by Skylar Finn
“I lost him,” Daniel gasped. His eyes struggled to focus on my face. “We were searching Tyler’s room. Things started happening. The TV fell off the wall. The glass doors shattered. The bookshelf fell over.”
I pulled off my sweater and pressed the fabric to the gash in his head. “Is that how you got hurt?”
He nodded and winced as fresh blood poured from the cut. “It was like the room was alive. I could feel things. I could feel them. I ran. I didn’t look back. When I reached the lobby, Daniel wasn’t behind me. Oh, God, what if he’s gone?”
“Stop,” I ordered. “We can’t panic. If we do, everything goes to crap. Stick to the plan. Give Daniel fifteen minutes to show up. I take it the two of you didn’t find Oliver?”
“Nowhere.”
“Neither did we. Get in here. We can’t do anything until you two are patched up.”
The normality of the first aid office—the organized medical supplies, the water cooler with its disposable paper cups, the stethoscope hanging in the corner—helped calm the three of us. I cleaned Nick’s head wound, closed the gap with steri strips, and wrapped it in fresh gauze. Jazmin’s ankle was a different story. I wasn’t sure how to treat a monster-delivered burn mark, so I smothered it with antibiotic ointment and covered it too. There was nothing to be done about my shoulders. They were red, raw, and bruised from my struggle with the trap door. I couldn’t raise my arms above my head. Jazmin found a few ice packs in the medical freezer, so we strapped them underneath my T-shirt with several layers of medical tape. By the time we were finished patching everyone up, fifteen minutes had come and passed with no sign of Daniel.
“Maybe in the lounge?” Jazmin suggested as the three of us emerged from the first aid office. I stood in the middle, supporting both Jazmin and Nick.
“Let’s check,” I said.
More problems waited for us in the Eagle’s View. It was empty.
“Riley?” I ducked out from beneath Nick and Jazmin to check beneath the tables, but the twelve-year-old was nowhere to be found, and neither were any of the employees. “Ari? Imani? Anyone?”
Frantically, I leapt over the bar and shoved the door to the kitchen open. A blur of motion caught my peripheral, and I raised a fist in anticipation of an attack, but it was only Riley emerging from her hiding space in the storage cupboard. She ran straight into me and buried her face in my torso.
“You’re back!” she said with a small sob of relief. “I was so worried.”
“Riley, what happened?” I cradled her head, taking comfort in the familiar artificial strawberry scent of her regular shampoo. “Where are all of the employees?”
She drew away, wiping her eyes. “They left.”
“They what?”
“As soon as you guys left the lounge, they decided to get out of King and Queens,” Riley said. “They stole a bunch of snow equipment from the rental store, dug their way out through the café’s back door, and left. I think they’re going to try and make it to White Oak.”
“Are they crazy? White Oak is miles away. They’ll freeze to death!”
“I tried to tell them,” Riley said. “They wouldn’t listen. They kept saying how it was safer trying to get through the snow than to stay here. To be honest, I’m not sure I really blame them. Did you find my dad?”
“No, and Daniel’s missing too now.” I led her into the lounge, where Nick and Jazmin rested at a booth. I poured everyone glasses of water from the bar and explained the situation.
“What now?” Jazmin asked, sipping slowly.
“We go look for Daniel,” I said.
“Then what?” Nick gingerly checked his bandages to make sure they were still in place. “We need to get out of here. I say we follow the employees to White Oak. We’ll be safe there.”
“If we make it through the snow,” Riley reminded him.
“About that—” Nick began.
Someone stumbled into the lounge, soaked in blood from head to toe. The four of us shrieked as the figure lumbered toward our table, and we dove off in different directions to avoid the bloody, reaching fingers. The figure went for the easiest target: Riley.
“No!” I yelled as he wrapped his slippery hands around Riley’s neck. She screamed as he pulled her away. I lunged toward the man, but when I found myself looking into the nose of a gun, I froze in place.
