Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  He wrapped an arm around Riley’s neck to hold her still and reached into his pocket. I squinted at the object he removed: an ice pick.

  “Oliver, what are you doing?”

  “What I should’ve done as soon as Riley told me she could hear the dead,” he said, raising the ice pick above his head. When he brought it down, he aimed for Riley’s neck.

  Adrenaline surged through my body as I pulled the trigger of Daniel’s gun. The bullet whizzed past Oliver and lodged itself in the French door, but it was enough to throw off Oliver’s aim. The ice pick grazed Riley’s shoulder rather than puncturing her neck. She yelled and bit down on her father’s arm. His roar shook the decorative pictures of Crimson Basin hanging on the walls as Riley ducked out of his grasp and sprinted across the room into my arms. Oliver lumbered toward us, half-blind from the clotting blood in his eyes, and lunged with the ice pick. I picked up Riley, pivoted 180 degrees—shielding Riley with my own body—and braced myself for the sting of the ice pick. It never came.

  A scream ripped through Oliver’s vocal chords, so shrill and horrifying that I couldn’t help but look at what happened. It was Odette as I’d first met her: in flames from the roots of her hair to the soles of her shoes. The smell of burning hair and skin filled the room as she walked toward Oliver. He backed up against the French doors, eyes wide and wild as he looked for an escape from the teenaged ghost. How he could see her, I had no idea.

  “Do you remember me?” Odette said. Her voice was different, deeper and guttural, as if she’d taken on some of the basement creature’s demonic qualities. “Do you?”

  He slumped to the floor as she bore down on him. “Y-yes.”

  “You betrayed me.”

  “It wasn’t me,” he spluttered. “I swear, it wasn’t me.”

  Odette continued to approach him, the flames eating away at her muscles and tendons. “You left me here to die.”

  “Odette, it wasn’t my fault.”

  They were face-to-face now. There was little left of Odette beside fire and bone. Empty eye sockets stared down at the man on the floor. She hissed in Oliver’s face. “I will never forgive you.”

  The finality of her tone seemed to awaken something in Oliver. His face slackened and his shoulders slumped. His fingers tightened around the ice pick once more. His gaze never left Odette’s as he plunged the ice pick into his own neck.

  “Dad!” Riley yelled.

  Odette set the curtains on fire. The fabric went up in seconds. A spark alighted on the bedspread, and the room erupted in flame. I didn’t stay to figure out if it was an illusion of Odette’s or not. The smoke and ash were real enough, so I shoved Riley out of the suite. She resisted, clawing at my hands and arms and sobbing as she tried to get around me to reach her father. As the heat licked my heels, I picked her up and carried her from the room, leaving Odette and Oliver to finish their tragic business by themselves.

  I ran for the lobby, Riley weighing me down. She went limp after a minute or two, but the growing cold spot on my shoulder indicated that she was weeping freely. The smoke followed us through the hallway, as did the roar and crackle of the fire. It was real. King and Queens was in flames for the second time in its history, come to collect the one Watson family member it hadn’t claimed the first time around. I thundered into the lobby, my lungs burning with the effort of carrying Riley. Jazmin and Nick waited by the steps to the Eagle’s View.

  “What happened?” Jazmin demanded, relieving me of Riley. The kid transferred her anguish to Jazmin’s shoulder instead. Jazmin sniffed the air. “Is that smoke?”

  “We have to go now.” I helped Nick to his feet and fit his cane into his hands. “This place is about to go up in flames. Please tell me you found enough snow gear for all of us.”

  “Even better,” Nick said. “I found a way to White Oak that doesn’t involve stepping outside.”

  “Nick, we don’t have time for riddles—”

  “And we don’t have the equipment to traipse all the way through the snow to White Oak,” he added. “Follow me.”

  He limped off, toward the hallway full of smoke.

  “Are you crazy?” I shouted. “We’re all going to die if we go back that way.”

  “Not if you hurry the heck up!” he called over his shoulder.

  Jazmin and I exchanged a look. She shrugged as she set Riley on her feet. “What have we got to lose?”

