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and I, you know.”
    “I sincerely hope that isn’t true,” I said. I have often found that with some enemies, politeness can be as strong a deterrent as a fist. I’m not kidding. Try it some time.
    “Sorry to disappoint you,” Paul said. “But it is. What’d Father Dominic tell you, anyway? He tell you not to spend any time alone with me? Not to believe a word I say?”
    “Not at all,” I said in the same distant tone. “Father Dominic thinks I should give you the benefit of the doubt.”
    Paul, behind his leather-covered steering wheel, looked surprised. “Really? He said that?”
    “Oh, yes,” I said, noticing a beautiful clump of buttercups growing alongside the road, and carefully skirting them in case they hid any dangerous stalks of poison oak. “Father Dominic thinks you’re here because you want to bond with the only other mediators you know. He thinks it’s our duty as charitable human beings to allow you to make amends and help you along the path to righteousness.”
    “But you don’t agree with him?” Paul was staring at me intently. Well, and why not? Considering how slowly he was going, it wasn’t like he had to keep an eye on the road or anything.
    “Look,” I said, wishing I had a barrette or something I could put my hair up with. It was beginning to stick to the back of my neck. The tortoiseshell hair clip I had started out with that morning had mysteriously disappeared. “Father Dominic is the nicest person I have ever met. All he lives for is to help others. He genuinely believes that human beings are, by nature, good, and that, if treated as such, will respond accordingly.”
    “But you,” Paul said, “don’t agree, I take it?”
    “I think we both know that Father Dom is living in a dreamworld.” I looked straight ahead as I trudged up the hill, hoping that Paul wouldn’t guess that my staggering heartbeat had nothing to do with the exercise and everything to do with his presence. “But because I don’t want to let the guy down, I’m going to keep my personal opinion about you—that you’re a user and a psychopath—to myself.”
    “A psychopath?” Paul seemed delighted to hear himself described this way…further proof that he was, in fact, exactly what I thought him. “I like the sound of that. I’ve been called a lot of things before but never a psychopath.”
    “It wasn’t a compliment,” I felt compelled to point out, since he seemed to be taking it that way.
    “I know,” he said. “That’s what makes it so particularly amusing. You’re quite a girl, you know that?”
    “Whatever,” I said, irritated. I couldn’t even seem to insult the guy successfully. “Just tell me one thing.”
    “Name it,” he said.
    “That night we ran into each other”—I pointed toward the sky—“you know, up there?”
    He nodded. “Yeah. What about it?”
    “How’d you get there? I mean, nobody exorcised you, right?”
    Paul was grinning now. I saw, to my dismay, that I’d asked him exactly the question he’d most wanted to hear.
    “No, nobody exorcised me,” he said. “And you didn’t need anybody to exorcise you, either.”
    This came close to flooring me. I froze in my tracks. “Are you trying to tell me that I can just go strolling around up there whenever I want?” I asked him, truly stunned.
    “There’s a lot,” Paul said, still grinning lazily, “that you can do that you haven’t figured out yet, Suze. Things you’ve never dreamed of. Things I can show you.”
    The silky tone of his voice didn’t fool me. Paul was a charmer, it was true, but he was also deadly.
    “Yeah,” I said, praying that he couldn’t see how fast my heart was beating through all that pink silk. “I’m sure.”
    “I’m serious, Suze,” Paul said. “Father Dominic is a great guy. I’m not denying it. But he’s just a mediator. You’re a little something more.”
    “I see.” I hitched my shoulders and started walking again. We had reached the crest of the hill