Unraveled

by Jennifer Estep

  So sure that I palmed a knife, whipped around, charged forward . . . and ran straight into a luggage cart.

  Clang.

  I hit the brass rails hard and bounced off, landing on my ass. Suitcases tumbled off the cart and went flying in several directions, sliding across the stone floor like oversize shuffleboard disks. I started to scramble to my feet, but the giant bellman who’d been pushing the cart tripped over one of the larger suitcases and fell right on top of me, driving me back down to the floor.

  “Oof!”

  All the air rushed out of my lungs at the hard, bruising impact, and the bellman accidentally shoved his big, bony elbow right into my ribs, adding injury to injury. But I ignored the aches and pains, shoved the bellman off me, and staggered to my feet, my knife still in my hand. My head whipped left and right, scanning the lobby. Where was Tucker? All I needed was a dark, quiet spot and five minutes alone with him. . . .

  I’d taken only three steps forward when I realized that everyone in the lobby was staring at me. The guests relaxing by the fireplace, the folks examining the Christmas trees, the people looking at the treasure-hunt display case, all the costumed clerks, bellmen, and waitstaff. All conversation had abruptly ceased, and the only sound was the Christmas carols playing in the background. Fa-la-la-la-la . . .

  I stopped short and quickly slid my knife back up my sleeve before anyone noticed it. Then I forced myself to smile and sheepishly shrug my shoulders, silently apologizing for interrupting everyone’s holiday fun. Slowly, all the folks in the lobby returned to their drinks, conversations, and chores.

  I turned around, leaned down, and helped the fallen bellman to his feet. “Sorry about that. I just didn’t, ah, see you standing there.”

  The bellman looked at me like I was crazy, since it was really, really hard to miss a seven-foot giant dressed like a cowboy and pushing a luggage cart. He sidestepped me and started picking up the suitcases I’d scattered across the lobby.

  Owen rushed over to me, along with Finn and Bria.

  “Gin!” Owen said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I muttered, rubbing my sore ribs and looking around the lobby again.

  That group of businessmen and women were over by the elevators now, but Tucker wasn’t with them. I scanned the rocking chairs in front of the fireplace, the ones around the Christmas trees, and even the stools at the bar, but I didn’t spot the vampire anywhere. It was like Tucker had walked past me and then just vanished into thin air. The bastard was quick, but was he really that quick?

  “What was that about?” Finn asked.

  “I thought . . .” I started to tell him that I’d seen Tucker but changed my mind.

  No one had spotted the vamp besides me, and he wasn’t in the lobby now. Oh, my friends would believe me if I told them about Tucker, but now, I was starting to doubt myself. Given my admittedly suspicious and paranoid nature, not to mention my obsession with the Circle, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to think that I’d just seen someone who looked like Tucker, instead of the man himself.

  “Gin?” Owen asked again, his face creasing with concern.

  “Sorry. Clumsy me, not watching where I was going.”

  I let out a brittle laugh, and Finn’s eyes narrowed. He realized that I wasn’t telling the truth. So did Owen and Bria. The three of them stared at me, waiting for me to fess up, but I remained silent.

  “Well, let’s go find this Ira person,” Finn finally said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  He gave me one more suspicious look, then put his arm around Bria’s shoulders again and headed back toward the hallway. Owen raised his eyebrows at me, but I shook my head, telling him that I didn’t want to talk about it.

  He held out his arm. I put mine through his, and together we walked out of the lobby. Still, right before we stepped into the hallway, I couldn’t help but look back over my shoulder, wondering where Hugh Tucker was.

  Or if he’d even been here to start with.

  * * *

  The hallway wrapped all the way around the perimeter of the hotel, with shops full of designer goods and gourmet restaurants branching off both sides of the wide stone corridor. Though it wasn’t even noon yet, dozens of people moved in and out of the shops and restaurants, so it took us the better part of fifteen minutes to navigate the crowds and reach the office in the far back corner.