  I wiped a bloody tear from Riley’s cheek. “Everything.”

  Riley grabbed my hand, interlocking our fingers. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  The three of us ran with Riley framed between me and Jazmin. We caught up to Nick in the smoky corridor. He’d pulled the collar of his sweatshirt over his nose to protect himself from the ashy air. I followed suit and made Riley do the same, but it didn’t keep us from hacking and coughing. We linked hands to keep track of each other and dove into the thick black air. It was nearly impossible to see anything. I put all of my faith in Nick, who never faltered as he led the way through the corridor.

  “Heads up,” he called, voice muffled through his sweater. “We’re going down.”

  My feet hit a flight of stairs. He’d led us to the narrow descent into the employee sector of the basement. I tried to rip my hand from Nick’s.

  “We can’t go down there,” I said. “We’ll never get out!”

  “Just trust me!”

  With Nick pulling and Jazmin and Riley pushing, I had to trust him. Jazmin, bringing up the rear, slammed the door shut behind her. Though tendrils of smoke curled into the small space beneath the door, the air was clear enough to free our faces from the makeshift sweater masks. There was no time to savor the deep breaths. The fire was close behind us. We thundered down the stairs into the basement, and Nick shouldered open the door to the breaker room.

  “I thought the keypad was broken,” I said, panting as we all ran in after him.

  “It was.” Nick closed the door behind us, took off his sweater, and used it to block the space at the bottom to prevent more smoke from pouring in. “I ripped it off the wall to get the door unlocked.”

  “We can’t wait this out,” Jazmin said. “The fire’s going to make it down here eventually, or the building is going to collapse from structural damage.”

  “We’re not waiting.” Nick crossed the room, set his cane on top of a large electrical box, and tried to shove the box out of the way. “We’re getting out of here. Someone help me with this.”

  I rushed over. Together, Nick and I moved the box out of the way. Disconnected wires dangled limply from its back end. They’d been hastily cut through with a sharp knife, but it wasn’t the box or the wires that mattered. It was the grate in the wall that the electrical box had been hiding.

  “What is that?” I said.

  Nick lifted the grate off the wall, revealing a dark tunnel—about five feet high—that led from the room. He grinned as he set the grate off to the side, picked up his cane, and climbed into the tunnel. “It’s our way out. You coming?”

  Riley went first, desperate to escape her burning childhood. I followed her, and Jazmin, as usual, pulled up the rear. We scuttled through the tunnel, hunched over in the small space. It got darker and colder the farther we went, but it wasn’t half as bad as walking through the snow would’ve been. My flashlight died, leaving Riley’s as the only light source. After several minutes, when my scalp was drenched in cold sweat, the tunnel grew tall enough to accommodate Nick’s full height. We stretched, groaning with relief, and kept walking.

  “How did you know this was here?” I asked Nick.

  “When I was planning to buy King and Queens, I pulled all sorts of resources from the public archives,” he explained. “That included blueprints. I noticed this tunnel marked, but everyone I asked about it didn’t know anything. I had a hunch though. See, King and Queens history was never squeaky clean. There were rumors that the original owner, Kent Watson, ran a drug smuggling ring. As legend has it, he built King and Queens as a
front for his business. The tunnels were used to transport opiates from here to the old train station.”

  “And where exactly is the old train station?” Jazmin asked.

  Nick smiled over his shoulder. “As it just so happens, the old train station was remodeled into White Oak’s Slopes Café at the bottom of the mountain.”

  “No freaking way.”

  “Yes freaking way,” Nick said, the slang rolling off his tongue perfectly despite its deviance from his usual princely dialect. “I made sure access to the tunnels wasn’t blocked during renovations, just in case we ever needed to address the link between my resort and Oliver’s. It’s a good damn thing I did because here we are.”

