“So… why aren’t you? Unless”—my blood ran cold— “you already found him. But then why—”

“Relax, Simon,” Paul said. “I didn’t find him. Yet. But we both know he’s due to show up here tomorrow, same as Jesse.”

I did relax then. Well, just a little. So Paul hadn’t gotten to Diego yet. Which meant there was still time…

To do what, though? What was I going to do when I found Jesse? I couldn’t tell him not to stay at Mrs. O’Neil’s boardinghouse or he’d be killed, because the truth was, I wanted him to be killed. How else was I ever going to get to meet him—okay, date him—in the twenty-first century?

I was just going to have to stick to Paul, was all. Stick to Paul and keep him from stopping Diego. Maybe I wouldn’t even see Jesse. Which would probably be just as well. Because if I did, what on earth was I going to say to him? What if he, like Mrs. O’Neil, mistook me for some random hoochie mama? I didn’t think I could bear it….

Which reminded me…

“Are people going to notice we’re gone?” I asked. “In our own time, I mean? Or when we get back, will it be like no time has gone by?”

“I don’t know.” I got the feeling Paul had been trying to get some sleep when I’d shown up. He seemed to be attempting to get back to it now and my endless questions were only serving to irritate him. “Why didn’t you ask my grandfather? You two are so close and all….”

“I didn’t exactly get a chance, now, did I?” I stared at him—or tried to, anyway—in the darkness. I still wasn’t sure why Dr. Slaski had chosen me as his confidante and not his own grandson. Well, except for the fact that Paul is a user. And a thief. And, oh yeah, had possibly purposefully drugged him.

“He’s not who you think he is, Paul,” I said, meaning Dr. Slaski. “He’s not your enemy. He’s just like us.”

“Don’t say that.” Paul’s blue-eyed gaze suddenly bore into me from the darkness. “Don’t ever.”

“Why? He’s a mediator, Paul. A shifter. He’s probably who you got it from. He knows a lot. And one thing he knows is that the more we play around with… with our powers… the better our chances of ending up like him—”

“I told you not to say that,” Paul snapped.

“But if you’d just give him a chance, instead of calling him a gork and purposefully—”

“We’re not like him, all right? You and I? We’re nothing like him. He was stupid. He tried to tell people. He tried to tell people that mediators—shifters—whatever—that we exist. And everyone laughed at him. My dad had to change his name, Suze, because no one would take him seriously, knowing he was related to someone they all said was a quack. So don’t you ever—ever—say we’re like him or that we’re going to end up like him. I already know how I’m going to end up.”

I just blinked at him. “Oh, really? And how’s that?”

“Not like him,” Paul assured me. “I’m going to be like my dad.”

“Your dad isn’t a mediator,” I reminded him.

“I mean I’m going to be rich, like my dad,” Paul said.

“How?” I asked with a laugh. “By stealing from the people you’re supposed to be helping?”

“There you go again,” Paul said, shaking his head. “Who told you we’re supposed to help the dead, Suze? Huh? Who?”

“You know perfectly well it was wrong of you to take that money. It wasn’t yours.”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “Well, there’s more where it came from and, unlike you, I suffer no moral compunctions in taking it. I’m going to be rich someday, Suze. And, unlike Grandpa Gork, in control.”

“Not if you kill all your brain cells flitting in and out of the past,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, well,” Paul said. “This is a one-time trip. After this, I shouldn’t need to go back again.”

I stared at his profile. Only our sides were touching beneath the horse blanket we shared. Still, Paul radiated a lot of heat. I was getting a little hot under the blanket.

That was when I realized the only other guy I’d ever lain this close to was Jesse, and that the heat he gave off? Yeah, a lot of that was in my mind. Because ghosts can’t give off heat. Even to mediators. Even to mediators who happen to be in love with them.

“It’s wrong,” I said quietly to Paul as I looked at his closed eyelids. “What you’re doing to Jesse. He doesn’t want it.”

Paul’s eyes opened at that.

“You told him?”

“He heard us talking about it,” I said. “And he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want you to interfere, Paul. He was going down to the Mission to stop you when I left.”

Paul looked at me for a few seconds, his blue eyes unreadable in the darkness.

“Are you sleeping with him?” he asked bluntly.

I gaped at him, feeling heat flood my cheeks. “Of course not!” Then, realizing what I’d said, stammered, “N-not that it’s any of your business.”

But Paul, rather than grinning over his so fully discomfiting me, as I would have expected him to, was gazing down at me very seriously.

“Then I don’t get it,” he said simply. “Why him? Why not me?”

Oh. That.

“Because he’s honest,” I said. “And he’s kind. And he puts me ahead of everything else—”

“So would I,” Paul said. “If you’d give me the chance.”

“Paul,” I said. “If we were in an earthquake or something, and you had a chance to save me but it was at the risk of your own life, you would save yourself, not me.”

“I would not! How can even you say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“But you’re saying that your perfect Jesse would save you, at the risk of his own life?”

“Yes,” I said with absolute certainty. “Because he has. In the past.”

“No, he hasn’t, Suze,” Paul said with equal certainty.

“Yes, he has, Paul. You don’t even know—”

“Yes, I do know. Jesse could never possibly have risked his own life to save yours, because in all the time you’ve known him, he’s been dead. So he hasn’t been risking anything, all those times he’s saved you. Has he?”