Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  “You think I’m actually a psychic medium?”

  “If you are, then so am I.”

  I slouched in my chair and stretched out my legs for a long minute. As the muscles loosened themselves, I imagined whatever “feeling” Riley was talking about flowed out of the fibers. If I stopped stretching, it would get caught up in my tendons and bones again, lingering under my skin and waiting for its next opportunity to escape. For five years, I pretended to be something I wasn’t, only to discover I might not have been pretending at all. But if I had the choice between Madame Lucia’s theatrics and Lucia Star’s real-life ghost stories, I preferred the fishing wire and the parlour tricks.

  “Why though?” I asked Riley. “Why us? What makes us different from everyone else?”

  “I’m twelve,” she said. “What makes you think I’d know?”

  “Because you know everything,” I replied. “My only reference for this sort of thing is the new Ghostbusters movie. Can we eat before we talk about anything else? All this communication with the dead is making me hungry.”

  We ordered half the breakfast menu, partially because we were determined to make it through the resort’s supply of eggs and bacon and partially because we wanted to make Xavier crazy. The food was excellent though, and I suspected Matisse made it instead. The pancakes were fluffier than Xavier’s usual batter, and someone had drawn a smiley face on the top of the stack with freshly whipped cream. Riley scooped up an eyeball and licked the cream off her finger.

  “It’s so much better when it’s not from a can,” she said.

  Halfway through the meal, Oliver crested the stairs from the lobby and weaved toward our table. His light-blue shirt sported an ominous, crusty red stain.

  “Oliver, what happened?” I said, springing up from my seat to check the wound. “Did you get hurt?”

  He waved me to sit down. “No, no. I’ve just come from cleaning up Tyler’s mess in the lobby. He tracked that awful stuff everywhere, and I wasn’t going to make Trey mop it up.”

  Riley shrank, disappearing beneath the table at the mention of her brother, but Oliver knelt beside her chair.

  “Honey, I’m so sorry,” he said, stroking her hair. “Detective Hawkins told me what Tyler did to you this morning. I wanted to let you know that I grounded him for the rest of the season. He won’t be allowed to snowboard until spring, and by then all of the good powder will be gone. Does that seem fair?”

  Riley groaned, unfolded her swan napkin, and covered her face with it. “No, that’s going to make everything worse.”

  Oliver appeared stupefied. “How? What do you mean?”

  “At least if he’s out snowboarding, he’s not inside to bother me,” Riley said. “Now he’s going to be here all the time.”

  “It’s different this time,” Oliver said. “I really laid down the law. He’s not going to scare you again. I promise.”

  Riley shoved her chair away from her father. “You think that just because you said not to, he won’t do it? Dad, you’re so oblivious. Tyler does whatever he wants.”

  “I can assure you he’s done with doing what he wants,” Oliver said. “My focus is on you, Riley. I’m going to do whatever needs to be done to help you, and Tyler can—”

  “Tyler can what?”

  The eldest Watson kid had been listening from a shadowy corner of the lounge. He emerged like a demon from beneath the mezzanine, his gait slow and calculated as he approached our table. My skin crawled at the sight of him. He hadn’t managed to wash off all the fake blood. It coagulated in his hair and beneath his fingernails as if he’d bathed in real blood after pulling off a successful murder.

  “Why am I not surprised?” he said, scowling at Riley. “You were always the favorite. I get grounded, and you get everything you want. Are you happy now?”

  I planted myself between Tyler and Riley. “Where’s Detective Hawkins?”

  He licked his lips and glanced at mine to screw with me. “Not so quick to pull the trigger when your boyfriend isn’t around, huh? Danny Boy had to check in with the station, so it’s just you and me, sweetheart.”

  “Tyler,” Oliver warned. “I already told you. You’re grounded. If you want to make this worse—”

  “You can’t ground me,” Tyler scoffed. “I’m almost twenty years old.”

  “And you live under my roof,” Oliver thundered. “When you move out, you can do whatever you want, but I’m the boss here.”

