3.

The rest of Jessica's weekend went by in a flash, even though most of Saturday involved sitting around in a hospital waiting for Esme's wrist to get set. By the time that was finished it was too late to make the trek back to Palo Alto, so she and Esme stayed another night at their little motel. (Surprisingly, no one had actually witnessed her and Esme running around half unclothed at dawn, so no one batted an eye when they finally returned. Jessica supposed she should be thankful for small favors.)

She then spent about an hour crammed in the small tub (adding hot water whenever it started to get cold), luxuriating in the glorious heat and refusing to get out whenever Esme hinted that she would like to wrap a trash bag around her new cast and take a shower herself. "You're not the one who was naked earlier," Jessica pointed out. "I'm still warming up."

"Why the hell is it so cold here, anyway? Isn't this the sunshine state?" Esme groused, causing Jessica to roll her eyes and remind Esme that one, not all of California was hot and sunny all the time and it was March; two, the sunshine state was Florida; and three, shouldn't someone as worldly as Esme know both things already? Esme ignored her (quite reasonable) points in favor of filling a cup with ice water and dumping it over her head. In the end, Jessica graciously let Esme have the shower and took the opportunity to steal her blankets.

Esme spent a little while on her phone with both the airline and their mother and got a flight out scheduled for Sunday afternoon, so they set out mid-morning Sunday and drove straight to the Palo Alto airport. "Where are you going from here?" Jessica asked Esme as they approached.

"Connection to SFO, then I'm headed out to Maine," Esme answered. "Looks like some sort of haunting at Bowdoin College. Call Mom if you want the details." She looked down at her cast, then back at Jessica, eyes uncharacteristically soft. "We did good, Jessie," she said, the corners of her mouth twitching up into a proud smile. She leaned over and gave Jessica a one-armed hug, holding her close for a heartbeat. Jessica hugged her back, closing her eyes and relaxing into her sister's arms.

Then Esme tickled her.

Jessica shrieked. Esme laughed uproariously and jumped out of the car. "I am so going to kill you next time I see you," Jessica yelled at her.

"Love you too, bitch," Esme called back cheerfully and grabbed her bag. Then, with a wink, she was gone.

Jessica spent the rest of Sunday curled up in her bed wearing sweats that actually fit her and doing all her homework. (The end of the quarter was looming, and she really needed to buckle down and actually pay attention to her studies for awhile.) Her phone didn't ring, and she didn't call anyone, partly because all of her friends thought she would be gone until late, but also because she felt like she needed to recharge, put on the college-girl outfit again and give it a few stretches until it fit her comfortably again.

Homework was a good (albeit mind-numbing) way to do that, and she let herself stop thinking about anything other than differential equations and abnormal psychology until she crawled under the covers, mourning the demise of her Snoopy pajamas as she tried to get comfortable wearing a nightgown. (Her mother had bought her the thing, all white lace and sheer fabric that twisted around her thighs like a vise whenever she tried to move. Jessica hated it, but her mother had packed it with her Stanford things, and of course it was the only clean thing she had.)

Her phone finally rang a few minutes after she had snapped off the light. She checked the display (Adrian), but didn't answer. She would see everyone tomorrow, Melissa for breakfast, Adrian in her first class, and Sam at lunch.

At the thought of Sam she felt heat flood her, her heart beating a crazy tattoo in her ears, and she laughed out loud at her own reaction. The thought of eating lunch with Sam should not cause a similar reaction to fighting for her life, she thought, but that didn't stop the crazy swooping feeling she got in her chest the longer she thought about what she might say to him. She couldn't tell him the whole truth about her, not yet, but she could tell him the honest truth about how she felt about him. She could give him that much.

She crossed her fingers in the dark and hoped he would want to hear it.

o

The next morning Jessica told Melissa over coffee that today was the day she would talk to Sam. Melissa smiled sleepily and gave her a tired 'you go, girl' and then nearly face-planted into her eggs. They spent the rest of their breakfast date discussing why organic chemistry was clearly the devil's work while Melissa did espresso shots in between forkfuls.

She got to calculus before Adrian, so she staked out their usual table in the back (chosen because the professor couldn't overhear whatever raunchy story Adrian was whispering to her) and waited impatiently for about five minutes before Adrian slid into the seat next to her and slung an arm around her shoulders. "You missed one hell of a night Friday," he purred into her ear.

