Read Online Ninth Key by Meg Cabot - Free Book Online Page A

along. He must have thought that his car was soundproof with the windows rolled up.
    Boy, was he ever wrong.
    After I was done giving my speech the second time, the guard, with a kind of smile on his face, said, “Hold on, miss,” and got on this white phone, and started saying a bunch of stuff into it that I couldn’t hear. I stood there wishing I’d worn tights instead of pantyhose since my legs were freezing in the cold wind that was coming in off the ocean, and wondering how I could ever have possibly thought this was a good idea.
    Then the microphone crackled.
    “Okay, miss,” the guard said. “Mr. Beaumont’ll see you.”
    And then, to my astonishment, the big spiky gates began to ease open.
    “Oh,” I said. “Oh my God! Thank you! Thanks —”
    Then I realized the guard couldn’t hear me since I wasn’t talking into the microphone. So I ran back to the car and tore open the door.
    Sleepy, in the middle of a pretty involved air guitar session, broke off and looked embarrassed.
    “So?” he said.
    “So,” I said back to him, slamming the passenger door behind me. “We’re in. Just drop me off at the house, will you?”
    “Sure thing, Cinderella.”
    It took like five minutes to get down that driveway. I am not even kidding. It was
that
long. On either side of it were these big trees that formed sort of an alley. A tree alley. It was kind of cool. I figured in the daytime it was probably really beautiful. Was there anything Tad Beaumont didn’t have? Looks, money, a beautiful place to live…
    All he needed was cute little old me.
    Sleepy pulled the car to a stop in front of this paved entranceway, which was flanked on either side by these enormous palm trees, kind of like the Polynesian Resort at Disney World. In fact, the whole place had kind of a Disney feel to it. You know, really big, and kind of modern and fake. There were all these lights on, and at the end of all the paved stones I could see this giant glass door with somebody hovering behind it.
    I turned to Sleepy and said, “Okay, I’m good. Thanks for the ride.”
    Sleepy looked out at all the lights and palm trees and stuff. “You sure you got a way home?”
    “I’m sure,” I said.
    “Okay.” As I got out of the car, I heard him mutter, “Never delivered a pie
here
before.”
    I hurried up the paved walkway, conscious, as Sleepy drove away, that I could hear the ocean somewhere, though in the darkness beyond the house, I couldn’t see it. When I got to the door, it swung open before I could look for a bell, and a Japanese man in black pants and a white housecoat-looking thing bowed to me and said, “This way, miss.”
    I had never been in a house where a servant answered the door before — let alone been called miss — so I didn’t know how to act. I followed him into this huge room where the walls were made out of actual rocks from which actual water was dripping in these little rivulets, which I guess were supposed to be waterfalls.
    “May I take your coat?” the Japanese man said, and so I shrugged out of it, though I kept my bag from which my writing tablet was peeking out. I wanted to look the part, you know.
    Then the Japanese man bowed to me again and said, “This way, miss.”
    He led me toward a set of sliding glass doors, which opened out onto a long, open-air courtyard in which there was a huge pool lit up turquoise in the dark. Steam rose from its surface. I guess it was heated. There was a fountain in the middle of it and a rock formation from which water gushed, and all around it were plants and trees and hibiscus bushes. A very nice place, I thought, for me to hang out in after school in my Calvin Klein one-piece and my sarong.
    Then we were inside again in a surprisingly ordinary-looking hallway. It was at this point that my guide bowed to me for a third time and said, “Wait here, please,” then disappeared through one of three doors off the corridor.
    So I did as he said, though I couldn’t help