"Suze," he said with a smile. Smiling - and probably even scowling, too - he looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model. And not just his face, either. I had, after all, seen him in a pair of swim trunks.

"Look, don't be this way," he said. "It's a new school year. Can't we make a new start?"

"No," I said, glad that my voice didn't shake this time. "We can't. In fact, you - you'd better stay away from me."

He seemed to find this deeply amusing. "Or what?" he asked, with another one of those smiles that revealed all of his white, even teeth - a politician's smile, I realized.

"Or you'll regret it," I said, the tremor back in my voice.

"Oh," he said, his dark eyes widening in mock terror. "You'll sic your boyfriend on me?"

It wasn't something I'd have joked around about, if I were him. Jesse could - and probably would, if he found out the guy was back - kill him. Except that I wasn't exactly Jesses girlfriend, so it wasn't really his job to protect me from creeps like the one in front of me.

He must have figured out from my expression that all was not copasetic in Suze-and-Jesse-land, since he laughed and said, "So that's how it is. Well, I never really thought Jesse was your type, you know. You need someone a little less - "

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment, CeeCee, who'd been following Adam in the direction of his locker - even though we'd solemnly sworn to each other the night before over the phone that we were not going to start off the new school year chasing boys - came back toward us, her gaze on the guy standing so close to me.

"Suze," she said politely. Unlike me, CeeCee had spent her summer working in the non-profit sector, and so had not had a lot of money to blow on a back-to-school wardrobe and makeover. Not that CeeCee would ever spend her money on anything so frivolous as makeup. Which was a good thing, since, being an albino, she had to special-order all of her makeup anyway, and couldn't just stroll on up to the M.A.C. counter and plunk her money down the way anybody else could.

"Who's your friend?" she wanted to know.

I was not about to stand there and make introductions. In fact, I was seriously thinking of heading to the administrative office and asking just what they were thinking, admitting a guy like this into what I had once considered a passably good school.

But he thrust one of those cool, strong hands at CeeCee and said with that grin that I had once found disarming but that now chilled me to the bone, "Hi. I'm Paul. Paul Slater. Nice to meet you."

Paul Slater. Not really the kind of name to strike terror into the heart of a young girl, huh? I mean, it sounded innocuous enough. Hi, I'm Paul Slater. There was nothing in that statement that could have alerted CeeCee to the truth: Paul Slater was sick, manipulative, and had icicles where his heart should have been.

No, CeeCee had no clue. Because I hadn't told her, of course. I hadn't told anyone.

The more fool I.

If CeeCee found his fingers a little too cold for her liking, she didn't let on.

"CeeCee Webb," she said, as she pumped his hand in her typically businesslike manner. "You must be new here, because I've never seen you around before."

Paul blinked, bringing attention to his eyelashes, which were really long, for a guy's. They looked almost heavy on his eyelids, like they'd be an effort to lift. My stepbrother Jake has sort of the same thing going, only on him, it just makes him look drowsy. On Paul, it had more of a sexy rock-star effect. I glanced worriedly at CeeCee. She was one of the most sensible people I had ever met, but are any of us really immune to the sexy rock-star type?

"My first day," Paul said with another one of those grins. "Lucky for me, I already happen to be acquainted with Ms. Simon here."

"How fortuitous," CeeCee, who, as editor of the school paper, liked big words, said, her white-blond eyebrows raised slightly. "Did you used to go to Suzes old school?"

"No," I said quickly. "He didn't. Look, we better get to homeroom, or we're going to get into trouble. . . ."

But Paul wasn't worried about getting into trouble. Probably because Paul was used to causing it.

"Suze and I had a thing this past summer," he informed CeeCee, whose purple eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses at this information.

"A thing?" she echoed.

"There was no thing," I hastened to assure her. "Believe me. No thing at all."

CeeCee's eyes got even wider. It was clear she didn't believe me. Well, why should she? I was her best friend, it was true. But had I ever once been completely honest with her? No. And she clearly knew it.

"Oh, so you guys broke up?" she asked pointedly.

"No, we didn't break up," Paul said, with another one of those secretive, knowing smiles.

