Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

Nick’s smile faltered once he made it to the counter, where the guests couldn’t read his expression. He ordered something from Dalton then spotted me and Jazmin in the corner.

  “Do you mind if I pull up a chair, ladies?” he asked.

  “Not at all.”

  He settled in an empty seat and rested his cane against the window. With a groan, he stretched out his bad leg. His head wound was covered with a neat bandage.

  “How are you holding up?” Nick asked. “Did our medical staff take care of you? Did you sleep well?”

  I tapped my shoulders, which were padded with gauze and antibiotic cream to calm the bruises and scrapes I’d acquired yesterday. “Still pretty sore, but hanging in there. Do either of you feel nauseous? I inhaled too much ash.”

  “Check in with my doctor,” Nick said. “What about you, Jazmin? How’s the ankle?”

  She rotated it left and right with a wince. Neither one of us planned to tell Nick that a demon ghost in the basement of King and Queens caused the injury.

  “All good,” Jazmin said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Nick said. “I have a few updates on the state of things if you’d like to hear them. I can understand if you don’t. This entire ordeal has been overwhelming. I can leave it for later—”

  “We want to know,” I jumped in.

  Dalton delivered our food. Nick also ordered the Breakfast Plate, and there was barely enough room on the table for all three meals. We finagled everything into place like a flat game of Tetris before digging in. The pancakes soaked up the acid in my stomach, and my feeling of unease settled as my blood sugar evened out. Nick ate everything, including his fruit, with a knife and fork.

  “I spent last night doing damage control,” he explained between bites. “They’re plowing the roads now. As soon as they’re finished, the authorities will send the fire department out to investigate what’s left of King and Queens.”

  “Why didn’t they come sooner?”

  “According to my inside buddy at the Crimson Basin police force, our dear Detective Daniel cried wolf one too many times,” Nick said. “The spotty cell coverage was problematic too. How’s Riley?”

  “Upset,” I said. “What are the odds her dad’s still alive?”

  “Slim to none.” Nick speared a strawberry with relish. “That’s my guess at least. That fire burned too quickly for him to escape.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

  “Is it bad if Oliver is dead?” Jazmin asked. “He murdered his wife and son, and he tried to kill Riley.”

  “I agree it’s almost a mercy,” Nick added. “At least Riley’s safe.”

  “He was a human being who made mistakes,” I reminded them. “We’ve all been there at one point or another. I’m not condoning murder, but Oliver was out of his mind. Maybe if someone had noticed the signs earlier, none of this would’ve happened.”

  Nick patted my arm. “We can’t change the past. Oliver is resting peacefully now. All that’s left is to clean up King and Queens and take care of Riley. I notified a social worker—”

  My fork, halfway to my mouth, clattered to my plate and splashed syrup across the table. Nick dodged the sprinkles, but Jazmin wasn’t so lucky. The sticky sugar droplets coated her sleeve.

  “You did what?” I said.

  He dipped his clean cloth napkin into his water glass and offered it to Jazmin. “Riley’s a ward of the state, Lucia. She doesn’t have an appointed guardian.”

  “I’m her guardian.”

  “Not legally,” Nick said. “If you like, I can speak to the social worker on your behalf. I’m sure we can work out a temporary foster parent situation to let Riley settle down before they integrate her into the system.”

  “The system? I’m not letting Riley get sucked into foster care.” The pancakes suddenly tasted too sweet. They roiled in my stomach. “Most foster parents don’t give a crap about the kids. They’re in it for the tax break.”

  Jazmin unfurled my fingers from where they were clenched around a butter knife. “Does Riley get a say in any of this? She’s old enough to decide who she wants to live with.”

  “You’ll have to ask the social worker,” Nick said.

  “Oh, you can count on it,” I snapped.

  “What about the other employees from King and Queens?” Jazmin asked. “Did they make it here?”

  “They’re fine,” Nick reported. “Our rescue team found them a mile from White Oak. They were half-frozen, but we got them inside in time. Almost everyone survived our real-life slasher film.”

  “Almost everyone,” I muttered.