She shrugged him off. "Good morning to you too," she said as calmly as she could manage. She wanted to grab him and shake him until he told her what had happened while she was gone (why had it been this weekend?), but she also didn't want him to get all coy with the details, which he would if he thought she cared. So she asked, all cool, "Hey, did you get problem eighteen on the homework?"

Adrian leaned back in his seat and laced his fingers behind his head. "A hell of a night, Jessie girl," he repeated, darting little glances at her out of the corner of his eye and not incidentally totally ignoring her (admittedly bullshit) question. He gave a satisfied sigh and tried to act nonchalant, like he wasn't dying to tell her everything and going to crack and spill every little detail any second now. Jessica bit her lips and acted like she didn't notice, even going so far as to fake a little yawn. Neither of them moved for a moment.

"What happened?" she blurted at the same time he dropped his hands and exclaimed, "Body shots, Jessie girl!"

She grabbed his shoulders and yanked his head down so he could whisper every salacious detail to her while they waited for their professor to put in an appearance. To her surprise Adrian was mostly excited about convincing Preeti to do body shots off of him, but then he told her about getting Sam to bare his shoulders (after several other shots) and letting him lick salt off them. Jessica was going to murder Adrian for not thinking to take pictures of this. (She really, really hoped that thought had crossed Rebecca's mind at least.)

But Adrian kept going back to Preeti and her 'big brown eyes' and 'cute little tongue' and 'adorable smile' so Jessica was left to imagine Sam's bared shoulders by herself. (Not that Preeti wasn't cute, of course, but Jessica wasn't interested in her that way. She was kind of surprised to learn that Adrian was, but then again Adrian's qualifications for a potential partner didn't seem to extend beyond 'breathing', which Preeti certainly was, so she supposed she shouldn't be too shocked.)

The rest of her morning was spent in a thrum of anticipation of her lunch date with Sam. She mentally rehearsed about eighteen different ways she could tell him, rejecting each as too stupid, or too lame, or liable to cause Sam to fall into a diabetic coma. She was still frantically trying to figure out how to put it when she arrived at the café.

Sam was already there, sitting hunched over a table in the back, and just from the set of his shoulders she could tell that he had a metaphorical thundercloud over his head. Disappointment hummed through her, but it was quickly replaced by concern, and she went over to him and slid into the chair next to him, not the one opposite, and touched his hand. "Hi, Sam," she said softly.

Sam jerked, raising red-rimmed eyes to hers, but when he saw it was Jessica his shoulders relaxed a fraction, and he dropped his head again. "Hi, Jess," he said to the tabletop.

She leaned over and wrapped an arm around him. "Hey," she said softly. "You okay?" He didn't answer, so she tried again. "C'mon, Sam, tell me what the table did to you. I'll kick its ass for you." She was rewarded with a choked-off laugh and a shift in her arms until he was leaning his head on her shoulder.

His hair was right there.

She debated with herself (really, she did, if only for about a nanosecond) and then slid one hand up to his head, running her fingers gently through the messy strands. He sighed a little and wrapped his arms around her waist. She moved her other hand up, stroked his hair with both hands (oh god it was so soft) and whispered, "What happened?"

"It's nothing," he murmured. "Just a fight with my brother. He showed up this weekend, for the first time since I left, and—" He cut himself off. "It's stupid."

"Dean was here?" she asked, miffed that Sam's mysterious brother had chosen this particular weekend to show up (yet more proof that this job had had the worst timing ever). But she was also a little relieved that this was Sam's problem. She might not know that much about Normal, but she knew a lot about fighting with bullheaded older siblings. "Is he still around? I can kick his ass too, if you want. He's not taller than you, is he? Not that it matters, I'll kick his ass anyway."

Sam snorted and pushed away from her, and she had to stop herself from lunging for his hair again. Instead she reached out and grabbed his both of his huge hands in hers and squeezed them until he looked at her again. He looked like shit, she decided, circles under his eyes like he hadn't slept and face a kind of sickly pale under the usual slight tan and his hands were clammy and trembling, and yet she still wanted to kiss him. "Seriously, what happened?" she asked instead.

He sighed. "I don't want to talk about it. Let's just eat, okay?"

This was a little more difficult. Jessica usually didn't have a problem getting people to tell her what was wrong (actually, it was usually more the opposite – Esme was always only too happy to tell Jessica exactly why she was angry/irritated/unhappy/etc., and all she had to do was feed Adrian a couple shots and he would sing like a canary) so she felt a little out of her depth, now. But she couldn't let Sam stay miserable like this either. "You can tell me," she hedged. "I've got an older brother too, and an older sister who is a total bitch, so I know the score. Little siblings unite, right?"

