Meg Cabot - Twilight

But it satisfied the rumbling in my stomach . . . and soon made me aware of another urge.

Paul seemed to read my mind.

"There's an outhouse behind the barn," he informed me.

"A what house?"

"You know." Paul grinned. "Watch out for the spiders."

I thought he was joking.

He wasn't. There were spiders. Worse, what they had to use as toilet paper back then? Let's just say that today, it wouldn't be considered fit to write on , let alone . . . you know . . . anything else.

Plus I had to hurry, so no one would see me in my twenty-first-century clothes and ask questions.

But it was hard because once I'd slipped out of the barn, I was flabbergasted by what I saw. . . .

Which was nothing.

Really. Nothing, in all directions. No houses. No telephone poles. No paved roads. No Circle Ks. No In-N-Out Burger. Nothing. Just trees. And a dirt track that I suppose passed for a street.

I could, however, see the red dome of the basilica. There it was, down in the valley below us, with the sea behind it. That, at least, hadn't changed in the last 150 years.

Thank God plumbing has, however.

When I crept back up to the loft, there was no sign of Mr. O'Neil. He appeared to have taken his horses and gone off to do whatever it was men like him did all day in 1850. Paul was waiting for me with an odd look on his face.

"What?" I asked, thinking he was going to tease me about the outhouse.

"Nothing," was all he said, however. "Just . . . I have a surprise for you."

Thinking it was another food-related item, although I was quite full from the pie, I said, "What? And don't tell me it's an Egg McMuffin, because I know they don't have drive-through here."

"It's not," Paul said.

And then, moving faster than I'd ever seen him move before, he took something else from his back pocket - a length of rope. Then he grabbed me.

People have, of course, tied me up before. But never somebody whose tongue was once in my mouth. I really wasn't expecting Paul to do something so underhanded. Save my boyfriend's life so I'd never meet him, yes. But hog-tie my hands behind my back?

Not so much.

I struggled, of course. I got in a few good elbow jabs. But I couldn't scream, not if I didn't want Mrs. O'Neil to show up and go running for the sheriff or whatever. I wouldn't be able to help Jesse from jail.

But it appeared I wouldn't be much help to him for the time being, either.

"Believe me," Paul said as he tightened knots that were already practically cutting off my circulation. "This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you."

"It does not," I said, struggling. But it was hard to struggle when I was on my stomach in the hay, and his knee was in the small of my back.

"Well," he said, going to work on my feet now. "You're right, I guess. Actually, this doesn't hurt me at all. And it'll keep you out of trouble while I go find Diego."

"There's a special place for people like you, Paul," I informed him, spitting out hay. I was getting really sick of hay.

"Reform school?" he asked lightly.

"Hell," I informed him.

"Now, Suze, don't be that way." He finished with my feet and, just to be sure I wouldn't get it into my head to, I don't know, roll out of the hayloft, he tied one end of the rope to a nearby post. "I'll be back to untie you just as soon as I kill Felix Diego. Then we can go home."

"Where I'll never speak to you again," I informed him.

"Sure you will," Paul said cheerfully. "You won't remember any of this. Because we won't have gone back through time to save Jesse. Because you won't even know who Jesse is."

"I hate you," I said, really meaning it this time.

"You do now," Paul agreed. "But you won't when you wake up tomorrow in your own bed. Because without Jesse, I'll be the best thing that ever happened to you. It'll just be you and me, two shifters against the world. Won't that be fun?"

"Why don't you go - "

But I didn't get to finish that sentence, because Paul took something else out of his pocket. A clean white handkerchief. He'd told me once that he always carried one because you never know when you might need to gag someone.

"Don't you dare!" I hissed at him.

But it was too late. He wadded the handkerchief into my mouth and secured it there with another piece of rope.

It I had never hated him before, I did then. Hated him with every bone in my body, every beat of my heart. Especially when he gave me a pat on the head and said, "See ya."

Then disappeared down the ladder to the barn floor.

Chapter fifteen

I don't know how long I lay there like that. Long enough to start wondering whether I could just close my eyes and shift home. Who knew where I'd end up? Somewhere in the backyard, anyway. Possibly in a big bunch of poison oak, since there was no barn there now. But anything had to be better than lying in a very cramped position on the floor of a hayloft, with who knew what crawling through my hair and the blood pounding in my temples.

But a world without Jesse? Because that's what I'd be guaranteeing myself if I gave up now. A world without my one purpose for living. Well, more or less. I mean, I know women need men like fish need bicycles, and all of that. Except . . .

Except I love him.

I couldn't do it. I was too selfish. I wasn't going to give up. Not yet. There were still plenty of hours of daylight left, or at least, there had been when Paul had left. The shadows, I couldn't help noticing, were growing longer.

Still, if Mrs. O'Neil had told Paul the truth, and Jesse was expected that night, there was still time. Paul might not find Diego. He might have to come back with his task unaccomplished. And when he did, and he untied me . . .

Well, he was going to learn a lot about pain, that was for sure. Because this time, I'd be ready for him.

I don't know how much time passed while I lay there, plotting my revenge on Paul Slater. Death was too good for him, of course. An eternity as a ghost - floating shiftlessly through this dimension and the next - was what would suit him best. Give him a little taste of what it had been like for Jesse all of these years. That ought to teach him . . .

I could do it, too. I could pull Paul's soul out of his body and make it so that he could never return to it . . .

. . . by giving that body to someone else. Someone who deserved a chance to live again . . .

But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. I couldn't kiss Paul's lips, even if I knew it was Jesse inside them, kissing me back. It was just too . . . gross.

It was as I was lying there thinking this that I heard it, a sound my ears had become so finely attuned to over the past year that I could have been at the Super Bowl, a million rows away, and I still would have heard it.

Jesse's voice.

He was calling to someone. I couldn't hear what, exactly, he was saying. But he sounded, I don't know. Different, somehow.

He was getting closer, too. His voice, I mean.

He was coming toward the barn.

He'd found me. I don't know how - Dr. Slaski hadn't said anything about ghosts being able to travel through time, But maybe they could. Maybe they could, just like shifters, and Jesse had done it, he'd come back through time looking for me. To save me. To help me save him.

I closed my eyes, thinking his name as hard as I could. This worked, more often than not. Jesse would materialize in front of me, wondering what on earth was so urgent.

Only he didn't. Not this time. I opened my eyes, and . . . nothing.

Only I could still his voice below me. He was saying, "No, no, it's all right, Mrs. O'Neil."

Mrs. O'Neil. Mrs. O'Neil could see Jesse?

The barn door opened. I heard it creak. Then . . .

Footsteps.

But how could Jesse have footsteps? He's a ghost.