The Mediator 6: Twilight

by Meg Cabot

  An all-too-familiar smile crept across those lips I knew so well. "I can take care of myself, Miss Susannah," he said. "I am not afraid of Felix Diego."

  I couldn’t believe what was happening right before my eyes.

  "Well, you should be!" I practically screamed. "Considering that he kills you!"

  "Ah," Jesse said. "But if I understand you correctly, that was before you came to warn me . . . for which I thank you."

  I couldn’t believe how badly this was going.

  "Jesse," I said, making one last desperate attempt to reason with him. "You can’t spend the night in that house. Do you understand? It’s way, way too dangerous."

  But Jesse surprised me. Well, why not? He always had.

  "I understand," he said.

  "You do?" I stared at him. "Really? Then you’ll go?"

  "No," he said, "I won’t go."

  "But—"

  "I will stay here," he said, nodding to indicate the loft. "With you. Until morning."

  I gaped at him.

  "Here?" I echoed. "Here . . . in the barn?"

  "With you," Jesse said.

  "With me?"

  "Yes," he said.

  It took me until that moment to realize what he was doing. Here I was, traveling back 150 years to protect him—well, now that’s what I was doing, anyway—and he was trying to protect me.

  That was just so pure Jesse that I almost started to cry. Really.

  But only almost.

  Because his next question distracted me. "I have to ask, though. . . . Why?" His dark-eyed gaze raked my face.

  "Why what?" I murmured, hypnotized as ever, by his gaze on mine.

  "Why did you do this—come all this way—to warn me about Diego?"

  Because I love you.

  Four simple words. Four simple words that there was no way I could say. Not to this Jesse, who was virtually a stranger to me. He already thought I was nuts. I didn’t want to make things even worse.

  "Because it isn’t right, what happened to you. That’s all." That’s what I started to say, anyway, when a man’s voice called, "Senor de Silva?"

  And let’s just say that it wasn’t Mr. O’Neil.

  chapter seventeen

  I felt the blood in my veins run cold.

  I knew that voice. Knew it only too well. The man who owned it had tried to kill me once.

  "It’s him," I whispered. Unnecessarily, of course, since Jesse obviously knew perfectly well who it was.

  Jesse stood up and moved from the shadows that had cloaked his face. He wore an expression, I was relieved to see, of intense distrust. He was starting to believe me now.

  "Who’s there?" he called, lifting the lantern and turning a knob that brought what had been a tiny flame to a more powerful one.

  The man below said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand. Except tor the last two words. And they were easy enough for even me to decipher.

  Felix Diego.

  This is it, I thought. There was no going back now.

  Jesse said something in Spanish to Diego, who replied in tones that, though I could not understand the words he spoke, sounded too silky-smooth to be trustworthy. He appeared to be inviting Jesse to do something.

  And Jesse, for his part, was clearly declining.

  "Well?" I whispered anxiously when the conversation ended and I heard Diego finally leave.

  Jesse held up a hand, though, clearly not as convinced as I was that the man was well and truly gone.

  Then, as the evening turned irrevocably to night and I could no longer see beyond the golden rays shooting out from the lamp Jesse held, he said, "It was Felix Diego. He said his master—Maria’s father—had sent him to see that I had everything I needed to be comfortable and to escort me on the remainder of my journey tomorrow."

  "Has Maria’s father ever done that when you’ve come to visit before?" I asked.

  "No" was Jesse’s terse reply to that question.

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I told him that I was fine," Jesse said. He was answering my questions, but it was clear from the expression on his face that his mind was a thousand miles away. He was putting the extraordinary tales I’d been telling him together with what had just happened, and not liking what he was coming up with.

  "I told him I’d be here all night," he went on. "Because my horse was sick. He said my horse looked fine to him and suggested I join him outside for a bottle—"

  I sucked in my breath. "You didn’t say yes, did you?"

  "Of course not." For the first time, Jesse seemed really to see me as he looked at me. "I think you’re right. I think he does mean to kill me."

  I didn’t reply with a hearty Told you so, because what would have been the point? Besides, Jesse looked upset enough. Not upset really—stunned. And something else, too. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. . . .

