Yoyo!

Toldja I'd update soon, didn't I?

Now, for those luverly reviewers to whom I couldn't reply via email, but whom I lub verra verra much:

Morri: Hola! Hehehe, I like the 'squishy' description. As for the almost-liking Paul thing - I SHALL convert you. Maybe. Depends if I decide I like him or not... Moowahahahaa ;)

gyvenska: I'M BACK! How cool is that? Too cool, too cool. I'm pleased at your speechlessness. And I can totally relate to the diary thing - my mum used to actually QUOTE things I'd written back to me, in really UNSUBTLE ways. So then I wrote purposefully sneaky things like, "And my mum NEVER buys me enough clothes", trying to get mum to take the hint. Didn't work. Hope you enjoy this chappie as much as the others, mi amica ;)

Beware of Bewulf: HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA! I'm sorry, clearly I didn't have enough imagination to think up such an idea for Paul to come to life. Either that, or I'm not as SEX-OBSESSED as you! HAHHAHA! I lub it. Oh, man. That has so totally made my evening. Genius. Maybe I'll write another story... Lol, you are way too hilariously messed up. You HAVE to review again, simply because you're nuts, and it's fantabulous. Hahahha. I'll try to get more steamyness in ;)

Lane: I lub being lubbed for my fluff. Because I lub ALL fluff. Oh, man, I so feel the same when I go on Fanfic. I have to hide the window whenever my mum or bro or dad walk in the room. And then I have to delete the website from the History... Anal, I know, but I'm simply paranoid. ;)

Anna: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So not getting rid of that 'abomination'. Even your lub is not worth that. Hehehehe. It had to be done. It HAD to be done. Surely you see that? Hope the rude bits in the previous chappie didn't alert you to the fact that I'm not a good girl. BECAUSE I AM. Please don't judge me...

FINALLY!The time has come!

Will Suze, or won't she?

Is Paul worth the ultimate sacrifice?

Will someone come to save her, in the nick of time, or has her fate already been written?

And, more importantly, WILL THERE BE ANY MORE HANKY-PANKY?

Stay tuned...


By the time it was a quarter to three in the morning, the butterflies in my stomach had managed to do a seriously good job about destroying it. It felt as though they'd damn well eaten it.

The drowning silence, except for the lulling of the waves, had done nothing to calm the fluttery nerves dancing through my system like thousands of tiny electric shocks.

I decided it was time to call Paul.

I hadn't told him any of my plans of what I was going to do tonight because I knew he wouldn't agree.

Well, I semi-knew. I fully knew he didn't want me to kill myself for him, so from that I gathered he wouldn't be totally supportive of my idea.

That's why I'd left it to the last – I consulted my watch – fourteen minutes before I called him here.

There hadn't been anything to prepare – no chicken blood or voodoo candle arrangements this time – so instead for the last couple of hours I'd done a lot of deep breathing. I might as well enjoy that privilege why I still have it.

For the last twenty minutes I'd bitten off all of my newly-manicured nails.

For the last ten minutes I'd said a prayer for every member of my family – friends included.

For the last five minutes I'd practiced what I was going to say to Jesse when I appeared to him in my new ghostly image,

For the last two minutes I'd wondered if maybe I should have chosen a more comfortable outfit to die in – my skirt was flapping almost indecently in the wind; my boots were sinking into the sand at painful angles; and my hair was whipping at my face in a really nasty way that I knew was leaving my cheeks and nose an uncomplimentary shade of red.

With one hand holding my frantic hair, I cupped my other hand around my mouth and shouted, "Paul!"

Then I waited.

For, like, a second. The guy really was desperate – he must have been sitting right next to that spectral telephone to answer so quickly.

"You beckoned, my sweet?" Paul stood about a meter in front of me, hands on hips and smirk on lips. Then he took a look around. "Um, Suze? What the hell are we doing on the beach at a quarter to three in the morning?"

I blew out a breath. Here goes.

