A/N: Obviously, The Mediator and all its canon characters belong to Meg Cabot, not me. This is just a fan fiction…meaning it's fiction, written by a fan. Beware! MAJOR SPOILERS below. Please let me know what you think by clicking that "submit review" button at the bottom of the page. Thanks and enjoy the ride!

Chapter One

He told me I couldn't handle this one alone. I didn't believe him, but that's what he told me.

I mean, I took perfectly good care of myself the first fifteen years of my life, without his help. Did he honestly think I couldn't handle a little ghost busting?

Looking back, of course, I wonder why I didn't listen. Jesse's always right about this kind of thing…I should have known that by now. But nope, I had to do my own thing, as usual, and completely ignore that still, small voice of reason.

And where does that always land me? In predicaments eerily similar to the one I was in right now.

Not that I'm always hung upside down and tied to a tree branch by my feet, oh no. Sometimes, I'm tied to a chair, or locked in a basement, or thrown off a roof.

Gee, I love my job.

Holding my shirt with one hand so that it wouldn't fly up around my ears, causing me to inadvertently flash any randomly passing innocents (not that there was much chance of anyone passing by, since I was in an out-of-the-way, grown over, fenced in area…but hey, I wasn't taking any chances), I used my other hand to dig around in my pocket for my cell phone, thankful that I hadn't dropped it (and very thankful that I actually had one now).

Jesse never turns off his phone, even when he's at work. He says it's because I'm always getting into trouble and he wants me to be able to reach him if I need him. I always kind of resented that (I'm not always in trouble), but just now I was feeling pretty grateful for it. So, squinting in the dark, I tried to dial. Let me tell you, it is no joke trying to dial in the dark…but my cell phone gives off a little bit of light, and his number is conveniently on speed dial. Having successfully put in his number and hit send, I held the phone up to my ear and waited for him to answer.

"Hello?" I heard him on the other end, and as usual just the sound of his voice made my heart leap.

"Um," I said, trying to act casual. "Hi."

"Susannah, I'm still at work," he said, sounding a tiny bit annoyed. "I'm kind of busy. Can this wait?"

"Um," I replied, biting my lip. "Okay."

A longish pause ensued, and then Jesse gave this kind of long-suffering sigh. He knew me far too well. "All right, where are you?" he asked. "Never mind, I know where you are." See what I mean? Far, far too well. "Are you hurt?"

"No, not exactly," I paused and licked my lips. "Just a little…um…tied up."

He said what sounded like a very bad word in Spanish, and I knew he was running his hand through his thick black hair in a resigned, irritated manner. "All right, I'll be there as soon as I can," he said, and, before hanging up, added, "And Susannah…don't move till I get there."

Haha. Like I had a choice.

Now that my boyfriend is alive, my life is a lot better than it used to be. No one's afraid I'm dating a gangbanger from the valley anymore, or anything like that. And they all love Jesse, especially my mom. She was a little wary of him at first, because of his age (He's twenty and I'm sixteen. She seems to be of the opinion that that is too big of a gap. Ha…if only she knew…), but after a while she got used to it and now she treats him like a king. So all around, things are cool.

The only problem is that it takes a little while longer for him to come to my rescue, now that he can't just dematerialize and reappear wherever he wants to the next second. And since he works half way across town at the Carmel Historical Society, I knew I was in for a longish wait. Unfortunately for me, my ankles were starting to ache, and I could feel all the blood rushing to my head.

But I could get through the physical pain and discomfort just fine. I've been through much worse in my time. It was the boredom I couldn't handle. Because let me tell you…being tied to a tree gets old. Fast. So I tried to come up with a way to amuse myself.

At first I considered twiddling my thumbs, but then I remembered that one of my hands was necessary to hold up my shirt. I tried whistling, but I'm not that great at it under the best of circumstances, and it's even harder to whistle upside down than it is to do right side up. So, to waste the time, I fell back on a last resort, playing an old game my mom and I used to play when I was little and we were stuck in traffic back in good old NYC.

"My name is Susannah, I'm going shopping and today I'm going to buy some sneakers," I began. "My name is Susannah, I'm going shopping and today I'm going to buy an umbrella…"

I'd gone through my first and middle name, and was just about to start on my last, when I heard someone scrambling through the loose board in the fence, and Jesse stood before me.

"God, Jesse, what took you so long?" I demanded, but he ignored me.

"Nombre de Dios, Susannah," he breathed, glancing from my face to the pink jump rope that was wrapped around my ankles, securing me to the tree. "Querida, how did you get into this mess?"

"Well, Jesse, though I would love to hang around and chat with you, this really isn't all that comfortable," I told him. "So how about you get me down and we can talk then?" I mean, really…did he think I was going to sit around and explain to him what happened right that second? Sheesh.

"Yes, of course," he said, nodding, stroking my cheek with his thumb as he surveyed the situation. "I'll get you down."

Walking to the base of the tree, he began to climb it with ease. Jesse does everything with ease. When he reached the branch that held me captive, he pulled a pocketknife out of his pocket, and opened it, ready to slice through the jump rope.

