"Because." I was bruised, I was out of breath, I was dripping with sweat, and all I wanted to do was let go of her, turn around and go home, crawl into my bed, and sleep for a million years.

But I couldn't.

So instead, I kicked her in the center of the chest and sent her staggering back to the center of the circle of candles. And the minute she stumbled over that photograph of herself she'd given to Bryce, the hole that had opened up above her head reappeared. And this time, the red smoke closed around her as suffocatingly as a thick wool blanket. She wasn't breaking out again. Not that easily.

The red fog had encased her so thickly, I couldn't see her anymore, but I could sure hear her. Her shrieks ought to have waked the dead – except, of course, she was the only dead around. Thunder clapped over her head. Inside the black hole that had opened above her, I thought I saw stars twinkling.

"Why?" Heather screamed. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because," I said. "I'm the mediator."

And then two things happened almost simultaneously.

The red smoke surrounding Heather began to be sucked back up into the spinning hole taking Heather with it.

And the sturdy pillars that supported the breezeway over my head suddenly snapped in two as cleanly as if they'd been two inches, and not two feet, thick.

And then the breezeway collapsed on top of me.

CHAPTER 18

I have no idea how long I lay beneath the planks of wood and heavy clay tiles of the crumpled breezeway. Looking back, I realize I must have lost consciousness, if only for a few minutes.

All I can remember is something sharp hitting me on the head, and the next thing I knew, I'd opened my eyes to consummate blackness, and a feeling that I was being smothered.

A favorite trick of some poltergeists is to sit on their victim's chest while he or she is just waking, so that the poor soul feels he or she is being smothered, but can't see why. I couldn't see why, and for a second or two I thought I'd failed and that Heather was still in this world, sitting on my chest, torturing me, getting her revenge for what I'd tried to do.

Then I thought, Maybe I'm dead.

I don't know why. But it occurred to me. Maybe this was how being dead felt. At first, anyway. This must have been how it was for Heather when she woke up in her coffin. She must have felt the same way I did: trapped, suffocated, frightened witless. God, no wonder she'd been in such a bad mood all the time. No wonder she'd wanted so desperately to get back to the world she'd known pre-death. This was horrible. It was worse than horrible. It was hell.

But then I moved my hand – the only part of me I could move – and felt something rough and cool resting over me. That's when I knew what had happened. The breezeway had collapsed. Heather had used her last little bit of kinetic power to hurt me for sending her away. And she'd done a splendid job because here I was unable to move, trapped underneath who knew how many pounds of wood and Spanish tile.

Thanks, Heather. Thanks a lot.

I should have been scared. I mean, there I was pinned down, completely unable to move, in utter darkness. But before I had time to start panicking, I heard someone call my name. I thought at first I might be going crazy. Nobody knew, after all, that I'd gone down to the school except for Jesse, of course, and I'd told him what would happen if he showed up. He wasn't stupid. He knew I was performing an exorcism. Could he have decided to come down anyway? Was it safe yet? I didn't know. If he happened to step into the circle of candles and chicken blood, would he be sucked into that same dark shadowland that took Heather?

Now I started to panic.

"Jesse!" I yelled, pounding on the wood above my face, causing dirt and bits of wood to fall down onto my face. "Don't!" I shrieked. All the dust was making me choke, but I didn't care. "Go back! It isn't safe!"

Then a great weight was lifted off my chest, and suddenly I could see. Above me stretched the night sky, velvet blue and spotted with a dusting of stars. And framed by those stars hung a face hovering over me worriedly.

"Here she is," Doc called, his voice wobbling in both pitch and volume. "Jake, I found her!"

A second face joined the first one, this one framed by a curtain of over-long blond hair. "Jesus Christ," Sleepy drawled, when he got a look at me. "Are you all right, Suze?"

I nodded, dazedly. "Help me up," I said.

The two of them managed to get most of the bigger pieces of timber off me. Then Sleepy instructed me to wrap my arms around his neck, which I did, while David grabbed my waist. And with the two of them pulling, and me pushing with my feet, I finally managed to get clear of the rubble.

