by Rainy Kaye
I pressed the two.
The doors shut, and the elevator started upward. Randall and I stood apart, arms behind our backs, like we were headed to a board meeting. I couldn’t quite place the formality between us.
The elevator jerked to a stop. I stepped onto the carpet and, tensing, surveyed the area. To my immediate right, a window overlooked the city. To my left, the elevator waiting area opened into the main hallway.
I crept toward the hallway, veering against the wall like a mouse. At the corner, I peered in each direction. One side came to an abrupt end with a fire exit. The other side stretched farther down, lined with closed doors. A long, empty wall that led to what was probably staff areas tucked just out of view intersected the hallway.
“Nothing,” I whispered, even though it seemed less and less likely anything was around that would notice us. I scrunched up my face as I turned to him. “What do you think that dot means?”
He shrugged, stifling a yawn, and then said, “Maybe it’s historical landmarks or a treasure map or a puzzle we’re never going to solve.”
I frowned, scanning the hallway again. One hotel room door stood wedged open by an abandoned serving cart.
“I know this is even less safe than taking the elevator, but what if we seized the glorious opportunity to shower and get some rest?” I nodded toward the door.
I could tell by his expression that he really wanted to argue, but also that he wasn’t going to. We had been on the go for days. A chance to freshen up was damn near a luxury.
When he didn’t respond, I headed forward, toward the open doorway. I waved at him to follow, careful to keep my steps light on the soft carpet, muting my footfall. I wasn’t entirely sure if there were any guests, welcomed or otherwise, that might be alerted to our presence.
At the room, I stopped just behind the cart and clasped the handle, leaning forward to peer into the dark room. I tried to make out any silhouettes on the bed of someone sleeping, but the interior seemed empty.
“Hello?” I said in a low, hoarse voice
Nothing.
Randall patted the wall just inside the door for the switch and flipped on the lights; one in the bathroom to the left, two by the bed, and another over the desk in the corner came to life.
The bed was made, and the room was free of luggage, dirty clothes, or any other signs of being occupied.
I squeezed around the cart and stepped into the room. The cool air washed over my skin, and I suddenly felt grimy and sticky.
Randall pulled the cart into the hall, keeping the door open with one hand, and then stepped inside behind me. He closed the door until it clicked into place.
“There’s electricity and a minibar. If the water works, we have the trifecta of indulgence,” he said.
“What has our life become?” I muttered, wandering into the bathroom. The sample-size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lotion sat in a decorative box on the vanity with a small drawer under it. I opened the drawer to find items in white packages: a comb, needle and thread, and bandages.
Reaching over, I turned on the sink, and the tap spluttered to life.
“We have water,” I called toward the room. “I’m going to take a shower.”
I turned off the sink, gathered the small bottles, and placed them on the shelf in the shower. Leaving the bathroom door ajar, I stripped down naked, tossed my clothes over the vanity, and then cranked on the shower. Water pounded down to the stone bottom, and steam rose up, inviting me into its fold.
I stepped into the shower, pulling the glass door closed, and let the water chisel away at the first layer of dirt. My shoulders ached as they tightened and then relaxed. My whole body followed suit. I wanted to stay in here until the world righted itself and I could go home.
Not that there was any use dwelling on all that. We had to keep moving forward, at least for a while longer.
I set to work washing up, reserving enough commodities for Randall. The scent of clean filled my head, and it relaxed me more than I would have given credit. Once I was moderately polished again, I turned off the shower, stepped out, and grabbed one of the fluffy towels folded perfectly on a shelf above the toilet. I unfurled it and wrapped it around my torso, and then snagged the sealed comb before heading back into the room.
Randall sat on the sofa by the window, a small packet in one hand and another open beside him.
He offered the one in his hand. “Found chocolate in the minibar. We’re moving up in the world.”
I closed the short distance between us to take the chocolate bar, and then dropped down on the side of the bed. My bare feet brushed against the carpet, and I dragged them back and forth, enjoying the sensation. A partial bottle of water—the fancy kind in a glass container—sat on the nightstand.
“I could really go for something stronger,” I said, picking up the water. I downed some and then returned it to its spot on the stand.
“Yeah, I don’t think we should be friending the captain while there’s a killer mage on the loose,” Randall said. He popped the last of his chocolate into his mouth and stood.
I unwrapped my bar. “Chocolate beats liquor any day.”
He shook his head and sauntered off to the bathroom. A moment later, the door closed behind him.
I nibbled on my chocolate, trying to think of anything important, but my mind was blank. It was as if the moment I had something resembling safety, my entire being shut down.
Not that was I sure we were actually not in danger here, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to contemplate this anymore.
I scooted back on the bed until I was propped up on the pillows and waited for Randall.
The shower ran, beating like a caught storm in the next room.
I slouched down a little. Then a little more.
I snapped open my eyes. I was still on the bed, wrapped in the towel. Randall had sprawled out asleep next to me, face down. The television paraded an ad for local hotspots, most of which were probably either knocked down or infested with masked demons by now.
