He had me there. And he knew it. I stood there, the wind from the sea whipping hair into my face, and looked at Jesse. He looked back at me, and gave a little shrug. He was at as much of a loss as I was. Father Dom was right. It didn't make any sense.

At least until Josh said, "The Macarena."

We all looked at him.

"I beg your pardon?" Father Dominic said. Even in anger, he was unerringly polite.

"Of course!" Felicia scrambled to her feet, tripping over her evening gown's long skirt. "Of course!"

Jesse and I exchanged yet another confused look. "The what?" I asked Josh.

"The Macarena," Josh said. He was smiling. Smiling, he didn't look anything like the guy who'd tried to drown me earlier that day. Smiling, he looked like what he was – a smart, athletic eighteen-year-old in the prime of his life.

Except that his life was over.

"I was driving my brother's car," he explained, still grinning. "He's away at college. He said I could use it while he was gone. It's bigger than my car. The only thing is, he had this stupid thing put in so that when you honk the horn it plays the Macarena."

"It's so embarrassing," Carrie informed us.

"And the night we were killed," Josh went on, "I laid on the horn as we were turning that corner – the one Michael was waiting behind."

"You're supposed to honk when you go around those hairpin curves," Felicia said, excitedly.

"And it played the Macarena." Josh's smile vanished as if wiped away by the wind. "And that's when he hit us."

"No other car horn on the peninsula," Felicia said, her expression no longer excited, "plays the Macarena. Not anymore. The Macarena was only hot for about the first two weeks after it came out. Then it became totally lame. Now they only play it at weddings and stuff."

"That's how he knew." Josh's voice was no longer filled with indignation. Now he merely sounded sad. His gaze was locked on the sea – a sea that was too dark to be distinguishable from the cloudy night sky. "That's how he knew it was us."

Frantically, I thought back to what Michael had told me, a few hours earlier, in his mother's minivan. They came barreling around that corner. That's what he'd said. Didn't honk. Nothing.

Only now Josh was saying they had honked. That not only had they honked, but that they had honked in a particular way, a way that distinguished Josh's car horn from all others....

"Oh," Father Dominic said, sounding as if he weren't feeling well. "Dear."

I totally agreed with him. Except …

"It still doesn't prove anything," I said.

"Are you kidding?" Josh looked at me as if I were the crazy one – like he wasn't wearing a tuxedo on the beach. "Of course it does."

"No, she's right." Jesse pushed himself off the boulder and came to stand beside Josh. "He has been very clever, Michael has. There is no way to prove – in a court of law, anyway – that he has committed a crime here."

Josh's jaw dropped. "What do you mean? He killed us! I'm standing here telling you so! We honked the horn, and he purposefully rammed us and pushed us over the cliff."

"Yes," Jesse said. "But your testimony will not hold up in a court of law, my friend."

Josh looked close to tears. "Why not?"

"Because it is the testimony," Jesse said evenly, "of a dead man."

Stung, Josh stabbed a finger in my direction. "She's not dead. She can tell them."

"She can't," Jesse said. "What is she supposed to say? That she knows the truth about what happened that night because the ghosts of the victims told her? Do you think a jury will believe that?"

Josh glared at him. Then, his gaze falling to his feet, he muttered, "Well, fine then. We're right back to where we started. We'll just take the matter into our own hands, right, guys?"

"Oh, no, you don't," I said. "No way. Two wrongs do not make a right – and three most definitely don't."

Carrie glanced from me to Josh and back again. "What's she talking about?" she wanted to know.

"You are not," I said, "going to avenge your deaths by killing Michael Meducci. I am sorry. But that is just not going to happen."

Mark, for the first time all evening, rose to his feet. He looked at me, then at Jesse, and then at Father Dom. Then he went, "This is bogus, man," and started stalking off down the beach.

"So the geek's just going to get away with it?" Josh, his jaw set, glared menacingly at me. "He kills four people, and he gets off scot-free?"

"Nobody said that." Jesse, in the firelight, looked more grim-faced than I'd ever seen him. "But what happens to the boy isn't up to you."

"Oh, yeah?" Josh was back to sneering. "Who's it up to, then?"

Jesse nodded at Father Dominic and me. "Them," he said quietly.

"Them?" Felicia's voice rose on a disgusted note. "Why them?"

"Because they are the mediators," Jesse said. In the orange glow from the fire, his eyes looked black. "It's what they do."

C H A P T E R

14

The only problem was that the mediators couldn't figure out just how, exactly, to handle the situation.

"Look," I whispered as Father Dominic dropped a white candle into the box I was holding, and dug out a purple one. "Let me just call the police with an anonymous tip. I'll tell them I was driving along Big Sur that night, and that I saw the whole thing, and that it was no accident."

Father Dominic screwed the purple candle into the place where the white one had been.

"And do you think the police follow up on every anonymous tip they receive?" He didn't bother whispering because there was no one to overhear us. The only reason I'd lowered my voice was because the basilica, with all its gold leaf and majestic stained glass, made me really nervous.

"Well, at least maybe they'll get suspicious." I followed Father Dominic as he climbed down from the stepladder, folded it up, and moved to the next Station of the Cross. "I mean, maybe they'll start looking into it a little more, bring Michael in for questioning, or something. I swear he'd crack if they'd just ask the right questions."