The Hotel Between

by Sean Easley

  My mind spins. Stripe has my dad. He wants to exchange him for the missing Greenhouse. He’s been manipulating me all along. Him, and Sev . . .

  . . . and Nico.

  I round on my blood-brother. “You!”

  Nico throws his hands up in surrender. “Calm down, kiddo.”

  “You lied to me! We made a contract! I . . . bound myself to you.”

  He shrugs. “I wouldn’t exactly go around telling people that.”

  I glare at him, grinding my teeth.

  “I know you’re mad, but you don’t have time to worry about that now.” He points to the maids marching up the hill, led by Rahki and the Maid Commander. “We’ve got to figure out how to spin this.”

  “Spin this?” I shout. “You sold me out!”

  “Cam, it’s not that simple. Stripe took my family, too.”

  And I can’t hold it in anymore. I ball my fist and swing at him.

  Nico dodges. His hand zips to his pocket and pulls out the sliver he used to bind our blood-brother contract. “Stop, Cam. Think about it.”

  I leap forward, knocking him into the remains of the Jimenez’s dining table.

  “Let go,” Nico grunts. He’s strong, but I manage to pin him to the floor and grab the sliver with my bandaged hand.

  “Get back!” I shout, jumping up and aiming the weapon at him.

  Nico scrambles to his feet. “Cam, please.”

  Through the window I see Rahki and the MC drawing close. “Why even make that stupid blood-brother thing? Is the Greenhouse really that important?”

  His eyes darken. “The Greenhouse is everything. You don’t understand. Stripe raised me. I know who he is. What he can do. This was the only way things could play out.”

  The front door bursts open and before I can react, the Maid Commander unsheathes her sword and points it at me. “Drop it, Mr. Cameron.”

  “Nico’s a traitor,” I declare, not lowering the sliver an inch. He has to get what he deserves.

  “Where did you get that sliver?” the MC asks.

  “I-I don’t know what it is.” Which is true. For all I know, slivers shoot laser beams out of their tips. Number 751: Incineration by laser. Seems an appropriate way for Nico to die. “I took it from him. He’s the one who caused the pin-failure. Him and Sev. They’ve been working for the Competition.”

  Her eyes bore into me. “And what about you, Mr. Cameron?”

  “I—” What do I say? That I was working with them too, but now I see who they really are? Pretty sure that won’t go over well. And what about the Hotel? I thought I knew who they were, what they wanted.

  I was wrong about them.

  “I think they wanted me to do something,” I say, still gripping the pin Stripe gave me in my other hand.

  I’m about to tell her about the Greenhouse, but something stops me. If Stripe has my dad, and I tell the MC everything, that’s it. I lose my chance to get him back, forever. Now I see why Nico and Sev kept telling me to focus only on finding him. The truth I now know—that the Hotel’s good and I’m on the wrong side—complicates everything.

  “Cameron’s no docent,” Rahki tells her, and gives me a long look. “I trust him.”

  I swallow a silent thank you.

  The Maid Commander nods to her maids. “Take the other one, then.”

  “No!” Nico bolts for the back door.

  But Rahki’s too quick. In one swift movement she hoists her duster, drags her gloved fingers down its surface, and sweeps it under Nico’s feet in a dive. He falls forward with a shout as Rahki binds his foot to the floor.

  “You broke my ankle!” he screams, reaching for his bound foot.

  The Maid Commander presses her sword against his neck. “Quiet, or I’m going to tailor you myself, suit.” She lifts his chin with her blade. “Agapios should never have brought you through our doors.”

  Nico scowls up at her, clenching his teeth in pain. “Maybe not, but you still owe me my wages.”

  Rahki strikes her duster and slaps Nico’s face, binding his lips shut.

  “I’ve wanted to close that mouth for so long,” she says, clapping the dust from her gloves.

  She breaks one of the flared splinters off her duster and curls it around Nico’s wrists. The wood shimmers as it tightens, binding him like handcuffs. I smile as Nico shouts another muffled insult. Serves him right.

  The MC grins too. “Back to the Hotel. We will sort this out there.”