Sam leaned forward until his forehead touched hers. "Look, Jess," he said quietly. "I really appreciate what you're trying, but I – I just can't explain what it was about, okay? It's," he swallowed, "private family stuff." He squeezed her hands. "You understand, right?"

No, she thought, but she forced herself to nod a little and squeeze back. Sam smiled a little then, finally, and they disentangled themselves and went up to the counter to order lunch. As she waited for her food and watched Sam's hands shake as he waited for his, she came to two conclusions.

One, she did understand why he didn't want to talk about it; she couldn't even imagine being able to explain her last huge fight with Esme to anyone else, and it wasn't just because she wasn't Normal. There were just some things too close, with too much history behind them, to be able to explain to anyone outside of it properly.

Two, she was pretty sure Sam hadn't eaten since his brother left.

They talked about nothing much over their food, classes and books and anime and the merits of various different law schools. Jessica ate fast, watching every bite Sam took. He started slow, small bites spaced out, but the longer they talked the more relaxed he got, and soon he had finished everything on his plate. He didn't even argue when she (perhaps not terribly subtly) suggested he go back for another helping (she went back too – for solidarity, of course). He also stole part of her dessert (which she generously allowed, though she did have to draw the line after he ate more than half of the brownie).

By the time they were done, his color had improved, and he was even genuinely laughing again. But now wasn't the time to leap on him and declare her (lust) love, so instead she looked pointedly at his jeans (which were about two inches too short) and told him they were hitting Goodwill.

"Why?" Sam asked as he followed her to her car like a faithful puppy. "It's not that close, is it?"

She grabbed his hand and swung it. "It's only, like, two or three miles, and because I need new pajamas and you need new jeans, and we're both too broke to go to real stores," she replied (which wasn't actually true, as Jessica could afford it, but she knew Sam couldn't, and she suspected he wouldn't like it if she dragged him to a high-end clothing store and tried to buy him pants).

"But these jeans are okay," he protested.

In response she kicked him on the (bare) ankle, and he stopped protesting after that. Instead he spent the short car ride there asking her why she needed new pajamas. She answered something about them getting ruined over the weekend, and when he tried to press her further, she took a risk and replied, "Sam, look. It's private family stuff, okay?" To her relief, he smiled at that, even if he also got his faraway look at the same time.

At the store, Jessica went off to paw through all the potential pajama replacements while Sam browsed the selection of jeans. After about twenty minutes (during which she found nothing that even came close to the perfection of her Snoopy pajamas), he slouched over to her and complained that none of the jeans in his size had long enough legs. "Maybe you should try ones with longer inseams," she said, holding up a shirt with Rainbow Brite on it and frowning at it.

"Don't get that," Sam opined.

"Wasn't going to," she said, tossing it back and picking up something else. "Seriously, though. How tall are you, anyway?"

"Six two, maybe six three?" Sam replied, causing her to drop the pink frilly nightgown she had been making faces at.

"You're kidding me, right?" she demanded.

He gave her a wide-eyed look of confusion. "What?"

Jessica grabbed his hand and dragged him over to one of the employees. "This idiot thinks he's only six two," she informed the girl, who gaped at her in surprise. Behind her, Sam made some sort of protesting noise, but she ignored it. "Do you have a measuring tape by any chance?"

The girl nodded and dug one out, handing it over with a shy smile as she looked Sam up and down. Jessica resisted the urge to give her the 'back off, bitch, he's mine!' look (she was far too nice for such things) and instead said to Sam, "Look, I don't usually admit this, but I'm over six feet tall, Sam."

He blinked. "You are?"

"Half an inch over," she confirmed. "I usually say just under six feet, but it's the other way around. And Sam, let me tell you something. You are not only an inch or two taller than I am." She quickly snapped the measuring tape taut and held it up to him. "Six six," she said, triumphant, and then (heart pounding) she measured his legs and showed him the result, hoping furiously that she wasn't blushing (oh god she had just run her hands over his legs).

Sam flushed, and she almost touched his cheek. "I'll go look again," he mumbled and dashed off in the direction of the pants.

With a sigh she handed the measuring tape back to the employee, who gave her a half-jealous, half-admiring look and whispered conspiratorially, "You and your boyfriend are so cute."

