I have no idea what business it is that Jesse left unfinished - and the truth is, I'm not so sure he knows, either. But it doesn't seem fair that if I'm destined to share my bedroom with the ghost of a dead guy, the dead guy has to be so cute.

I mean it. Jesse is way too good looking for my peace of mind. I may be a mediator, but I'm still human, for crying out loud.

But anyway, there he was, after I'd told him very politely not to come around for a while, looking all manly and hot and everything in the nineteenth-century outlaw outfit he always wears. You know the kind: with those tight black pants and the white shirt open down to there …

"When is she leaving?" Jesse wanted to know, bringing my attention away from the place where his shirt opened, revealing an extremely muscular set of abs, up to his face - which, I probably don't have to point out, is totally perfect, except for this small white scar in one of his dark eyebrows.

He didn't bother whispering. Gina couldn't hear him.

"I told you," I said. I, on the other hand, had to whisper since there was every likelihood I might be overheard. "Next Sunday."

"That long?"

Jesse looked irritated. I would like to say that he looked irritated because he considered every moment I spent with Gina a moment stolen from him, and deeply resented her because of that.

But to be honest, I highly doubt that was the case. I'm pretty sure Jesse likes me, and everything....

But only as a friend. Not in any special kind of way. Why should he? He's one hundred and fifty years old - a hundred and seventy if you count the fact that he'd been twenty or so when he died. What could a guy who'd lived through a hundred and seventy years of stuff possibly see in a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore who's never had a boyfriend and can't even pass her driving exam?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

Let's face it, I knew perfectly well why Jesse wanted Gina gone.

Because of Spike.

Spike is our cat. I say "our" cat, because even though ordinarily animals can't stand ghosts, Spike has developed this strange affinity for Jesse. His affection for Jesse balances out, in a way, his total lack of regard for me, even though I'm the one who feeds him, and cleans out his litter box, and, oh, yes, rescued him from a life of squalor on the mean streets of Carmel.

Does the stupid thing show me one iota of gratitude? No way. But Jesse, he adores. In fact, Spike spends most of his time outdoors, and only bothers coming around whenever he senses Jesse might have materialized.

Like now, for instance. I heard a familiar thump on the porch roof - Spike landing there from the pine tree he always climbs to reach it - and then the big orange nightmare was scrambling through the window I'd left open for him, mewing piteously, like he hadn't been fed in ages.

When Jesse saw Spike, he went over to him and started scratching him under the ears, causing the cat to purr so loudly I thought he might wake Gina up.

"Look," I said. "It's just for a week. Spike will survive."

Jesse looked up at me with an expression that seemed to suggest that he thought I'd slipped down a few notches on the IQ scale.

"It's not Spike I'm worried about," he said.

This only served to confuse me. I knew it couldn't be me Jesse was worrying about. I mean, I guess I'd gotten into a few scrapes since I'd met him - scrapes that, more often than not, Jesse'd had to bail me out of. But nothing was going on just then. Well, aside from the four dead kids I'd seen that afternoon in Jimmy's.

"Yeah?" I watched as Spike threw his head back in obvious ecstasy as Jesse scratched him underneath the chin. "What is it, then? Gina's very cool, you know. Even if she found out about you, I doubt she'd run screaming from the room, or anything. She'd probably just want to borrow your shirt sometime, or something."

Jesse glanced over at my houseguest. All you could really see of Gina was a couple of lumps beneath the comforter, and a lot of bright copper curls spread out across the pillows beneath her head.

"I'm certain that she's very … cool," Jesse said, a little hesitantly. Sometimes my twenty-first-century vernacular throws him. But that's okay. His frequent employment of Spanish, of which I don't speak a word, throws me. "It's just that something's happened - "

This perked me right up. He looked pretty serious about it, too. Like maybe what had happened was that he'd finally realized that I was the perfect woman for him, and that all this time he'd been fighting an overwhelming attraction for me, and that he'd finally had to give up the fight in the light of my incredible irresistibility.

But then he had to go and say, "I've been hearing some things."

I sank back against my pillows, disappointed.

"Oh," I said. "So you've sensed a disturbance in the Force, have you, Luke?"

