The Dead Girls Detective Agency (14 page)

“What happened? Do the adults have a Door in their hotel too? Do you think they helped him get his Key and he went through that?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Nancy said. “All we know is that’s what happens when you break the Rules. So who cares who they were written by—a ghost before us, one of the adults—it’s better to obey them.”

I thought back to Edison and the river. He’d said everything he’d taught me was fine, just tricks and loopholes rather than Rule breaks. I
really
hoped he was telling the truth.

“Anyway, you still have all of your Nine Times to go!” Nancy said brightly. “Let’s have some fun—and get you to put your breakup behind you.”

Breakup? It sounded so final when someone else said it out loud instead of me just running it around in my head. But—if there was one thing my funeral had proved—it was that David and I were officially over, even if I wasn’t sure I wanted us to be.

“Seeing as you’re dead there are certain traditional girl heartbreak remedies that we can’t use,” Lorna said.

“Like, we can’t feed you ice cream.” Nancy shook her head.

Or get me drunk, I thought.

“Or give you a break-over new look,” Lorna added, “or rent
Titanic
so you can get some perspective on the whole situation.” Because that’s what watching Leonardo DiCaprio die did for a girl. “But we do have the whole city to play in—and you can
really
play when you’re dead. Especially when you have porting and invisibility on your side.”

She turned to Nancy. “Let’s get the smile back on Charlotte’s face. I’ll try first.”

Their arms circled me. I really appreciated their attempts to happy me up, but I wasn’t sure they had this right. Making me want to puke my guts up from another bout of porting sickness was not about to make me forget David. No matter how badly I wanted to hurl.

But there was no point complaining. Before I could even say,
Actually, I’d kinda rather mope on my own
, Lorna winked at Nancy and the world whirled. Urgh.

The nausea didn’t last long this time (was I getting used to it?) and the next thing I knew we were in a very smart apartment, overlooking the park. I peered out of one of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, thinking how weird it was to be all the way up here, when we’d just been down there, then started to look around.

There were gold discs covering the walls and what looked like a recording studio in the corner. On the table in front of me was a picture of a couple posing. On a red carpet. They looked like they were. No, it couldn’t be. It was …

“This is Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s apartment!” Lorna screamed. “Would. You. Check. It. Out. They’re soooo totally private that no one knows what it looks like in here.” She lowered her voice. “Even if you work at
Us Weekly
.”

“Lorna, are you sure this is the way to beat the breakup blues? Charlotte doesn’t look like the kind of girl who was into Destiny’s Child.” Nancy’s brow was fully furrowed. “Maybe we should have taken her to see those Evan people?”

“Destiny’s Child split up
years
ago, Nancy. Where have you been?” Lorna said. “And I think Charlotte’s had more than enough of Evanescence for one day. Plus everyone likes to be nosy where celebrities are concerned. Whatever, I’m just trying to prove my point.” She turned to me. “Which is this: Charlotte, forget the we-can-only-port-to-solve-your-murder Rule. Tonight, for one night only, we’re going to break it and port all over the city as many times as you like. We can go backstage, behind closed doors, into VIP sections. Anywhere you want—as long as we get you smiling and forget about dumb-boy back there.”

Dumb-boy. Must forget about dumb-boy. And break lots of Rules. Okay, so maybe this could be kinda cool.

“So, where do you want to go?” Lorna asked, momentarily distracted by a pile of Prada shopping bags by the front door. Nancy dragged her back to my side. “Maybe you’d like to see what it’s really like inside the hippest bar in the city?”

Arms raised, sick, whoosh.

Suddenly we were out of the popocracy apartment and in some cave of a bar with low lighting, crazy art prints, and a
Balearic Sunset
soundtrack. All the women around us—and there were plenty—were so rail thin, so pretty, and so beautifully dressed they made Lorna look plain. They were sipping colored cocktails (too many calories, surely?) while guys in perfect suits straight out of a Dior ad stood chatting to them. If this was the hippest-bar-land, I could not have hated it more. Even if I raided all the cheermonsters’ closets and spent my entire traveling fund in Aveda, I’d never fit in here.

“Too sophisticated?” Lorna read my get-me-out-of-here look instantly. “Then how would you like to be a guest on
Letterman
…?”

