Ninth Key by Meg Cabot Page B

dreams about them,” CeeCee said, and I didn’t think I was imagining the level of disgust in her voice. “Aunt Pru summons the spirits of the dead and she’ll tell you what they said. For a small fee.”
    “Aunt
Pru
?” I grinned. “Wow, CeeCee. I didn’t know you had a psychic in the family.”
    “She isn’t a psychic.” CeeCee’s disgust deepened. “She’s a complete flake. I’m embarrassed to be related to her. Talk to the dead. Right!”
    “Don’t hold back, CeeCee,” I said. “Let us know how you really feel.”
    “Well,” CeeCee said. “I’m sorry. But —”
    “Hey,” Adam interrupted brightly. “Maybe Aunt Pru could help tell us why” — he bent down for a closer look at the dead woman’s photo on CeeCee’s computer screen — “Mrs. Deirdre Fiske here is popping up in Suze’s dreams.”
    Horrified, I leaned forward and slammed CeeCee’s laptop closed. “No thanks,” I said.
    CeeCee, opening her computer back up again, said irritably, “Nobody fondles the electronics but me, Simon.”
    “Aw, come on,” Adam said. “It’ll be fun. Suze’s never met Pru. She’ll get a big kick out of her. She’s a riot.”
    CeeCee muttered, “Yeah, you know how funny the mentally ill can be.”
    I said, hoping to get the subject back on track, “Um, maybe some other time. Anything else, CeeCee, that you were able to dig up on Mr. Beaumont?”
    “You mean other than the fact that he might possibly be killing anyone who stands in the way of his amassing a fortune by raping our forests and beaches?” CeeCee, who was wearing a khaki rainhat to protect her sensitive skin from the sun, as well as her violet-lensed sunglasses, looked up at me. “You’re not satisfied yet, Simon? Haven’t we thoroughly vetted your paramour’s closest relations?”
    “Yeah,” Adam said. “It must be reassuring to know that last night you hooked up with a guy who comes from such a nice, stable family, Suze.”
    “Hey,” I said with an indignation I was far from actually feeling. “There’s no
proof
Tad’s dad is the one who’s responsible for those environmentalists’ disappearances. And besides, we just had coffee, okay? We did not hook up.”
    CeeCee blinked at me. “You went out with him, Suze. That’s all Adam meant by hooking up.”
    “Oh.” Where I come from, hooking up means something else entirely. “Sorry. I —”
    At that moment, Adam let out a shout. “Spike!”
    I whirled around, following his pointing finger. There, peering out from the dry underbrush, sat the biggest, meanest-looking cat I’d ever seen. He was the same color yellow as the grass, which was probably how we’d missed him. He had orange stripes, one chewed-off ear, and an extremely nasty look on his face.
    “Spike?” I asked, softly.
    The cat turned his head in my direction and glared at me malevolently.
    “Oh my God,” I said. “No wonder Tim’s dad didn’t take him to the animal shelter.”
    It took some doing — and the ultimate sacrifice of my Kate Spade book bag, which I’d managed to purchase only at great physical risk at a sample sale back in SoHo — but we finally managed to capture Spike. Once he was zipped up inside my bag, he seemed to resign himself to captivity, although throughout the ride to Safeway, where we went to stock up on litter and food for him, I could hear him working industriously on the bag’s lining with his claws. Timothy, I decided, owed me big time.
    Especially when Adam, instead of turning up the street to my house, turned in the opposite direction, heading farther up the Carmel hills until the big red dome covering the basilica of the Mission below us was the size of my thumbnail.
    “No,” CeeCee immediately said as firmly as I’ve ever heard her say anything. “Absolutely not. Turn the car around. Turn the car around
now
.”
    Only Adam, chuckling diabolically, just sped up.
    Holding my Kate Spade bag on my lap, I said, “Uh, Adam. I don’t know where, exactly, you