Jesse knit his eyebrows in bewilderment. He had no idea, of course, what I was talking about. My rare flashes of wit are, for the most part, sadly wasted on him. It's really no wonder he isn't even the tiniest bit in love with me.

I sighed and said, "So you heard something on the ghost grapevine. What?"

Jesse often picked up on things that were happening on what I like to call the spectral plane, things that often don't have anything to do with him, but which usually end up involving me, most often in a highly life-threatening - or at least horribly messy - way. The last time he'd "heard some things," I'd ended up nearly being killed by a psychotic real estate developer.

So I guess you can see why my heart doesn't exactly go pitter-pat whenever Jesse mentions he's heard something.

"There are some newcomers," he said, as he continued to pet Spike. "Young ones."

I raised my eyebrows, remembering the kids in the prom wear at Jimmy's. "Yes?"

"They' re lookmg for something," Jesse said.

"Yeah," I said. "I know. Beer."

Jesse shook his head. He had a sort of distant expression on his face, and he wasn't looking at me, but sort of past me, as if there were something very far away just beyond my right shoulder.

"No," he said. "Not beer. They're looking for someone. And they're angry." His dark eyes came sharply into focus and bored into my face. "They're very angry, Susannah."

His gaze was so intense, I had to drop my own. Jesse's eyes are such a deep brown, a lot of the time I can't tell where his pupils end and irises begin. It's a little unnerving. Almost as unnerving as the way he always calls me by my full name, Susannah. No one except Father Dominic ever calls me that.

"Angry?" I looked down at my geometry book. The kids I saw hadn't looked a bit angry. Scared, maybe, after they'd realized I could see them. But not angry. He must, I thought, have been talking about someone else.

"Well," I said. "Okay. I'll keep my eyes open. Thanks."

Jesse looked like he'd wanted to say more, but all of a sudden, Gina rolled over, lifted up her head, and squinted in my direction.

"Suze?" she said sleepily. "Who you talking to?"

I said, "Nobody." I hoped she couldn't read the guilt in my expression. I hate lying to her. She is, after all, my best friend. "Why?"

Gina hoisted herself up onto her elbows and gaped at Spike. "So that's the famous Spike I've been hearing so much about from your brothers? Damn, he is ugly."

Jesse, who'd stayed where he was, looked defensive. Spike was his baby, and you just don't go around calling Jesse's baby ugly.

"He's not so bad," I said, hoping Gina would get the message and shut up.

"Are you on crack?" Gina wanted to know. "Simon, the thing's only got one ear."

Suddenly, the large, gilt-framed mirror above the dressing table started to shake. It had a tendency to do this whenever Jesse got annoyed - really annoyed.

Gina, not knowing this, stared at the mirror with growing excitement. "Hey!" she cried. "All right! Another one!"

She meant an earthquake, of course, but this, like the one before, was no earthquake. It was just Jesse letting off steam.

Then the next thing I knew, a bottle of fingernail polish Gina had left on the dressing table went flying, and, defying all gravitational law, landed upside down in the suitcase she had placed on the floor at the end of the daybed, around seven or eight feet away.

I probably don't need to add that the bottle of polish - it was emerald green - was uncapped. And that it ended up on top of the clothes Gina hadn't unpacked yet.

Gina let out a terrific shriek, threw back the comforter, and dove to the floor, trying to salvage what she could. I, meanwhile, threw Jesse a very dirty look.

But all he said was, "Don't look at me like that, Susannah. You heard what she said about him." He sounded wounded. "She called him ugly."

I growled, "I say he's ugly all the time, and you don't ever do that to me."

He lifted the eyebrow with the scar in it, and then said, "Well, it's different when you say it."

And then, as if he couldn't stand it a minute longer, Jesse abruptly disappeared, leaving a very disgruntled-looking Spike - and a confused Gina - behind.

"I don't understand this," Gina said as she held up a one-piece leopard print bathing suit that was now hopelessly stained. "I don't understand how that happened. First the beer, in that store today, and now this. I tell you, California is weird."

Reflecting on all this in Father Dominic's office the next morning, I supposed I could see how Gina must have felt. I mean, it probably seemed to her like things had gone flying around an awful lot lately. The common denominator, which Gina still hadn't noticed, was that they only went flying around when I was present.