The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two) by Spencer Baum Read Free Book Online

placed Art’s keys on the floor, pulled off her right earring, and straightened out the earwire. She slid the earwire into the center of the lock and began to jiggle it up and down. With each upward pull, the steel pins in the lock pressed their shape into the soft silver wire. She could feel herself getting closer, the wire stretching to the back of the lock. She was seconds away from getting the door open when she heard the Jada Razor jingle that was her ringtone. She had left her phone on the mantle in the foyer. She thought about letting it ring, but then decided it might be a distraction to Jill. Leaving her earwire in the lock, she ran back to the foyer.
    She found her phone in time to see that the incoming call was from Ryan Jenson.
    Her first thought was to shut the phone off, that now was a terrible time to take a call from anyone, much less from him, that she needed to think about the mission and Ryan wasn’t a part of the mission anymore.
    It rang again. She had to act now. She felt an urgency to make it stop ringing. She reached for the button to shut it off, but at the last second, she pressed answer instead.
    “Hello?”

 
    Chapter 5
     
    “Hey Nicky. It’s Ryan.”
    Silence. Nicky ran on the balls of her feet, scurrying as quietly as she could to get out of the foyer where Jill might hear her talking on the phone.
    “Hello?” Ryan said.
    “Just a minute,” Nicky whispered.
    She ran back to the hallway, back to the earwire she’d left in the locked door.
    “Okay, sorry about that,” she said. “I had to get someplace quiet.”
    “That’s okay,” Ryan said. “I understand. I had to do the same thing…step away, that is.”
    “Oh yeah?” Nicky said. She knelt down on the floor and got back to work jiggling her earwire. “Step away from what?”
    “We’re having a little get-together at my house. Kind of an after-after-party, if you know what I mean.”
    Nicky stopped jiggling.
    “Are you telling me that Kim Renwick’s at your house?”
    “Yep. Pretty stupid of me to call since you and Kim are mortal enemies now. I’ll have to come up with something to say when I get back to the party. What do you suppose I should tell everyone?”
    “I don’t know. Who might you normally call at this time of night?”
    “Good question. Unfortunately, they all know the answer. No one. I don’t really talk on the phone much. I think I’ll need a different cover story. I’ll probably just say I had to go to the bathroom.”
    “That’s always a good way to go,” Nicky said. “Be sure to flush a toilet somewhere in the house before you come back.”
    “Good idea. I’ll do that.”
    It was good to hear his voice, even if they didn’t have anything to say to each other. The last time Nicky spoke to Ryan was at Homecoming, when Ryan asked her to run away with him before it was too late. She had rejected him—she had to—but that last conversation with him was one of many things that had been floating in her head all day long.
    She started jiggling the earwire again. She was getting close. She could feel it.
    “So…is there any particular reason we’re speaking on the phone this evening?” Nicky asked.
    “No. Just felt like it. I kind of wanted to tell you about Kim’s party, but maybe that conversation will have to wait.”
    With a hard click, the earwire found its way to the back of the lock. Nicky turned the knob and let the door swing open.
    There was nothing but a dusty water heater on the other side. It was a closet with a water heater, an unusually deep closet for such a small water heater. The unit was set so far back in the closet the light from the hallway barely touched it.
    “Bummer,” Nicky said.
    “Totally a bummer,” said Ryan.
    “What? Oh…no, I was just…something else was a bummer…it doesn’t have to wait, Ryan.”
    Ryan was laughing now. “What are you talking about Nicky Bloom?”
    She started to laugh too. He did that to her. The sound of his laugh was so