  • • •

  The maids support Nico—one on either side—as we make our way back to the Corridor. A third maid carries the sliver in his belt, holstered beside his duster.

  Nico winces with every limping step. His ankle might very well be broken, but I don’t care. He betrayed me—I want him to suffer. Unfortunately, the binding between us causes my ankle to hurt a bit too. I find myself limping the closer we get to the Corridor.

  “You okay?” Rahki asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I promise, I don’t get in a lot of fights.”

  She chuckles and hands my coin back to me. “You did good.”

  I turn it over in my hand. It seems . . . heavier now. “I don’t feel like I did good. I got played.”

  “We all did.”

  “You didn’t. You knew he was up to something.”

  She twists her lips and stares off into the trees. “I didn’t know Sev was a docent. I really believed him.”

  “Docents are people who work with the Competition?”

  “That’s just what we call them. There are different types of people who serve the Competition. Docents, suits . . . docents are people who’ve signed a contract that requires them to work for Stripe and the Museum. They’re controlled, to a certain degree. That control can make them do things against their will, under certain circumstances. I think Sev was trying to tell me that was happening to him. But suits are different. They work with the Competition willingly.”

  “Why?”

  “The Competition thinks of itself as a business empire. I don’t know what their real goals are. I’m not even sure Agapios and the MC know. But when it comes down to it, they’re all just empty people in nice suits.” Her sad tone gives way to false happiness. “Anyway, Agapios is going to reward you for turning Nico in. You’ll see.”

  She doesn’t know the only reward I want is the one thing the Hotel can’t give me.

  “What’s this hallway?” the MC asks, examining the pin binding the shack door to Stripe’s Corridor.

  “It belongs to the Competition,” I tell her. “The Corridor’s how Nico snuck me into the Hotel.” I look away, ashamed.

  She heaves a sigh. “I guess the truth comes better late than not at all.”

  My ears crackle as Rahki and I pass through the checkered Corridor. It seems so different now. Darker. Uglier. The MC’s shoes echo down the hall behind us, all the way to the Alcove Door.

  When we enter the back halls of the Hotel, the MC starts to say something. But as I turn to check on Nico—still in Stripe’s Corridor behind us—his calculating eyes catch my attention. His gaze is locked on his sliver in the belt of the maid in front of him.

  Then he looks up at me, and smirks.

  Oh no. “He’s about to—”

  Nico throws his shoulder into one of the maids supporting him, knocking her back, and manages to slip the sliver out of the other maid’s belt. He spins—hands now freed—and jabs the third maid with the pointy end of his weapon.

  The woman cries out, but her scream is distorted. In fact, she’s distorted. Shrinking. Bending. Crumpled into the tip of the sliver like a piece of paper sucked into a vacuum cleaner hose.

  And then, she’s gone.

  Nico jukes away from the others and heads for us, limping toward the door. I watch in utter shock as he draws closer. He made that woman disappear. Minutes ago, I was holding that sliver. Did it . . . did he . . . kill her?

  The Maid Commander draws her sword, but I’m already moving, reaching for the ope
n doorway to stop him. We come face to face at the threshold. I reach for his sliver, but he casts it aside and grabs the collar of my shirt.

  “It’s just a touch, brother,” he whispers. “Trust me.”

  He gives me a shove and I tumble toward the ground. The MC catches me, but shoves me aside to pursue him. Nico’s not running, though. He collapses to his knees at the threshold binding the Corridor to the Hotel, the glimmer of something shiny in his hand.

  A plug.

  Nico pops the pin halfway out of the hinge and snaps it off.

  A clap, like thunder, as a wave of force bursts from the door, and I’m flying. Rolling. An electric current zips through my body as my face skids across the linoleum. Janitorial supplies rain around me. Everything hurts.

  I struggle to sit up, but a weight holds me down. A metal shelf cuts into my back. My jacket tears as I push it off me.

  The wind from the door whips old toiletries and moldy paper towels off the shelves and down the cramped hall. Cold air and dust stings my eyes.

  He broke the pin in the hinge. Severed the binding. It’s like the pin-failure, though I get the feeling this is worse. This pin wasn’t just cracked—it was snapped in half. I read about this in the safety brochure. In the event of pin-snap, do not panic.

