by Skylar Finn
“Brazilian Jiu Jitsu,” she said, grinning as Daniel shook out his arm and scrambled to pick up his fallen flashlight. “Black belt. I started when I was eight.”
Nick didn’t bother to hide his glee. “That was fantastic! Say, could you teach me that?”
“Maybe later,” Jazmin said. “After all this murder crap calms down.”
“Right. Of course.”
Daniel got shakily to his feet. “Ahem. Right. Well, I’m still hesitant to let you girls go in there alone. It’s dangerous. The whole place is unstable.”
“I’ve been in there multiple times,” I said, ignoring Daniel’s look of disapproval. “I know what goes boom and what doesn’t. You don’t, and Nick will have trouble navigating the debris with his cane. Sorry, Nick.”
Nick rearranged his disgruntled expression into another winning smile. “Not to worry. I understand completely.”
“Let’s get this over with,” said Daniel. “Same plan. One hour. If you don’t find him, meet us in the lobby. We’ll give each other a fifteen-minute window to arrive. After that, if the other party hasn’t shown up, assume something’s gone wrong and go look for them. Carefully. Lucia, come here.”
He guided me away from Jazmin and Nick and into the forsaken restaurant. Chairs were stacked upside down on tables. Piles of linen napkins, perfectly stacked, waited for someone to fold them into swans for each place setting. Wine glasses and champagne flutes lined the bar. When this place was operational, they probably sparkled like an expensive pair of diamond earrings, but the dust dulled their shine.
“This is embarrassing.” Daniel picked up a glass and blew on it. A cloud of dust poofed into his face. He sneezed.
“What is?”
“I’m not a sentimental guy, okay?” he said, feigning interest in the bar’s construction so he wouldn’t have to look at me. “I know we’re on a timeline, so I’ll make this quick.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with me,” I said sardonically. “I don’t think I can take it.”
He snorted. “Ha!”
“Okay, you don’t have to be rude.”
“Shut up for a second,” he said. “All I wanted to say is you’ve been a decent influence on me in the past couple of weeks. I never thought I’d learn anything from an online psychic, but you’ve taught me a lot.”
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. What, not mushy enough for you?”
I made kissy faces at him as Jazmin and Nick came into the restaurant to check on us. Jazmin bounced on the balls of her feet, arms stick straight with her hands shoved deep in her pockets. It was the same posture she assumed right before every job interview or new introduction. To her, it was a power stance. To everyone else—and I’d mentioned this to her before—it looked like she really had to go to the bathroom. Alternatively, Nick was the picture of stillness. Despite our unfortunate objective, his straight back and squared shoulders gave the illusion of unyielding confidence.
“Shall we go?” Nick said. “The more time we waste, the higher the probability someone in the lounge gets hurt.”
Daniel, his sentimental speech forgotten, didn’t bother with goodbyes. He joined Nick at the door, pausing to give me and Jazmin one final warning. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Have you met Lucia?” Jazmin deadpanned. I jabbed her side, but she used her elbow to block me. “We’ll be fine. See you in an hour.”
They left, Daniel walking a step behind Nick to avoid his cane. Jazmin fiddled with something in the front of her jean jacket. I caught a glimpse of a GoPro on a chest strap.
“You’re still filming?” I asked. “You realize we’re going to get arrested for this, right?”
She arranged the camera so the lens had a clear view through her jacket. “I’m not going down without a fight, and if I do, I’m going to make damn sure the cops know as much as possible about whoever put us in danger. Besides, think glass half-full thoughts, Lucia. If we make it out of here and the cops don’t confiscate our footage, we can release the greatest episode of Madame Lucia’s Parlour the Internet’s ever seen.”
“I can’t believe you’re thinking of that.”
“Aren’t you?”
“People have died,” I reminded her.
She stopped adjusting the camera to brush dust from my collar. “If you recall, that’s the whole reason Madame Lucia exists in the first place—to help the dead settle. I know you nominated us to search the old wing for a reason. Why don’t you fill me in on what it is?”
