Ninth Key Read online

  So I went back outside and stood there in my Calvin Klein one-piece—with a sarong tied ever-so-casually around my waist—totally not knowing I had just stumbled into a bunch of poison oak, while Kelly went over to her dream date and asked him to ask me to dance again.

  As I stood there, I tried not to think that the only reason he wanted to dance with me in the first place was that I was the only girl at the party in a swimsuit. Having never been invited to a pool party before in my life, I had erroneously 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 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 old-fashioned white shirt fell open, revealing dark, olive-complected skin, some chest hair, and just about the best-defined abs you’ve ever seen. I could also see the strong planes of his face, the tiny scar in one of his ink-black eyebrows, where something—or someone—had cut him once.

  Kelly Prescott was wrong. Bryce Martinson was not the cutest guy in Carmel.

  Jesse was.

  And if I wasn’t mean to him, I knew I’d find myself falling in love with him.

  And the problem with that, you see, is that he’s dead.

  “If you’re going to do this, Susannah,” he said, in that silky voice, “don’t do it halfway.”

  “Look, Jesse,” I said. My voice wasn’t a bit silky. It was hard as rock. Or that’s what I told myself, anyway. “I’ve been doing this a long time without any help from you, okay?”

  He said, “She was obviously in great emotional need, and you—”

  “What about you?” I demanded. “You two live on the same astral plane, if I’m not mistaken. Why didn’t you get her rank and serial number?”

  He looked confused. On him, let me tell you, confused looks good. Everything looks good on Jesse.

  “Rank and what?” he asked.

  Sometimes I forget that Jesse died a hundred and fifty or so years ago. He’s not exactly up on the lingo of the twenty-first century, if you know what I mean.

  “Her name,” I translated. “Why didn’t you get her name?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  Jesse’s always saying stuff like that. Cryptic stuff about the spirit world that I, not being a spirit, am still somehow expected to understand. I tell you, it burns me up. Between that and the Spanish—which I don’t speak, and which he spouts occasionally, especially when he’s mad—I have no idea what Jesse’s saying about a third of the time.

  Which is way irritating. I mean, I have to share my bedroom with the guy because it was in this room that he got shot, or whatever, in like 1850, back when the house had been a kind of hotel for prospectors and cowboys—or, as in Jesse’s case, rich ranchers’ sons who were supposed to be marrying their beautiful, rich cousins, but were tragically murdered on the way to the ceremony.

  At least, that’s what had happened to Jesse. Not that he’s told me that, or anything. No, I had to figure that out on my own…though my stepbrother Doc helped. It isn’t something, it turns out, that Jesse seems much interested in discussing. Which is sort of weird because in my experience, all the dead ever want to talk about is how they got that way.

  Not Jesse, though. All he ever wants to talk about is how much I suck at being a mediator.

  Maybe he had a point, though. I mean, according to Father Dominic, I was supposed to be serving as a spiritual conductor between the land of the living and the land of the dead. But mostly all I was doing was complaining because nobody was letting me get any sleep.

  “Look,” I said. “I fully intend to help that woman. Just not now, okay? Now, I need to get some sleep. I’m totally wrecked.”

  “Wrecked?” he echoed.

  “Yeah. Wrecked.” Sometimes I suspect Jesse doesn’t understand a third of what I’m saying, either, though at least I’m speaking in English.

  “Whacked,” I translated. “Beat. All tuckered out. Tired.”

  “Oh,” he said. He stood there for a minute, looking at me with those dark, sad eyes. Jesse has those kind of eyes some guys have, the kind of sad eyes that make you think you might want to try and make them not so sad.

  That’s why I have to make a point of being so mean to him. I’m pretty sure there’s a rule against that. I mean, in Father Dom’s mediation guidelines. About mediators and ghosts getting together, and trying to, um, cheer each other up.

  If you know what I mean.

  “Good night, then, Susannah,” Jesse said, in that deep, silky voice of his.

  “Good night,” I said. My voice isn’t deep or silky. Right then, in fact, it sounded kind of squeaky. It usually does that when I’m talking to Jesse. Nobody else. Just Jesse.

  Which is great. The only time I want to sound sexy and sophisticated, and I come out sounding squeaky. Swell.

  I rolled over, bringing the covers up over my face, which I could tell was blushing. When I peeked out from underneath them a minute or so later, I saw that he was gone.

  That’s Jesse’s M.O. He shows up when I least expect him to, and disappears when I least want him to. That’s how ghosts operate.

