Haunted (20 page)

“Neil!” Jake cried, trying to pull both Paul and his friend—who, as far as he knew, had inexplicably plunged into the hot tub face first—up from the bottom of the Jacuzzi. What he didn’t know, of course, was that ghostly hands were holding both of them down.

I knew it, though. I also knew that there wasn’t anything any of us could do to get them to let go. Ghosts have superhuman strength. There was no way any of us were going to get those two to give up their victims. Not until they were as dead as…well, as their killers.

Which was why I knew I was going to have to do something I really didn’t want to do. I just didn’t see any way out of it. Threats hadn’t worked. Brute force hadn’t worked. There was only one way.

But I really, really didn’t want to take it. My chest was tight with fear. I could hardly breathe, I was so scared. I mean, the last time I’d been to that place, I’d nearly died. And I had no way of knowing whether or not Paul had told me the truth. What if I tried what he’d said, and I ended up somewhere even worse than where I’d ended up before?

Although it would be hard to imagine any place worse.

Still, what choice did I have? None.

I just really, really didn’t want to take it.

But I guess we don’t always get what we want.

My heart in my throat, I thrust my hands into the hot, churning water, and grabbed twin handfuls of shirt. I didn’t even know whose clothes I had hold of. All I knew was, this was the only way I could think of to prevent a murder.

Then I closed my eyes and pictured that place in my head I had hoped never to see again.

And when I opened my eyes, I was there.

I wasn’t alone. Paul was with me. And Craig Jankow, too.

“What the…?” Craig looked up and down the long dark hallway, as eerily silent as Brad’s party had been loud. “Where the hell are we?”

“Where you should have gone a long time ago,” Paul said, carefully brushing lint off his shirt—though, since this was an alternative plane, and only his consciousness, not his actual body, was on it, there was no lint to brush. To me, Paul said with a smile, “Nice work, Suze. And on your first try, too.”

“Shut up.” I was in no mood for pleasantries. I was somewhere I really, really didn’t want to be…a place that, every time I returned to in my nightmares, left me feeling completely physically and emotionally drained. A place that sucked the life out of me…not to mention my courage. “I’m not exactly happy about this.”

“I can tell.” Paul reached up and felt his nose. Since we were in the spirit world, and not the actual one, it was no longer bleeding. His clothes weren’t wet, either. “You know the fact that we’re up here means that our bodies, down there, are unconscious.”

“I know,” I said, glancing nervously up and down the long, fog-enshrouded hallway. Just like in my dreams, I couldn’t see what was at either end. It was just a line of doors that seemed to go on forever.

“Well,” Paul said, “that should get Jesse’s attention, anyway. Your suddenly dropping off into a coma, I mean.”

“Shut up,” I said again. I felt like crying. I really did. And I hate crying. Almost more than I hate falling into bottomless pits. “This is all your fault. You shouldn’t have antagonized him.”

“And you,” Paul said with a spark of anger, “shouldn’t go around kissing—”

“Excuse me,” Craig interrupted. “But could somebody maybe tell me exactly what—”

“Shut up,” Paul and I said to him, at the exact same time.

Then, to Paul, I said, a catch in my voice, “Look, I’m sorry about what happened at your house. Okay? I lost my head. But that doesn’t mean that there is anything going on between us.”

“You lost your head,” Paul repeated tonelessly.

“That’s right,” I said. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. I did not like this place. I didn’t like the white plumes of fog that were licking my legs. I didn’t like the tomblike stillness. And I especially didn’t like that I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. Who knew where the floor might drop off from underneath?

“What if I want there to be something between us?” he asked.

“Too bad,” I said, shortly.

He glanced over at Craig, who was beginning to wander down the hall, regarding the closed doors on either side of him with interest.

“What about shifting?” Paul asked.

“What
about
it?”

“I told you how to do it, didn’t I? Well, there’s other stuff I can show you. Stuff you’ve never even dreamed you could do.”

I blinked at him. I thought back to what he’d said that afternoon in his bedroom, about soul transference. There was a part of me that wanted to know what that was all about. There was a part of me that wanted to know about this very, very badly.