Because we were never going out, I wanted to shriek. You think I'd ever go out with him? He's not what you think, CeeCee. He looks human, but underneath that studly facade, he's a ... a ...

Well, I didn't know what Paul was, exactly.

But then, what did that make me? Paul and I had far more in common than I was comfortable admitting, even to myself.

Even if I'd had the guts to say something along those lines in front of him, I didn't get a chance because suddenly a stern, "Miss Simon! Miss Webb! Haven't you ladies got a class you should be getting to?" rang out.

Sister Ernestine - whose three-month absence from my life had not rendered her any less intimidating, with her enormous chest and even bigger crucifix adorning it - came barrelling down upon us, the wide black sleeves of her habit trailing behind her like wings.

"Get going," she tut-tutted us, waving her hands in the direction of our lockers, built into the adobe walls all along the mission's beautifully manicured inner courtyard. "You'll be late to first period."

We got going . . . but unfortunately Paul followed directly behind us.

"Suze and I go way back," he was saying to CeeCee, as we moved along the porticoed hallway toward my locker. "We met at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort."

I could only stare at him as I fumbled with the combination to my locker. I couldn't believe this was happening. I really couldn't. What was Paul doing here? What was Paul doing here enrolling in my school, making my world - from which I'd thought I'd rid him forever - a real-life nightmare?

I didn't want to know. Whatever his motives for coming back, I didn't want to know. I just wanted to get away from him, get to class, anywhere, anywhere at all ...... so long as it was away from him.

"Well," I said, slamming my locker door closed. I hardly knew what I was doing. I had reached in and blindly grabbed the first books my fingers touched. "Gotta go. Homeroom calls."

He looked down at the books in my arms, the ones I was holding almost as a shield, as if they would protect me from whatever it was - and I was sure there was something - he had in store for me. For us.

"You won't find them in there," Paul said with a cryptic nod at the textbooks bulging from my arms.

I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't want to know. All I knew was that I wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there fast. CeeCee still stood beside me, looking bewilderedly from my face to Paul's. Any second, I knew, she was going to begin to ask questions, questions I didn't dare answer . . . because she wouldn't believe me if I tried.

Still, even though I didn't want to, I heard myself asking, as if the words were being torn involuntarily from my lips, "I won't find what in here?"

"The answers you're looking for." Paul's blue-eyed gaze was intense. "Why you, of all people, were chosen. And what, exactly, you are."

This time, I didn't have to ask what he meant. I knew. I knew as surely as if he'd said the words out loud. He was talking about the gift we shared, he and I, the one over which he seemed to have so much better control - and of which he seemed to have such superior knowledge - than I did.

While CeeCee stood there, staring at the two of us as if we were speaking a foreign language, Paul went on smoothly, "When you're ready to hear the truth about what you are, you'll know where to find me. Because I'll be right here."

And then he walked away, seemingly unaware of all the feminine sighs he drew from my classmates as he moved with pantherlike grace down the breezeway.

Her violet eyes still wide behind her glasses, CeeCee looked up at me wonderingly.

"What," she wanted to know, "was that guy talking about? And who on earth is Jesse?"

2

I couldn't tell her, of course. I couldn't tell anyone about Jesse, because, frankly, who'd have believed it? I knew only one person - one living person, anyway - who knew the whole truth about people like Paul and me, and that was only because he was one of us. As I sat in front of his mahogany desk a little while later, I couldn't help letting out a groan.

"How could this have happened?" I asked.

Father Dominic, principal of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy, sat behind his enormous desk, looking patient. It was an expression that became the good father, who, rumor had it, grew better looking with every passing year. At nearly sixty-five, he was a white-haired, spectacled Adonis.

He was also very contrite.

"Susannah, I'm sorry. I've been so busy with preparations for the new school year - not to mention the Father Serra festival this coming weekend - I never glanced at the admission rosters." He shook his neatly trimmed white head. "I am so, so sorry."

I grimaced. He was sorry. He was sorry? What about me? He wasn't the one who had to be in the same classes with Paul Slater. Two classes, as a matter of fact: homeroom and U.S. history. Two whole hours a day I was going to have to sit there and look at the guy who'd tried to off my boyfriend and leave me for dead. And that wasn't even counting morning assembly and lunch. That was another hour, right there!