The Dead Girls Detective Agency

by Suzy Cox

  He looked at the note again, rereading the line about his head. David hugged himself with his arms, then slammed his locker.

  Like that would shut a door on the weirdness and make it melt away.

  David stood, staring at the closed, gray, graffitied door for a few seconds more, then bolted down the corridor and out onto the street.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” I asked. Damn! There was definitely a hint of giving-a-crap in my voice. After all the stuff he’d pulled, why wasn’t I done with that?

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” Tess mimicked back at me. She rolled her eyes. “Feldman, just when I thought you were getting a backbone …”

  “David will be fine,” Nancy cut in. “He’s going to be disoriented, sure. We have just stolen a day of his life. It’s way, way longer than a routine possession.”

  “That is nothing compared to all the time you wasted on him, Charlotte, so don’t feel bad.” Lorna gave my shoulders a little squeeze. Did I mention that I loved her?

  “He’ll just put it down to overtiredness or sunstroke,” Nancy added authoritatively.

  “There is no sun today, Nancy. It’s raining out,” Lorna pointed out.

  “Oh well.” Nancy shrugged and ported home.

  As she did, a slight breeze blew up the hallway. A Halloween dance poster fell off the wall and dropped onto the floor in front of us with a swoosh.

  “The dance is tomorrow night,” Lorna said. “October thirty-first: it’s almost your deathiversary.”

  Great. Bring out the streamers and balloons.

  Chapter 24

  I PORTED BACK TO THE ATTESA STEPS, KNOWING the others would have gone straight into HHQ. They’d probably assume I’d made the rookie mistake of misfiring myself and would catch up with them soon.

  I wanted things that way. That was my plan.

  I’d never been the Garbo gimme-space type (well, unless Mom was asking for a play-by-play of my day the second my schoolbag hit the floor). But right now, I just wanted a few minutes alone. Without Nancy instructing or Tess bitching or Lorna fussing with her hair.

  I considered walking over into Washington Square, but from the Attesa steps, I could see there were a ton of dogs in the exercise run, excitedly yapping away. I had enough noise in my head. I didn’t need any more. Instead I sat down on the gray stone and tucked my knees up to my chin.

  The more I tried to zone out, the more worried I felt. Before my death, my pulse would have been racing as I thought through everything. Fat chance of that now. Instead all I had left was this low-level panic, where I couldn’t pinpoint exactly which of the insanely hideous events of the last week was upsetting me the most.

  It was like that feeling you have when you get to school and wonder if you’ve left your straightening irons on and they’re going to burn down your parents’ apartment, or if there’s a test you haven’t prepared for.

  I let my head drop forward and massaged my temples with my fingers. Like that would help.

  Through the window below, I could hear Nancy talking to Lorna. Well, more at than to. Even though I couldn’t make out whole sentences, the tone of Nancy’s voice told me everything I needed to know: She was debriefing her sidekick (she’d never talk to Tess like that), figuring out what conclusions they could draw from today, hypothesizing what the Agency should do next.

  I could picture what each of them was doing without even peeking in. Lorna would be good-naturedly nodding along, but actually fantasizing about what she’d wear to a Halloween dance if she got the chance. Nancy would be writing Brian on the blackboard, then scholarly crossing his name out, then chewing on the end of a red piece of chalk.

  And me? I was out here wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my death.

  I’d seen enough bad cop shows. I knew that time was running out. The longer a murder went unsolved, the harder it became to crack. And I’d been dead five days and counting. By the time the trees in the park lost their leaves, I’d be nothing more than a cold case. Filed away by the Agency in one of Nancy’s dusty cabinets, while newer dead girls with solvable murders checked into the hotel—and, like Tess, I’d have to stand by and wonder what made them so special that they could find their Key when mine was missing.

  I sighed. Maybe I needed to focus on the positives instead. Was being here—in this world—really so bad? There were plenty of reasons to be glad I was dead. I’d never have to pay taxes, work a job I hated, grow old and wrinkly.