"Um, Jesse?"

He paused and glanced down at me. "Yes, querida?"

"I don't mean to be a bother, but you do realize that if you cut that rope I'm going to fall, right? Right on my head, too. Just wanted to point that out." I was a good four feet above the ground, and I did not want to break my neck and die, not when he'd just come to life, and when my life had just ceased to suck.

He smiled at me, the expression on his face clearly calling me a silly little girl, but it was in a fond way, so I wasn't going to complain. Besides, I was totally used to him giving me these looks by now. Jesse can be a little bit arrogant sometimes. He sometimes gives off the impression that he thinks he knows everything and that he's always right. The problem with this, of course, is that he usually is. Right, I mean.

"I will not let you fall, Susannah," he reassured me, reaching down. "Give me your hand."

So I gave him my hand (the one I wasn't using to hold my shirt up with, obviously), and he pulled me up onto the branch beside him.

"Are you all right?" he asked as he cut through the hot pink jump rope that was binding my ankles, and I noted that his voice had a slightly steely edge to it. I couldn't see his face, but I was willing to bet that his expression was pretty grim, and that the scar through his eyebrow was glowing bone white.

I gulped. Jesse was mad. And Jesse doesn't get mad all that often. Well, you know, except for when people try to kill me (like Marcus Beaumont, Michael Meducci, and the ghosts of the RLS Angels), or when psycho fellow mediators (excuse me, shifters) try to kiss and/or threaten me (Paul Slater, anyone?), or that time he caught me frenching Tad Beaumont. But anyway, while I was pretty sure most of his anger was directed towards the ghost who'd done this to me, I was also pretty sure he wasn't all that pleased with me either.

"Um, well, you know," I said hesitantly, experimentally flexing my feet now that they were free. "I'm fine, I guess. I mean, my head kind of hurts and my ankles are killing me, but the feeling is starting to come back in my toes, so I guess I'm okay."

He looked back up at me, and I guess I must have looked pretty pathetic, because his gaze softened. Reaching out a hand, he brushed a bit of dirt off my cheek and smiled.

"My poor querida," he said, and planted a quick kiss on my mouth before jumping to the ground. "Can you get down?"

I looked down past my feet, to the ground, and shuddered, holding tighter to the branch. "Um," I said, "No. I don't think so." He grinned and shook his head at me, clearly amused, before helping me down. The amused look was wiped off his face a moment later, however, when I promptly crumpled to the ground.

Three things happen when someone ties you to a tree upside down and leaves you hanging there for almost an hour. You see, when you finally get right side up and on the ground you will not only have a horrible head ache (thanks to all the blood having rushed to your head) and painful rope burns, but since all the circulation was cut off from your feet you won't be able to stand without assistance for a while either.

"Susannah?" Jesse bent down and hovered over me, an anxious expression on his face. "Susannah, are you all right? What's wrong?"

I grimaced and shook my head. I was feeling a little dizzy, and my head was aching more than ever now, since my head had hit a rather lumpy tree root as I fell. "My feet," I said a bit groggily. "They um, hurt. And the feeling hasn't quite come back yet. And I'm feeling sort of…dizzy." Gingerly, I tried to sit up. "I think you, um, are going to have to help me."

He frowned, and I could tell he was mad again. However, when he spoke again his voice was gentle, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't mad at me, it seemed. "Let me see your feet, querida."

Since I'd been wearing el cheapo flip flops earlier which had long since fallen off, my feet, as I held them out to him, were bare, and kind of dirty. And, I noted grimly, where the ropes had wrapped around them were big, bright red burns. Ouch.

Jesse's frown deepened and his jaw tightened. "Susannah," he began, but I cut him off. I was so not in the mood for a lecture right now. I mean, I don't know if he'd noticed or not, but those rope burns hurt.

"Jesse, can we just save that for later, please? I mean…I know you're ready to point out the error of my ways, but maybe right now we should concentrate on getting out of here unnoticed. I know you haven't had a lot of problems with the police before…but now that you're alive, trespassing on private property could get you in some real trouble."

"And just how do you suggest we get out of here? Querida, you can't even stand up without assistance. Do you really think I'm going to let you try and scramble through there in your present condition?" He motioned towards the lose plank, and I sighed. He did have a point.

"I don't know, Jesse," I said tiredly. "Maybe you could help me, or something. Besides, I only fell because my feet were still numb. But judging from the sharp pain shooting up from my feet, I'd say the feeling's returned to them. And we really need to get out of here. I mean, Kevin was way mad. And given my 'present condition', I'm not all that willing to run into him again any time soon, ya know? So if you'd, you know, lend me a hand, I'll get up and we can figure a way out of this mess."

He shot me a sharp look and muttered something that sounded like "if you'd listened to me we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place", but he gave me his hand and pulled me to my feet and asked a little shortly if I could stand now.

"Yes, thank you," I said primly, though I was still a little wobbly. "Now," I slowly and carefully made my way over to the fence. "Just how are we going to get out of here?"