Which reminded me . . .

"Are people going to notice we're gone?" I asked. "In our own time, I mean? Or when we get back, will it be like no time has gone by?"

"I don't know." I got the feeling Paul had been trying to get some sleep when I'd shown up. He seemed to be atternpting to get back to it now and my endless questions were only serving to irritate him. "Why didn't you ask my grandfather? You two are so close and all. . . ."

"I didn't exactly get a chance, now, did I?" I stared at him - or tried to, anyway - in the darkness. I still wasn't sure why Dr. Slaski had chosen me as his confidante and not his own grandson. Well, except for the fact that Paul is a user. And a thief. And, oh yeah, had possibly purposefully drugged him.

"He's not who you think he is, Paul," I said, meaning Dr. Slaski. "He's not your enemy. He's just like us."

"Don't say that." Paul's blue-eyed gaze suddenly bore into me from the darkness. "Don't ever."

"Why? He's a mediator, Paul. A shifter. He's probably who you got it from. He knows a lot. And one thing he knows is that the more we play around with . . . with our powers . . . the better our chances of ending up like him - "

"I told you not to say that," Paul snapped.

"But if you'd just give him a chance, instead of calling him a gork and purposefully - "

"We're not like him, all right? You and I? We're nothing like him. He was stupid. He tried to tell people. He tried to tell people that mediators - shifters - whatever - that we exist. And everyone laughed at him. My dad had to change his name, Suze, because no one would take him seriously, knowing he was related to someone they all said was a quack. So don't you ever - ever - say we're like him or that we're going to end up like him. I already know how I'm going to end up."

I just blinked at him. "Oh, really? And how's that?"

"Not like him," Paul assured me. "I'm going to be like my dad."

"Your dad isn't a mediator," I reminded him.

"I mean I'm going to be rich, like my dad," Paul said.

"How?" I asked with a laugh. "By stealing from the people you're supposed to be helping?"

"There you go again," Paul said, shaking his head. "Who told you we're supposed to help the dead, Suze? Huh? Who?"

"You know perfectly well it was wrong of you to take that money. It wasn't yours."

"Yeah," Paul said. "Well, there's more where it came from and, unlike you, I suffer no moral compunctions in taking it. I'm going to be rich someday, Suze. And, unlike Grandpa Gork, in control."

"Not if you kill all your brain cells flitting in and out of the past," I pointed out.

"Yeah, well," Paul said. "This is a one-time trip. After this, I shouldn't need to go back again."

I stared at his profile. Only our sides were touching beneath the horse blanket we shared. Still, Paul radiated a lot of heat. I was getting a little hot under the blanket.

That was when I realized the only other guy I'd ever lain this close to was Jesse, and that the heat he gave off? Yeah, a lot of that was in my mind. Because ghosts can't give off heat. Even to mediators. Even to mediators who happen to be in love with them.

"It's wrong," I said quietly to Paul as I looked at his closed eyelids. "What you're doing to Jesse. He doesn't want it."

Paul's eyes opened at that.

"You told him?"

"Of course I told him," I said. "And he doesn't want it He doesn't want you to interfere, Paul. He was going down to the Mission to stop you when I left."

Paul looked at me for a few seconds, his blue eyes unreadable in the darkness.

"Are you sleeping with him?" he asked bluntly.

I gaped at him, feeling heat flood my cheeks. "Of course not!" Then, realizing what I'd said, stammered, "N-not that it's any of your business."

But Paul, rather than grinning over his so fully discomfiting me, as I would have expected him to, was gazing down at me very seriously.

"Then I don't get it," he said simply. "Why him? Why not me?"

Oh. That.

"Because he's honest," I said. "And he's kind. And he puts me ahead of everything else - "

"So would I," Paul said. "If you'd give me the chance."

"Paul," I said. "If we were in an earthquake or something, and you had a chance to save me but it was at the risk of your own life, you would save yourself, not me."

"I would not! How can even you say that?"

"Because it's true."

"But you're saying that your perfect Jesse would save you, at the risk of his own life?"

"Yes," I said with absolute certainty. "Because he has. In the past."

"No, he hasn't, Suze," Paul said with equal certainty.