Jessica thought about correcting her, but dammit, they were cute, even if it wasn't official (yet), and besides, she didn't want to give the girl any ideas about Sam being a free agent. So she just said, "Thanks!" with a bright smile and then returned to the pajama section.

After another ten minutes of searching she spotted the perfect replacement set. She tried them on and looked at herself in the mirror for a minute, then stripped them off, ran to the front, and bought them before she could talk herself out of it on the basis that the shirt was technically too small for her. (Well, so were the pants, but pajama pants hitting her mid-calf was an acceptable length, and they did fit around her waist.) So the shirt would show off her midriff, she thought. So it didn't have Snoopy on it. She loved them. Maybe not as much as her Snoopy pajamas (may they rest in peace), but they were soft and comfortable (despite being too short), and the shirt had Smurfs on it.

Sam met her at the front, holding a bag. "I found a pair," he told her, looking excited, and she smiled at him and showed him the Smurfs top. He approved.

They drove back to campus and spent the rest of the afternoon together in Sam's room, talking for awhile (he still wouldn't talk about his brother's visit, though she tentatively tried to bring up the subject a couple times) and then beating each other up, video-game style, on Zach's console. (Sam at one point mentioned that, given that the quarter was ending on Friday, maybe they should do some work, but that suggestion was quickly forgotten in a flurry of digital violence.)

Zach showed up around dinnertime, so all three of them went to the cafeteria for dinner, where they met up with Rebecca and Preeti. (Jessica asked both of them if either had taken pictures of Adrian and Sam doing body shots, but Preeti blushed and said she hadn't even noticed it had happened, and Rebecca swore and said she wished she had thought of it, if only for the blackmail material. She then spent several minutes whispering descriptions of Sam's shoulders, so Jessica was almost mollified. She made a mental note to start bringing her camera with her everywhere, though.)

After dinner, they separated so Sam could finish a paper due Tuesday morning. Jessica hugged him extra tight before going back to her room, where she called first her mother to give her the Daily Report ("Still no progress with Sam then, honey?"), and then Melissa to tell her that things hadn't worked out for today, but she had high hopes for this weekend. "Why not tomorrow?" Melissa asked, but Jessica had her own end-of-quarter work to do (one of which was a huge paper she hadn't technically started yet). She told Melissa this, who immediately agreed that academia came before attempted seduction.

"Besides," Melissa said, "once finals are over, you'll both have some time off. You can afford to wait on things with Sam until you can make it perfect."

o

It was a good thing Jessica could afford to wait on the Sam Issue, as her every waking moment the next week not spent in class, eating, or sleeping had to be devoted to her twin travails of psych paper and calculus test. Her only contact with any of her friends (except Adrian, who was studying with her when he could and therefore didn't count) after Monday was via brief emails and one short phone call from Sam on Wednesday night that ended when Jessica started reciting calculus formulas at him until he promised not to call again and hung up.

She let out a sigh of relief (she did not have time to let herself get distracted with thoughts of Sam and her still-pending confession to him) and dropped her calculus notes in favor of working on her paper instead. She could finish the paper tonight, she reasoned, edit it tomorrow, and then turn it in Friday. All the rest of her time she would devote to studying for calculus. "Let's do it!" she said out loud (rah rah!), and started typing.

Only the conclusion was left when her phone rang. Jessica shook the kinks out of her wrists and grabbed the phone, all set to deliver a veritable tongue-lashing to Sam for calling her again, when she noticed the display blinking 'Dad'.

"Hey, Dad. What's up?" she answered.

"Muffin!" her father's voice boomed over the line. "It's good to hear your voice! Esme told me all about your last hunt. You really beheaded a draugr?"

"I really did," she confirmed, glancing at her computer screen. "Dad, I—"

"All that practice paid off then, eh?"

"Yes, Dad, all the summers you spent making me behead practice dummies really paid off." She leaned back and closed her eyes. "Look, Dad—"

"Beheading is a lot harder than it looks, you know," her father said sagely (she did know already, thanks). "I'm proud of you, muffin. So you're keeping up with your training then?"

"Best I can," she replied, then said in a rush, "Dad, I'm working on a paper due soon. If I promise to call you back this weekend, can I go now? We can talk all about beheading then, I promise."

"Well, that's the thing," he replied, an edge of seriousness bleeding into his voice. "I'm calling for your mother."