  Nick polished off his last bite, clearing his plate in less than ten minutes. He patted his mouth with his napkin and scooted away from the table. “Thank you for letting me crash your breakfast, ladies, but I’m afraid I can’t linger. I need to be available when the emergency teams show up. Let the staff know if you need anything, okay? They can help you right away or get a message to me. Au revoir.”

  “I can’t believe he did that,” I said after he left. “I can’t believe he would throw Riley to some strange government official.”

  “It’s protocol,” Jazmin said. “What did you think was going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. Not this!”

  A bright flash reflected in the window behind our table. Across the café, a young woman hastily lowered a fat DSLR camera with a long lens and fiddled with the flash attachment. She didn’t notice I was staring at her until she raised the camera again to take another shot. She set the camera aside and pretended to drink her coffee. I stood up.

  “Lucia, don’t,” Jazmin warned.

  I pushed through the busy café to reach the woman’s table. She was in her early to mid-twenties, with stick-straight shiny brown hair and round tortoiseshell glasses. When I kicked her chair, she feigned surprise.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Did you just take a picture of me and my friend?”

  “No.”

  The lie came out with such confidence that it forced a rush of rage through my veins.

  “I saw you,” I said. “Your flash went off.”

  “I was just getting a picture of the slopes,” she said.

  I pointed through the opposite window. “The slopes are that way. Besides, if you wanted a decent shot of the mountain, you’d have to go outside. The flash reflects off the windows anyway.”

  “Which is why I was trying to turn it off,” she said.

  I held out my hand. “Give me your camera.”

  “What? No!”

  I leaned over to take it off the table, but she snatched it away. “If you weren’t taking pictures of us, then you’d let me see it.”

  She packed up her things. “You’re crazy.”

  I cornered her against the wall of the coffee shop. “Listen up, you little weirdo. You can’t imagine what me and my friends have been through in the last couple of days. I happen to be a friend of Nick Porter’s, and if you don’t delete those photos, I’ll make sure he kicks you out of White Oak, blocked roads or not. Better yet, I’ll ask to have you arrested. How’s that sound?”

  Jazmin appeared behind me, our coats draped over her arm. She tugged on the back of my shirt. “Lucia, drop it. Let’s go. People are staring.”

  “You have three seconds to admit what you did and delete the pictures,” I told the shorter woman. “Or I’m taking your camera and doing it myself. Three—”

  The woman chuckled. “You’re insane.”

  “Two, one,” I finished. “Give me that.”

  She slipped to the side when I lunged for the camera. I overstepped and crashed into her table. Plates and a mug shattered on the floor, showering the occupants of the next table over with cold coffee and bacon scraps. As Jazmin helped me to my feet, Dalton hurried over.

  “I’m sorry, ladies,” he said. “I called security.”

  “No need, Dalton.” I brushed pancake crumbs from the front of my shirt. “The embarrassment was punis
hment enough.”

  In the chaos, the woman with the camera snuck out of Slopes. Jazmin stayed on my heels as we left the café and took the snowy pathway to White Oak’s main building.

  “What got into you back there?” she said, shoving my coat into my arms. “I’ve never seen you lose your temper like that. What were you going to do, slug her?”

  I zipped the coat up to my chin. “She was taking photos of us, Jazmin! Without our permission. Who does she think she is?”

  “Lourdes Calvo.”

  The woman stepped out from beneath the overhang of White Oak’s ski rental shop, camera bag slung over her shoulder.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said. “I’m sorry for not speaking up earlier, but your eyes were glowing red in the café. Didn’t want to poke the bear.”

  “You were taking pictures of us!” I said. “Are you going to delete them or not?”

  She pursed her lips. “I need as many pictures of Madame Lucia as I can get.”

  “You—!”

  Jazmin stepped in as my temper heated up again. “What’s your name again? Why are you stalking Lucia?”

  “Lourdes,” she repeated, extending her hand. Jazmin shook it. “I’m a journalism student at Emerson College, but when I heard the story brewing here, I had to come check it out.”

  “What story?” I snapped.