"Yes, he has, Paul. You don't even know - "

"Yes, I do know. Jesse could never possibly have risked his own life to save yours, because in all the time you've known him, he's been dead. So he hasn't been risking anything, all those times he's saved you. Has he?"

I opened my mouth to deny to this, then realized that Paul was right. It was the truth. A screwed-up version of the truth, but the truth just the same.

"What have you got to be so bitter about?" I demanded instead. "You've always gotten everything you've ever wanted your whole life. You've only had to ask for it, and it was yours. But it's like it's never enough for you."

"I haven't gotten everything I've ever wanted," Paul said pointedly. "Although I'm working to correct that."

I shook my head, knowing what he meant.

"You only want me because you can't have me, Paul," I said. "And you know it. I mean, my God. You've got Kelly. All the guys in school want her."

"All the guys in school," Paul said, "are idiots."

I ignored that.

"You would be a lot better off," I said, "if you'd just be happy with what you have, Paul, instead of wanting what you'll never get."

But Paul kept right on grinning. Grinning and rolling back over so he could sleep. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, if I were you, Suze," he said in a tone that sounded way too smug to me.

"You - "

"Go to sleep, Suze," Paul said.

"But you - "

"We've got a long day ahead of us. Just sleep."

Amazingly, I did. Sleep, I mean. I hadn't expected that I'd be able to. But maybe Dr. Slaski was right. Traveling through time DOES wear you out. I don't think I'd have fallen asleep otherwise . . . you know, given the hay, the horses, the rain, and, oh yeah, the hot-but-totally-deadly guy lying next to me.

But I laid my head down, and next thing I knew, lights-out.

I woke with a start. I hadn't even realized I'd been asleep. But there was light streaming through the slits between the wood planks that made up the sides of the barn. Not the gray light of dawn, either. It was full-on sunlight, revealing that I'd slept way past 8:00. . . .

And kneeling in front of me was Paul, with breakfast.

"Where'd you get that?" I asked, sitting up. Because in Paul's hands was a pie. A whole pie. Apple, from the smell of it.

And it was still warm.

"Don't ask," he said, pulling, of all things, two forks from his back pocket. "Just eat."

"Paul." I could hear movement below. Paul had been speaking in hushed tones. I knew why now.

We were not alone.

A man's voice said, "Git along there." He appeared to speaking to the horses.

"Did you steal this?" I asked, even as I was taking the fork and digging in. Time travel doesn't just make you sleepy, It makes you hungry, too.

"I told you not to ask," Paul said as he, too, shoveled a forkful of pie into his mouth, Stolen or not, it was good. Not the best I'd ever had, by any means - I don't know if, out in the Wild West, they really had access to the best sugar and stuff.

But it satisfied the rumbling in my stomach . . . and soon made me aware of another urge.

Paul seemed to read my mind.

"There's an outhouse behind the barn," he informed me.

"A what house?"

"You know." Paul grinned. "Watch out for the spiders."

I thought he was joking.

He wasn't. There were spiders. Worse, what they had to use as toilet paper back then? Let's just say that today, it wouldn't be considered fit to write on, let alone . . . you know . . . anything else.

Plus I had to hurry, so no one would see me in my twenty-first-century clothes and ask questions.

But it was hard because once I'd slipped out of the barn, I was flabbergasted by what I saw. . . .

Which was nothing.

Really. Nothing, in all directions. No houses. No telephone poles. No paved roads. No Circle Ks. No In-N-Out Burger. Nothing. Just trees. And a dirt track that I suppose passed for a street.

I could, however, see the red dome of the basilica. There it was, down in the valley below us, with the sea behind it. That, at least, hadn't changed in the last 150 years.

Thank God plumbing has, however.

When I crept back up to the loft, there was no sign of Mr. O'Neil. He appeared to have taken his horses and gone off to do whatever it was men like him did all day in 1850. Paul was waiting for me with an odd look on his face.

"What?" I asked, thinking he was going to tease me about the outhouse.

"Nothing," was all he said, however. "Just . . . I have a surprise for you."

Thinking it was another food-related item, although I was quite full from the pie, I said, "What? And don't tell me it's an Egg McMuffin, because I know they don't have drive-through here."

"It's not," Paul said.

And then, moving faster than I'd ever seen him move before, he took something else from his back pocket - a length of rope. Then he grabbed me.