“Stay here,” I told them. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Adam, however, noticed the fire extinguisher and said, “Cool! Special effects!” and started after me.

There was nothing I could do. I mean, I had to get back upstairs if I was going to keep Paul and Jesse from killing each other—or at least Jesse from killing Paul, since Jesse, of course, was already dead. CeeCee and Adam were going to have to deal with whatever they might see if they followed me.

I had hoped I might lose them on the stairs, but those hopes were dashed when, upon finally reaching the staircase, I saw Paul and Jesse tumbling down it.

That’s what I saw, anyway. The two of them locked in a life-and-death struggle, rolling down the stairs on top of each other, each holding fistfuls of the other’s clothing.

That’s not what CeeCee and Adam—or anyone else who happened to be looking at that point—saw. What they saw was Paul Slater, bloody and bruised, falling down my stairs and seemingly hitting—well, himself.

“Oh, my God!” CeeCee cried, as Paul—she couldn’t see that Jesse was there, too—crashed heavily at her feet. “Suze! What’s going on?”

Jesse recovered himself before Paul did. He climbed to his feet, reached down, seized Paul by the arms, and pulled him up—just so he could hit him again.

That was not what CeeCee, Adam, and everyone else who happened to be looking in the direction of the stairs at that moment saw. What they saw was Paul jerked up by some unseen force and then thrown, by an invisible blow, across the room.

Much of the gyrating stopped. The music pounded on, but nobody was dancing anymore. Everybody was just standing there, staring at Paul.

“Oh, my God,” CeeCee cried. “Is he on drugs?”

Adam shook his head. “It would explain a lot about that guy,” he said.

Jake, meanwhile, apparently alerted by someone, pushed his way into the living room, took one look at Paul, writhing on the floor—with Jesse’s hands around his neck, though I was the only one who could see this—and went, “Aw, Jesus.”

Then, seeing me standing with the fire extinguisher in my hands, Jake strode over, took it away from me, and sent a jet of foamy white stuff spraying in Paul’s direction.

It didn’t do any good, really. All it did was cause the two of them to roll into the dining room—making a good many people jump out of the way—then crash into my mother’s china cabinet—which of course teetered and fell, smashing all the plates inside.

Jake looked stunned. “What the hell is wrong with that guy? Is he wasted or what?”

Neil Jankow, who’d been standing nearby with his cup of beer still in his hand, said, “Maybe he’s having a seizure. Somebody better call an ambulance.”

Jake looked alarmed.

“No,” he cried. “No, no cops! Nobody call the cops!”

At least, that’s what he was saying right up until Jesse threw Paul through the sliding glass door to the deck.

It was the shower of glass that finally alerted all the people in the hot tub to the life-and-death battle that had been taking place inside. Screaming, they struggled to get out of the way of Paul’s flailing body, only to find their escape dangerously impeded by shards of broken glass. Being barefooted, the people in the hot tub had nowhere to go as Paul and Jesse battered each other around the deck.

Brad, one of the people trapped in the hot tub—Debbie Mancuso hanging off him like a pilot fish—stared disbelievingly at the gaping hole where the sliding glass door had been. Then he thundered, “Slater! You are paying for a new door, you freak!”

Paul, however, wasn’t in a position to be paying much attention. That’s because he was struggling just to breathe. Jesse had him by the neck and was holding him over the side of the hot tub.

“Are you going to stay away from her?” Jesse demanded, as the lights from the Jacuzzi bottom cast them in an eery blue glow.

Paul gurgled, “No way.”

Jesse dunked Paul’s head beneath the water and held it there.

Neil, who’d followed Jake out onto the deck, pointed and cried, “Now he’s trying to drown himself! Ackerman, you better do something, and quick.”

“Jesse,” I cried. “Let him go. It’s not worth it.”

CeeCee looked around. “Jesse?” she echoed confusedly. “He’s here?”

Jesse was distracted enough that he loosened his hold somewhat, and Jake, with Neil’s help, was able to pull Paul up, gasping for air, with blood now mingling with chlorinated water all down his shirt front.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “You have to stop it,” I said to Jesse and Paul. “That’s enough. You’ve wrecked my house. You’ve made a mess of each other. And—” I added this last as I looked around and saw all the curious, half-frightened gazes aimed at me “—I think you’ve pretty much destroyed what little good reputation I once had.”

Before either Jesse or Paul could reply, however, another voice broke in.

“I can’t believe,” Craig Jankow said, materializing to the left of his brother, “that you guys had a kegger, and no one invited me. Seriously,” Craig continued, as I threw him an incredulous look, “this is some good stuff. You mediators really know how to throw a party.”

Jesse wasn’t paying any attention to the late-comer, however. He said to Paul, “Don’t come near her again. Do you understand?”

“Eat me,” Paul suggested.

Back he went into the hot tub with a splash. Jesse ripped him right out of Jake’s grip.

The surprise was, this time Neil went under with Paul. That’s because Craig, a quick learner, had decided to go ahead and follow through with his whole if-I’m-dead-my-brother-should-be-too thing, now that Jesse had shown him how.

“Neil!” Jake cried, trying to pull both Paul and his friend—who, as far as he knew, had inexplicably plunged into the hot tub face first—up from the bottom of the Jacuzzi. What he didn’t know, of course, was that ghostly hands were holding both of them down.

I knew it, though. I also knew that there wasn’t anything any of us could do to get them to let go. Ghosts have superhuman strength. There was no way any of us were going to get those two to give up their victims. Not until they were as dead as…well, as their killers.

Which was why I knew I was going to have to do something I really didn’t want to do. I just didn’t see any way out of it. Threats hadn’t worked. Brute force hadn’t worked. There was only one way.