Um, wait a minute—well, more like two seconds—and give me a chance to think. Their arms went around me, the room blurred, and … the three of us were sitting on David Letterman’s sofa. Next to Robert Pattinson, who was talking (well, stuttering a bit) about his new movie. He was totally not as hot as I hoped up close.

“Or …” Lorna jumped up on the sofa next to R. Pattz and bounced around a bit. He and his hair didn’t even move.

She and Nancy armed me again and a second of spinning later, we were in some store. With a lot of dresses and stuff. It looked super-expensive and so not me. Lorna meanwhile was pretty much genuflecting in front of one rail.

“Prada,” she breathed. “The biggest Prada store in the city. As soon as I saw those bags in Beyoncé’s place, I knew I had to bring you here. And it’s after closing time, so no one is here but us. Just look”—she waved her arms at the pricey outfits around her—“look at
all
this. It’s like your own private store opening. It’s, it’s—”

“More like your idea of heaven than Charlotte’s?” Nancy butted in.

Lorna reluctantly came to. “Okay, okay. So what do you want to do, Charlotte? Where do you want to see? Where have you never been allowed to go? The city is your lobster.”

“Oyster,” Nancy said.

“What?” Lorna wiggled her nose.

“The city is her
oyster
. No city can be a lobster.”

“Oh. Whatevs. Where do you want to go?”

I knew my answer. But Lorna was so not going to be impressed. Not after the Knowles-Carter apartment or the Letterman sofa or the private Prada view.

“Could we go and see a band?”

“A band?” Lorna blinked.

“Yeah, I’d love to go and see a band at the Bowery Ballroom,” I said. “It’s just that Mom never let me get tickets—except one time on my sixteenth—because she’d never been allowed to see bands on her own until she was seventeen. It was a stupid rule, but if we’re breaking them, can we break that one?”

Lorna looked properly dumbstruck. Nancy stepped in. “If that’s what makes you happy, Charlotte, of course. Let’s make sure you get a ringside seat.”

Before I knew it, I was feeling slightly sick—and standing next to Alex Turner.

As in Alex Turner, the lead singer from the Arctic Monkeys. Every one of whose albums I’d downloaded and listened to a trillion times. Onstage. At the Bowery. As hundreds of fangirls screamed below me. Whoa. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, David You-Weren’t-That-Good-a-Kisser-Anyway Maher.

“This sure beats ice cream and bitching about your ex, right?” Nancy managed, stepping out of the way just as Alex swung his guitar around and almost put it right through her stomach.

She was right. For my first proper, no-parents concert, I couldn’t have had a more perfect view: the band, the guys crowd-surfing over the fangirls’ heads, Lorna sitting on an amp, the moment the Arctics struck up the chords of my favorite song, and the encores they came back for three times.

It would have been perfect if it wasn’t so painful too. The problem with dating someone for as long as I’d been with David is that, much as you hate the idea, your tastes merge. You kinda forget who liked which book first and who introduced who to what film. So the more I tried to forget him and the traitor kiss, with every chord I heard, the more a bit of me wished he was here—because he would beyond love this. Even though I couldn’t hold his hand if he was. Even though he was a cheating, cheerleader-kissing idiot who I never wanted to see again and would soon be totally over. I hoped.

“Feel any better?” Nancy gave me a small smile as the band packed up.

“You know what,” I said, lying my unapparited ass off. “I think I do.”

The whole trying-to-cheer-Charlotte-up plan, it was actually kinda nice. It felt good to know they were on my side. Even if they were borderline insane.

“Um, Charlotte.” Lorna grimaced as a massive, sweaty roadie walked straight through her. “Can we get out of here now?”

“Yes, enough with the distractions,” Nancy said, switching speed. “Your funeral didn’t throw up any leads, so tomorrow—when the Living are awake again—we need to begin the investigation into your murder properly.”

I watched as my friends ported away, each disappearing into the air with a small
pop!
Much as murder investigations weren’t my idea of a pull point, I guessed I better get back to the Attesa too.

I swung around to take one last look at the stage—and crashed straight into a tall guy. I was so unprepared for the force of banging into someone instead of walking through them, I lost my balance and tumbled backward toward the wooden stage.

