Author's Note: for Paula, Merry Christmas

Andy took the book from David who was still rather pale and shaky. He ruffled his son's hair "you ok, Dave?" he asked.

David nodded. "Yes, I knew it was illogical for Suze to die right then, after all the next day we saw her safe and sound"

"It's ok to be scared though, we all were" Andy said reassuringly before he turned back to the book.

We made it back into Mr Walden's classroom. I don't know how, but we did it, the statue's head hurtling after us the whole way, the velocity with which it was travelling causing it to whistle eerily, as if Father Serra was screaming.

"You mean the head is still chasing them?!" Helen asked horrified as the other flinched slightly.

The head collided with all the force of a cannonball against the heavy wooden door, just as we slammed it closed behind us.

"Ouch, that gotta hurt" Brad winced.

"Jesus Cristo" Jesse spluttered, as we leaned, panting, with our backs pressed up against the door as if with our sheer weight, we could keep her out – Heather, who could walk through walls if she wanted to.

"Oh god, what if she watched us in the bathroom or boys showers?" Brad asked horrified.

"Brad, I think Heather has better things to do than perve at the likes of you" Jake said rolling his eyes.

"I can take care of myself,' you said. 'I'll just have to get rid of her first' you told me. Right!"

I was trying to catch my breath, think what to do. I had never seen anything like that. Never. "Shut up" I said.

"Please Suzie, be nicer to the man you rescued you!" Helen pleaded feeling ashamed at her daughter's manners.

"Cadaver breath" Jesse turned his head to look down at me. His chest was rising and falling. "Do you realize that's what you called me? That hurt, you know, querida. It really hurt"

"Awwwwwwww" Helen cooed. "He's already starting to love her!"

"What an idiot, an insane one, no one in their right mind would fancy Suze let alone fall in love with her" Brad said disgustedly.

"Didn't you fancy her during the wedding?" David asked slyly.

Brad spluttered and turned a bright red. "I DID NOT!" he roared.

"Children behave" Andy said mildly.

"I told you-" something heavy was buffeting against the door. I could feel it knocking against my spine. It didn't take a genius to guess it was the founder of a certain mission's head. "- not to call me that"

"Well, I would appreciate if you didn't make disparaging remarks about my-"

"We. Don't. Want. To. Know" Brad choked out mortified.

"Brad, you pervert he meant his breath" Jake said smacking his younger brother round the head.

"Look" I said. "This door isn't going to hold up forever"

"No" he agreed, just as the metal head managed to smash its way partly through a spot it had weakened in the wood. "May I make a suggestion?"

"Please let it be run" Helen said to the ceiling.

I was staring, horrified, down at the head, which had turned, halfway in and halfway out of the door, to look up at me with cold, bronze eyes. It's crazy but I could have sworn it was smiling at me.

Everyone shuddered.

"Sure" I said.

"Run"

"Thank god!" Helen said sighing with relief. "Yes Suzie, please run!"

I wasted no time in taking his advice. I ran for the window sill, and, heedless of the shards of broken glass, swung myself up on to it. It only took a few seconds to open the window again, but that was long enough for Jesse, still pushing against what had begun to sound like a hurricane with all the banging and wailing, to say, "Uh, hurry, please?"

"Yes please hurry"

I jumped down into the parking lot. It was kind of funny how, outside the thick adobe walls of the Mission, you couldn't tell at all that there was a severe paranormal disturbance going on inside.

"Well apparently we can't even tell if there's a severe paranormal disturbance happening right under our nose let alone inside the Mission" David said, his lips twitching in amusement.

"Only you would find that amusing, you loser" Brad said rolling his eyes.

"Brad, don't call your brother a loser"

The parking lot was still empty, and still quiet, except for the gentle, rhythmic sound of ocean waves. It's just amazing what can be going on beneath people's noses, and they have no idea...no idea at all.

"Yeah, you're telling me" Jake said.

"Jesse!" I hissed, through the window. "Come on!" I had no idea if Heather might decide to take out her rage with me on an innocent party – or, if she did, whether Jesse had any cool tricks,

"I'm sure he does, in fact I bet he's behind her wondering what the hell she's worrying about" Brad said snickering lightly.

"It show's she cares for him too, oh the beginnings of young love!"

"Mom, we really don't want to know!"

Like the one she pulled with the statue's head, of his own. All I knew was that the sooner the both of us got out of her range, the better.

