Paul blinked, bringing attention to his eyelashes, which were really long, for a guy’s. They looked almost heavy on his eyelids, like they’d be an effort to lift. My stepbrother Jake has sort of the same thing going, only on him, it just makes him look drowsy. On Paul, it had more of a sexy rock-star effect. I glanced worriedly at CeeCee. She was one of the most sensible people I had ever met, but are any of us really immune to the sexy rock-star type?

“My first day,” Paul said with another one of those grins. “Lucky for me, I already happen to be acquainted with Ms. Simon here.”

“How fortuitous,” CeeCee, who, as editor of the school paper, liked big words, said, her white-blond eyebrows raised slightly. “Did you used to go to Suze’s old school?”

“No,” I said quickly. “He didn’t. Look, we better get to homeroom, or we’re going to get into trouble….”

But Paul wasn’t worried about getting into trouble. Probably because Paul was used to causing it.

“Suze and I had a thing this past summer,” he informed CeeCee, whose purple eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses at this information.

“A thing?” she echoed.

“There was no thing,” I hastened to assure her. “Believe me. No thing at all.”

CeeCee’s eyes got even wider. It was clear she didn’t believe me. Well, why should she? I was her best friend, it was true. But had I ever once been completely honest with her? No. And she clearly knew it.

“Oh, so you guys broke up?” she asked pointedly.

“No, we didn’t break up,” Paul said, with another one of those secretive, knowing smiles.

Because we were never going out, I wanted to shriek. You think I’d ever go out with him? He’s not what you think, CeeCee. He looks human, but underneath that studly façade, he’s a…a…

Well, I didn’t know what Paul was, exactly.

But then, what did that make me? Paul and I had far more in common than I was comfortable admitting, even to myself.

Even if I’d had the guts to say something along those lines in front of him, I didn’t get a chance because suddenly a stern, “Miss Simon! Miss Webb! Haven’t you ladies got a class you should be getting to?” rang out.

Sister Ernestine—whose three-month absence from my life had not rendered her any less intimidating, with her enormous chest and even bigger crucifix adorning it—came barreling down upon us, the wide black sleeves of her habit trailing behind her like wings.

“Get going,” she tut-tutted us, waving her hands in the direction of our lockers, built into the adobe walls all along the mission’s beautifully manicured inner courtyard. “You’ll be late to first period.”

We got going…but unfortunately Paul followed directly behind us.

“Suze and I go way back,” he was saying to CeeCee, as we moved along the porticoed hallway toward my locker. “We met at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort.”

I could only stare at him as I fumbled with the combination to my locker. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I really couldn’t. What was Paul doing here? What was Paul doing here enrolling in my school, making my world—from which I’d thought I’d rid him forever—a real-life nightmare?

I didn’t want to know. Whatever his motives for coming back, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get away from him, get to class, anywhere, anywhere at all…

…so long as it was away from him.

“Well,” I said, slamming my locker door closed. I hardly knew what I was doing. I had reached in and blindly grabbed the first books my fingers touched. “Gotta go. Homeroom calls.”

He looked down at the books in my arms, the ones I was holding almost as a shield, as if they would protect me from whatever it was—and I was sure there was something—he had in store for me. For us.

“You won’t find them in there,” Paul said with a cryptic nod at the textbooks bulging from my arms.

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t want to know. All I knew was that I wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there fast. CeeCee still stood beside me, looking bewilderedly from my face to Paul’s. Any second, I knew, she was going to begin to ask questions, questions I didn’t dare answer…because she wouldn’t believe me if I tried.

Still, even though I didn’t want to, I heard myself asking, as if the words were being torn involuntarily from my lips, “I won’t find what in here?”

“The answers you’re looking for.” Paul’s blue-eyed gaze was intense. “Why you, of all people, were chosen. And what, exactly, you are.”

This time, I didn’t have to ask what he meant. I knew. I knew as surely as if he’d said the words out loud. He was talking about the gift we shared, he and I, the one over which he seemed to have so much better control—and of which he seemed to have such superior knowledge—than I did.

While CeeCee stood there, staring at the two of us as if we were speaking a foreign language, Paul went on smoothly, “When you’re ready to hear the truth about what you are, you’ll know where to find me. Because I’ll be right here.”

And then he walked away, seemingly unaware of all the feminine sighs he drew from my classmates as he moved with pantherlike grace down the breezeway.

Her violet eyes still wide behind her glasses, CeeCee looked up at me wonderingly.

“What,” she wanted to know, “was that guy talking about? And who on earth is Jesse?”

Read all the Mediator books:

THE MEDIATOR 1:

Shadowland

THE MEDIATOR 2:

Ninth Key

THE MEDIATOR 3:

Reunion

THE MEDIATOR 4:

Darkest Hour

THE MEDIATOR 5:

Haunted

THE MEDIATOR 6:

Twilight

About the Author

Meg Cabot is also the author of the Princess Diaries series, upon which the Disney movies are based. In the books, though, Princess Mia has yield-sign-shaped hair, lives in New York, and Fat Louie is orange. And those are the least of the differences. The following is a complete list of the Princess Diaries books:

THE PRINCESS DIARIES