Haunted by Meg Cabot Page B

could help me. I thought you said you were the mediator.”
    “I am,” I said with a hasty glance at Jesse, who looked as taken aback as I felt. “But I don’t dictate who lives or dies. That’s not up to me. It’s not part of my job.”
    Craig, his expression turning to one of disgust, said, “Well, thanks for nothing, then,” and started stalking toward my bedroom door.
    I wasn’t about to stop him. I mean, I didn’t really want anything more to do with him. He seemed like kind of a rude guy with a chip on his big swimmer’s shoulders. If he didn’t want my help, hey, not my problem.
    It was Jesse who stopped him.
    “You,” he said, in a voice that was deep enough—and commanding enough—to cause Craig to stop in his tracks. “Apologize to her.”
    The guy in the doorway turned his head slowly to stare at Jesse.
    “No freaking way,” was what he had the lack of foresight to say.
    A second later, he wasn’t walking out—or even through—that door. No, he was pinned to it. Jesse was holding one of Craig’s arms at what looked to be a fairly painful angle behind his back, and he was leaning heavily against him.
    “Apologize,” Jesse hissed, “to the young lady. She is trying to do you a kindness. You do not turn your back on someone who is trying to do you a kindness.”
    Whoa. For a guy who seems to want nothing to do with me, Jesse sure can be testy sometimes about how other people treat me.
    “I’m sorry,” Craig said in a voice that was muffled against the wood of the door. He sounded like he might be in pain. Just because you are dead, of course, does not mean you are immune to injury. Your soul remembers, even if your body is gone.
    “That’s better,” Jesse said, releasing him.
    Craig sagged against the door. Even though he was kind of a jerk and all, I felt sorry for the guy. I mean, he had had an even tougher day than I had, what with being dead and all.
    “It’s just,” Craig said in a suffering tone as he reached up to rub the arm Jesse had nearly broken, “that it isn’t fair, you know? It wasn’t supposed to have been me. I was the one who should have lived. Not Neil.”
    I looked at him with some surprise. “Oh? Neil was with you on the boat?”
    “Catamaran,” Craig corrected me. “And yeah, of course he was.”
    “He was your sailing partner?”
    Craig sent me a look of disgust, then, with a nervous glance at Jesse, quickly modified it to one of polite disdain.
    “Of course not,” he said. “Do you think we’d have tipped if Neil had had the slightest clue what he was doing? By rights, he ’s the one who should be dead. I don’t know what Mom and Dad were thinking. Take Neil out on the cat with you. You never take Neil out on the cat with you. Well, I hope they’re happy now. I took Neil out on the cat with me. And look where it got me. I’m dead. And my stupid brother is the one who lived.”

chapter

six
     
     

    Well, at least now I knew why Neil had been sort of quiet all through dinner: He’d just lost his only brother.
    “The guy couldn’t swim to the other side of the pool,” Craig insisted, “without having an asthma attack. How could he have clung to the side of a catamaran for seven hours, in ten-foot swells, before being rescued? How?”
    I was at a loss to explain it as well. Much as I was at a loss as to how I was going to explain to Craig that it was his belief that his brother should be dead that was keeping his soul earthbound.
    “Maybe,” I suggested tentatively, “you got hit in the head.”
    “So what if I did?” Craig glared at me, letting me know my guess was right on target. “Freaking Neil—who couldn’t do a chin-up to save his life— he managed to hold on. Me, the guy with all the swimming trophies? Yeah, I’m the one who drowned. There’s no justice in the world. And that’s why I’m here, and Neil’s downstairs eating freaking fajitas.”
    Jesse looked solemn. “Is it your plan, then, to avenge your death by