by Meg Cabot
The distraction gave Jesse just enough time to pull from his boot his own knife . . . the one he’d used to cut me loose from Paul’s ropes.
"Okay, that’s it," I said when I saw this. "Somebody’s going to get—"
"That’s what we want," Paul said, keeping a firmer grip on me than ever. "So long as it’s the right guy."
I couldn’t understand what Paul was doing, what he was thinking. Jesse and Diego were circling each other warily now, coming within inches with every other step of the loft ledge. We could stop it. We could stop it so easily. Why wasn’t he—
Then it hit me. Was Paul on Diego’s side? Was this whole thing some kind of weird setup? Had he really failed to find Diego during the day or had he only pretended to go and look for him, so he could have the pleasure of watching Jesse die later? Because that could be the only reason he’d have gone to these elaborate lengths—so that he could watch Jesse die—
I wrenched myself free of him.
"You want Jesse to die," I shrieked at him. "You want him to, don’t you?"
Paul looked at me like I was nuts. "Are you kidding? The whole reason I came back was to make sure he didn’t."
"Then why aren’t you helping him?"
"I don’t need—" Jesse ducked as Diego took a swing at him. "—any help!"
"Who are those people?" Diego snarled, lunging at Jesse again.
"No one," Jesse said. "Pay no attention to them. This is between you and me."
"See?" Paul said to me, not without some self-righteousness. "Would you chill?"
But how could I, when I was standing there watching my boyfriend—okay, well, he wasn’t exactly my boyfriend, yet—in a struggle for his life? I stood there, my heart in my mouth, barely able to breathe, watching the flash of cold hard metal as the two men circled each other. . . .
And then it happened. Diego suddenly reached behind him, and in a flash had grabbed hold of—
Me.
I was caught so off guard, I couldn’t think. All I knew was that one minute I was standing there next to Paul, barely able to watch what was happening, I was so scared .
. . . and the next, I was in the middle of it, an arm crushing my throat as Diego held me in front of him, the tip of his silver blade at my neck.
"Drop the knife," he said to Jesse. He was standing so close to me, I could feel his voice reverberating through his body. "Or the girl dies."
I saw Jesse blanch. But he never hesitated. He dropped his knife.
Paul screamed, "Suze! Shift!"
It took me a second to realize what he meant. Diego was touching me. Diego was touching me. All I had to do was picture that hallway I hated so much—that way station between existences—and he and I would both be transported there . . .
. . . and we’d be rid of him forever.
But before I could so much as close my eyes, Diego threw me away from him and lunged at Jesse. I tried to scream as I fell, but my throat was so sore from the force with which he’d held me, nothing came out.
I didn’t fall from the loft, however. Instead, I fell against something metal—and glass. Something that broke beneath my weight. Something that soaked the straw beneath me.
Something that burst into flames.
The lantern. I’d fallen on the lantern, and broken it. And set the hay on fire.
The flames broke out more quickly than I ever could have imagined they would. Suddenly, I was separated from the others by a wall of orange. I could see them standing on the other side, Paul staring at me in dumb horror, while Jesse and Diego—
Well, Jesse was trying to keep Diego from plunging a knife into his heart.
"Paul," I shrieked. "Help him! Help Jesse!"
But Paul just stood there looking at me for some reason. It was Jesse who finally broke Diego’s grip on him. Jesse who twisted the arm that held the knife until Diego, with a cry of pain, let go of it. And Jesse who hauled off and struck Diego with a blow to the face that sent him reeling—
Right over the ledge.
I heard his body hit the barn floor, heard the unmistakable snap of breaking bones . . . breaking neck bones.
The horses heard it as well. They whinnied shrilly and kicked at the doors to their stalls. They could smell the smoke.
So, I realized, could the O’Neils. I heard shouts coming from outside the barn.
"You did it," I cried, gazing at a panting Jesse through the smoke and fire. "You killed him!"
"Suze." Paul was still staring at me. "Suze."