  No one was in this remote part of the hotel, not so much as a janitor going about his daily duties, and everything was still and quiet. Way back here you couldn’t even hear the Christmas carols from the lobby sound system. A piece of paper with Ira Morris, Bullet Pointe resort manager scrawled across it in thick black ink was taped up to the door, along with a single string of white holiday lights that continuously flickered as though they were going to burn out at any second. A sad testament to just how far Ira Morris had fallen.

  “Wow, Deirdre really banished this guy, didn’t she?” Bria said. “I don’t think you could get any farther from the lobby and still be in the same building.”

  “Oh, I’m sure if there was a basement, Deirdre would have kicked him all the way down there,” I said.

  Finn gave us a warning look and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a low, gravelly voice called out.

  Finn opened the door, and the four of us stepped inside. Unlike Roxy’s lavish office, this was a small, cramped space, barely big enough for the rickety metal desk and two mismatched chairs squatting in front of it. Gray metal filing cabinets lined two of the walls, the drawers on each one partially open, since they couldn’t possibly contain all the reams of paper that had been haphazardly stuffed inside them. Still more sheets were stacked on top of all the filing cabinets, curving upward like flimsy spiral staircases. The air even smelled like paper, old, dry, and slightly musty, but it wasn’t an unpleasant aroma. It reminded me of Fletcher’s office back before I’d started cleaning it out.

  Where the furniture and paper mess stopped, the photos began. Color shots, black-and-white portraits, even some old tintypes, covered all the available space on the walls, the frames crammed in next to each other like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All the photos showed some aspect of Bullet Pointe. The sun setting behind the hotel roof. The lights of the carousels and other theme-park rides flashing at night. People eating funnel cakes and playing carnival games.

  The photos were far more candid and interesting than the celebrity glamour shots that had been tacked up to the walls outside Roxy’s office. I was betting that they’d all been taken by Ira Morris himself, given the old cameras, lenses, and other photography equipment that perched here and there, like metal birds roosting in a paper tree.

  “Just a second,” a man said.

  He seemed to be sitting behind the desk, although I couldn’t actually see him, given the massive stacks of papers there, each towering pile wobbling in the faint breeze we’d created just by opening the door and stepping inside the office.

  Owen noticed the leaning towers of papers and gently closed the door behind us, cutting off the treacherous breeze.

  A pair of rough, weathered hands emerged, grabbing one stack of sheets, then another, and moving them to opposite sides of the desk, revealing the man in the middle of the mess. No wonder I hadn’t been able to see him before. He was a dwarf, a little more than five feet tall, with a thick, strong body. His black hair had been cropped close to his skull and was shot through with a generous amount of silver, making the short, stubby strands look like needles poking up out of his scalp. His ebony skin was a shade lighter than his hair, while his eyes were a dark hazel. Given the deep lines that grooved around his eyes and mouth, he was probably more than one hundred years old, although it was always hard to tell a dwarf’s true age.

  Just like Roxy, he didn’t look like your typical resort manager, especially since he was wearing a
holiday sweater, bright green with a giant red poinsettia in the center. As I watched, small red lights winked on one by one, ringing his chest and illuminating the tips of the poinsettia before flashing in unison. I didn’t think it was possible, but the dwarf’s sweater was even more garish than Jonah McAllister’s had been. At least the sleazy lawyer’s garment hadn’t had blinking lights on it.

  “Just a sec,” he repeated, his voice more sharp, twangy Western than soft, drawling Southern.

  The dwarf shuffled some more stacks from one side of his desk to the other, frowning in concentration as he looked at all of them, as though they were of the utmost importance. I didn’t see how they were any different from any of the other papers crammed into the office, but this wasn’t my work space to judge. Finally, he set the last of the sheets aside, adding them to the teetering stack on his left and looked up at us.

  “What do you want?” he growled.

  Not exactly a warm welcome, but Finn was undeterred. He plastered a smile on his face, stepped forward, and held out his hand. “I’m Finnegan Lane, the new owner of the resort.”

