“Well, anyway, I just called to say thanks for being, you know, so cool about everything.”
Also, Gina wrote, I think you should know, I am very seriously thinking about getting a tattoo while I’m out there. I know, I know. Mom wasn’t exactly thrilled by the tongue stud. But I’m thinking there’s no reason she has to see the tattoo, if I get it where I’m thinking about getting it. If you know what I mean! XXXOOO—G
“Also, I guess I should tell you, since my uncle’s gone, and my dad’s…you know, in the hospital…it looks like I have to go stay with my aunt for a while up in San Francisco. So I won’t be around for a few weeks. Or at least until my dad gets better.”
I was never, I realized, going to see Tad again. To him, I would eventually become just an awkward reminder of what had happened. And why would he want to hang around someone who reminds him of the painful time when his dad was running around pretending to be Count Dracula?
I found this a little sad, but I could understand it.
P.S. Check this out! I found it in a thrift shop. Remember that whacked-out psychic we went to see that one time? The one who called you—what was it again? Oh, yeah, a mediator. Conductor of souls? Well, here you are! Nice robes. I mean it. Very Cynthia Rowley.
Tucked into the envelope with Gina’s letter was a battered tarot card. It appeared to have been from a beginner’s set since there was an explanation printed under the illustration, which was of an old man with a long white beard holding a lantern.
The Ninth Key, the explanation went. Ninth card in the Tarot, the Hermit guides the souls of the dead past the temptation of illusory fires by the roadside, so that they may go straight to their higher goal.
Gina had drawn a balloon coming from the hermit’s mouth, in which she’d penned the words, Hi, I’m Suze, I’ll be your spiritual guide to the afterlife. All right, which one of you lousy spooks took my lip gloss?
“Sue?” Tad sounded concerned. “Sue, are you still there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m here. That’s really too bad, Tad. I’ll miss you.”
“Yeah,” Tad said. “Me, too. I’m really sorry you never got to see me play.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a real shame.”
Tad murmured a last good-bye in his sexy, silky voice, then hung up. I did the same, careful not to look in Jesse’s direction.
“So,” Jesse said without so much as an excuse-me-for-eavesdropping-on-your-private-conversation. “You and Tad? You are no more?”
I glared at him.
“Not,” I said, stiffly, “that it’s any of your business. But yes, it appears that Tad is moving to San Francisco.”
Jesse didn’t even have the decency to try to hide his grin.
Instead of letting him get to me, I picked up the tarot card Gina had sent me. It’s funny, but it looked like the same one CeeCee’s aunt Pru had kept turning over when we’d been at her house. Had I made that happen? I wondered. Had it been because of me?
But I was certainly no great shakes as a conductor of souls. I mean, look how badly I’d messed up the whole thing with Doc’s mom.
On the other hand, I had figured it out eventually. And along the way, I’d helped stop a murderer….
Maybe I wasn’t quite as bad at this mediating thing as I thought.
I was sitting there in the middle of my bed, trying to figure out what I should do with the card—Pin it to my door? Or would that generate too many curious questions? Tape it up inside my locker?—when somebody banged on my bedroom door.
“Come in,” I said.
The door swung open and Dopey stood there.
“Hey,” he said. “Dinner’s ready. Dad says for you to come downst—Hey.” His normally idiotic expression turned into a grin of malicious delight. “Is that a cat?”
I glanced at Spike. And swallowed.
“Um,” I said. “Yeah. But listen, Dope—I mean, Brad. Please don’t tell your—”
“You,” Dopey said, “are…so…busted.”
Suze’s supernatural misadventures
continue in the third Mediator book,
Reunion
The following is an excerpt:
If it was hotties you wanted, you didn’t have to look any further than the guy who manned the counter at Jimmy’s, the little convenience store right across from the stairs to the beach. Dumb as an inflatable pool toy, Kurt—that was his name, I swear to God—was nevertheless stunning, and after I’d placed the sweating bottle of Diet Coke I’d secured from the refrigerated case on the counter in front of him, I gave him the old hairy eyeball. He was deeply absorbed in a copy of Surf Digest, so he didn’t notice my leering gaze. I guess I was sun-drunk, or something, because I just kept standing there staring at Kurt, but what I was really doing was thinking about someone else.
Someone whom I really shouldn’t have been thinking about at all.
I guess that’s why when Kelly Prescott said hi to me, I didn’t even notice. It was like she wasn’t even there.
Until she waved a hand in my face and went, “Hello, earth to Suze. Come in, Suze.”
I tore my eyes off Kurt and found myself looking at Kelly, sophomore class president, radiant blonde, and fashion plate. She was in one of her dad’s dress shirts, unbuttoned to reveal what she wore beneath it, which was an olive-green bikini made out of yarn. There were skin-colored inserts so you couldn’t see her bare skin through the holes in the crochet.
Standing next to Kelly was Debbie Mancuso, my stepbrother Dopey’s sometime girlfriend.
“Oh my God,” Kelly said. “I had no idea you were at the beach today, Suze. Where’d you put your towel?”
“By the lifeguard tower,” I said.
“Oh, God,” Kelly said. “Good spot. We’re way over by the stairs.”
Debbie went, way too casually, “I noticed the Rambler in the parking lot. Is Brad out on his board?”
Brad is what everyone but me calls my stepbrother, Dopey.
“Yeah,” Kelly said. “And Jake?”