I led the way through the restaurant’s kitchen and into the old ballroom. It was Jazmin’s first time in the outdated sector of King and Queens. She spun across the marble floor, twirling under the ridiculously high ceiling.
“I feel like Anastasia!”
“Before or after she got kidnapped?”
She came to a dizzy halt. “Way to rain on my parade.”
“You wanted to know about the old wing.” I led her to the far side of the ballroom, where the original doors were chained shut. “After you.”
She eyed the tiny gap and rusty chain. “You’re kidding. This is where you’ve been sneaking off to?”
“Still upset I left you out?”
“Not at all.” Cautiously, she wiggled under the chain and squeezed through the gap. As I followed, she took in the sight of the burnt lobby and whistled. “Wow. Why do you think they left it like this?”
“Still a mystery,” I said. “Jazmin, I should warn you. The last few times I’ve been here, the spirits chased me out pretty violently. That’s how I got that burn on my arm.”
Jazmin pushed up my sleeve. “You mean the one that’s magically gone now?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Catch me up on the details later. What are we doing here?”
“Are you up for an adventure?”
She winked. “Always.”
The lobby was quiet as I led Jazmin through the debris to the library, but I didn’t stop worrying. This was how it always was. The ghosts gave me time to get comfortable, made me think I wouldn’t wake them. As soon as I got complacent, they set the place on fire again, and I wasn’t sure how Jazmin, a non-psychic, would handle their illusions. Hell, I didn’t know how to handle them myself. We made it to the library, but when I ducked underneath the desk and pulled the trap door out of place, Jazmin found her limit.
“Nope,” she said, staring into the dark hole. “No freaking way, Lucia. This is how people get killed in horror movies. I am not going down there.”
“It’s just the basement.” With less hesitation than last time, I lowered myself into the narrow tunnel. “We didn’t freak out when we went down with Daniel and Nick.”
“Yeah, because we used the stairs, not a sewer hole. Lucia, don’t.” She grabbed my arms before I disappeared completely. “Are you serious?”
“Would I let anything bad happen to you?” I asked. “I think I know where Oliver is.”
“Down there?”
“Yup. Are you coming or are you going to stay up here all alone?”
Jazmin glanced around the library, taking in the spookiness of the burned books and fallen shelves. She sat at the edge of the tunnel and dangled her sneakers in my face. “Move. I’m coming.”
At the bottom, when we were both on level ground again, Jazmin shuddered and shook out her arms and legs. Her denim jacket was caked with moisture and grime.
“This is vintage,” she said, trying to wipe off the dirt. “And my favorite.”
“Throw it in the wash.” I aimed my flashlight at the door to Oliver’s creepy secret room. Jazmin held onto my belt loop as we crept down the hallway. The door was closed, but the padlock wasn’t done up. Someone had just been here.
“What is this place?” Jazmin muttered.
I knocked on the door. “Oliver? It’s Lucia. Are you in there?”
No one replied, but I was so sure this was Oliver’s go-to hiding spot. I nodded to Jazmin, who raised the
baton to her shoulder, ready to swing. I took a step back and kicked in the door. It rocketed open, banged against the wall, and fell off the hinges with an enormous clang. My jaw dropped at the sight of the room, and Jazmin lowered her baton.
“What exactly was supposed to be down here?” she asked.
Everything was gone. The room was bare. No newspaper clippings, no articles, no pictures. Oliver’s stack of crazy journals no longer occupied the corner of the room. Even the desk had vanished, leaving nothing but my memory of the information I’d discovered here. Was any of it real or had I imagined Oliver’s connection to the investigation?
“Lucia, what gives?” Jazmin said. “You said this was important.”
“This room was full of junk!” I kicked the fallen door, but instead of venting my frustration, I only succeeded in procuring a sore big toe. “Newspapers and articles! Pictures of Oliver and his family. It’s the Watsons, Jazmin. Odette—the girl haunting me—is Oliver’s sister. He’s hiding something about the fire. I know it.”
