by Meg Cabot
"Nothing," was all he said, however. "Just . . . I have a surprise for you."
Thinking it was another food-related item, although I was quite full from the pie, I said, "What? And don't tell me it's an Egg McMuffin, because I know they don't have drive-through here."
"It's not," Paul said.
And then, moving faster than I'd ever seen him move before, he took something else from his back pocket - a length of rope. Then he grabbed me.
People have, of course, tied me up before. But never somebody whose tongue was once in my mouth. I really wasn't expecting Paul to do something so underhanded. Save my boyfriend's life so I'd never meet him, yes. But hog-tie my hands behind my back?
Not so much.
I struggled, of course. I got in a few good elbow jabs. But I couldn't scream, not if I didn't want Mrs. O'Neil to show up and go running for the sheriff or whatever. I wouldn't be able to help Jesse from jail.
But it appeared I wouldn't be much help to him for the time being, either.
"Believe me," Paul said as he tightened knots that were already practically cutting off my circulation. "This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you."
"It does not," I said, struggling. But it was hard to struggle when I was on my stomach in the hay, and his knee was in the small of my back.
"Well," he said, going to work on my feet now. "You're right, I guess. Actually, this doesn't hurt me at all. And it'll keep you out of trouble while I go find Diego."
"There's a special place for people like you, Paul," I informed him, spitting out hay. I was getting really sick of hay.
"Reform school?" he asked lightly.
"Hell," I informed him.
"Now, Suze, don't be that way." He finished with my feet and, just to be sure I wouldn't get it into my head to, I don't know, roll out of the hayloft, he tied one end of the rope to a nearby post. "I'll be back to untie you just as soon as I kill Felix Diego. Then we can go home."
"Where I'll never speak to you again," I informed him.
"Sure you will," Paul said cheerfully. "You won't remember any of this. Because we won't have gone back through time to save Jesse. Because you won't even know who Jesse is."
"I hate you," I said, really meaning it this time.
"You do now," Paul agreed. "But you won't when you wake up tomorrow in your own bed. Because without Jesse, I'll be the best thing that ever happened to you. It'll just be you and me, two shifters against the world. Won't that be fun?"
"Why don't you go - "
But I didn't get to finish that sentence, because Paul took something else out of his pocket. A clean white handkerchief. He'd told me once that he always carried one because you never know when you might need to gag someone.
"Don't you dare!" I hissed at him.
But it was too late. He wadded the handkerchief into my mouth and secured it there with another piece of rope.
It I had never hated him before, I did then. Hated him with every bone in my body, every beat of my heart. Especially when he gave me a pat on the head and said, "See ya."
Then disappeared down the ladder to the barn floor.
Chapter fifteen
I don't know how long I lay there like that. Long enough to start wondering whether I could just close my eyes and shift home. Who knew where I'd end up? Somewhere in the backyard, anyway. Possibly in a big bunch of poison oak, since there was no barn there now. But anything had to be better than lying in a very cramped position on the floor of a hayloft, with who knew what crawling through my hair and the blood pounding in my temples.
But a world without Jesse? Because that's what I'd be guaranteeing myself if I gave up now. A world without my one purpose for living. Well, more or less. I mean, I know women need men like fish need bicycles, and all of that. Except . . .
Except I love him.
I couldn't do it. I was too selfish. I wasn't going to give up. Not yet. There were still plenty of hours of daylight left, or at least, there had been when Paul had left. The shadows, I couldn't help noticing, were growing longer.
Still, if Mrs. O'Neil had told Paul the truth, and Jesse was expected that night, there was still time. Paul might not find Diego. He might have to come back with his task unaccomplished. And when he did, and he untied me . . .
Well, he was going to learn a lot about pain, that was for sure. Because this time, I'd be ready for him.
I don't know how much time passed while I lay there, plotting my revenge on Paul Slater. Death was too good for him, of course. An eternity as a ghost - floating shiftlessly through this dimension and the next - was what would suit him best. Give him a little taste of what it had been like for Jesse all of these years. That ought to teach him . . .
I could do it, too. I could pull Paul's soul out of his body and make it so that he could never return to it . . .
