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there—wasn’t perfect at all…. In fact, it was completely wrong. “What I mean is,lately, he’s been threatening… well, to do something I don’t really understand. To you.”
    Jesse looked amused. Which was not exactly the reaction I’d been expecting.
    “So you came rushing down here,” he said, “in the middle of the night to warn me? Susannah, I’m touched.”
    “Jesse, I’m serious,” I said. “I think Paul’s up to something. Remember Mrs. Gutierrez?”
    “Of course.” Jesse had translated the dead woman’s frantic message for me because my Spanish is pretty much confined to taco and, of course, querida . “What about her?”
    Quickly, I told him about having met Paul in Mrs. Gutierrez’s backyard. Even though I skimmed over the bit about Paul having stolen the money before I’d been able to get my hands on it, Jesse’s outrage was obvious. I saw a glint of steel in his eyes, and he said something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand, but I’m guessing it wasn’t complimentary to Paul’s parentage.
    “Father D’s going to take care of it,” I hastened to assure him, in case Jesse was getting any ideas about trying to take Paul on—something I’d warned him repeatedly would be foolhardy in the extreme. I didn’t say that Father D. was unaware of Paul’s theft… only that the Gutierrezes were in need. I knew what Jesse would say if he found out I’d left Father Dominic in the dark about Paul’s latest transgression.
    I also knew, however, what Paul would do if he found out I’d narced on him.
    “But that’s not what I’m worried about,” I added hastily. “It’s something Paul said when I… when I tried to get him to give the money back.” I thought it better to leave out the part about when I’d gone for Paul’s solar plexus. Also the thing Paul had said earlier in the day, about how his plans for Jesse were more humane than my own plans for himself. Because I had a feeling now that I knew what he’d meant by that. Though he couldn’t have been more wrong. “It was something about you and what he was going to do you. Not kill you—”
    “That,” Jesse interrupted dryly, “would be difficult, querida , given that I’m already dead.”
    I glared at him. “You know what I mean. He said he wasn’t going to kill you. He was going to… I think he said he was going to keep you from having died in the first place.”
    Even in the darkness of the car’s interior, I saw Jesse’s eyebrow go up.
    “He has a very high opinion of his own abilities, that one” was all he said, however.
    “Jesse,” I said. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t taking Paul’s threat seriously. “He really meant it. He’s said it to me a couple of times, now. I seriously think he might be up to something.”
    “Slater is always going to be up to something where you’re concerned, Susannah,” Jesse said, in a voice that suggested he was more than a little tired of the subject. “He’s in love with you. Ignore him, and eventually he’ll go away.”
    “Jesse,” I said. I couldn’t, of course, tell him that I’d have liked nothing better than to turn my back on Paul and his manipulative ways, but that I couldn’t because I’d promised him I wouldn’t… in return for Jesse’s life. Or at least his continued presence in this dimension. “I really think—”
    “Ignore him, Susannah.” Jesse was smiling a little now as he shook his head. “He’s only saying these things because he knows they upset you, and then you pay attention to him. ‘Oh, Paul! No, don’t, Paul!’”
    I looked at him in horror. “Was that supposed to be an imitation of me ?”
    “Don’t gratify him by paying attention,” Jesse continued as if he hadn’t heard me, “and he’ll grow tired of it and move on.”
    “I don’t sound anything like that.” I chewed my lower lip uncertainly. “Do I really sound like that?”
    “And now, if that’s all,” Jesse went on, ignoring me exactly the way