  “Oh yeah?” Tyler stepped around me to stand as close to his father’s face as space would allow. He towered over the older man, making it difficult for Oliver to exert any aura of power. “I’d like to see you try to be the boss of me, old man. You ignored me my whole life. You tried to pretend that Riley was your only kid. What makes you think you can change that now?”

  “Sit down,” Oliver said.

  “Make me.”

  Oliver didn’t back away from Tyler’s challenging stare. “Lucia, would you mind giving me and my family some time to talk? We have a few kinks to work out.”

  I looked at Riley. “Do you want me to go?”

  She shook her head.

  “Miss Star,” Oliver said. “I appreciate your concern for my daughter, but this is a family matter, and you are not a part of this family. Please go.”

  Though the request was worded politely, his tone was far from courteous. Riley begged with her eyes for me to stay, but all I could do was give her an apologetic shrug. As I collected the camera and took my leave, I caught sight of Karli. Her face was set like concrete as she waved her phone at me. If anything drastic happened, she had a call to the police already set up. In the lobby, Daniel attempted to wipe fake blood off his gray thermal with a wet paper towel. I grabbed a fresh towel from the front desk and helped him blot.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” I said, dabbing at his sleeve. “The Watsons are playing family feud in the Eagle’s View. Oliver kicked me out, but someone needs to be up there in case Tyler does something stupid. Can you spy on them for me?”

  “This case is starting to feel like a domestic dispute,” he grumbled. “I’m a homicide detective, not a family therapist, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Please go up there,” I said. “I’m sure Oliver can hold his own, but I’m worried about Riley. She doesn’t need the stress. This shirt is toast by the way.”

  He stretched it out to examine the damp, stained fabric. “You’re right. It’s a goner. I was heading up to the Eagle’s View anyway for a drink.”

  “A drink?”

  “Water,” he rectified as he tossed the shredded paper towels into the wastebasket next to the front desk. “Or coffee. Something non-alcoholic. I’m as sober as a rock. Would you like to join me? Cappuccinos on me.”

  “I got kicked out, remember?”

  “Right, right,” he said. “Well, I better get up there. Thanks for the heads up, Lucia.”

  With Daniel off to settle the Watson family dispute, there was nothing for me to do but head back upstairs to my haunted suite. As I waited for one of the elevators to arrive on the first floor, I flipped the camera on. The memory card hadn’t magically restored itself. The footage of last night’s hot chocolate ghost was officially gone. Somehow, I was more disappointed about not being able to include it in my King and Queens vlog than losing all evidence of the resort’s supernatural guests. The elevator dinged. The door slid open, and I stepped inside without looking up.

  “Something wrong?” said a lilting voice. It was Stella. I was so absorbed with the malfunctioning camera that I hadn’t noticed her at first.

  “Hi,” I said. “No, nothing’s wrong. Actually, yes— Don’t worry about it. How are you? I haven’t seen you in a few days. How’s your daughter? Odette, right?”

  “I’m afraid she might be coming down with an ear infection,” Stella said. “I’d like to run to the store for something to soothe it, but I’m afraid to leave her alone for too long. Say, is your offer to babysit still good?”

  “Sure,”
I said. “When do you need me?”

  “Is right now too soon?” Stella asked, clasping her hands in prayer position. “I’ll only be an hour or so, and Odette naps like she’s dead. She probably won’t wake up the entire time you’re there.”

  I couldn’t have asked for a better offer. Hanging out with baby Odette sounded way better than going back to my own room alone. “Right now sounds great. What floor is your room?”

  “The twentieth.”

  “Oh, same as me.” The elevator button was already alight. “I didn’t realize anyone else was staying up there.”

  “I keep to myself,” Stella said, gazing dreamily beyond the glass. “Reading and such, you know.”

