Meg Cabot - Reunion

Jesse shook his head. It was a dangerous move with four angry, out-of-control young ghosts bearing down on him. But he did it anyway.

I took a step closer to Jesse as I saw the RLS Angels shimmer with rage. I stood on tiptoe so he could hear me when I whispered, "I'll take the girls. You take the boys."

"No." Jesse's expression was grim. "Leave, Susannah. While they are occupied with me, run for the road and flag down the next automobile you see. Then go with them to safety."

Uh, yeah. Right.

"And leave you to deal with them alone?" I glared at him. "What are you, nuts?"

"Susannah," he hissed. "You don't understand. They'll kill you - "

I laughed. I actually laughed, all my anger with him gone.

Jesse was right. I didn't understand.

"Let them try," I said.

That's when they rushed us.

I guess the Angels must have agreed upon an arrangement amongst themselves that was similar to the one I'd tried to make with Jesse, since the girls came at me and both boys went for Jesse. I wasn't too dismayed. I mean, two on one is kind of unfair, but, except for the whole telekinetic power thing, I felt we were pretty even. Carrie and Felicia hadn't been fighters when they'd been alive - that much was clear from the very first moment they tackled me - so they didn't have a real solid idea of where it was best to apply a fist in order to cause the most pain.

At least, that's what I thought before they started hitting me. The thing I hadn't counted on was the fact that these girls - and their boyfriends, too - were really, really mad.

And if you think about it, they had a right to be. Okay, maybe they had been jerks when they'd been alive - they didn't exactly strike me as the kind of people I'd want to hang out with, with their obsession with partying and their elitist attitudes - but they'd been young. They would likely have grown into, if not thoughtful, then at least productive citizens.

Michael Meducci had put a stop to that, though. And they were spitting mad about it.

I guess you could argue that their own behavior hadn't exactly been above reproach. I mean, they had thrown that party where Lila Meducci had been so seriously hurt, due not only to her own stupidity, but also their - and their parents' - negligence.

But that didn't seem to occur to them. No, as far as the RLS Angels were concerned, they'd been cheated. Cheated from their lives. And somebody was going to have to pay for that.

That someone was Michael Meducci. And anyone who tried to stand in the way of their achieving that goal.

Their wrath was exquisite. Really. I don't think I've ever been as completely, one hundred percent angry as those ghosts were. Oh, I've been mad, sure. But never that mad, and never for that long.

The RLS Angels were furious. And they took that fury out on Jesse and me.

I didn't even see the first blow. It spun me around the way that semi truck had spun the Rambler. I felt my lip split. Blood flew out in a fountain from my face. Some of it landed on the girls' evening gowns.

They didn't even notice. They just hit me again.

I don't want you to think I didn't hit back. I did. I was good. Really good.

Just not good enough. I had to reassess my whole theory on that two-on-one thing. It wasn't fair. Felicia Bruce and Carrie Whitman were killing me.

And there wasn't a blessed thing I could do about it.

I couldn't even look over to see if Jesse was bearing up any better than I was. Every time I turned my head, it seemed, another fist connected with it. Soon I couldn't see at all. My eyes had filled up with blood, which appeared to be streaming from a cut in my forehead. Either that or some blood vessels in my eyes had burst from the force of some of those blows. I hoped Jesse, at least, would be all right. It wasn't like he could die, or anything. Not like I could. The one thing that kept going through my head was, Well, if they kill me, then I'll finally know where everybody goes. Once a mediator has sent them packing, I mean.

At one point during Felicia and Carrie's assault, I tripped over something - something that was warm and somewhat soft. I wasn't sure what it was - I couldn't see it, of course - until it moaned my name.

"Suze," it said.

At first I didn't recognize the voice. Then I realized Michael's throat must have been crushed by that seatbelt. All he could do was croak.

"Suze," he wheezed. "What's happening?"

The terror in his voice, I thought, showed that he was probably as frightened now as Josh, Carrie, Mark, and Felicia had been when he'd rammed their car and sent them plummeting to their deaths. It served him right, I thought, in some distant part of my mind that wasn't concentrating on trying to escape the blows that were raining down on me.

"Suze," Michael moaned, beneath me. "Make it stop."

As if I could. As if I had anything like control over what was happening to me. If I lived through this - which didn't seem likely - some big changes were going to be made. First and foremost, I was going to practice my kick-boxing a lot more faithfully.

And then something happened. I can't tell you what it was because, like I said, I couldn't see.

But I could hear. And what I heard was perhaps the sweetest sound I'd ever heard in my life.

It was a siren. Police or firetruck, ambulance or paramedic, I couldn't tell. But it was coming closer, and closer, and closer still, until suddenly, I could hear the vehicle's tires crunching on the gravel in front of me. The blows that had been raining down on me abruptly ceased, and I sagged against Michael, who was pushing at me feebly, saying, "The cops. Get off me. It's the cops. I gotta go."

A second later, hands were touching me. Warm hands. Not ghost hands. Human hands.

Then a man's voice was saying, "Don't worry, miss. We've got you. We've got you. Can you stand up?"

I could, but standing caused waves of pain to go shooting through me. I recognized that pain. It was the kind of pain that was so intense, it seemed ridiculous … so ridiculous, I started to giggle. Really. Because it was just funny that anything could hurt that much. It meant, pain like that, that something, somewhere, was broken.

Then something soft was pressed beneath me, and I was told to lie down. More pain - burning, searing pain that left me chuckling weakly. More hands touched me.

Then I heard a familiar voice calling my name as if from somewhere very far away.

"Susannah. Susannah, it's me, Father Dominic. Can you hear me, Susannah?"

I opened my eyes. Someone had wiped the blood from them. I could see again.

I was lying on an ambulance gurney. Red and white lights were flashing all around me. Two emergency medical technicians were messing with the wound in my scalp.

But that wasn't what hurt. My chest. Ribs. I'd cracked a few. I could tell.

Father Dominic's face loomed over my gurney. I tried to smile - tried to speak - but I couldn't. My lip was too sore to move it.

"Gina called me," Father Dominic said, I suppose in answer to the questioning look I'd given him. "She told me you were going to meet Michael. I guessed - after she told me what you'd said about the accident today - that this was where you'd bring him. Oh, Susannah, how I wish you hadn't."

"Yeah," one of the EMTs said. "Looks like he worked her over pretty good."

"Hey." His partner was grinning. "Who you kidding? She gave as good as she got. Kid's a mess."

Michael. They were talking about Michael. Who else could they be talking about? None of them - except Father Dominic - could see Jesse, or the RLS Angels. They could see only the two of us, Michael and me, both beaten, apparently, almost to death. Of course they assumed we'd done it to each other. Who else was there to blame?

Jesse. Reminded of him, my heart began to hammer in my broken chest. Where was Jesse? I lifted my head, looking around for him frantically in what had become a sea of uniformed police officers. Was Jesse all right?