"He did it, Paul!" I couldn’t believe it. "He’s going to live." To Jesse, I said, joyfully, "You’re going to live!"
Jesse didn’t look too happy about it, though. He said, "Susannah. Stay where you are."
Then I saw what he meant. The fire had completely cut me off from the rest of the loft. Even from the ledge. I was cornered by flames. And smoke. Smoke that was getting so thick, I could barely see them.
No wonder Paul had been staring at me. I was caught in a fire trap.
"Suze," Paul said. But his voice sounded faint. Then he cried, "Jesse, no—"
But it was too late. Because the next thing I knew, a large object hurtled at me through the smoke and flame—hit me, as a matter of fact, and knocked me to the ground. It took me a second to realize the object was Jesse and that he’d wrapped himself in the horse blanket I’d slept under the night before. . . .
A horse blanket that was now smoldering.
"Come on," Jesse said, throwing down the blanket, then grabbing my hand and pulling me back to my feet. "We haven’t much time."
"Suze!" I heard Paul yelling. I could no longer see him, the smoke was so thick.
"Get down," Jesse yelled to Paul. "Get down and help them with the horses."
But Paul didn’t appear to be listening.
"Suze," he yelled. "Shift! Do it now! It’s your only chance!"
Jesse had turned and was kicking at the planks that made up the closest wall. The boards shuddered under the assault.
Shift? My mind seemed to be working only murkily, maybe due to all the smoke. But it didn’t seem like I could shift just then. What about Jesse? I couldn’t leave Jesse. I hadn’t gone to all this trouble to save him from Diego just to have him die in a barn fire.
"Suze," Paul yelled once more. "Shift! I’m doing it, too. I’ll meet you on the other side!"
Other side? What was he talking about? Was he insane?
Oh, right. He was Paul. Of course he was insane.
I heard a crash. Then Jesse was taking my hand.
"We’re going to have to jump," he said, his face very close to mine.
I felt something cool lick my face. Air. Fresh air. I turned my head and saw that Jesse had kicked out enough boards in the barn wall for a person to squeeze through. It was dark through that hole. But lifting my face a little to better feel the deliriously cool breeze, I saw stars in the night sky.
"Do you understand me, Susannah?" Jesse’s face was very close to mine. Close enough to kiss me. Why didn’t he kiss me? "We’ll jump together, on the count of three."
I felt him reach out and grab me by the waist, bringing me close to him. Well, that was better. Much better for kissing—
"One . . ."
I could feel his heart drumming hard against mine. Only how was that possible? Jesse’s heart had stopped beating 150 years ago.
"Two . . ."
Hot flames were licking mv heels. I was so hot. Why didn’t he hurry up and kiss me already?
"Three . . ."
And then we were flying through the air. Not because he was kissing me, I realized. No, because we were really flying through the air.
And as if the fresh cool wind had cleared the smoke from my brain, I realized what was happening. Jesse and I were hurtling toward the ground, which looked extremely far away.
And so I did the only thing I could. I clung to him, closed my eyes, and thought of home.
chapter nineteen
I landed with such force, all the
wind was knocked out of me. It was like being hit in the back with a railroad tie—which has actually happened to me before, so I would know. I lay there, completely stunned, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything but be aware of the pain.
Then, slowly, consciousness returned. I could move my legs. This was a good sign. I could move my arms. Also good. Breathing returned—painfully, but there, none the less.
Then I heard it.
Crickets.
Not the shrieks of horses as they protested being dragged from their burning stalls. Not the roaring of fire all around me. Not even my own labored breathing.
But crickets, chirping away like they had nothing better to do.
I opened my eyes.
And instead of smoke and fire and burning barn, all I saw were stars, hundreds of them, glowing coldly millions of miles away.
I turned my head.
And saw my house.
Not Mrs. O’Neil’s boardinghouse, either. But my house. I was in the backyard. I could see the deck Andy had built. Someone had left the lights on in the hot tub.
Home. I was home.
And I was alive. Barely, but alive.
And I was not alone. Suddenly, someone was kneeling beside me, blocking my view of the hot tub lights, and saying my name.