Ok, let me state right now that I am not a coward.

"Not really considering the insane stuff you get into"

I'm really not. But I'm not a fool either. I think if you recognize that you are up against a force greater than your own, it is perfectly ok to run.

"Thank god my daughter is smart enough to recognise that. Otherwise I get the feeling she would long be dead" Helen said.

It's not ok to leave others behind though.

"Jesse!" I screamed, through the window.

"I thought I told you," said a very irritated voice from behind me, "to run"

"She's too honourable" David said.

"Too stupid more like" Brad muttered.

I gasped and spun around. Jesse stood there on the asphalt of the parking lot, the moon at his back, casting his face into the shadows.

"Oh my God" my heart was beating so fast;

Helen squealed. "Honey, I don't think Suze meant she fancied him" Andy said smiling fondly at his wife's antics.

I thought it was going to explode. I had never been so scared in all my life. Never.

"I get the horrible feeling she will get more scared later on in these books"

"Well considering the weird shit with-"

"Brad language!"

Maybe that's why I did what I did next, which was reach out and grab the front of Jesse's shirt in both my hands. "Oh my God" I said again. "Jesse are you all right?"

"Of course. I'm all right" he sounded surprised I'd even bother to ask.

"Because he has never had anyone to care for him and he's overwhelmed that Suzie cares. Especially since Suzie acts insensitive and uncaring"

"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight"

And I guess it was stupid. What could Heather do to Jesse, after all? She couldn't exactly kill him. "Are you all right"

"And he really cares for her back!"

"Me? I'm fine" I turned my head to search the darkened windows of Mr Walden's classroom. "Do you think she's...done?"

"For now" Jesse said.

Everyone shuddered. "I hate the sound of that; it means Suzie is in more danger"

"How do you know?" I was shocked to find that I was shaking – really shaking – all over. "How do you know she won't come bursting through that wall there and start uprooting those trees and hurling them at us?"

Jake shuddered even more. "Oh that's a scary thought; I'm going to have nightmares now"

Jesse shook his head and I could see that he was smiling. You know, for a guy who died before they invented orthodontia, he had pretty nice teeth. Almost as nice as Bryce's. "She won't"

"How do you know?" Jake hissed. "She's a psycho alive and now dead, only she has super powers!"

"How do you know?"

"Because she won't. She doesn't know she can. She's too new at all this, Susannah. She doesn't know yet all that she can do"

"Ooh...i don't like the sound of that" Andy winced.

If that was supposed to make me feel better, it didn't work. The fact that he admitted she could uproot trees and start hurling them at me – she was that powerful – and only hadn't due to lack of experience, was enough to stop my shaking cold, and drop the handfuls of shirt I held.

"F-funny I can't stop shaking at the idea"

Not that I didn't think Heather could have followed me if she wanted to. She could, the same way Jesse had followed me down to the Mission. But the thing of it was, Jesse knew he could. He'd been a ghost a lot longer than Heather. She was only just beginning to explore her new powers.

That was the scariest part. She was so new at all of this...and already that powerful.

"Yeah, don't remind me"

I started pacing around the parking lot like a crazy woman.

"See, she admits it!" Brad said triumphantly.

Everyone ignored him.

"We've got to do something" I said. "We've got to warn Father Dominic – and Bryce. My God, we've got to warn Bryce not to come to school tomorrow. She'll kill him. She'll kill him the minute he sets foot on campus-"

"If she's behind that cross thing, then she almost did" Jake said.

"Susannah" Jesse said.

"I guess we could call him. It's one in the morning, but we could call him and tell him – I don't know what we could tell him. We could tell him there's been a death threat on him, or something. That might work. Or – we could leave a death threat. Yeah, that's what we could do! We could call his house and I could disguise my voice, and I could be like 'don't come to school tomorrow, or you'll die'. Maybe he'd listen. Maybe he'd-"

"Somehow I don't think that would have worked"

"Susannah" Jesse said again.

"Or we could have Father Dom do it! We could have Father Dom call Bryce and tell him not to come to school, that there's been some kind of accident, or something-"

"Like his parents would believe that"

"Susannah" Jesse stepped in front of me just as I turned around to retread the same five feet I'd been pacing for the past few minutes. I came up short, startled by his sudden proximity, my nose practically banging into place where his shirt collar was open. Jesse seized both my arms quickly, to steady me.

