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

genuine. So clean. It forced her to smile.
    “Sorry, I wasn’t being very clear,” she said. “What I was trying to say is, I’m dying to hear about what happened last night.”
    She started closing the door to the water heater when something made her stop. Why was this water heater set so far back in the closet? It was strange. She took a step back to get a different view.
    “Nicky, I can tell you everything you need to know about Kim’s party in two words.”
    “So tell me then.”
    “It sucked.”
    Nicky laughed harder now. “Did it really suck, or are you just saying that to make me feel good?”
    “It royally sucked. It was the suckiest piece of sucktitude I’ve ever had the sucky luck to attend. Seriously, Nicky. If things weren’t…the way they were…I would have bolted on that party ten minutes into it. Hell, I almost bolted anyway. I was playing that game you play when you’re sneaking out on the party early. You know, the one where you make sure everyone’s seen you and then you wait until they’re just drunk enough that they don’t really know what’s going on and then you’re out of there. But I was afraid Kim might have done something to keep track of who stayed and who didn’t, like hidden cameras at the exit or something.”
    “She probably paid her door security to keep notes on anyone who left,” Nicky said.
    “There you go. That sounds like her. So anyway, I was stuck there, like everyone else, and had to grin and bear it.”
    Nicky was looking at the hallway as a whole now, thinking about where she stood in the house. The kitchen was behind her. The garage was off to her left. The dining room was next to that….
    During her time as a thief for the Network she had learned how to figure out houses quickly from the inside. The layout of pipes and wires behind the walls gave clues to where the valuable things might be hidden.
    Looking at this water heater, she tried to imagine the layout of pipes behind the wall, and it didn’t make any sense.
    “I’m sure the party was fine for the other attendees,” she said. “You didn’t really want to be there, but a lot of people had been looking forward to it for a long time.”
    “But that’s just it, they didn’t want to be there either. I could tell. It was the craziest thing. For the first hour of the party everyone was frantic trying to figure out who wasn’t there, because they knew anyone who wasn’t there had dissed Kim and was on your team now.”
    The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that a water heater didn’t belong here, that putting it at the end of this hall kept the hot water so far away from the kitchen and the bathrooms that on cold days, the water would lose half its heat before it ever came out of the spigot.
    “Now I get it,” she said, quietly.
    “What’s that?” Ryan said.
    This water heater was a trick. It was hiding here at the end of a hall, behind a boring old door, a door that was locked for no good reason. Someone had put this water heater here to fool thieves like Nicky. This water heater wasn’t connected to anything and wasn’t functional. It was just here to hide something. Something good.
    Nicky stepped into the too-large closet and again thought about the layout of the house. Garage to her left. Outside wall to her right. Kitchen behind her.
    She turned left and ran her fingers along the wall. She found the crevice in the corner, hidden in shadow. Cradling the phone to her shoulder, she put both hands on the wall in front of her and gave it a hard push.
    With a slight pop, a hidden door in the wall swung open, revealing a stairwell descending into darkness behind it.
    “Nicky? Hello? Are you there?”
    “Hello, I’m here. Can you hear me?” she said.
    “I can hear you now,” Ryan said. “We must have lost each other there for a bit. What were you saying?”
    Nicky stepped down onto the stairs and felt along the wall with her hand. She found a light switch to her right