  At least, not until a second later, when I heard footsteps scrape for a second time on the ladder to the loft. Thinking it was Diego returning, I started toward the ladder, ready to fling the guy’s soul back to kingdom come. . . .

  But Jesse stepped in front of me, throwing out an arm to stop me from coming any closer.

  And I realized what that "something" was that I’d seen in his eye.

  But it turned out the person climbing toward us wasn’t Felix Diego after all.

  "Oh, great," Paul said, when he finally pulled himself up to the top of the ladder and saw us. "Oh, this is just great. What’s he doing here?" Paul was glaring at Jesse, who glared right back.

  "He just found me, Paul," I said. I didn’t mention the part where I’d sort of made him find me.

  Paul just glared at Jesse some more. If he noticed how different Jesse looked alive than he did dead, he didn’t exactly mention it.

  Jesse, for his part, simply nodded to Paul and asked me, "Is this him? The man who tied you up?"

  I should have said no, of course. I should have seen what was coming.

  But I didn’t think. I just went, "Yeah, that’s him."

  It wasn’t until I saw Jesse’s hands clench into fists that I realized what I’d done. "No, wait!" I started to cry.

  But it was too late. Jesse had launched himself at Paul like a linebacker, tackling him to the floor of the hayloft, and causing an enormous crash that sent the horses below whinnying and thumping around in their stalls.

  "Stop it!" I cried, darting forward and trying separate them.

  But it was like trying to pull apart a couple of mountains.

  Paul, at least, wasn’t as into the fight as Jesse was, since I could hear him crying, "Get him off me! Suze, get him off—"

  On the word off, Jesse let go of his own accord and backed away, breathing hard. His shirt had gotten unbuttoned a little in the melee, and I caught a glimpse of his strong hard abs. It was impossible, even given the gravity of the situation, not to appreciate the sight.

  "What the—" Paul scrambled up from the hay, brushing bits of it off him. "God, Suze. What did you tell him about me? Doesn’t he know I’m the good guy here? You’re the one who was going to let him get—"

  "He knows," I interrupted, quickly.

  Paul quit brushing himself and sent me a quizzical look. "He knows?" he echoed. "As in . . . knows knows?"

  "He knows," I repeated grimly.

  "Well," Paul said, looking intrigued. "What brought about that little change of heart? I thought—"

  "That was before," I said quickly.

  "Before what?" Paul found a piece of straw in his hair and pulled it out.

  "Before I saw him," I said softly, not looking at either of them.

  Paul didn’t say anything—which for him was unusual. Jesse, of course, didn’t know what we were talking about. He was still mad at Paul for tying me up.

  "I don’t know if it’s considered normal in the time you come from to leave women bound and gagged," Jesse said severely. "But in this day and age, allow me to assure you that such behavior would generally land a
gentleman in jail."

  Jesse said the word gentleman like it was the last thing he actually thought Paul was.

  Paul just looked at him. "You know," he said. "I think I like your ghost better."

  I felt it wise to change the subject. "He’s here," I said to Paul. "Felix Diego, I mean."

  "I know," Paul said. "I followed him back here."

  "I thought you were going to get rid of him!"

  "Yeah, well, I couldn’t just walk up to him and suck out his soul in front of everyone."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I would’ve gotten shot, that’s why not."

  "But you could just have shifted back to the future—"

  "Uh, and left you tied up in Mrs. O’Neil’s hayloft? I don’t think so. I’d have had to come back and rescue you." His gaze shifted toward Jesse’s. "I didn’t know, of course, that Prince Charming here had come along and done it for me."

  "So what are we going to do?" I asked. Paul looked at Jesse.

  "Well," he said. "What does Wonderboy want to do?"

  "Wonderboy?" Jesse glared menacingly in Paul’s direction. "Is this person a friend of mine in the future?" he asked me.

  "No," I said to Jesse. To Paul I said, "I tried to get him to leave, but he won’t go."