Jessica's heart sank. "For Mom?" Her mother knew how much work she had (Jessica had told her on Monday) and had let her off the hook for mother/daughter phone calls until Friday. So she wouldn't be calling her (or, more accurately, making Jessica's father call her) unless—

"It's a vengeful spirit," her father confirmed. "Not too far from you. Your mother made a few calls, figured out who it was and where the body's buried. You just have to salt and burn the body." His tone turned cajoling. "Esme says you have a flame gun now, so you can use that instead of matches. That'll be fun, right, muffin?"

"Just salt and burn it?" Jessica repeated incredulously. "Dad, do you know how long it takes to dig up a grave by myself? I'm still not finished with this paper, and it's the last week of classes. Does it have to be me who—"

"Yes, it does," her father interrupted, tone all business now. "Your mother spent most of the day trying to find a freelancer close enough to get there by tonight, but the closest one is over a day away, and this spirit has attacked every night this week right at 1 am. It's killed four people already, Jessica."

He was using her actual name. She let out a breath, glanced again at her almost-finished paper on the screen, and then hit save and closed the file.

"Where's the grave?" she asked.

The grave turned out to be almost an hour outside of Palo Alto. Jessica drove there as fast as she dared, checking the clock and doing mental calculations as she weaved in and out of traffic. She should get there just before ten, so she'd have a little more than three hours before the spirit attacked again. It would be tight, and she'd be aching afterwards, but she could do it.

Her mother called about halfway through the drive. Jessica let her get through some of the more pertinent details about where she was going (such as which exit she needed to take to get there), but as soon as she got directions she cut her mother off to demand, "Is there a burial liner? Because last time I had to dig up a grave by myself, you neglected to mention the burial liner, and I don't exactly have the time to smash my way through concrete again."

"I talked to the cousin who had to bury him, and no, there isn't one," her mother assured her. "They buried him as cheaply as they could, considering what had happened."

"Just what did this guy do to get killed?"

"Nothing good," her mother said grimly. "It's not important, Jessica. Stopping him before 1 am is. The coffin is the cheapest one they could find, so it's not sealed either. You should be able to smash it open."

"Good," Jessica said fervently. "What else?"

Her mother launched into a description of the cemetery and its security vis-à-vis the location of the grave. "Be careful, as it's not completely out of the way," her mother warned. "But you won't be right on the road, and you shouldn't have too many problems if you're quiet. Call me once you're done, from the car," she added, as if Jessica were a moron who would linger around and talk next to the grave she'd just desecrated.

Jessica rolled her eyes at the rearview mirror and restricted herself to a, "Yes, Mom," before hanging up and following her mother's directions to the cemetery.

Once she'd parked the car in as unobtrusive a location as she could find, she opened the trunk and took out the shovel. Then she pulled up the flap that ostensibly covered just the spare tire, but in reality covered the spare tire (a smaller version than the car had come with) and her collection of weapons. She stowed the flame gun, the salt, her gloves, and (after a moment's deliberation) the lighter fluid in her bag, then hunted through her weapons until she found one of the iron-bladed knives and added that to the collection. Then she gently shut the trunk and turned to the fence surrounding the cemetery.

Her mother had determined that the only security was one night watchman and nothing electronic, so she pitched the shovel over first (careful that it would land on nothing but grass) and followed it with her bag. Then she scaled the fence with ease (she had also spent summers climbing every type of fence her father could find until she could be up and over all of them in less than ten seconds) and dropped quietly to the ground on the other side. Nothing happened; no guard yelling and waving a flashlight appeared, so she gathered up her equipment and stole through the cemetery until she found the right grave.

It was behind a gentle hill topped with a few trees, offering her some screening from the road and (she hoped) from the guard's eyes as well. Moving quickly (it was nearly 9:30 now), she laid out the salt, lighter fluid, and gun far enough from the grave that she wouldn't cover them with dirt. She took a minute to twist her hair into a tight bun, then stuck the knife through her belt and donned the gloves. (Her mother had required gardening gloves for digging after the first time her father had dug up a grave and come back with oozing blisters all over his hands. It made her hands sweat like a bitch, but she wore them because one, it did help keep them from bleeding all over the shovel handle, which made digging easier, and two, they kept her from having to invent reasons why her hands were blistered later.)

As the grave been dug recently (the dates on the plaque showed the guy had only been dead a little over a week), she started by peeling off the strips of sod with the shovel. It took a little work but they came up fairly easily, and she had barely broken a sweat by the time she was done. She laid them out of the way by the other supplies, cocked one ear for the sound of approaching footsteps, and got down to work.

