Haunted recap

Paul Slater enrolls at the Mission Academy and makes his terms clear: he wants Suze, and he wants to teach her what shifters can really do. When she refuses, he shows her the leverage he has been holding. A shifter can reach the place the dead pass through, and from there the past, which means Paul could go back to 1850 and stop Jesse's murder, so that Jesse lives an ordinary nineteenth-century life and Suze never meets him. To learn enough to prevent it, Suze accepts Paul's lessons and spends weeks in his company, explaining herself to neither Jesse nor Father Dominic. In parallel she is stalked by the ghost of Craig, a young man who drowned and cannot accept that his younger brother survived instead; his attempts to take his brother end in the water, where Suze nearly drowns stopping him. Craig is dealt with, but the cost is Jesse's trust, and Paul ends the book stating outright that he intends to erase Jesse's death.

Susannah Simon is a mediator: she sees the dead and helps them finish whatever keeps them here. Since her mother remarried she has lived in Carmel-by-the-Sea with her stepfather Andy, three stepbrothers she calls Sleepy, Dopey and Doc, and Jesse, the ghost of a young man who has occupied her bedroom since long before she moved in. At the Junipero Serra Mission Academy the principal, Father Dominic, is a mediator too, and the two work together while disagreeing about method: he counsels the dead, she fights them. Suze has driven a violent ghost out of the school, carried a dead woman's message into a wealthy family's affairs, and stopped four dead teenagers from killing the classmate they blamed for their crash. Last summer she learned Jesse's story: he was Hector de Silva, murdered in 1850 in what is now her bedroom on the orders of the cousin he was engaged to, and buried in the backyard. His remains were found and laid to rest, which freed him to move on, and he stayed anyway, for her. That same summer she met Paul Slater, who has the same ability, calls it shifting, claims to know far more about it than Father Dominic, and left saying he would be back.

Paul Slater is back, and he has enrolled at the Mission Academy. He makes his intentions plain: he wants Suze, he wants her to learn what shifters can actually do, and he expects to be the one teaching her. Suze wants nothing to do with him, and Father Dominic tells her to keep her distance entirely, but Paul knows more about her, and about Jesse, than either of them is comfortable with. Alongside this, an angry new ghost attaches himself to Suze: Craig, a young man who drowned when a boat went down and whose younger brother survived. He does not accept that he is dead, and he has decided the wrong brother lived.

Paul turns his offer into a threat. He tells Suze that a shifter can travel through the place the dead pass on their way out, and that from there it is possible to reach the past, and he makes clear he could go back to 1850 and stop Jesse from being murdered. Jesse would live an ordinary nineteenth-century life and would never have been in her bedroom to be found. To keep Paul from doing it, and to learn enough to stop him, Suze agrees to his terms and starts spending her time with him, telling neither Jesse nor Father Dominic the truth about why. Craig, meanwhile, escalates from following his brother to trying to take him. Suze now has two problems and nobody she is willing to discuss either one with.

Paul's lessons are real and unsettling. He shows Suze that what she can do goes well beyond mediating, and he is careful never to teach her quite enough to act against him. The hours she spends with him cost her with Jesse, who can see exactly what it looks like and is offered no explanation, and the two of them fall out badly. Father Dominic, kept in the dark, grows more worried about both of them. Craig's attempts on his brother's life become more direct, and Suze's efforts to talk him down fail: he cannot be argued out of the belief that he was the one who should have survived.

The Craig case ends in the water. He makes a final attempt to drown his brother, Suze goes in after them, and she comes closer to dying than she has in any case so far. Craig is stopped and the haunting is over. Everything else is unresolved: Jesse is barely speaking to her, Father Dominic has worked out that he has been managed without knowing how far, and Paul is still holding the one thing Suze cannot afford to lose.

With Craig gone, Paul stops negotiating and says what he means to do. He will travel back to the night in 1850 when Jesse was killed and prevent the murder. Jesse would then live out his own century and die in it, would never have haunted the room Suze sleeps in, and Suze would never have met him at all. Paul has the ability, he has demonstrated it, and he has no reason to hold off. Suze has spent the book learning from him and has not learned enough. Jesse, who has been given no honest account of any of it, is further from her than he has ever been, and Father Dominic knows only part of the story. The book ends with the threat standing and Suze without a way to answer it.

Craig is stopped in the water after a final attempt on his brother's life that nearly drowns Suze as well, and the haunting ends. Everything else is worse than it was. Jesse has spent weeks watching Suze choose Paul Slater's company over his and being given no reason for it, and the distance between them is now real. Father Dominic knows he has been managed and does not know how far. Paul, having proved he can teach Suze what she does not know and having been careful never to teach her enough, states plainly what he intends to do: travel back to the night in 1850 when Jesse was murdered and prevent it. Jesse would then live out his own century and die in it, would never have haunted the room Suze sleeps in, and Suze would never have met him. Paul has the ability, no reason not to use it, and nothing to lose by it. The book closes with the threat live, Suze out of people she is willing to be honest with, and no idea how to stop him.