We sat for a minute in the darkness of the courtyard, leaning against the edge of the dais on which the headless statue of Junipero Serra stood. We just sat there, panting and staring at the ruin which had once been our school. Well, that's a bit dramatic, I guess. Most of the school was still standing. Even most of the breezeway was still up. Just the section in front of Heather's locker and Mr. Walden's classroom had come down. The twisted pile of wood neatly hid the evidence of my evening's activities, including the candles, which had evidently gone out. There was no sign of Heather. The night was perfectly quiet except for the sound of our breathing. And the crickets.

That's how I knew Heather was really gone. The crickets had started up again.

"Jesus," Sleepy said again, still panting pretty heavily, "are you sure you're all right, Suze?"

I turned to look at him. All he had on was a pair of jeans and an Army jacket, thrown hastily over a bare chest. Sleepy, I noticed, had almost as defined a six-pack as Jesse.

How is it that I'd nearly been smothered to death, and yet I could sit there and notice things like my stepbrother's abdominal muscles a few minutes later?

"Yeah," I said, pushing some hair out of my eyes. "I'm fine. A little banged up, maybe. But nothing broken."

"She should probably go to the hospital and get checked out." David's voice was still pretty wobbly. "Don't you think she should go to the hospital and get checked out, Jake?"

"No," I said. "No hospitals."

"You could have a concussion," David said. "Or a fractured skull. You might slip into a coma in your sleep and never wake up. You should at least get an X-ray. Or an MRI, maybe. A CAT scan wouldn't hurt, either – "

"No." I brushed my hands off on my leggings and stood up. My body felt pretty creaky, but whole. "Come on. Let's get out of here before somebody comes. They were bound to have heard all that." I nodded toward the part of the building where the priests and nuns lived. Lights had come on in some of the windows. "I don't want to get you guys in trouble."

"Yeah," Sleepy said, getting up. "Well, you might have thought of that before you snuck out, huh?"

We left the way we'd come in. Like me, David had wriggled in beneath the front gate, then unlocked it from the inside and let Sleepy in. We slipped out as quietly as we could, and hurried to the Rambler, which Sleepy had parked in some shadows, out of sight of the police car. The black and white was still sitting there, its occupant perfectly oblivious to what had gone on just a few dozen yards away. Still, I didn't want to risk anything by trying to sneak past him, and retrieve my bike. We just left it there, and hoped no one would notice it.

The whole way home, my new big brother Jake lectured me. Apparently, he thought I'd been at the school in the middle of the night as part of some sort of gang initiation. I kid you not. He was really very indignant about the whole thing. He wanted to know what kind of friends I thought these people were, leaving me to die under a pile of roofing tiles. He suggested that if I were bored or in need of a thrill, I should take up surfing because, and I quote, "If you're gonna have your head split open, it might as well be while you're riding a wave, dude."

I took his lecture as gracefully as I could. After all, I couldn't very well tell him the real reason I'd been down at the school after hours. I only interrupted Jake once during his little anti-gang speech, and that was to ask him just how he and David had known to come after me.

"I don't know," Jake said, as we pulled up the driveway. "All I know is, I was catching some pretty heavy-duty Z's, when all of a sudden Dave is all over me, telling me we have to go down to the school and find you. How'd you know she was down there, anyway, Dave?"

David's face was unnaturally white even in the moonlight. "I don't know," he said, quietly. "I just had a feeling."

I turned to look at him, hard. But he wouldn't meet my eye.

That kid, I thought. That kid knows.

But I was too tired to talk about it just then. We snuck into the house, relieved that the only occupant who woke upon our entrance was Max, who wagged his tail and tried to lick us as we made our way to our rooms. Before I slipped into mine, I looked over at David just once, to see if he wanted – or needed – to say anything to me. But he didn't. He just went into his room and shut his door, a scared little boy. My heart swelled for him.

But only for a second. I was too tired to think of anything much but bed – not even Jesse. In the morning, I told myself, as I peeled off my dusty clothes. I'll talk to him in the morning.

I didn't, though. When I woke up, the light outside my windows looked funny. When I lifted my head and saw the clock, I realized why. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. All the morning fog had burned away, and the sun was beating down as hard as if it were July, and not January.