Chapter Four

I didn't get very far. Ryan caught up with me by the old oak tree in front of the school.

"Daisy, wait up! I want to talk to you," Ryan called as he broke into a jog. I refused to look behind me again, but I could hear the sound of his footsteps as he came closer.

I forced myself not to run, even though I didn't want to have this conversation with Ryan. Not now. Not ever. Not the letting-her-down-gently bit.

I knew it by heart. I should, I'd helped him practice it enough times. Ryan was a nice guy. He didn't like to crush the hopes of some freshman who was locker-stalking him. So he had a prepared speech.

A speech I wasn't going to hear. Not today. In his defense, I knew Ryan had no clue about how I felt about him. Not until we kissed, that is. That may have given him a clue. I sped up.

His hand touched my shoulder. "Daisy?"

I whirled around. "I get it!"

He recoiled from the heat in my voice. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just wanted to talk to you about—"

"The kiss, I know. We're better off friends, yada yada."

He looked puzzled. "No, I wanted to talk to you about the girl we ... visited the other night." And then, in case I didn't catch on, he added in a low voice, "At the morgue."

I stopped long enough to process what he had said. Relief coursed through me. I wasn't going to be subjected to a humiliating It isn't you, it's me speech. "What about her?"

"I may have some new information," Ryan said.

A clue. He had to be the cutest Hardy Boy ever, especially when he smiled at me like that.

"What did you find out?" I started walking again, but this time at a more reasonable pace.

Ryan fell into step beside me. "I heard my dad talking the other night."

"And?" I prompted him.

"She disappeared," he replied.

"Who?"

"The girl in the morgue. She's gone."

"What? When?"

"Saturday night. Something conked Denton on the head, and when he woke up, the morgue had been trashed and the body was gone."

"The body has been missing for four days now?" I yelped. "Why didn't you say something earlier?"

Ryan shrugged. "It seemed like you were avoiding me." He was actually blushing. Maybe I wasn't the only one who was insecure.

He leaned in until our shoulders touched. I caught my breath and took in his smell of freshly brewed coffee and dark chocolate. Two of my favorite fragrances. I turned my attention back to what he was saying.

"I think Dad knows something about the case. Something he's not telling anyone." He stepped out onto the empty street.

An image flashed in my mind, and I yanked him back onto the sidewalk. "Wait!" I said.

"What the...?" But he never finished the sentence, because a dark gray hearse squealed around the corner and into the intersection. The driver peeled away, doing about sixty in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed zone.

"Thanks!" Ryan said. "That guy would have hit me if you hadn't stopped me. How did you know?"

I changed the subject because I didn't know how I knew. The image was in my mind, and a minute later it was happening.

"Was that Nicholas Bone driving?" The Bone family owned the town funeral home, Mort's Mortuary. Mort Bone was a nice man. When he wasn't supervising a viewing, he wore polo shirts and plaid pants and was most often spotted getting in eighteen holes at the town's golf course. But his son Nicholas was a different matter. Nicholas Bone was trouble. Gorgeous trouble, but trouble just the same.

"I heard he skipped town after graduation," Ryan said.

Nicholas had been in Rose's class at Nightshade High. He broke my sister's heart their junior year. Great. I didn't want to be the one to tell Rose he was back in town, although all things considered, she probably already knew.

We were a few blocks from my house, almost within Rose's unintentional mental eavesdropping zone. I tugged on Ryan's hand to stop him. Tingles shot up my fingers, my wrists, all the way to my heart. "Back to this disappearing body...," I said.

A couple of kids from school were headed toward us. I dropped Ryan's hand before they spotted us.

We fell silent as they passed by. The freshman girl, Katie something, kept glancing back at us over her shoulder. Probably another member of the Ryan Mendez fan club.

After they were out of earshot, I said, "How does a body disappear without a trace? It can't just get up and walk away."

"It can't, not if it was anything human," His breath tickled my ear as he lowered his voice.

My mouth opened, guppylike, as I took in his meaning. Nightshade was an odd town.

