“About damn time,” I muttered to her. “Where have you been?”
“I saved your butt in the old wing,” she reminded me. “Again.”
“Yeah, thanks for dropping the matches on my head,” I said, sweeping my flashlight across the hall. “What was that thing in the basement?”
“It started out as one of us,” Odette said. “I guess you could say it made a deal with the devil to get like that.”
“Why would anyone want to be like that?”
“Power,” she answered. “Strength. Some semblance of control over your life.”
“Afterlife?”
“Existence,” she rectified.
“Who was it?”
Her pearly glow was less prominent tonight, as if she dimmed herself to blend in with the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“You said it was someone from the hotel fire,” I said. “Do you know who?”
She stared at the floor in silence. I knew what that meant. She did know, but she wasn’t at liberty to share the information with me. Yet another mystery for me to figure out by myself.
“Forget it,” I said. “You can help me with something else. Oliver took Riley. He’s covered in blood that I don’t think belongs to him. Riley’s not safe with him. He might be a murderer.”
Odette stopped dead, gazing at something in our path. “Might be?”
With a growing lump in my throat, I aimed the flashlight at the floor in front of us. The beam shone over a bloody, ruined body, splay-legged in the middle of the corridor. It was Daniel.
20
The hallway carpet was so saturated with blood that my shoes squelched as I stepped toward Daniel’s body. A moment later, I had to step away again as my stomach revolted. I heaved near the baseboards, adding another terrible color and smell to the mix. At least I hadn’t eaten enough in the past few hours to make a worse mess.
“Gross,” Odette said, wrinkling her nose. Whether she was referring to Daniel’s body or my upset stomach, I wasn’t sure.
I spit and wiped my mouth. Shaking from head to toe, I forced myself to examine the detective. He stared at the ceiling, those intense blue eyes blank and cold. Like Tyler, he’d met his end at knife point, but while Tyler’s death had appeared to be long and drawn out, the killer was going for efficiency with Daniel. Two perfect slices took Daniel down, one across his neck and one on the inside of his thigh where the femoral artery was. It was overkill. Literally. Opening either spot would’ve been enough to kill Daniel in minutes. Opening both meant he probably bled out in seconds. There was no doubt in my mind that Oliver had done this. The image of him, doused in Daniel’s blood as he dragged Riley away, kept replaying in my head. I closed Daniel’s eyes and patted down his pockets.
“Looking for loose change?” Odette said.
I pulled a can of mace from Daniel’s pants. “Not exactly.”
Odette gazed at Daniel, an odd look on her face. “He had a daughter, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” I wiped my hands on an unstained portion of Daniel’s pants, but not all of his blood came off. “Guess it’s just her and her mother now. God, I hope they like each other.”
I had to move on, but it felt wrong to leave Daniel alone in the hallway. Odette did the ghost equivalent of nudging me on, pushing her hand through my shoulder. Her icy touch made me shiver. My skin tingled, but I no longer suffered from the full-body paralysis that our first meeting induced. The thought gave me the strength and determination to step over Daniel’s legs.
“You’re improving,” Odette noted as we walked on. “No longer relying on conscious thought to balance your energy. How did you learn to do that so fast?”
“I couldn’t always count on you to get me out of sticky situations,” I whispered. We moved slower than before. I swept the flashlight beam in every direction before advancing a step. “Turns out paralysis isn’t great for self-preservation. I adapted.”
Odette smirked. “No one’s ever done that before.”
“No one else has stayed here long enough to invoke the wrath of King and Queens’s past guests,” I said. “Are you impressed?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Admit it. Say I impressed you.”
“Never.”
The teasing fell flat when a faint whimper emanated from Oliver’s room at the end of the hallway. I sprinted toward the sound, flashlight swinging wildly. Paces away from the door, Odette reappeared in front of me. I ran through her. Not expecting a full-body immersion in the spirit world, my energy tipped. My veins buzzed, and my head throbbed, like I’d had one too many tequila shots at the lounge.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Sorry,” Odette said. “But you can’t barge in there without a plan. If you rush this, you might end up dead. If you screw up, Riley might end up dead. There are lives on the line here.”
