Kiss of Death Read Online Free PDF

news to Nadia.
    “I would like to ask you to come for a drink with me,” he continues as all of us stare at him in absolute incredulity.
    “Jeez, he has balls of steel, ” Taylor whispers to me.
    It’s true. This geeky boy with gelled-up hair and a flaming acne breakout, smelling strongly of sweat, is hitting on one of the reigning princesses of London society. Not only that, but he’s acting as if her answer is a foregone conclusion.
    “You perhaps saw me onstage,” he continues, nodding in a patronizing way to the rest of us. “I am very famous in Norway. So!” He smiles at Nadia. “We go for a drink?”
    Nadia is looking from side to side, her eyes flickering nervously, and I know exactly why: I know how these girls’ minds work by now, even if I’m not an expert at their games. She thinks some frenemy of hers is setting her up—maybe getting ready to take a photo of Nadia and Mr. Hürti Slärtbärten that they can then post on Facebook, captioned Nadia and her new sick crush!
    “Don’t worry!” he says jovially to the rest of us. “I bring her back safe and whole!”
    Lizzie, unfortunately, loses it at this point and starts to giggle, tossing her carefully straightened and highlighted hair from side to side. It would be Lizzie, of course.
    “Right!” Ms. Burton-Race, St. Tabby’s history teacher, bustles up to us. “St. Tabby’s girls, with me! Time to go home! We have a busy day tomorrow!”
    I don’t think Nadia’s ever been that grateful to see a teacher in her life.

three
“GOOD FRIENDS TELL YOU THE TRUTH”
    “ That was worth the price of admission,” Taylor comments as we curl up at the back of the coach.
    “I’ve never seen Nadia lost for words before,” I agree appreciatively.
    “The thing is, in the normal world, a boy who looks like that would never dare to come near her,” Taylor says thoughtfully. “I mean, she must be used to princes and kids with million-pound trust funds hitting on her.”
    “Sophia von und zu Whatsit’s older brother’s a Graf,” I offer. “That’s a count or an earl or something in Austria. And apparently he’s always after Nadia.”
    “There you go. So when old Stinkyspots came up to her, she literally couldn’t believe it,” Taylor says happily.
    “No one could. It’d be like Aunt Gwen thinking she had a chance with Johnny Depp,” I say, much to Taylor’s amusement.
    Then I dart a glance up the aisle. Aunt Gwen’s sitting right at the front of the coach: there’s no chance she could have heard me. Still, better to be safe than sorry where Aunt Gwen’s concerned.
    “Scarlett?” Taylor says more seriously.
    “Yeah?” I put my feet up, wedging them on the seat back in front, getting comfortable.
    “That photo of Plum you have,” Taylor continues, lowering her voice now. Most of the girls, still excited from the concert, are chattering away, and the coach is a thirty-seater, much bigger than we need, so we’re all spread out; still, she’s talking about something so potentially explosive that I totally get why she’s taking extra precautions not to be overheard. “It’s somewhere really safe, right?”
    I nod. Last year, in the course of trying to find out how Dan McAndrew had died, I came across a hidden stack of Polaroid photos of girls in—um, well, sexy poses. Not (blush) really horrible, hard-core stuff, but certainly not the kind of thing that anyone would want shown round. Or scanned and uploaded to Facebook.
    Nadia was in there. Lucy, Callum’s ex-girlfriend. Sophia von und zu Whatsit.
    And so was Plum.
    I burned almost all the photos. But something told me to keep one of Plum. Just in case. Plum had been awful to me after Dan’s death, had practically driven me out of St. Tabby’s. I felt bad about it, because I knew that none of those girls would want anyone to see those photos but the person who’d taken them, but having some Plum insurance had seemed like a sensible precaution.
    And I’d been right. To be