Meg Cabot - Ninth Key

With my free hand, I was rooting through my bag again. "Well, a real good prescriptive for guilt, I've always found, is confessing." My fingers closed over the roll of dimes. No. No good. He had my best punching arm. "Why don't you let me make a phone call, and we can get the police over here, and you can tell them all about it. How does that sound?"

"No," Mr. Beaumont said, solemnly. "That's no good. I highly doubt the police would have any respect whatsoever for my somewhat, well, special needs...."

And then Mr. Beaumont did something totally unexpected. He smiled at me. Ruefully, but still, a smile.

He had smiled at me before, of course, but I had always been across the room, or at least the width of a coffee table away. Now I was right there, right in his face.

And when he smiled, I was given a very special glimpse of something I certainly never expected to see in my lifetime:

The pointiest incisors ever.

Okay, I'll admit it. I freaked. I may have been battling ghosts all of my life, but that didn't mean I was at all prepared for my first encounter with a real live vampire. I mean, ghosts, I knew from experience, were real.

But vampires? Vampires were the stuff of nightmares, mythological creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. I mean, come on.

But here, right in front of me, smiling this completely sickening my-kid-is-an-honor-student kind of smile at me, was an actual real-life vampire in the flesh.

Now I knew why, when Marcus had shown up that day in Mr. Beaumont's office, he'd kept looking at my neck. He'd been checking to make sure his boss hadn't tried to go for my jugular.

I guess that's why, considering that my free hand was still inside my shoulder bag, I did what I did next.

Which was grasp the pencil I'd put in there at the last minute, pull it out, and plunge it, with all my might, into the center of Mr. Beaumont's sweater.

For a second, both of us froze. Both Mr. Beaumont and I stared at the pencil sticking out of his chest.

Then Mr. Beaumont said, in a very surprised voice, "Oh, my."

To which I replied, "Eat lead."

And then he pitched forward, missing the glass coffee table by only a few inches, and ended up on the floor between the couch and the fireplace.

Where he lay unmoving for several long moments, during which all I could do was massage the wrist he'd been clutching so hard.

He didn't, I noticed after a while, crumble into dust the way vampires on TV did. Nor did he burst into flame as vampires in the movies often do. Instead, he just lay there.

And then, little by little, the reality of what I had just done sank in:

I had just killed my boyfriend's dad.

CHAPTER 14

Well, okay, Tad wasn't exactly my boyfriend, and I had honestly believed that his dad was a vampire.

But guess what? He wasn't. And I had killed him.

How unpopular was that going to make me?

And this little bubble of hysteria started rising up into my throat. I could tell I was going to scream. I really didn't want to. But there I was in a room with an unconscious kid and his psycho dad, whom I had just staked through the heart with a Number Two pencil. How could I help thinking, You know, they are so totally going to kick me off the student council....

Come on. You'd have started screaming, too.

But no sooner had I sucked in a lungful of air and was getting ready to let it out in a shriek guaranteed to bring Yoshi and all those waiters who'd served me dinner come running, than someone standing behind me asked, sharply, "What happened here?"

I spun around. And there, looking stunned, stood Marcus, Red Beaumont's secretary.

I said the first thing that came into my head, which was, "I didn't mean to, I swear it. Only he was scaring me, so I stabbed him."

Marcus, dressed much like the last time I'd seen him, in a suit and tie, rushed toward me. Not toward his boss, who was sprawled out on the floor. But toward me.

"Are you all right?" he demanded, grabbing me by the shoulders and looking all up and down my body . . . but mostly at my neck. "Did he hurt you?"

Marcus's face was white with anxiety.

" I'm fine," I said. I was starring to feel a lump in my throat. "It's your boss you ought to be worried about...." My gaze flitted toward Tad, still facedown on the couch. "Oh, and his kid. He poisoned his kid."

Marcus went over to Tad and pried open one of his eyelids. Then he bent and listened to his breathing. "No," he said, almost to himself. "Not poisoned. Just drugged."

"Oh," I said, with a nervous laugh. "Oh, then that's okay."

What the hell was going on here? Was this guy for real?

He seemed so. He was obviously very concerned. He shoved the coffee table out of the way, then bent and turned his boss over.

I had to look away. I didn't think I could bear to see that pencil sticking out of Mr. Beaumont's chest. I mean, I had rammed ghosts in the chest with all sorts of stuff - pickaxes, butcher's knives, tent poles, whatever was handy. But the thing about ghosts is … well, they're already dead. Tad's father had been alive when I'd jabbed that pencil into him.

Oh, God, why had I let Father Dom put that stupid vampire idea into my head? What kind of idiot believes in vampires? I must have been out of my mind.

"Is he …" I could barely choke the question out. I had to keep my gaze on Tad because if I looked down at his dad, I had a feeling I'd hurl all that lamb and mesclun salad. Even in my anxiety I couldn't help noticing that, unconscious, Tad still looked pretty hot. He certainly wasn't drooling, or anything. "Is he dead?"

And I thought my mother was going to be mad if she found out about the mediator thing. Could you imagine how mad she'd be if she found out I'm a teenage killer?

Marcus's voice sounded surprised. "Of couse he's not dead," he said. "Just fainted. You must have given him quite a little scare."

I snuck a peek in his direction. He had straightened up, and was standing there with my pencil in his hands. I looked hastily away, my stomach lurching.

"Is this what you used on him?" Marcus asked, in a wry voice. When I nodded silently, still not willing to glance in his direction in case I caught a glimpse of Mr. Beaumont's blood, he said, "Don't worry. It didn't go in very far. You hit his sternum."

Jeesh. Good thing Red Beaumont hadn't turned out to be the real thing or I'd have been in serious trouble. I couldn't even stake a guy properly. I really must be losing my touch.

As it was, all I had succeeded in doing was making a complete ass of myself. I said, still feeling that little bubble of hysteria in my chest, which I blamed for causing me to babble a little incoherently, "He poisoned Tad, and then he grabbed me, and I just freaked out …"

Marcus left his boss's unconscious body and laid a comforting hand on my arm. He said, "Shhh, I know, I know," in a soothing voice.

"I'm really sorry," I jabbered on. "But he has that thing about sunlight, and then he wouldn't eat, and then when he smiled, he had those pointy teeth, and I really thought - "

" - he was a vampire." Marcus, to my surprise, finished my sentence for me. "I know, Miss Simon."

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the truth is, I was pretty close to bursting into tears. Marcus's admission, however, made me forget all about my urge to break down into big weepy sobs.

"You know ?" I echoed, staring up at him incredulously.

He nodded. His expression was grim. "It's what his doctors call a fixation. He's on medication for it, and most days, he does all right. But sometimes, when we aren't careful, he skips a dose, and . . . well, you can see the results for yourself. He becomes convinced that he is a dangerous vampire who has killed dozens of people - "