  We’d reached a door. It was a surprisingly normal door, freshly painted, with a White Oak Slopes Café sign affixed to its front. Nick drew a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and ushered us through it. We emerged in a storage room, free of smoke. Nick locked the door behind him and led us up the staircase. We were met with casual chatter, the perfect indoor temperature to warm up skiers just in from the mountain paths, and the luxurious smell of fresh coffee and pressed paninis. The Slopes Café was open for business, and the guests of White Oak were taking full advantage. Coffee machines whirred and frying pans clanged as the employees and customers bustled about, completely oblivious to the terrible goings-on at the neighboring resort on the opposite side of the mountain.

  “Mr. Porter!” A short college-aged boy with bright blue hair and wearing a Slopes apron waved at Nick with an espresso mug. He wormed his way through the other employees. “You’re back! Wow, and you smell like last year’s Thanksgiving turkey deep fry accident at my uncle’s house. What happened to you?”

  Nick clapped the young man on his shoulder. “Good to see you too, Dalton. I’m afraid we ran into some trouble at King and Queens. My first and only priority is making sure my new friends are safe and comfortable. Call the front desk and let them know we’re heading to the lobby. I need the finest suite cleared out and cleaned.”

  It was all too normal. White Oak was gorgeous. Its perfect modern architecture blew King and Queens’s antiquated style out of the water. The lobby was vast and beautiful, with an enormous angled lookout to see the conditions on the mountain. The guests could practically sit on the reinforced glass and watch the skiers pass beneath. It was dark outside, and White Oak turned off its lights at night so the constellations were visible. People milled about, playing cards or reading to keep themselves busy. All in all, if you had to wait out the biggest snowstorm the Basin had seen in years, this was the way to do it. Nick, Jazmin, Riley, and I looked bizarrely out of place. We were banged up, bruised, bleeding, and covered in soot. Our group attracted several looks of alarm, but Nick was quick to reassure his guests that everything was okay.

  “Just a small problem at the neighboring resort,” he said to a passing family whose five-year-old unabashedly stared at the bloody handprints on Riley’s face. “Nothing for you to worry about. Enjoy your evening! Try the lamb at Porter’s Restaurant. It’s divine!”

  I tugged on the sleeve of Nick’s shirt. “Uh, maybe we should get out of the lobby, Nick. I doubt this is doing any good for your business.”

  “Working on it. Ah, Eloise!”

  A busty blonde woman, dressed smartly in a pencil skirt and a White Oak blouse and carrying a sleek, shiny tablet, beamed as she approached us. “Mr. Porter, we’re so relieved you’re back! My goodness, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. What on earth happened to your head?”

  “That’s what we were just discussing, Eloise,” Nick said, urging us all to a secluded corner of the massive lobby. “Did you secure the suite for my guests?”

  “Yes, it’s all ready for you, sir,” she said, tapping away on her tablet. “Shall I show your guests the way?”

  “No, I’ll do it,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ll need medical attention. Could you send our team up as well?”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “Excellent. Everyone else, follow me.”

  We fell in line behind Nick as he led us to the elevators. There were a whopping eight of them, four for White Oak’s right tower of rooms and four for the left tower. When we got in, the lift zoomed upward, the mechanics utterly silent, as a cool female voice announced floor numbers.

  “Here we are,” Nick said as we stepped out on the top floor. “It’s the first door. Riley, would you like to do the honors?”

  After our ordeal, the simple joy of swiping a key card was lost on Riley. She stared at the card when Nick offered it, so I took it instead and flashed it against the sensor. The door popped open, and automatic lights switched on as we entered. Jazmin gasped aloud. If the suite at King and Queens was nice, White Oak’s was downright heavenly. Like a penthouse apartment in upstate New York, it included three bedrooms, a kitchen worthy of catalogue glory, a living room with white leather couches, a lounge area and bar, and a rooftop terrace with one of those fancy gas fire pits set in marble.

  “I’d ask you not to sit down until you’ve all had baths,” Nick said, wincing apologetically. “I’m afraid it’s quite expensive to maintain this place.”

  Without a word, Riley walked off. A moment later, we heard the water running in a nearby bathroom. Jazmin took off her sweater, the blue fabric now black, and dumped it on the floor.

  “The kid’s got the right idea,” she said. “I’m going to check out the other bathroom. There is another bathroom, right?”

  “Through the master bedroom,” Nick called.

