Mystery at the Ice Hotel

by Sara Grant

  “You got a mini bar?” Toby asked and walked right over to the mini fridge. “I’m starving.”

  “You’re not staying,” Mackenzie said and slipped between Toby and the fridge.

  “Harsh,” Toby muttered.

  Mackenzie and I sat on the two big purple leather chairs while TnT flopped on the matching couch.

  “We’ve got the passkey, and we thought you might want to help us check out Katrina’s room.”

  My expression must have given me away because Mackenzie said, “Not a chance. We are not leaving this room.”

  “Two of us can be the lookouts and two can check the room.” Toby twirled the passkey between his fingers.

  “No, absolutely not.” Mackenzie walked to the door and opened it. “That’s called breaking and entering.”

  “They do it all the time on TV,” Taylor said. “I mean, if the person has committed a crime or you think they might commit another, or if someone might be hurt or need help.”

  “We could be saving lives,” Toby said.

  Sounded reasonable to me, but I stayed silent.

  “Come on,” Taylor whined. “We could find proof that Katrina is the killer and then we’ll be heroes.”

  I studied Mackenzie. Her frown softened. Maybe they were getting to her. “No. Go,” she said but I could tell she was having second thoughts.

  We jumped when someone pounded on the door. TnT dived behind the couch.

  “Who is it?” Mackenzie called through the door. “It’s Shauna.”

  Mackenzie mouthed, what should I do?

  “What do you want?” I called to Shauna as I stepped next to Mackenzie.

  “Let me in!” She was agitated.

  “Um, Ariadne told us not to let anyone in,” Mackenzie said.

  “I’ve got a message from your grandma,” Shauna replied and jiggled the handle. “And lunch.”

  I opened the door. Shauna marched into the middle of the room and dumped two Winter Wonder gift bags on the table. The bags tipped over, spilling out sandwiches, potato chips and cans of soda. Snow was melting off her boots. She unzipped her snowsuit a bit. “Ariadne has gone for help. She told me to tell you not to worry. I begged her not to go. But you know your grandma.”

  We both nodded. That sounded like my stubborn grandma. She couldn’t sit around doing nothing. Like grandmother, like granddaughter. Maybe that was what she meant about putting an end to it once and for all.

  “I’ve gone door to door, delivering meals and asking our guests to remain in their rooms.” She pointed to me and then Mackenzie. “That includes you too.” She turned towards the couch. “And you two.” The boys popped up, grinning. “You boys need to return to your room, or I’ll tell—”

  “Yeah, all right,” Toby interrupted.

  Who would she tell? As far as we knew, the boys were here on their own.

  “Have you two seen my phone?” Shauna asked and looked straight at me. Maybe it was my guilty conscience, but it seemed as if she knew what I’d done.

  “Why yes,” Mackenzie said, slipping into her posh speak. “We found it in the lobby. We forgot we had it.” Mackenzie retrieved the phone from the snowsuits piled on the floor.

  Shauna unlocked the phone and tapped the screen. I tried to see what she was doing, but she held the phone close to her chest. If she checked the call history, she’d see that we had dialled Katrina. Shauna was making me nervous.

  “Boys, out!” Shauna held open the door. The boys didn’t move. “Now!” Toby and Taylor each snatched a sandwich from the table. She followed them out. They were gesturing and mouthing something behind Shauna’s back but I had no idea what they were trying to tell us. They stopped as soon as Shauna flipped to face them. “You girls stay put.” She glared at us. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the two of you.”

  “Fine,” I grunted, annoyed that she was treating us like five year olds.

  “You’ll let us know as soon as Ariadne returns?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Of course,” Shauna said and slammed the door in our faces.

  I flopped on the couch, completely and utterly frustrated.

  Mackenzie stood there.

  “What is it?” I sat up straight.

  “I don’t know,” she muttered. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  I could almost see her computer brain whirring. She went to the bathroom and returned with her phone. “I called and sent texts to Ariadne. She hasn’t responded.” She hit redial and tried Grandma again. It immediately went to voicemail. “Ariadne, please call me. We’re getting worried,” Mackenzie pleaded into the phone and then hung up. “Her phone is switched off. Why would she do that?”