“We’re not going to find anything here,” Jazmin said. “Let’s go back up before this gets creepy.”
“Wait.”
The flashlight beam caught a reflection in the far corner of the room. One last photo remained face down on the floor. I picked it up and flipped it over. Jazmin shined her light over my shoulder.
“Is that—?”
“Oliver’s family.”
The date on the photo was 1988, the same year the fire ruined King and Queens’s reputation by killing so many guests. It was the same picture from the photo album in my room, but whereas my copy was too ruined to make out the faces of the subjects, this photo was perfectly intact. It showed the Watson family in its entirety—Richard, Stella, Oliver, and Odette—standing beneath the trademark stone archway in the old King and Queens lobby. I examined little Oliver. At eight years old, he had a dashing smile and bright, inquisitive eyes. Time and stress had stolen those qualities from him. The child in the picture looked like a different person than the Oliver I knew in real life.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Jazmin muttered. “Everything he went through.”
“The worst.” I tore my gaze away from the image but tucked the picture into the pocket of my jeans. “Let’s go. If Oliver’s not here, he’s causing trouble somewhere else.”
A loud slam echoed above, and my heart dropped into my stomach. I knew exactly what the sound was, and from the horrified look on Jazmin’s face, she knew too. We sprinted out of the room and down the hallway. Jazmin reached the tunnel first and stared up.
“No,” she breathed, horrified. “Lucia, someone shut the trap door.”
I shoved her aside and climbed the ladder. There was no circle of light at the top like last time, no escape from the dark confines of the basement. I reached the trap door and tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Come one, you piece of junk!” I growled, shoving with all of my might.
“I don’t have cell service down here,” Jazmin’s voice echoed from below. “I can’t call Daniel.”
I grunted as I heaved my shoulder against the door, hoping to pop it open. With every attempt, my shoulder got a new bruise. Something murmured far below, and I heard Jazmin’s shoes squeak against the lower rungs of the rusty ladder.
“Lucia, how it’s coming with that door?”
“Doing my best.”
“You might want to hurry.”
My shoulder felt like ground beef. I switched sides. “Why’s that?”
“Because we’re being watched.”
I looked down. Jazmin’s face was level with my shoes. She’d climbed as high as possible to get away from whatever was at the bottom of the ladder. A pair of yellow eyes stared up from the darkness. Heavy breathing echoed up the tunnel. It smelled of rotting corpses. A sporadic drip accompanied it, like drool oozing from a dog’s muzzle. Every nerve in my body stood at attention. This was the creature of my nightmares, the one that guided me to the old wing when Riley was in trouble. The one that breathed across the back of my neck because I couldn’t bear to face it. Frozen with shock, my flashlight escaped my grasp. Jazmin dodged the heavy-duty metal casing, and it fell into the abyss below. The creature’s eyes moved to the side, as if it had sidestepped the accidental ballistic. For a brief moment, the flashlight rotated upward, and the beam illuminated the creature’s face. Once, it had been a man, but the flash of bared teeth and melted skin was more demon than human.
“Lucia,” Jazmin whispered. Her entire body shook, rattling the frame of the ladder. “What is that thing?”
“I have no idea.”
The creature’s eyes moved upward. Toward us. One foot. Then another. One rung on the ladder. And another. Jazmin wrapped her fingers around my ankle.
“It’s coming,” she whispered.
The creature leapt, covering several feet in less than a second. Jazmin’s yell yanked me out of my stupor, and I heaved against the trap door with renewed vigor. Blind panic and adrenaline prevented me from acknowledging my injured shoulders.
“Odette!” I screamed, pounding on the door. “I know you can hear me! Get us out of here!”
The creature’s cloying smell crept up the tunnel. It prowled toward Jazmin, as if it knew it had us trapped and was enjoying our terror. Jazmin climbed higher, tucking her feet up to her knees.
“Lucia, hurry!”
I shouldered the trap door, one hit after the next. “Odette, please!”
Jazmin screamed, and she dropped several feet as the creature wrapped long black fingers wrapped around her ankles and pulled. I abandoned my struggle with the trap door, dropping my feet off the ladder and using the tunnel walls to slide uncontrollably to Jazmin.