  Paul looked at Jesse. "Buddy," he said. "I’m not telling you this because I like you. Believe me. But if you stay here, you’re gonna get iced. Simple as that. That Diego guy? He means business."

  "I’m not afraid of him," Jesse said as if we were morons for not believing him.

  "See what I mean?" I said, to Paul.

  "Great." Paul sat down on a hay bale, looking pained. "This is just great. So when Diego comes to kill him, he can take a crack at you and me, too."

  I opened my mouth to insist this wouldn’t happen, but Jesse interrupted.

  "If you think I would leave you alone with her again," he said, his gaze never wavering from Paul’s face, "you don’t know me at all in this future you speak of."

  "Don’t worry," Paul said, holding up a hand wearily. "I wouldn’t expect anything else from you, Jesse. Well, that’s it then." Paul leaned back in the hay, making himself more comfortable. "We wait. And if he comes back, thinking you’ve fallen asleep and he can do the job out here, we take him."

  "No." Jesse’s jaw was set. He didn’t raise his voice. Not at all. His tone was hard as steel, however. "I will take him."

  "Uh, no offense," Paul said, "but Suze and I, we came here especially just to—"

  "I said I’ll do it," Jesse said in that same ice-cold voice—the one I had come to recognize as the voice Jesse used only when he was truly angry about something. "I’m the one he’s come to kill. I am the one who will stop him."

  Paul and I exchanged glances. Then Paul sighed, lifted the horse blanket, and stretched out across the hay in a dark corner of the loft.

  "Fine," he said. "Wake me when it’s time to shift home."

  And to my utter disbelief, he closed his eyes and seemed to doze off.

  I glanced at Jesse and saw that he was eyeing Paul with distaste. When he noticed the direction of my gaze, he asked, his tone less hard than before, "You two are friends in the place you come from?"

  "Uh," I said. "Not really. More like . . . colleagues. We both have the same . . . gift, I guess you’d call it."

  "For traveling through time," Jesse said.

  "Yes," I said. "And . . . other things."

  "And when I kill Diego"—I noticed he said when and not if—"you’ll go back where you came from?"

  "Yes," I said, trying not to think about how incredibly hard that moment was going to be.

  "And you want to help me," Jesse said, just as quietly as I’d spoken to him, "because . . . ?"

  I realized I hadn’t actually answered his question the first time he’d asked it. In the soft glow of the lamp—he’d turned the flame down to make sure Diego really did think he was sleeping, so he could take him unawares—Jesse had never looked as handsome as he did then. Because, of course, he’d never been alive any other time I’d seen him. His brown eyes looked soft, the lashes around them dark as the shadows all through the loft. His lips—those strong, soft lips that hadn’t kissed mine nearly as often as I’d have liked, and, in all likelihood, never would again—looked hypnotically appealing. I had to tear my gaze from them and keep it instead on a threadbare spot on the knee of my jeans.

  "Because it’s what I do," I said, only something was happening in my throat, making the words come out more huskily than I’d intended them to.

  I coughed.

  "And you do this—" Jesse seemed to mean travel back through time to warn potential murder victims of their impending doom. "—for all who die before their time?"

  "Uh, not exactly," I said. "Yours is kind of . . . a special case."

  "And are all girls from your time," Jesse went on, thoughtfully, apparently not noticing my discomfort or my fascination with his mouth, "like you?"

  "Like me? Like . . . that they’re mediators?"

  "No." Jesse shook his head. "Unafraid, like you. Brave, like you."

  I smiled a little ruefully. "I’m not brave, Jesse," I said.

  "You’re staying here," he said, indicating the loft. "Even though you know—or think you know—something terrible is going to happen."

  "Well, sure," I said. "Because that’s the whole reason I came. To make sure it doesn’t. Although, to be truthful . . ." I threw a cautious glance at Paul, in case—and he probably was—he was listening. "—really I came here to stop him. Paul, I mean. From stopping Diego. Because you see, if you don’t die tonight, you and I—in the future, where I come from—will never meet. And I couldn’t bear to let that happen. And you even—in the future—said you didn’t want that to happen. Only . . . only . . . here I am, letting it happen. So you see, I’m not brave at all."

