I stared at Bryce. He was tanned from his trip to Antigua. He sat on the picnic table with his feet on the bench, his elbows on his knees, staring out at the Pacific. A gentle wind tugged at some of his sandy-blond hair.
He has no idea, I thought. He has no idea at all. He thinks his life was bad now? Just wait.
Just wait.
CHAPTER 8
He didn't have to wait long. In fact, it was right after lunch that she came after him. Not that he ever knew it, of course. I spotted her immediately in the crowd as everybody headed toward their lockers. Ghosts have a sort of glow about them that sets them apart from the living – thank God, too, or half the time I might never have known the difference.
Anyway, there she was staring daggers at him like one of those blond kids out of Village of the Damned. People, not knowing she was there, kept walking straight through her. I sort of envied them. I wish ghosts were invisible to me like they were to everybody else. I know that would mean I wouldn't have been able to enjoy my dad's company these past few years, but, hey, it also would have meant I wouldn't be standing there knowing Heather was about to do something horrible.
Not that I knew what it was she planned on doing to him. Ghosts can get pretty rough sometimes. The trick Jesse had done with the mirror was nothing, really. I've had objects thrown at me with enough force that, if I hadn't ducked, I'd certainly be one with the spirit world as well. I've had concussions and broken bones galore. My mom just thinks I'm accident-prone. Yeah, Mom. That's right. I broke my wrist falling down the stairs. Oh, and the reason I fell down the stairs is that the ghost of a three-hundred-year-old conquistador pushed me.
The minute I saw Heather, though, I knew she was up to no good. I was not basing this assumption on my previous interaction with her. Oh, no. See, I followed the direction of Heather's gaze, and saw that it wasn't Bryce, exactly, that she was staring at. It was actually one of the rafters in the section of breezeway beneath which Bryce was walking that had attracted her attention. And as I stood there, I saw the timber start to shake. Not the whole breezeway. Oh, no. Just one single, heavy piece. The piece directly over Bryce's head.
I acted without thought. I threw myself as hard as I could at Bryce. We both went flying. And good thing, too. Because we were still rolling when I heard an enormous explosion. I ducked my head to shield my eyes, so I didn't actually see the piece of timber explode. But I heard it. And I felt it, too. Those tiny splinters of wood hurt as they pelted me. Good thing I was wearing wool slacks, too.
Bryce lay so still beneath me that I thought maybe a chunk of wood had got him between the frontal lobes, or something. But when I lifted my face from his chest, I saw that he was okay – he was just staring, horrified, at the ten-inch-thick plank of wood, nearly two feet long, that lay a few feet away from us. All around us were scattered shards of wood that had broken off the main piece. I guess Bryce was realizing that if that plank had succeeded in splintering his cranium, there'd have been little pieces of Bryce scattered all around that stone floor, too.
"Excuse me. Excuse me – " I heard Father Dominic's strained voice, and saw him push through the crowd of stunned onlookers. He froze when he saw the chunk of wood, but when his gaze took in Bryce and me, he sprung into action again.
"Good God in heaven," he cried, hurrying toward us. "Are you children all right? Susannah, are you hurt? Bryce?"
I sat up slowly. I frequently have to check for broken bones, and have found, over the years, that the slower you get up, the more chance you have at discovering what's broken, and the less chance there is you'll put weight on it.
But in this particular case, nothing seemed broken. I got to my feet.
"Good gracious," Father Dom was saying. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine," I said, brushing myself off. There were little pieces of wood all over me. And this was my best Donna Karan jacket. I looked around for Heather – really, if I'd have found her at that particular moment, I'd have killed her, I really would have ... except, of course, that she's already dead. But she was gone.
"God," Bryce said, coming up to me. He didn't look hurt, just shaken up a little. Actually, it would have been hard to hurt a guy as big as he was. He was six feet tall and broad shouldered, a genuine Baldwin.
And he was talking to me. Me!
"God, are you okay?" he wanted to know. "Thank you. God. I think you must have saved my life."
"Oh," I said. "It was nothing, really." I couldn't resist reaching out and plucking a splinter of wood from his sweater vest. Cashmere. Just as I'd suspected.
"What is going on here?" A tall guy in a lot of robes with a red beanie on his head came pushing through the crowd. When he saw the wood on the ground, then looked up to take in the gaping hole where it was supposed to be, he turned on Father Dom and said, "See? See, Dominic? This is what comes of you letting your precious birds nest wherever they want! Mr. Ackerman warned us this might happen, and look! He was right! Somebody might have been killed!"
So this, then, was Monsignor Constantine.
"I'm so sorry, Monsignor," Father Dom said. "I can't think how such a thing could have happened. Thank heavens no one was hurt." He turned to Bryce and me. "You two are all right? You know, I think Miss Simon looks a little pale. I'll just take her off to see the nurse, if that's all right with you, Susannah. The rest of you children get on to class now. Everyone is all right. It was just an accident. Run along, now."
Amazingly, people did as he said. Father Dominic had that kind of way about him. You just sort of had to do what he said. Thank God he used his powers for good instead of evil!
I wish the same could have been said of the monsignor. He stood in the suddenly empty corridor, staring down at the piece of wood. Anybody could tell just to look at it that it wasn't the least bit rotten. The wood wasn't new by any means, but it was perfectly dry.
"I'm having those bird nests removed, Dominic," the monsignor said bitterly. "All of them. We simply can't take these kinds of risks. Supposing one of the tourists had been standing here? Or, God forbid, the archbishop. He's coming next month, you know. What if Archbishop Rivera had been standing here and this beam had fallen? What then, Dominic?"
The nuns who'd come out, hearing all the ruckus, cast looks of such reproof at poor Father Dominic that I nearly said something. I opened my mouth to do so, in fact, but Father Dom tightened his grip on my arm and started marching me away. "Of course," he called. "You're quite right. I'll get the custodial staff right on it, Monsignor. We couldn't have the archbishop injured. No, indeed."
"God, what a pus-head!" I said, as soon as we were safely behind the closed door to the principal's office. "Is he kidding, thinking a couple of birds could do that?"
Father Dominic had gone straight across the room to a small cabinet in which there were a number of trophies and plaques – teaching awards, I found out later. Before he'd been reassigned by the diocese to an administrative position, Father Dominic had been a popular and much-loved teacher of biology. He reached behind one of the awards and drew out a packet of cigarettes.
"I'm not sure it isn't a bit sacrilegious, Susannah," he said, looking down at the red and white pack, "to refer to a monsignor in the Catholic church as a pus-head."
"Good thing I'm not Catholic, then," I said. "And you can smoke one of those if you want to." I nodded at the cigarettes in his hand. "I won't tell."
He looked down longingly at the pack for a minute more, then heaved this big sigh, and put them back where he'd found them. "No," he said. "Thank you, but I'd better not."
Jeez. Maybe it was a good thing I'd never really gotten the hang of the smoking thing.