  I steady myself as the tempest whips around me. The MC lies unconscious on the other side of the rubble. Rahki’s pulling herself out from under a stack of chairs, but her leg’s stuck.

  Nico and the two remaining maids were still on the other side when he broke the pin, but they’re gone now. And the one Nico pricked with the sliver . . .

  “The hinge!” Rahki yells. “Stop the pin!”

  I glance back at the door to nowhere, shielding my eyes against the gusts of icy nothing. If I don’t stop it, the Hotel could lose another wing, or worse.

  In the event of pin-snap, isolate and re-pin the broken door before the root system collapses.

  I pull the pin Sev gave me from its sleeve and stand, bracing against the gale.

  “Hurry!”

  Gusts of cold, dusty air press me backwards and scrape past my face. Thank the binding we wear Chucks and not slippery formal shoes. The grip on my sneakers gives me traction enough to inch forward. Closer. Step by step. My face feels like it’s being rubbed down with Sev’s sandpaper, like bits of me are tearing loose and flying down the hall. Where does disintegration by magic wind fit on my list?

  I grab the door and pull myself to the hinge. The broken pin is wedged in tight. I pull Sev’s plug— the one I kept after the pin failure—from my jacket pocket. Slide it into place. Pop. The remnants of the broken pin fall to the floor.

  But the wind keeps coming. In that cold, black darkness beyond the door, I can almost feel something watching me.

  “Cameron!”

  I slam my pin into place painfully with my bandaged palm.

  The air stills.

  I fall through the door and collapse to the floor on the other side. My muscles quiver. I did it. I stopped the pin-snap. In the event of pin-snap, just don’t die.

  The stillness of the room washes over me. Peaceful. Quiet.

  Home.

  • • •

  “Cam?”

  I look up to see my sister staring down at me from her wheelchair. “Cass? What are you—” I scramble to my knees and whirl around to see the Hotel back halls through my bedroom door. Not the hall outside my bedroom, like it should be. I didn’t have time to realize that re-pinning the door would also bind the Hotel to Oma’s house.

  Wonder practically drools down Cass’s face as she gazes past the threshold. “What . . . is that?”

  I bite my thumbnail. What was she doing in my room, anyway? I can’t get out of this one. I remember what it was like for me the first time I saw something that didn’t belong on the other side of a door. And Cass is far more curious than I am.

  She rolls toward the devastated hallway.

  I grab the handles of her chair to stop her. “You can’t go in there.” On the other side, Rahki shoves the chairs off herself, and the MC stirs.

  Cass turns one of her killer stink-eyes on me. “Is that where you’ve been?”

  I swallow, noticing the worn, gray coin hanging from her neck. There’ll be no stopping her now. There are magics in the world, and she’s just seen one.

  She grits her teeth and punches me in the leg. “You left us! Just like Dad, you left us!”

  “I-I can explain.” Though I have no idea what I’d say. Angry Cass is a running theme throughout the WWTD list.

  I reach up to touch Dad’s coin at my neck for comfort, but it’s not there.

  My heart stops. I dig under my collar, frantically searching for the thing that’s comforted me my whole life.

  It’s gone.

  Then I remember Nico grabbing my collar. Pushing me back. It’s just a touch, brother. He snatched Dad’s coin when he grabbed me! Nico stole it.

  My breath sticks in my throat. My arms tingle. Through bleary eyes, I catch a shadow of movement at the far end of the Hotel alcove as a tall, pale man rounds the corner.

  Agapios.

  “Not now,” I whisper.

  The Old Man floats through the wreckage on bony legs, his hollow eyes sending sparks of electricity down my arms.

  “Follow my lead,” I tell Cass. “Don’t say or do anything unless I tell you to. Just . . . be quiet.”

  “No one tells me who to be,” she snaps.

  “Listen to me!” I whisper-yell. “For once. Please.”

  “Mr. Cameron.” Agapios steps into my bedroom and scans the safety posters on my walls. “Where are we?”

  Cass tries to roll out of my grip toward him. “I don’t know who you are, but you don’t just waltz into my brother’s room like that.”