Jake is the stepbrother I call Sleepy. For reasons unfathomable to me, Sleepy, who is in his senior year at the Mission Academy, and Dopey, a sophomore like me, are considered these great catches. Obviously, these girls have never seen my stepbrothers eat. It is truly a revolting sight.
“Yeah,” I said. And since I knew what they were after, I added, “Why don’t you two join us?”
“Cool,” Kelly said. “That’d be gr—”
Gina appeared, and Kelly broke off mid-sentence.
Well, Gina is the kind of girl people break off mid-sentence to admire. She’s nearly six feet tall, and the fact that she’d recently had her hair done into a mop of prickly-looking copper-colored tendrils, forming a four- or five-inch aura all the way around her head, only made her look taller. She also happened to have on a black vinyl bikini, over which she’d tugged on shorts that appeared to be made from the pull tabs off of a lot of soda cans.
Oh, and the fact that she’d been out in the sun all day had darkened her normally café au lait skin to the color of espresso, always startling when combined with a nose ring and orange hair.
“Score,” Gina said excitedly, as she thumped a six-pack down onto the counter next to my Diet Coke. “Yoo-hoo, dude. The perfect chemical compound.”
“Um, Gina,” I said, hoping she wasn’t going to expect me to join her in consuming any of those bottles. “These are some friends of mine from school, Kelly Prescott and Debbie Mancuso. Kelly, Debbie, this is Gina Augustin, a friend of mine from New York.”
Gina’s eyes widened behind her Ray-Bans. I think she was astonished by the fact that I had, since moving out here, actually made some friends, something I had certainly not had many of, besides her, back in New York. Still, she managed to control her surprise and said, very politely, “How do you do?”
Debbie murmured, “Hi,” but Kelly got straight to the point: “Where did you get those awesome shorts?”
It was while Gina was telling her that I first
noticed the four kids in evening wear hanging out near the suntan lotion rack.
You might be wondering how I’d missed them before. Well, the truth of the matter is that, up until that particular moment, they hadn’t been there.
And, then, suddenly, there they were.
Being from Brooklyn, I’ve seen far stranger things than four teenagers dressed in formal wear in a convenience mart on a Sunday afternoon at the beach. But since this wasn’t New York, but California, the sight was a startling one. Even more startling was that these four were in the act of heisting a twelve-pack of beer.
I’m not kidding. A twelve-pack, right in broad daylight with them dressed to the nines, the girls with wrist corsages, even. Kurt’s no rocket scientist, it’s true, but surely they couldn’t think he would simply let them walk out of there with this beer—particularly in prom wear.
Then I lifted up my Donna Karans in order to get a better look at them.
And that’s when I realized it.
Kurt wasn’t going to be carding these kids. No way.
Kurt couldn’t see them.
Because they were dead.
Read all the
Mediator books:
THE MEDIATOR 1:
Shadowland
THE MEDIATOR 2:
Ninth Key
THE MEDIATOR 3:
Reunion
THE MEDIATOR 4:
Darkest Hour
THE MEDIATOR 5:
Haunted
THE MEDIATOR 6:
Twilight
About the Author
Meg Cabot is also the author of the Princess Diaries series, upon which the Disney movies are based. In the books, though, Princess Mia has yield-sign-shaped hair, lives in New York, and Fat Louie is orange. And those are the least of the differences. The following is a complete list of the Princess Diaries books:
THE PRINCESS DIARIES
THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME II:
PRINCESS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME III:
PRINCESS IN LOVE
THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME IV:
PRINCESS IN WAITING
THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME IV AND A HALF:
PROJECT PRINCESS
THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME V:
PRINCESS IN PINK
THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME VI:
PRINCESS IN TRAINING
THE PRINCESS PRESENT:
A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK
PRINCESS LESSONS:
A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK
PERFECT PRINCESS:
A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK
Aside from the Mediator books
and the Princess Diaries books, Meg
has written several more books:
ALL-AMERICAN GIRL
Samantha Madison saves the president’s life…only to have his son fall in love with her. Which would be fine, except for all the Secret Service agents following them around.
Jenny Greenley gives everyone advice, so why can’t she follow her own and find love? Further complicating matters is the presence of hot Hollywood star Luke Striker in Jenny’s homeroom, of all places.
Nicola and the Viscount
It’s 1810, and Nicola Sparks is ready to dive headlong into her first London Season. Good thing there’s a handsome viscount there to catch her!
Victoria and the Rogue
Lady Victoria Arbuthnot is accustomed to being right. She isn’t always, though, especially when her own heart is concerned.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
But wait!
There’s more by Meg:
THE BOY NEXT DOOR
BOY MEETS GIRL
EVERY BOY’S GOT ONE
THE 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU BOOKS:
WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES
CODE NAME CASSANDRA
SAFE HOUSE
SANCTUARY
For more about Meg and
to read her diary, visit:
www.megcabot.com
Join her online book club at:
www.megcabotbookclub.com
Credits
Cover art © 2005 by Paul Oakley
Cover design by Sasha Illingworth
Cover © 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright
Originally published in 2001 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
THE MEDIATOR #2: The Ninth Key. Copyright © 2001 by Meggin Cabot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2004 ISBN: 9780061971891
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004093413
ISBN 0-06-072512-5
First Avon edition, 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
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United States
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http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Meg Cabot, Ninth Key
(Series: The Mediator # 2)
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