I was numb.

So numb that, when I swung my legs out my bedroom window and landed on the roof of the front porch - my usual form of exit when I didn't want anyone inside to be aware I was up to something - I didn't even care about the things that normally really mean stuff to me, like the moon, for instance, hanging over the bay, casting everything into black and gray shadow, and the scent of the giant pine to one side of the porch. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

I had just crossed the porch roof and was preparing to swing down from it when a glow that was brighter than the moon but much weaker than, say, the overhead in my bedroom, appeared behind me.

Okay, I'll admit it. I thought it was Jesse. Don't ask me why. I mean, it went against all logic. But whatever. My heart gave a happy lurch and I spun around....

Maria was standing not five feet from me on the sloping, pine needle-strewn roof. She looked just as she had in that portrait over Clive Clemmings's desk: elegant and otherworldly.

Well, and why not? She isn't of this world, now, is she?

"Going somewhere, Susannah?" she asked me in her brittle, only slightly accented English.

"I was," I said, pushing my sweatshirt hood back. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail. Unattractive, I know, but I needed all the peripheral vision I could get. "But now that you're here, I see I don't have to. I can kick your bony butt here just as well as down at your stinking grave."

Maria raised her delicately arched black eyebrows. "Such language," she said. I swear, if she'd had a fan on her, she'd have been using it, just like Scarlett O'Hara. "And what could I possibly have done to warrant such an unladylike tongue-lashing? You'll catch more flies with honey, you know, than vinegar."

"You know good and well what you did," I said, taking a step toward her. "Let's start with the bugs in the orange juice."

She reached up and coyly smoothed back a strand of shining black hair that had escaped from her side ringlets.

"Yes," she said. "I thought you might like that one."

"But killing Dr. Clemmings?" I took another step forward. "That was even better. Because I imagine you didn't have to kill him at all, did you? You just wanted the painting, right? The one of Jesse?"

She made what in magazines they call a moue out of her mouth: you know, she kind of pursed her lips and looked pleased with herself at the same time.

"Yes," she said. "At first I wasn't going to kill him. But when I saw the portrait - my portrait - above his desk, well, how could I not? He is not even related to me. Why should he have such a fine painting - and in his miserable little office, as well? That painting used to grace my dining room. It hung in splendor over a table with seating for twenty."

"Yeah, well," I said. "My understanding is that none of your descendants wanted it. Your kids turned out to be nothing but a bunch of lowlifes and goons. Sounds like your parenting skills left a bit to be desired."

For the first time, Maria actually looked annoyed. She started to say something, but I interrupted her.

"What I don't get," I said, "is what you wanted the painting for. The one of Jesse. I mean, what good is it to you? Unless you only took it to get me in trouble."

"Wouldn't that be reason enough?" Maria inquired with a sneer.

"I suppose so," I said. "Except that it didn't work."

"Yet," Maria said, with a certain amount of emphasis. "There is still time."

I shook my head. I just shook my head as I looked at her. "Gosh," I said, mostly to myself. "Gosh, I'm going to hurt you."

"Oh, yes." Maria tittered behind one lace-gloved hand. "I forgot. You must be very angry with me. He's gone, isn't he? Hector, I mean. That must be a great blow for you. I know how fond you were of him."

I could have jumped her right then. I probably should have. But it occurred to me that she might, you know, have some information on Jesse - how he was, or even where he was. Lame, I know, but look at it this way: on top of the whole, you know, love thing, he was one of the best friends I ever had.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, I guess slave-runners aren't really my cup of tea. That is who you married instead, right? A slave-runner. Your father must have been so proud."

That wiped the grin right off her face.

"You leave my father out of this," she snarled.

"Oh, why?" I asked. "Tell me something, is he sore at you? Your dad, I mean. You know, for having Jesse killed? Because I imagine he would be. I mean, basically, thanks to you, the de Silva family line ran out. And your kids with that Diego dude turned out to be, as we've already discussed, major losers. I bet whenever you run into your dad out there, you know, on the spiritual plane, he doesn't even say hi anymore, does he? That's gotta hurt."