Her sweatpants and hoodie (both dark brown and kept specifically for the purpose of digging up graves) were utterly soaked with sweat and liberally smudged with dirt by the time she uncovered the coffin. Panting, she (carefully) wiped the sweat out of her eyes and leaned on the shovel handle for a moment. Then she checked her watch.

She had about ten minutes before one, so (much as she would have loved collapsing for a minute first) she sucked in a deep breath, raised the shovel over her head, and brought it down as hard as she could on the coffin. (She hated this part, more than the hours of digging, but at least concrete wasn't involved this time.) It hit the lid with a resounding crack, and she winced. But when no one appeared, she smashed it again and mentally crossed her fingers that the guard was on the other side of the cemetery (or possibly hard of hearing).

It took several blows before the lid splintered, but once it had she hauled herself out of the hole, jammed the shovel into the crack, and wrenched it. With a groan the lid broke lengthwise.

The smell hit her then, and she gagged. Should have brought peppermint oil, she thought faintly. (Esme advocated smearing peppermint oil under one's nose whenever dealing with fresher corpses. She had apparently gotten the idea from a coroner.) However, that obviously wasn't an option now (as Jessica had never actually bought peppermint oil out of spite), so instead she opted for burning the damn thing as soon as possible. Preferably before she lost her dinner.

To that end, she started mouth-breathing and batting the strips of wood out of the way until she could actually see the body. The sight of it was almost as awful as the smell; the body had swelled, and the skin was green and black and starting to slough off. It could be worse, she told herself, and knocked another splintered board out of her way.

Now she had a clear shot at the body.

"Time to get down to business," she whispered. She laid the shovel down by the grave and stripped the gloves off, then went for the salt and the lighter fluid. She had just finished salting and dousing and was going back for the flame gun when the spirit attacked.

Its hands scrabbled at her face as she bit off a scream of shock and dropped to the ground. The spirit followed her, its eyes nothing but pits of shadow but its mouth open in a snarl as it tried, again, to grab her face. It's going for my eyes, she realized, and threw herself forward, scrabbling for the flame gun. Her hands closed on the handle.

The spirit suddenly shifted to in front of her and went for her again. Suppressing another shriek, she yanked the gun up to block it, but the spirit didn't seem too fazed by it, if the way its hands went through the gun was any indication. No iron, she thought, and threw herself backwards to avoid the clawed fingers reaching again for her eyes. Her back grazed across the corner of the plaque and she nearly swore, but she ignored the pain in favor of scooting forward a few inches. (She did not want to fall in the open grave and land on this bastard's body.)

The spirit was (for the moment) still a few feet away, so she seized the opportunity to carefully lay the gun down (throwing a flame gun was pretty close to the top of the list of Stupid Things to Do With Your Weapon) and then go for the knife still stuck through her belt.

The spirit flickered out of a sight for an instant, then reappeared right in front of her. Up close she could see that its eyes weren't just shadows; they were bloodied pits, like they'd been stabbed, and in the back of her mind she noted that that was probably why it was going for eyes now. But she didn't stop to contemplate it too thoroughly; instead she grabbed the iron knife and swung it through the spirit's outstretched arms.

Its form dissolved into a mist, and she fell back again, panting. Then she dropped the knife, grabbed the flame gun, and rolled until she was facing the open grave. Taking a deep breath, she scrambled up onto her knees and carefully aimed, then pulled the trigger.

The corpse went up in a blaze of fire. Behind her, she heard a wail, and she twisted around to see the spirit writhing in spectral flames. It was clawing at its own eyes, she noted, watching as its form was consumed. When it was gone, she sat back on her heels and tried not to hyperventilate. Then she checked her watch again.

1:03 am.

She put out the still-raging fire (note to self, she thought, don't use too much lighter fluid when using a flame gun) by shoveling dirt back over it. Working as quickly as she could, she refilled the grave, patted it down best she could with the flat of the shovel, and then replaced the sod strips. It didn't look as neat as it had before she broke in, but it wouldn't be immediately obvious (from a distance, anyway) either, so she called it a night, gathered up her stuff, and got the hell out of there.

No one stopped her the second time over the fence either, even when the shovel banged a little on the curb when she threw it. The sheet she used to protect her seats after these excursions was already in place, so she stowed all her gear in the trunk and gratefully climbed into the driver's seat. She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and breathed for a moment, then fished out her phone and called her mother to report that it was done.

