The Hotel Between

by Sean Easley

  The thought of creeping through the submarine that leads to the Concierge Retreat makes my arms itch. My WWTD list doesn’t even begin to cover the things Agapios could do to me if he finds out. “How will I know it’s time?”

  “Trust me,” Nico says. “You’ll know.”

  • • •

  We head to the War Room for the day’s assignments, and the MC once again puts me on a mission with Rahki—this time to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  Elizabeth groans when Rahki tells her on the service elevator where we’re headed.

  “Please take me with you. Please.” The fact that Elizabeth actually wants to help the Hotel with its “mission” forms a bubble in my stomach. Or maybe it’s just gas.

  “Sorry,” Rahki says, licking her pen and scribbling something on her pad in Arabic. The words disappear into the page. Today’s the first time I’ve seen her use it. She said earlier that the pad is bound to a notebook she keeps in her room, but I can’t help wondering what she’s writing. “It’s only an in-and-out. I’ll let the MC know you want to join us next time.”

  Elizabeth sighs and gets off at Lobby Level.

  I start to follow, but Rahki grabs my suspenders and pulls me back.

  “Need transport where we’re going.” She hits the elevator button marked MP.

  I gaze out over the Shaft as we continue our descent, watching the elevators travel up and down and side-to-side on their rails. The memory of Mom’s face being dragged into a black abyss rises to the surface. In my dream it felt like some dark, clawed beast was ripping her away from me.

  Not from me. From Dad.

  I distract myself by running a finger down the steel plate of the elevator console. It’s got all the normal buttons for guest floors and staff dormitories, but there are others, too: MS, MP, ACCO, MEZZ. Some I’ve been to. Most I haven’t.

  I trace the keyhole next to a button marked BO. “Body odor?”

  Rahki laughs. “Business Office.” She points to the next one, marked MS. “And that’s Maid Service level.”

  A bunch of buttons are dimmed out—they look like the out-of-order doors in the lobbies.

  I point to the button for floor four. “Why does the Hotel have these floors if they’re not accessible?”

  She shrugs. “Some are just off-limits. The rest? I think they’re holding out hope we’ll reopen them one day. That’s unlikely, though, without the Greenhouse.” The elevator halts its downward motion and shifts sideways. Rahki scrawls something else on her pad, and the words vanish. Are they notes for the MC? Notes about me?

  “Nico and Sev were talking about the Greenhouse,” I tell her. “Something about a tree?”

  “The Vesima. I don’t know the whole story. It happened a while ago. All I know is it came unbound from the Hotel, and without the tree, doors will continue to fail.”

  “Because the pins get old?”

  “It’s more than that. When we bind a door with Vesima wood, it’s like grafting that door onto the tree itself. It’s all connected, like invisible branches. If you break those branches from the roots that feed them—”

  “They die.”

  Rahki nods. “The connection between the Vesima and the doors is weakened from being so distant for so long. The magic feeding the doors is slipping away.” She sighs. “If that keeps on, we’ll eventually lose the Hotel altogether.”

  She leans against the cage and watches the elevators travel along their sparkling rails. There’s a sadness in her eyes that makes me want to tell her everything, but I resist. I don’t want my secrets vanishing into her magic paper.

  The elevator dings, and the doors beyond the cage slide open.

  “Motor Pool,” Rahki says, brightening a little. “Let’s grab a ride.”

  The Hotel Motor Pool is the biggest parking garage I’ve ever seen. Shiny, sealed concrete floors reflect amber lights, lined with rows and rows and rows of cars: long black limos, boxy pastel buses, half a dozen ambulances. I imagine the Lamborghini purring at me, begging to be driven. It doesn’t matter that I’m too young, or that car accidents are near the tippy-top of the WWTD—I want to smell the interior, feel the high-performance engine, experience all that horsepower.

  The whirr of machine tools shocks me back to reality. I rush to follow Rahki behind the freestanding elevator.

  The garage extends this way, too, but it’s different. Rather than rows of vehicles, the back half of the Motor Pool is a giant mechanics’ shop. Hydraulic power tools hang from the ceiling, lit by fluorescent lights. A bunch of old cars are up on lifts, and a horde of kids in coveralls drill and crank and socket beneath them. I breathe in the overpowering smell of oil.