. . . by giving that body to someone else. Someone who deserved a chance to live again . . .
But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. I couldn't kiss Paul's lips, even if I knew it was Jesse inside them, kissing me back. It was just too . . . gross.
It was as I was lying there thinking this that I heard it, a sound my ears had become so finely attuned to over the past year that I could have been at the Super Bowl, a million rows away, and I still would have heard it.
Jesse's voice.
He was calling to someone. I couldn't hear what, exactly, he was saying. But he sounded, I don't know. Different, somehow.
He was getting closer, too. His voice, I mean.
He was coming toward the barn.
He'd found me. I don't know how - Dr. Slaski hadn't said anything about ghosts being able to travel through time, But maybe they could. Maybe they could, just like shifters, and Jesse had done it, he'd come back through time looking for me. To save me. To help me save him.
I closed my eyes, thinking his name as hard as I could. This worked, more often than not. Jesse would materialize in front of me, wondering what on earth was so urgent.
Only he didn't. Not this time. I opened my eyes, and . . . nothing.
Only I could still his voice below me. He was saying, "No, no, it's all right, Mrs. O'Neil."
Mrs. O'Neil. Mrs. O'Neil could see Jesse?
The barn door opened. I heard it creak. Then . . .
Footsteps.
But how could Jesse have footsteps? He's a ghost.
Wriggling as far toward the edge of the hayloft as I could, I craned my neck, trying to see what I could only hear. But the rope Paul had used to tie my feet to the post wouldn't let me wiggle more than a few feet from my original position. I could hear him now, though - really hear him. He was speaking in a soft, soothing tone to . . . to . . .
To his horse.
Jesse was talking to a horse. I heard it whinny softly in reply.
Which was when I finally knew. This wasn't Ghost Jesse, come to rescue me. This was Alive Jesse, who didn't even know me. Alive Jesse, come to meet his fate in my room tonight.
I froze, feeling pins and needles all over - and not just because I'd been lying in such a cramped position for so long. I needed to see him. I needed to see him. Only how?
Then he moved and I turned my head, following the sound . . .
. . . and saw, through a chink in the floorboards of the loft, a spot of color. His horse. It was his horse. I saw his hands moving over the saddle, unstrapping it. It was Jesse. He was right beneath me. He was -
Why I did what I did next, I'll never know. I didn't want Jesse to know I was there. If Jesse found me, it could throw off everything. Who knew, he might not even be murdered that night. And then I'd never get to meet him.
But the urge to see him - alive - was so strong, that without even thinking about it, I banged my feet as hard as I could on the hayloft floor.
The hands moving over the saddle grew suddenly still. He'd heard me. I tried to call to him, but all that came out, thanks to Paul's gag, was gnnh, gnnh.
I banged my feet harder.
"Is someone there?" I heard Jesse
call.
I banged again.
This time, he didn't call out. He started climbing the ladder to the loft. I heard the wood strain beneath his weight.
His weight. Jesse had weight.
And then I saw his hands - his large, brown, capable hands - on the top rung of the ladder, followed, a second later, by his head. . . .
The breath froze in my lungs.
Because it was him. It was Jesse.
But not Jesse as I'd ever seen him before. Because he was alive. He was . . . there. He was so solidly and unquestionably there, taking up space like he owned it, like the space better get out of his way, as opposed to the other way around.
He wasn't glowing. He was radiating. Not the spectral glow I was used to seeing around him, either, but instead an undeniable aura of health and vitality. It was like the Jesse I had known was a pale replica - a reflection - of the one I was looking at now. Never had I been so aware of the way his dark hair curled against the back of his tanned neck; the deep brown of his eyes; the whiteness of his teeth; the strength in those long legs as he knelt down beside me; the tendons in the back of his brown hands; the sinews in his bare arms, . . .
"Miss?"
And his voice. His voice! So deep, it seemed to reverberate down my spine. It was Jesse's voice all right, but suddenly, it was in surround sound, it was THX, it was . . .
"Miss? Are you all right?"
