‘What is your name?’

I glared at him. ‘Look. Just tell me what you want, and get out. I’m hot, and I want to change clothes. I don’t have time for—’

He interrupted, as amiably as if he hadn’t heard me talking at all, ‘That woman – your mother – called you Suzie.’ His black eyes were bright on me. ‘Short for Susan?’

‘Susannah,’ I said, correcting him automatically. ‘As in, “Don’t you cry for me.” ’

He smiled. ‘I know the song.’

‘Yeah. It was probably in the top forty the year you were born, huh?’

He just kept on smiling. ‘So this is your room now, is it, Susannah?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, this is my room now. So you’re going to have clear out.’

‘I’m going to have to clear out?’ He raised one black eyebrow. ‘This has been my home for a century and a half. Why do I have to leave it?’

‘Because.’ I was getting really mad. Mostly because I was so hot, and I wanted to open a window, but the windows were behind him, and I didn’t want to get that close to him. ‘This is my room. I’m not sharing it with some dead cowboy.’

That got to him. He slammed his foot back down on the floor – hard – and stood up. I instantly wished I hadn’t said anything. He was tall, way taller than me, and in my ankle boots I’m five eight.

‘I am not a cowboy,’ he informed me, angrily. He added something in Spanish in an undertone, but since I had always taken French, I had no idea what he was saying. At the same time, the antique mirror hanging over my new dressing table started to wobble dangerously on the hook that held it to the wall. This was not due, I knew, to a California earthquake, but to the agitation of the ghost in front of me, whose psychic abilities were obviously of a kinetic bent.

That’s the thing about ghosts: they’re so touchy! The slightest thing can set them off.

‘Whoa,’ I said, holding up both my hands, palms outwards. ‘Down. Down, boy.’

‘My family,’ Jesse raged, wagging a finger in my face, ‘worked like slaves to make something of themselves in this country, but never, never as a vaquero—’

‘Hey,’ I said. And that’s when I made my big mistake. I reached out, not liking the finger he was jabbing at me, and grabbed it, hard, yanking on his hand and pulling him towards me so I could be sure he heard me as I hissed, ‘Stop with the mirror already. And stop shoving your finger in my face. Do it again, and I’ll break it.’

I flung his hand away, and saw, with satisfaction, that the mirror had stopped shaking. But then I happened to glance at his face.

Ghosts don’t have blood. How can they? They aren’t alive. But I swear, at that moment, all the colour drained from Jesse’s face, as if every ounce of blood that had once been there had evaporated just at that moment.