  Rahki winds her way through the bays. I struggle to keep up, unsuccessfully dodging toolboxes and tires and mechanics. She stops at one of the back bays and calls out, “Sana, we’re here!”

  A girl crouched at a toolbox stands and greets us with a big, brown-eyed smile. Streaks of oil smear her cheeks, and a shiny black braid curls down the front of her coveralls.

  “Hi Rahki.” She wipes her forehead, spreading even more grease, and slides a wrench into the pocket of a long leather tool belt draped around her like an Indian sari. The leather creaks as she moves. “I checked those icons for you. You should both have strong bonds.”

  Rahki nods. “Sana, this is Cameron.”

  I blink as Sana presses her hands together in front of her. Her fingers and wrists are covered in math equations, stained into her skin with some kind of dye. She gives a slight bow, and says, “Namaste.”

  “Uhh . . . ” I look to Rahki, who rolls her eyes. “Namaste?” I say back, mimicking Sana’s gesture.

  “Awesome.” Sana winks, and tosses her hand up in a flourish. “To your statues!”

  • • •

  Sana leads us through the bays, past the elevator, back to the rows of vehicles. She points out her favorite makes and models as we go. We pass shiny cars, rusty cars, strange cars with no wheels. And then come the tanks . . . heavy, powerful-looking machines. Sana knows more about war machines than I thought possible. She talks about them with the same enthusiasm Cass has for her travel shows. I wish she was here to experience this with me.

  Eventually the military vehicles give way to statues. Sandstone camels. Onyx horses. Jade lions with stone saddles. A huge, twisting dragon with one clawed foot perched on a burnished cow.

  “They’re called icons,” Rahki tells me.

  They’re freaky is what they are. The so-called icons watch me with lifeless, wooden eyes. They remind me of the statues scattered throughout the lobbies.

  “These look good,” Rahki says when we come to a pair of granite elephants.

  “What are we supposed to do with them?” I ask.

  Sana clasps her hands in front of her. “Has Mr. Cameron not been icon-bound before?”

  “No.” Rahki pats her stone elephant’s backside. “Can you take care of him?”

  “Sure.” Sana bobbles her head and waves me to her. “Do you have your coin?”

  I fish my coin from my right pocket—Nico’s is still in my left, where he keeps sneaking it—and hand it to her.

  “This won’t hurt much,” she says, taking my hand and pulling a needle from her tool-sari.

  I pull back. “You’re going to prick me again?”

  “Again?” She scrunches her brow.

  Rahki stops and watches me. Not good. I forgot that what Nico, Sev, and I do behind closed doors needs to stay secret.

  “Of course I’m not going to prick you.” Sana hands me the needle, which I realize now isn’t a needle at all. It’s an ink pen, shaped like the Hotel pins. Only it’s got no ink.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Icon-bindings are temporary,” she says. “Touch the pen to your tongue—to wet it—and write your name on your coin. Your saliva, and your name, will strengthen the binding for a short time, connecting the icon to you.”

  I glance to Rahki, who’s back to examining her
elephant. “Like the dust.”

  “Yeah.” Rahki pats the duster at her hip.

  I lick the pen tip, and it zaps me with a tingly, metallic burn, like licking a nine-volt battery. This is temporary, I remind myself. Nothing to worry about. I write my name on the coin with my spit, and smile when an electric pop sounds in my ears.

  Sana takes the pen back. “That should last a while. If the binding fails, you need only do that again with Rahki’s pen. Now, hop on.”

  She motions to a rolling staircase next to one of the stone elephants. Rahki’s already seated on hers, sliding her coin into a slot at the back of the statue’s neck. A wave of color flushes across its surface, the hard stone softens, and it shifts. Spiderweb cracks spread down its legs, transforming the stone into tough, leathery skin.

  Rahki’s elephant shakes its head, and its long, floppy ears send a cloud of granite dust into the air.

  It’s alive. It’s like the breakfast tray, and the luggage carts. I scan the other statues throughout the Motor Pool, and my gaze lands on the giant dragon that towers above the rest. “Can they all do this?”

