The Key of Lost Things

by Sean Easley

  “Bienvenidos a Venezuela!” Oma casts her arms wide like a game show host. “I know you like your storms.”

  After spraying us down with a layer of bug repellent strong enough to melt plastic, Oma leads us across a series of bridges to a pier under an awning strung with lights, attached to a tin shack. The whole community here is built not next to the water, but on it—a series of piers and docks all connected into a mishmash of metal and wood. Long lines of blue, triangular flags droop back and forth across the water from building to building across a river leading away from the nearby lake. The flags flutter in the strong wind.

  Cass bumps me with her wheelchair when I bend down to tie my Chucks. “Oops,” she says as I stumble to the edge of the decking. “Don’t fall. Wouldn’t want you to become piranha bait.”

  I glance over at the calm lake. “There are piranha in there?”

  “Maybe.” She rubs her hands together like a supervillain. Yep, still fighting. Ever since Cass stormed out of my room, it’s been even worse. We don’t usually fight often, but when we do, it’s the stuff of legend.

  Storm clouds gather as the last bits of daylight fade. I sit at the table opposite Cass while Oma lights a green anti-mosquito coil. The scent of the repellent mixes with the smell of the metal walls and lake water and aroma of fried fish wafting from the nearby window. The smell reminds me of the time I went on a weekend fishing trip with a friend and his dad a few years ago. In the distance a bolt of purple lightning promises plenty more nerve-tingling thunder for dinner.

  “The Catatumbo lightning storms never really end,” Cass says, raising a finger to accent her impressive assortment of trivia. “It storms here every night.”

  I rub the static-y hairs on my arms. “I don’t like storms.” Lightning is one of the holdovers from the Worst Ways to Die list from last year. Kills you in an instant, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

  Cass sticks out her tongue. “Stop whining.”

  “I’m not whining.”

  “Hush, both of you.” Oma leans forward to pour our drinks. “Tonight is for Cassia. She’s been stuck in that little office for too long, so I picked this place for her.”

  Oh. Now I see what’s happening. “You’re punishing me?”

  “I’m not punishing you, dear,” Oma says. “Just giving your sister a special treat.”

  “It’s not all about you, you know,” Cass adds.

  “It’s not like you do the work you’re supposed to anyway,” I say. “People depend on you being at your station, and you’re never there.”

  “This is not about me answering phones. This is about you wanting to keep me on a leash.”

  I growl at that. “You know what, you’re right. As long as you’re inside, the Hotel’s magic protects you. The whole point of bringing you here was to keep you healthy.”

  “That’s your whole point,” Cass says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Enough,” Oma says. “We’re not here to blame anyone. We’re here to enjoy dinner.”

  Our argument dies on our tongues. The only sound is the hiss of the grills inside the shack behind me and the rumbling sky on the horizon.

  One of the locals passes through a beaded curtain carrying plastic bowls of fish stew, a plate of shredded dark meat, flat corn cakes, and little piles of brown rice-looking stuff that I don’t recognize.

  “What’s that?” I ask, poking at the rice things in a not-so-subtle attempt to break the silence.

  “Try it,” Oma says. “You might like it.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s fried ants!” Cass says. “I’ve been wanting to try those.” She dives right in. I take a bite too. The ants taste citrusy, and strangely a little like gas station pork rinds. Not bad.

  The door we arrived through across the bridge opens again, and Dad steps through wearing the same grungy jeans and soil-stained shirt he must’ve been wearing in the Greenhouse today. His arms are speckled with dirt, and sweat glistens across his forehead.

  Another flash of lightning, followed by the rumble of thunder.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Oma says.

  “Sorry, sorry.” He takes the seat next to me. “Didn’t realize what time it was.” He even smells like the Greenhouse, which is especially offensive, considering the Vesima’s rotting-fruit problem.

  I start to say something about his appearance—to remind him that we live in a Hotel, with Housekeeping and Laundry Service and an endless supply of complimentary soaps—but I stop myself. This evening doesn’t need to be any more miserable than it already is.