  “Her battery might have died,” I said, remembering the email to my mom and my dead phone. Dead. That word punched worry in my gut. “Or she might not have a signal. You know there are dead spots all around here.” Dead. I gulped at my stupid use of the word again.

  The door lock clicked. There wasn’t time to react. TnT walked in and shut the door behind them.

  “Get out,” I said what I thought Mackenzie would want me to. Toby reached for the door handle.

  “Wait,” Mackenzie said. My eyes widened in surprise.

  “We made sure what’s-her-face didn’t see us,” Taylor said.

  “Time for some snooping.” Toby held up the passkey.

  “Let’s go,” Mackenzie said, and I couldn’t have been more proud.

  We dressed in our snowsuits again. They were bulky and awkward to move in, but this way, we looked alike. Even if we were spotted, no one could tell who we were with our hoods up. We took turns keeping a lookout and darting down corridors, stairwells and eventually into Katrina’s room. Taylor kept the door open a crack and stood guard. Toby and I searched Katrina’s room while Mackenzie zeroed in on her computer.

  “Look at this,” Mackenzie whispered after only a few minutes. We gathered around her. “Her computer wasn’t locked. I scanned her recent history and this is what she’s been working on.”

  Mackenzie was scrolling down a Word document. Big deal. We knew Katrina was a journalist. “So?” I said.

  “Did you read it?” she asked.

  “You were scrolling it too fast,” Toby said.

  “Is it her article about Grandma’s app?” I asked.

  “No, that’s the weird thing,” Mackenzie said and scrolled to the headline at the top of the document: The Secrets We Keep. “It’s about a fifteen-year-old girl named Parker Stephens who drowned. It’s only a page or two but it’s written like fiction, not a newspaper article.”

  A dead girl. What did she have to do with anything? But then Blake’s voice echoed in my brain: revenge.

  “What was that?” Mackenzie asked, making the rest of us jump.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Taylor said and looked out of the door to be sure.

  Mackenzie rushed to the window and peeked out. I took her place at the computer and read Katrina’s story.

  “What now?” Toby asked.

  “I thought I heard someone outside,” Mackenzie said, and traced the jagged scar on her neck. “Katrina could return at any minute. We shouldn’t be here. I was wrong to go along with this. What was I thinking?” Mackenzie babbled when she got nervous.

  Mackenzie kept talking. I kept reading. The story started with a fifteen-year-old girl’s dead body being dragged out of a lake. For some reason the girl was covered in red and gold paint. Katrina wrote in such detail about the paint swirling into orange under the body. The final words of the story were: They called it an accident and maybe it was, but it didn’t need to happen.

  “Those are Ingenium colours,” Toby said, pointing to the screen.

  “What?” The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Another deadly connection to Ingenium. The only name in the story was Parker Stephens. It read like a story in a book, but it felt eerily true. It can’t be a coincidence that Katrina was writing this story now.

  �
�Can we go?” Mackenzie was waiting at the door.

  I shut down the computer. “OK,” I said. I didn’t know if it was Mackenzie’s sudden jittery behaviour or the story, but I felt it too. It was like a clock was counting down in my brain to some unknown horror.

  “Help us return the key,” Toby said. That was fair.

  Like before, we tag-teamed to the lobby. One pair served as lookout. When the coast was clear the other pair moved. I was partnered with Taylor. As we waited in the stairwell for one of the bellboys to pass, I asked him, “Do you know anything about a dead girl drowning in a lake at Ingenium?”

  The bellboy disappeared into the lobby so we waved Mackenzie and Toby forward.

  “There’s this school legend,” he said as we waited for the all-clear signal. “I didn’t think it was real. You know one of the stories the upper classmen tell the newbies to keep them from sneaking to the lake.”

  Mackenzie and Toby were hiding behind a potted pine right where the corridor from the rooms intersected with the lobby. Mackenzie signalled us forward. We crawled behind the reception desk and signalled Toby. He continued on; he had the passkey and was going to return it to the manager’s office.

