“Where I’ll never speak to you again,” I informed him.

“Sure you will,” Paul said cheerfully. “You won’t remember any of this. Because we won’t have gone back through time to save Jesse. Because you won’t even know who Jesse is.”

“I hate you,” I said, really meaning it this time.

“You do now,” Paul agreed. “But you won’t when you wake up tomorrow in your own bed. Because without Jesse, I’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you. It’ll just be you and me, two shifters against the world. Won’t that be fun?”

“Why don’t you go—”

But I didn’t get to finish that sentence, because Paul took something else out of his pocket. A clean white handkerchief. He’d told me once that he always carried one because you never know when you might need to gag someone.

“Don’t you dare!” I hissed at him.

But it was too late. He wadded the handkerchief into my mouth and secured it there with another piece of rope.

If I had never hated him before, I did then. Hated him with every bone in my body, every beat of my heart. Especially when he gave me a pat on the head and said, “See ya.”

Then disappeared down the ladder to the barn floor.

Chapter

fifteen

I don’t know how long I lay there like that. Long enough to start wondering whether I could just close my eyes and shift home. Who knew where I’d end up? Somewhere in the backyard, anyway. Possibly in a big bunch of poison oak, since there was no barn there now. But anything had to be better than lying in a very cramped position on the floor of a hayloft, with who knew what crawling through my hair and the blood pounding in my temples.

But a world without Jesse? Because that’s what I’d be guaranteeing myself if I gave up now. A world without my one purpose for living. Well, more or less. I mean, I know women need men like fish need bicycles, and all of that. Except…

Except I love him.

I couldn’t do it. I was too selfish. I wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. There were still plenty of hours of daylight left, or at least, there had been when Paul had left. The shadows, I couldn’t help noticing, were growing longer.

Still, if Mrs. O’Neil had told Paul the truth, and Jesse was expected that night, there was still time. Paul might not find Diego. He might have to come back with his task unaccomplished. And when he did, and he untied me…

Well, he was going to learn a lot about pain, that was for sure. Because this time, I’d be ready for him.

I don’t know how much time passed while I lay there, plotting my revenge on Paul Slater. Death was too good for him, of course. An eternity as a ghost—floating shiftlessly through this dimension and the next—was what would suit him best. Give him a little taste of what it had been like for Jesse all of these years. That ought to teach him….

I could do it, too. I could pull Paul’s soul out of his body and make it so that he could never return to it…

…by giving that body to someone else. Someone who deserved a chance to live again….

But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t kiss Paul’s lips, even if I knew it was Jesse inside them, kissing me back. It was just too… gross.

It was as I was lying there thinking this that I heard it, a sound my ears had become so finely attuned to over the past year that I could have been at the Super Bowl, a million rows away, and I still would have heard it.

Jesse’s voice.

He was calling to someone. I couldn’t hear what, exactly, he was saying. But he sounded, I don’t know. Different, somehow.

He was getting closer, too. His voice, I mean.

He was coming toward the barn.

He’d found me. I don’t know how—Dr. Slaski hadn’t said anything about ghosts being able to travel through time. But maybe they could. Maybe they could, just like shifters, and Jesse had done it, he’d come back through time looking for me. To save me. To help me save him.

I closed my eyes, thinking his name as hard as I could. This worked, more often than not. Jesse would materialize in front of me, wondering what on earth was so urgent.

Only he didn’t. Not this time. I opened my eyes, and… nothing.

Only I could still his voice below me. He was saying, “No, no, it’s all right, Mrs. O’Neil.”

Mrs. O’Neil. Mrs. O’Neil could see Jesse?

The barn door opened. I heard it creak. Then…

Footsteps.

But how could Jesse have footsteps? He’s a ghost.

Wriggling as far toward the edge of the hayloft as I could, I craned my neck, trying to see what I could only hear. But the rope Paul had used to tie my feet to the post wouldn’t let me wiggle more than a few feet from my original position. I could hear him now, though—really hear him. He was speaking in a soft, soothing tone to… to…

To his horse.

Jesse was talking to a horse. I heard it whinny softly in reply.

Which was when I finally knew. This wasn’t Ghost Jesse, come to rescue me. This was Alive Jesse, who didn’t even know me. Alive Jesse, come to meet his fate in my room tonight.

I froze, feeling pins and needles all over—and not just because I’d been lying in such a cramped position for so long. I needed to see him. I needed to see him. Only how?

Then he moved and I turned my head, following the sound…

…and saw, through a chink in the floorboards of the loft, a spot of color. His horse. It was his horse. I saw his hands moving over the saddle, unstrapping it. It was Jesse. He was right beneath me. He was—

Why I did what I did next, I’ll never know. I didn’t want Jesse to know I was there. If Jesse found me, it could throw off everything. Who knew, he might not even be murdered that night. And then I’d never get to meet him.

But the urge to see him—alive—was so strong, that without even thinking about it, I banged my feet as hard as I could on the hayloft floor.

The hands moving over the saddle grew suddenly still. He’d heard me. I tried to call to him, but all that came out, thanks to Paul’s gag, was gnnh, gnnh.

I banged my feet harder.

“Is someone there?” I heard Jesse call.

I banged again.

This time, he didn’t call out. He started climbing the ladder to the loft. I heard the wood strain beneath his weight.