Not to mention what, I was convinced, he’d done to Jesse, someone he had not even known.

And for that, I’d never forgive him.

And I certainly wasn’t about to trust him. Or his opinions on fishing.

Disgusted as I was with him, however, I didn’t throw his note away. It would, I decided, have to be shown to Father Dom, who, a phone call had reassured me, was doing well—just a little sore, was all.

While Sleepy and Dopey rolled around—Dopey yelling, “Get offa me, homo”—I picked up my bounty and went back upstairs. Heck, it was my day off. I wasn’t going to spend it indoors, despite my mother’s orders. I decided to give CeeCee a call and see what she was up to. Maybe the two of us could hit the beach. I deserved, I thought, a little R and R.

When I got to my room, I saw that Jesse was already up. He doesn’t usually pay morning visits. On the other hand, I don’t normally sleep for thirty-six hours straight, so I guess neither of us was really sticking to the schedule.

In any case, I hadn’t expected to see him there, and so I jumped about a foot and a half and quickly hid the hand carrying his miniature behind my back.

I mean, come on. I don’t want him to think I like him or anything.

“You’re awake,” he said from the window seat where he’d been sitting with Spike and a copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book that I happen to know he’d stolen from my mother’s bookshelf downstairs.

“Um,” I said, sidling over to my bed. Maybe, if I was quick enough, I could thrust his picture under my pillow before he noticed. “Yes, I am.”

“How do you feel?” he asked me.

“Me?” I asked, like there was somebody else in the room he could possibly have been asking.

Jesse laid the book down and looked at me with another one of those expressions on his face. You know, the kind I can never read.

“Yes, you,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” I said. I made it to the bed. I sat down on it, and quick as a mongoose—I’ve never seen one in action, but I’ve heard they’re pretty fast—I thrust the check, the letters, and the miniature under my pillow. Then I relaxed.

“I feel great,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “We need to talk.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so relaxed anymore. In fact, I sprang to my feet. I don’t know why, but my heart started beating very fast.

Talk? What does he want to talk about? My mind was going a hundred miles a second. I suppose we should talk about what happened. I mean, it was very scary and all of that, and I nearly died, and like Paul said, I do have a lot of questions—

But what if that was what Jesse wanted to talk about? The part where I nearly died, I mean?

I didn’t want to talk about that. Because the fact is, that whole part, that part where I nearly died, well, I nearly died trying to save him. Seriously. I was hoping he hadn’t noticed, but I could tell by the look on his face that he totally had. Noticed, I mean.

And now he wanted to talk about it. But how could I talk about it? Without letting it slip? The L word, I mean.

“You know what,” I said, very fast. “I don’t want to talk. Is that okay? I really, really don’t want to talk. I am all talked out.”

Jesse lifted Spike off his lap and put him on the floor. Then he stood up.

What was he doing? I wondered. What was he doing?

I took a deep breath, and kept talking about not talking.

“I’m just—Look,” I said, as he took a step toward me. “I’m just going to give CeeCee a call and maybe we’ll go to the beach or something, because I really…I just need a day off.”

Another step toward me. Now he was right in front of me.

“Especially,” I said significantly, looking up at him, “from talking. That’s what I especially need a day off from. Talking.”

“Fine,” he said. He reached up and cupped my face in both his hands. “We don’t have to talk.”

And that’s when he kissed me.

On the lips.

Suze’s supernatural misadventures continue in the fifth Mediator book,

Haunted

The following is an excerpt:

He must have figured out from my expression that all was not copacetic in Suze-and-Jesse-land, since he laughed and said, “So that’s how it is. Well, I never really thought Jesse was your type, you know. You need someone a little less—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment, CeeCee, who’d been following Adam in the direction of his locker—even though we’d solemnly sworn to each other the night before over the phone that we were not going to start off the new school year chasing boys—came back toward us, her gaze on the guy standing so close to me.

“Suze,” she said politely. Unlike me, CeeCee had spent her summer working in the non-profit sector, and so had not had a lot of money to blow on a back-to-school wardrobe and makeover. Not that CeeCee would ever spend her money on anything so frivolous as makeup. Which was a good thing, since, being an albino, she had to special-order all of her makeup anyway, and couldn’t just stroll on up to the M.A.C. counter and plunk her money down the way anybody else could.

“Who’s your friend?” she wanted to know.

I was not about to stand there and make introductions. In fact, I was seriously thinking of heading to the administrative office and asking just what they were thinking, admitting a guy like this into what I had once considered a passably good school.

But he thrust one of those cool, strong hands at CeeCee and said with that grin that I had once found disarming but that now chilled me to the bone, “Hi. I’m Paul. Paul Slater. Nice to meet you.”

Paul Slater. Not really the kind of name to strike terror into the heart of a young girl, huh? I mean, it sounded innocuous enough. Hi, I’m Paul Slater. There was nothing in that statement that could have alerted CeeCee to the truth: Paul Slater was sick, manipulative, and had icicles where his heart should have been.

No, CeeCee had no clue. Because I hadn’t told her, of course. I hadn’t told anyone.

The more fool I.

If CeeCee found his fingers a little too cold for her liking, she didn’t let on.

“CeeCee Webb,” she said, as she pumped his hand in her typically businesslike manner. “You must be new here, because I’ve never seen you around before.”