  “What’s the legend?” I whispered but kept my eyes glued to Toby.

  “A girl haunts the lake seeking revenge on Ingenium students,” he whispered.

  There was that word again. “Why revenge?”

  “The story goes that she was killed during some initiation thing, and—” His story was cut short by someone yelling in the lobby.

  “How dare you!”

  “Oh no,” Taylor said as he walked from our hiding place.

  I reached for him. “What are you doing?” I whisper-shouted at him, but he disappeared into the lobby.

  “I will kill you two boys!” Was that Mr Ashworth’s voice?

  He had a connection to Ingenium. He knew Lucinda and had invited a bunch of people from Ingenium here for Grandma’s event. Was Mr Ashworth our killer? I hunched down next to Mackenzie.

  Mr Ashworth had Toby and Taylor by their collars and was dragging them through the lobby. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone so angry. “You two have been nothing but trouble,” he shouted. “Why did you steal the passkey? What were you doing?” He was so angry his words were jumbling together, and spit and sweat were pinging off him.

  We had to help TnT. I gestured to Mackenzie that she head one way and I’d go the other. He couldn’t overpower all four of us.

  Mackenzie and I darted from hiding, as Mr Ashworth shouted, “Tobias Horatio and Taylor Ignatius Ashworth, I am so ashamed of you!” Mackenzie and I dived behind the reception desk. “Kicked out of school and now this!”

  Ashworth? Toby and Taylor Ashworth? They were the manager’s sons. The yelling continued. The boys were in huge trouble, but not in any real danger.

  “They’ve been lying to us this whole time about who they are and why they’re here,” Mackenzie said.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. They were caught, but we didn’t have to be. I flicked the hood of Mackenzie’s snowsuit over her head.

  “Oh no,” she said when she realized Mr Ashworth was blocking the way to Grandma’s room.

  “No choice,” I said and dashed to the front door. I punched it open and held it until Mackenzie stumbled out. We raced into the snow. The world was sparkly and beautiful but didn’t feel safe any more. I didn’t know if I was running to or from something. All I wanted was to run away.

  “What are you doing?” Mackenzie pulled us to a stop. The ice maze was just ahead. The lake and the forest were beyond. Was my grandma out there somewhere? “I don’t want to be out here. We are going to lock ourselves in Ariadne’s room until she comes for us.” Mackenzie’s voice cracked. She was terrified.

  “OK,” I said. We took a few steps towards the lodge.

  “Did you hear that?” Mackenzie said. I shifted so we were back to back. She wasn’t making it up this time. I’d heard it too. Footsteps.

  I froze. I saw something emerging from the snowy scene ahead of me. The image took shape. It was a person, but he wasn’t wearing the standard issue blue-and-black Winter Wonder Resort gear. The figure was in some sort of high-tech silvery suit that almost blended with the wintery surroundings.

  I took Mackenzie’s hand and ran away from the figure. “In here,” I said, when the ice maze came into focus. She checked behind us. We couldn’t see the figure but we could still hear him approaching. “We can lose him in here,” I told Mackenzie and manoeuvred her ahead of me.

  She’d figured out the way to the centre of the maze in no time on her very first try. We’d been through it so many times that I knew we turned left by the big snowman, right by the ice sculpture with the massive snowflakes, straight on until we hit a dead end at an ice polar bear. That was the tricky part. There was a tunnel hidden behind the bear that was a shortcut to the centre.

  We had the same idea at the same time. We ducked behind the polar bear and hid in the tunnel. I hoped the person chasing us didn’t know the ice maze very well. We didn’t dare speak. We knew that sound bounced off the glassy surfaces. Our panting breath clouded our view, but we saw the silvery figure skid as he reached the polar bear and dashed away.

  I crawled out and watched as the figure headed deeper into the maze. I waited and counted the footsteps until I was sure he was far enough away. “Come on,” I whispered in my quietest voice to Mackenzie. We tiptoed back the way we came, making as little sound as possible.

  The entrance to the maze was in sight. We’d made it. “Race you to Grandma’s room,” I whispered.