“She’s my daughter,” the man croaked. It was Oliver. This close, his features were visible beneath the layer of blood. It caked his eyelashes. Dripped from his hands. Coated Riley’s shirt as she heaved for breath under her father’s grasp. Oliver backed up, taking Riley with him. “She’s safe with me. You can’t have her.”
“That’s Daniel’s gun,” Nick whispered from behind me.
Oliver trembled, his fingers slipping over the trigger. My teeth clicked together as he aimed at my head. I raised my hands.
“Oliver, don’t do anything rash,” I pleaded. “I’m trying to keep Riley safe.”
“That’s my job,” he said.
“She’s scared,” I told him. “Look at her, Oliver. She’s terrified of you. You can’t take her.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do with my own daughter!”
Riley shuddered in her father’s grasp, tears falling off her chin. She tried to worm away from him, but he kept her locked against him with one arm across her chest. The other kept the gun level.
“We’re leaving,” he announced. “We’re going somewhere safe. Just me and Riley. If you follow” —he pointed the gun at my shins when I tried to take a step toward him— “I’ll blow your feet off.”
“No!” Riley, her hair now matted with whoever’s blood covered Oliver’s body, wrestled with her father’s arm. He yanked her down the first couple of steps. “Lucia, help!”
There was nothing I could do while Oliver held the gun. Nick darted forward, coming at Oliver from the side, but Oliver was too quick. He swiveled toward his rival and fired. Nick ducked, but Oliver’s aim was off. The bullet hit the top shelf of the bar. A bottle of booze exploded, showering the lounge in tequila.
“I’ll kill you, Porter!” Oliver said, his eyes bulging out of his skull. “Don’t think I won’t!”
Riley braced herself as her father stumbled backward, his arm around her neck. I tried once more to leave the lounge, but the gun came up to face me again.
“Not another step,” Oliver warned. He’d made it to ground floor of the lobby. A trail of smeared blood marked his path. “I mean it, Miss Star.”
“It’s okay, Riley,” I called. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to come find you. I promise.”
The crack in my voice betrayed my lack of confidence in fulfilling that promise, but as Oliver turned his back on us and forced Riley to run from the lobby, a burning sensation filled the pit of my stomach. It was a combination of rage, fear, and impatience, all mixing together to create a roiling storm in my core. I returned to the lounge, wiping tears of frustration from my cheeks. My shoes tracked blood across the carpet.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “I don’t care how we do it. I don’t care if we get to White Oak or if we make an igloo in the snow.”
“What about Riley?” Jazmin asked.
“I’m going to go get her.”
“How?” Nick said. “You saw Oliver. He’s deranged. If you go anywhere near that little girl, he’ll shoot you.”
“I’m not leaving without her,” I said. “Jazmin, go upstairs and pack whatever you can for me, you, and Riley. Not too much, just whatever you can carry. Make sure you get all our camera gear. Nick?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You know the area better than anyone, right?”
“I like to think so.”
“Good,” I said. “Find us a way out of here, preferably one that doesn’t result in all of us freezing to death. Contact White Oak. Tell them to expect us tonight. If we don’t turn up, ask them to send out rescue skiers to find us. Then raid what’s left of the equip
ment in the rental shop and grab anything to prepare us for the trip.”
Nick saluted me then grimaced when he accidentally grazed the bandage around his head. “You got it, boss.”
Jazmin hooked her arm through mine. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go find Daniel and Riley.”
It was both better and worse to traverse the dark resort by myself. On the one hand, I didn’t have to worry about Nick or Jazmin once I located Oliver. On the other hand, I’d never felt more alone. Thankfully, I had some unearthly backup. As I crept down the hall, following the trail of blood Oliver tracked through the resort, Odette appeared beside me.
“About damn time,” I muttered to her. “Where have you been?”
“I saved your butt in the old wing,” she reminded me. “Again.”
“Yeah, thanks for dropping the matches on my head,” I said, sweeping my flashlight across the hall. “What was that thing in the basement?”