Letting out a deep sigh, I twisted around to sit with my legs off the side of the bed. My neck muscles felt knotted, and my shoulders barely wanted to move. I pushed my palms against the mattress to stand and shuffled off to the bathroom to retrieve my clothes.
They were right where I had left them. Wrinkling my nose, I lifted them one by one and shook them out. Dust puffed in the air and settled along the pristine bathroom. Most of it seemed to come right back to the fabric.
Now that I was clean, I was keenly aware of the bad shape of my clothes. I didn’t want to put them back on, but it was one of the lesser worries in my life. Reluctantly, I slipped into them and stepped into my shoes, before heading back into the bedroom.
Randall was dead to the world. My stomach, however, was not.
I leaned over and shook his shoulder. “Randall. Hey, wake up.”
His eyes fluttered open and he stared at me for a long moment, as if trying to focus back on reality. Finally, he sat up, rubbing his face.
“Let’s go scrounge around and see if we can’t find something to eat,” I said. “There’s a restaurant on the first floor.”
Wordlessly, he nodded, but sat hunched over, looking blankly at the floor.
I straightened up, clapping my hands. “Hey, Earth is calling. Can we go?”
He shoved to his feet and absently followed me toward the door.
“We’re going to need to prop the cart in the way again,” I said. “No room key.”
He nodded, and I opened the door to let us into the hall. The cart was where Randall had placed it, and the realization both assured and unnerved me. I liked knowing no one was messing with anything near our room while we slept.
It also meant the hotel had been abandoned by its staff.
Who knew what had gone down? Maybe they had evacuated in fear of the earthquakes.
Maybe the mage had been through here.
I held the door while Randall maneuvered
the cart into position to keep it open. Then we headed down the hallway toward the elevators.
Low voices caught my attention. I jerked back and looked up at Randall, eyebrows raised.
He was wide awake now. He grabbed my arm and tugged me back as a group of three people rounded into the hallway, right in front of us. They must have just come off the elevators.
They halted in their step. The man—tall and dark with a shaved head—collided with the woman in front. She had long straight black hair and wore a light gray top with a necklace chain peeking out and fitted jeans. She elbowed him back.
I opened my mouth to speak. She grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me around the corner, in the direction they had come. I twisted against her hold. She stabbed the elevator button with her finger. I swatted at her with one arm, connecting with her face. The doors opened. She spluttered-spat and shoved me into the elevator. My back hit the far wall, slamming into the handrail. I winced and darted forward for the exit. She slammed her palm into the close button.
The doors started to shut. Just as I passed her, she lifted her hand and tapped my head.
My body tensed, spasmed, and fell to the ground. For a moment, it felt like my mind was still standing. Then, it plummeted into my head which I was certain had bounced on the floor.
The elevator doors closed, and we descended.
“Oh, get up,” she said with a huff. “I barely touched you.”
I would have argued, if my tongue wasn’t stuck to the roof of my mouth. With effort, I peeled myself off the floor and sat, unable to stand.
The elevator climbed to the third floor.
“Why, for the love of all things holy, did you think coming here was a good idea?” she asked, staring down at me.
I couldn’t actually remember why. My brain was still powering back on.
Oh.
“We had a map,” I said, the words thick in my mouth. “It showed the hotel.”
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“It was blinking.” I realized I wasn’t making much sense.
The elevator reached the third floor and the doors opened. She nodded for me to follow her. I scrambled to my feet and exited onto another level that was nearly the same as the one we had been on.
The other elevator opened, and the man and other woman escorted Randall out.
We stood in a spread-out group, staring at each other.
“Okay, I forfeit,” I said, raising my hands in front of me and then letting them drop to my thighs. “What’s going on this time?”
Our hosts exchanged looks.
The other girl stood taller. She had a long, thin blonde ponytail and the skin around her eyes was nearly purple.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” she said in a low, even voice.
“’Course not,” I said. “That fits perfectly with the rest of the week.”
“Let me see your map,” the dark-haired woman next to me said.
Before I could reply, the man standing next to Randall yanked it from his back pocket and, in a few long strides, brought it to her. She took it, and I nearly pulled it out of her hands, but resisted. I didn’t really care if she saw it. She might even know more than we did.
Which was a pretty low bar.
She unfolded the map and, holding it up, studied it, a crease forming on her forehead.
“It’s an espial map,” she said, glancing at her comrades.
I stood on my tip toes to see over the edge of the map, as if it would make more sense this time. “Come again?”
She shook the paper once. “It just notes where magic is being used. The little bursts, those would be something brief, like lighting a fire with magic. Something like that.”
I stared down at the one indicating the hotel. “Well, what about the ones that don’t blink out?”
“It’s a continual source,” she said. “Something that keeps running, so to speak.”
I lowered back from my toes and studied her face. “So, it was you we saw on the map?”
She shook her head, scowl deepening. “Not quite…”
An uneasiness shifted through the group.
