Because it didn't make any sense. What had just happened, I mean. How could Paul be taking Kelly to the Winter Formal when, last time I'd checked, I was the one he was hounding for a date . . . any date? Not that I'd been especially thrilled about it, of course. But I did have to throw him the occasional bone, if only to keep him from doing to my boyfriend what he'd done to Mrs. Gutierrez.

Wait a minute. Was that what was going on? Paul was finally getting tired of hanging around with a girl he had to blackmail into spending time with him?

Well, good. Right? I mean, if Kelly wanted him, she could have him.

The only problem was, I was having a hard time not remembering the way Paul's body had felt as it had lain across mine that night in the Gutierrezes' yard. Because it had felt good - his weight, his warmth - despite my fear. Really good.

Right sensation . . . wrong guy.

But the right guy? Yeah, he wasn't a real pin-the-girl-to-the-grass kind of person. And warmth? He hadn't given off any in a century and a half.

Which wasn't his fault, really. The warmth thing, I mean. Jesse couldn't help being dead any more than Paul could help being . . . well, Paul.

Still, this asking-Kelly-to-the-dance-and-not-me thing . . . it was freaking me out. I'd been bracing myself for his invitation - and his reaction to my turning it down - for weeks. I'd even begun thinking I was finally getting the hang of the back-and-forth nature of our relationship . . . as if it were a tennis game at the resort where we'd met last summer.

Except that now I had a sinking feeling that Paul had just lobbed a ball into my court that I was never going to be able to hit back.

What was that all about?

The words floated before my eyes, scrawled on a piece of paper torn from a notebook, and were waved at me from over the top of the wooden partition separating my carrel from the one in front of it. I pulled the piece of paper from the fingers clutching it and wrote, Paul asked Kelly to the Winter Formal, then slid the page over the partition.

A few seconds later, the paper fluttered back down in front of me.

I thought he was going to ask you!!! my best friend, CeeCee, wrote.

I guess not, I scribbled in response.

Well, maybe it's just as well, was CeeCee's reply. You didn't want to go with him, anyway. I mean, what about Jesse?

But that was just it. What about Jesse? If Paul had asked me to the Winter Formal, and I'd responded with something less than enthusiasm to his invitation, he'd let loose one of his cryptic threats about Jesse - the newest one, in fact, about him apparently having learned of some way to keep the dead from having passed on in the first place. . . . Whatever that meant.

And yet today he'd turned around and asked someone else to go to the dance with him instead. Not just someone else, either, but Kelly Prescott, the prettiest, most popular girl in school . . . but also someone I happened to know Paul despised.

Something wasn't right about any of this . . . and it wasn't just that I was trying to save all my dances for a guy who's been dead for 150-odd years.

But I didn't mention this to CeeCee. Best friend or no, there's only so much a sixteen-year-old girl - even a sixteen-year-old albino who happens to have a psychic aunt - can understand. Yes, she knew about Jesse. But Paul? I hadn't breathed a word.

And I wanted to keep it that way.

Whatever, I scrawled. How about you? Adam ask you yet?

I looked around to make sure Sister Marie-Rose, our French teacher, wasn't watching before I slid the note back toward CeeCee, and instead spotted Father Dominic waving at me from the language lab doorway.

I removed my headphones with no real regret - Dominique's and Michel's whining would hardly have been riveting in English; in French, it was downright unbearable - and hurried to the door. I felt, rather than saw, that a certain gaze was very much on me.

I would not, however, give him the satisfaction of glancing his way.

"Susannah," Father Dominic said as I slipped out of the language lab and into one of the open breezeways that served as hallways between classrooms at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy. "I'm glad I was able to catch you before I left."

"Left?" It was only then that I noticed Father D was holding an overnight bag and wearing an extremely anxious expression. "Where are you going?"

"San Francisco." Father Dominic's face was nearly as white as his neatly trimmed hair. "I'm afraid something terrible has happened."

I raised my eyebrows. "Earthquake?"

"Not exactly." Father Dominic pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles into place at the top of his perfectly aquiline nose as he squinted down at me. "It's the monsignor. There's been an accident and he's in a coma."

I tried to look suitably upset, although the truth is, I've never really cared for the monsignor. He's always getting upset about stuff that doesn't really matter - like girls who wear miniskirts to school. But he never gets upset over stuff that's actually important, like how the hot dogs they serve at lunch are always stone-cold.

