The Hotel Between

by Sean Easley

  He unlocks the door, revealing a dark hallway. The floor beyond is polished concrete, the walls a drab grayish-blue.

  Rahki heads inside first. “Once we’re done here we’ll grab them some honey cookies. You’re welcome to come too,” she tells him.

  Orban glances back the way we came. He keeps doing that—as though he’s afraid of something. But there’s nothing out there to be afraid of. At least not from what I can see. Just the crowd, the vendors, and Stripe.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He touches a warning finger to his lips, and leads me through the door, out of the shadows and the cold and the smell of candied nuts.

  It’s a hotel. The rows of numbered doors, the smell of disinfectant . . . But it’s not the Hotel. These doors are locked with keycards, not skeleton screws, which means they aren’t bound like the Hotel’s turners. And my ears didn’t crackle when we crossed the threshold.

  I hang back a little. Orban keeps giving me weird glances, and he’s stopped speaking. I can’t quit thinking about that look on Stripe’s face. I should be okay with this—Orban’s my ally, after all—but every danger sensor in my brain is going off.

  Orban swipes a keycard to one of the rooms, and I catch a glimpse of something poking out of his deep pocket. It looks almost like . . . a knife? When he sees me looking, he tries to cover it.

  I grab Rahki before she can step through. “Let me go first.”

  Rahki tilts her head. “Why?”

  Because all of this feels wrong. Because if something bad’s going to happen, it needs to happen to me first. That’s my job. I protect others from the bad things. Cass. Oma. Everyone.

  “I just want to see,” I tell her, and push through the cracked door.

  But I’m not prepared for what’s waiting on the other side.

  “They’re kids,” I say. Five of them—all under the age of eight—with worried expressions.

  Oma’s stories about evil spirits race through my head again. Spirits are greedy. They’d possess the world if they could. She always said children are hard to own; that’s why the spirits want them so much. Kids don’t do what they’re told, don’t obey the rules, so the craftiest spirits steal into people’s homes and suck the joy out of their children. They ruin them.

  These kids look like they’ve had more than just joy sucked out of them, though. Their eyes are bulbous and hollow. Their skin stretches tight across their faces, their arms, their ribs. Clothes hang off them like they’re nothing more than hangers in a closet.

  Rahki rushes forward with open arms and squats in the middle of them. “Come here, little ones.”

  The girls lean into her. The boys step back, watching with cautious eyes.

  Many enter those doors, but not all return. Was Stripe talking about kids like these? Is Agapios one of Oma’s greedy spirits? Is the Hotel stealing their joy? Or is it something else?

  “What . . . happened to them?”

  No one answers me. Rahki’s busy comforting the children, and Orban’s still standing outside the door.

  I watch the kids. The looks in their eyes make me miss my sister, my home, more than I ever thought I could. Are they looking for me? Did they call the police? Will I just vanish?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Orban take a step back and grab the door handle. Our eyes lock, and I don’t like what his say.

  “Orban?”

  Orban pulls the knife from his overcoat and points it at me. Only it’s not a knife. At least, not any kind of knife I’ve ever seen. The whole thing is wood, grip to tip—a sharp spike no bigger around than a pencil, but twice as long.

  He jabs it toward me, warning me to stay back. “I won’t be unbound,” he says, his voice creaking. His next words are almost a whisper, directed straight at me: “Get out.”

  Rahki turns as he slams the door shut.

  I reach for the handle to throw it open, but miss. I grab again, but my fingers find nothing but air.

  There is no handle.

  My arms tingle. My ears pound.

  Orban says something in Hungarian from the other side of the door, and his footsteps scurry away.

  I look to Rahki to translate.

  She blinks. “He said . . . a debt was owed.”

  11

  Dust to Dust

  Rahki pulls the scared children close.

  I won’t be unbound.

  Get out.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, but deep down I already know. Trouble. I can’t tell what the trouble is, or what I’m supposed to be worried about, but that doesn’t prevent me from running calculations.