She pressed her lips together as she folded the map.
“When I zapped you in the elevator, that would have been a flash on your map, here. Most magic will show up like that. The hotel, however…There’s something here. We haven’t been able to eradicate it yet.” She grimaced. “You should not have come here.”
I blinked a few times, digesting what she had said.
“You mean, there’s a monster of some kind…here?” I pointed in general reference to the hotel. “And you can’t kill it?”
She nodded. The man beside Randall shifted weight. The blonde woman looked so tired she was ready to faint.
“You really, really…shouldn’t have come inside,” the woman next to me said.
“Great.” I spun on my heels, facing Randall. “Then we’re leaving. Keep the map.”
I headed for the elevators, tense and ready for a fight. They filed in after me, Randall in their midst, and as a group, we descended to the ground floor. The silence was unnerving, and I couldn’t quite make out what their gig was.
On the ground floor, I expected them to say something, anything, but they just watched us.
Chewing the inside of my cheek, I lifted my chin to Randall, stepping out into the lobby, and then headed for the exit.
Something slammed into me head on, throwing me back. My back rammed into a support pillar. I collapsed on the floor. My chest struggled to expand.
The dark-haired woman stood over me, offering me her hand. I weakly lifted my arm, and she bent to hook me under my arms and hoist me to my feet. She propped me against the pillar and dusted off my shirt.
“That, my friend, is why I said you shouldn’t have come inside.” She patted my cheek. “You can’t leave. It put up wards.”
“You couldn’t tell me that?” I sounded like I had a mouth full of rocks.
“You would have still tried it,” she said. “You’ll be fine. It doesn’t want you to die. In fact, we’re not entirely sure what he’s feeding on, but he certainly seems to like company.”
I blinked back to reality as everything started to come together in some distorted, twisted way.
“It’s a trick,” I said, numbly.
“Like a fly and a Venus fly trap,” she said. “Guess who the fly is here?”
I sized up the group, taking them in more fully this time. They looked exhausted, exasperated—like people who were trapped in the hotel with a monster.
Because they were.
Now, so were Randall and I.
16
As I followed the woman to the restaurant right off the lobby, I peered at the corners, the furniture, and up to the ceiling. What sort of monster had taken up residency in here? Every time I mustered up the will to ask, I couldn’t quite get the words out, as if just speaking about it would encourage the monster to answer the question itself.
I wasn’t ready to tackle the beast, and I never really would be, but I already knew where this scenario was headed. We were going to have to find a way out, and the situation was going to get ugly. Par for the course these days.
But first, food.
Inside the restaurant, the woman gestured toward a long, padded bench by the window, with three tables and chairs in front of it. I wove through the empty restaurant and took a seat on the bench and stared out.
Randall sat across from me, in a chair, and placed his elbows on the table, hands propping up his head. “What do you think it is?”
I shook my head, muscles tense and jaw clenched. My brain hadn’t received nearly enough downtime earlier to be prepared for this turn of events.
Fighting another monster was bad enough. Even worse, we had somehow managed to find ourselves completely barred from getting to Fiona.
Despair threatened to rip me apart, and only by sheer will did I keep myself together. For now.
The clattering and
banging of pots and pans issued from in front of us, past the empty buffet that separated the dining area from the open kitchen. The woman and her cohorts shuffled around, opening cans and gathering spices as they continued to prepare food that had already been started.
I couldn’t speak. I clenched my hands on my lap and tried not to think about anything. My body shook, anyway.
Randall reached across the table and squeezed my shoulder.
“We’ll get out of here,” he said, evenly, and then chuckled. “We keep defying the odds, and we’re going to do it again. It’s what we do.”
I pressed my lips together, staring down at the table, but my mind flipped through the events of the last few days until it was a blur.
Inside my head prickled, and I blinked back tears as the woman approached, holding a tray with two white plates. Swallowing down my emotions, I straightened in my seat, watching as she placed the tray on the table between us, revealing a dish that looked a bit like chili.
“Rajma,” she said. “It’ll fill you up and help you sleep.”
I started, jerking around to look up at her with a scowl.
“What?” she asked. “Do you not think you will need to rest?”
“There’s a monster in the hotel,” I said in a low voice, glancing around, as if I might have summoned it.
“And it will be here still when you awake.” With a curt smile, she turned and sauntered off as the man approached, carrying a plate of naan.
The man sat the plate on the table next to us.
“Sasmita is a nice lady,” he said, his expression apologetic. “She’s taking this whole…situation…a bit hard, that’s all.”
“You think?” I blurted.
Randall raised his eyebrows at me to signal I needed to knock it down about five notches, but I continued, gesturing wildly.
“She’s struggling? My friend is being held hostage by some magic-wielding nightmares, and I’m stuck in this hotel instead of out there where I need to be to save her.”
The man nodded along with my words, letting me finish though I could see the interjection on his face.
I sucked in a breath, letting my hands fall back to my lap, already exhausted, and I hadn’t even eaten the rajma yet.