The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  We’d reached a door. It was a surprisingly normal door, freshly painted, with a White Oak Slopes Café sign affixed to its front. Nick drew a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and ushered us through it. We emerged in a storage room, free of smoke. Nick locked the door behind him and led us up the staircase. We were met with casual chatter, the perfect indoor temperature to warm up skiers just in from the mountain paths, and the luxurious smell of fresh coffee and pressed paninis. The Slopes Café was open for business, and the guests of White Oak were taking full advantage. Coffee machines whirred and frying pans clanged as the employees and customers bustled about, completely oblivious to the terrible goings-on at the neighboring resort on the opposite side of the mountain.

  “Mr. Porter!” A short college-aged boy with bright blue hair and wearing a Slopes apron waved at Nick with an espresso mug. He wormed his way through the other employees. “You’re back! Wow, and you smell like last year’s Thanksgiving turkey deep fry accident at my uncle’s house. What happened to you?”

  Nick clapped the young man on his shoulder. “Good to see you too, Dalton. I’m afraid we ran into some trouble at King and Queens. My first and only priority is making sure my new friends are safe and comfortable. Call the front desk and let them know we’re heading to the lobby. I need the finest suite cleared out and cleaned.”

  It was all too normal. White Oak was gorgeous. Its perfect modern architecture blew King and Queens’s antiquated style out of the water. The lobby was vast and beautiful, with an enormous angled lookout to see the conditions on the mountain. The guests could practically sit on the reinforced glass and watch the skiers pass beneath. It was dark outside, and White Oak turned off its lights at night so the constellations were visible. People milled about, playing cards or reading to keep themselves busy. All in all, if you had to wait out the biggest snowstorm the Basin had seen in years, this was the way to do it. Nick, Jazmin, Riley, and I looked bizarrely out of place. We were banged up, bruised, bleeding, and covered in soot. Our group attracted several looks of alarm, but Nick was quick to reassure his guests that everything was okay.

  “Just a small problem at the neighboring resort,” he said to a passing family whose five-year-old unabashedly stared at the bloody handprints on Riley’s face. “Nothing for you to worry about. Enjoy your evening! Try the lamb at Porter’s Restaurant. It’s divine!”

  I tugged on the sleeve of Nick’s shirt. “Uh, maybe we should get out of the lobby, Nick. I doubt this is doing any good for your business.”

  “Working on it. Ah, Eloise!”

  A busty blonde woman, dressed smartly in a pencil skirt and a White Oak blouse and carrying a sleek, shiny tablet, beamed as she approached us. “Mr. Porter, we’re so relieved you’re back! My goodness, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. What on earth happened to your head?”

  “That’s what we were just discussing, Eloise,” Nick said, urging us all to a secluded corner of the massive lobby. “Did you secure the suite for my guests?”

  “Yes, it’s all ready for you, sir,” she said, tapping away on her tablet. “Shall I show your guests the way?”

  “No, I’ll do it,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ll need medical attention. Could you send our team up as well?”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “Excellent. Everyone else, follow me.”

  We fell in line behind Nick as he led us to the elevators. There were a whopping eight of them, four for White Oak’s right tower of rooms and four for the left tower. When we got in, the lift zoomed upward, the mechanics utterly silent, as a cool female voice announced floor numbers.

  “Here we are,” Nick said as we stepped out on the top floor. “It’s the first door. Riley, would you like to do the honors?”

  After our ordeal, the simple joy of swiping a key card was lost on Riley. She stared at the card when Nick offered it, so I took it instead and flashed it against the sensor. The door popped open, and automatic lights switched on as we entered. Jazmin gasped aloud. If the suite at King and Queens was nice, White Oak’s was downright heavenly. Like a penthouse apartment in upstate New York, it included three bedrooms, a kitchen worthy of catalogue glory, a living room with white leather couches, a lounge area and bar, and a rooftop terrace with one of those fancy gas fire pits set in marble.

