Read Legally Undead for Free Online

stainless steel letter openers with Statue of Liberty handles and brass letter openers with lovely wooden handles carved with the words “New York City.” The Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue didn’t have any letter openers at all.
    With an hour and a half to go before I was supposed to meet Nick, I grabbed a taxi and headed to Chinatown. Surely somewhere in the piles of junk there I could find what I was looking for.
    I didn’t, of course. What I did find on the second floor of a two-story emporium on Mott Street, however, were some lovely wooden chopsticks. With very pointy ends. The small Asian man who had led me to them looked a little startled when I started testing the points of all the chopsticks against my palm. He earnestly assured me, in broken English, that the points didn’t matter when eating with chopsticks. He even demonstrated the proper use of chopsticks to illustrate his point. I smiled and nodded, then went on testing the points. He shook his head in irritation and muttered to himself in Chinese when I chose the sharpest of the bunch and bought three pairs of them. I didn’t mind him thinking I was a stupid American tourist if it meant I had heart-impaling chopsticks when I left the store.
    I made it to Union Square with fifteen minutes to spare. Nick was already waiting for me when I walked into the restaurant simply labeled “The Coffeehouse.”
    The restaurant was much hipper than the ones I tended to frequent. The servers were all tall and willowy, an impression heightened by the all-black uniforms they wore. Most of them sported tattoos and many had nose-rings. Our waitress seemed irritated that she had to wait on us at all.
    I picked up the menu that was waiting for me. Most of the food on it was Brazilian. More hipness. I ordered something saladesque. When the waitress left, I leaned over the table toward Nick.
    “So,” I said. “Like I said on the phone, Greg attacked me last night. On campus.” I told him the whole story, lowering my voice to a whisper when I noticed the couple next to us staring.
    When I got to the part about Malcolm, Nick stopped me. “Did he see Greg?”
    “Yeah. Why? Does it matter?”
    “I don’t know yet. Tell me the rest.”
    It didn’t take long for me to finish. “So,” I said, concluding the story, “I need to know everything you know. Start with Forster, Pearson and Sims. And how they knew about Greg that night.”
    Nick ran a hand across his eyes. “It’s not that simple, Elle. I’m not supposed to talk about it at all. I’m not entirely sure that meeting you here today was a good idea.”
    “I don’t care what’s a good idea and what’s not, Nick. You told me to call you if I ran into trouble. The man who, up until just a few days ago, I planned to spend my life with, attacked me last night.” I emphasized the last four words. “I’m in trouble and I called. I need your help. Talk to me. What do you know?”
    We both leaned back as our waitress brought our food and slapped it down in front of us.
    Nick pushed his plate slightly away, then looked up at me. “Okay. I don’t know if I can tell you anything all that helpful, but I guess I need to tell you how I got into this business in the first place.”
    I took a bite of my salad and waited for him to begin.
    “Alec Pearson is my godfather.”
    I stopped chewing and raised my eyebrows.
    Nick nodded. “He and my father were college buddies. I was thirteen when my parents both died in a car wreck and Alec took me in. He didn’t have any idea what to do with a teenage boy, and I didn’t have any idea how to deal with losing both parents and leaving behind pretty much everything I’d known to move in with this guy I’d known all my life but never spent much time with.
    “Not that we spent much time together after I’d moved in, either. At that point, Alec was still young, trying to prove himself in his grandfather’s firm. He wasn’t around much, so I did just about anything I wanted