Jesse was gazing down at me, his dark eyes filled with concern. One of his hands moved to his boot, and the next thing I knew, a long and shiny blade was gleaming in his hand. I watched in fascination as the blade came nearer and nearer to my cheek.
"Don't be afraid," Jesse was saying. "I'm going to untie you. Who did this to you?"
Suddenly, the gag was gone. My mouth was raw from where the rope had cut into it. Then my hands were free. Sore, but free.
"Can you speak?" Jesse's hands were on my feet now, his knife neatly slicing through the ropes Paul had tied me with. "Here."
He laid the knife aside and lifted something else toward my face. Water. From a flask. I took it from him and sucked greedily. I'd had no idea how thirsty I'd been.
"Easy," Jesse said in that voice - that voice! "I can get you more. Stay here and I'll get help - "
On the word help, however, my hands, as if of their own volition, dropped the flask and flew out to seize his shirt-front instead.
It wasn't the shirt I was used to seeing Jesse in. It was similar, the same soft, white linen. But this one was higher at the neck. He was wearing a vest, too - a waistcoat, I think they were called back then - of a sort of watered silk.
"No," I croaked and was startled at how raspy my voice sounded. "Don't go."
Not, of course, because I was worried he was going to go and get Mrs. O'Neil, who'd recognize me as the strumpet she'd found wandering around her front parlor the night before. But because I couldn't bear the thought of him leaving my sight. Not now. Not ever.
This was Jesse. This was the real Jesse. This was who I loved.
And who was going to die shortly.
"Who are you?" Jesse asked, lifting the flask I'd dropped and, finding it not quite empty, handing it back to me. "Who did this - left you here like this?"
I drank what was left of the water. I'd known Jesse long enough to see that he was outraged - outraged at whoever had left me like that.
"A . . . a man," I said. Because, of course, Jesse - this Jesse - wouldn't know who Paul was. . . . Didn't know who I was, clearly.
His eyebrows furrowed, the one with the scar in it looking particularly adorable. The scar wasn't as obvious, I noticed, on Live Jesse as it was on Ghost Jesse.
"And did this same man put you in these outlandish clothes?" Jesse wanted to know, looking critically at my jeans and motorcycle jacket.
Suddenly, I wanted to laugh. He seemed like a different Jesse entirely - or rather, a hundred times more real than the Jesse I had known - but his disgust with my wardrobe? That hadn't changed a bit.
"Yes," I said. I figured it would be more believable to him than the real explanation.
"I'll see him horsewhipped," Jesse said as matter-of-factly as if he had people horsewhipped for dressing girls up in odd outfits and leaving them tied up in haylofts every day of the week. "Who are you? Your family must be looking for you - "
"Um," I said. "No, they aren't. I mean . . . I doubt it. And my name is Suze."
Again the dark brow furrowed. "Soose?"
"Suze," I said with a laugh. I couldn't help it. Laughing, I mean. It was so wonderful to see him like this. "Susannah. As in 'Oh, Susannah, Don't You Cry for Me.'"
It was what I had said to him, I realized with a pang, back in my bedroom, the very first time I'd met him, the day I'd arrived in Carmel. I hadn't known then what I knew now - that that moment had been a turning point in my life - everything before it was BJ: Before Jesse. Everything afterward, AJ: After Jesse. I hadn't known then that this guy in the puffy shirt with the tight black pants would one day mean more to me than my own life. . . . Would one day be my everything.
But I knew it now, just as I knew something else:
I had it wrong. I had it all wrong.
But it wasn't, I knew, too late to fix it. Thank God.
"Susannah," Jesse said, as he sat beside me in the straw. "Susannah O'Neil, perhaps? You are related to Mr. and Mrs. O'Neil? Let me get them. I know they'll want to see that you're safe - "
"No," I said, shaking my head. "My, um, family is far away." Really far away. "You can't get them. I mean, thank you, but . . . you can't get them."
"Then this man . . ." Jesse looked excited. And why not? It probably wasn't every day the guy stumbled over a sixteen-year-old girl who'd been left bound and gagged in a hayloft. "Who is he? I'll fetch the sheriff. He must pay for what he's done."
