When Doc had finished this particular lecture, I just looked at him and went, ‘Photographic memory much?’

He looked embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s good to know the history of the place where you’re living.’

I filed this away for future reference. Doc might be just the person I needed if Jesse showed up again.

Now, standing in the cool office of the ancient building Junipero Serra had constructed for the betterment of the natives in the area, I wondered how many ghosts I was going to encounter. That Serra guy had to have a bunch of Native Americans mad at him – particularly considering that corporal punishment thing – and I hadn’t any doubt I was going to encounter all of them.

And yet, when my mom and I walked through the school’s wide front archway into the courtyard round which the Mission had been constructed, I didn’t see a single person who looked as if he or she didn’t belong there. There were a few tourists snapping pictures of the impressive fountain, a gardener working diligently at the base of a palm tree – even at my new school there were palm trees – a priest walking in silent contemplation down the airy breezeway. It was a beautiful, restful place – especially for a building that was so old, and had to have seen so much death.

I couldn’t understand it. Where were all the ghosts?

Maybe they were afraid to hang around the place. I was a little afraid, looking up at that crucifix. I mean, I’ve got nothing against religious art, but was it really necessary to portray the crucifixion so realistically, with so many scabs and all?

Apparently, I was not alone in thinking so, since a boy who was slumped on a couch across from the one where my mom and I had been instructed to wait noticed the direction of my gaze and said, ‘He’s supposed to weep tears of blood if any girl ever graduates from here a virgin.’

I couldn’t help letting out a little bark of laughter. My mother glared at me. The secretary, a plump middle-aged woman who looked as if something like that ought to have offended her deeply only rolled her eyes, and said, tiredly, ‘Oh, Adam.’

Adam, a good-looking boy about my age, looked at me with a perfectly serious face. ‘It’s true,’ he said, gravely. ‘It happened last year. My sister.’ He dropped his voice conspiratorially. ‘She’s adopted.’

I laughed again, and my mother frowned at me. She had spent most of yesterday explaining to me that it had been really, really hard to convince the school to take me, especially since she couldn’t produce any proof that I’d ever been baptized. In the end, they’d only let me in because of Andy, since all three of his boys went there. I imagine a sizeable donation had also played a part in my admittance, but my mother wouldn’t tell me that. All she said was that I had better behave myself, and not hurl anything out of any windows – even though I reminded her that that particular incident hadn’t been my fault. I’d been fighting with a particularly violent young ghost who’d refused to quit haunting the girls’ locker room at my old school. Throwing him through that window had certainly gotten his attention, and convinced him to tread the path of righteousness ever after.