  Forty percent chance someone’s coming to kill us with a chainsaw.

  Twenty-three percent chance the walls are about to close in.

  Sixteen percent chance we’ll be drowned in toxic goop.

  Ten percent chance the floor’s going to open up and feed us to hungry sharks.

  Seven percent chance a bunch of Budapestian spiders are going to wrap us in death cocoons, suck out our blood, and leave our shriveled-up bodies for the police to find.

  And . . . I don’t know what that leaves. I’m not a math person, so . . . maybe, like, four percent chance it’ll be okay. I don’t like those odds, especially since I’m pretty sure they don’t add up.

  Orban’s supposed to be on my side, though. So why would he lock me in here?

  Rahki watches the door like she expects it to open on its own. “That weapon . . . Orban had a sliver. He’s with the Competition.”

  “The who?”

  She stands, glaring at me, and then . . . she strikes a hand up her duster. Shimmering fingers flying toward my face. My cheek smashes into the wall. . . .

  And I’m stuck.

  “What did you—?”

  “Quiet!” she shouts. “I need to think.”

  Meanwhile, my cheek is glued to the wall with Rahki’s magic dust. I can’t pull away, can’t slide, can’t even begin to peel myself loose. “Let me go!”

  “I said quiet!” She hoists her duster menacingly.

  “Okay, okay!” I turn to face her the best I can with my jaw currently in use as a wall fixture. “Just one itty-bitty question. Why’d you bind me to the wall?”

  She runs a hand along the doorframe, searching for something. “Because you might be one of them.”

  I swallow hard and scramble for something to say—anything that’ll prove I’m not . . . whatever she thinks I am. The children whimper behind me. I can’t turn to see them. They must be so scared. “One of who?”

  “The Competition,” Rahki says, prying at the door.

  “Will you please tell me what’s going on?” I ask, giving in to my superglued fate.

  Her gaze lingers where the hinges should be, but they’re on the other side, unreachable. “The Competition are people who want to break up the Hotel. They’re our enemy, and they’ve just caught us in one of their traps.”

  Stripe. Nico and Sev. Orban. Are they the Competition? Am I?

  Rahki searches every corner, window, and drywall imperfection in the room.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a way out,” she says.

  Not being able to turn my head really stinks. “My neck’s starting to hurt. And my shoulder is going numb.”

  “Deal with it.” Rahki returns to the door and pounds a fist against it. “I need a hinge. They cleared out all the furniture, barred the windows . . . even took the bathroom door.”

  “Listen,” I tell her, “I don’t know what this is all about. If you let me loose, maybe I could help.”

  She gives me a quizzical look. “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

  “Promise.” I hold my hands up. Though, hanging by my cheek as I am, I’m pretty sure it looks more like some lame chicken dance than surrender. “I’d never heard of the Competition before you mentioned them just now. I don’t know why you’ve got these kids, or why Orban locked us in here.”

  Rahki twists her li
ps to the side, then pulls her duster from its holster and raises it.

  I wince. “Please don’t hit me.”

  “I’m not going to hit you, dummy. Hold still.” She pushes the skinny end of her duster under my cheek and spins it. “The binding between the dust and the duster is stronger than the binding between you and the wall. Dust to dust, and . . . ”

  She pulls back on the duster, and my face peels free, sending me sprawling.

  One of the girls gives a little giggle.

  “You like that, huh?” I say, brushing myself off. “It’ll be a week before my face goes back to normal.”

  The girl says something in Hungarian, and smiles.

  I give her a funny, stretched-out expression. “Does it look all right?”

  She laughs, but the girl beside her scoots away, fear in her eyes. Probably shouldn’t joke with scary faces right now.

  I scramble over and rest my hand on the frightened girl’s shoulder, like I do when Cass is scared, and give it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s going to be all right.”