  I doubt he’d understood a word I’d said. It didn’t matter, though. It was as close to an apology as the Jesse I had known and loved was going to get. And I felt I owed him one. An apology. For what I had done.

  Which was destroy everything we’d had together.

  "I think you’re wrong," Jesse said. About my not being brave.

  But what did he know about any of it, really?

  I just smiled at him.

  Which is when I heard it.

  chapter eighteen

  Don’t ask me how. I wasn’t born with superheating or anything. I just . . . heard it.

  The scrape of the barn door.

  And Jesse, over by the ladder, froze. He had heard it, too. A second later, I saw Paul sit up. He hadn’t been sleeping. Not at all.

  We waited in tense silence, each of us hardly daring to breathe.

  Then I heard another scrape. This time, it was of a boot on a ladder rung.

  Diego. It had to be. Diego was coming to kill Jesse.

  Jesse must have sensed my unease, since he lifted a single hand toward me, palm out, in the universal signal for "Stay." He wanted Paul and me to leave Diego to him.

  Yeah. Right.

  And then I saw them—Diego’s head and shoulders, looming massive and black against the lighter dark of the rest of the barn. His head was turned in the direction of Jesse’s supine form—he didn’t see anything else.

  Slowly, obviously fearful of waking his prey, Diego climbed into the loft, his footfalls softened by all the hay. As he crept closer and closer—now he was five feet away . . . now four . . . now three—I leaned forward, ready to pounce. I had no idea what I was going to do to stop him. He was not a small man, and I’m no black belt. But shifting definitely came to mind.

  Paul had his hand on me now, though, holding on to the sleeve of my motorcycle jacket, keeping me back so that Jesse could have a chance at taking care of the problem himself. Funny how in this one thing, Paul should be on Jesse’s side, when he’d never taken Jesse’s side on any other occasion.

  One foot. Diego was now one foot from Jesse’s supposedly sleeping form. He reached f
or something at his waist—his belt. I saw the gleam of his buckle . . . the same buckle that, in my own time, had somehow ended up in the attic . . .

  Then, just as Diego had wrapped both ends of the belt around either fist and yanked the part in the middle taut, to use as a kind of garrote, Jesse’s voice, cool and assured, cut through the silence.

  In Spanish. He said something in Spanish.

  Why? Why had I taken French and not Spanish?

  Diego, caught totally off guard, stumbled back a step.

  I couldn’t stand it.

  "What did he say?" I hissed at Paul.

  Paul, not looking too happy about playing translator, said, "He said, 'So it IS true.' Now shut up so I can hear."

  Diego recovered nicely, however. He didn’t lower the hands that clutched the belt. Instead, he said something.

  In Spanish.

  This time, Paul didn’t need any urging.

  "He said, 'So you know. Yes, it’s true. I’m here to kill you.'"

  Jesse said something else. The only word I recognized was a name.

  "He said, 'Maria sent you?'"

  Diego laughed. Then he nodded. Then he lunged.

  I don’t think I screamed. I know I sucked in a ton of air and was going to let it out in a shriek. But I found myself holding my breath instead. Because Jesse, instead of rolling out from under Diego, as I would have done, rose up to meet his assailant.

  The two men teetered dangerously on the edge of the hayloft floor, just before the twelve-foot drop to the ground below. It was hard to see exactly what was happening in the semidarkness, but one thing was certain: Diego had the advantage, weight-wise.

  Now Paul and I were on our feet, completely unnoticed by the two men struggling at the edge of the loft. I tried to rush forward to help, but again Paul wouldn’t let me.

  "It’s a fair fight," he said to me.

  But when, a second later, the two men broke apart, and Diego threw aside his belt with a chuckle, I saw that there was nothing fair about the fight at all. Because Diego had suddenly produced a knife. It gleamed wickedly in the light from the lantern, sitting on the loft floor a few feet away from them.

  Now the air in my lungs came out in a rush. "Jesse!" I shrieked. "Knife!"

  Diego whirled. "Who’s there?" he asked in English.