Ninth Key Read Free

believed people actually swam at them, and had dressed accordingly.
    Not so, apparently. Aside from my stepbrother, who’d apparently become overwarm while in Debbie Mancuso’s impassioned embrace and had stripped off his shirt, I was wearing the least clothes of anybody there.
    Including Kelly’s dream date. He sauntered up a few minutes later, wearing a serious expression, a pair of white chinos, and a black silk shirt. Very Jersey, but then, this was the West Coast, so how was he to know?
    “Do you want to dance?” he asked me in this really soft voice. I could barely hear him above the strains of Sheryl Crow, booming out from the pool deck’s speakers.
    “Look,” I said, putting down my Diet Coke. “I don’t even know your name.”
    “It’s Tad,” he said.
    And then without another word, he put his arms around my waist, pulled me up to him, and started swaying in time to the music.
    With the exception of the time I threw myself at Bryce Martinson in order to knock him out of the way when a ghost was trying to crush his skull with a large chunk of wood, this was as close to the body of a boy — a
live
boy, one who was still breathing — I had ever been.
    And let me tell you, black silk shirt notwithstanding, I
liked
it. This guy felt
good.
He was all warm — it was kind of chilly in my bathing suit; being January, of course, it was supposed to be too chilly for bathing suits, but this
was
California, after all — and smelled like some kind of really nice, expensive soap. Plus he was just taller enough than me for his breath to kind of brush against my cheek in this provocative, romance-novel sort of way.
    Let me tell you, I closed my eyes, put my arms around this guy’s neck, and swayed with him for two of the longest, most blissful minutes of my life.
    Then the song ended.
    Tad said, “Thank you,” in the same soft voice he’d used before, and let go of me.
    And that was it. He turned around and walked back over to this group of guys who were hanging out by the keg Kelly’s dad had bought for her on the condition she didn’t let anybody drive home drunk, a condition Kelly was sticking strictly to by not drinking herself and carrying around a cell phone with the number of Carmel Cab on redial.
    And then for the rest of the party, Tad avoided me. He didn’t dance with anybody else. But he didn’t speak to me again.
    Game over, as Dopey would say.
    But I didn’t think Father Dominic wanted to hear about my dating travails. So I said, “Nope. Nada. Nothing.”
    “Strange,” Father Dominic said, looking thoughtful. “I would have thought there’d be
some
paranormal activity —”
    “Oh,” I said. “You mean has any
ghost
stuff been going on?”
    Now he didn’t look thoughtful. He looked kind of annoyed. “Well, yes, Susannah,” he said, taking off his glasses, and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger like he had a headache all of a sudden. “Of course, that’s what I mean.” He put his glasses back on. “Why? Has something happened? Have you encountered anyone? I mean, since that unfortunate incident that resulted in the destruction of the school?”
    I said, slowly, “Well…”

Chapter
Two
     
     
    The first time she showed up, it was about an hour after I’d come home from the pool party. Around three in the morning, I guess. And what she did was, she stood by my bed and started screaming.
    Really
screaming.
Really
loud. She woke me out of a dead sleep. I’d been lying there dreaming about Bryce Martinson. In my dream, he and I were cruising along Seventeen Mile Drive in this red convertible. I don’t know whose convertible it was. His, I guess, since I don’t even have my driver’s license yet. Bryce’s soft sandy-blond hair was blowing in the wind, and the sun was sinking into the sea, making the sky all red and orange and purple. We were going around these curves, you know, on the cliffs above the Pacific, and I wasn’t even carsick or