  “So, what are we talking about?” Dad asks, stabbing the shredded meat with his fork.

  “Just about how Cam still insists on putting me in the most boring job ever,” Cass snipes.

  A bubble of annoyance rises in my throat, but I swallow it back down with another bite of ants. Keep it under control. Don’t let her get to you.

  Dad looks back and forth between Cass’s pursed lips and my scowl. “I think I missed something.”

  Yeah, about twelve years of something.

  “Your brother cares for you,” Oma says, reaching for Cass’s hand. “He may not show it in the right way all the time, but he cares.”

  Cass harrumphs. “If it were up to him, I’d be wrapped in bubble wrap and put in storage for the rest of my life.”

  “That is not true,” I snap. Lightning cracks over the edge of the lake. “Sometimes I think you want to end up back in the hospital.”

  “It’d be better than sitting behind that stupid desk while you hang off the side of elevators.”

  “She has a point, Cam.” Dad leans back, glancing between us. “You can’t watch her every minute of the day. She has the right to go places too. Make her own mistakes.”

  The thunder roars in my ears. “Because that worked out so well for you, didn’t it.”

  Oma slaps her hand on the table. “That is enough! Cameron, you do not talk to your father that way.”

  “He doesn’t get to tell me how to take care of my sister,” I say, practically shouting. I don’t want to yell, but I’m so angry. He missed out on taking care of us, and now he’s telling me I shouldn’t be taking care of things?

  “You don’t take care of me—” Cass starts.

  But I’m not done. “He doesn’t know what it was like when he was gone and it was just us. I let him come to the Hotel so that we could try to be a family, but he doesn’t even care enough to make it to dinner on time.”

  He shrinks back at that.

  “Stop,” Oma says in a tone that definitively says I’ve crossed the line. But right now I don’t care. Dad crossed all the lines already. Ever since he came back, Cass acts like the lines don’t even exist. And when I think about it, if it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t even be in a position to hang off the side of elevators in the first place. In fact, everything bad that’s ever happened to us is because of what he did that night all those years ago.

  “I should’ve never invited you,” I mumble, unable to look anywhere other than my plate of ants.

  The table goes silent. The kind-faced lady carrying a tray of desserts slowly backs away into the shack. The only sound is the rumble of the storm and the creak of the waves against the deck.

  I ease myself back onto the bench. That was too far. It’s not like me to say those things. For that matter, he saved my life on that elevator. And I was always supportive of Cass before we came to the Hotel, even if I did want to take care of everything. But I just feel so . . . tired. I don’t know how to be what everyone wants me to be. I thought us being together at the Hotel would fix our relationship—make us one big happy family—but even magics can’t fix everything. I’m failing—at being a good son, a good brother. I’m not even a good Concierge-in-Training.

  Dad leaves the table. Oma shoots me a glare and follows, leaving me alone with Cass as the first droplets of rain patter across the tin roof of the awning.


  “Now you’ve done it,” Cass says after a minute. “He’s going to end up leaving, you know.”

  “What do you care?” I cross my arms and watch the water as the rain begins to fall in sheets. “You never wanted him here in the first place.”

  • • •

  I don’t know where the rest of my family goes after our disastrous dinner, but I head down to the Greenhouse. To Mom.

  The Greenhouse dome is almost empty, despite the bright sky. For some reason, it’s always daylight here, as though this place isn’t subject to the normal turning of the earth—another of the Hotel’s endless mysteries. I like coming here, despite the smell. I’m even starting to get used to the odor.

  I flop down onto the roots at the base of the Vesima tree, and the sickly leaves rustle overhead.

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  Of course, the tree doesn’t reply. I like to imagine that Mom sees what goes on in this weird life of mine and tells me the things I need to hear. You shouldn’t have done that, Cam. You need to apologize. You’re wrong.