  Great. Off to a bad start already.

  “Ah. I wondered when we would get to meet your sister.” Agapios strokes his knobby chin. “This is your home, then?” Behind him, Rahki helps the Maid Commander out of the rubble.

  “My grandmother’s house,” I say. I’ve got to keep everything under control. Though I’m not sure what that looks like anymore.

  Agapios studies the hinge. “Where did you get this pin?”

  “From one of the doormen,” I reply. “Sev. Vsevolod Pronichev. He told me it was a way out. I used it in the pin-failure a few days ago, too, but . . . I think he and Nico were the ones who caused that pin-failure.”

  “Ah.” He nods as if it all makes sense.

  But nothing makes sense. If Stripe and the others were lying to me, does that mean old death-face here is the good guy? I picture that maid being sucked into the sliver like a milkshake through a straw, and Nico snapping the pin as if it was nothing. I was helping them.

  No, not helping. I was only trying to find Dad. I’m one of the good guys. I’ve got to be.

  The Old Man glides around my room, investigating everything. My posters. The dusty bed. The cat statue with its ever- bobbing paw.

  “What’s going on?” Cass whispers.

  “Quiet,” I whisper back.

  “Mr. Cameron has just saved a great many people.” Agapios’s angular cheekbones cast long shadows down his face. “Your brother is a hero.”

  A hero? I’m no hero.

  “Saved who? From what?” Cass gestures to the door. “And what happened to our house?!”

  Agapios turns to me. “Your sister does not know?”

  I shake my head. “You said the secret of the Hotel wasn’t mine to share.”

  He smiles. “So I did. Maybe it’s time we broke that rule.” Agapios kneels in front of Cass, taking her hand in his spindly fingers. “Ms. Cassia, I knew your mother and father. There is much to tell you. Would you join me for dinner?”

  “Uh . . . y-yes?” Cass stutters. She never stutters.

  “Perfect.” Agapios stands and claps his hands once, raising his voice. “We welcome a new guest tonight.” Then, taking her hand again and giving it a long kiss, he says, “
Ms. Cassia, welcome to The Hotel Between.”

  22

  Keys to the Kingdom

  My stomach lurches at the thought of going back aboard the Dining Ship.

  The past few hours have been a whirlwind. I haven’t seen Cass since Agapios brought her in as his honored guest and instructed the staff to prepare us for dinner at the Concierge’s Table. In the meantime, I got a haircut and a tuxedo, and even Rahki—invited at the MC’s request—wears a snazzy new pantsuit for the occasion.

  “What’s keeping her?” I ask as we wait in the Pyramid Foyer reception area. “Shouldn’t Cass be here already?”

  “We’re early,” Rahki says, sitting on the embroidered formal couch.

  I huff and flop down beside her. It’s strange to think a few hours ago I would have been mortified at the idea of Cass alone with Agapios. Now I only wish I was with her, hearing whatever the Old Man’s telling her.

  My hand keeps reaching for my neck, where Dad’s coin should be. Why would Nico take it, anyway? He can’t use it. And Stripe still wants me to find the Greenhouse. I can’t do that without the coin. Nothing makes sense.

  Pretty soon guests start lining up outside the Accommodation turners. Breakfast, lunch, supper—meals aboard the Accommodation are always a big deal. But a message went out hours ago informing everyone that tonight’s New Year’s Eve dinner will be a formal affair. Glittery dresses, linen suits trimmed with brilliant colors . . . even in my tux, I feel underdressed.

  I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from touching my collar, and feel the pin Stripe gave me. With Dad’s coin, Nico could lead Stripe to the Greenhouse without me, and I’d never get the chance to exchange it for Dad. If only I could speak to Agapios, tell him everything. If I do that, though, I’m definitely not getting Dad back.

  “Why didn’t the Old Man want to talk to me?” I ask Rahki. “Did I do something wrong?”

  She laughs. “No way. Though you probably should’ve been up front and told them you were Melissa and Reinhart’s kid when you first arrived. Not saying anything made them suspicious. That doesn’t change the fact you stopped a pin-snap, though.”