by E. E. Holmes
“Ambrose is going to meet us at the hotel,” I told her. “I’ve got to text him the address, though.”
After sending Ambrose the information he needed, we set off down the street after Savvy. The shadows were getting longer as evening approached, and the sky was cloudless. I knew that soon the streets would be awash in moonlight as the full moon rose over the city. The nights of lunar Crossings had once filled me with trepidation. I had dreaded the flood of unfamiliar memories, the crowding in of anxious spirits preparing to Cross. I had worried that something might go wrong—that I would leave out a tiny detail or mispronounce a word, and be responsible for some terrible error—a Crossing gone awry. Time and practice had all but eliminated those fears, and now I actually looked forward to Crossings. The more I had explored my link to the spirit world, the more in tune I had become to the ebb and flow of energy. Now, when Hannah and I lit those candles and opened that ancient door, it felt like a release—like a great cosmic exhalation of a breath with which I’d filled my lungs gradually over the previous weeks, building it up, holding it in, until at last I could let it all go.
It was also a moment of validation—a reassuring answer to the hundred times every month I asked myself, “Why the hell am I doing this?” This, the Aether would whisper. This is why.
“This is it, just up here,” Savvy said after a few minutes of brisk walking. She was pointing ahead to a dingy brick building with a sign on the front that read, “The Hotel Royal.”
“Phoebe stays here?” I asked. I’d never seen a place so inappropriately named in my life.
“Yeah, I know, it’s a bit seedy,” Savvy said. “But it’s also cheap, and Phoebe’s a right old skinflint. It’s also walking distance to my place and she flat out refuses to take the Tube. She says she’s always afraid the tunnel’s going to collapse and bury her alive.” She rolled her eyes. “Bloody tunnels have been here since 1890, but she’s sure the one time she rides one is the time the entire system crumbles to dust.”
Savvy cocked her head toward the entrance, but I held her up. “Wait. What are we going to say when we go in there?” I asked.
Savvy spun around. “We ask for Phoebe’s room number,” she said.
“Yeah, but you already asked for it over the phone, didn’t you?” I reminded her. “They said they didn’t give out that kind of information.” This made a little more sense now that I’d seen the place. I doubted many people checked in using their real names. Discretion was probably part of The Hotel Royal’s dubious charm.
“I figured I could be a bit more persuasive in person,” Savvy said darkly, and she was rubbing her fist, as though she were a cartoon mobster ready to give someone a knuckle-sandwich.
“No,” Hannah said firmly. “I’ve got a better idea.”
§
Inside the lobby of The Hotel Royal, its name grew exponentially more ironic. The wallpaper was faded and peeling in the corners. The furniture was threadbare. And the woman standing at the front desk had certainly never seen the inside of a castle. Her hair was teased to comical proportions, and her makeup looked as though it had been applied with a trowel. She barely glanced up from her gossip magazine as we approached the counter.
“Welcome to The Hotel Royal, how can I assist you today?” she droned between loud snaps of her gum. A cigarette dangled from between two of her brightly polished fingers. Before I could answer, a small, mousy-faced man and a woman in a mini skirt stumbled through the door behind us, laughing raucously and kissing each other.
“Oi, Dolores, number 12 free, then?” the man called over to the desk.
Dolores rolled her eyes, and drummed impatient fingers on the counter. “I better see some cash first, Tony, or you can see yourself out, you useless wanker.”
The man called Tony muttered a stream of curses and reached into his trouser pockets, pulling out a roll of bills and peeling a few off the top. The woman beside him continued to laugh, snatching at the remaining cash and stuffing it down her cleavage.
Tony tossed the bills at Dolores, who pulled a key off a hook behind her and plunked it down on the countertop. “Number 12. TV ain’t working.”
Tony pocketed the key and he and his lady friend disappeared through a door and up a staircase. Dolores shook her head ruefully as she watched them go and then stared down again at her magazine, evidently having already forgotten we were standing there in front of her.