"Wow," I said. "So what happened? Car crash?"

Father Dominic cleared his throat. "Er, no. He, um, choked."

"Somebody strangled him?" I asked hopefully.

"Of course not. Really, Susannah," Father Dom chided me. "He choked on a piece of hot dog at a parish barbecue."

Whoa! Poetic justice! I didn't say so out loud, though, since I knew Father Dom wouldn't approve.

Instead, I said, "Too bad. So how long will you be gone?"

"I have no idea," Father Dom said, looking harassed. "This couldn't have happened at a worse time, either, what with the auction this weekend."

The Mission Academy is ceaseless in its fund-raising efforts. This weekend the annual antique auction would be taking place. Donations had been flooding in all week and were being stashed for safekeeping in the rectory basement. Some of the more notable items that the booster club had received included a turn-of-the-century Ouija board (courtesy of CeeCee's psychic aunt, Pru) and a silver belt buckle - estimated by the Carmel Historical Society to be more than 150 years old - discovered by my stepbrother, Brad, while he was cleaning out our attic, a task assigned to him as punishment for an act of malfeasance, the nature of which I could no longer recall.

"But I wanted to make sure you knew where I was." Father Dominic plucked a cell phone from his pocket. "You'll call me if anything, er, out of the ordinary occurs, won't you, Susannah? The number is - "

"I know the number, Father D," I reminded him. Father Dom's cell phone was new, but not that new. May I just add that it totally sucks that Father Dominic, who has never wanted - nor has the slightest idea how to use - a cell phone has one and I don't? "And by out of the ordinary, do you mean stuff like Brad getting a passing grade on his trig midterm, or more supernatural phenomena, like ectoplasmic manifestations in the basilica?"

"The latter," Father Dom said, pocketing the cell phone again. "I hope not to be gone for more than a day or two, Susannah, but I am perfectly aware that in the past it hasn't taken much longer than that for you to get yourself into mortal peril. Kindly, while I'm away, see to it that you exercise a modicum of caution in that capacity. I don't care to return home, only to find another section of the school blown to kingdom come. Oh, and if you would, make sure that Spike has enough food - "

"Nuh-uh," I said, backing away. It was the first time in a long time that my wrists and hands were free of angry red scratches, and I wanted to keep it that way. "That cat's your responsibility now, not mine."

"And what am I to do, Susannah?" Father D looked frustrated. "Ask Sister Ernestine to look in on him from time to time? There aren't even supposed to be pets in the rectory, thanks to her severe allergies. I've had to learn to sleep with the window open so that that infernal animal can come and go as it pleases without being spotted by any of the novices - "

"Fine," I interrupted him, sighing gustily. "I'll stop by PETCO after school. Anything else?"

Father Dominic pulled a crumpled list from his pocket.

"Oh," he said after skimming it. "And the Gutierrez funeral. All taken care of. And I've put the family on our neediest-case roster, as you requested."

"Thanks, Father D," I said quietly, looking away through the arched openings in the breezeway toward the fountain in the center of the courtyard. Back in Brooklyn, where I'd grown up, November meant death to all flora. Here in California - even though it's northern California - all November apparently means is that the tourists, who visit the Mission daily, wear khakis instead of Bermuda shorts, and the surfers down on Carmel Beach have to exchange their short-sleeved wetsuits for long-sleeved ones. Dazzling red and pink blossoms still fill the Mission's flower beds, and when we're released for lunch each noon, it's still possible to work up a sweat under the sun's rays.

Still, temperatures in the seventies or not, I shivered . . . and not just because I was standing in the cool shade of the breezeway. No, it was a cold that came from inside that was causing the goose bumps on my upper arms. Because, beautiful as the Mission gardens were, there was no denying that beneath those glorious petals lurked something dark and . . .

. . . well, Paul-like.

It was true. The guy had the ability to cause even the brightest day to cloud over. At least, as far as I was concerned. Whether or not Father Dominic felt the same, I didn't know . . . but I kind of doubted it. After his somewhat rocky start to the school year, Paul had ended up not having nearly as much regular contact with the school principal as I did. Which, given that all three of us are mediators, might seem a little strange.