"It's after one," her mother said worriedly. "It might have had time—"

"It didn't kill anyone," Jessica reassured her. "I know because it came after me. And yes, Mom, I'm fine."

The drive back didn't seem to take nearly as long, but then there was hardly any traffic anymore. She would park the car, get back to her dorm, take a shower (or possibly a hot bath; she was getting pretty stiff), and then work on her paper until the adrenaline wore off, she decided. She might miss a few hours of sleep, but for the most part this whole experience hadn't screwed her up too much.

The plan went perfectly up until the part where she was walking back to her dorm after parking the car. She was almost there when she heard footsteps off to one side, and then someone called her name.

She turned. "Rebecca?"

"Jessica! It is you!" Rebecca exclaimed, emerging from the shadows and into the light thrown by a nearby streetlamp. "What are you doing out this late? And—" she squinted. "Oh my god, are you okay?"

"What are you doing out this late?" Jessica threw back, already mentally trying to figure out how to explain why she was covered in dirt and sweat and moving like she'd just been through boot camp. (God, she ached.)

Rebecca blushed, which made Jessica also notice that her hair was mussed and her shirt wasn't buttoned properly. She plastered a teasing smile on her face and exclaimed, "Why, Little Becky! Booty calls at this hour? Our little girl's finally growing up!"

"Shut up, it's exam stress," Rebecca muttered, but she grinned. "I'll introduce you to him sometime." She took another step forward, and her eyes raked over Jessica again. "Seriously, are you okay? Did you get attacked or something?"

Jessica looked down at herself. "Yes," she heard herself saying. "I got attacked by a pissed-off ghost while I was digging up its grave."

Rebecca stared at her.

Jessica stared back.

Then Rebecca burst into nervous laughter. "Okay, fine, don't tell me," she said, shaking her head. "Just – are you sure you're okay?"

Jessica sighed. "Yeah, Becca, I'm fine. And it's nothing. I was at the library studying and I tripped and fell on the way home." (One of the libraries had a study room open 24 hours, which Jessica had actually studied in until 3am once, so she thought this story was entirely plausible. She just hoped Rebecca thought so too.)

Rebecca's face cleared at that. "Is that all?" she asked with relief. "God, I was thinking you'd been mugged or something."

"Yeah, because my calculus notes are worth so much," Jessica joked back. Her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled at Rebecca. "Hey, let's get together after exams are over, okay? I need to hear all about this guy who can convince you to come over until 2 am during the last week of classes."

Rebecca laughed. "I'm going back to St. Louis for the break, but I'll get back the day before classes start again, so how about then? We can also talk about you and Saaa-aam," she added in a sing-song.

"Am I that obvious?" Jessica sighed.

Rebecca giggled. "No, he is."

A thrill went through her at that, despite her aching body, and she gave Rebecca a dazzling smile. "Call me when you get back then, okay?"

"Sure," Rebecca agreed, and made as if to hug her. Jessica stepped back and shook her head, grinning, and Rebecca stopped mid-hug and grinned back. Instead she gave Jessica a little wave and disappeared in the direction of her dorm.

Jessica heaved a sigh and then continued the painful walk back to hers. Of course Rebecca didn't believe her, she mused, but then, Normal people never did without incontrovertible evidence. When she (finally) told Sam, she would make sure she could prove it so he wouldn't decide she was a raving lunatic and go screaming into the night.

But she would worry about telling him later (preferably after they were at least dating), she thought wearily as she ran a bath. First, she had to get through the rest of this week.

o

True to his word, Sam didn't try calling her again until Saturday morning, when her phone woke her up from her thank-god-it's-all-over-until-Monday-when-exams-start-oh-god stupor. Jessica blearily grabbed it. "Hello?" she yawned.

"Hey, sleepyhead," Sam said, sounding far too awake for her taste. "We missed you last night. There was no one to challenge me after I kicked Zach's ass at Soul Caliber."

"Tragic," she mumbled. "You know yesterday was the day from hell for me. I got home, ate dinner, and crashed. You just woke up me, actually." She squinted at the clock. "Sam, why are you calling me at nine am on Saturday?"

"I thought maybe we could do breakfast. I haven't even seen you since Monday, and exams don't start till day after tomorrow. We could go out, maybe get omelets or something. Hey, I'll wear the jeans."