I cleared my throat. “Hi, we just had a few questions about your rates.”
The woman looked up, slightly startled to see three young women standing there. “You what?”
“We had some questions. About your rates,” I repeated.
“What for?” the woman shot back.
“Because we want to write a bleeding love ballad about it,” Savvy snapped. “What, you’ve never had someone ask you about your rates before? We might want a room for the night. What are your rates?”
The woman chewed her tongue for a moment before answering stiffly, “What kind of room are you looking for?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Something that will sleep all of us. What have you got?”
“Hourly or nightly?” Dolores asked, looking back and forth amongst the three of us, as if trying to decide if the question were even worth asking.
“Nightly,” I said firmly, before Savvy could make what I knew would be a mouthy retort.
The woman heaved a sigh, as though it were the world’s greatest inconvenience to have to actually do her job. She turned and picked up a large register book, which she lay open on the counter.
This was Milo’s cue. Silent and invisible, he slipped behind the counter and materialized right beside the woman, peering over her shoulder down into the book. She was utterly oblivious, except for the fact that she gave a little shiver and started rubbing at her left arm as though it were going numb.
“I’ve got a single, that’s £45 a night.”
“She just said it’s got to sleep all of us,” Savvy said through gritted teeth. “You think the three of us want to squeeze into a single bed?”
“Well, I’ve got a suite, but… well, we try to keep it open, see?” Dolores whispered, leaning forward and tipping us a salacious wink.
I reached into my bag, pulled out three £100 notes, and slid them across the counter to her. “There. Is that enough to close it?”
Dolores raised her eyebrows, then looked up and smiled pleasantly. “It’s all yours,” she said, plucking the bills from the counter and pocketing them. Then she jotted something down in her register and reached behind her to grab the key, but Milo was shaking his head.
“I need a little more time here,” he said, still frantically scanning the page in front of him. With a powerful little burst of energy, he caused the page to flip backward, so that he could scan the previous page.
Dolores turned again, holding the key out to us expectantly, but I didn’t take it.
“Is that it? Don’t you need our names or anything?” I asked her.
“You paid triple up front in cash,” she said with a snorting laugh. “You can call yourself whatever you bloody well please. Ain’t none of my concern.”
I glanced at Milo, but he was still reading, so I fished wildly for another question. “Uh… is there a mini-fridge?” I asked her.
She snorted. “Nah. We don’t have them in our rooms.”
“I thought you said it was a suite,” I pointed out.
“It’s a suite without a refrigerator, that a problem?” she asked.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I was just… curious.”
“Got it!” Milo crowed, soaring out from behind the desk and accidentally causing the register to blow shut with the force of his energy. “Phoebe Price, room twenty-six!”
Dolores stared at the register for a moment, unable to decide if something strange had just happened, but then made the conscious decision to ignore it instead. She pulled a phone out of her pocket, glanced at it, laid it down on the counter, and went
right back to her fashion magazine. “Third floor. Last on the left. Lift is out of order, so you’ll want the stairs,” she mumbled.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” I muttered to her, and we walked toward the same door Tony and his conquest had just taken.
“God, remind me to bathe in bleach when we get home,” I said as we mounted the narrow staircase. The soles of my sneakers were sticking slightly to every stair tread.
“Since when do you walk around with hundreds of pounds in your pockets?” Savvy asked me.
“I was going to ask the same thing,” Hannah added, panting a little.
“Catriona had all the paperwork for the Pickwick case couriered over to the flat the other day,” I explained. “I swiped the cash from the per diem envelopes, just in case we needed it.”
Savvy chuckled. “That was brilliant.”
“I’m just glad I brought it, or we would have been pooling our cash for an hourly room next to Tony,” I said with a shudder.
“Milo, did the register say anything else?” Hannah asked.
Milo shook his head. “The only information was the name, room number, and time of check in, which was 6:00 PM yesterday. The spot for check out was still blank.”
