’s so pretty and everything.”

Men. I’m serious. Even at the age of eight. It’s pathetic.

“Jack,” I said to him. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover?’”