The Hotel Between

by Sean Easley

  “Bust it open,” the woman’s voice says on the other side of Sev’s door as Nico closes the window, locking me outside.

  I duck behind the bushes and press my back against the chilled brick. Muffled voices escape through the glass as a woman barks commands. This is ridiculous. I’m hiding out in the snow because they’re worried about a maid? What’s she going to do, dust them to death?

  I draw my arms close to my body, taking in the view of the cathedral across the street. It’s real. This definitely isn’t Dallas. I’m not even sure where it is. Cass would be amazed. She’d be giddy if she was able to travel anywhere, given how difficult it is for her to fly, but this would top the charts. She’d be fascinated by the way everything in the Hotel sparkles like a new penny; we’re not used to new things. Oma has to scrape together money to take care of us. Almost everything we own is used. Cass would stay. I know she would. Maybe not to find Dad, but she’d stay all the same, to visit all the places she never could before. She’d be brave enough to face the unknown. So why can’t I?

  I peek over the ledge to see inside, but someone’s drawn a thin, sheer curtain. Through the gossamer I can make out Sev, and Nico, and a third person—the so-called Maid Commander, I guess—flanked by two more imposing, suited shadows.

  The Maid Commander’s silhouette isn’t shaped like a maid at all. She’s wearing slacks and a jacket that looks more like something a soldier would wear than a cleaning lady. The shape of a sheathed sword hangs on her hip, and she’s shouting Nico and Sev down like a general reaming out soldiers.

  WWTD number 899: death by maid-rage.

  The wind whips through my ears. There are lots of ways to die in the cold. Number 221: Frostbite sucks the heat from your hands and feet, leaving them black and stiff until they fall off. Number 224: Breathe air that’s too cold, and it turns the water in your lungs to ice. Number 237: Hypothermia drops your body temperature so low your brain shuts down. None of them seem like good ways to go.

  “Come on,” Nico whispers, offering a hand to help me over the windowsill and back inside once the Maid Commander leaves. “We’ve got to get you back to Dallas before anything else goes wrong.”

  My body is stiff and achy. I relish the warmth from Sev’s heating vent. My teeth chatter as Sev and Nico rub my arms to warm me up.

  “Y-y-y-you g-got r-r-rid of her?”

  “For now.” Sev throws a heavy wool blanket around my shoulders and gives Nico a cautious look.

  “Wh-wh-what ab-b-bout the p-plan?”

  “We do not have a plan for keeping you hidden when Maid Service knows you are here.” Sev sighs. “Vek zhivi, vek uchis.”

  “Live and learn,” Nico translates, though I can tell those aren’t the words he wanted to hear. “I told you, we can’t trust Rahki.”

  “T-t-that g-girl f-f-from the b-ballroom?”

  Sev hangs his head. “Rahki intends for good.”

  “I’m s-s-so c-cold.” It’s all I can think about. Cold. Cold. Need to warm up.

  Nico leans his ear against the door. “I think they’re gone. We have to leave. Now.”

  “T-t-thanks.” I hand the blanket back to Sev.

  He takes it and grips my hand. “Remember us fondly. I wish we could do more.” His smiling eyes tell me he means it. “Shastlivovo puti.”

  • • •

  Nico and I hurry through the passages. The running warms my joints, but not enough to keep up with Nico.

  “Put a rush on, kiddo,” he says, and I flex my fingers, knowing I’ve hit my limit. I swear if he calls me “kiddo” one more time I’m going to pop him in the mouth. We’re practically the same age!

  “Where are we going?” I ask. “Isn’t the elevator back there?”

  “Magic doors, remember?”

  Nico pushes on a section of the wall, and it gives way to a hidden passage. We take the stairs two at a time, and head down to a dimly lit hall with wood paneling and musty green carpet, before another swiveling panel puts us back in the dark, musty stone back halls.

  Leaving this place is a mistake, but I can’t stay. I have too many responsibilities.

  A few more turns and we’re back at the alcove where we came in.

  “Told you,” Nico says. “Just a touch. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”

  He rounds the stairs into the cluttered hall that leads to the Alcove Door.

