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

wondering what time it was. I don’t wear a watch since every one I ever owned has ended up getting smashed by some evil spirit. But I hadn’t planned on spending more than a few minutes of my time with this guy. My plan was to get in, deliver the dead lady’s message, and then get out. I’d told my mom I’d be home by nine, and it had to be nearly eight by now.
    Rich people. They just don’t care about other people’s curfews.
    Then the Japanese man reappeared, bowed, and said, “He will see you now.”
    Whoa. I wondered if I should genuflect.
    I restrained myself. Instead, I went through the door — and found myself in an elevator. A tiny little elevator with a chair and an end table in it. There was even a plant on the end table. The Japanese man had shut the door behind me, and now I was alone in a tiny room that was definitely moving. Whether it was going up or down, I had no way of knowing. There were no numbers over the door to indicate the direction the thing was taking. And there was only one button…
    The room stopped moving. When I reached for the doorknob, it turned. And when I stepped out of the elevator, I found myself in a darkened room with big velvet curtains pulled over the windows, containing only a massive desk, an even more massive aquarium, and a single visitor’s chair, evidently for me, in front of that desk. Behind the desk sat a man. The man, when he saw me, smiled.
    “Ah,” he said. “You must be Miss Simon.”

Chapter
Seven
     
     
    “Um,” I said. “Yes.”
    It was hard to tell, because it was so dark in the room, but the man behind the desk appeared to be about my stepfather’s age. Forty-five or so. He was wearing a sweater over a button-down collared shirt, sort of like Bill Gates always does. He had brown hair that was obviously thinning. CeeCee was right: It certainly wasn’t red.
    And he wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as his son.
    “Sit down,” Mr. Beaumont said. “Sit down. I’m so delighted to see you. Tad’s told me so much about you.”
    Yeah, right. I wondered what he’d say if I pointed out that Tad didn’t even know my name. But since I was still playing the part of the eager girl reporter, I smiled as I settled into the comfortable leather chair in front of his desk.
    “Would you like anything?” Mr. Beaumont asked. “Tea? Lemonade?”
    “Oh, no thank you,” I said. It was hard not to stare at the aquarium behind him. It was built into the wall, almost filling it up, and was stocked with every color fish imaginable. There were lights built into the sand at the bottom of the tank that cast this weird, watery glow around the room. Mr. Beaumont’s face, with this wavy light on it, looked kind of Grand Moff Tarkin-ish. You know, in the final Death Star battle scene.
    “I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” I said in response to his question about liquid refreshment.
    “Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Yoshi can get it for you.” Mr. Beaumont reached for the phone in the center of his giant, Victorian-looking desk. “Shall I ask him to get you anything?”
    “Really,” I said. “I’m fine.” And then I crossed my legs because I was still freezing from when I’d stood outside by the guard’s house.
    “Oh, but you’re cold,” Mr. Beaumont said. “Here, let me light a fire.”
    “No,” I said. “Really. It’s all…right….”
    My voice trailed off. Mr. Beaumont had not, as Andy would have done, stood up, gone to the fireplace, stuffed wadded-up pieces of newspaper under some logs, lit the thing, and then spent the next half hour blowing on it and cursing.
    Instead, he lifted a remote control, hit a button, and all of a sudden this cheerful fire was going in the black marble fireplace. I felt its heat at once.
    “Wow,” I said. “That sure is…convenient.”
    “Isn’t it?” Mr. Beaumont smiled at me. He kept looking, for some reason, at the cross around my neck. “I never was one for building fires. So messy. I was never