  “Mostly.”

  I climb the stairs—struggling not to think about all the ways giant stone elephants could result in my untimely demise—and have a seat in a saddle that’s way too big for one person. The slot in the elephant’s neck stares back at me. I’m about to take a ride on a magic stone elephant. Cass would be so jealous.

  Rahki kicks the sides of her elephant, and it lumbers forward. “Any day now.”

  “Be easy on him,” Sana chides. “We must all come to the binding in our own way.”

  I take a breath, and shove my coin into the slot.

  A glimmer of light shines outward. The elephant shifts under me.

  I grab tight to the saddle to keep from falling. “Where are the reins?”

  “Don’t need them.” Rahki nods to the coin slot. “It’ll do what you want.”

  My elephant takes a step, the cold stone now warm and squishy and alive. My weight shifts as the monstrous creature backs out of the bay.

  “Calm yourself,” Sana says, her voice smooth like a song. “The icon fears because you fear. Be strong. Confident.”

  I’m anything but confident. But I have to be if I’m going to survive this Hotel and find Dad.

  The elephant slows.

  “Good.” Sana pulls a thick wooden rod from her tool-sari and heads for an enormous cedar arch.

  “Just keep thinking about sticking with me,” Rahki says. “The icon will follow as long as you want it to.”

  Sana removes a stick from a hinge in the arch frame, and slides the new peg in. A rippling wave of green trees and gray skies bursts between the beams. “Enjoy your first trip to the Congo.”

  14

  Trust on Rocky Ground

  I’m sweating almost as soon as our elephants barge through the Congo arch. The wet air sticks to my forehead, and to the big-leafed plants everywhere, collecting in muddy puddles that reflect the stormy sky.

  A cloud of bugs whirls around me. I try to fight them off, but one flies up my nose, forcing me to cough. My elephant lurches forward, and I hold tight to the saddle, eyes watering, fighting to stay on.

  “Shut the gate,” Rahki calls back to Sana. “No bugs.”

  The Motor Pool disappears as soon as Sana pulls the enormous pin.

  I slap a mosquito that’s making me its lunch. “Shouldn’t I have gotten a shot or something before heading to Africa? My immunizations aren’t up-to-date.” The “exotic diseases” section of the WWTD list goes on and on.

  “The Hotel protects us from disease.” She urges her elephant forward. “Takes forever to get bugs out of the lobbies, though. Mosquitoes are the worst.”

  My icon lumbers after her, and I start to slide off. I grab at anything I can to keep from falling into a puddle. “The Hotel prevents disease?” I ask, pretending to have a handle on this whole living statue thing.

  Rahki’s already five elephant paces ahead of me, riding past a series of straw huts. “More like it protects its guests,” she says. “The Hotel can even extend a person’s life, if their bond is strong enough. Though, with the wood getting older, that’s questionable these days.”

  I wonder if it can cure conditions like Cass’s, too. It’s another example of just how much I don’t know about this place, even after these past few days on staff. I need to find out more. And quickly.

  Maybe Rahki can help me fill in some gaps. “Are we grafted into the tree, too? Like the doors?”

  “It’s different with people. The doors are just doors. No door binding is stronger than any other. But people can be bound to different degrees. The strength of a person’s binding determines what magic they can draw from it. Since Agapios founded the Hotel ages ago, his bind is strongest, and he can do the most with it.”

  That still doesn’t tell me why he’s taking those kids.

  My elephant’s foot lands in a puddle and it shakes its head, spraying dirt and water everywhere.

  Rahki laughs as I regain my balance and wipe mud from my face. “Need me to bind you to the saddle?”

  “No!” I blurt. I’m not at all interested in having my butt superglued to a plodding stone pachyderm.

  We ride on, the canopy above so dense I can’t see the sky. Insects chitter in the branches. All these disease-ridden bugs and poisonous tree frogs and venomous snakes . . . I am not a fan of the Congo.

  Though, it gets me thinking . . . I wonder if Mom and Dad ever got to see the tree before it disappeared. “How can the Old Man be so sure there’s not another Vesima tree hiding in a jungle somewhere?”