  Stella’s room was across the hall from mine. The suite was a mirror image of the one I was staying in, though the view from Stella’s balcony included the dueling chairlifts of both mountain lodges. A constant mechanic whir, muted but audible, filled the room. It drove me crazy, but Stella didn’t seem to mind it as she led me into the bedroom. A polished wooden crib with hand-carved details stood next to the bed. Odette, pink and perfect with her tufts of inky curls, snoozed peacefully on a smooth mattress printed with cartoon cows and moons.

  “Wow, she’s like a tiny little goddess,” I said. I wanted to touch one of Odette’s chunky baby hands but refrained from doing so. If she was sick, I didn’t want to give her any more germs than she could handle. “She needs a staff or a trident to rule over her people.”

  Stella laughed and stroked Odette’s flawless curls. “I’m afraid her people are limited to me and her father, and she certainly doesn’t need a staff or a trident to rule either of us.”

  “I can see why,” I said. “I would definitely bow down to her.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay with her?” Stella asked.

  “Absolutely,” I assured her. “I used to watch over my nieces all the time before my sister moved out of state. She’s safe with me. Do you mind if I get my laptop before you leave though? I thought I might get some work done while Odette catches up on her beauty sleep.”

  Stella scrunched her eyebrows. “Your laptop?”

  “I’m a vlogger,” I explained. “But I’ve been slacking on providing my viewers with content. If I don’t upload a video soon, they might revolt and make me irrelevant. And we all know that irrelevant is the worst thing to be on the Internet.”

  She chuckled in that polite way people did when they didn’t quite understand what you were saying but didn’t want to offend you by asking you to repeat yourself. “Go ahead. Fetch whatever you need.”

  I ducked across the hall and into my own suite to get my things. The hot chocolate had dried on the carpet in the bedroom, proof that something had knocked it over in the middle of the night. On the upside, nothing made my skin question its place on my body. Whatever visited us last night appeared to have moved on, but its absence didn’t make the suite any less creepy. I was glad to return to Stella’s room, which smelled faintly of baby powder and rose petals.

  “Help yourself to whatever you like,” Stella said, threading her arms through the sleeves of a fabulous, floor-length coat. “There’s not much in the fridge, but feel free to order room service on me. It’s the least I can do in return for your trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble,” I insisted. I set up my laptop at the table by the window. “And Oliver’s comped my entire stay anyway, so I can order room service for free.”

  “Oliver?”

  “Mr. Watson.”

  “Right.” She shouldered her purse. “I’m off. See you in a little while.”

  “Be safe out there. I hear a big storm’s coming.”

  She was gone before the warning left my mouth, too preoccupied with Odette’s oncoming ear infection. I hoped she could get in and out of the pharmacy in town before the snow started coming down too hard. Flakes drifted by the window and alighted on the railing of the balcony, piling up at a rapid pace. It wouldn’t be long before the resort was covered in a fresh layer of powder.

  A baby monitor was perched on the corner of the kitchen counter. It was one of those high-tech ones with audio and visuals. Though I hadn’t noticed a camera mounted to Odette’s fancy crib, the monitor’s screen showed a perfect angle of the dozing baby. I set the monitor next to my laptop to keep an eye on her and got to work. After days of accumulating footage from around the lodge, I was long overdue for an editing session. As I dragged and dropped clips into a semi-coherent order, I lost myself in the puzzle pieces of the vlog. The footage was never boring. Either it showcased the enormity and grandeur of King and Queens, starred Riley in the middle of an interview, or featured me exploring the mysterious parts of the resort. Tyler’s prank was the best stuff I’d caught on camera in a long time. My terror as I fled from the library in the old wing wasn’t staged. The camera caught glimpses of the falling bricks and Tyler’s friends in their hooded getups. That combined with Riley’s confessions and King and Queens’s general air of creepiness made this episode of Madame Lucia’s the most realistic yet. Maybe the Parlour wasn’t doomed after all.

  “Lucia?”

  I perked up at the sound of my own name. For one wild moment, I thought baby Odette had called out for me, but a look at the monitor showed her napping in the crib. The voice called again, this time accompanied by a muted knock.

  “Lucia, it’s Riley.”