  I forced a smile. It was better to be glass half full. Besides, maybe Lorna and Nancy were right to believe Tess when it came to the Big Red Door. Who knew what was on the Other Side anyhow? It might be all fire and brimstone.

  A couple of kids ran by in pristine private-school uniforms holding their books in their hands. See, I’d never have to fail an exam again, either.

  And if I did have to stay in one place forever, New York wasn’t such a bad city to be shipwrecked in. What if I’d been murdered when I was visiting my grandmother upstate in her tiny one-bar town—they didn’t even have a Whole Foods there. Not that I could eat Whole Foods anymore. But the point was that, in some places, there was zero to do. Nada. And I was not dead in one of them. There were a load of museums in New York I’d never even set foot inside, much less explored. And what about my favorite art galleries? And all their new exhibits? The books I hadn’t read, and the bands whose (non-Brooklyn) concerts I could just sneak into—now I never needed to pay for tickets or get my parents’ permission again.

  I had so much to look forward to. So why did it still feel like my life was over?

  Maybe because it was.

  “Plotting how you’re going to use your special powers to take down Manhattan, Ghostgirl?” Ed asked.

  What was it with him and the sneaking-up thing?

  Edison sat down on the step next to me. I looked around to check that Lorna and the others were still inside. I didn’t need another interrogation about what was up with me and Ed today. It wasn’t like I’d gotten a handle on what our friendship meant myself.

  “Ghostgirl, superhero of the next world,” Ed singsonged and waved his fingers in my face to get my attention. “Come on, talk to me. Maybe I can help. For a start, if you’re thinking of storming the city via an army of sewer ghouls, I can tell you right now that that is a bad idea. I tried it back in ’91 and—me?—I’m still here. Powerless.”

  Despite myself, I smiled.

  “That’s better,” Ed said, returning my grin.

  We sat in silence for the longest time. When I’d been alive, I’d felt kinda awkward with David if we didn’t talk. Like I wasn’t entertaining enough or we’d run out of things to say. With Edison, it felt more like the talking was the less comfortable part. The silences were easy. While my head reeled, Ed stared forward, saying nothing. I hoped it was because he knew I needed time, but didn’t want me to be alone.

  “So what’s really up?” he asked eventually.

  Honestly? I didn’t want to tell the other dead girls what I was thinking. It sounded stupid, complaining and whining about being stuck when they’d been here for so much longer. Sure, Nancy and Lorna acted like they could leave at any time, but could they really? And Tess? She just seemed to be bitter.

  But Edison … He was so … weird and moody and funny and unpredictable. He didn’t seem to have an agenda. Unless it was against colored clothes. He’d just tell me to shut up, if he thought I was being pathetic.

  “It’s my case,” I said, concentrating hard on a spot in the street where the pavement had come loose. “It’s been almost a week now and I’m—”

  “Worried they’ll never help you solve it?” Ed finished, nodding his head back in the direction of HHQ’s window, where Nancy’s voice could still be heard.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Look, when I got here, I …” Ed stopped himself and mentally changed tack. “The other day, you asked me, does it ever get any easier. I’ve been thinking about my answer ever since, and I don’t
think I gave you the right one.”

  He looked at me intensely, his eyes flickering around my face, searching for something before he went on.

  “When I arrived, I decided that life had taught me one very important lesson,” he said eventually.

  “Which is?”

  “Which is that you can’t control it.” Ed dropped his eyes, took a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, and lit one up, shielding the flame with his hand. He really was one of those guys who made smoking look every bit as cool as your mother has always told you it isn’t.

  “When I was alive, there were all these things,” he said, taking a long drag and flicking off some nonexistent ash, “these benchmarks or goals or whatever that were all set out for me—school, graduation, maybe college one day if I saved enough. All this stuff I had to do or it would be the end of the world.”

  He slowly blew out a smoke ring. “But the thing is that, when it did come—the end of my world—I had no way of stopping it. There was nothing I could do. No amount of studying harder, or getting in earlier, or flossing twice a day would have stopped it. My life ended and that was that.”

