Ninth Key Read Free Page A

anything. It was one really terrific dream.
    And then this woman starts wailing, practically in my ear.
    I ask you: Who needs that?
    Of course I sat up right away, completely wide awake. Having a walking dead woman show up in your bedroom screaming her head off can do that to you. Wake you up right away, I mean.
    I sat there blinking because my room was really dark — well, it was nighttime. You know, nighttime, when normal people are asleep.
    But not us mediators. Oh, no.
    She was standing in this skinny patch of moonlight coming in from the bay windows on the far side of my room. She had on a gray hooded sweatshirt, hood down, a T-shirt, capri pants, and Keds. Her hair was short, sort of mousy brown. It was hard to tell if she was young or old, what with all the screaming and everything, but I kind of figured her for my mom’s age.
    Which was why I didn’t get out of bed and punch her right then and there.
    I probably should have. I mean, it wasn’t like I could exactly yell back at her, not without waking the whole house. I was the only one in the house who could hear her.
    Well, the only one who was alive, anyway.
    After a while, I guess she noticed I was awake because she stopped screaming and reached up to wipe her eyes. She was crying pretty hard.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    I said, “Yeah, well, you got my attention. Now what do you want?”
    “I need you,” she said. She was sniffling. “I need you to tell someone something.”
    I said, “Okay. What?”
    “Tell him…” She wiped her face with her hands. “Tell him it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t kill me.”
    This was sort of a new one. I raised my eyebrows. “Tell him he
didn’t
kill you?” I asked, just to be sure I’d heard her right.
    She nodded. She was kind of pretty, I guess, in a waifish sort of way. Although it probably wouldn’t have hurt if she’d eaten a muffin or two back when she’d been alive.
    “You’ll tell him?” she asked me, eagerly. “Promise?”
    “Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell him. Only who am I telling?”
    She looked at me funny. “Red, of course.”
    Red?
Was she
kidding
?
    But it was too late. She was gone.
    Just like that.
    Red. I turned around and beat on my pillow to get it fluffy again. Red.
    Why me? I mean, really. To be interrupted while having a dream about Bryce Martinson just because some woman wants a guy named
Red
to know he
didn’t
kill her…. I swear, sometimes I am convinced my life is just a series of sketches for
America’s Funniest Home Videos,
minus all that pants-dropping business.
    Except my life really isn’t all that funny if you think about it.
    I especially wasn’t laughing when, the minute I finally found a comfy spot on my pillow and was just about to close my eyes and go back to sleep, somebody else showed up in the sliver of moonlight in the middle of my room.
    This time there wasn’t any screaming. That was about the only thing I had to be grateful for.
    “What?”
I asked in a pretty rude voice.
    He said, shaking his head, “You didn’t even ask her name.”
    I leaned up on both elbows. It was because of this guy that I’d taken to wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts to bed. Not that I had been going around in floaty negligees before he’d come along, but I sure wasn’t going to take them up now that I had a male roommate.
    Yeah, you read that right.
    “Like she gave me the chance,” I said.
    “You could have asked.” Jesse folded his arms across his chest. “But you didn’t bother.”
    “Excuse me,” I said, sitting up. “This is
my
bedroom. I will treat spectral visitors to it any way I want to, thank you.”
    He said, “Susannah.”
    He had the softest voice imaginable. Softer, even, than that guy Tad’s. It was like silk or something, his voice. It was really hard to be mean to a guy with a voice like that.
    But the thing was, I
had
to be mean. Because even in the moonlight, I could make out the breadth of his strong shoulders, the vee where his