  A noise behind us draws my attention. Footsteps. I turn to see a man and woman dressed in black suits marching down the hall, followed by the girl from the ballroom, and the tall, imposing figure of what I assume to be the Maid Commander.

  The Maid Commander drills me with her stare. Her graying hair is pulled back into a tight bun, and a burn scar trails down her severe face. Compared to the suited staff in front of her she seems willowy and thin, but the sharp way she walks makes me think she could easily do a WWTD number 136 and snap me like a pencil.

  “Uh, Nico?” I dodge into the alcove to find him squeezing through the pushcarts. “They’re here.”

  Nico stops and listens to confirm, the silver skeleton key already in hand. “Not good.” He shoves the key in his pocket.

  “What are you doing?” I say. “Open the door.”

  “It’s okay. You still have that coin I gave you at your house?”

  “No, you took it back.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Check your pocks.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the small, gold-painted disc. He must’ve slipped it to me. Again.

  Nico grabs my hand and shoves it back into my jeans. “Put it away! Just follow my lead.”

  Rahki and the others round the corner, holding their heads high in a dignified stance. The woman on the left cracks a knuckle. The man flattens his shirt. Rahki pulls a long wooden baton from her belt and hefts it with both hands.

  I shrink behind Nico, wishing the Maid Commander’s eyes would stop stabbing me.

  “Ms. Rahkaiah told me I’d be rewarded if I waited.” The Maid Commander’s vowels roll off her tongue, as if she’s not sure which to land on. I think the accent’s French, but I’m not sure. “Mr. Nico, all intruders must be brought directly to me or the Old Man. You know this.”

  Nico bows. “Forgive me.”

  She pushes Rahki aside and steps up to face me. I smell her perfume—something almost nutty. “And who is our intruder?”

  I swallow. “Cameron.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Cameron what?”

  My mouth hangs open. I can’t tell her my last name is Kuhn, can I? They’d surely recognize it, if Dad used to work here.

  “Uh, Jones,” I say, remembering Oma’s maiden name. “Cameron Jones.”

  “Are you sure about that?” the MC says.

  I nod, and Nico nods with me.

  One of the staff rifles through a clipboard. “He’s not on the guest list.”

  “No, I should think not.” Her gaze digs deeper. “How did you get here, Mr. Cameron? Through which door?”

  “The . . . uh . . . Dallas Door?” Not the Alcove Door behind us, that’s for sure.

  “He snuck in,” Nico adds. “I was going to report him, but he had a coin, so—”

  The Maid Commander turns her bludgeoning stare on him. “A coin?”

  I pull the necklace out from under my shirt.

  She grabs at it and yanks me toward her, humming to herself as she turns Dad’s coin over. “Not your own, I presume?”

  I’m not sure what to say. Stripe warned me—many who come to the Hotel never leave. They disappear, just like Dad. If I answer incorrectly, will I disappear too?

  “Answer me, boy!”

  “No ma’am.” I gulp. I can’t tell them it was Dad’s. If they’re the bad guys, like Stripe says, they might lock me in a cell and I’d never get out of here. “I just . . . f-found it.”

  “Hmph. Why bring him down here?” she asks Nico.

  Nico glares at Rahki before turning back to the woman. “I wanted to hide him somewhere the guests wouldn’t see
him. I was going to find you and ask what to do, but I mean . . . since he’s got a coin, I thought it’d be okay.” His lie sounds so convincing, I almost want to believe it myself.

  She nods to the door behind the shelf. “I do not recognize that door. Is it bound?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Open it.”

  Nico obeys. I can tell he’s accustomed to taking orders from her. I wonder if he’s used to lying to her, too. It doesn’t matter though. She’s about to see where that door leads, and this whole thing will end up becoming an even bigger disaster.

  But when Nico opens the door, it reveals nothing but a closet full of cleaning supplies.

  The Maid Commander scowls. “You know what I mean. Open it with your staff key.”

  Nico fishes in his pocket and inserts his skeleton key into the door. Once again, the key embeds itself in the metal with a sparkle. He turns it and pulls, revealing . . .