  Ed gave me a sad smile. “So, mighty Ghostgirl, my sage but simple advice to you is this: Don’t sweat it. You couldn’t do anything when the worst thing imaginable happened, so don’t waste your afterlife worrying now—especially when you don’t have a future to worry about anyway.” Ed threw his half-smoked cigarette into the street. “If you’re meant to go through the Door, you will.”

  We sat quietly for a minute, as I took what he’d said in.

  Without another word, he scooted closer to me. So close our knees were touching. He leaned forward to brush a strand of my hair off my forehead. His hand was just a few centimeters from my face when something flashed in his eyes and he suddenly realized what he was doing—actually about to show me some affection when there was just the two of us here. Ed stopped, mid-sweep. His hand lay shell-shaped and motionless, agonizingly close to my face.

  Suddenly I had the weirdest, clearest thought. I wondered if everything he’d done—the watching and the teasing and the scaring and the teaching and the actually opening up—might in some twisted boy way mean that Ed liked me.

  And what if I might like him back.

  I tried to look away, but it was like his eyes had mine in a boy tractor beam. His expression changed. He slowly moved his hand closer to my face, until he was tracing the contours of my cheek with his thumb—making it feel like it was under a heat lamp. Slowly he tilted his face and brought his lips down onto mine. The world whirled. And not in a way that made me feel ill either.

  “Ahem!”

  There was a loud cough from the Attesa doorway. Lorna bounced down the steps and stood in front of us, eyebrows raised so high they almost disappeared under her blond bangs.

  We jumped apart like we’d been wrenched with a crowbar. Lorna stared at Ed strangely as he suddenly realized his hand was still raised in the air where it had been cupping my face. He snapped it back down by his side, turned his face away, and coolly took out another cigarette.

  Act natural. She only caught you kissing Ed.

  Kissing him. As in: On. The. Lips.

  Lorna gave me a look that said she was in no way buying it. “We wondered where you’d gone,” she said, pretending like she hadn’t just walked in on what she’d just walked in on. What had she just walked in on? “Nancy was getting worried you’d misported—she was about to send Tess after you again. Aren’t you glad I came looking instead? I said you were probably just taking a moment to yourself.”

  “Yeah, no need to worry or send out a search party. I was sitting out here, thinking and stuff,” I said, refusing to meet her eyes and focusing really hard on that broken piece of asphalt again.

  “And stuff,” Lorna said.

  Stuff.

  Ed stood up and I felt a gaping space form beside me. I silently willed Lorna to leave and for him to sit back down. I needed to know if I was right about us or as delusional as Brian.

  Which was stupid because the last thing I needed right now was another guy to jerk me around. If blue-eyed, straight Bs, mom’s-favorite David could be such a fake, just imagine what damage confusing-as-hell Edison could do.

  “I guess we should go inside then,” I said to Lorna. “Get on with cracking my case. Or something?”

  “Very good idea,” she said, nodding hard. “Edison, will you be joining us? Or are you off to skulk in some shadows as per?”

  “Oh, you know me,” he said, “I pick skulking over working every time.”

  Ed saluted us both by touching an invisible cap, then walked off down the road, deliberately walking through two of the Living as he went. They both stopped, shuddered, and looked a little confused.

  “Lorna, we were just—” I started.

  Lorna put her hands on her skinny hips. “Charlotte, your stuff is none of my business. Though I’m a little surprised you’re spending time on stuff after our chat yesterday. Just remember what I said about Edison. I don’t trust his sudden interest in you. He’s not normally like this with newbies and—”

  “I know,” I said, cutting her off and following her up the steps into the hotel. “You don’t think he’s being straight with me, but really we’ve been talking and …” I stopped. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be getting into this,” I said, shaking my head.

  So why, when I turned back and stared down the street to see Edison still watching me, did I want to run right after him?

  Chapter 25

  I DIDN’T GO BACK INTO HHQ LIKE LORNA ASKED me to. I couldn’t face it. All that talk of clues and suspects and reading case files in the vain hope something would pop up after all this time.

