Free Haunted by Meg Cabot Page A

blue eyes. “Not another one of those charity cases you and the good father are always taking on.”
    I said with some indignation, “Helping lost souls find their way is my job, after all.”
    “Who says?” Paul wanted to know.
    I blinked at him. “Well—it just—it just is ,” I stammered. “I mean, what else am I supposed to do?”
    Paul plucked a pencil from a nearby desk and began swiftly and neatly to solve the problems on my worksheet. “I wonder. It doesn’t seem fair to me that we were just handed this mediator thing at birth without so much as a contract or list of employee benefits. I mean, I never signed up for this mediator thing. Did you?”
    “Of course not,” I said, as if this was not something about which I complained, in almost those exact words, every time I saw Father Dominic.
    “And how do you know what your job responsibilities even consist of?” Paul asked. “Yeah, you think you’re supposed to help the dead move on to their final destination, because once you do, they stop bugging you, and you can get on with your life again. But I’ve got a question for you. Who told you it was up to you? Who told you how it was done, even?”
    I blinked at him. No one had told me that, actually. Well, my dad had, sort of. And later, a certain psychic my best friend, Gina, had taken me to back home. And then Father Dom, of course…
    “Right,” Paul said, observing from my expression apparently that I didn’t have a real straightforward answer for him. “Nobody told you. But what if I said I knew? What if I told you I’d found something—something that dated back to the first days of actual written communication—that exactly described mediators, though that wasn’t what we were called back then, and their real purpose, not to mention techniques?”
    I continued to blink at him. He sounded so…well, convincing. And he certainly looked sincere.
    “If you really had something like that,” I said hesitantly, “I guess I’d say…show me.”
    “Fine,” Paul said, looking pleased. “Come over to my place after school today, and I will.”
    I was up and out of my chair so fast, I practically tipped it over.
    “No,” I said, gathering up my books and clutching them in front of my wildly beating heart as if both to hide and protect it. “ No way .”
    Paul regarded me from where he sat, not seeming too surprised by my reaction.
    “Hmmm,” he said. “I thought as much. You want to know but not enough to risk your reputation.”
    “It isn’t my reputation I’m worried about,” I informed him, managing to make my tone more acid than shaken. “It’s my life. You tried to kill me once, remember?”
    I said these words a little too loudly and noticed several people glance at me curiously over the tops of the computer monitors.
    Paul, however, just looked bored.
    “Not that again,” he said. “Listen, Suze, I told you…. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter what I told you. You’re going to believe what you want to believe. But, seriously, you could have gotten out of there any time you wanted to.”
    “But Jesse couldn’t have,” I hissed at him. “Could he? Thanks to you.”
    “Well,” Paul said with an uncomfortable shrug. “No. Not Jesse. But, really, Suze, don’t you think you’re overreacting? I mean, what’s the big deal? The guy’s already dead—”
    “You,” I said, my trembling voice giving the statement somewhat iffy conviction, “are a pig.”
    Then I started to stride away. I say started to because I didn’t get very far before Paul’s calm voice stopped me.
    “Uh, Suze,” Paul said. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
    I turned my head to glare at him. “Oh, you mean, did I forget to tell you not to speak to me again? Yes.”
    “No,” Paul said with a wry smile. “Aren’t those your shoes under there?” He pointed down at my Jimmy Choos, without which I’d been about to stalk from the room. Like Sister Ernestine wouldn’t have had too big a