“Whoa!” The guy grabbed me back up with such force, I found my face momentarily buried in his hard chest. Firm, not as permeable as smoke. One thing was for sure: Tall guy wasn’t alive either.

“Still haven’t learned to walk in those heels, Feldman?” he said. I knew who it was even before I had time to smooth down my hair and lift my head.

“Edison, what are you doing here?” I asked, my words tumbling out in a rush.

“Shock, horror, just like you, I happen to like watching bands. Though I should ask how you got Tweedledum and Tweedledee to take a break from sleuthin’ ’n’ shoppin’ to attend something as downtown as a gig.” He lifted his green eyes from mine and scanned the room. “Where did they port off to in such a hurry, anyway?”

“Back to the hotel. They were trying to snap me out of my funk. I kinda had a bad day,” I said, my voice breaking.

“Hey, as everyone who’s had one knows, the ‘fun’ in ‘funeral’ is something of a misnomer.” He looked down at me with a crooked smile, but his eyes were serious. He was still holding my shoulders tightly, as if I might fall again at any moment. If he let go, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t.

“Do you just sit around at night coming up with these lines? Waiting for new dead girls to show up so you can try them out?” I asked.

“No. I made that one up just for you,” he said.

There was a low click and the lights in the Bowery shut off. Suddenly I was aware of just how close Ed and I were standing.

“I guess that means they’re not going to do another encore then,” I said unnecessarily. Hell, was I glad it was dark in here. I was pretty sure my face was flushed and I had no idea where to look or what to do next.

Edison gently dropped his arms from my shoulders to my waist, resting his fingers on the small of my back. “Then I guess we better take this party someplace more lively,” he said quietly in my ear.

All I could manage was an uh-huh.

He tightened his grip, pulling me closer. OMG. I’d only known for sure that David and I were broken up today, and already I was alone in the dark, with the dead guy next door, my body feeling more alive than it had in days. Did this make me as bad as David? And if so, why didn’t I want to pull away?

“Shhh … Close your eyes,” Ed whispered.

I mentally calculated my chances of breaking away and porting back to the hotel before he caught up with me. He had me pretty tight. They weren’t good. Broken, I did as I was told and shut my eyes tight.

As he pushed his fingers harder on my back, my shoulders stiffened. Was he going to make a move? What if, any second now, I felt the pressure of his lips, that pressure I’d wanted to feel when I tried to kiss David in his room? What would I do? Would I let him? Or push away? Suddenly I felt really faint, sick even. Somewhere inside my head, there seemed to be lights.

“Open up,” I heard him say.

I did. But Ed wasn’t holding me anymore. And I wasn’t on the stage in the Bowery either.

No, he’d taken me somewhere else—somewhere low and dark and dank. So that was what the nausea meant, it wasn’t because he was touching me; we’d ported here. And those lights I’d seen—they weren’t in my mind. Oh no, now my eyes were open, I could see they were real. Very real.

Staring ahead, two yellow lights were coming toward me. Blinding through the darkness. The kind on the front of a subway train.

My brain clicked into gear, and I realized I was standing on a track. And the lights were hurtling right toward me at an incredible speed.

Chapter 13

I DON’T REMEMBER HOW IT FELT THE FIRST TIME
the train ran over me. But now my senses were in overdrive, as if they were under someone else’s control and determined I’d experience every sensation. As the lights got closer, a scream stuck in my throat. Then the metal cut through my being, jolting me, as car by car rolled over track after track. There was no pain. No hurt. No actual damage this time. Just confusion and fear, as my upper body skimmed above the train’s floors, and I saw into every car, took in every sitting passenger, as the train screeched by.

It was late and the subway was almost empty, but—even as I willed my open eyes to shut until this was through—I saw the sleeping businessman who would miss his stop, the college kids drinking beer out of brown paper bags, the security guard on the way to his night shift. Normal commuters, with no idea a ghost was trapped somewhere between where they sat and the track beneath them and was watching them all speed by in a blur.

Then when it was over and the train had gone, I stood motionless on the tracks, wishing I could cry and the tears would come.

“Hurts a little less the second time around, huh?”

Edison was standing on the subway platform above me, blowing cigarette smoke out of his nose. Under the artificial lights, he looked like a black fire-breathing dragon.