  I got up and opened the door to Stella’s suite. Riley waited outside my room across the hall. “Hey.”

  She turned around. “What are you doing over there?”

  “One of the other guests asked me to babysit for an hour,” I said. “The kid’s asleep. I’m sure her mom won’t mind if you join me as long as we don’t wake her up.”

  “I’m pretty quiet,” Riley said as she joined me in Stella’s living room. She wandered over to my laptop and examined the screen. “This looks complicated. You know how to do all this?”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” I pulled a chair around to the same side of the table so she could watch me work. “It’s glorified copy-and-pasting.”

  She pointed to a thumbnail. “That’s me.”

  “Sure is. You didn’t change your mind about being in my vlog, did you?”

  “No, I guess it’s okay.” She picked up the baby monitor. “She’s cute. Not like other babies.”

  “I think so too.”

  “Two days,” Riley said.

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s nearly the weekend,” she clarified. “My dad said you only had to stay here for a week before he would pay you the money. Two more days, and you’re free.”

  I closed the laptop to focus on her, but she fiddled with the dials on the monitor rather than making eye contact with me. “Riley, when I promised you that I wouldn’t leave you here alone, it wasn’t dependent on my contract with your dad. I’ll stay as long as I can. You never know. We may end up helping each other out.”

  “So you’re not going home on Monday?”

  “I don’t really have a place to go home to,” I said. “I’m sort of in the lurch right now.”

  “But you’re staying?”

  I ruffled her hair. “Yes, I’m staying.”

  She melted into the chair. “Good.”

  I opened the laptop. “What happened with your dad and Tyler? Did they resolve anything?”

  “Detective Hawkins showed up before Tyler could do anything stupid,” she said, pulling a book from the inside of her sweater and opening it to a dog-eared page. “I snuck away as soon as I could. Dad’s not very smart about Tyler.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “Any guesses why?”

  “He was a mistake.”

  “Come again?”

  “Tyler,” she clarified. “That’s why he’s so much older than me. He was a mistake. Mom always said he was a surprise, but I think she only did that to make him feel better. Anyway, he wasn’t planned.”

  “So your parents got pregnant early.”

  “Mom was seventeen.”<
br />
  “Wow.”

  Riley gazed at Odette on the baby monitor. “I never want kids.”

  “You don’t have to have them if you don’t want to.”

  “Do you want kids?”

  “Nah, it’s not in the cards for me,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I spliced together a montage of the chair lift and the butterfly garden. “I guess because I don’t see the point of bringing more kids into the world when there are already so many that need homes. If I wanted kids, I’d adopt.”

  “A baby?” she asked.

  “No, I think I’d get someone older,” I mused. “The older kids get screwed over because all these young couples want babies. I like to think I’d give one of them some hope and love.”

  Riley kicked her feet up on the table and buried her nose in her book. “I think you’d be a great mom.”

  “Thanks, kid.”

  We settled into a comfortable silence. I worked on the vlog while Riley read the book she’d brought with her. The novel was thicker than a cumulative British anthology of literature, but she worked her way through it at a steady pace, her brow scrunched up in concentration. Stella’s suite became a nugget of peace. Between the hush of snowfall and the buzz of the ski lift—which acted more as helpful white noise than distracting annoyance now—it was the perfect place to work. Odette’s little snores were a sense of comfort. I dreaded Stella’s imminent return, unwilling to give up our peaceful space, but the hour passed without word from her.

  Absorbed with the vlog, it took me a minute to hear the eerie whispers emanating from the speaker of the baby monitor. Riley tapped the back of my hand, and I accidentally spliced a clip in half.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s the voices.”

  The whispers grew, as if two people were arguing in Odette’s room while trying not to wake her up. None of the conversation was discernible, but from the look on Riley’s face and the all-too-familiar prickle on my neck, the people involved were not members of the living world. Riley and I stared at the baby monitor. Neither one of us dared to pick it up. Odette rolled over in her sleep, and a dark figure approached the crib.