by Meg Cabot
"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 somewh
ere?"
"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."
I was too tired to argue. Much.
"He thought he was robbing me of Jesse," I said. "Even his memory."
Father Dominic shrugged. "In the end, Susannah, that might actually have been kinder, don't you think? Kinder than this, anyway." He nodded his head at Jesse's unconscious form.
Well, that much was true.
"He would have had to leave, anyway, Susannah," Father Dominic said. "Someday."
"I know." The knot in my throat throbbed.
Which was when I remembered. There'd been a ghost in Father Dom's life, as well. The ghost of a girl he'd loved, maybe even as much as I loved Jesse.
"I . . ." I could barely speak, the lump in my throat had swelled to such gigantic proportions. "I'm sorry, Father Dominic. I forgot."
Father Dom just smiled sadly and touched my arm.
"Don't be too hard on him," he said, meaning Paul. Then, with a final glance at Jesse, he said, "There isn't much I can think of to do. But the insurance situation. That I think I can take care of. I'll be back soon. Can I bring you anything? Have you eaten?"
The thought of trying to swallow anything down past the mass in my throat was so ludicrous, I actually laughed a little.
"No, thanks," I said.
"All right." Father Dominic started from the room. At the doorway, however, he paused and looked back.
"I'm sorry, Susannah," he said quietly. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when . . . it happened. And I'm more sorry than I can say that it had to end this way."
And with that, he was gone.
I stood there for a moment, not doing anything, not thinking a thing. Then the true meaning of his words sunk in.
And I lost it.
Because Father Dominic was right. This was the end. I could deny it as much as I wanted, but this was it. Jesse was dying, right before my eyes, and there was nothing, nothing on earth, that I could do for him.
And it was my fault. My own fault he was leaving me. Sure, I could comfort myself that wherever he was, it had to be better than the half-life he'd had with me.
But that didn't make it hurt any less.
I fell into the chair beside Jesse's hospital bed. I couldn't see, I was crying so hard. Not out loud. I didn't want any nurse to come running with a bunch of tranquilizers or anything. What I really wanted, I realized, was my mom. No, not my mom. My dad. Where was my dad now, when I really needed him?
"Susannah."
I thought about Jesse's grave, the one marked by the headstone Father Dominic and I had paid for. What was in that grave now, if Jesse's body was here? Nothing. It was empty.
But not for long. No, not for long.
"Susannah."
And back in his own time? What were Mr. and Mrs. O'Neil doing right now? Probably combing through the rubble of what had been their barn. They'd find one skeleton for sure. But would they know it wasn't Jesse's? Would Jesse's family have closure or would they wonder forever what had happened to their beloved son and brother?
No. They had no way of knowing the body was Diego's. They'd think it was Jesse. The de Silvas would have a funeral. But for the wrong man.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Great. Someone was there. Someone was watching me cry my eyes out. Nice. Let the girl have a little time to grieve, would you, please?
"Go away," I snapped, lifting my head. "Can't you see I'm - "
That's when I noticed that the figure beside me was glowing.
Chapter twenty
I must have jumped about a mile and a half into the ai
r, I was that startled. I know I sprang from the chair, so fast that I knocked it over. I stood there, my chest heaving, my eyes suddenly bone dry, and stared.
Because standing there beside the bed, looking down at Jesse's prone body, was . . .
Jesse.
I looked from one Jesse to the other, not quite believing what I was seeing.
But it was true. There were two Jesses, the dead one and the live one.
Or, I suppose it would have been more correct to say the dead one and the dying one.
"J-Jesse?" I swiped at the tears coating my cheeks with the back of my smoky sleeve.
But Jesse wasn't looking at me. He was staring down at . . . well, at himself, on the bed.
"Susannah," he whispered. "What . . . what did you do?"
I was so overjoyed to see him, I wasn't thinking straight. I went to him and grabbed his hand.
"Jesse, I went. Back through time, I mean," I babbled.
He tore his gaze from the tigure on the bed and focused all of that intense dark gaze on me. He didn't look too happy.
"You went?" He glared at me. "You went after Slater? After I told you I could take care of myself?"
He was furious. I was so happy to see that fury, however, that I let out a little burble of laughter. I didn't realize, then, what seeing him here in the hospital meant.
"You did take care of yourself," I assured him. "I-I told you - the past you - about Diego, and he didn't kill you, Jesse. You killed him. But then . . . then . . . there was a fire." I swallowed, not feeling like laughing anymore. "In the barn. The O'Neils' barn . . ."
His eyes narrowed.
"The O'Neils," he murmured. He appeared to be in as much of a daze as I was. "I remember them."
"Yes," I said. "There was a fire, and Jesse . . . Jesse, you saved me. Or, at least, you tried to. But . . . but . . ."
My voice trailed off. Jesse had dropped my hand. He was moving closer to the bed, looking down at the body that lay there, barely breathing.
"I don't understand," Jesse said. "How did this happen?"
I bit my lip. There was no time for explanations. Not when, any minute, I knew we were going to have to be saying good-bye . . .
"I did it," I blurted. "I didn't mean to. I meant to save you, Jesse, not . . . not this. But I was still touching you when I shifted back to the future, and you . . . you just got caught."
