‘Susannah.’ Jesse stepped in front of me just as I turned around to retread the same five feet I’d been pacing for the past few minutes. I came up short, startled by his sudden proximity, my nose practically banging into the place where his shirt collar was open. Jesse seized both my arms quickly, to steady me.

This was not a good thing. I mean, I know a minute ago I had grabbed him – well, not really him, but his shirt. But I don’t like being touched under normal circumstances, and I especially don’t like being touched by ghosts. And I especially don’t like being touched by ghosts who have hands as big and as tendony and strong-looking as Jesse’s.

‘Susannah,’ he said again, before I could tell him to get his big tendony hands off me. ‘It’s all right. It’s not your fault. There was nothing you could do.’

I sort of forgot about being mad about his hands. ‘Nothing I could do? Are you kidding me? I should have kicked that girl back into her grave!’

‘No.’ Jesse shook his head. ‘She’d have killed you.’

‘Bull! I totally could have taken her. If she hadn’t done that thing with that guy’s head—’

‘Susannah.’

‘I mean it, Jesse, I could totally have handled her if she hadn’t gotten so mad. I bet if I just wait a little while until she’s calmed down and go back in there, I can talk her into—’

‘No.’ He let go of my arms, but only so he could wrap one of his own round my shoulders and start steering me away from the school and toward the dumpster where I’d parked my bike. ‘Come on. Let’s go home.’

‘But what about—’

The grip on my shoulders tightened. ‘No.’

‘Jesse, you don’t understand. This is my job. I have to—’

‘It’s Father Dominic’s job, too, no? Let him take it from here. There’s no reason why you have to be burdened with all the responsibility yourself.’

‘Well, yes, there is. I’m the one who screwed up.’

‘You put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger?’

‘Of course not. But I’m the one who got her so mad. Father Dom didn’t. I can’t ask Father Dom to clean up my messes. That is totally unfair.’

‘What is totally unfair,’ Jesse explained – patiently, I guess, for him, ‘is for anyone to expect a young girl like yourself to do battle with a demon from hell like—’

‘She isn’t a demon from hell. She’s just mad. She’s mad because the one guy she thought she could trust turned out to be a—’

‘Susannah.’ Jesse stopped walking suddenly. The only reason I didn’t lurch forwards and fall flat on my face was that he still kept hold of my shoulder.

For a minute – just a minute – I really thought . . . well, I thought he was going to kiss me. I’d never been kissed before, but it seemed as if all the necessities for a kiss to happen were there: you know, his arm was round me, there was moonlight, our hearts were racing – oh, yeah, and we’d both just narrowly escaped being killed by a really pissed-off ghost.