“So, she checked in, but hasn’t checked out yet,” Savvy asked.
“According to the register, yes,” Milo said.
“That’s just so weird,” Savvy muttered, speeding up.
Instead of going up two flights of stairs, we took the first door out onto the second floor corridor. Hannah peered at the number on the first door.
“This is the right floor!” she announced. “Number twenty. Phoebe’s room should be just up here.”
We all took care to tread quietly now, our tension mounting. At last, we all came to a stop in front of room twenty-six. Savvy knocked smartly on the door.
There was no answer.
“Phoebe, you in there?” Savvy called. “It’s Sav. Open up.”
Still no answer.
Savvy looked at me, eyes wide and dark with anxiety. “What do you reckon?”
“Call her cell phone again,” Hannah suggested.
Savvy pulled out her phone and hit redial. A moment later, a musical ring could be heard coming from the other side of the door. We all froze, listening to it repeat, until Savvy hung up.
“Now what?” Savvy hissed. “We can’t just break the door down, but if she’s in there and something’s happened to her…”
“We don’t have to wait for doors to open,” Hannah said.
Savvy turned to her. “Huh?”
Hannah pointed to Milo. “Ghost, remember?”
Milo brightened at once, as though, in his nervousness, he had temporarily forgotten that he could walk through walls. “Oh yeah!” he said. Then, squaring his shoulders, he walked confidently at the door.
He flew back from it almost at once.
“What the hell—” he muttered and tried again. Again, he was unable to penetrate the barrier. “It’s Warded!” he cried.
“Warded?” I repeated. “Are you sure? What in the world would she Ward it for?”
“I’m sure, look!” Milo said, and flew again at the door, which repelled him. He then tried the wall on either side of the door with the same result. Then he blinked out of sight.
“Milo, what are you—”
“Probably trying the rest of the perimeter of the room,” Hannah said. “To see if there are any weak spots.”
Sure enough, a minute or so later, Milo popped back into form beside me, looking both frustrated and a little pale. “It’s no good, the whole room’s been Warded,” he announced. “The shades are drawn, and I can’t find a weak spot, not even up through the floor.”
Hannah frowned. “Did you try any of the other—”
“All of them,” Milo said. “I think I flew straight through every room in this carnival sideshow of a hotel. Please excuse me as I gouge out my own eyes. Oh, and don’t bother trying to knock on any other doors in this place. With the shit going on in here, no one is going to admit if they’ve heard or seen anything suspicious.”
“Damn it,” Savvy muttered, running her hands through her hair. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
A buzzing sound made us all jump. Ambrose was calling me.
“I’m outside. Where are you? I thought I told you not to do anything stupid until I got there?” Ambrose grunted at me when I answered the call.
“Oh, I’m sorry, was distracting the desk clerk so that Milo could swipe Phoebe’s reservation information stupid?” I hissed at him. “Because that’s what we’ve done so far.”
A moment’s silence, then, “Oh. No. That is—well done.”
“Thanks for that ringing endorsement. Now, do you think you could find your way up to room twenty-six without drawing attention to yourself? We can hear Phoebe’s phone ringing in there, but she’s not coming to the door, and she’s Warded the room for some reason.”
“On my way,” Ambrose said. “Don’t open that door.”
“What did he say?” Hannah, Milo, and Savvy all asked at once.
“He’s on his way up,” I said, pocketing my phone.
“What about Bertie?” Hannah asked suddenly. “Can you try him again?”
Savvy dialed Bertie’s number. A ringing sound responded from inside the hotel room.
We all looked at each other, startled, listening to the ringing until it finally stopped.
“What in the world…” Savvy mumbled.
“This is just getting weirder by the minute,” I said. “What in the world is Bertie doing here?”
Milo swallowed. “You… you don’t think he and Phoebe are… like… together, do you?”
Savvy shuddered. “No. Abso-bloody-lutely not. Bertie would never dream of breaking the code of conduct like that. No offense to the bloke, but he just… doesn’t have it in him.”