  “Don’t you think they would have replaced it if there were?”

  You never know.

  The path opens into a clearing lined with huts. A woman carrying a plastic water jug watches me from the corner of her eye. In fact, lots of people are watching us. Eyes, everywhere, following the two fancy-dressed elephant riders clomping down the path. Do they know we’re here to “pick up” more children? Do they secretly hate us for it?

  “If there were any other way to save the Hotel, Agapios would have done it,” Rahki says.

  I picture that bony, pale face staring back at me in Dad’s dreams. “He looks so ancient.”

  “No one knows how long he’s been around. The MC won’t say how long she’s been here either, but I did see a picture of the two of them once, standing in front a knocker from the thirties.”

  My elephant stops. “As in, the 1930s?”

  She nods. “They looked the same as they do now. It’s no wonder Agapios is looking for a Concierge-in-Training again.”

  That makes sense. Stripe runs his fight against the Hotel from a museum. He must have figured out what Agapios was up to by uncovering the Hotel’s history. Nico said the hotel part was just the facade, and that it had been around in different forms much longer. But didn’t Nico say Stripe was old too? And he doesn’t look that different today than he did in the picture with Dad.

  Rahki hops off her elephant and runs a gloved finger in the grooves of a plaque hanging from one of the huts. A carving of two keys crossed over a tree—the same as Agapios’s cross-keys lapel pin.

  “Here we are,” she says, and pushes through the faded, patterned curtain. I scramble off my elephant to follow her.

  Shafts of afternoon sunlight shine through the twiggy roof, illuminating a roomful of children. Just like the kids we picked up in Budapest. A few are bandaged—almost all are shirtless. One little boy sits on a bench, a wrapped knee hanging off the edge. But a knee is all he’s got—everything from his calf down is missing. Another kid looks at me with dirty gauze wrapped over one eye.

  I glance to the boy with the missing leg. He smiles at me, and I look away. I wish I knew what happens to them after we take them to the Hotel. I can’t even talk to them, because none of the children I’ve encountered so far speak English.

  A lanky man in a flowery shirt and thigh-length jeans shorts tos
ses his hands up with a smile. “Aye, Rahki! Glad to see you!”

  “You too, Philippe,” she says.

  “And who’s this?” Philippe asks in a booming, bass-y accent. “A new friend?”

  Rahki introduces me, and I shake the man’s thick, callused hand.

  “Cameron Jones?” he says. “My goodness, you look familiar. And that name . . . Cameron. You’re not related to Melissa and Reinhart Kuhn, are you?”

  Rahki shoots me a confused look, and I freeze. What do I do? This guy knows my parents.

  “Of course you are!” Philippe laughs. “Jones was Reinhart’s mother’s name, way back when, wasn’t it? You’re Reinhart’s boy! Cameron and . . . oh, what was your twin sister’s name?”

  I swallow. “Ca-Cassia.”

  “That’s it!” He slaps me on the back, almost knocking me over. “Jones, ha! Can’t pull the wool over these eyes. You’re a Kuhn if I ever saw one. Old Reinhart—now there’s a man you couldn’t keep down.” He leans in and whispers. “Did they ever find the Greenhouse?”

  It’s like all the heat leaves my arms, my legs, even my chest, and floods to my cheeks instead. My ears go numb. My head tingles. This guy knew my parents, and he’s still working with the Hotel. What’s worse, he’s giving kids to them. He has to know what’s going on. All these years . . . could he have been the reason Dad went on the run? Could this happy, smiling man have been the one who killed Mom?

  Rahki steps closer. “Reinhart? The Green . . . what are you talking about?”

  “Did he not tell you?” Philippe fixes his eyes on me. “Or do you not know?”

  I clasp Dad’s coin through my button-down collar. I’ve got to keep it together. Maybe this Philippe guy is like Rahki, and doesn’t know the Hotel’s secrets. But if he couldn’t uncover them after all this time, how am I supposed to figure it out in only six more days?

  “I . . . uh . . . I don’t know what happened to my dad,” I say, struggling to hide the panic in my voice. “I never knew him.”