Helen inhaled sharply and stared at the book intensely, waiting for a passionate moment like the ones in her romance books while her stepsons groaned at the thought.

This was not a good thing. I mean, I know a minute ago I had grabbed him – well, not really him, but his shirt. But I don't like being touched under normal circumstances,

"True"

And I especially don't like being touched by ghosts.

"Probably very true"

And I especially don't like being touched by ghosts who have hands as big and as tendon and strong-looking as Jesse's.

"I don't like the idea of her being touched with hands as big and as tendon and what was it...? Oh yeah strong-looking as Jesse's"

"I do! It's a romantic moment. Soon Suzie will realise she's craving for Jesse's touch!"

"Yeah and next week Jake is taking a vow of celibacy"

"Susannah" he said again, before I could tell him to get his big tendon hands off me. "It's all right. It's not your fault. There was nothing you could do"

"I agree, don't be too hard on yourself Suze" Jake said reassuringly. "Heather was always a psycho cow"

I sort of forgot about being mad about his hands. "Nothing I could do? Are you kidding me? I should have kicked that girl back into her grave!"

"No! Suzie baby, she would have killed you!"

"No" Jesse shook his head. "She'd have killed you"

"See even Jesse agrees with me! Listen to your mother and go home and let Father Dominic handle it"

"Bull! I totally could have taken her. If she hadn't done that thing with that guy's head-"

"Scary thing is, she probably could if it wasn't for the fact Heather was too far gone"

"Susannah"

"I mean it, Jesse; I could totally have handled her if she hadn't gotten so mad. I bet if I just wait a little while until she calmed down and go back in there, I can talk her into-"

"NO!" everyone shouted.

"No" he let go of my arms, but only so he could wrap one of his own round my shoulders and start steering me away from the school and toward the dumpster where I'd parked my bike. "Come on. Let's go home"

"But what about-"

"NO!"

The grip on my shoulders tightened. "No"

"Jesse you don't understand. This is my job. I have to-"

"No you don't! As your mother I command you to go home and get some sleep"

"Err...do you want to tell her that she's talking to a book or shall I?"

"Brad, you dimwit you were talking to the book earlier as well"

"Oh shuddup!"

"It's Father Dominic's job too, no? Let him take it from here. There's no reason why you have to be burdened with all the responsibility yourself"

"Exactly! Please listen to Jesse sweetheart"

"Well, yes, there is. I'm the one who screwed up"

"No you didn't!"

"You put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger?"

"Of course not. But I'm the one who got her so mad. Father Dom didn't. I can't ask Father Dom to clean up my messes. That is totally unfair"

"What is totally unfair" Jesse explained – patiently, I guess, for him, "is for anyone to expect a young girl like yourself to do battle with a demon from hell like-"

Jake and Brad laughed while Helen was nodding in agreement with Jesse. David grinned and Andy had a hard time to stop laughing himself.

"She isn't a demon from hell. She's just mad. She's mad because the one guy she thought she could trust turned out to be a-"

"Aren't you going to date this guy?" Brad asked raising an eyebrow.

"Susannah" Jesse stopped walking suddenly. The only reason I didn't lurch forwards and fall flat on my face was that he still kept hold of my shoulder.

Helen leaned forwards, eyes wide and glittering with excitement.

For a minute – just a minute – I really thought...well I thought he was going to kiss me. I'd never been kissed before,

Brad snorted. "What a loser, I had my first kiss at the age of eleven"

but it seemed as if all the necessities for a kiss to happen were there: you know, his arm was round me, there was moonlight, our hearts were racing – oh, yeah, and we'd both just narrowly escaped being killed by a really pissed-off ghost.

"That sort of ruins the imagery" David said fiddling wit his glasses.

Of course, I didn't know how I felt about my first kiss coming from one of the undead, but hey, beggars can't be choosers,

Brad opened his mouth to say something but was silenced by everyone's glares.

And let me tell you something, Jesse was way cuter than any live guy I'd met lately. I'd never seen such a nice-looking ghost. He couldn't, I thought, have been more than twenty when he died. I wondered what had killed him. It's usually hard to tell with ghosts, since their spirits tend to take on the shape their body was in just before they stopped functioning. My dad, for instance, doesn't look any different when he appears to me now than he did the day before he went out for that fatal jog around Prospect Park ten years ago.