Clenching my stomach, I braced against the wall and focused on my breathing. Gradually, everything calmed down again. “You’re right. Thank you.”
“You keep forgetting you have a valuable resource,” Odette said.
“I do?”
“Yes. Me.”
She disappeared with a pop. Inside Oliver’s room, I heard Riley hiccup with a faint gasp of surprise. A second later, Odette reappeared in the hallway.
“He dropped the gun,” she reported. “When you walk in, it’ll be on the floor to your left.”
“What about Riley?” I said. “Is she okay?”
“She’s not hurt, but Oliver still has a hold on her,” Odette said. “He’s sitting on the bed, rocking her back and forth like a baby. I might’ve screwed up though. She noticed me. If Oliver picked up on that, he might be prepared for you to come in.”
“Let’s move fast then.” I planted my feet, raised the can of mace to eye level, and reached for the door. “You got my back, right?”
Odette’s eyes sparkled in the moonlight. “As long as you’ve got mine.”
Instead of busting the door down like I wanted to, I eased it open. The creak of the hinges put goosebumps on my skin. Had Oliver heard it? Tentatively, I stepped into the room.
The first thing I saw was Riley’s face, perched over her father’s shoulder as he rocked her. He sat on the far side of the bed, facing the French doors that led outside. The storm had settled. It left a blank slate in its wake, a white canvas waiting for someone to ruin it. Riley’s fists clenched against her father’s back. Bloody handprints framed her cheeks, like Oliver had taken her head between his fingers. When her eyes met mine, I put a finger to my lips. Her chin quivered as I inched forward and knelt down to pick up the gun. The weapon felt foreign in my hands. I’d never held a gun before. I couldn’t bring myself to aim it at Oliver. If I accidentally fired it, the bullet could hit Riley instead. I settled for gripping it in both hands, finger nowhere near the trigger and the muzzle pointed at the bloodstained carpet.
“Oliver?” I ventured. “It’s Lucia. I have Daniel’s gun. If you hurt Riley, I won’t have any choice but to shoot you.”
He swayed Riley, cradling her tighter. When he replied, it sounded as if something was caught in his throat. “Hurt Riley? I would never do that.”
“You killed Daniel.” I took another step toward the bed, toward Riley. She lifted her fingers from her father’s back to reach for me. “You left him to die in the hallway.”
“That wasn’t me,” Oliver whispered. I couldn’t see his face. He did not turn to confront me.
“You’re covered in his blood, Oliver.” Another step. One less foot between me and Riley. “You’re hurting people. Don’t you understand that?”
His back muscles clenched as he squeezed Riley tighter. She panicked, dropping her hand to the back of his neck again, and bit her lip out of sheer fright. A droplet of blood welled up and fell to her father’s stained shirt.
“I can’t remember anything,” Oliver said. “Oh, God. I can’t remember.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re going to
get you help.”
He abruptly stood up, taking Riley with him, and I hastily backed away a few steps. She tried to pull free of him, kicking his shins and shoving against his chest, but his strong fingers wrapped around her arms and prevented her from going anywhere. When father and daughter locked eyes, Riley looked away as soon as possible and began to cry. Oliver turned around, and I understood why. He’d tried to gouge his eyes out.
He hadn’t succeeded. Each one was still firmly rooted in his skull, but both were bloodshot. A vein had burst in the left one, filling the white of it with thick crimson blood. Scratch marks from his nails raked his forehead and cheeks. I swallowed the acid at the back of my throat. Against my better judgement, I lifted the gun.
“Jesus, Oliver. What have you done to yourself?”
“I don’t want to see anymore,” he said, pivoting Riley around. “I don’t want to see the bodies or those people. The shadows that follow me around. The woman in the mirror.”
“What are you talking about?”
Riley whimpered as he jerked her shoulders and forced her toward me.
“We’re leaving,” he declared. “I told you. Riley and I are leaving.”
