He blinks at me.
“Like, you know, sort of a covert lending agreement in which one person is not in the know, if you get my drift,” I tell him.
He’s still blinking at me.
“It’s like this,” I say. “You know…it’s…we have to…um—”
“We have to sneak it,” Mags says flatly.
“Why can’t you just ask for it?” Nyx says. “I mean, what’s with all the double-oh-seven?”
“Because Mr. Lozano is weird about his key cards, that’s why,” Mags informs him.
“Like really weird,” I agree. “I think being interim manager has gone to his head.”
“So, how are we supposed to do this without getting in the room?” Nyx asks.
Mags turns to me. “Velma? Any ideas?”
“Is that your real name or something?” Nyx asks.
“No,” I say. “Velma Dinkley is from Scooby-Doo.”
“Oh, right.” He nods at me and grins again. “I totally see it.”
I poke Mags. “See?” I say, giving my glasses a push at the bridge. “I told you I give off a Velma vibe.”
“Actually”—Nyx shrugs—“it’s the glasses.”
Mags’s laugh comes out in a burst and I give her a good smack.
“So, do you have an idea or don’t you?” she asks me.
I pace the porch and finger my satchel of bravery crystals while I think. I give Mr. Lozano a side-eye peek through the open double doors each time I pass. He’s sitting at his post, guarding the key cards with an eagle eye. Well, technically he’s reading a book with his eagle eyes, the same stupid one with the red staircase on the cover, but I know he’s still guarding the keys big-time.
And then it comes to me.
“I got it,” I tell them. “Mags, you go in first. Head to the kitchen through the dining hall. Then come running out and tell Mr. Lozano you saw a mouse run across the floor. He’ll leave the desk, and while you’re distracting him, I’ll grab the key card and then me and Nyx will hurry upstairs. Once you can get away, come meet us up in our room. And if we’re lucky, we can replace the key card before he even notices it’s gone. Everyone in?” I ask.
Nyx nods.
“Mags?” I ask.
“Yep,” Mags pipes up. “Me too.”
“Then let’s bring it in,” I say.
We gather in a circle of three.
I put my hand in the center.
“Operation: Smudge the Stanley is in motion,” I say.
Mags puts her hand on mine and Nyx puts his hand on hers.
“On three, everybody, evil ghosts be gone,” I tell them. “One…two…three.”
And on three we all call out, “Evil ghosts be gone!”
* * *
At the front desk, I stand there scanning all the colorful postcards stuck neatly into the compartments of a wire carousel.
“Da, da, da,” I hum, giving the carousel another push around. “Which one should I choose?” I say, side-eyeing Mr. Lozano.
Still reading.
“Mr. Lozano,” I finally ask, “what do you think about the woman Chef Raphaël saw in the dining hall yesterday?”
He sighs, folds the corner of his page and sets down his book.
“Do you really want to know?” he asks.
I stop pushing the postcard carousel. “Yes,” I tell him.
He looks toward one end of the lobby and then the other.
Then I do it too and say, “There’s no one here, Mr. Lozano.”
He raises his eyebrows and says, “Isn’t there?”
“Ah…no,” I say. “There isn’t.”
That’s when he leans forward and tells me something I’ll never, ever forget.
“This hotel is alive,” he tells me in a whisper.
I swallow. “So, like…alive alive?”
He nods.
“Like it’s breathing?”
“It may not be breathing, but it certainly decides who it wants to reveal itself to and who it doesn’t,” he explains.
I blink at him while my what-ifs process this new information, cataloging worries in order of appearance for later tonight.
The first one is a doozy.
WHAT-IFS
An actual living hotel is watching me.
“I—I…wh-what…,” I stammer. “D-do you think the house actually chewed up the missing managers?”
He picks his book up again. “That’s ridiculous,” he snorts.
“You were the one who said it was alive, not me,” I remind him. “I think that’s a very valid follow-up question.”
He snorts again and turns a page in the book while I give the postcard carousel another push around.
Every wire compartment is filled with a different picture of Estes Park. And not a single one is of a ghost. But every one has a huge blue sky in it. Rocky Mountains with blue sky, pine trees with blue sky and even romping bear cubs with blue sky. This was actually the very first thing I noticed about Colorado. In New York, it seems like there are so many things attached to the ground all around you, there’s no real reason to look up. But in Colorado there’s way more open space, so it makes the sky seem a whole lot bigger. There is blue everywhere. In front of you, behind you and above you too.
I pull out a bear cub card and side-eye Mr. Lozano again.
“So, when you say alive…do you mean like Madame Drusilla’s talking roses?” I ask.
He folds the page again and sets the book aside.
“In its heyday, this hotel was full every night. No vacancies,” he tells me.
“Not one?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. “And all four buildings were open too.”
“Huh,” I say.
“But now all this haunting business has been happening and…well, everything has changed. It’s fishy, if you ask me.”