"Suze? Suze, are you all right?"
Paul was tugging on me, pushing me in places that hurt. I tried to slap his hands away, but he just kept doing it until finally I said, "Paul, quit it!"
"You’re okay." He sank down into the grass beside me. His face in the moonlight looked pale. And relieved. "Thank God. You weren’t moving before."
"I’m fine," I said.
Then remembered that I wasn’t. Because . . . Jesse . . . I had lost Jesse. We had saved him, so that I could lose him forever. Pain—much worse pain than I’d felt during my landing on the cold hard ground—gripped me like a vise.
Jesse. He was gone. Gone for good . . .
Except . . .
Except if that were true, why did I remember him?
I rose up onto my elbows, ignoring the jolt of pain that rose from my ribs when I did so.
That’s when I saw him. He was lying on his stomach in the grass a few feet away, totally unmoving, totally not . . .
Glowing.
He wasn’t glowing.
I looked at Paul. He blinked back at me.
"I don’t know," he said as if the words had been wrung from him. "All right, Suze? I don’t know how it happened. You were both here when I showed up just now. I don’t know how it happened—"
And then I was on my hands and knees, crawling through the wet grass toward him. I think I was crying. I don’t know for sure. All I know was, it was hard to see all of a sudden.
"Jesse!" I reached his side.
It was him. It was really him. The real Jesse, Alive Jesse.
Only he didn’t seem too alive just then. I reached out and felt for a pulse on his throat. There was one—my breath caught as I felt it—but it was faint. He was breathing, but barely. I was afraid to touch him, afraid to move him. . . .
But more afraid not to.
"Jesse!" I cried, rolling him over and shaking him by the shoulders. "Jesse, it’s me, Suze! Wake up. Wake up, Jesse!"
"It’s no good, Suze," Paul said. "I already tried. He’s there . . . but he’s not. Not really."
I had Jesse’s head in my arms. I cradled it, looking down at him. In the moonlight, he looked dead.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t dead. I’d have known if he was.
"I think we screwed up, Suze," Paul said. "You weren’t—you weren’t supposed to bring him back."
"I didn’t mean to," I said. My voice was so faint, it was practically drowned out by the crickets. "I didn’t do it on purpose."
"I know," Paul said. "But . . . I think maybe you need to put him back."
"Put him back where?" I raged. Now my voice was much louder than the crickets. So loud, in fact, that the crickets were startled into silence. "In the middle of that fire?"
"No," Paul said. "I just—I just don’t think he can stay here, Suze, and . . . live."
I continued to cradle Jesse’s head, thinking furiously. This wasn’t fair. No one had warned us about this. Dr. Slaski hadn’t said a word. All he’d said was to picture in your head the time and place you wanted to be in, and . . .
And not to touch anything you didn’t want to bring through time with you.
I groaned and dropped my face to Jesse’s. It was my fault. It was all my fault.
"Suze." Paul reached out and rested a hand on my shoulder. "Let me try. Maybe I can get him back—"
"You can’t." I lifted my head, my voice cold as the blade Diego had pressed to my throat. "It’ll kill him. He’s not like us. He’s not a mediator. He’s . . . he’s human."
Paul shook his head. "Maybe he was meant to die, then, Suze," he said. "Like you said. Maybe we aren’t supposed to mess with this stuff, just like you warned me."
"Great." I let out a bitter little laugh. "That’s just great, Paul. Now you agree with me?"
Paul just stood there, looking anxious. If I could have been capable of feeling anything except despair, at that point, I would have hated him.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate him. I couldn’t think of anything but Jesse. I had not, I told myself, saved him just so I could sit and watch him die.
"Go to the carport," I said in a low, even voice. "And inside the house through the door there. They never remember to lock it. Hanging on a hook by the door are my mom’s car keys. Get them and then come back and help me take him to the car."
Paul looked down at me like I was a crazy woman.
"The car?" He sounded dubious. "You’re going to . . . drive him somewhere?"