  The janitor’s closet. Still just a closet.

  Then I notice the key. It’s not silver, like the one he used before. This one’s brass. It’s the one he used on the Dallas Door.

  He switched them.

  My hand is drawn to my own pocket. My fingers wrap first around Nico’s coin, and then around a long piece of metal.

  He slipped the silver key to me. Smooth.

  The Maid Commander scoffs. “Come. We will take the boy to the Old Man. Mr. Cameron must settle his account.”

  7

  An Old Man in the Sea

  It’s over. The Hotel caught me, and now I’m going to be carted away to some deserted island off the coast of Bali where I’ll have to survive on coconuts and my strength of will. And I don’t really have strength of will. Which means one of the many WWTDs tagged “starvation” is going to make me its victim.

  The Maid Commander folds her hands behind her, waiting for us to get into the elevator.

  This box is different from the one we took to Sev’s room. Instead of the gilded doors engraved with the all-too-familiar tree, this elevator lies behind a pair of drab iron doors decorated with florets and swirls. On the inside, the previous elevator’s traveling windows have been replaced with a rickety cage suspended in darkness. Not exactly something I’d trust to carry me to another floor.

  Rahki steps on first. I follow Nico and gaze through the wire cage that prevents me from leaning out over the edge.

  “The Shaft,” Nico whispers.

  A perfect blue circle of sky countless stories above provides the Shaft’s only light, illuminating the empty column of rock wall only halfway down. It feels almost like looking up from inside a volcano.

  “The cages were added to these lifts later,” he says, nodding to the wire mesh that extends above the railing. “Rumor is someone fell into the pit and died.”

  Rahki clears her throat.

  “Oh shut up.” Nico sticks his tongue out at her.

  “Enough,” the Maid Commander snaps, still standing in the hall outside the elevator. She looks even more general-like up close. Multicolored epaulets decorate the shoulders of her maroon jacket. Her slacks are creased in perfect, straight lines. She leans in past the metal inner gate, glances at the console, and barks “sub-level” to Rahki. “Take them to Agapios, and report back to me. I want to know what the Old Man decides.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Rahki slides the metal gate closed.

  “And Mr. Nico,” the MC says through the bars, “I will see you at your designated time tomorrow. If you are still with us, that is.”

  The doors beyond the gate shut, locking us in with Rahki.

  The platform starts down with a rickety shake. I grip the railing and focus out over the giant, open-air column, tracing the walls of the Shaft down, down, down. The pit below is so deep, I can’t see the bottom. Across the gap—which seems so far away—more elevators hang like roller coaster cars on cabled metal tracks. Some are closed-in gold boxes like the one we took before, but others are cages, like this one. The tracks lead up, down, side to side, even diagonally, carrying the elevators every which way to the doors cut in the Shaft wall.

  Nico said elevators were everywhere in the Hotel, but those doors must all lead to this Shaft.

  “That was a bad move, Rahki,” Nico says as we descend. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

  Rahki’s voice is full of venom. “You don’t bring unauthorized people into the Hotel, Nico. You know that.”

  “Cam is authorized.” He points again to my necklace. “Coined and everything.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  The cage shakes, and I grip the rail tighter. A metal lattice is all that stands between me and that pit of doom. Oh, how I wish we had the window-walls instead.

  “Sev trusted you to stay quiet,” Nico continues. “I keep telling him he should steer clear of you, and you always prove me right.”

  “All I did was point the MC in the right direction.” Rahki shoves a stray tuft of hair into her headscarf. “I didn’t get Sev in trouble when you obviously had the kid outside his window, because I knew it was your fault. You’re the one he shouldn’t trust. I don’t know what you’re up to, but rules are rules.”

  “Tattle-tale.”

  “No-good weasel,” she shoots back.

  He growls as the platform rattles and switches to another path leading us deeper into darkness.

  “I don’t know what Nico’s told you,” Rahki says, looking at me, “but you need to be careful around him. He’s always up to something.”

  Nico flutters his lips. “The only thing I’m ‘up to’ is making your life as difficult as possible.”