“Like phony baloney fishy?” I ask.
“Is there any other kind?”
I nod in agreement. “I suppose not,” I say.
“This hotel has been in the Jewel family for over a century, and they’re going to lose it. It’s just a terrible thing.” He shakes his head. “Such a pity.”
“It’s awful is what it is,” I agree.
“I’ve had my eye on things for a while and I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“If you could put your finger on someone or something that’s the most phony baloney…where would your finger be?” I ask him.
He looks left and then right again. Then he leans forward and opens his mouth, but this time a blaring scream snatches the words before he can even get them out.
It’s Mags, right on cue.
“Mr. Lozano! Mr. Lozano!” She runs out the dining hall door and into the lobby. “There’s a mouse under one of the tables. I saw it. Come quick!”
Mr. Lozano lurches from his desk, grabs a broom from the corner and darts toward the dining hall.
Mags gives me a nod and I scurry behind the desk and grab the key card for room 217.
“Hurry up,” I whisper to Mags.
She nods again and runs back into the dining hall.
“Nyx!” I call to the front porch.
His head pops around the corner of the open double doors.
“Come on!” I tell him.
He throws his backpack over his shoulder and together we run up the grand staircase.
“He went that way,” we hear Mags telling Mr. Lozano. “There he is! There…no, there he goes. There he is, Mr. Lozano! Over by that table there!”
Up in me and Mags’s hotel room, I pace the viney carpet waiting for her to come back. Nyx is busy examining the Ouija board me and Mags pulled out of the back dumpster.
“Why’s there dried ketchup all over it?” he asks.
“Oh, that…yeah, right…so, we had to, ah…pull it out of the, you know…dumpster,” I tell him.
“The dumpster? What was it doing in there?”
I wave away his words from the air between us.
“It’s a whole thing,” I say.
He just smiles. “Uh-huh,” he says.
“What is taking her so long?” I wonder out loud, tapping my fingers on the inside of my sweatshirt pocket.
One. Two. Three. Four.
“She should have been here by now—”
One.Two.Three.Four.
Onetwothreefour.
“What was Mr. Lozano saying to you at the front desk?” Nyx asks.
I stop pacing and face him. “Right,” I say. “So, he was saying something like the hotel is alive and there was never a vacancy before the hauntings and also…oh, ah, that there’s something fishy going on. And that one I totally agree with. I mean seriously, right? There is something phony baloney going on. I mean, you know, in addition to the whole paranormal hubbub. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
Knock…pause…knock…pause…knock…pause…knock, knock.
“Finally!” I say, running toward the door.
“Wait,” Nyx says. “That’s not the secret knock. It was ‘Knock…pause…knock, knock, knock…pause…knock…pause…knock, knock.’ ”
“Right,” I tell him, and then wedge my ear against the door.
“What’s the password?” I call.
“Egg on a Roll,” Mags whispers through the wood.
“You got the knock wrong,” I say. “How do I know it’s really you?”
“Open. The. Door.”
I snicker behind my hand.
“No can do,” I tell her. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to hear the proper knock first. I mean, Daphne would have gotten it right the first time.”
“My Daphne is going to punch your Velma in the nose if you don’t open this door right now.”
“So you’re admitting, then, that I am Velma.”
“You’d better open this door.”
“Let me hear you say it,” I tell her.
“You are Velma,” she says. “Okay? You’re Velma.”
“Mmm,” I say. “I’m hearing the words, but they don’t feel like you really mean it. Maybe say it again, but this time, you know, with a little more oom-pah to it.”
“You are Velma, okay?” she says again. “You are more Velma than any Velma who’s ever been Velma, okay?”
“You better open the door,” Nyx warns me, licking his thumb and wiping at another ketchup stain.
“Better safe than sorry,” I tell him, and then turn back to the door. “How do I know it’s Mags and not some angry ghost using Mags’s voice?” Then I get an idea. “I’ll ask you questions of a secretive nature and you answer them, okay? That’s how they make sure you are who you say you are for online passwords.”
“You couldn’t be more annoying right now,” Mags informs me.
“Let me think of a good one,” I say, tapping my lip with my pointer finger. “Oh, here’s one. What favorite deli did the health department close around the corner from our walk-up on Charles Street?”
Exaggerated sigh. “Chester’s.”
I turn to Nyx. “That’s right,” I say.
“What does Rhonda Thomas pick during study hall when she thinks no one is looking?”
Exaggerated sigh. “Her right nose hole.”
I turn to Nyx. “She got that one too.”
“She sounds pretty mad—” he starts.
“Finish this sentence,” I call through the door again. “Woo-woo isn’t cuckoo and without it…”
Groan. “You’ll have bad juju.”
I fling open the door. “Mags! It’s really you!”
She’s standing with her hands on her hips giving me the rankest stink eye ever given in the history of stink eyes.
“You’re dead,” she says, lunging at me.