"You should wear them anyway, seeing as they're the only pair you have that fits," she said absently, fishing out her knife from under her pillow and quickly stowing it in the drawer. "Sure, come over in like ten minutes? I need to get dressed."

"What, you're not going to just go out in your Smurfs? I thought they were going to continue the Snoopy legacy," he teased.

She wished he were there so she could stick her tongue out at him. "Like anything could truly continue the Snoopy legacy. See you in ten minutes." They hung up and she dragged herself out of her nice, warm bed, grabbed her morning caddy (complete with toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and makeup), and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. About seven minutes later, she was just opening the door to her room when Sam rounded the corner of her hall.

She stopped mid-turn, her breath catching in her throat, her hand frozen on the doorknob. Sam was indeed wearing his new jeans, and if she hadn't realized how gorgeous his legs were when she had been feeling him up with a measuring tape, this pair of jeans drove it home. (Oh, they fit him, all right.) To top it off he was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt instead of his usual (rather shapeless) hoodie, and oh god his shoulders.

"Jess?" he said, and she snapped out of it.

"That was not ten minutes," she complained, a little breathily (down girl, she told herself, you haven't even had breakfast yet). "Give me a minute and I'll get presentable."

He swallowed, and her eyes traced the movement of his throat. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes a little wider than usual, and she wanted to jump on him he was so beautiful. "You're presentable," he said faintly.

She looked down at herself. "You can see my bellybutton," she said, also faintly, and when she looked up again Sam had moved and was standing right in front of her. Her eyes met his, and for a moment they just stared at each other. His eyes were nice, she thought, warm and hazel, and his hair was practically in them but it was so adorable she loved it anyway. Letting go of the doorknob, she reached up with trembling fingers and touched his cheek.

"Jess," he whispered, both of his hands coming up to cup her face, and then he kissed her.

It was a blitzkrieg kiss, sudden and striking, and she dropped her caddy so she could fist both hands in his hair and kiss back. He made a little noise and pressed her against the door to her room, kissing her breathless until she had to pull away several seconds later just to get some air. Undeterred, he pressed his lips against the corner of her mouth and kissed his way down to her neck. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how to breathe, especially after he added his teeth into the equation, which prompted her to drop her head so she could capture his lips with hers again. His arms went around her then, pulling her forward just a bit, and she melted into the warmth, the press of him against her, the feel of his tongue sliding against hers.

Then her foot kicked her abandoned caddy and her eyes flew open again. "Sam!" she tried to say, but he was too busy sucking on her lower lip to notice. She considered breaking the kiss so she could relocate them properly, but quickly abandoned that option when he gently nipped at her lip and she nearly forgot how to stand.

Then it occurred to her that she was pressed up against her door.

So (after a brief fight with herself) she untangled one hand from his hair, grasped the doorknob, and twisted. The door banged open and they nearly fell through (and probably would have had she not one, been expecting it, and two, had as much training as she did).

Sam pulled back with a surprised 'mmph!' and blinked at her in dazed surprise.

"We were in the hallway," Jessica whispered. "I have a PDA rule."

The corners of Sam's mouth curved up. "So do I. Usually," he admitted, almost sheepishly, and she surged forward and kissed both his dimples and then his lips. He laughed, breathlessly, and she pulled back long enough to grin at him before she gave into temptation and bit his shoulder right through his t-shirt's thin fabric.

Sam jumped a little and she backed off and met his heavy-lidded gaze. "What about—" he started, but Jessica (who had been waiting months for this, and if she wasn't letting the fact that she hadn't had breakfast deter her, nothing he could say other than 'stop' would do it) just grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and yanked it off over his head before he could finish whatever he was about to say. Then she tossed him onto her bed and pounced.

It wasn't the heartfelt confession she had been rehearsing, or the romantic scene she had half-expected after listening to what Normal girls talked about, with candlelight and flowers and soft kisses and declarations of love and possibly silk sheets. It was unexpected and sudden. It was neither of them having even eaten breakfast and nearly fainting with hunger by the time they surfaced, and Jessica completely forgetting her toiletries were all scattered all over the hallway until a confused freshman knocked on the door and nearly got an eyeful of naked Sam before Jessica snatched the caddy and slammed the door laughing, and Sam ending up smashing his head against the wall at one point, and them both missing breakfast entirely and going out for lunch after cleaning each other up while giggling madly and kissing every few seconds. It wasn't what she had planned at all.

But it was perfect anyway.