Gina avoided, I noticed, supplying any descriptives for Spike, who climbed in through the open window, then stalked over to his food bowl and cried to be fed. Apparently, the memory of what had happened the last time she'd called the cat a name - the thing with the fingernail polish - was still fresh in Gina's mind. As fresh, apparently, as what that psychic had said all those years ago.

One love that would last until the end of time.

I realized, as I picked up Spike's bag of food, that my palms had broken out into a cold sweat.

"Wouldn't you die," Gina asked, "if it turned out your one true love was Michael Meducci?"

"Totally," I replied, automatically.

But it wasn't. If it was true - and I had no reason to doubt it, since Madame Zara had been right about the mediator thing, the only person in the world, with the exception of Father Dominic, who had ever guessed - then I knew perfectly well who it was.

And it wasn't Michael Meducci.

CHAPTER 7

Not that Michael didn't try.

The next morning he was waiting for me in the parking lot as Gina, Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, and I stumbled out of the Rambler and started making our way toward our various lines for assembly. Michael asked if he could carry my books. Telling myself that the RLS Angels could show up at any time and attempt to murder him again, I let him. Better to keep an eye on him, I thought, than to let him wander into God only knew what.

Still, it wasn't all that fun. Behind us, Dopey kept doing a very convincing imitation of someone throwing up.

And later, at lunch, which I traditionally spend with Adam and Cee Cee - though this particular day, since Gina was in our midst, we had been joined by her groupies, Sleepy, Dopey, and about a half dozen boys I didn't know, each of whom was vying desperately for Gina's attention - Michael asked if he could join us. Again, I had no choice but to say yes.

And then when, strolling toward the Rambler after school, it was suggested that we use the next four or five hours of daylight to its best advantage by doing our homework at the beach, Michael must have been nearby. How else could he have known to show up at the Carmel Beach, beach chair in tow, an hour later?

"Oh, God," Gina said from her beach towel. "Don't look now, but your one true love approacheth."

I looked. And stifled a groan. And rolled over to make room for him.

"Are you mental?" Cee Cee demanded, which was an interesting question coming from her, considering the fact that she was seated in the shade of a beach umbrella - no big deal, and perfectly understandable, considering the number of times she'd been taken to the hospital with sun poisoning.

But she was also wearing a rain hat - the brim of which she'd pulled well down - long pants, and a long-sleeved T. Gina, stretched out in the sun beside her like a Nubian princess, had lifted a casual brow and inquired, "Who are you supposed to be? Gilligan?"

"I mean it, Suze," Cee Cee said as Michael came nearer. "You better nip this one in the bud, and fast."

"I can't," I grumbled, shifting my textbooks over in the sand to make room for Michael and his beach chair.

"What do you mean, you can't?" Cee Cee inquired. "You had no trouble telling Adam to get lost these past two months. Not," she added, her gaze straying toward the waves where all the guys, including Adam, were surfing, "that I don't appreciate it."

"It's a long story," I said.

"I hope you aren't doing it because you feel sorry for him about that whole thing with his sister," Cee Cee said grumpily. "Not to mention those dead kids."

"Shut up, will you," I said. "He's coming."

And then he was there, dropping his stuff all over the place, spilling cold soda on Gina's back, and taking an inordinately long time to figure out how his beach chair worked. I bore it as well as I could, telling myself, You are all that is keeping him from becoming a geek pancake.

But I gotta tell you, it was sort of hard to believe, out there in the sun, that anything bad - like vengeance-minded ghosts - even existed. Everything was just so … right.

At least until Adam, claiming he needed a break - but really, I noticed, taking the opportunity to plunge down into the sand next to us and show off his four or five chest hairs - threw down his board. Then Michael looked up from his calculus book - he was taking senior math and science classes - and said, "Mind if I borrow that?"

Adam, the easiest going of men, shrugged and said, "Be my guest. Wave face is kinda flat, but you might be able to pick off some clean ones. Water's cold, though. Better take my suit."

Then, as Gina, Cee Cee, and I watched with mild interest, Adam unzipped his wetsuit, stepped out of it, and, dressed only in swim trunks, handed the black rubber thing to Michael, who promptly removed his glasses and stripped off his shirt.