"Oh...." Helen whispered some of the excitement died in her eyes.

I could only assume Jesse had died at someone else's hands since he looked pretty damned healthy to me. Chances were he'd been a victim of one of those bullet holes downstairs. Nice of Andy to frame it for posterity's sake.

"Yeah...i now have an urge to fill up that bullet. Blimey Jesse must feel terrible seeing it each time he visits"

And now this extremely nice-looking ghost looked as if he were going to kiss me. Well, who was I to stop him.

So I sort of leaned my head back and looked out at him from underneath my eyelids, and sort of let my mouth get all relaxed, you know?

"I don't think I want to hear this" Jake muttered.

And that's when I noticed his attention wasn't focused anywhere near my lips, but way below them.

"WHAT?!"

And not my chest either, which would have been an ok second.

"No it wouldn't have been an ok second because that would mean he was a pervert"

"You're bleeding" he said.

Well that pretty much spoiled the moment.

Helen deflated with disappointment and the brothers sighed in relief of not hearing about Suze's supposed first kiss.

My eyes popped wide open at that remark.

"I am not" I said automatically since I didn't feel any pain. Then I looked down. There were smallish stains flowering on the pavement below my feet. You couldn't tell what colour they were because it was so dark. In the moonlight they looked black. There were similar dark stains, I saw with horror, on the front of Jesse's shirt.

"Oooh" Brad winced in sympathy.

"Ye-ouch" Jake agreed.

"Oh my poor baby!"

But they were definitely coming from me. I checked myself out and found that I'd managed to open what was probably one of the smallest by still fairly important veins in my wrist.

Helen hissed. "She should have gotten it checked out at hospital"

I'd peeled off my gloves and stuffed them in my pockets while I'd been talking to Heather, and in my haste to escape during her fit of rage, I'd forgotten to put them back on. I'd probably sliced myself on the broken glass still littering the window sill in Mr Walden's classroom when I'd vaulted up on to it during my escape.

"Ah so that's why the carpet got all cut up by the police"

Which just proved my theory that it's always on the way out that you get stuck.

"Suze, it's not the time to do the I was right dance!"

"Suze isn't lame enough to do that dance. Only you are Brad and even then you never do it"

"Oh" I said, watching the blood ooze out. I couldn't think of anything else to say but, "what a mess. I'm sorry about your shirt"

"It's nothing" Jesse reached into one of the pockets of his dark, narrow-fitting trousers and pulled out something white and soft that he wrapped round my wrist a few times, then tied into place like a tourniquet, only not as tight. He didn't say anything as he did this, concentrating on what he was doing. I have to say this was the first time a ghost had ever performed first aid on me. Not quite as interesting as a kiss would have been, but not entirely boring either.

Helen squealed. "See romance is blooming already! Hang on what do you mean this is the first time a ghost had ever performed first aid on you?! Why isn't Peter taking care of you?"

"There" he said when he finished. "Does that hurt?"

"No" I said, since it didn't. It wouldn't start hurting, I knew from experience, for a few hours. I cleared my throat. "Thanks"

"It's nothing" he said.

"No" I said. Suddenly, ridiculously, I felt like crying. Really. And I never cry. "I mean it. Thanks. Thanks for coming out here to help me. You shouldn't have done it. I mean, I'm glad you did. And...Well, thanks. That's all"

"Ooh that gotta hurt. Actually thanking someone while almost crying. Good job Suze you're halfway to being human"

"Brad, quit the smart arse comments or I'll send you in the corner again"

He looked embarrassed. Well I suppose that was natural, me going all mushy on him the way I just then. But I couldn't help it. I mean, I still couldn't really believe it. No ghost had ever been so nice to me. Oh, my dad tried, I guess. But he wasn't exactly what you call reliable about it. I could never really count on him, especially in a crisis.

"Hmmm...Well if I ever see him again I shall strangle him!"

But Jesse. Jesse had come through for me. And I hadn't even asked him to. In fact, I'd been pretty unpleasant to him, overall.

"Yep! Jesse must have been dropped on his head as a baby or something"

"Ok that's it. Brad corner until the end of the next chapter"

Brad grumbled as he crawled back into his corner and sat there, back turned away from them as he sulked.

"Never mind" was all he said, though. And then he added. "Let's go home"

"And that is the end" Andy said passing the book to Helen. "Your turn darling"