“You can’t leave.” The closed door was right behind me. I had nowhere to go but out, and I wasn’t leaving without Riley. “The snow’s waist deep.”
A crooked smile crossed Oliver’s face. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
He wrapped an arm around Riley’s neck to hold her still and reached into his pocket. I squinted at the object he removed: an ice pick.
“Oliver, what are you doing?”
“What I should’ve done as soon as Riley told me she could hear the dead,” he said, raising the ice pick above his head. When he brought it down, he aimed for Riley’s neck.
Adrenaline surged through my body as I pulled the trigger of Daniel’s gun. The bullet whizzed past Oliver and lodged itself in the French door, but it was enough to throw off Oliver’s aim. The ice pick grazed Riley’s shoulder rather than puncturing her neck. She yelled and bit down on her father’s arm. His roar shook the decorative pictures of Crimson Basin hanging on the walls as Riley ducked out of his grasp and sprinted across the room into my arms. Oliver lumbered toward us, half-blind from the clotting blood in his eyes, and lunged with the ice pick. I picked up Riley, pivoted 180 degrees—shielding Riley with my own body—and braced myself for the sting of the ice pick. It never came.
A scream ripped through Oliver’s vocal chords, so shrill and horrifying that I couldn’t help but look at what happened. It was Odette as I’d first met her: in flames from the roots of her hair to the soles of her shoes. The smell of burning hair and skin filled the room as she walked toward Oliver. He backed up against the French doors, eyes wide and wild as he looked for an escape from the teenaged ghost. How he could see her, I had no idea.
“Do you remember me?” Odette said. Her voice was different, deeper and guttural, as if she’d taken on some of the basement creature’s demonic qualities. “Do you?”
He slumped to the floor as she bore down on him. “Y-yes.”
“You betrayed me.”
“It wasn’t me,” he spluttered. “I swear, it wasn’t me.”
Odette continued to approach him, the flames eating away at her muscles and tendons. “You left me here to die.”
“Odette, it wasn’t my fault.”
They were face-to-face now. There was little left of Odette beside fire and bone. Empty eye sockets stared down at the man on the floor. She hissed in Oliver’s face. “I will never forgive you.”
The finality of her tone seemed to awaken something in Oliver. His face slackened and his shoulders slumped. His fingers tightened around the ice pick once more. His gaze never left Odette’s as he plunged the ice pick into his own neck.
“Dad!” Riley yelled.
Odette set the curtains on fire. The fabric went up in seconds. A spark alighted on the bedspread, and the room erupted in flame. I didn’t stay to figure out if it was an illusion of Odette’s or not. The smoke and ash were real enough, so I shoved Riley out of the suite. She resisted, clawing at my hands and arms and sobbing as she tried to get around me to reach her father. As the heat licked my heels, I picked her up and carried her from the room, leaving Odette and Oliver to finish their tragic business by themselves.
I ran for the lobby, Riley weighing me down. She went limp after a minute or two, but the growing cold spot on my shoulder indicated that she was weeping freely. The smoke followed us through the hallway, as did the roar and crackle of the fire. It was real. King and Queens was in flames for the second time in its history, come to collect the one Watson family member it hadn’t claimed the first time around. I thundered into the lobby, my lungs burning with the effort of carrying Riley. Jazmin and Nick waited by the steps to the Eagle’s View.
“What happened?” Jazmin demanded, relieving me of Riley. The kid transferred her anguish to Jazmin’s shoulder instead. Jazmin sniffed the air. “Is that smoke?”
“We have to go now.” I helped Nick to his feet and fit his cane into his hands. “This place is about to go up in flames. Please tell me you found enough snow gear for all of us.”
“Even better,” Nick said. “I found a way to White Oak that doesn’t involve stepping outside.”
“Nick, we don’t have time for riddles—”
“And we don’t have the equipment to traipse all the way through the snow to White Oak,” he added. “Follow me.”
He limped off, toward the hallway full of smoke.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted. “We’re all going to die if we go back that way.”