  “Ira Morris,” the other man snapped. “So you’re Deirdre’s spawn.”

  Finn winced a little, but he kept his smile fixed on his face. “Yeah.”

  “Hmm.”

  The simple sound had a whole lot of judgment in it. I got the impression that Ira hadn’t thought too highly of Deirdre.

  Ira ignored Finn’s outstretched hand, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned back in his chair, which let out an ominous creak, as if it were about to collapse. “And who are your friends?”

  Finn introduced us. Ira glanced at Owen and me, ­dismissing us outright, but he stopped and did a double take when he finally looked at Bria.

  The dwarf studied her for several seconds. “Your last name is Coolidge?”

  “Yeah,” Bria replied warily. “Why?”

  Ira stared at her for several more seconds, then his gaze darted around the office, as though he were looking for something. His gaze moved along the wall to his right, although I couldn’t tell what stack of papers or photo he might be searching for.

  He finally shrugged. “No reason.” He leaned forward in his chair, making it creak again. “I’ll ask again. What do you want?”

  His twangy tone was as brusque as ever. Finn frowned and slowly lowered his hand to his side, looking a bit crestfallen. No ass-kissing here. I hid a smile.

  Finn cleared his throat. “Roxy said that you had the key to my mother’s suite and could show me where it is. I’d like to go up there after the high-noon show and look through her things, if I could.”

  Ira snorted. “I reckon you can do anything you want to, since it’s your resort now.”

  The dwarf shoved away from his desk, and his chair slapped back against yet more stacks of paper, rattling them and the photos on the wall above. Ira yanked open a drawer in the middle of his desk and pawed through the junk inside. After the better part of a minute, he came up with an old-fashioned iron skeleton key, which he tossed on top of his desk.

  “That’s the key to Deirdre’s fancy suite. Top floor. You look like a smart enough guy. I’m sure you can find it all by yourself.”

  Finn blinked. He’d expected the dwarf to ooze cowboy charisma, charm, and cheer, just like Roxy had. But I kind of liked Ira’s surliness. At least he was honest about hating us. After all of Tucker and the Circle’s machinations, I appreciated honesty more than ever before.

  “But Roxy said—” Finn started.

  Ira glared at him. “I don’t give a damn about what Roxy said. I have a show to narrate. I don’t have time to take his royal highness around.”

  Finn’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.

  Ira snorted again, then stood up and turned sideways, deftly maneuvering through the narrow corridors created by all the paper towers, some of which were almost as tall as he was. Finn, Bria, and Owen all fell back out of his way, but I held my ground, forcing him to stop and peer up at me.

  He started to barrel right on past me, but I crossed my arms over my chest and widened my stance. He realized that I wasn’t going to move until I was good and ready, and he stopped and stared at me a little more closely, his hazel eyes narrowing in thought, and causing more lines to crease his craggy, weathered face.

  “Blanco, right?” he barked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmm.”

  There was that harsh, judgmental sound again. Usually, it took me at least a few minutes to piss people off. Then again, I was willing to bet that just about everything pissed off Ira Morris since his demotion.

  “Well?” he snapped. “Are you going to move, or are you just going to stand there all day?”

  I stared him down a moment, letting him know that I wasn’t afraid of him, before finally stepping aside. The dwarf huffed, moved past me, threw open the door, and stormed away. His quick motions made a violent breeze gust through the tiny office, causing sheets of paper to swirl through the air like snowflakes, before slowly settling back down on top of their respective piles again.

  I peered out the door and watched the dwarf disappear around the curving hallway. Then I looked back over my shoulder at Finn.

  “Wow,” I drawled, “I’ve never seen such enthusiastic ass-kissing in all my life. He just loved you.”

  Bria and Owen both snickered.

  “Shut it, Gin,” Finn growled, then grabbed the key off the desk and stomped out of the office just like Ira Morris had.

