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She had trouble with her cartwheels and was sloppy with her splits.
    I whirled around and stomped outside.
    I was going to try out, and I was going to make it. I was going to be the best damn cheerleader Nightshade High had ever seen.

Chapter Four
    I didn't get very far. Ryan caught up with me by the old oak tree in front of the school.
    "Daisy, wait up! I want to talk to you," Ryan called as he broke into a jog. I refused to look behind me again, but I could hear the sound of his footsteps as he came closer.
    I forced myself not to run, even though I didn't want to have this conversation with Ryan. Not now. Not ever. Not the letting-her-down-gently bit.
    I knew it by heart. I should, I'd helped him practice it enough times. Ryan was a nice guy. He didn't like to crush the hopes of some freshman who was locker-stalking him. So he had a prepared speech.
    A speech I wasn't going to hear. Not today. In his defense, I knew Ryan had no clue about how I felt about him. Not until we kissed, that is. That may have given him a clue. I sped up.
    His hand touched my shoulder. "Daisy?"
    I whirled around. "I get it!"
    He recoiled from the heat in my voice. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just wanted to talk to you about—"
    "The kiss, I know. We're better off friends, yada yada."
    He looked puzzled. "No, I wanted to talk to you about the girl we ... visited the other night." And then, in case I didn't catch on, he added in a low voice, "At the morgue."
    I stopped long enough to process what he had said. Relief coursed through me. I wasn't going to be subjected to a humiliating It isn't you, it's me speech. "What about her?"
    "I may have some new information," Ryan said.
    A clue. He had to be the cutest Hardy Boy ever, especially when he smiled at me like that.
    "What did you find out?" I started walking again, but this time at a more reasonable pace.
    Ryan fell into step beside me. "I heard my dad talking the other night."
    "And?" I prompted him.
    "She disappeared," he replied.
    "Who?"
    "The girl in the morgue. She's gone."
    "What? When?"
    "Saturday night. Something conked Denton on the head, and when he woke up, the morgue had been trashed and the body was gone."
    "The body has been missing for four days now?" I yelped. "Why didn't you say something earlier?"
    Ryan shrugged. "It seemed like you were avoiding me." He was actually blushing. Maybe I wasn't the only one who was insecure.
    He leaned in until our shoulders touched. I caught my breath and took in his smell of freshly brewed coffee and dark chocolate. Two of my favorite fragrances. I turned my attention back to what he was saying.
    "I think Dad knows something about the case. Something he's not telling anyone." He stepped out onto the empty street.
    An image flashed in my mind, and I yanked him back onto the sidewalk. "Wait!" I said.
    "What the...?" But he never finished the sentence, because a dark gray hearse squealed around the corner and into the intersection. The driver peeled away, doing about sixty in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed zone.
    "Thanks!" Ryan said. "That guy would have hit me if you hadn't stopped me. How did you know?"
    I changed the subject because I didn't know how I knew. The image was in my mind, and a minute later it was happening.
    "Was that Nicholas Bone driving?" The Bone family owned the town funeral home, Mort's Mortuary. Mort Bone was a nice man. When he wasn't supervising a viewing, he wore polo shirts and plaid pants and was most often spotted getting in eighteen holes at the town's golf course. But his son Nicholas was a different matter. Nicholas Bone was trouble. Gorgeous trouble, but trouble just the same.
    "I heard he skipped town after graduation," Ryan said.
    Nicholas had been in Rose's class at Nightshade High. He broke my sister's heart their junior year. Great. I didn't want to be the one to tell Rose he was back in town, although all things considered, she probably already knew.
    We were a few blocks from my house, almost