“It started out as one of us,” Odette said. “I guess you could say it made a deal with the devil to get like that.”
“Why would anyone want to be like that?”
“Power,” she answered. “Strength. Some semblance of control over your life.”
“Afterlife?”
“Existence,” she rectified.
“Who was it?”
Her pearly glow was less prominent tonight, as if she dimmed herself to blend in with the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“You said it was someone from the hotel fire,” I said. “Do you know who?”
She stared at the floor in silence. I knew what that meant. She did know, but she wasn’t at liberty to share the information with me. Yet another mystery for me to figure out by myself.
“Forget it,” I said. “You can help me with something else. Oliver took Riley. He’s covered in blood that I don’t think belongs to him. Riley’s not safe with him. He might be a murderer.”
Odette stopped dead, gazing at something in our path. “Might be?”
With a growing lump in my throat, I aimed the flashlight at the floor in front of us. The beam shone over a bloody, ruined body, splay-legged in the middle of the corridor. It was Daniel.
10
The hallway carpet was so saturated with blood that my shoes squelched as I stepped toward Daniel’s body. A moment later, I had to step away again as my stomach revolted. I heaved near the baseboards, adding another terrible color and smell to the mix. At least I hadn’t eaten enough in the past few hours to make a worse mess.
“Gross,” Odette said, wrinkling her nose. Whether she was referring to Daniel’s body or my upset stomach, I wasn’t sure.
I spit and wiped my mouth. Shaking from head to toe, I forced myself to examine the detective. He stared at the ceiling, those intense blue eyes blank and cold. Like Tyler, he’d met his end at knife point, but while Tyler’s death had appeared to be long and drawn out, the killer was going for efficiency with Daniel. Two perfect slices took Daniel down, one across his neck and one on the inside of his thigh where the femoral artery was. It was overkill. Literally. Opening either spot would’ve been enough to kill Daniel in minutes. Opening both meant he probably bled out in seconds. There was no doubt in my mind that Oliver had done this. The image of him, doused in Daniel’s blood as he dragged Riley away, kept replaying in my head. I closed Daniel’s eyes and patted down his pockets.
“Looking for loose change?” Odette said.
I pulled a can of mace from Daniel’s pants. “Not exactly.”
Odette gazed at Daniel, an odd look on her face. “He had a daughter, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” I wiped my hands on an unstained portion of Daniel’s pants, but not all of his blood came off. “Guess it’s just her and her mother now. God, I hope they like each other.”
I had to move on, but it felt wrong to leave Daniel alone in the hallway. Odette did the ghost equivalent of nudging me on, pushing her hand through my shoulder. Her icy touch made me shiver. My skin tingled, but I no longer suffered from the full-body paralysis that our first meeting induced. The thought gave me the strength and determination to step over Daniel’s legs.
“You’re improving,” Odette noted as we walked on. “No longer relying on conscious thought to balance your energy. How did you learn to do that so fast?”
“I couldn’t always count on you to get me out of sticky situations,” I whispered. We moved slower than before. I swept the flashlight beam in every direction before advancing a step. “Turns out paralysis isn’t great for self-preservation. I adapted.”
Odette smirked. “No one’s ever done that before.”
“No one else has stayed here long enough to invoke the wrath of King and Queens’s past guests,” I said. “Are you impressed?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Admit it. Say I impressed you.”
“Never.”
The teasing fell flat when a faint whimper emanated from Oliver’s room at the end of the hallway. I sprinted toward the sound, flashlight swinging wildly. Paces away from the door, Odette reappeared in front of me. I ran through her. Not expecting a full-body immersion in the spirit world, my energy tipped. My veins buzzed, and my head throbbed, like I’d had one too many tequila shots at the lounge.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Sorry,” Odette said. “But you can’t barge in there without a plan. If you rush this, you might end up dead. If you screw up, Riley might end up dead. There are lives on the line here.”
Clenching my stomach, I braced against the wall and focused on my breathing. Gradually, everything calmed down again. “You’re right. Thank you.”