  “There’s one thing we agree on.”

  The elevator dings, and Rahki pulls back the cage gate as the doors open on the other side. My ears pop as we cross into a cluttered metal hall lit only by dim red bulbs.

  Rahki stations herself outside the doors as Nico drags me down the hall. “It’s only a matter of time until I figure you out,” she calls after us.

  Nico straightens his back in a mock salute, and with a sarcastic, “Good evening, ma’am!” to Rahki, he turns and pulls me through the porthole into the next compartment.

  Everything in these cramped halls is a similar dull, painted metal. Our feet clang on sheets of it. Pipes and cabling run across the ceiling, and a damp, iron smell stings my nostrils. Weight presses in on my body from all sides. The cables, the metal rivets, the caged lights . . . it almost reminds me of an old submarine.

  “Thank goodness that’s over,” Nico says as we make our way down the straight hall. “Rahki’s with the Maid Service, a.k.a. the enemy. Best keep her at a distance.”

  “She doesn’t look like any kind of maid I’ve ever seen.” I glance back to see her standing in front of the iron doors that hide the cage elevator. “And is this a submarine?”

  “Yeah. Sub-level.” Nico ducks under a low-hanging cable and through an open metal door with a spinning lock mechanism—the first of many in this long hall. “Maid Service aren’t your typical maids. The maids of The Hotel Between don’t clean rooms; that’s Housekeeping’s job. The Maid Service cleans up messes of a more . . . dangerous sort. And they report to that nasty troll of a woman who calls herself the Maid Commander. Trust me: You do not want to be on the receiving end of her duster.”

  I block his path before he reaches the next metal door. “Stop.”

  “What?”

  I don’t even know where to begin. “We weren’t supposed to get caught, but we did. What happens now?”

  “We get the beef from the Old Man.”

  “Will you please speak English?”

  Nico sighs. “The Old Man is Agapios. He’s kinda like . . . head concierge, or the owner, maybe. But like I said before, to enter the Hotel always costs something. I’m not sure what it’ll be for you. The Hotel will decide.”

  I glare at him. “This is your fault. If you and Mr. Stripe hadn’t—”

  Nico claps his hand over my mouth and shove
s me into the metal wall.

  “Do not say that name here,” he whispers. He glances back down the corridor, but Rahki’s too far away to be seen. “Names are important. It was good thinking to give the MC a fake last name, but you still have to be careful. If the Hotel figures out why we’re here, we’re through.”

  “Why?” My voice muffles through his fingers. My heart’s racing. What am I doing? This kid shows up with some card tricks and I trust him with my life just like that? I don’t even know him. He could snuff me out right here in this hallway.

  I’ve got to be more careful.

  “You have no idea what they could do to us. What he might do. You’ve come this far; you have to trust me. We’ve got to play this cool.” He releases me, straightens his shirt, and runs a hand through his hair. “Follow my lead, and it’ll all be just a touch.”

  Nico’s reaction to Stripe’s name bothers me. Why would the staff at a hotel care about a museum curator—no matter how special he is? There’s definitely more to this story than Nico’s telling me.

  I follow him up clanging metal stairs to a heavy iron door that reads:

  AGAPIOS PANOTIERRI

  CONCIERGE/MANAGER

  He pokes a finger to my chest. “Whatever happens, let me handle it.”

  I give a silent nod, and he spins the wheel lock.

  The door squeals open, and warm candlelight floats through. I cross the threshold, expecting to feel the rough cast of metal as I run my hand along the inside of the sub door, only this side isn’t metal at all. It’s wood—aged, worn, with deep, long splits and a moldy smell. An old ceiling fan whirrs over a stripped oak desk covered in papers. Sunlight streams through slats over the windows. Shelves line the clay dome all the way to the top, packed tight with books and trinkets.

  And at the desk in the center of the room sits a man who looks like Death on his way to the prom—flat, angular forehead with a receding hairline and slick black hair. His pale face is long—way longer than it should be—and his cheekbones look like someone surgically inserted dice into his face.

  A gold cross-keys pin hangs from his shiny lapel.