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Mr. Beaumont must have finally noticed what I was doing since he said, casually, "Oh, that. Yes. I'm sensitive to sunlight. So bad for the skin."

Oh, okay. This guy was certifiable.

There was only one other door in the room, and that one was behind Mr. Beaumont, next to the aquarium. I didn't exactly relish the idea of going anywhere near that guy, so I headed back for the door to the elevator.

"Look, can you please unlock this so I can go home?" I tugged on the knob, trying not to let my fear show. "My mom is really strict, and if I miss my curfew, she … she might beat me."

I know this was shoveling it on a bit thick - especially if he ever happened to watch the local news and saw my mother doing one of her reports. She is so not the abusive type. But the thing was, there was something so creepy about him, I really just wanted to get out, and I didn't care how. I'd have said anything to get out of there.

"Do you think," Mr. Beaumont wanted to know, "that if I were very quiet, you might be able to summon this woman's spirit again so that I could have a word with her?"

"No," I said. "Could you please open this door?"

"Don't you wonder what she could have meant?" Mr. Beaumont asked me. "I mean, she told you to tell me not to blame myself for her death. As if I, in some way, were responsible for killing her. Didn't that make you wonder a little, Miss Simon? I mean, about whether or not I might be a - "

Right then, to my utter relief, the knob to the elevator door turned in my hand. But not, it turned out, because Mr. Beaumont had released it. No, it turned out somebody was getting off the elevator.

"Hello," said a blond man, much younger than Mr. Beaumont, and dressed in a suit and tie. "What have we here?"

"This is Miss Simon, Marcus," Mr. Beaumont said, happily. "She's a psychic."

Marcus, for some reason, kept looking at my necklace, too. Not just my necklace, either, but my whole throat area.

"Psychic, eh?" he said, his gaze sweeping the neckline of my sweater. "Is that what you two were discussing down here? Yoshi told me something about a newspaper article...."

"Oh, no." Mr. Beaumont waved a hand as if to dismiss the whole newspaper thing. "That was just something she made up to get me to see her so she could tell me about the dream. Really quite an extraordinary dream, Marcus. She says she had a dream that a woman told her I didn't kill her. Didn't kill her, Marcus. Isn't that interesting?"

"It certainly is," Marcus said. He took hold of my arm. "Well, I'm glad you two had a nice little visit. Now I'm afraid Miss Simon has to go."

"Oh, no." Mr Beaumont, for the first time, stood up behind his desk. He was very tall, I noticed. He also had on green corduroy pants. Green!

Really, if you ask me, that was the weirdest thing of all.

"We were just getting to know one another," Mr. Beaumont said, mournfully.

"I told my mom I'd be home by nine," I told Marcus really fast.

Marcus was no dummy. He steered me right into that elevator, saying, to Mr. Beaumont, "We'll have Miss Simon back sometime soon."

"Wait." Mr. Beaumont started to come around from behind his desk. "I haven't had a chance to - "

But Marcus jumped into the elevator with me and, letting go of me, slammed the door behind him.

CHAPTER 8

A second later we were moving. Whether we were going up or down, I still couldn't tell. But it didn't really matter. The fact was, we were moving, and away from Mr. Beaumont, which was all I cared about.

"Jeez," I couldn't help bursting out as soon as I knew I was safe. "What is with that guy?"

Marcus looked down at me.

"Did Mr. Beaumont hurt you in any way, Miss Simon?"

I blinked at him. "No."

"I'm very glad to hear that." Marcus looked a little relieved, but he tried to cover it up by being businesslike. "Mr. Beaumont," he said, "is a little tired this evening. He is a very important, very busy man."

"I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that guy's more than just tired."

"Be that as it may," Marcus said, "Mr. Beaumont does not have time for little girls who enjoy playing pranks."

"Prank?" I echoed, mightily offended. "Listen, mister, I really did . . ." What was I saying? "I really did, um, have that dream, and I resent - "

Marcus looked down at me tiredly. "Miss Simon," he said, in a bored voice. "I really don't want to have to call your parents. And if you promise me you won't bother Mr. Beaumont ever again with any more of this psychic dream business, I won't."

I almost laughed out loud at that. My parents? I'd been worried he was set to call the police. My parents I could handle. The police were another matter entirely.

"Oh," I said when the elevator stopped and Marcus opened the door and let me back out into the little corridor off the courtyard where they kept the pool. "All right." I tried to put a lot of petulant disappointment in my voice. "I promise."

"Thank you," Marcus said.

He nodded, and then started walking me toward the front door.

He probably would have kicked me out without another thought if it hadn't been for the fact that as we were heading past the pool I happened to notice that someone was swimming laps in it. I couldn't tell who it was at first. It was really dark out, the night sky both moonless and starless because of a thick layer of clouds, and the only lights were the big round ones under the water. They made the person in it look all distorted - kind of like Mr. Beaumont's face with the light from the aquarium all over it.

But then the swimmer reached the end of the pool and, his exercise regimen apparently complete, lifted himself out of it, and reached for a towel he'd thrown across a deck chair.

I froze.

And not just because I recognized him. I froze because really, it's not every day you see a Greek god right here on earth.

I mean it. Tad Beaumont in a bathing suit was a beautiful sight to see. In the blue light from the pool, he looked like an Adonis, with water sparkling all over the dark hair that coated his chest and legs. And if his abs weren't quite as impressive as Jesse's, well, at least he had a really buff set of biceps to make up for it.

"Hi, Tad," I said.

Tad looked up. He'd been drying himself with the towel. Now he paused and looked me over.

"Oh, hey," he said, recognizing me. A big smile broke out across his face. "It's you."

Cee Cee had been right. He didn't even know my name.

"Yeah," I said. "Suze Simon. From Kelly Prescott's party."

"Sure, I remember." Tad sauntered over to us, the towel slung casually over his shoulders. "How you doin'?"

His smile was something to see, let me tell you. His dad had probably paid some orthodontist a pretty penny for it, but it was worth it, every cent.

"You know this young lady, Tad?" Marcus said, his disbelief evident in his tone.

"Oh, sure," Tad said. He stood next to me, water still dripping from his dark hair like diamonds. "We go way back."

"Well," Marcus said. And then he evidently couldn't think of anything to add to that, since he said it again. "Well."

And then, after an awkward silence, he said it a third time, but then added, "I guess I'll leave you two alone then. Tad, you'll show Miss Simon the way out?"

"Sure," Tad said. Then, when Marcus had disappeared back through the sliding glass doors into the house, he whispered, "Sorry about that. Marcus is a great guy, but he's kind of a worrier."

Having met his boss, I didn't exactly blame Marcus for worrying. But since I couldn't say that to Tad, I just went, "I'm sure he's very nice."

And then I told him about the story I was doing for the school paper. I figured even if they discussed it later, his dad wasn't going to go, "Oh, no, that's not why she was here. She was here to tell me about this dream she had."