I hadn’t for a moment considered that we might be breaking up a lovers’ tryst. But there was no time to even consider the unlikely possibility. The heavy thumping of footsteps behind us announced Ambrose’s arrival.
“How did you get past the gremlin at the gate, then?” Savvy asked him.
“Called the hotel’s main line and snuck past her when she turned to answer the phone,” Ambrose said with a shrug. “This place is real dodgy. No security at all. What’s the status?”
“No one is answering the door. It’s completely Warded, and both Phoebe and Bertie’s phones are ringing inside,” I said.
Ambrose’s eyebrows drew together into a deep, concerned “V.” “Bertie’s phone, you say?” He looked back at the door again, and this time his expression was alert, even wary.
“Is that bad?” Hannah whispered.
“It’s not good,” Ambrose countered. I saw his hand hovering near his belt, where a knife glinted from its holster.
“Let’s get this over with then,” I said. “Can you pick this lock?”
Ambrose nodded, reached into his pocket, and extracted a lock picking kit. I’d spent enough time around Caomhnóir by now to know that this was a standard part of their skill set. I was glad to see that Ambrose wasn’t opposed to using it—he seemed the type who would prefer to just break a door off its hinges. Brute force now, ask questions later.
He worked for a minute, until we heard the lock click at last. He froze at the sound, listening for an answering noise from inside the room, but all was silence. Slipping the tools back into his pocket, he turned over his shoulder to us. “Step back,” he ordered, and only when I glared at him did he grudgingly add, “Please.”
We did as he asked. He twisted the knob slowly and pressed his shoulder against the door, easing it open just enough to peer through the crack.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
“What? What is it?” Savvy asked, her voice rising on a tide of hysteria.
Ambrose shook his head. “I don’t think it’s wise to—”
“Just let me in the bloody room!�
�� Savvy was shouting now, shoving her way forward.
Ambrose turned to me, his expression grim. “We should get her out of here,” he muttered to me.
“Oh, God,” I murmured, my heart breaking into a gallop. “What is it, Ambrose?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just let me through!” Savvy bellowed, and barreled her way straight past Ambrose to the door, wrenching it open.
The light from the hallway flooded the dim room—someone had drawn all the blinds. In the flickering, washed-out glow of the fluorescent light we saw a summoning circle painted upon the carpet. Inside it, Phoebe was tied to a chair, her entire body limp, her chin drooping down onto her chest. Runes had been scrawled all over the walls, the floor, and up and down Phoebe’s arms and neck. There were signs of a struggle—a second chair lay overturned on the floor, a curl of rope still dangling from it. A number of candles had been scattered across the room, lying in dried pools of their own wax. One of the heavy drapes had been torn from the curtain rod and lay in a heap on the carpet.
“Phoebe! Oh, God. Oh, God, no, please, no, no, no,” Savvy cried, rushing forward and falling to her knees beside the chair. She took Phoebe by the shoulders and shook her violently. To everyone’s relief, Phoebe let out a muffled sort of groan. Savvy gave an answering cry and dropped her head onto Phoebe’s lap, shaking with relieved sobs.
Ambrose followed Savvy into the room, knife drawn, peering first into the closet, and then the grubby bathroom, trying to ensure Phoebe’s attacker wasn’t hiding somewhere. I started forward, unable to bear seeing Savvy sobbing without trying to comfort her, but Hannah grabbed my arm.
“What?’ I asked her, pulling my arm out of her grasp. “I want to help.”
But Hannah didn’t answer. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring, wide-eyed, at something beyond me.
“What is it?” I asked her, and then, when she didn’t answer, reached for her shoulder and shook her. “What is it, Hannah?”
But Hannah had no words. Her mouth opened and closed, and she looked up at me with an expression I could not even decipher, except that I knew, with every fiber of my being, that I never wanted to see it on her face again.