But there was an equally big part of me that wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Paul Slater.

“Come on, Suze,” Paul went on. “You know you’re dying to know. All your life you’ve been wondering who—or what—you really are. And I’m telling you, I have the answers. I
know
. And I’ll teach you, if you’ll let me.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what do
you
get out of this magnanimous offer of yours?” I wanted to know.

“The pleasure of your company,” he said with a smile.

He said it casually, but I knew there was nothing casual about it at all. Which was why, in spite of how much I was dying to find out more about all the other stuff he claimed to know, I was reluctant to accept his offer. Because there was a catch. And the catch was that I was going to have to spend time with Paul Slater.

But it might be worth it. Almost. And not because I’d finally be getting some insight into the true nature of our so-called gift, but because I might, at last, be able to guarantee Jesse’s safety…at least where Paul was concerned.

“Okay,” I said.

To say Paul looked surprised would have been the understatement of the year. But before he could say anything, I added, gruffly, “But Jesse is off-limits to you. I really mean it. No more insults. No more fights. And no more exorcisms.”

One of Paul’s dark eyebrows went up. “So that’s how it is,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s how it is.”

He didn’t say anything for so long that I figured he wanted to forget the whole thing. Which would have been fine by me. Sort of. Except for the Jesse part.

But then Paul shrugged and went, “Fine by me.”

I stared at him, hardly daring to believe my own ears. Had I just engineered—at great personal sacrifice, it had to be admitted—Jesse’s reprieve?

It was Paul’s nonchalance about the whole thing that convinced me I had. Especially his response to Craig, when the latter reached out and rattled one of the doorknobs and called, “Hey, what’s behind these doors?”

“Your just rewards,” Paul said with a smirk.

Craig looked over his shoulder at Paul. “Really? My just rewards?”

“Sure,” Paul said.

“Don’t listen to him, Craig,” I said. “He doesn’t know what’s behind those doors. It could be your just rewards. Or it could just be your next life. No one knows. No one has ever come out through one of them. You can only go in.”

Craig looked speculatively at the door in front of him.

“Next life, huh?” he said.

“Or eternal salvation,” Paul said. “Or, depending on how bad you’ve been, eternal damnation. Go on. Open it and find out whether you were naughty or nice.”

Craig shrugged but he didn’t take his eyes off the door in front of him.

“Well,” he said. “It’s gotta be better than hanging around down there. Tell Neil I’m sorry I acted like such a…you know. It’s just that, well, it’s just that it really wasn’t very fair.”

Then, laying a hand on the doorknob in front of him, he turned the handle. The door opened a fraction of an inch…

And Craig disappeared in a flash of light so blinding, I had to throw up my hands to protect my eyes.

“Well,” I heard Paul saying, a few seconds later, “now that he’s out of the way…”

I lowered my arms. Craig was gone. There was nothing left where he’d been standing. Even the fog looked undisturbed.

“Now can we get out of here?” Paul heaved a little shudder. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

I tried to hide my astonishment that Paul felt exactly the way I did about the spirit plane. I wondered if he had nightmares about it, too. Somehow, I didn’t think so.

But I didn’t think I’d be having any more of them, either.

“Okay,” I said. “Only…only how do we get back?”

“Same thing,” Paul said, closing his eyes. “Just picture it.”

I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of Paul’s fingers inside my arm, and the cool lick of the fog on my legs…

A second later, the awful silence was gone, replaced instead by the sounds of loud music. And screaming. And sirens.

I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was Jesse’s face, hanging over mine. It looked pale in the flashing red and white lights of the ambulance that had pulled up alongside the deck. Beside Jesse’s face was CeeCee’s, and beside hers, Jake’s.

CeeCee was the first one to go, “She’s awake! Oh, my God, Suze! You’re awake! Are you okay?”

I sat up groggily. I did not feel very good. In fact, I felt a little as if someone had hit me. Hard. I clutched my temples. Headache. Pounding headache. Nausea-inducing headache.

“Susannah.” Jesse’s arm was around me. His voice, in my ear, was urgent. “Susannah, what happened? Are you all right? Where…where did you go? Where’s Craig?”