"What did the body look like?" Ryan asked. "I never even got a chance to talk to you about it after we were busted by Officer Denton."

"She looked ... dead," I said, shoving aside the memory of the twitching hand.

"Did you notice anything unusual?"

I almost snapped that I didn't spend as much time in the morgue as he did, so I didn't know what was usual for a dead body, but then I looked into his gorgeous green eyes and stopped myself. "She had a tattoo on her left hand and a stamp on her right. The stamp said 'Opal.' Do you think that's her name?"

Ryan's eyes widened. "Was it a purple stamp?"

I nodded.

"That's probably from the Black Opal," he said.

I had no idea what he was talking about. "The what?"

"The Black Opal. It's a club in Santa Cruz."

"Oh," I said, feeling totally uncool for not knowing. "You've been there?"

Ryan nodded. "A bunch of us were there last weekend."

As well as I knew him, it was easy to forget that Ryan had a whole other, more popular group of friends. The kind of friends who went to clubs in Santa Cruz on the weekends instead of sitting at home trying out new recipes.

"I guess I'll just have to check it out for myself," I said.

"Daisy, I want you to promise me you won't go there alone."

I looked him in the eye. "I can't promise you that," I said as we approached my house, "but I will promise you that I'll let someone know where I'm going. If I go," I added, just so he didn't think he knew me like the back of his hand or anything.

Ryan raised his eyebrow and stared at me. We both knew I would be in that club before he could say "VIP room." "So, tomorrow night, then?" he offered.

"Thanks, Ryan," I said. "You don't know how much I appreciate this."

"I'd do anything for you, Daisy," he said softly. "Just ask."

The intensity in his eyes unnerved me. My knees were trembling so badly I had to grab on to our picket fence for support.

"This is me," I said inanely, pushing open the gate. Like Ryan hadn't been to my house a million times. He had, but this time was different.

Very different, I realized, when Ryan reached over and gave me a peck on the lips. Quick, but tasty. The fast food of kisses.

"I'll call you later," he said, then jogged away.

I practically floated up the walkway to the house. Ryan kissed me. Again. He was going to call me.

Wait. Why was Ryan going to call me? To ask me out or to talk about the case? It was a mystery to me. As I climbed the porch steps, my euphoria deflated. I kicked the door in frustration. Just a little kick, but Poppy busted me.

"You know Mom hates it when you do that," she said.

"Oh, go psy yourself," I said.

"Jeesh, you're in a bad mood," Poppy said.

I walked away from her, into the kitchen, but she followed me.

"I don't understand why, especially since Ryan walked you home and gave you that sweet little kiss on the lips."

"Don't you have anything better to do than spy on me?" I snapped.

"No, not really," Poppy admitted cheerfully.

I went from wanting to strangle her to bursting into laughter in ten seconds flat.

Poppy giggled along with me and then went to the fridge and poured a couple of glasses of milk. She peered into the fridge. "I'm hungry and there's nothing to eat."

"Rose still hasn't done the grocery shopping," I said.

"She's been really absentminded lately," Poppy commented.

"I hadn't noticed," I said. I had, but I wasn't going to tell Poppy. She'd just use it as ammo the next time she and Rose got in a tiff. They always made up, but then they somehow always ended up mad at me.

"Where's Mom?" I asked.

"She called earlier and said she's working on a case with Chief Mendez. She said they'd grab something out," Poppy told me. "Oh, and I forgot to mention. Samantha Devereaux called."

"She called here?" My incredulity was clear. She really must be dead, because that was the only way she'd get caught calling me.

"I thought you were friends," Poppy said.

"No, we're not friends," I said shortly.

"But you were," Poppy persisted. "She used to be here all the time."

"Yeah, back in sixth grade." I took a gulp of milk. "When I didn't know any better," I added under my breath.

"She left her number." Poppy handed me a slip of paper. "She said it was urgent."

What did the queen of the dead want now? Whatever it was, I'm sure it involved plenty of pain and humiliation. For me, of course.