  Lourdes peeked around Jazmin to answer me. “The story of a lifetime. The one I plan on making my thesis. Madame Lucia was a hoax, but Lucia Star isn’t. I overhead Nick Porter talking about what happened at King and Queens, and I put all the pieces together. That place is haunted, isn’t it?”

  2

  “You know who I am,” I said to Lourdes. From the moment the flash went off in Slopes, it was obvious she wanted my picture for something. Since Madame Lucia’s Parlour for the Dead and Departed—my failed YouTube show—was the only partial success I’d ever found in the world of entertainment, Lourdes must know about it.

  “My mother’s a fan,” she said. Her smirk said it all. She wouldn’t be caught dead watching my show, but her middle-aged mother with questionable taste loved it. “Is it true then? You didn’t deny it.”

  “Is what true?”

  “That you’re psychic,” Lourdes said. “King and Queens was haunted before it burned down.”

  Jazmin faked a laugh. “You’re not serious, are you? Ghosts aren’t real.”

  “I don’t buy it,” said Lourdes.

  “How do you know about the fire?” I asked. “The local news hasn’t reported it yet.”

  “I told you. I overhead Nick Porter talking about it.” She waggled an audio recorder. “Got it all on tape. Would you like to go on the record with me? You’re the ultimate source for my story, and it might bandage your flailing career. That last episode of the Parlour was” —she grimaced with intentional theatrics— “sad.”

  “Go to hell.”

  She had the gall to laugh. “Whatever. I don’t need your permission or participation to write an excellent story. There’s so much to unpack here. You have no idea. Besides, the best journalists work under the most challenging conditions.”

  “The best journalists also chase stories built on facts,” Jazmin said, dry and cold like the surrounding ice. “Your thesis advisor isn’t going to support a child’s haunted house exposé.”

  Lourdes’s upper lip curled. “My thesis advisor already approved my story.”

  “We don’t care,” Jazmin said, piloting me away from the insufferable student. “Leave my friend alone.”

  “I’m still writing the story!” she called after us.

  I raised my middle finger without looking back. Jazmin grabbed my fist out of the air and shoved it into her own mitten to keep my fingers from committing any additional crimes of impropriety. Our boots shuffled across the slick stone pathway. Jazmin walked with ease, sliding across patches of ice when she encountered them. I skidded out every few feet.

  “Forget about the journalist,” Jazmin suggested after she’d caught me from busting my butt for the eighth time. “She won’t find anything.”

  “It’s not just her.” Eyes glued to the ground, I spotted the next ice patch and skated across it. It half-worked. I made it to the other side without dying, but my arms windmilled wildly as I did so. “People died because of me, Jazmin. If I hadn’t come to King and Queens—”

  “Thelma Watson would still be dead,” she finished for me. “And who knows what would have happened to Riley? She was lost without you. Stop thinking you’ve ruined everything. You saved Riley and the other employees.”

  “They saved themselves,” I corrected. “They had the nerve to leave King and Queens. If they’d done what I told them to do and stayed in the Eagle’s View, they’d all be barbecue by now.”

  “But they aren’t,” Jazmin said. “You shouldn’t keep the people who died on your conscience either.”

  “Daniel—”

  “Couldn’t come to terms with the extent of his addiction,” she interrupted again. “If he had been honest with us—with you—from the beginning, maybe he wouldn’t have run into the killer.”

  We reached the main doors. They slid open to welcome us into White Oak’s expansive lobby. A purple fuzzball ran into my legs, looked up, and squeaked, “Sorry!” before running outside. I smiled sadly as the little kid took a flying leap into the nearest snowbank. What a dream to be that carefree.

  “Who’s going to tell Daniel’s ex-wife and daughter about him?” I asked Jazmin. “The police, right?”

  “I imagine so,” said Jazmin. “Let’s stop talking about this. It’s depressing. Want to do something fun?”

  “Like what?”

  She grabbed a random brochure from a display of thirty or forty and unfolded it to check the contents. “Ooh, hot springs! What do you say? Adventure up the mountain to get a little steamy?”

  She winked in jest.