One of Gina's hands whipped out and seized my wrist. Her fingernails bit into my skin.

"Oh, my God," she breathed.

Even Cee Cee, I noticed with a quick glance, was staring, completely transfixed, at Michael Meducci as he stepped into Adam's wetsuit and zipped it up.

"Would you," he asked, dropping to one knee in the sand beside me, "hang onto these?"

He slipped his glasses into my hands. I had a chance to look into his eyes, and noticed for the first time that they were a very deep, very bright blue.

"Sure thing," I heard myself murmur.

He smiled. Then he got back to his feet, picked up Adam's board, and, with a polite nod to us girls, trudged out into the waves.

"Oh, my God," Gina said again.

Adam, who'd collapsed into the sand beside Cee Cee, leaned up on an elbow and demanded, "What?"

When Michael had joined Sleepy, Dopey, and their other friends in the surf, Gina turned her face slowly toward mine. "Did you see that?" she asked.

I nodded dumbly.

"But that - that - " Cee Cee stammered. "That defies all logic."

Adam sat up. "What are you guys talking about?" he wanted to know.

But we could only shake our heads. Speech was impossible.

Because it turned out that Michael Meducci, underneath his pen protector, was totally and completely buff.

"He must," Cee Cee ventured, "work out like three hours a day."

"More like five," Gina murmured.

"He could bench press me," I said, and both Cee Cee and Gina nodded in agreement.

"Are you guys," Adam demanded, "talking about Michael Meducci?"

We ignored him. How could we not? For we had just seen a god - pasty skinned, it was true, but perfect in every other way.

"All he needs," Gina breathed, "is to come out from behind that computer once in a while and get a little color."

"No," I said. I couldn't bear the thought of that perfectly sculpted body marred by skin cancer. "He's fine the way he is."

"Just a little color," Gina said again. "I mean, SPF 15 and he'll still get a little brown. That's all he needs."

"No," I said again.

"Suze is right," Cee Cee said. "He's perfect the way he is."

"Oh, my God," Adam said, flopping back disgustedly into the sand. "Michael Meducci. I can't believe you guys are talking that way about Michael Meducci."

But how could we help it? He was perfection. Okay, so he wasn't the best surfer. That, we realized, while we watched him get tossed off Adam's board by a fairly small wave that Sleepy and Dopey rode with ease, would have been asking for too much.

But in every other way, he was one hundred percent genuine hottie.

At least until he was knocked over by a middling to large-size wave and did not resurface.

At first we were not alarmed. Surfing was not something I particularly wanted to try - while I love the beach, I have no affection at all for the ocean. In fact, quite the opposite: the water scares me because there's no telling what else is swimming around in all that murky darkness. But I had watched Sleepy and Dopey ride enough waves to know that surfers often disappear for long moments, only to come popping up yards away, usually flashing a big grin and an OK sign with their thumb and index finger.

But the wait for Michael to come popping up seemed longer than usual. We saw Adam's board shoot out of a particularly large wave, and head, riderless, toward the shore. Still no sign of Michael.

This was when the lifeguard - the same big blond one who'd attempted to rescue Dopey; we had stationed ourselves close to his chair, as had become our custom - sat up straight, and suddenly lifted his binoculars to his face.

I, however, did not need binoculars to see what I saw next. And that was Michael finally breaking the surface after having been down nearly a minute. Only no sooner had he come up than he was pulled down again, and not by any undertow or riptide.

No, this I saw quite clearly: Michael was pulled down by a rope of seaweed that had somehow twined itself around his neck....

And then I saw there was no "somehow" about it. The seaweed was being held there by a pair of hands.

A pair of hands belonging to someone in the water beneath him.

Someone who had no need to surface for air. Because that someone was already dead.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that I did what I did next with any sort of conscious thought. If I'd been thinking at all, I'd have stayed exactly where I was and hoped for the best. All I can say in defense of my actions is that, after years and years of dealing with the undead, I acted purely on instinct, without thinking anything through.

Which was why, as the lifeguard was charging through the surf toward Michael, his little orange flotation device in hand, I leaped up and followed.