by Sean Easley
“Probably.”
“We should wait and see what happens,” Cass says. “Maybe he’ll tell us what he’s up to?”
“No.” I clench my teeth. Even with all the work I’ve been doing to cover up these pranks, it’s getting to be too hard to keep them quiet. It’s one thing to play jokes with fountains and smells and cats—it’s another to endanger our guests. “I’ve had about enough of him. Everyone, stay here. I’m going to check things out backstage.”
When I peek behind the heavy stage curtain, I’m struck by how dark it is back there. I need a light. The suspended frame showing that big beautiful moon catches my attention. That’ll work.
I lower the frame to the stage and unclip it from its harness. The wood is surprisingly light, and the air coming through it is crisp, despite the lingering warmth from the stage lights. Using the moon-frame as an oversize flashlight, I continue around the curtain.
Backstage, sandbags and weights hang at various heights from metal cables that reflect the moonlight. The sound of the fleeing guests on the other side of the curtain mixes with the stagnant tones playing through the speakers, to form an eerie tightness in my chest.
A gust of wind blows past, smelling like soil and plants. I stick my hand into the frame to test the air on the other side, but the breeze isn’t coming from there, so where—
A loud flutter smacks me in the face, and I jump. Membrane wings slap at my head and pull at my hair before disappearing into the rafters. My shoulders tingle with adrenaline. I close my eyes, struggling to calm myself down. It was just a bat, flying through from wherever the frame leads.
When I open my eyes, I see a figure in the shadows at the opposite side of the stage. A boy, shorter than me, and wearing a pin-striped suit.
“Nico?” I think it’s him, and yet something’s not quite right. It’s as if the edges of his shape are being drawn and redrawn over and over again by hand. Like the image I saw in the elevator glass.
The figure mirrors my movement, grabbing the coin at his chest and clenching his teeth just like me. It is him. We’re still connected.
The shadow bolts, disappearing into the darkness.
“Wait!”
I dart after him, but I’m stopped short when my face smashes into something solid. The sound of breaking glass showers all around me as I stumble backward, shielding my face against the rain of shards.
When it stops, I carefully reach for the moon-frame for light to see the damage.
A mirror. It was a mirror, and I ran headlong into it. The black-painted floor is covered with broken reflections of the moon in my hands.
He was here, though. I’m sure of it. Does he realize what he’s doing to me? Does he care? I kick the bricks of the wall next to me in frustration, stubbing my toe in the process.
The lights flicker on, and a sharp voice assaults me from behind.
“There you are!” Cass rolls toward me, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I heard a crash and called for you, but you didn’t answer. I got worried, and—you’re bleeding!” She moves as close as she can without crunching the broken glass, to hand me a handkerchief.
I reach up to feel the trickle coming from the spot where my forehead smashed into the mirror. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you. Hold on. You were worried about me?”
“Well, yeah.” She turns to head back to the Arkade. “Now let’s take care of the guests.”
I grab the handles of her chair to stop her. I know she hates that, but we need to talk. The death-glare she gives me tells me that stopping her chair probably wasn’t the best way to start up a meaningful conversation, but I’m not going to let her get away this time.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
Her scowl remains. “Fine. Now will you let go?”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry about everything,” I say. “I know I’ve been a jerk, and I’m not great at being a good brother sometimes. It’s just . . .” I remember what Dad said in Germany. “I’m only a stick, you know?”
She squints, as if trying to puzzle out what I mean. “A stick?”
“I mean . . . I’m only a common stick. I’m not a tree.” Ugh, this is going really, really badly. I fix my gaze on the mirror shards scattered around us. “I mean I don’t know why I do stuff sometimes. It’s in my nature, maybe. Only, I’m trying to change my nature. I’m just a bunch of cards, and I don’t know the rules. . . .”
When I look up, she’s smiling, almost laughing.