"I found out a way to save you," was all I said. After all, I didn't want him disappearing on me before I could perform this show, did I? I figured I could stall him by getting him to keep asking me questions – like in the movies, when the girl's being held hostage waiting for her handsome hero to save her by asking really insane questions like, "Do you really think you'll get away with this?" or saying really stupid things like, "You can still get away with this, you still have a chance to go to heaven, don't end it like this!" Okay, so I don't like action movies all that much. Sue me.

Paul's face instantly lit up. "You did? Way to go, Suze!" He gave me a fierce hug, then took a step back, his hands still clutching my shoulders. "Wait." A frown appeared on his brow. "Does it have something to do with the time and place of our current situation?"

I took his hands in mine and brought them round in between us, like the Book of the Dead had drawn. Paul didn't notice because I'd kept my eyes locked on his while I told him: "The time, yes. The place, no."

Paul quirked an eyebrow. "Okay. What's so special about a quarter to three in the morning?"

I stole a glance at my watch, again without Paul noticing. I couldn't let him discover I needed to hold his hands for this to work in case he caught on for some reason, I tried to break away. "Actually, it's more like ten to three, now."

Paul nodded, waiting for me to say more. When I didn't, he inquired, with a little less patience, "Well, what's so special about a ten to three, then?"

"Nothing," I said.

This time Paul's eyes narrowed and I knew that little bit of patience had run out. "Suze…" he growled warningly.

"It's actually precisely three am that's important." I kept my sentences short to keep him talking, trying to desperately pass the time until show time without Paul catching on to anything dodgy, such as me concentrating all my life energy on him.

"Damn it, Suze, why the hell is 'precisely three am'" – I did not appreciate the mimicking, can I just say? – "so special?"

"Because that's when night and day meet, so that it's neither daytime or nighttime at that specific time. This means our mediator powers have more strength because a special door is opened between our world and the spectral world, or the underworld, or wherever. Whatever. I'm not that good on the details of this whole thing."

Another peek at my watch – five minutes to go.

Paul's frown became less irate and more confused. "How do you know all this?"

"I did a little light reading from the Book of the Dead."

Paul's eyebrows lifted all the way to his hairline so fast it was like they moved there using ghost powers. "Oh, yeah? And what did the Book of the Dead tell you I have to do to get out of this?"

"Well," I said, and shifted my footing for better balance – you know, in case anything went boom, or something, "first, it told me to wait until three in the morning."

"I got that much, Suze."

"Okay, then it said I have to hold your hands like…this." I moved our linked hands up into the prayer position together.

Paul's frown came back. "Hold it a second, Suze. What part do you have in all of this?"

I glanced at the watch again – thirty seconds.

"Oh, you know. I'm just here to help you keep your balance. Supernatural powers can be very turbulent and unpredictable things, I hear."

But Paul's frown was still suspicious. "Suze, what exactly is going on here?" He tried to yank his hands away, but I gripped them more firmly.

Don't ask me how a guy who probably weighed seventy to eighty pounds more than me couldn't find the strength to pull away from me; I guess that adrenalin I had shooting through my veins was giving me some superhuman powers.

Well, more superhuman powers, if you're going to be picky and count the whole "I see dead people" thing.

"What's going on here, Paul," I said calmly, ignoring his struggles and panicked yelling, "is I'm going to save your life." With one last, deep breath, I said, "Tell my family I love them, Paul."

Paul's anguished scream of "NOOOOOOO!" ripped through my heart, but I lifted my head to the sky and closed my eyes instead of reacting like I wanted to – by running far, far away.

Shutting out every sound and feeling, I concentrated solely on the connection of my hands to Paul's. I concentrated on the rhythmic pounding of my heart. On the sparkling aura I could feel around me that represented my life force.

I could feel my aura brightening, growing, and I could feel the power inside of me heating and boiling. It raced through my bloodstream like water down a hosepipe. I felt sharp tingles of awareness all over my body – suddenly the wind was buffeting me more ferociously, suddenly the tangy, salty smell of the sea was erupting in my nose.