  9

  Now that we had the key to Deirdre’s suite, I wanted to go up there immediately and start searching through her things, but Finn had other ideas. He insisted that we walk through the theme park and stake out a good seat for the high-noon show. So we headed back to the lobby, then meandered along one of the paved paths that wound from the hotel down the hill to the theme park in the valley below.

  Bullet Pointe boasted all your usual attractions. Carousels, roller coasters, and other rides. Food carts serving corn dogs, nachos, and my favorite, funnel cakes. Shops selling T-shirts, boots, commemorative shot glasses, and other merchandise and souvenirs, all of which were imprinted with the theme park’s rune—a cowboy hat with two old-fashioned revolvers crossed over it.

  Everything had some sort of Western theme, and signs shaped like grinning cowboys, prancing horses, and prickly cacti adorned practically everything, including the old-fashioned iron streetlights that lined the walkways.

  Unlike the hotel, Deirdre must not have bothered with remodeling or upgrading anything in the park, since all the booths, rides, and signs had the same worn, weathered look as I remembered from that long-ago trip with Finn and Fletcher.

  But the centerpiece of the theme park was Main Street. A fifty-foot-tall wooden water tower, with the words Bullet Pointe Main Street painted on it in faded, rusty red, marked the entrance. All of the park walkways fed into the long, wide packed-dirt street, which resembled the main drag of an old-timey Western town, complete with wooden sidewalks and storefronts on either side. Every single bit of lettering on the stores was done in a Western font, adding to the illusion that you’d stepped back in time to the Old West.

  Alleys ran in between the storefront blocks, leading to other areas with more food carts and souvenir shops, with more walkways that led to the park’s rides and other attractions, forming a giant circle. At the far end, Main Street opened up into more of a large square, with several sets of gray, rickety-looking wooden bleachers blocking off the area.

  The Main Street shops and restaurants were much larger and nicer than those in the rest of the theme park and naturally featured much higher prices. They all continued the Western theme, from the Feeding Trough (a barbecue restaurant) to the Gumdrop (a candy shop) to the Silver Spur (a clothing, hat, and boot store) to the Gold Mine (a place where you could pan for gold and gems and then design your ow
n settings for them, as well as buy premade rings, necklaces, and the like).

  But the largest storefront belonged to the Good Tyme Saloon, an old-fashioned saloon where you could get sarsaparillas, along with more common sodas, beers, and mixed drinks to wet your whistle, according to the tin sign in the window. The saloon was also one of several establishments that put on a show every hour on the hour. The plinka-plinka sounds of a piano that desperately needed tuning drifted outside, and through the storefront window I could see several women dressed as saloon girls swishing their brightly colored skirts and dancing across the floor. Still more people in costume—everyone from cowboys to gamblers to gold miners—strolled up and down the sidewalks, tipping their hats to folks, posing for pictures, and spouting cornball phrases in keeping with their characters.

  “Get me some crackers to go with all this cheese,” Bria muttered, watching a giant cowboy amble by in a deliberate bowlegged stance.

  “Well, I think that it’s fun,” Owen said. “Cheesy, certainly, but fun too.”

  I looked at him. “I didn’t realize that you were such a cowboy fan.”

  He grinned. “Are you kidding? What kid doesn’t want to be a cowboy? Ride the range on your trusty horse, sing songs around the campfire, sleep outside under the stars, the whole shebang.” He looked out over the crowds of people moving up and down the sidewalks. “My parents actually brought Eva and me here on vacation once. She was just a baby, so she doesn’t remember it, but I do. It was one of the best trips we ever took. My mom even bought me a real Stetson. I kept it right up until she and my dad died . . .”

  Owen’s voice trailed off, and the smile slipped from his face. Due to his father’s gambling debts, his parents had died in a fire set by Mab Monroe when he was a teenager, leaving him and Eva homeless.

  I reached over and squeezed his hand, and he flashed me a grateful grin for pulling him out of those old, painful memories.