Read Dead Is Just a Dream - [Dead Is - 08] for Free Online

planned to lounge for the rest of the night.
    But then the doorbell rang.
    Daisy Giordano stood there with a plate of cookies. “Hi, Jessica,” she said. “I’ve been practicing my baking skills and we have way too many cookies left. I thought you guys might like them.”
    “We’d love some,” I said. “Come on in and tell me what you’ve been up to lately, besides baking. How’s Ryan?”
    Daisy winked at me. “He’s just fine.” When I was younger, I had a huge crush on Daisy’s boyfriend, Ryan Mendez. He was my brother’s best friend and totally gorgeous besides.
    “What kind of cookies are they?” I asked.
    “Sugar skull cookies,” she said. “I’m working on a new frosting recipe for the Day of the Dead party at the Wilders’.” The Wilder estate, with stone walls, intimidating décor, and five-star restaurant, would be the perfect place for the spooky theme party. Daisy took cooking lessons from the head chef there.
    “Sounds like it’ll be fun.”
    “The whole town is coming,” she replied. “The Nightshade City Council is sponsoring the event.”
    Daisy pried open the Tupperware lid and showed me the rows of meticulously decorated skeletons. We sat at the kitchen counter dipping the cookies into cold glasses of milk.
    “Dominic’s band is playing the party,” I said. Then I took the conversation in a darker direction. I knew that Daisy had investigated lots of unusual doings in Nightshade, so I asked, “Have you heard about the murders?”
    “I heard,” she said. “Ryan overheard Chief Wells say that Tad Collins had garnets all over his apartment.” Ryan was a police trainee.
    “Was he a geology professor?” I asked. Daisy was a student at UC Nightshade, where Tad Collins had taught.
    “No, he was an art history teacher,” she said. “But garnets are supposed to be protection against nightmares.”
    Sadly, those good luck charms hadn’t worked.
    “Did you pick up on anything on campus, psychically speaking?” I asked. “Or maybe Rose?” Daisy and her sisters, Poppy and Rose, all had psychic abilities.
    “Nothing. You?”
    I shook my head. “I saw a ghostly white horse on the beach one night, and then the next night Mrs. Lincoln was dead.”
    Daisy frowned. “I don’t know if a horse could kill her, but it probably couldn’t rob her.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Ryan told me in confidence that lots of valuables were stolen from Mrs. Lincoln’s house,” Daisy said. “Like jewelry and cash.”
    “Maybe she walked in on them and they killed her? Or they were scared off before they could finish the robbery? Though I hate to think anyone in Nightshade would be capable of that,” I said.
    Daisy took a bite of her cookie. “Who’s new in town?”
    “The owner of Phantasm Farms,” I told her. “And that guy Jensen Kenton, who has a bunch of creepy paintings on display at the library.”
    “Those paintings are supposedly worth a lot,” she said, “creepy as they are. Which is why it’s also odd that whoever killed Professor Collins didn’t steal the Kenton painting he owned.”
    I gulped. I bet I could guess which one it was. What I couldn’t guess was whether the killer had just copied the gruesome scene in the painting, or if the painting itself was somehow to blame for Tad Collins’s death.
    I took a bite of my cookie and nearly swooned. “Daisy, this frosting is amazing.”
    “Thanks,” she said. She looked at our kitchen clock. “I’ve got to get back. Chef Pierre is going to show me how to make his secret-recipe ganache next.”
    “I’ll walk you out,” I said.
    “Not with your sprained ankle,” she said.
    But the doorbell rang again. “Stay put,” she said. “I’ll answer it.”
    She came back to the kitchen with Ryan Mendez in tow. Ryan seemed to get better looking every time I saw him. His summer tan only made his green eyes look more intense. He still made my heart beat a little faster. Not as fast as Dominic did, though.
    “I was