Ninth Key by Meg Cabot

me?”
    “Oh my God,” I said, completely mortified. “Jesse, I never said a word to him about you. I swear. He’s the one who brought you up. I guess he’s been spying on me or something.” This was a humiliating thing to have to admit. “So…what’d you do? When he came after you?”
    Jesse shrugged. “What could I do? I tried to explain myself as best I could. After all, it’s not as if my intentions are dishonorable.”
    Damn! Wait a minute, though
— “You have
intentions
?”
    I know it’s pathetic, but at this point in my life, even hearing that the
ghost
of a guy might have intentions — even of the not dishonorable sort — was kind of cool. Well, what do you expect? I’m sixteen and no one’s ever asked me out. Give me a break, okay?
    Besides, Jesse’s way hot, for a dead guy.
    But unfortunately, his intentions toward me appeared to be nothing but platonic, if the fact that he picked up the pillow that he’d slammed onto the floor — with his hands this time — and smashed it in my face was any indication.
    This did not seem like the kind of thing a guy who was madly in love with me would do.
    “So what did my dad say?” I asked him when I’d pushed the pillow away. “I mean, after you reassured him that your intentions weren’t dishonorable?”
    “Oh,” Jesse said, sitting back down on the bed. “After a while he calmed down. I like him, Susannah.”
    I snorted. “Everybody does. Or did, back when he was alive.”
    “He worries about you, you know,” Jesse said.
    “He’s got way bigger things to worry about,” I muttered, “than me.”
    Jesse blinked at me curiously. “Like what?”
    “Gee, I don’t know. How about why he’s still here instead of wherever it is people are supposed to go after they die? That might be one suggestion, don’t you think?”
    Jesse said, quietly, “How are you so sure this isn’t where he’s supposed to be, Susannah? Or me, for that matter?”
    I glared at him. “Because it doesn’t work that way, Jesse. I may not know much about this mediation thing, but I do know that. This is the land of the living. You and my dad and that lady who was here a minute ago — you don’t belong here. The reason you’re stuck here is because something is wrong.”
    “Ah,” he said. “I see.”
    But he didn’t see. I knew he didn’t see.
    “You can’t tell me you’re happy here,” I said. “You can’t tell me you’ve
liked
being trapped in this room for a hundred and fifty years.”
    “It hasn’t been all bad,” he said with a smile. “Things have picked up recently.”
    I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. And since I was afraid my voice might get all squeaky again if I asked, I settled for saying, “Well, I’m sorry about my dad coming after you. I swear I didn’t tell him to.”
    Jesse said softly, “It’s all right, Susannah. I like your father. And he only does it because he cares about you.”
    “You think so?” I picked at the bedspread. “I wonder. I think he does it because he knows it annoys me.”
    Jesse, who’d been watching me pull on a chenille ball, suddenly reached out and seized my fingers.
    He’s not supposed to do that. Well, at least I’d been meaning to tell him he’s not supposed to do that. Maybe it had slipped my mind. But anyway, he’s not supposed to do that. Touch me, I mean.
    See, even though Jesse’s a ghost, and can walk through walls and disappear and reappear at will, he’s still…well,
there.
To me, anyway. That’s what makes me — and Father Dom — different from everybody else. We not only can see and talk to ghosts, but we can feel them, too — just as if they were anybody else. Anybody alive, I mean. Because to me and Father Dom, ghosts
are
just like anyone else, with blood and guts and sweat and bad breath and whatever. The only real difference is that they kind of have this glow around them — an aura, I think it’s called.
    Oh, and did I mention that a lot of them have superhuman