“Lucia,” she screamed, with enough force that my hair was lifted back from my face and shoulders and the panes in the windows shook. “And no one hurts Becca!”

And that’s when the simple mediation I’d been planning went to complete hell.

The stone tiles beneath my feet began to pitch and buckle . . . which was some feat, because they were stone pavers, each more than two feet wide. They had been laid there three hundred years earlier by true believers at the behest of Father Serra. They’d never shown so much as a crack despite all the earthquakes that had since shaken Northern California.

And now some little girl ghost venting her wrath at me had the ancient floors splitting, and the three-foot-thick mission walls trembling, and the fluorescent lights overhead swaying, even the glass in the casement windows tinkling.

“Stop!” I cried, reaching out to grab the arms of the chair in which Becca sat, both to steady myself as well as to shield her from any glass that might start falling. Becca’s eyes were wide with terror. She still couldn’t hear or see Lucia, and so had no idea what was going on.

I knew, and not only was I as scared as Becca—my heart felt as if it was about to jackhammer out of my chest—I couldn’t have been more mad at myself. I’d been so distracted by the potential curse on my boyfriend I’d forgotten one of the most important rules of mediation:

Never, ever underestimate a ghost.

“I’m sorry,” I shouted at Lucia’s spirit. “I swear I was only trying to help—”

“Shut up!” the little girl thundered in a voice that seemed to come from straight from the depths of hell itself. “Shutupshutupshutup!”

Each syllable was emphasized by another jolt to the floor and walls, sending drawers from the file cabinets slamming wildly, files—as well as the pages within them—flying like a blizzard of eight-by-eleven-inch paper snowflakes, and the wooden Venetian blinds that had never in my memory been lowered over the windows suddenly came crashing down.

“What’s happening?” Becca shouted. It was hard to hear anything above the tinkling of the glass and, above our heads, the groaning of the rafters in the pitched wooden ceiling that tourists loved snapping photos of so they could tell their architects back home, I want the living room to look just like this. “Is this an earthquake?”

I wished it were an earthquake. A geological explanation for what was happening would be so much simpler than, Actually, it’s a ghost. No one ever goes for that one.

Instead I said, “Crap,” because I noticed my computer had begun to slide from my desk. The huge monitor—not a flat screen because the school couldn’t afford anything that fancy—was sliding in our direction.

Becca, hearing my curse, followed the direction of my gaze, then screamed and ducked her head. I hunched over her so my back would take most of the weight of the computer if things didn’t work out, then kicked backward, relieved when I felt the sole of my platform wedge meet with a chunk of hard plastic.

This is why I needed a new pair of boots. You never knew when you were going to have to keep a ghost from using your computer to crush you (and a student) to death.

cinco

The shaking stopped.

Sister Ernestine raced from her office, clutching the only adornment to her otherwise sensible attire, a plain silver crucifix that gleamed against her massive chest.

“Good heavens,” she cried. “What happened?”

“Uh,” I said. “Earthquake.”

I looked around for the NCDP. She was gone, of course. What would she stick around for? Her work was done for the day. I imagined she was off wherever baby ghosts go after hours, enjoying some Disney Horror Channel, learning some snappy new rude comebacks and ways to dispose of the living.

“Are you all right, dear?” Sister Ernestine asked Becca solicitously, not giving me so much as a glance.

Becca nodded, looking uncertain. “I . . . I th-think so.”

Oh, sure. Ask the kid who just tried to off herself with some school supplies if she was okay. Don’t worry about me, the girl doing the splits to keep a piece of computer equipment from killing us both.

Slowly, I lowered my leg, steadying the computer monitor with my hand. The only reason it had stayed in place was because of the cord, still plugged into the wall—and the fact that I was holding it. I shoved it back to its proper position on my desk, straightening my in-box and penholder as well. Not that it did much good. They’d disgorged their contents all over the floor.

The pavers beneath us were back in place, though, not a crack in them. The glass in the windowpanes was fine, too.

The office itself, however, was a mess, which was truly upsetting since I’d only just gotten it organized after the chaos Ms. Yoga Pants Carper had left in her wake. It was going to take me hours—no, days—to get all those folders back into alphabetical order, and then refile all the papers that now blanketed every surface like snow.

When I got my hands on Lucia, however tragically she might have passed, I was going to kill her all over again.

“Oh, dear,” Sister Ernestine said as the phone began to ring—not just the one in her office, but the one in Ms. Diaz’s, the one half hanging off my desk, and the cell phone in my back pocket, as well.

“Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” Jesse.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and pressed Ignore. Jesse was going to have to wait a little while longer to find out what was going on. I knew he’d understand. That’s the nice thing about soul mates.

Well, for as long as he continued to have a soul, anyway.

“Oh, dear. This is a disaster. I can only imagine what’s going on in the classrooms,” the nun was murmuring. “I hope there aren’t any injuries—”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure we got the worst of it right here.” I leaned down to retrieve the first-aid kit, which had also spilled all over the floor. “I’m guessing this was the epicenter, in fact.”

Sister Ernestine threw me a curious glance as she hurried back into her office to answer the phone. She knew my BA was in psychology, not seismology. “Becca, I spoke to your stepmother. She said she’s on her way, but now with this quake, who knows how long it will take her to—yes, hello, this is Sister Ernestine.”

I peeled the back from a large stick-on bandage and held it toward Becca. “Arm out, please.”