  Take my dad. He’s been paying these totally random social calls on me since he died a decade ago. Does he show up when I really need him? Like when my mom moved me out here to a totally different coast and I didn’t know anyone at first and I was totally lonely? Heck, no. No sign of good old Dad. He was always pretty irresponsible, but I’d really thought that the one time I needed him…

  I couldn’t really accuse Jesse of being irresponsible, though. If anything, he was a little too responsible. He had even saved my life, not once, but twice. And I’d only known him a couple of weeks. I guess you could say I kind of owed him one.

  So when Father Dominic asked me, back in his office, whether or not any ghost stuff had been going on, I sort of lied and said no. I guess it’s a sin to lie, especially to a priest, but here’s the thing:

  I’ve never exactly told Father Dom about Jesse.

  I just thought he might get upset, you know, being a priest and all, to hear there was this dead guy hanging out in my bedroom. And the fact is, Jesse had obviously been hanging around the place for as long as he had for a reason. Part of the mediator’s job is to help ghosts figure out what that reason is. Usually, once the ghost knows, he can take care of whatever it is that’s keeping him stuck in that midway point between life and death, and move on.

  But sometimes—and I suspected it was this way in Jesse’s case—the dead guy doesn’t know why he’s still sticking around. He doesn’t have the slightest idea. That’s when I have to use what Father Dom calls my intuitive skills.

  The thing is, I think I got sort of shortchanged in this department because I’m not very good at intuiting. What I’m a lot better at is when they—the dead—know perfectly well why they are sticking around but they just don’t want to get to where they’re supposed to go because what they’ve got in store there probably isn’t that great. These are the worst kinds of ghosts, the ones whose butts I have no choice but to kick.

  They happen to be my specialty.

  Father Dominic, of course, thinks we should treat all ghosts with dignity and respect, without the use of fists.

  I disagree. Some ghosts just deserve to have the snot knocked out of them. And I don’t mind doing it a bit.

  Not the lady who’d showed up in my room, though. She seemed like a decent sort, just sort of messed up. The reason I didn’t tell Father Dom about her was that, truthfully, I was kind of ashamed of how I’d treated her. Jesse had been right to yell at me. I’d been a bitch to her, and knowing that he was right, I’d been a bitch to him, too.

  So you see, I couldn’t tell Father Dom about either Jesse or the lady Red hadn’t killed. I figured the lady I’d take care of soon, anyway. And Jesse…

  Well, Jesse, I didn’t know what to do about. I was pretty much convinced there wasn’t anything I could do about Jesse.

  I was also kind of scared I felt this way because I didn’t really want to do anything about Jesse. Much as it sucked having to change clothes in the bathroom inste
ad of in my room—Jesse seemed to have an aversion to the bathroom, which was a new addition to the house since he’d lived there—and not being able to wear floaty negligees to bed, I sort of liked having Jesse around. And if I told Father Dom about him, Father Dom would get all hot and bothered and want to help him get to the other side.

  But what good would that do me? Then I’d never get to see him again.

  Was this selfish of me? I mean, I kind of figured if Jesse wanted to go to the other side, then he would have done something about it. He wasn’t one of those help-me-I’m-lost kind of ghosts like the one who’d shown up with the message for Red. No way. Jesse was more one of those don’t-mess-with-me-I’m-so-mysterious kind of ghosts. You know the ones. With the accent and the killer abs.

  So I admit it. I lied. So what? So sue me.

  “Nope,” I said. “Nothing to report, Father Dom. Supernatural or otherwise.”

  Was it my imagination or did Father Dominic look a little disappointed? To tell you the truth, I think he sort of liked that I’d wrecked the school. Seriously. Much as he complained about it, I don’t think he minded my mediation techniques so much. It certainly gave him something to get on a soapbox about, and as the principal of a tiny private school in Carmel, California, I can’t imagine he really had all that much to complain about. Other than me, I mean.

  “Well,” he said, trying not to let me see how let down he was by my lack of anything to report. “All right, then.” He brightened. “I understand there was a three-car pileup out in Sunnyvale. Maybe we should drive out there and see if any of those poor lost souls need our aid.”

  I looked at him like he was out of his mind. “Father Dom,” I said, shocked.

  He fiddled with his glasses. “Yes, well…I mean, I just thought…”

  “Look, padre,” I said, getting up. “You gotta remember something. I don’t feel the same way about this gift of ours that you do. I never asked for it and I’ve never liked it. I just want to be normal, you know?”

  Father Dom looked taken aback. “Normal?” he echoed. As in, who would ever want to be that?