“You keep forgetting you have a valuable resource,” Odette said.
“I do?”
“Yes. Me.”
She disappeared with a pop. Inside Oliver’s room, I heard Riley hiccup with a faint gasp of surprise. A second later, Odette reappeared in the hallway.
“He dropped the gun,” she reported. “When you walk in, it’ll be on the floor to your left.”
“What about Riley?” I said. “Is she okay?”
“She’s not hurt, but Oliver still has a hold on her,” Odette said. “He’s sitting on the bed, rocking her back and forth like a baby. I might’ve screwed up though. She noticed me. If Oliver picked up on that, he might be prepared for you to come in.”
“Let’s move fast then.” I planted my feet, raised the can of mace to eye level, and reached for the door. “You got my back, right?”
Odette’s eyes sparkled in the moonlight. “As long as you’ve got mine.”
Instead of busting the door down like I wanted to, I eased it open. The creak of the hinges put goosebumps on my skin. Had Oliver heard it? Tentatively, I stepped into the room.
The first thing I saw was Riley’s face, perched over her father’s shoulder as he rocked her. He sat on the far side of the bed, facing the French doors that led outside. The storm had settled. It left a blank slate in its wake, a white canvas waiting for someone to ruin it. Riley’s fists clenched against her father’s back. Bloody handprints framed her cheeks, like Oliver had taken her head between his fingers. When her eyes met mine, I put a finger to my lips. Her chin quivered as I inched forward and knelt down to pick up the gun. The weapon felt foreign in my hands. I’d never held a gun before. I couldn’t bring myself to aim it at Oliver. If I accidentally fired it, the bullet could hit Riley instead. I settled for gripping it in both hands, finger nowhere near the trigger and the muzzle pointed at the bloodstained carpet.
“Oliver?” I ventured. “It’s Lucia. I have Daniel’s gun. If you hurt Riley, I won’t have any choice but to shoot you.”
He swayed Riley, cradling her tighter. When he replied, it sounded as if something was caught in his throat. “Hurt Riley? I would never do that.”
“You killed Daniel.” I took another step toward the bed, toward Riley. She lifted her fingers from her father’s back to reach for me. “You left him
to die in the hallway.”
“That wasn’t me,” Oliver whispered. I couldn’t see his face. He did not turn to confront me.
“You’re covered in his blood, Oliver.” Another step. One less foot between me and Riley. “You’re hurting people. Don’t you understand that?”
His back muscles clenched as he squeezed Riley tighter. She panicked, dropping her hand to the back of his neck again, and bit her lip out of sheer fright. A droplet of blood welled up and fell to her father’s stained shirt.
“I can’t remember anything,” Oliver said. “Oh, God. I can’t remember.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re going to get you help.”
He abruptly stood up, taking Riley with him, and I hastily backed away a few steps. She tried to pull free of him, kicking his shins and shoving against his chest, but his strong fingers wrapped around her arms and prevented her from going anywhere. When father and daughter locked eyes, Riley looked away as soon as possible and began to cry. Oliver turned around, and I understood why. He’d tried to gouge his eyes out.
He hadn’t succeeded. Each one was still firmly rooted in his skull, but both were bloodshot. A vein had burst in the left one, filling the white of it with thick crimson blood. Scratch marks from his nails raked his forehead and cheeks. I swallowed the acid at the back of my throat. Against my better judgement, I lifted the gun.
“Jesus, Oliver. What have you done to yourself?”
“I don’t want to see anymore,” he said, pivoting Riley around. “I don’t want to see the bodies or those people. The shadows that follow me around. The woman in the mirror.”
“What are you talking about?”
Riley whimpered as he jerked her shoulders and forced her toward me.
“We’re leaving,” he declared. “I told you. Riley and I are leaving.”
“You can’t leave.” The closed door was right behind me. I had nowhere to go but out, and I wasn’t leaving without Riley. “The snow’s waist deep.”
A crooked smile crossed Oliver’s face. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”