  When we were younger, Oma used to tell me how vulnerable Cass was. She said some people need a little more attention than others, and that it was my job to care for and protect Cass. Cass isn’t all that weak these days—the younger years for kids with spina bifida are always the worst. She still has her moments, like the other afternoon, but she’s smart, more independent than ever, and hopeful.

  These girls remind me of how Cass used to be.

  When I look up, Rahki’s watching me. “You’re good at that.”

  “Lots of practice.” I wipe away a tear from the scared girl’s eyes and wink at the one who laughed.

  “Okay.” Rahki pulls a wooden pin from the pin-sleeves on her shirt. “This hinge-pin is bound to the Hotel. But the Competition knew I’d have one for emergencies, and therefore, no hinges.”

  I close my eyes and focus. This is another locker. Lockers have releases. There has to be a way out. No matter how hard Rahki looks, a hinge isn’t going to just magically materialize. That means all we’ve got to work with are these kids, and the stuff we came here with. There’s Rahki’s duster, and the pin she pulled from her pin-sleeve, and . . .

  Wait a minute . . . “Is there any magic in the hinge, or is it just the pin?” I ask.

  “All in the pin. The hinge just keeps the pin connected to the doorframe.”

  “So . . . all you have to do is connect the two, and the pin will bind the door to the Hotel?”

  “Something like that. But like I said, there are no hinges.”

  “There are no hinges yet.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What are you getting at?”

  “What if we made our own?” I stick my finger in one of the empty pin-sleeves on my shirt and pull. The threads snap one-by-one as I rip the rectangular piece of fabric loose and hand it to her. “Here. Use that dust stuff to glue the material to the door and the frame, and we can slide the pin in between, creating a new hinge on our side.”

  She hesitates, examining the strip of fabric.

  “Will that not work?” I ask.

  “Not sure,” she says. “In theory, maybe. It might even separate this side of the door from the hinges on the other side.”

  “Only one way to find out, right?”

  She grins. “All right, let’s see what happens.” Rahki strikes her duster and attaches the pin-sleeve where the hinge should be.

  As she sticks the last bit to the door, a knock makes her jump back in alarm.

  “Helló?” A man’s voice. “Ez senkit nem?”

  “Who is it?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know.” Rahki lifts her head and replies to the man on the other side in Hungarian.

  “You speak English?” the man says. A pause. “I saw a young man running away. He looked up to no good.”

  “That would be Orban the Traitor, escaping,” Rahki mumbles.

  “Think it’s the Competition?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Doubtful. They wouldn’t be talking to us like this. They’d just come on in and take what they wanted, I think.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve never encountered the suits myself. Maid Commander just recently started sending me on the more dangerous missions.”

  Another knock. “Is everything all right in there?”

  “Bind the door,” I tell her. “Let’s just see if we can get out of here.”

  Rahki inserts her pin into the makeshift fabric hinge. There’s a crackle as the binding takes hold. “I think it worked,” she says.

  The door cracks open, and I catch the faintest scent of blueberry pie. We did it! We can—

  But before it can open fully, there’s a ripping sound. A pop. A glimmering wave of light as the fabric of the pin-sleeve tears and the door falls toward me. The pins that had held the door in place on the outside clatter to the ground.

  Rahki helps me guide the door into the room and to the floor, then retrieves the pin that freed us.

  When I stand back up and look through the open doorway, The Hotel Between isn’t on the other side. But it’s not the “where” of what I see that bothers me. It’s the “who.”

  Mr. Stripe stands in the threshold, munching on his bag of candied nuts. “Well,” he says, “after seeing the guilty look on that boy’s face, I thought someone might need help. Looks like I was wrong.”

  My mind races, struggling to figure out what’s going on. Why is Stripe still here? Did he conspire to lock us in this room?

  “Since that’s sorted, I guess I’ll be going.” Stripe tips his hat and shakes my hand vigorously. “You all have a happy holiday.”

  He saunters down the hall, leaning on his cane the whole way.

  I feel something, like a folded piece of paper, in my palm; Stripe left it behind when he shook my hand.

  A note.