  Why did I say all those things? Lately I feel angry all the time.

  “I’ll try,” I say when my mom’s imaginary voice tells me to cut Dad some slack. I know he’s doing the best he can, and I need to accept that. I’m just not sure how. I don’t know how to be less angry at him, or at Cass for wanting me to trust that she can take care of herself. I don’t even trust me most of the time.

  I just want to find a way to get all the chaos of my new life back under control.

  “Am I a jerk?” I ask into the air.

  I settle into a cleft in the tree’s enormous roots and pull out my notepad, anxious for anything to distract me. My list of to-do’s for the gala is growing, after my most recent meetings with Agapios. We need security, a theme. He said I’ll have to organize the guest list, but I don’t even know who’s supposed to be on the list, or what the Embassy’s connection is to the Hotel. The more I think about it, the more overwhelmed I feel. Agapios says he’ll be there to help, but if I’m supposed to be concierge one day, shouldn’t I be able to do this stuff on my own?

  I pick at the bark on the Vesima’s trunk. Everyone talks about Mom like she was the best thing that ever happened to this place. She would have been able to keep it all together. Why couldn’t I have ended up more like her?

  When I pull my hand back, my fingers come away black and sticky. Why are we worried about parties when we can’t even fix our tree? If the Vesima dies, there is no gala.

  I go to wipe my hand on the grass, but . . . the goop is gone. My hand is clean.

  That’s strange. It was all over my fingers. I’m imagining things again, like that cat running down the sixth-floor hall, and Nico’s reflection in the Shaft.

  As I stare up into the branches, a chill runs up my back. I pull Mom’s topscrew out of my pocket. The key’s cold again—it gets that way whenever I come down here, almost as if it’s reacting to its proximity to the tree. I wonder if it can sense its previous owner trapped inside.

  “We’ll figure everything out,” I say. “The gala, and you, Mom. I know we will.”

  10

  The Ledger of Ways

  The next morning I take the service elevator to the sub-level—which is an actual war submarine from the 1940s—and head down its dimly lit, metal corridor to the heavy airlock door that leads to Agapios’s office.

  I’ve been this way many times to meet with the Old Man, but this is the first time I’ve noticed the recessed bronze plaque on the wall nearby.

  EFS Atalanta

  “Guard the Roads in the Night”

  —Adm. Virginia Dare

  Wow. Admiral Dare even has a plaque in her honor. All the more reason to make sure everything’s as perfect as it can be for her party.

  I spin the wheel lock and step through into the Concierge Retreat.

  “Cameron, please, come in.”

  Agapios sits at his cluttered desk under the dusty clay dome, scribbling something with a long wooden pen. A ceiling fan squeaks overhead. The key cupboard behind his desk is open, revealing the hundreds of keys that the Old Man has collected to keep them out of the hands of the Competition. Very few are topscrews like Mom’s, but most have a little magic in them.

  “Did you bring your mother’s key with you?” he asks.

  I dig the pearl topscrew out of my pocket and finger the delicate design on the bow. We rarely discuss Mom, or her key, these days. Topscrews like this are super rare—but I still have no idea why.

  The Old Man stands. “I have something for you.”

  He leads me to one of the four doors arrayed around the Concierge Retreat like directions on a compass. I’ve only ever been through one of these doors—the southern one, which leads back to the sub-level and the Hotel. Now we pass through the eastern door into a large, bright room. I shield my eyes against the sunlight streaming through the windows, and blink away the spots in my vision. The dry air sucks the moisture out of my hands.

  As my eyes adjust, I’m struck by how old this room looks. Everything in it is made of rusty red stone—walls, tables, even the rows and rows of bookshelves. It’s as if they’ve all been carved out of that same curry-colored sandstone I see through the open windows, stretching out into the distance.

  The Old Man motions to a bench next to a low stone table. “Please, sit.”

  I ease myself onto the bench, scanning the ancient-looking books lining the shelves. They’re not like the printed books in our town library. These look like they were hand-scribed by someone sitting in a room just like this.