“You’re such a dork,” she says. “It’s okay. I only want you to give me some space, all right? I know what I’m doing, and I’m not going to break. But thank you for apologizing.” She turns and heads for the curtain.
I blink. It can’t be that easy, can it?
“That’s it?” I ask, jogging to keep up with her. “You forgive me?”
“Sure. That’s what sisters do, right?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
“Do you want me to hold a grudge?”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “No. Nooooo. I guess I just figured it would take more convincing.” Like, a lot more convincing. Like, groveling-at-the-feet-of-Queen-Cass convincing. “Besides, I know you think—”
“You don’t know what you think you know, Cam,” she says sternly. “I’ve got more important things to worry about than my overprotective brother being annoying. So yeah, that’s it. You’re forgiven.” She flashes a smile. “Now. There’s a couple of things I need to take care of before our party tomorrow, and you need to get that cut on your head looked at. We good?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling for the first time in a while. “We’re good.”
• • •
That night, rather than sneak around using Mom’s key to hide all the things that went wrong today one by one—concealing the cracks in the Russian staircase, covering up another malfunctioning door, or dispersing the smell in the corridors on the eighteenth floor—I head straight to the empty Greenhouse.
Djhut’s words won’t leave me alone. He said that when a magic penetrates deep into the heart of a thing, the magic can affect every part of that thing. And then there’s what Elizabeth said about things wanting to stay close to their nature. They want to be what they already are.
Or what they were.
We have the heart of the Hotel right here. Mom’s key can’t fix all the problems in the Hotel, but what if it doesn’t have to? The Hotel wants to look like it’s supposed to, right? The Vesima has been looking better lately. I’ve been using the key to make the situation look like I know what I’m doing—like everything’s running smoothly and properly. Magic shapes the wielder; the wielder shapes the magic. Maybe by hiding all these problems, I’m healing her. Mom.
And if that’s the case, what if I use the key directly on the Hotel’s heart?
I press my hand against the bark at the foot of the tree—it’s sticky with sap—and I try to feel the network of connections like Djhut instructed. I visualize all of the Hotel doors at once—the knockers to the outside, the turners inside, even the door that’s bound to Oma’s house way up on the seventeenth floor, far away from the rest of the knockers.
No more games. I raise Mom’s topscrew to the massive trunk, and a keyhole glitters to life. Just a few more days, and I can get to the business of fixing each of these problems one by one once everyone goes home.
I insert the key and turn.
Everything’s going to be just fine.
17
Unexpected Guests
The morning of our big birthday party, I sit cross-legged on my bed, The Ledger of Ways between my knees. It’s all I can do, really. The rest of the trainees made Cass and me promise that we’d take our birthday to chill and “under no circumstances, work.”
For once, I’m okay with that. Everyone’s been talking about how it looks as though the Vesima is finally healed, which is great news for the Hotel. When Nagalla comes, I’ll be able to stand up to his scrutiny with pride. Kinda. I’m still not sure whether using the key actuall
y fixed things or just hid them like Dad’s illusion of the tree, but it doesn’t matter. We just have to make it through the gala and everything will be fine.
Of course, there’s still the final matter of getting to know all the ambassadors before the gala, and that requires the Ledger.
Reading the Ledger has gotten easier, and has given me loads of info that I need to prepare for this event, but sometimes I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing. It’s not like the book came with an instruction guide—it’s just a bunch of pages full of hidden information. The better I get at finding what I’m looking for, the more I realize that I don’t know what to look for. Mom hasn’t shown up again since that first time, but that’s okay. I know she’s in there. Agapios has been so busy lately that I never see him, which means he can’t tell me what I’m looking for either. And for some reason the Ledger still doesn’t want to tell me much more about Admiral Dare. It’s not just that the info is missing. Every time I try to look her up, the ink goes wild with scribbles, as if the book itself is in pain.
Then there’s Nico.
“I’m not ‘looking’ for him, exactly,” I tell it. “I only want to know if he’s going to try anything at the gala. Can you at least show me that?”
