Jesse just said, “Susannah. Shut up.”

And then, still keeping one hand on my arm, he grabbed the rope and started following it, back in the direction from which I’d come.

Oh, I thought as he propelled me along. Okay. Great. Now he’s mad at me. Here I risk my life—because let’s face it, that’s what I was doing—and he’s mad at me because of it. I actually should have thought of this. I mean, risking your life for a guy is practically like using the L word. Worse, even. How was I going to get out of this one?

I said, “Jesse, don’t flatter yourself that I did this for you. I mean, it has been nothing but one giant pain in the neck, having you for a roommate. Do you think I like having to come home from school or from work or whatever and having to explain stuff like the Bay of Pigs to you? Believe me, life with you is no picnic.”

He didn’t say anything. He just kept pulling me along.

“Or what about Tad?” I said, bringing up what I knew was a sore subject. “I mean, you think I like having you tag along on my dates? Having you out of my life is going to make things a lot simpler, so don’t think, you know, I did this for you. I only did it because that stupid cat of yours has been crying its head off. And also because anything I can do to make your stupid girlfriend mad, I will.”

“Nombre de Dios, Susannah,” Jesse muttered. “Maria’s not my girlfriend.”

“Well, she certainly used to be,” I said. “And what about that, anyway? That girl is a full-on skank, Jesse. I can’t believe you ever agreed to marry her. I mean, what were you thinking, anyway? Couldn’t you see what she was like underneath all that lace?”

“Things,” Jesse said through gritted teeth, “were different back then, Susannah.”

“Oh, yeah? So different that you couldn’t tell the girl you were about to marry was a big old—”

“I hardly knew her,” Jesse said, hauling me to a stop and glaring down at me. “All right?”

“Nice try,” I said. “You two were cousins. Which is a whole other issue which, if you really want to know, completely grosses me—”

“Yes, we were cousins,” Jesse interrupted, giving my arm a shake. “But like I said before, things were different back then, Susannah. If we had more time, I’d tell you—”

“Oh, no, you don’t. We still have”—I looked down at Father D’s watch—“twelve minutes left. You tell me now.”

“Susannah—”

“Now, Jesse, or I swear, I’m not budging.”

He actually groaned in frustration, and said what I think must have been a very bad word, only I don’t know for sure, since it was in Spanish. They don’t teach us swears in Spanish at school.

“Fine,” he said, dropping my arm. “You want to know? You want to know how it was back then? It was different, all right? California was different. Completely different. There was none of this mingling of the sexes. Boys and girls did not play together, did not sit side by side in classrooms. The only time I was ever in the same room with Maria was at meals, or sometimes dances. And then we were surrounded by other people. I doubt I ever heard her speak more than a few words—”

“Well, they were evidently pretty impressive ones, since you agreed to marry her.”

Jesse ran a hand through his hair and made another other exclamation in Spanish. “Of course I agreed to marry her,” he said. “My father wanted it, her father wanted it. How could I say no? I didn’t want to say no. I didn’t know—not then—what she was. It was only later, when I got her letters, that I realized—”

“That she can’t spell?”

He ignored me. “—that the two of us had nothing in common, and never would. But even then, I would not have disgraced my family by breaking things off with her. Not for that.”

“But when you heard she wasn’t as pure as the driven snow?” I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him, sexist product of the nineteenth century that he was. “That’s when you decided she wasn’t good wife material?”

“When I heard rumors about Maria and Felix Diego,” he said impatiently, “I was unhappy. I knew Diego. He was not a good man. He was cruel and…Well, he was always looking for ways to make money. And Maria had a lot of money. He wanted to marry her—you can guess why—so when I found out, I decided it might be better to end it, yes—”

“But Diego got to know you first,” I said, a throb in my voice.

“Susannah.” He stared down at me. “I’ve had a century and a half to get used to being dead. It no longer matters to me who killed me, or why. What’s important to me right now is seeing that you do not end up the same way. Now will you move, or do I have to carry you?”

“Okay,” I said, letting him pull me along again. “But I just want to get one thing straight. I did not do all this—you know, get myself exorcised and come up here and all—because I’m in love with you or anything like that.”

“I would not,” he said grimly, “as you say, flatter myself.”

“Damn straight,” I said. I wondered if I was still being unfeminine enough. Actually, I was beginning to think I was being a little too unfeminine. Hostile, actually, was what I was being. “Because I’m not. I came because of the cat. The cat really misses you.”

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” Jesse said under his breath. Still, I heard him, anyway. It wasn’t like there was a whole lot of other noise up there. We had left the corridor—it had disappeared, I saw, the minute we turned our backs to it—and were back in the fog again, following the rope that, thankfully, Jack had remembered. “I cannot believe that Father Dominic allowed it.”

“Hey,” I said. “Leave Father D. out of it. This is all your fault, you know. None of this would have happened if you had just been open and honest with me from the beginning about how you died. Then I could have at least told Andy to dig elsewhere. And I’d have been prepared to deal with Maria and her bohunk husband. I don’t know why they are so strung out about people finding out they’re a couple of murderers, but they are very intent on keeping what happened to you a big old myst—”

“That,” Jesse said, “is because to them, no time has passed since their deaths. They were at rest until it became evident that my body was about to be found, which would inevitably open up speculation as to the cause of my demise. They do not understand that more than a century has passed since then. They are trying to preserve their places in the community, as the leading citizens they once were.”