  “The snow is too deep,” I reminded her. “Do you plan on hiking up there? Because if you are, I expect you to carry me piggy-back style.”

  She plunked the brochure into the holder. “I forgot you’re not much of a hiker, or a skier, or an athlete, or—”

  I plucked another brochure from the display, rolled it up, and whacked her with it. “Keep listing my flaws, why don’t you?”

  “They’re not flaws.” She caught my makeshift weapon and tossed the ruined brochure into a nearby wastebasket. “They’re character traits. What about the spa? I could do with a facial and massage.”

  “I’m really not in the mood,” I said. “I’d rather go up to the room and rest.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “I need some time alone.”

  “You shouldn’t be on your own,” she said. “Especially with Stella on the loose.”

  “So you’re going to babysit me all day?”

  “No, but we should stay together,” she said. “Look at this place. One wrong turn and you’re at the gym instead of the sauna, and what a tragedy that would be, right?”

  Usually, Jazmin could pull me out of a funk, but her attempt at making light fell flat. A hot rock massage and an avocado facial weren’t going to make me forget about the past few days, but Jazmin wouldn’t let up.

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll go to the spa. Check us in while I ditch our coats upstairs. Give me yours.”

  Jazmin did a happy dance as she handed hers over. “You won’t regret it. I promise. Everything always feels better after a trip to a spa.”

  She kissed my cheek and bounced off. When she was out of sight, I put Jazmin’s coat on over mine and went back outside. The bright sunshine cleared my head. I gulped the cold air, savoring the crisp flavor of clean snow on my tongue. A nearby sign caught my eye: High Pine’s Lookout - A Bird’s Eye View. Beneath the title was a map of the mountain’s hiking trails. One led to the hot springs Jazmin wanted to visit. A shorter one led to a bird-watching platform. It was two miles to the top. On the spot, I decided to hike it, despite my lack of outdoo
rsy skills. When I first arrived at King and Queens, I made it through an entire day skiing with Riley, and later, an entire night hiking through the wooded parts of the mountain. If I’d survived that, a clear cut path would be a piece of cake.

  I rented hiking poles from the equipment shop. They came in handy for the deep drifts of snow and icy bits on the hiking trail. The trees closed in around me, and a hush fell over the path. The pine needles and thick snow muffled the excited yells of the riders on the adjacent slope. No one hiked with me. Everyone was too busy taking advantage of the fresh powder to bother with birdwatching. All I wanted was some time on my own to process everything that had happened in the last couple of weeks. Jazmin’s good intentions fueled her spa suggestion, and I felt horrible for tricking and ditching her, but she didn’t understand what I was dealing with. The farther I hiked from White Oak, the better I felt. Up ahead, I spotted the overhang of the birdwatching platform. It was a steep climb to reach it. A White Oak employee had bolted wood planks to the landscape, creating an uneven staircase up to the platform. My legs burned as I lifted myself up the deep gaps between steps. When I reached the lookout, I puffed to catch my breath, but the exquisite view made it infinitely harder to do so.

  If I could have lived there—right on the lookout—I would’ve. I would’ve built a little treehouse and wired it for electricity and Wi-Fi. I would’ve crapped in an outhouse and boiled my water if it meant waking up to this sight every morning. Though the lookout was only two miles up the mountain, the steep elevation made me feel like I was standing at the top. I could see across the entire basin: the busy slopes, miles of forest, and in the distance near the horizon, the small town of Crimson Basin. Far below, past White Oak’s monstrous presence, a few cars trundled along the freshly-plowed road. I was happy to see black asphalt instead of more snow. I leaned over the railing of the lookout and peered straight down. The mountain dropped off at a sharp angle. If I were to fall, I’d probably be impaled against the pointed rocks below. A slushy waterfall trickled between the stones, and steam rose to the platform above. I positioned my face over the rising humidity. The earthy, metallic mist caressed my pores with a delicate touch no cosmetologist could ever compete with. As nature settled in around me, I forgot what I was doing at White Oak. Then a fire truck and an ambulance drove by on the road below, sirens wailing and lights flashing as they headed to King and Queens.