  “I’d ask you not to sit down until you’ve all had baths,” Nick said, wincing apologetically. “I’m afraid it’s quite expensive to maintain this place.”

  Without a word, Riley walked off. A moment later, we heard the water running in a nearby bathroom. Jazmin took off her sweater, the blue fabric now black, and dumped it on the floor.

  “The kid’s got the right idea,” she said. “I’m going to check out the other bathroom. There is another bathroom, right?”

  “Through the master bedroom,” Nick called.

  Jazmin waved her thanks and disappeared, leaving me and Nick alone in the foyer. The suite was big enough for its own entrance hall. Nick’s hand trembled. His cane slipped. I stopped it with the side of my shoe and repositioned it in Nick’s faulty grasp.

  “Thank you,” he said. “This has been quite the adventure.”

  “Can you check that the other King and Queens employees made it here safely?” I asked. “I’d like to know if they’re okay.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that right away,” he said. “What about you, Lucia? You’re always checking on everyone else.”

  “I just watched a man try to kill his own daughter.” I wandered to the sliding doors and gazed across the mountain. In the distance, an orange glow quivered on the horizon and smoke furled up to meet the night sky. “When that didn’t work, he lit his resort on fire and tried to kill himself instead.” It was easier to lie to Nick about the fire than to tell him the truth about Odette. At this point, it didn’t matter who was responsible. Both Oliver and Odette were gone. “You should call someone for that too,” I added, nodding at the glow. “Let the fire station know about it.”

  “I’ll get my staff right on it.” He cleared his throat and limped toward the door. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. The medical team should be here any minute, and I’ll send up our best selections from the room service menu.”

  “Don’t forget yourself,” I said. “Someone needs to clean and redress your head wound.”

  “I won’t forget. Good night, Lucia. Try not to worry.”

  Alone in the main part of the suite, the first thing I did was wash the blood and soot from my hands, arms, and face. I coughed up a mouthful of ash, spat it in the stainless silver kitchen sink, and washed it down the drain. When I looked up, a woman with dark hair and blue eyes stood next to me.

  “Lucia,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Oh my God.” I accidentally sprayed water across the kitchen. The droplets fell through the woman’s body and hit the floor like she wasn’t there. Because she wasn’t. “Stella? How are you here? King and Queens is going to be nothing but ash in a few hours.”

  Behind her head, the plume of fire and smoke continued to drift toward the night. Stella—Odette and Oliver’s mother—leaned against the kitchen counter, creating the perfect angle with her body. The fabric of her red ball gown fluttered as if an invisible breeze rippled through the room.

  “Did you think we were confined to King and Queens?” she asked, the lilt to her voice vaguely familiar to me. “Darling, we are but wisps of smoke.”

  My hands trembled. I was too exhausted to worry about balancing my energy, and my body tingled all over. “What are you saying?”

  “It is widely believed that leftover spirits occupy a space,” Stella explained as she adjusted one of her dangling diamond earrings to sit properly above her collarbone. “This is not always true. On rare occasions, we decide to occupy a person.”

  A lump rose in my throat. I fought to draw breath around it. “A person?”

  “Your troubles are far from over.” She rounded the counter, the tips of her polished fingers brushing across the granite. She wal
ked to the sliding doors as if the living room was her runway. When she reached the glass, she posed unintentionally, glancing over her shoulder at me. “Welcome to the big leagues, sweetheart.”

  “Wait!” I vaulted over the white sofa to reach her, planting ashy footprints on the white leather. “What does that mean, Stella? What’s going to happen?”

  “I suppose that’s up to you,” she replied. “If you want to make it out of this, you need to confront the one thing that’s holding you back.”

  “Which is what?”

  She fixed me with a knowing look. “Did you not tell my grandaughter the truth? I know you killed your father, Lucia.”

  She might as well have thrown a brick. The words crashed into me—words I had never been capable of saying out loud—and knocked the wind out of me.

  “How did you—?”

  She dismissed my oncoming panic attack with a regal flick of her wrist. “Oh, please. Your energy is dripping with guilt and shame. It tastes terrible. Au revoir!”