I'm not sure how much of that, if any, Maria actually understood. Still, she seemed plenty mad.

"You!" she cried. "I warned you! I told you to make your family stop with their digging, but did you listen to me? It is your fault you've lost your precious Hector. If you had only listened, he would be here still. But no. You think, because you are this mediator - this special person who can communicate with spirits - that you are better than us ... better than me! But you are nothing - nothing, do you hear? Who are the Simons? Who are they? No one! I, Maria Teresa de Silva, am a descendant of royalty - of kings and princes!"

I just laughed. I mean, seriously. Come on.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "And that sure was some princely behavior, killing your boyfriend like that."

Maria's scowl was like a dark storm cloud over her head. "Hector died," she hissed in a scary voice, "because he dared to break off our betrothal. He thought to disgrace me in front of everyone. Me! Knowing, as he did, of the royal lineage running through my blood. To suggest that I would - "

Whoa. This was a new one. "Wait a minute. He did what?"

But Maria was off on a rant.

"As if I, Maria de Silva, would allow myself to be so humiliated. He sought to return my letters and asked for his own - and his ring - back. He could not, he said, marry me, after what he had heard about me and Diego." She laughed, not pleasantly. "As if he did not know to whom he was speaking! As if he did not know he was speaking to a de Silva!"

I cleared my throat. "Um," I said. "I'm pretty sure he knew. I mean, that was his last name, too. Weren't the two of you cousins or something?"

Maria made a face. "Yes. I am ashamed to say I shared a name - and grandparents - with that - " She called Jesse something in Spanish that did not sound at all flattering. "He did not know with whom he was trifling. There was not a man in the county who would not have killed for the honor of marrying me."

"And it certainly appears," I couldn't help pointing out, "that at least one man in the county was killed for refusing that honor."

"Why shouldn't he have died?" Maria demanded. "For insulting me in such a manner?"

"Um," I said, "how about because murder is illegal? And because having a guy killed because he doesn't want to marry you is the act of a freaking lunatic, which is exactly what you are. Funny how that part didn't trickle down through the annals of history. But don't worry. I'll make sure I get the word out."

Maria's face changed. Before, she'd looked disgusted and irritated. Now she looked murderous.

Which was kind of funny. If this chick thought anybody in the world cared about what some prissy broad had done a century and a half ago, she was mightily mistaken. She had managed to kill the one person to whom this piece of information might have been remotely interesting - Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.

But she was still apparently high on the whole "we de Silvas are descended from Spanish royalty" thing, since she whirled on me, petticoats flying, and went, in this scary voice, "Stupid girl! I said to Diego that you were far too much of a fool to cause trouble for us, but I see now that I was wrong. You are everything I have heard about mediators - interfering, loathsome creature!"

I was flattered. I truly was. No one had ever called me loathsome before.

"If I'm loathsome," I said, "what does that make you? Oh, wait, don't tell me, I already know. A two-faced backstabbing bitch, right?"

The next thing I knew, she'd pulled that knife from her sleeve and was once more pointing it at my throat.

"I will not stab you in the back," Maria assured me. "It is your face I intend to carve."

"Go ahead," I said. I reached out and seized the wrist of the hand that was clutching the knife. "You want to know what your big mistake was?" She grunted as, with a neat move I'd learned in tae kwan do, I twisted her arm behind her back. "Saying my losing Jesse was my fault. Because I was feeling sorry for you before. But now I'm just mad."

Then, sinking one knee into Maria de Silva's spine, I sent her sprawling, facedown, onto the porch roof.

"And when I'm mad," I said as I pried the knife from her fingers with my free hand, "I don't really know what comes over me. But I just sort of start hitting people. Really, really hard."

Maria wasn't taking any of this quietly. She was shrieking her head off - mostly in Spanish, though, so I just ignored her. I was the only one who could hear her, anyway.

"I told my mom's therapist about it," I informed her as I flung the knife, as hard as I could, into the backyard, still keeping her pinned down with the weight of my knee. "And you know what she said? She said the trigger to my rage mechanism is oversensitive."