I race toward the bed with her right behind until we land on the velvet spread together, giggling so hard we fall off one side.
“What is that?” Nyx asks.
“What’s what?” I ask, standing up and straightening my sweatshirt.
“The bad juju thing,” he says.
“Oh, yeah…it’s my personal mantra,” I tell him. “It goes like this: Woo-woo isn’t cuckoo and without it you’ll have bad juju.”
He raises his chin in the air to consider this and then lowers it again, nodding his head up and down. “I like it.”
“Do you have a personal mantra?” I ask him.
“Of course,” he says. “Who doesn’t?”
“Ah…everyone else,” Mags tells him.
I shake my head at her. “So closed.”
She throws her palms up. “Am I wrong?”
“What’s your mantra?” I ask Nyx.
“You’ll laugh,” he says.
“I won’t,” I promise him.
“Let me guess,” Mags says. “There’s a Snoopy in it.”
Nyx points an accusing finger at her. “See?”
“Mags!” I scold. “Mantras are sacred. Never, ever dis the mantra.”
“Fine, fine,” she says. “I won’t laugh.”
Nyx looks down at his shoes for a few more seconds.
“It’s a German proverb,” he tells us.
“Are you German?” Mags asks.
“No.”
“So, why—?”
“Shhh,” I tell her.
“Fine,” she says.
We wait.
Nyx clears his throat.
NYX’S MANTRA: FEAR MAKES THE WOLF BIGGER THAN HE IS.
We both stare at him.
And then Mags wrinkles up her nose and says, “I don’t get it.”
“I do,” I tell him. “I totally get it.”
Nyx smiles at me and I smile back and that’s the very moment when I know that Nyx Brown is the one for me. It’s a sign sent straight from Luna Shadow, Almighty Spirit Guide Supreme.
And I didn’t even need to swipe right on some stupid app, either.
That’s because when your spirit guide gives you a sign…you just know it all the way inside your bones.
It makes me wonder how Mom got hers so wrong.
* * *
We make it down to 217 without a hitch and then watch as Nyx gets his whole Rid o’ Ghost Kit set up the way he wants it.
One ketchup-stained Ouija board. Check.
One protective salt circle (with an exit for angry ghosts). Check.
One clump of burnt-up sage. Check.
“Okay, so we need to do a closing ceremony with the Ouija board and the salt to ward away unwanted entities.”
He takes a lighter out of his backpack and uses it to burn the leaves of the sage so that there’s just a thin line of smoke floating out from the top.
“Here.” He hands them to me. “Wave this around the room slowly to smudge the place.”
I step across the carpet vines, waving the smoking leaves over my head.
“Like this?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says while he sets the Ouija board on the floor and sprinkles salt in a circle around it.
“Okay,” he tells me. “That’s good enough. Now everyone come and sit down around the board within the protective circle.”
I sit next to Nyx, and Mags sits next to me.
“Ew…what’s that?” Mags points.
“Dried ketchup,” Nyx tells her.
“Ohhhh” is all she says.
“A hazard of hanging out in a dumpster,” he goes on with a grin.
She turns to me and says, “You told him?”
I shrug.
“I’ve never heard of anyone throwi
ng out a Ouija board in an attempt to block its spiritual connection to the in-between,” he says, shaking his head.
“It felt like the right thing at the time,” Mags tells him.
I nod in agreement. “Definitely,” I say.
Then she turns to me and with her hand straight up above her head she says, “Raise your hand if your best friend stinks at keeping secrets.”
“I know, I know,” I say. “I have a secret-keeping problem.”
“Serious,” Mags seconds.
“You guys ready?” Nyx asks.
“You never told us how come you know so much about all this stuff,” I say.
He nods. “Remember when I told you guys about Harry Houdini?”
“The greatest magician of all time,” I say.
“Illusionist,” he reminds me.
“I remember,” I tell him.
“Well, in addition to magic, he was very interested in spiritualism and the afterlife. For one very important reason.”
“What was that?” I ask.
“His mother died.”
“That’s sad,” I say.
Nyx nods. “After she was gone, he had a real hard time getting over it. He started to seek help from mediums and spiritualists who claimed they could make contact with her in the afterlife. But instead of making contact with her, all he found were hoaxers, charlatans and fakes who took his money and lied. The thought of people like that taking advantage of grieving family members made him so angry.”
“Tooooold you,” Mags sings.
“Don’t mind her,” I tell Nyx. “Madame Drusilla said she was a tortured soul in her past life.”
He nods and considers Mags. “I get that.”
Mags just rolls her eyes.
“So, did Houdini ever make contact with his mom?” I ask him.
“He kept trying, making it known that he would pay ten thousand dollars to any spiritualist who could prove to him without a doubt that they’d made contact with her.”
“Did anyone get the money?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“Not one person could prove it?” Mags asks.
“Nobody,” Nyx says.
“So, he never got to talk to his mom again?” I ask.
Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter Page 12