An overwhelming sense of frustration overcame me – you know that feeling when you've just eaten a pound of candy, and the sugar high is zinging through you, but you have no outlet for all that energy? Well, I felt like that. Except multiplied by a hundred thousand million.

It felt as though, if I didn't get rid of all this energy ricocheting inside of me like a hundred tiny bullets of solid heat, if I didn't get rid of all those bullets, I would die. My heart and mind and body would just explode.

Man, I needed to get rid of that energy.

I could feel a scream building in my throat, rumbling from the very heart of me. The rest of my body felt ice cold except for my heart, which was thudding harder, faster, almost as if it was bouncing off my ribcage to my spine and then back again. My freezing hands clasped Paul's struggling ones in a painfully tight grip, but I didn't hear his grunt of pain and I didn't see him sink to his knees.

All I knew was that there was something alive inside of me. Something bigger and brighter than I could have ever imagined was clamoring to escape from inside me, and I had to let it.

It was building and building and building and…

And then something in side of me seemed to heave me, heart first, towards Paul. It was as if someone had hooked an anchor between my ribs, and had suddenly yanked me forward.

I braced myself against Paul's hands before I fell over him, so that my body formed an arc, starting at where our hands met and going to where my back curved towards the sky, ending at where my feet were planted wide apart, sinking giant holes into the sand as the force of what was happening pushed me downwards.

All the while I kept my head tilted to the sky, my neck straining, my eyes screwed tightly shut, my lips open in a soundless scream.

I felt ten feet tall. I felt huge and powerful and destructive. I felt invincible.

I had no notion of the tornado of sand that was whirling frenetically around Paul and I – with Paul still kneeling on the floor, frozen in a perverted parody of a man begging his god for forgiveness on his knees, with his back arched as inwards as mine was arched outwards, his hands braced against mine and his head thrown back.

I had no notion of the blinding light that was emanating from our joined hands – of the starlight trickles of light that had replaced the blood in my, flowing towards our joined hands, feeding the glowing ball that was growing there.

What I did have a notion of was feeling my invincibility draining away, leaving me mortal and frail and small.

I could feel my life slipping away, even as my head screamed and screamed for it to come back. But my body wouldn't – couldn't – move.

And all the while, my mind kept on screaming.

Until I didn't have the energy for even that. Until my thoughts shut down and my limbs turned to rubber.

As I began to sink, lifeless, to the ground, Paul's and my hands broke apart, and the connection was gone.

Through a slit between my eyelids and the bottom of my eyes, I watched as the blinding light shot towards Paul, into Paul, throwing him meters backwards like a rag doll thrown by a fed up child.

My mind sparked with something for an instant, but it was so quick and so feeble that I couldn't tell what it was, or what it meant.

I dimly registered the sand storm had fallen, showers of sand dropping to the floor as lifelessly as Paul and I had. The ball of light was gone too. Or… no, that wasn't right. I could see light, through my blurred and darkened vision, I could see Paul's crumpled body glowing, rising upwards. It was as though a giant hand had grabbed Paul's middle, and was gently lifting him upwards.

It's God, I stupidly thought. God's taking him home. He'll take me next.

And then Paul's body stretched, violently, and twitched, and I didn't want God to take me home. I watched as Paul's back straightened, as all his limbs straightened in a sudden, sharp motion that flung his body into a wide, cruel star shape. I saw the glow being sucked into his body by an invisible vacuum, laying itself through him like a blanket of light and warmth.

And all the while Paul was screaming.

But that didn't mean anything to me. None of it meant anything to me. How could it, when I didn't know what was happening? Or why? Or who I even was?

Then Paul's body dropped like a falling bird and he landed heavily on the sand, his body no longer glowing or rigid.

And that's when I felt my heart stop.


Uh oh.

She's in trouble. With no way out...

REVIEW-ME, or I'm so notupdating.

All those people who only read-me, take a chance, and REVIEW-ME. Come on. I won't bite. You don't even have to say anything. Simply type 'lub', and I shall feel it. The lub, I mean. Sheesh. Sickos.