The Dead Girls Detective Agency (34 page)

“I would,” I said, staring her down, willing her with everything I had to drop my Key.

Her face became a mask. She tightened her grip on the metal fob and began to turn.

“Tess, please, I’ll help too,” Edison said. “I’ll do everything I can this time.”

Tess squeezed my Key in the lock. The Door started to gently tremble. A puff of green smoke shot out from under it. Tess gasped, as if suddenly aware of what she was doing.

She whimpered and jumped back like she’d been burned—with the Key in her hand and out of the lock.

The Door groaned as the smoke sucked back under it, like a vacuum cleaner in reverse. Instantly it returned to its usual painted hue. Tess collapsed onto the Attesa floor in a ball of sobs.

Maybe I should have walked out right there and then, given her the kind of speech I gave David or at the very least hit her. But suddenly hearing Tess’s cries, I knew I couldn’t. Instead I ran over and held her tight until she was all wept out.

“I had to be mean to you.” Tess was beginning to speak normally again now. “I knew if I started to like you even a little bit, I couldn’t go through with it. Guess I’m even lamer than I imagined.” She sniffed and gave me the ghost of a smile.

Lorna bobbed down and stroked Tess’s hair. “We’ll figure this out,” she promised, as Nancy joined the hug.

“Hey, Ghostgirl,” Edison said, breaking the mood.

I looked up and found his green eyes. “What?”

“A word.” He beckoned me to where he was now standing at the curtain’s edge. Nancy gave me a small nod and took Tess’s head from my lap to hers. I stood up and ducked behind the red velvet.

“Exactly how much of that conversation did you hear?” Edison asked as I reached him.

I pulled the curtain back an inch and looked at Tess sitting broken in Nancy’s arms. She seemed so fragile now. “Enough to know that you haven’t been totally honest with me.” I let the curtain fall back again and turned to face Ed. “But that you had your reasons and you tried to make it right.”

His eyes softened and he stared me down for a beat longer than was necessary. I tried to move, to go back to the others, but my feet felt as if they were tacked to the tiles.

“And the very last part,” he said, leaning a little nearer, “were you close enough to hear that?”

My arms went weak and hundreds of bubbles formed in my chest. Was that a ghost thing or a girl thing? Maybe it was a side effect of my Key. I managed an uh-huh.

Edison’s palm found my elbow. I tried not to shudder. He broke my gaze and looked down. “Look, Charlotte, you’ve got a lot to deal with right now. You and the blond band boy … You have history. I get it. I saw how he was looking at you up on the roof. If you still want to—”

“No! Ed, I know the David thing looked bad.” I tried to move toward him too, but the air between us felt dense like sponge. “But after everything that’s happened, I really wouldn—”

Waaahhhh! Waaahhhh! Waaahhhh!
The sound of a siren blasted through the lobby.

I shot back with surprise, almost tumbling over. Edison steadied me, pulling me back onto my leaden feet. The bubbles fizzed where my heart used to beat.

“Charlotte!” Nancy called out. We spun around and ran back to the other side of the curtain.

Nancy jumped to attention. “I hate to change the subject,” she said, looking down at Tess, “especially at a moment with quite as much gravitas as this, but it seems”—she pointed to a light flashing madly above the Attesa’s front desk—“that any second now we’re going to get a new arrival.”

Nancy grabbed my hand and quickly pulled me over to the old-fashioned mail chute at the front desk. I was too confused and beat and
what just happened?
to argue. Tess and Lorna followed behind.

A letter sealed with red wax appeared. Nancy tore it open.

“A seventeen-year-old girl’s just been murdered …,” Nancy said, skimming quickly, “coming out of the Hudson Library Bar, up by Central Park. According to this, someone deliberately pushed her in front of a cab. Oh! A bit like you, Charlotte …”

For such a star pupil you’d have thought Nancy—at some point before now—would have taken a lesson in tact.

“And she’ll be here in twenty minutes.” She tucked a curl behind her ear and stared down at her watch. “So we should, you know …”

I looked at Nancy and Lorna and smiled. “Get on with what we’re here for?” I asked.

Since I’d died, the one thing I’d learned was that nothing was what it seemed—not my boyfriend, not my life, and certainly not my death. But if you had friends to help you through, well, maybe none of that mattered. Maybe it would be okay.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Lorna’s shoulder and silently giggling at her face as I dared to ruffle the arm of her perfect blue Marc J dress. “It looks as though I’m the newest member of the Dead Girls Detective Agency. Whether I like it or not.”

Tess, Lorna, and Nancy hurried down the stairs to HHQ.

“Hey,” Edison said, grabbing my hand as I walked past and pulling me close, “I happen to like it very much.”

About the Author

Suzy Cox
is deputy editor of Cosmopolitan UK. She lives in London, but she loves New York.

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Credits

Cover design by Sammy Yuen

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Dead Girls Detective Agency

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cox, Suzy.

The Dead Girls Detective Agency / Suzy Cox.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: “When Charlotte is pushed in front of the F train, she wakes up as the newest member of the Dead Girls Detective Agency and learns that she must solve her own murder before she can pass to the Other Side”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-202064-2

EPub Edition © JULY 2012 9780062190109

[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Dead—Fiction. 3. Murder—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.