I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You Read Online Free PDF Page B

of purple smoke that was seeping beneath the stairwell doors behind him. Professor Buckingham was shoving towels in the cracks, but every time she got near the purple fog she'd start sneezing uncontrollably. She kicked the towel with her foot. Dr. Fibs appeared with a roll of duct tape and started trying to seal the cracks around the doors. (How's that for superspy technology?)
    Mr. Mosckowitz kept swaying back and forth, maybe because the purple stuff had messed with his sense of balance or maybe because he was trying to block Macey's view, which would have been tough, considering he can't be an inch taller that five foot five. He said, "I understand you're a potential student."
    But just then, Dr. Fibs's tall, lanky frame crashed onto the floor. He was out cold, and the purple smoke was growing thicker.
    Bex and I looked at each other. This is seriously NOT GOOD!
    Buckingham hauled Dr. Fibs into a teacher's chair and started rolling him away, but I didn't have a clue what to do. Bex grabbed Macey's arm. "Come on, Macey. I know a short—"
    But Macey only wrenched her arm out of Bex's grasp and said, "Don't touch me, b——." (Yeah, that's right, she called Bex the B word.)
    Now see, here's where the whole private-school thing puts a girl at a disadvantage. MTV will lead us to believe that the B word has become a term of endearment or slang among equals, but I still mainly think of it as the insult of choice for the inarticulate. So, either Macey hated us or respected us, but I looked at Bex and knew that she was betting on the former.
    Bex stepped forward, shaking off her happy schoolgirl persona and putting on her superspy face.
    This is SERIOUSLY not good, I thought again, just as a white shirt and khaki pants appeared in my peripheral vision.
    Never again would I wonder if the only reason we thought Mr. Solomon was hot was because we'd been grading on the girls'-school curve; one look at Macey McHenry made it perfectly clear that even beyond the walls of the Gallagher Academy, Joe Solomon was gorgeous. And she didn't even know he was a spy (which always makes a guy hotter).
    "Hello." It was the exact same thing Mr. Mosckowitz had said, but oh was it different. "Welcome to the Gallagher Academy. I hope you're considering joining us," he said, but I'm pretty sure Macey, Bex, and I all heard, I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world, and I'd be honored if you'd bear my children. (Really, truly, I think he said that.)
    "Are you enjoying your tour?" he asked, but Macey just batted her eyelashes and went all seductive in a way that totally didn't go with her combat boots.
    Maybe it was the cloud of purple smoke wafting toward me, but I thought I might barf.
    "Do you have a second?" Mr. Solomon asked, but didn't wait for her to respond before he said, "There's something on the second floor that I'd love to show you."
    He pointed her toward a circular stone staircase that had once been a fixture in the Gallagher family chapel. Stained-glass windows stood two stories tall and colored the light that landed on Mr. Solomon's white shirt as we climbed. When we reached the second floor, he held his arms out at the grand, high-ceilinged corridor that was awash in a kaleidoscope of color.
    It was, in a word, beautiful, and yet I'd never really noticed it until then—there had always been classes to get to, assignments to finish. I heard Mr. Solomon's lecture again— notice things —and I couldn't help feeling that we'd just had our first CoveOps test. And we'd failed.
    He walked us all the way to the Hall of History before turning and strolling back toward that gorgeous wall of stained glass. As Macey watched him go, she muttered, "Who was that?"
    It was the first enthusiastic thing Macey had said since crawling out of the limo and maybe long before that—probably since realizing that her father would sell his soul for a vote and her mother was the B word as used in its traditional context.
    "He's a new teacher," Bex