  “What is this place?” I ask as Agapios sits on the bench across from me.

  “My file room, in a city long forgotten.” He waves a hand toward the slab table, where a leather-bound book lies closed. “Have a look.”

  The cover shimmers as I run my fingers along the artfully carved tree and read the stylized lettering. The Ledger of Ways. I flip it open, and see that the pages are crisp and brittle with age. Many are darkened at the edges and are flaking away; some have been torn out completely. Not that it would make any difference—every last page is blank.

  “This is one of the Hotel’s most important artifacts,” the Old Man whispers. “A fountain of knowledge, born from the Hotel itself. You could say it’s the Hotel’s voice.”

  I drag my fingers down what should be the title page; images and words burn their way across the surface of the page in golden lines, like on Oma’s slates. The glittering ink draws my sister gazing out across a valley. On the next page, Oma rearranges family pictures on the hall table at home.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “The Ledger is reading you,” he says.

  “It is reading me?”

  He hums in confirmation. “Though I fear it is . . . out of practice. When the Vesima was hidden, the book was unable to read anyone. It needs to be used again in order to reclaim the power and skill it once had.”

  More images. Me seeing my dad for the first time, and the moment when I realized that he wasn’t what I’d hoped. A picture of me writing up the contract that took the Museum away from Mr. Stripe, and Stripe’s baleful expression when he realized he’d been tricked.

  I pull my hand away, and the ink fades.

  “Why would I want to see those awful things all over again?” I ask.

  “The Ledger fixates on the reader’s strongest memories and emotions. It catalogues them to help the reader remember who they are and better understand those around them. It seems you keep your darkest moments close.”

  That’s what Oma’s always saying—that I focus too much on the bad things.

  Agapios leans in. “Anyone who wishes to master one of the great Houses must learn to communicate with the House’s heart.” He taps the page. “Please, touch it again. Only this time, ask it a question. Ask it about the Embassy.”

  I do as he says, and new sketches form out of the ink. Pictures of men and women I’ve never met, their names in f
lowing script on banners beneath them. Dembe Tun. Francesca Corona. Anastasia Romann. Wang Zhenyi. Virginia Dare.

  “These are ambassadors,” I say as the figures of Agapios Panotierri and Jehanna la Pucelle curl into the ink at the bottom of the page. “You and the MC?”

  “The Embassy is made up of people from all over the world who have built a relationship with the Hotel’s binding magic. It is in the magic’s nature to bring people together, and so those who have built a relationship with the binding magic have also formed a unified group to work alongside it. Our organization, the Embassy, is committed to protecting this world from those who would exploit it.”

  “Like Stripe.”

  Agapios frowns slightly at the name, but the expression fades almost instantly. “The Ledger contains records of every person who has ever been bound to the Hotel. The Embassy’s agents, and representatives of governments who know secrets that they can’t share, the builders, fighters—many ambassadors get their start here, but not all. This book should help you better understand some of the people you will be serving.”

  I remove my hand, and the figures disperse. “Why me? You’re giving me all this responsibility, and . . . it seems like you should be the only one to even touch something like this.”

  “Ah, I can’t sneak anything by you.” He tents his fingers in front of his pale lips. “Unfortunately, I am no longer able to use the Ledger. I’d hoped my connection to it would return to me once we reclaimed the Greenhouse, but alas, it has not.”

  “So . . . you can’t make it work, but I can?”

  “It would seem so.” The Old Man wets his lips. “I have been with this House for many ages. Perhaps there is too much knowledge locked up in this old brain of mine. Or maybe the Hotel has tired of having me as its master. Regardless, it appears my time as Grand Concierge is drawing to a close. The House seeks a new master.”

  It’s not that Agapios wants to choose a replacement—it’s that he has to. Interesting. “And the other old heads of the Hotel?” I ask. “Surely someone else deserves the position more than I do.”