  She vanished through the glass. I dropped to my knees, holding on to the back of the sofa for support as my lungs attempted to inflate again.

  “Lucia?” Riley stood in the archway that led to the bedrooms, a fluffy white towel draped over her shoulder. She stared at me in shock. “Is it true? What she said?”

  I dragged myself to my feet. Riley backed into the hallway behind her. I froze in place. She was scared of me. I stood my ground and swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Yes,” I said. “I killed my father.”

  21

  For the first time in two weeks, I had a bed to myself. The duvet floated like a cloud atop the mattress, enveloping me in its fluffy hold. My bare legs whooshed against the silky satin sheets. When a spear of sunshine pierced the space between the curtains and hit my eyes, I pulled the duvet over my face and laid on my stomach. If I stayed asleep, the events of yesterday and the weeks previous would stay in the past for a while longer. No haunted resorts or ski lift accidents that weren’t really accidents or murderers with no faces. No ghosts or fiery hallways or homicides. I longed for the old days, when I was struggling to make ends meet through advertising revenue on YouTube. That version of myself was long gone. King and Queens Ski Lodge and Resort had scrubbed her clean from my personality. On the upside, the previous Lucia Star was selfish and single-minded to the point of carelessness. The new Lucia was less sane, but she’d learned to look beyond the scope of her own needs. Or maybe she hadn’t.

  One good thing had come out of the escape from the fire at King and Queens. We were safe—Jazmin, Riley, me, and Nick—at White Oak Resort and Spa. There were perks of getting snowed in at a haunted resort with the owner of the rival lodge. Nick Porter arranged for us to stay in one of White Oak’s nicest suites. The place was apartment-sized, and each of us got our own room and bed. While the view from the patio was breathtaking and my room was warm and cozy, the bed itself felt cold and empty after so many nights of sharing with Jazmin and Riley.

  “Get up,” a sharp voice snapped.

  A woman in a full-length ball gown with gorgeous fabric as red as a ripe apple lounged against the door to the patio. Her dark hair flipped away from her face in an outdated style, but it did nothing to detract from her beauty. Once demure and polite when I’d first met her, she now spoke with impatience and irritation.

  “Again, Stella?” I buried my head beneath a pillow so the feathery down blocked my ears. “Can we take a break? I feel like crap.”

  My head was fuzzy and heavy like yesterday was Cinco de Mayo and I’d had one tequila shot too many. A bitter taste rose in my throat.

  “You don’t have time for breaks,” Stella said. “Did you bother to consider what I said last night?”

  “That ghosts can occupy people?” I repeated. “No. I was too busy trying to convince Riley that I’m not a murderer.”

  “But you are.”

  “I am not!”

  Stella smiled as she swept the curtains open with her ghostly energy. Blinding white sunlight poured in from the patio. For the first time in days, the sky was blue instead of gray. The worst snowstorm in Crimson Basin’s recent history had finally passed over. The sky got me out of bed. I wormed out from under the duvet and stood next to Stella to look up at the great expanse of bright blue. It was pure and complete, not a wisp of condensation in the air. Stella watched me out of the side of her eye.

  “I can’t believe you told her,” I muttered. “You knew she was standing behind me, didn’t you?”

  “As a mother, I believe all children should know every truth about their parents.”

  “Riley isn’t my daughter.”

  “She might as well be.”

  “You’re a hypocrite,” I said. “You never lied to Odette or Oliver to keep them safe?”

  Stella’s mouth twisted at the sound of her children’s names. Odette had died on the same day she had. Oliver’s fate was less certain, but the last time I’d seen him, he’d shoved an ice pick into his neck before King and Queens went up in flames. His odds weren’t exactly stellar.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “Riley wouldn’t look at me or talk to me last night. I knocked on her door for a good hour.”

  Stella brushed her voluminous hair over one shoulder. “Here’s the one thing you should know about children, Lucia. They’re amazingly perceptive. When adults try to hide things from them, they’re likely to figure out exactly what it is.”