“Where he belongs,” I said, wincing as red and white lights caused my headache to feel a thousand times worse. “Is Neil…is Neil all right?”

“He’s fine. Susannah.” Jesse looked about as shaky as I felt…which was pretty shaky. I didn’t imagine that the past few minutes had been all that great for him. I mean, what with me being slumped over, unconscious, and for no apparent reason and all. My jeans were wet from where I’d landed in water from the hot tub. I could only imagine what my hair looked like. I feared passing a mirror.

“Susannah.” Jesse’s grasp on me was possessive. Delightfully so. “What happened?”

“Who’s Neil?” CeeCee wanted to know. She glanced worriedly at Adam. “Oh, my God. She’s delusional.”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, with a glance at CeeCee. A few feet away, I could see that Paul, too, was sitting up. Unlike Neil, over where the sliding glass door used to be, he was doing so without the aid of an EMT. But like Neil, Paul was coughing up plenty of chlorinated water. And not just his jeans were wet. He was soaked from head to toe. And his nose was bleeding profusely.

“What’ve we got here?” An EMT knelt down beside me, and, lifting my wrist, began to take my pulse.

“She passed out cold,” CeeCee said officiously. “And no, she hadn’t had anything to drink.”

“Lotta that going around here,” the EMT said. She checked my pupils. “You hit your head, too?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, narrowing my eyes against the annoying glare of her little penlight.

“She might’ve,” CeeCee said,“when she passed out.”

The EMT looked disapproving. “When are you kids going to learn? Alcohol,” she said severely, “and hot tubs do not mix.”

I didn’t bother to argue that I hadn’t been drinking. Or, for that matter, sitting in the hot tub. I was, after all, fully dressed. It was enough that the EMT let me go after telling me that my vitals checked out and that I was to drink plenty of water and get some sleep. Neil, too, was given a clean bill of health. I saw him a little while later, calling for a cab on his cell phone. I went up to him and told him that it was safe to use his car now. He just looked at me like I was crazy.

Paul wasn’t as lucky as Neil and me. His nose turned out to be broken, so they trundled him off to the ER. I saw him moments before they wheeled him away, and he did not look happy. He peered at me around the splint they’d taped to his face.

“Headache?” Paul asked in a phlegmy voice.

“A killer one,” I said.

“Forgot to warn you,” he said. “It always happens, post shifting.”

Paul grimaced. I realized he was trying to smile. “I’ll be back,” he said in a pretty sad imitation of the Terminator. Then the EMTs returned to cart him away.

After Paul was gone, I looked around for Jesse. I had no idea what I was going to say to him…maybe something along the lines of how he wasn’t going to have to worry about Paul anymore?

Only it ended up not mattering anyway, because I didn’t see him anywhere. Instead, all I saw was Brad, panting heavily, and coming my way.

“Suze,” he cried. “Come on. Some idiot called the cops. We’ve got to hide the keg before they get here.”

I just blinked at him. “No way,” I said.

“Suze.” Brad looked panicky. “Come on! They’ll confiscate it! Or worse, arrest everybody.”

I looked around and found CeeCee standing over by Adam’s car. I called, “Hey, Cee. Can I come over and spend the night at your house?”

CeeCee called back, “Sure. If you’ll tell me everything there is to know about this Jesse guy.”

“Nothing to tell,” I said. Because there really wasn’t. Jesse was gone. And I had a pretty good idea where he’d gone, too.

And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

“Face it, Suze,” CeeCee said as she wolfed down her half of a cannoli we were sharing the next day at the feast of Father Serra. “Men suck.”

“You’re telling me,” I said.

“I mean it. Either you want them and they don’t want you, or they want you and you don’t want them—”

“Welcome to my world,” I said, glumly.

“Aw, come on,” she said, looking taken aback by my tone. “It can’t be
that
bad.”

I wasn’t in any sort of mood to argue with her. For one thing, I had only just, a little less than twelve hours later, gotten over my postshifting headache. For another, there was the little matter of Jesse. I wasn’t all that keen to discuss the latest developments there.