  12

  Pinched

  The Maid Commander is waiting for us in the Eastern European Lobby with her staff when we get back. The maids all wear slacks and flat-front button-downs under a vest just like Rahki’s, and carry the same kind of wooden duster shaved down to various lengths. The MC scowls, indignant, like I put gum in her hair.

  “Here comes the Maid Service,” Rahki announces.

  “The dusters were a dead giveaway,” I whisper. “I’m going to have nightmares about having my face superglued to a moving car for months.”

  She chuckles. “I’ll take it from here. Make sure you report to Nico for your afternoon errands. We’ll talk later.” She starts to go, but pauses. “And great job out there. Maybe when your trial period’s over, the Hotel will let you join the maids with me.”

  Rahki leads the children forward, and the Maid Commander ushers them up the stairs to the Elevator Bank. I wonder where they’re taking those kids, and whether anyone will see them again. The possibility that I may have helped this place disappear a few more children sours my stomach. But I don’t know for sure that’s what’s happening. I need to find out more, and quickly.

  The MC stops at the top of the stairs to look down at me, hand on the hilt of her sword, then turns on her heel, leaving me alone in the Hotel for the first time.

  Though I’m not really alone. The lobbies are full of guests coming and going through the turners to other parts of the Hotel, staff answering the knockers to allow those who’ve been on excursions back inside. The giant bull statues flanking the grand staircase to the Elevator Bank stare me down. A man plays a jig on an accordion in the corner, though the music seems to come from everywhere. It’s as if his instrument is bound to the entire room, and the walls are playing along.

  But the warm light of the Hotel isn’t so warm anymore. It feels alien without someone to guide me through it. Maybe it is alien, and Agapios is the alien king, and they’re harvesting kids for experiments, and . . .

  No, I’m pretty sure the Old Man and the MC aren’t aliens. Of course, two days ago I was certain magic doors weren’t a thing, either. And the closes
t I ever had to an enemy was the class bully who thought it was funny to wipe boogers on me when he passed by in school.

  Orban’s words echo like some awful pop song full of doo-wops and nonsense words. I won’t be unbound. Get out.

  I sit on one of the floral-painted benches and dig in my pocket for the note Stripe slipped to me when he shook my hand. The words are written in flowing black script, only slightly more legible than Agapios’s.

  Dear Cameron,

  Forgive my little farce with Orban. When Nico informed me that you would be accompanying the maid sent to steal those children, I saw an opportunity to strengthen support for you within the Hotel ranks. Our little act may have revealed Orban as one of our own, but the Hotel staff will be far more likely to trust you now that they’ve seen you as vulnerable as they are.

  I’m so pleased you managed to find a place at the Hotel. This will really help us locate your father and free him from whatever fate has kept you apart these twelve years. Wonderful, wonderful job. But now that you are in the Hotel, dangers lurk around every corner. I’m sure our encounter in Budapest has shown how deeply deceived the Hotel staff are concerning their so-called “mission.”

  It’s this mission that I and your new friends have worked so diligently to stop. Agapios has convinced everyone that what the Hotel does is for the benefit of the children, but it is theft, plain and simple. Those stolen children have no idea what’s in store for them.

  Try not to trouble yourself with these things, though, else the Hotel may begin to sense your intentions. Set your sights on unlocking the secrets hidden in Reinhart’s coin, and the Hotel will not fault you for it. Focus only on him, and you will find what you’ve always longed for.

  Reinhart would be proud.

  Stripe

  I read it over again and again, lingering each time on those final words.

  Reinhart would be proud.

  So the Hotel is stealing kids, and Rahki’s bought some lie that they’re doing it for a good cause. That’s why Nico views her as the enemy. She seems like a really good person, though, even if she threw me under the bus when I first arrived; I’m sure she just doesn’t know the truth.

  Stripe said they revealed Orban as one of their own. That could mean Stripe and the people working with him really are the Competition, and that the Competition’s job is to stop the Hotel from taking these kids.