  “I am not a murderer.”

  “You admitted to killing your father.”

  I stared into the sun until my eyes watered. Bright pink and purple floaters decorated the inside of my eyelids. The swirling colors exacerbated my nausea.

  “You don’t understand the situation,” I said.

  “Neither do you,” Stella replied. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “To torment me about my past?”

  “To remind you the past affects the present,” she said. “The block in your mind is affecting your energy. Odette warned you from the beginning. If you don’t learn to control your energy, you won’t reach your potential as a psychic.”

  “I never wanted to be a psychic in the first place.”

  “But you are one,” she said. “We don’t choose our fates, Lucia.”

  I looked her square in the face. Like Odette, her image wavered like static on an old television set. “I don’t believe that.”

  She began to fade, becoming translucent. “Don’t negate the truth. It will only continue to harm you.”

  “That’s it?” I demanded. “For someone who claims she wants to help me, you aren’t doing a good job.”

  Stella disappeared, but her sardonic laugh lingered in my room. The sound of it, sans source, was creepier than Stella’s presence. A shiver tickled my spine, a symptom of my unbalanced energy, as Riley’s and Jazmin’s voices drifted in from the living room. My heart swelled at the thought of them. My weird little family was safe, and here at White Oak, I could take care of them the way they deserved. Was it too much to ask for a nice breakfast with the two of them? Room service at White Oak was said to be divine. I pictured stacks of pancakes and French toast, fried eggs, bacon, and fresh fruit, steaming cappuccinos with the perfect milk-to-coffee ratio, and an entire selection of organic teas. We could fire up the fancy gas fire pit on the patio and wrap up in White Oak’s complimentary hand-woven throw blankets to fend off the cold. A girl could hope for a normal morning like that, right?

  As soon as I set foot in the main room—the living room to the left and the exquisite kitchen to the right—Riley’s gaze snapped up to clock my movement. Jazmin, drinking coffee on the couch, looked from me to Riley, waiting for something to happen.

  “Riley, I—” I began.

  She turned on her heel and left the suite, still in her pajamas, leaving her toast to blacken in the oven and the jam jar uncapped on the counter. I dipped my finger in the apricot preserves before putting the rest away.

  “She hates m
e,” I said, flopping next to Jazmin.

  She held up her coffee, grimacing as she kept it from spilling on the perfect white leather. “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “She won’t look at me, Jazmin.” I lay down, hooked my knees over the edge of the couch, and rested my head in Jazmin’s lap. “She can’t stand being in the same room with me.”

  Jazmin set down her coffee and combed her fingers through my tangled hair. “Give her time to process. It’s no small secret you’ve been hiding.”

  I picked at a hole in Jazmin’s flannel pajama pants, widening it with my pinky. “What was I supposed to say, huh? You were the only person I told.”

  “You didn’t give me the whole story.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “No, of course not.” She braided my hair then pulled the pattern free again. “Can you tell me now?”

  I ripped the fabric of her pants, and she tugged my hand away to prevent me from doing any more damage. “Sorry. I’m not ready.”

  “You were thirteen when it happened,” Jazmin reminded me, gentle as the world’s best therapist. “It’s been seventeen years. It’s time for you to confront your past.”

  “Why does everyone keep telling me that?” I grumbled.

  Jazmin’s stomach contracted as she laughed, jostling my head. “Maybe you should take it as a sign to start listening to someone other than yourself, Madame Lucia.”

  In most scenarios, Jazmin’s unfiltered honesty prevailed above her other personality traits. Today, I wished she’d keep it bottled up. I sat up, detangling Jazmin’s fingers from my hair.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Stella visited me last night.”

  “Are you kidding me? I thought the ghosts were tied to White Oak,” she said. “I thought we were done when it burned down.”

  “According to Stella, ghosts can occupy a person or a place.”

  “Like possession?”

  My head throbbed, and my stomach flipped again. “No, she’s able to follow me around because our energies are attached, or something like that. None of this ghosts science crap makes sense.”