“Not if you hurry the heck up!” he called over his shoulder.
Jazmin and I exchanged a look. She shrugged as she set Riley on her feet. “What have we got to lose?”
I wiped a bloody tear from Riley’s cheek. “Everything.”
Riley grabbed my hand, interlocking our fingers. “Let’s go,” she whispered.
The three of us ran with Riley framed between me and Jazmin. We caught up to Nick in the smoky corridor. He’d pulled the collar of his sweatshirt over his nose to protect himself from the ashy air. I followed suit and made Riley do the same, but it didn’t keep us from hacking and coughing. We linked hands to keep track of each other and dove into the thick black air. It was nearly impossible to see anything. I put all of my faith in Nick, who never faltered as he led the way through the corridor.
“Heads up,” he called, voice muffled through his sweater. “We’re going down.”
My feet hit a flight of stairs. He’d led us to the narrow descent into the employee sector of the basement. I tried to rip my hand from Nick’s.
“We can’t go down there,” I said. “We’ll never get out!”
“Just trust me!”
With Nick pulling and Jazmin and Riley pushing, I had to trust him. Jazmin, bringing up the rear, slammed the door shut behind her. Though tendrils of smoke curled into the small space beneath the door, the air was clear enough to free our faces from the makeshift sweater masks. There was no time to savor the deep breaths. The fire was close behind us. We thundered down the stairs into the basement, and Nick shouldered open the door to the breaker room.
“I thought the keypad was broken,” I said, panting as we all ran in after him.
“It was.” Nick closed the door behind us, took off his sweater, and used it to block the space at the bottom to prevent more smoke from pouring in. “I ripped it off the wall to get the door unlocked.”
“We can’t wait this out,” Jazmin said. “The fire’s going to make it down here eventually, or the building is going to collapse from structural damage.”
“We’re not waiting.” Nick crossed the room, set his cane on top of a large electrical box, and tried to shove the box out of the way. “We’re getting out of here. Someone help me with this.”
I rushed over. Together, Nick and I moved the box out of the way. Disconnected wires dangled limp
ly from its back end. They’d been hastily cut through with a sharp knife, but it wasn’t the box or the wires that mattered. It was the grate in the wall that the electrical box had been hiding.
“What is that?” I said.
Nick lifted the grate off the wall, revealing a dark tunnel—about five feet high—that led from the room. He grinned as he set the grate off to the side, picked up his cane, and climbed into the tunnel. “It’s our way out. You coming?”
Riley went first, desperate to escape her burning childhood. I followed her, and Jazmin, as usual, pulled up the rear. We scuttled through the tunnel, hunched over in the small space. It got darker and colder the farther we went, but it wasn’t half as bad as walking through the snow would’ve been. My flashlight died, leaving Riley’s as the only light source. After several minutes, when my scalp was drenched in cold sweat, the tunnel grew tall enough to accommodate Nick’s full height. We stretched, groaning with relief, and kept walking.
“How did you know this was here?” I asked Nick.
“When I was planning to buy King and Queens, I pulled all sorts of resources from the public archives,” he explained. “That included blueprints. I noticed this tunnel marked, but everyone I asked about it didn’t know anything. I had a hunch though. See, King and Queens history was never squeaky clean. There were rumors that the original owner, Kent Watson, ran a drug smuggling ring. As legend has it, he built King and Queens as a front for his business. The tunnels were used to transport opiates from here to the old train station.”
“And where exactly is the old train station?” Jazmin asked.
Nick smiled over his shoulder. “As it just so happens, the old train station was remodeled into White Oak’s Slopes Café at the bottom of the mountain.”
“No freaking way.”
“Yes freaking way,” Nick said, the slang rolling off his tongue perfectly despite its deviance from his usual princely dialect. “I made sure access to the tunnels wasn’t blocked during renovations, just in case we ever needed to address the link between my resort and Oliver’s. It’s a good damn thing I did because here we are.”
The Haunting of Riley Watson Page 38