“No, you don’t!” I said, teeth bared at the creature. It was made of darkness, blending in to the tunnel’s walls. Only its eyes were visible as it tried to take my best friend with it. “You’ll have to burn me alive if you want my best friend. Jazmin, take my hand!”
She made a wild grab for me, and I locked my fingers around her wrist. Her eyes were wide and panicked. “Don’t let go. Lucia, please don’t leave me.”
“Never.”
The creature jerked hard on her ankles, and her sweaty hand slipped out of mine. The flashlight slipped out of her belt, fell, and joined mine at the bottom of the tunnel. The bulb shattered and went out, leaving us in total darkness. I couldn’t see anything. Without the flashlights, the underground tunnel might as well have been outer space. I groped beneath me, hoping to find Jazmin’s hands, but all I felt were the tunnel’s grimy walls.
“Jazmin!”
She screamed again. It echoed from farther away. The creature was taking her from me. My chest tightened. My throat closed up. My heart pounded in my head, blood rushing through my veins like river rapids. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t save her. Not when I couldn’t see where she was.
Moonlight poured into the tunnel from above. Someone had opened the trap door. My eyes adjusted to the dim light. Jazmin was near the bottom of the tunnel, struggling to free herself from the creature. When it flinched away from the light, Jazmin aimed a kick at its eyes. It howled—an inhuman gargle—and let go of her ankle. She leapt up the ladder and climbed toward me. Something dropped onto my head—a packet of complimentary King and Queens matches.
“Move!” I ordered Jazmin as she reached me. She flattened herself against the wall of the tunnel as I struck the head of a match. On the third attempt, it caught fire, and I dropped the match into the cavern below. The miniscule flame fell in slow motion, barely making a dent in the darkness, but when it reached the creature below, it blossomed into the most beautiful fire I’d ever seen. The creature roared as the flames engulfed its body, and it retreated from the tunnel.
I grabbed Jazmin’s hand and pulled her up and out of the trap door. When we emerged in the library, I swiveled around, slammed the door shut, and locked the bolt. Then I shoved Jazmin to her feet. Together, we ran from the
old wing, and we didn’t stop until we’d cleared the lobby, the ballroom, and the restaurant. When we reached the outer corridor, Jazmin collapsed against the wall. The adrenaline was gone, and panic threatened to take over.
“You’re okay.” I wiped muck off her cheeks with my sleeve. She sobbed so violently that she couldn’t draw breath. “Jazmin, we got out of there. We escaped. It’s going to be okay.”
She buried her face in my collar. “I thought that thing was going to kill me, Lucia.”
“Not on my watch.”
She grasped her ankle with both hands and winced. I rolled up the leg of her jeans to check the damage. Her skin was blistered, black, and inflamed where the creature had touched her, as if she’d inexplicably come down with a case of gangrene.
“Is it bad?” she asked. She wouldn’t look at it herself.
“It’s not good,” I said. “Let’s get you to the first aid office so I can clean it up.”
I heaved Jazmin to her feet, pulling her arm over my shoulder to support her as we limped toward the lobby.
“You got the trap door open,” she said feebly.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Who did it then?”
“Odette,” I said. “I felt her as we were running. She gave me the matches too. She knew that thing would be afraid of fire.”
Jazmin breathing hitched and buckled. “What was it?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” I said. “It’s stalked me before. The first time, it told me where Riley was when she ran off.”
“It helped you?”
“I guess.”
Before we could reach the first aid office, Nick Porter stumbled out of the far hallway. His cane slipped from his grasp. As it clattered across the floor, he fell to his knees. “Lucia! Jazmin! Oh, thank goodness.”
I lowered Jazmin to the floor beside the front desk then picked up Nick’s cane and rushed to his side. A massive laceration stretched across his forehead. Blood ran down his entire face, dripping into his eyes and clogging his nose. “God, Nick! What happened to you? Where’s Daniel?”