I press my fingers to the page, and the ink swirls, golden light turning to black as the magic draws across the page. I can’t make heads or tails out of what it sketches. There’s a shape that looks like it might be Nico, but that gets scribbled out too, like someone got angry and decided to strike his image out of existence.
It’s weird how similar this is to when I search for Admiral Dare. For most people in the Ledger, I receive too much information—their whole life story, it seems—but with these two the details are so limited. Big chunks of their pasts are missing, the pages dark or scratched out. Especially with the admiral—whole decades just blotted out. Is there a connection between the admiral and Nico?
A knock comes at my bedroom door. I glance reflexively to my nightstand to make sure the drawer is closed, but then I remember that the sliver’s still gone. I never did find it after it vanished.
I open the door. “Sev?”
“Happy birthday!” he says, and instantly starts tugging on my ears. “One, two, three . . .”
“What are you doing?” I ask, trying to back away from the assault on my ear lobes.
“. . . eleven, twelve, thirteen!” He lets go, and I stumble back. “It is tradition. I pull your ears for the number of years—ha-ha, I rhyme—and then I say, ‘Grow up. Don’t be noodles!’ . . . or something like that.”
Wow, he’s enthusiastic this morning. “What does that even mean, ‘Don’t be noodles’?”
“I do not know. I have never actually heard anyone say it in person before.”
“Then how do . . . Oh, never mind.” I peek around him to see if he’s hiding anything. “Didn’t you say you had a present for me?”
Sev smiles widely. “Later. Trust me. Today will be a good day. We have much planned for you.”
The hotel phone on my bedside table rings, one of the lights indicating that the call is coming from the front desk. Probably Elizabeth, wanting to wish me a happy birthday too. I could get used to this.
I pick up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Cam, get down to the front desk. Now.” There’s an edge to Elizabeth’s voice that makes my skin prickle. “They’re here.”
• • •
Sev and I hurry down to the Lobby Level, where people are piled up in a line all the way to the knockers.
I push my way into the front office, where all eight windows show the same thing—long queues in each of the lobbies, people waiting to be checked in. We never have this many people arrive at once. “What’s going on?”
Elizabeth sits behind the Pacific Lobby counter, helping a spindly woman wearing a sparkly sari and bottlecap glasses. Elizabeth holds up a finger to the woman and whips around to face me. “Cameron. Good. Your gala guests have arrived.”
“It’s two days early!”
“I know,” she says, “and we are operatin’ at half staff because everyone else is gettin’ ready for your birthday party. No one’s even given us the room assignments yet, and many of the rooms still need to be cleaned anyway.”
I was hoping to finalize the room assignments tomorrow morning. “This isn’t possible,” I say, scratching my head. “I told the ambassadors when to arrive. It was on their invitations.”
“You gave them the wrong date.” She thrusts a folded invitation into my hands.
I take a hard swallow, reading it over and over, but there’s no denying what it says. “This says the gala is today.” I typed out the message myself—double- and triple-checked everything. “Do they all say this?”
“Every last one.”
There’s no way I’d write my own birthday on every single invitation.
I scan the crowd of people from around the world, all squished together in the lobby. These folks don’t look like “dignitaries.” I mean, some do—dressed in fancy clothes and all—but the rest look completely normal, like ambassador Aijin, whom we met at dinner. I spent so much time reading about the members-in-permanent, like the Maid Commander and the admiral, that I’ve barely started learning about the others.
“We’ve got to find somewhere to put them,” I say, thinking fast. Agapios said the ambassadors were a notoriously finicky bunch; part of the reason he gave me the Ledger was so I could accurately accommodate them. Now we don’t have that luxury.
Or do we?
“I’ll be right back.” I head for the door, but stop to add, “Call Rahki down here. We’ll need her help.”
• • •
“What’s that?” Elizabeth asks when I return, her voice even louder than usual, to compete with a few grumbling ambassadors.