  Instead, I waited until Lorna padded down the stairs to the basement and snuck into the elevator. I went up to my room, crawled under the covers and closed my eyes. But of course sleep didn’t come. I lay there, watching the shadows in the room lengthen until eventually the entire place was as dark as a room in New York City ever gets.

  When I was a kid, Dad made up bedtime stories about the monsters that hid under “naughty girls’ beds,” ghosts and ghouls that only came out when it got dark. Even though I knew he was teasing, it still scared me enough to sleep with my star lamp on for most of second grade.

  Now that I was one of the ghosts I’d been so scared of, the dark wasn’t menacing anymore. It was a comfort. A break from the Living and the day and the whatever-the-hell had just happened between me and Edison outside.

  I stayed there, lay like that, for hours and hours until slowly the sun came up, like someone turning on a dimmer switch to my room.

  There was a gentle knock on my door.

  “Charlotte?” Lorna said quietly.

  I kept my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep.

  “Charlotte,” she said, louder this time. I didn’t answer, so she bounced down on my bed, putting a hand on my back. “Ghosts can’t sleep—remember?—so there’s no point pretending you can’t hear me.”

  Crap. I reluctantly rolled over.

  “Please come downstairs,” she begged. “It’s the day of the Halloween dance. Nancy’s got a new plan.”

  Like that was going to entice me.

  “Is it as good as the one where I possess my ex-boyfriend, then a cheerleader tries to feel me up?” I asked. “Or this time, maybe I could have a ringside seat while my parents cry some more. Or watch while the head cheerleader shouts abuse at my best friend.”

  “Well …”

  “That was all I needed to hear,” I said, turning back to the window again. I knew I shouldn’t be taking this out on Lorna, but now I’d awoken my inner brat, I couldn’t put her back in her box.

  “Please, Charlotte,” Lorna said. “It’s not good for you, all this moping up here on your own. I’m worried you’re getting depressed.”

  I turned back over and pulled myself up on my elbow.

  “Promise Nancy won’t suggest any more possessions,” I as
ked.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die—again,” Lorna said, a glint in her eye.

  “Okay then.”

  We walked down the stairs to HHQ.

  “Even so, we should trail David tonight,” Nancy was saying to a bored-looking Tess. “We might not have found any concrete clues yesterday, but it did give us an insight into what was really going on in the high school. Maybe tonight, someone will relax and let out a secret.”

  So we were back in the land of might and maybe. Awesome.

  The others very deliberately didn’t look up when Lorna and I walked in. Which only had me even more convinced they’d been talking about me until they heard our steps on the stairs.

  “One teeny problem,” Tess said, drumming her fingers on the desk she was sitting on. “It’s Halloween, so every kid going to this dumb-ass dance is going to be dressed up as busters or ghosts. How are we going to find David in costume?”

  “Easy!” Nancy said. “He’s meeting Kristen on the roof of the Sedgwick Hotel at eight p.m.—just before the Scream Queen and King are crowned.”

  David was what?

  “And how exactly do you know that?” Lorna asked, her brow furrowed. “Charlotte possessed him all day long yesterday and Kristen didn’t come over to talk to him once. We’d have noticed if they had made plans.”

  Nancy’s smile faded. “I just know, okay?” she said.

  Because that’s an explanation. “Come on, Nancy,” I said. “What gives? How do you know that?”

  “I know that because I saw this note.” Nancy walked over to the map wall and picked up a crumpled piece of paper from the table below it. Her eyes scanned it quickly as she reminded herself what it said, then she passed it to Lorna.

  “‘Meet me at the top of the Sedgwick at eight p.m. Don’t be late—I don’t like to be kept waiting. Kristen,’” Lorna read aloud. “Oh, and she signed it with three kisses and two pink hearts.”

  Of course.

  “And how long have you known about this rendezvous, Nancy?” I asked. I could not believe she’d kept this from me.