  We bolted forward but slid to a stop and crashed to the ground as a figure in a Winter Wonder Resort snowsuit stepped into the maze’s entrance and blocked our only way out. We screamed, shattering the snowy silence. Our terror echoed and seemed to fill the maze. The figure’s face was obscured by goggles and a scarf, just like in the ice cathedral. It was the same figure who had tried to kill Blake, I was sure of it. The killer raised his hands to reveal he was holding a sharpened dagger of ice in each hand – one for each of us.

  I didn’t wait for the killer to attack. I lunged for his middle and knocked him to the ground. He may have been bigger, but I’d surprised him by striking first. I staggered to my feet, quicker than my attacker. My dad told me that when the options are fight or flight, run like hell. I wasn’t going to wait for round two. I stumbled out of the ice maze. I expected Mackenzie to be right behind me.

  The killer was disappearing into the maze, and I realized too late that Mackenzie and I had gone in opposite directions – me towards danger and her away.

  “Help! Chase!” Mackenzie was shrieking as she raced further and further into the maze. I followed the sound of her voice. She was heading towards the centre. She wouldn’t have time to use the tunnel. She couldn’t risk getting stuck in the narrow passageway.

  The faster I ran the more I slipped and slid. I was crashing into the ice wall and losing time. I could still hear Mackenzie shouting for me. “I’m coming,” I called.

  I was so focused on Mackenzie that I didn’t realize I was being followed until the silver-suited figure was practically on top of me.

  Two killers? Was there a team of killers on the loose? My mind flicked to TnT, but it couldn’t be them, could it?

  I used my only real weapon again – the element of surprise. I spun around and threw a punch, but I misjudged everything. I only managed to nick my attacker as he passed and slammed me into the wall. I kicked off the wall and dived for his feet, but he swiftly and easily sidestepped my hands. I face-planted on to the ground. The packed snow gave me an icy burn on my cheek. I was stunned but not stopped. Why didn’t my attacker finish me off? It didn’t make sense. All I knew was that now both of the bad guys were after Mackenzie. Were these assassins sent to kill her? I ran.

  When I reached the polar bear, I made a split-second decision to go up, not down. I leaped into the bear’s outstretched arms and scra
mbled to its shoulders. I wrapped my arms around its neck to steady myself. If I could stand on its shoulders, I could see into the centre of the maze. I hoped I could spot Mackenzie and pinpoint her two attackers. From that vantage point, I’d have a better chance of helping Mackenzie. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

  The bad thing about using ice as your ladder was that it melted. The more I clawed at it the more slippery it got. I took a deep breath. The only way I’d manage to stand was using balance, not speed. I had to calm down. My heart was beating so rapidly I wondered if part of my ice-melting-slippery problem was that I was generating the heat of a volcano.

  I positioned one foot but moved the other too quickly and fell flat on my back on the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of me, but a few seconds later, I’d catapulted myself up again. This time I took it nice and slow. I found one foot hold and balanced. Once on top of the polar bear, I moved to the maze wall, which was at least somewhat flat, and then slowly rose to my feet.

  What I saw nearly sent me crashing to the ground again, but I steadied my breath. I stretched my arms for balance. The figure in goggles and the Winter Wonder Resort snowsuit had Mackenzie cornered in the centre of the maze with an ice dagger ready to strike. The figure in the silver suit had nearly reached the centre too. It was two adults against one helpless Mackenzie. She didn’t have a chance. If I threw myself at one attacker, the other one could easily overpower me. I had one move, and I had to make the most of it. I’d wait until both attackers had reached the centre, and I’d try to take them out with a Chase Armstrong divebomb. I wasn’t sure I could get much leverage on the ice. I needed to hit them with force, not simply fall on top of them.

  I hunched down, preparing to attack, but the strangest thing happened. The silver-suited figure burst into the opening and pounced on Mackenzie’s attacker. The two baddies crashed to the ground. I saw my chance.

  “Up here!” I shouted to Mackenzie. She was trembling so badly it was hard for her to walk. “Focus on me,” I told her, but we kept glancing at the two mysterious figures who were engaged in an all-out brawl.