Much as I would have liked to sic Jesse - Live Jesse - on Paul, it didn't seem like the appropriate thing to do. Not when Jesse was going to have so many problems of his own to handle very soon. Paul was my problem, not his.
"No," I said. "No, that's okay." Then, seeing his puzzled look, I said, "I mean, that's all right. Don't get the sheriff - "
"You needn't fear him anymore, Susannah," Jesse said, gently. He clearly did not know he was speaking to a girl who had kicked a lot of butt in her day. Ghost butt, mostly, but whatever. "I won't let him hurt you again."
"I'm not afraid of him, Jesse," I said.
"Then - " Jesse's face clouded suddenly. "Wait. How did you know my name?"
Ah. Well, there was the rub, wasn't it?
Jesse was looking at me curiously, that dark-eyed gaze raking my face. I'm sure I must have looked a picture. I mean, what girl wouldn't after having been left for hours with her head in the straw and her mouth gagged?
It didn't matter, of course. What Jesse thought of me. But I felt self-conscious just the same. I reached up and shoved some hair out of my eyes, trying to tuck it back behind an ear. Just my luck, the first time I meet my boyfriend - while he's still living - and I look like a complete train wreck.
"Do I know you?" Jesse asked, his gaze searching. "Have we met? Are you . . . are you one of the Anderson girls?"
I had no idea who the Anderson girls might be, but I felt a stab of envy for them, whoever they were. Because they were girls who'd gotten to know Jesse - Live Jesse. I wondered if they knew how lucky they were.
"We haven't met," I said. "Yet. But . . . I know you. I mean, I know . . . about you."
"You do?" Recognition dawned at last in his gaze. "Wait . . . yes! Now I know. You're friends with one of my sisters From school? Mercedes? You know Mercedes?"
I shook my head, fumbling around in the pocket of my leather jacket.
"Josefina, then?" Jesse studied me some more. "You must be close to her age, fifteen, yes? You don't know Josefina? You can't know Marta, she's too old - "
I shook my head again, then held out what I'd fished from my pocket.
He looked down at what I held in my hand.
"Nombre de dios," he said softly, and took it from me.
It was the miniature portrait of Jesse, the one I'd stolen from the Carmel Historical Society. I saw now how poor a portrait it actually was. Oh, the painter had gotten the shape of Jesse's head right and his eye color and expression were close enough.
But he'd completely failed to capture what it was that made Jesse . . . well . . . Jesse. The keen intelligence in his dark brown eyes. The confident twist of his wide, sensuous mouth. The gentleness of his cool, strong hands. The power - just now leashed, but coiled so close to the surface, it might rise up at any moment - of those muscles, honed from years of working alongside his father's ranch hands, beneath that soft linen shirt and black pants.
"Where did you get this?" Jesse demanded, his fist closing over the portrait. Sparks seem to fly from his dark eyes, he was that angry. "Only one person has a portrait like this."
"I know," I said. "Your fiancée, Maria. You're here to marry her. Or at least, that's the plan. You're on your way to see her now, but her father's ranch is still pretty far off, so you're staying here for the night before you go on to her place in the morning."
Anger turned to bewilderment as Jesse lifted his free hand and raked his fingers through his thick dark hair - a gesture I had seen him perform so many times when he was completely frustrated with me, that tears actually sprang to my eyes, it was so familiar . . . and so adorable.
"How do you know all this?" he asked desperately. "You're . . . you're friends with Maria? Did she . . . give you this?"
"Not exactly," I said.
And took a deep breath.
"Jesse, my name is Susannah Simon," I said all in a rush, wanting to get it out before I changed my mind. "I'm what's called a mediator. I'm from the future. And I'm here to keep you from being murdered tonight."
Chapter sixteen
Because, in the end, I couldn't do it.
I thought I could. I really did think I could sit back and let Jesse be murdered. I mean, if the alternative was never to meet him? Sure, I could do it. No problem.
But that had been before. Before I'd seen him. Before I'd spoken to him. Before he'd touched me. Before I'd known what he was, what he could have been, if he'd only lived.