  Jazmin waved her thanks and disappeared, leaving me and Nick alone in the foyer. The suite was big enough for its own entrance hall. Nick’s hand trembled. His cane slipped. I stopped it with the side of my shoe and repositioned it in Nick’s faulty grasp.

  “Thank you,” he said. “This has been quite the adventure.”

  “Can you check that the other King and Queens employees made it here safely?” I asked. “I’d like to know if they’re okay.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that right away,” he said. “What about you, Lucia? You’re always checking on everyone else.”

  “I just watched a man try to kill his own daughter.” I wandered to the sliding doors and gazed across the mountain. In the distance, an orange glow quivered on the horizon and smoke furled up to meet the night sky. “When that didn’t work, he lit his resort on fire and tried to kill himself instead.” It was easier to lie to Nick about the fire than to tell him the truth about Odette. At this point, it didn’t matter who was responsible. Both Oliver and Odette were gone. “You should call someone for that too,” I added, nodding at the glow. “Let the fire station know about it.”

  “I’ll get my staff right on it.” He cleared his throat and limped toward the door. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. The medical team should be here any minute, and I’ll send up our best selections from the room service menu.”

  “Don’t forget yourself,” I said. “Someone needs to clean and redress your head wound.”

  “I won’t forget. Good night, Lucia. Try not to worry.”

  Alone in the main part of the suite, the first thing I did was wash the blood and soot from my hands, arms, and face. I coughed up a mouthful of ash, spat it in the stainless silver kitchen sink, and washed it down the drain. When I looked up, a woman with dark hair and blue eyes stood next to me.

  “Lucia,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Oh my God.” I accidentally sprayed water across the kitchen. The droplets fell through the woman’s body and hit the floor like she wasn’t there. Because she wasn’t. “Stella? How are you here? King and Queens is going to be nothing but ash in a few hours.”

  Behind her head, the plume of fire and smoke continued to drift toward the night. Stella—Odette and Oliver’s mother—leaned against the kitchen counter, creating the perfect angle with her body. The fabric of her red ball gown fluttered as if an invisible breeze rippled through the room.

  “Did you think we were confined to King and Queens?” s
he asked, the lilt to her voice vaguely familiar to me. “Darling, we are but wisps of smoke.”

  My hands trembled. I was too exhausted to worry about balancing my energy, and my body tingled all over. “What are you saying?”

  “It is widely believed that leftover spirits occupy a space,” Stella explained as she adjusted one of her dangling diamond earrings to sit properly above her collarbone. “This is not always true. On rare occasions, we decide to occupy a person.”

  A lump rose in my throat. I fought to draw breath around it. “A person?”

  “Your troubles are far from over.” She rounded the counter, the tips of her polished fingers brushing across the granite. She walked to the sliding doors as if the living room was her runway. When she reached the glass, she posed unintentionally, glancing over her shoulder at me. “Welcome to the big leagues, sweetheart.”

  “Wait!” I vaulted over the white sofa to reach her, planting ashy footprints on the white leather. “What does that mean, Stella? What’s going to happen?”

  “I suppose that’s up to you,” she replied. “If you want to make it out of this, you need to confront the one thing that’s holding you back.”

  “Which is what?”

  She fixed me with a knowing look. “Did you not tell my grandaughter the truth? I know you killed your father, Lucia.”

  She might as well have thrown a brick. The words crashed into me—words I had never been capable of saying out loud—and knocked the wind out of me.

  “How did you—?”

  She dismissed my oncoming panic attack with a regal flick of her wrist. “Oh, please. Your energy is dripping with guilt and shame. It tastes terrible. Au revoir!”

  She vanished through the glass. I dropped to my knees, holding on to the back of the sofa for support as my lungs attempted to inflate again.

  “Lucia?” Riley stood in the archway that led to the bedrooms, a fluffy white towel draped over her shoulder. She stared at me in shock. “Is it true? What she said?”

  I dragged myself to my feet. Riley backed into the hallway behind her. I froze in place. She was scared of me. I stood my ground and swallowed the lump in my throat.