"Yes, you fool," I snarled. "To the hospital."
"The hospital." Paul shook his head. "But Suze—"
"Just do it!"
Paul did it. I know he thought it was futile, but he did it. He got the keys, then came back and helped me carry Jesse to my mom’s car. It wasn’t easy, but between the two of us, we managed. I’d have dragged him the whole way by myself if I’d had to.
Then we were on the road, Paul driving while I continued to hold Jesse’s head in my arms. I didn’t think then that what I was doing was futile. Maybe, I kept thinking, the hospital could save him. Medicine had made so many advances in the past 150 years. Why couldn’t it save a man who’d just traveled to another time, through another dimension? Why couldn’t it?
Except that it couldn’t.
Oh, they tried. At the hospital. They came running out with a gurney when Paul went in to tell them we had an unconscious man in the car. They hooked Jesse up to an oxygen mask while the emergency room doctor grilled me. Had he taken drugs? Had too much to drink? Had a seizure? A headache? Complained of pain in his arm?
There was no medical explanation for the coma Jesse was in. That’s what the doctor came out and told me, hours later. None that he had been able to determine so far. A CT scan might tell him more. Did I happen to know what kind of insurance Jesse had? His Social Security number, maybe? A phone number for his next of kin?
At 6:00 in the morning, they admitted him. At 7:00, I called my mother, and told her where I was—at the hospital with a friend. At 8:00, I phoned the only person I could think of who might possibly have some idea what to do.
Father Dominic had gotten back from San Francisco the night before. He listened to what I had to say without remark. "Father Dominic, I did . . . I think I did something awful. I didn’t mean to, but . . . Jesse’s here. The real Jesse. The live one. We’re at the hospital. Please come."
He came. When I saw his tall, strong figure approaching the hard plastic seat I’d been sitting in for hours, I nearly collapsed all over again.
But I didn’t. I stood up and, a second later, was in his arms.
"What did you do?" he kept murmuring over and over. He wasn’t talking to just me, either. Paul was there, too.
"What did you two do?"
"Something bad," I said, lifting my tear-stained face from his shirt. "But we didn’t mean it."
"We were trying to save him," Paul said sheepishly. "His life. We almost did—"
"Until I brought him back," I said. "Oh, Father Dominic—"
He shushed me and went into the room where Jesse lay, so still, the blanket over him barely stirring with each shallow breath. Ghost Jesse, I now realized, would have looked better—more alive—than Alive Jesse did.
Father Dominic crossed himself, he was so startled by what he saw. A nurse was there, taking Jesse’s pulse and writing the results down on a clipboard. She smiled sadly when she saw Father Dominic, then left the room.
Father Dominic looked down at Jesse. For the first time, I noticed that the lenses of his glasses were kind of fogged up.
He didn’t say anything.
"They want to know what kind of insurance he has," I said bitterly, "before they do more tests."
"I . . . see," Father Dominic said.
"I don’t see what more tests are going to tell them," Paul said.
"You don’t know," I snapped, lashing out at Paul because I couldn’t lash out at the person who most deserved it . . . myself. "Maybe there’s something they can do. Maybe there’s—"
"Isn’t your grandfather here somewhere?" Father Dominic asked Paul.
Paul lifted his gaze from Jesse’s unconscious form.
"Yeah," he said. "I mean, yes, sir. I think so."
"Perhaps you should go and pay him a visit." Father Dominic’s voice was calm. His presence, I had to admit, was soothing. "If he’s conscious, perhaps he’ll be able to offer us some advice."
Paul’s chin slid out truculently. "He won’t talk to me," Paul insisted. "Even if he is awake—"
"I think," Father Dominic said quietly, "that if there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, it’s that life is fleeting and if there are fences to mend, you had best mend them quickly, before it’s too late. Go and make amends with your grandfather."
Paul opened his mouth to protest, but Father Dominic shot him a look that snapped his lips shut. With one final glance at me, Paul left the room, looking aggrieved.
"Don’t be too angry with him, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "He thought he was doing right."