I lug The Ledger of Ways onto the counter. “It’s what we’re going to use to fix this mess.”
Rahki’s already here, and Sev pulled Orban away from party preparations to help too. But someone’s missing.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck situation. Where’s Cass?” I ask, knowing full well that she didn’t have anything else planned for today.
“I couldn’t reach her,” Elizabeth says.
Again? “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got enough to deal with.” I take a seat at the counter facing the Eastern European Lobby. “Rahki, you’re on translation duty. Elizabeth, Sev, and Orban, get all the ambassadors to move their lines over here. We’ll sign them in one by one.”
The ambassadors grow more sullen as they’re asked to form an even longer line that wraps through the entire Lobby Ring. Rahki translates as each guest steps up to the window, and I use the Ledger to glean what I can about them before assigning each a room, a dining time, and everything else included in the Hotel super-luxury package. The line seems to be dwindling, but there are still so many people.
“Mr. Thanapoom Siripopungul,” Rahki tells me, translating for the next person in line. “He says his wife brought their dog.”
The man points to a woman seated in a domed chair, nuzzling a small, copper-colored shar-pei puppy.
I hold the man’s name in my mind and press my fingers to the Ledger; the ink blooms with information. Thanapoom Siripopungul: Thai ambassador working as an Embassy spy within the local police force to root out Competition loyalists in East Asia.
I glance back up at pudgy Mr. Siripopungul, who gives me a wide, dopey smile. This guy is a spy? He looks like our Texas neighbor’s dad.
A woman near the back of the line hollers something I can’t understand.
“Can we move this along?” Rahki proposes. “They’re growing impatient.”
Apparently Thanapoom loves graphic novels and Vegemite, and always dreamed of singing opera professionally. I assign him room 973, overlooking the Sydney Opera House. “One of our staff members will take you up to your room. Hope you find your destination. Next.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a small sh
adow slinking across the furniture around the edge of the room. Another cat now? Please, please tell me Nico didn’t send another feline plague for me to deal with on top of this fiasco.
Mrs. Siripopungul’s dog perks up. Oh no. It lets out a squeaky yap before scrambling out of the woman’s lap and leaping after the cat.
The chase continues through all eight lobbies around the Lobby Ring—cat and dog weaving through the ambassadors’ legs and under the furniture.
“Has anyone found Agapios yet?” I ask, fairly certain I already know the answer.
“Just keep it moving,” Rahki says. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
• • •
We slowly whittle the line down. Imre Tüske to room 2489 in Egypt. Etiene Greco to 1333, New Amsterdam. Yuki Uehara, Neumann Darby, San Domain. Some guy who goes by “Sagocero the Sorcerer” asks for a room with lots of plants, and Cristina Corallo would like to stay somewhere that has “mixed martial arts on the telly, if you please.”
It’s interesting reading the Ledger’s descriptions. These people aren’t at all like Agapios, or the MC, or Admiral Dare. They live all over the world, working in secret to help people and fight against Stripe’s brand of greed. They protect governments from docent infiltrators, search for children in danger, even seek out new magics that might be friendly toward us humans. There are dangers mentioned in the ledger that don’t make sense and names that slip from my memory almost as soon as I read them.
The mission is so much bigger than I thought, and each of these ambassadors plays a small role.
After a while, Elizabeth and Sev return from getting some of the guests situated.
“This is takin’ way too long,” Elizabeth says. “The ambassadors are gettin’ hungry.”
“We’ve got another problem too,” Sana says, entering from the African Lobby. “The Accommodation reeks.”
“Again?” I ask.
She weaves her fingers through her braid in concern. “The smell is worse than before. There’s no way we can feed them in the banquet hall.”
I’m going to strangle Nico if I ever find him.
“No problem,” Rahki says, perking up. “We’ll just throw the ambassadors a party. That’s what they’re here for, isn’t it?”