I had no idea that night how bad things were going to get between Paul and me.

But I was about to find out.

Chapter

two

He’d done it. Finally. Just like, deep down, I guess I’d always known he would.

You would think, what with everything I’d been through, I’d have seen it coming. I’m not exactly new at this. And it wasn’t as if all the warning signs hadn’t been there.

Still, the blow, when it came, seemed to strike like a bolt out of the clear blue.

“So where are you going for dinner before the Winter Formal?” Kelly Prescott asked me in fourth period language lab. She didn’t even wait to hear what my answer was. Because Kelly didn’t care what my answer was. That wasn’t the point of her asking me in the first place.

“Paul’s taking me to the Cliffside Inn,” Kelly went on. “You know the Cliffside Inn, don’t you, Suze? In Big Sur?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “I know it.”

That’s what I said, anyway. Isn’t it weird how your brain can slip into autopilot? Like, how you can be saying one thing and thinking something entirely different? Because when Kelly said that—about Paul taking her to the Cliffside Inn—the first thing I thought wasn’t Oh, sure, I know it. Not even close. My first thought was more along the lines of What? Kelly Prescott? Paul Slater is taking KELLY PRESCOTT to the Winter Formal?

But that’s not what I said out loud, thank God. I mean, considering that Paul himself was sitting just a few study carrels away, futzing with the sound on his tape player. The last thing in the world I wanted was for him to think I was, you know, peeved that he’d asked someone else to the formal. It was bad enough that he noticed I was even looking in his direction, let alone talking about him. He raised his eyebrows all questioningly, as if to say, “May I be of service?”

That’s when I saw he still had on his headphones. He hadn’t, I realized with relief, heard what Kelly had said. He’d been listening to the scintillating conversation between Dominique and Michel, our little French friends.

“It got five stars,” Kelly went on, settling into her carrel. “The Cliffside Inn, I mean.”

“Cool,” I said, resolutely ripping my gaze from Paul’s and pulling out the chair to my own carrel. “I’m sure you two will have a really great time.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kelly said. She flipped her honey-blonde hair back so she could slip on her headphones. “It’ll be so romantic. So where’re you going? To eat before the dance, I mean.”

She knew, of course. She knew perfectly well.

But she was going to make me say it. Because that’s how girls like Kelly are.

“I guess I’m not going to the dance,” I said, sitting down at the carrel beside hers and putting on my own headphones.

Kelly looked over the partition between us, her pretty face twisted with sympathy. Fake sympathy, of course. Kelly Prescott doesn’t care about me. Or anyone, except herself.

“Not going? Oh, Suze, that’s terrible! Nobody asked you?”

I just smiled in response. Smiled and tried not to feel Paul’s gaze boring into the back of my head.

“That’s too bad,” Kelly said. “And it looks like Brad’s not going to be able to go, either, what with Debbie being out with mono. Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Kelly giggled. “You and Brad should go to the dance together!”

“Funny,” I said, smiling weakly as Kelly tittered at her own joke. Because, you know, there isn’t anything quite as pathetic as a girl being taken to the junior–senior Winter Formal by her own stepbrother.

Except, possibly, her not being taken by anyone at all.

I turned on my tape player. Dominique immediately began to complain to Michel about her dormitoire. I’m sure Michel murmured sympathetic replies (he always does), but I didn’t hear what they were.

Because it didn’t make any sense. What had just happened, I mean. How could Paul be taking Kelly to the Winter Formal when, last time I’d checked, I was the one he was hounding for a date… any date? Not that I’d been especially thrilled about it, of course. But I did have to throw him the occasional bone, if only to keep him from doing to my boyfriend what he’d done to Mrs. Gutierrez.

Wait a minute. Was that what was going on? Paul was finally getting tired of hanging around with a girl he had to blackmail into spending time with him?

Well, good. Right? I mean, if Kelly wanted him, she could have him.

The only problem was, I was having a hard time not remembering the way Paul’s body had felt as it had lain across mine that night in the Gutierrezes’ yard. Because it had felt good—his weight, his warmth—despite my fear. Really good.

Right sensation… wrong guy.

But the right guy? Yeah, he wasn’t a real pin-the-girl-tothe-grass kind of person. And warmth? He hadn’t given off any in a century and a half.

Which wasn’t his fault, really. The warmth thing, I mean. Jesse couldn’t help being dead any more than Paul could help being… well, Paul.

Still, this asking-Kelly-and-not-me-to-the-dance thing… it was freaking me out. I’d been bracing myself for his invitation—and his reaction to my turning it down—for weeks. I’d even begun thinking I was finally getting the hang of the back-and-forth nature of our relationship… as if it were a tennis game at the resort where we’d met last summer.

Except that now I had a sinking feeling that Paul had just lobbed a ball into my court that I was never going to be able to hit back.

What was that all about?

The words floated before my eyes, scrawled on a piece of paper torn from a notebook, and were waved at me from over the top of the wooden partition separating my carrel from the one in front of it. I pulled the piece of paper from the fingers clutching it and wrote, Paul asked Kelly to the Winter Formal, then slid the page over the partition.

A few seconds later, the paper fluttered back down in front of me.

I thought he was going to ask you!!! my best friend, CeeCee, wrote.

I guess not, I scribbled in response.

Well, maybe it’s just as well, was CeeCee’s reply. You didn’t want to go with him, anyway. I mean, what about Jesse?

But that was just it. What about Jesse? If Paul had asked me to the Winter Formal, and I’d responded with something less than enthusiasm to his invitation, he’d let loose one of his cryptic threats about Jesse—the newest one, in fact, about him apparently having learned of some way to keep the dead from having passed on in the first place….Whatever that meant.