A corner of the paper had been torn away as the boy held the box up to his face, and he jerked back when Ziah reached over the counter for it. The two stared at one another for a long moment during which Lorelei felt just enough dread settle into her stomach to know that she should have done something a second sooner, and then Ziah hurdled right over the desk. Grier jumped back with a quickness he certainly didn’t have seconds before, crushing the package to him. The alalynx shot her head up and trilled.
Eyes wide, Lorelei darted around the edge of the front desk, but Grier was already sprinting for the dining room where the breakfast buffet was being picked at by tables full of guests. Ziah was flying after, all sense of decorum dropped as she lost a heel in her clamor over the desk. They burst through the room, Lorelei following and muttering apologies to the dwarf that had been barreled over, and continued on through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
Dishes crashed to the floor as Grier collided with the tiny form of Hana, carrying a tray of food to refill the buffet. Ziah’s bare foot landed in scrambled eggs, and she went skidding into the two, knocking them all into a pile. Lorelei stopped short just inside the doors, and they swung shut behind her.
Ando popped his head out from around hanging pans, both sets of his arms crossed. He shot an angry look at Lorelei as if this were somehow her fault, ignoring the apology she attempted to sputter and instead insisted they all needed to clean that up and then get the nether out of his kitchen. But the others were deaf to his shouting, Grier and Ziah blaming one another for the mess and slipping on slices of soggy toast as they tried to get to their feet.
Hana, though, was not scurrying about and cleaning up in her typical way. She was instead sitting on the floor, a piece of bacon draped over her shoulder, syrup streaking her pin-straight hair, and her dark eyes trained on the package that had landed in her lap. She held it up, marveling at the thing, crushed slightly but still intact.
Lorelei’s eyes widened, watching as the girl’s hand went for the bow to pull the whole thing loose, grave curse running through her mind. She tried to slip between Grier and Ziah to snatch it away, but the two were right in each other’s faces, snarling and blocking her in. There was a flicker of fire that alighted in one of Ziah’s hands, and then Grier’s form shifted so that a massive beast that was not wholly unlike a dog but much bigger was growling from the spot where Grier had just been standing. “Hey!” she shouted, looking from one of them to the other and throwing her arms out. “Calm down!”
“Bad magic.” Ando said in a voice that boomed into the kitchen ethereally, loud enough to make them all look. He stood behind Hana, having plucked the box away with a set of tongs, holding it at arm’s length. “You three,” he said with the authority of a chef whose kitchen had been violated for the first and last time that morning, “clean this up now. And you,”—he flicked the package over the others, and Lorelei caught it—“keep that away from them. It’s calling to the strongest being it can find. Hide it.”
She turned to leave, but Ando’s voice pierced the air once more.
“Not in your room,” he said as if knowing exactly what she was about to do. “Somewhere none of them will find it.”
Lorelei swept out the double doors, the package tight against her chest and her head down as she hurried back through the dining room. Half of the manor’s employees didn’t know she was human, and Ando was on Team In The Dark; he believed she was a fae being which was a bit different than being one of the charmed folk, so his trust in her over the others with the box perhaps made a sort of sense. She didn’t know what he truly was either, or Hana, his niece, for that matter, but he seemed wise enough to know what he was talking about and strong enough to keep the others at bay while she absconded with the package.
Her sigh of relief caught in her throat when she realized the foyer was no longer empty. Arista stood at the front desk, her tight frown drawn even tighter and frownier than usual. Beside her, the alalynx was now sitting and glaring at the woman contemptuously, ever Lorelei’s faithful companion. “I just had to check someone in.” Each word was like a cuff to the ear.
If there were someone at the manor Lorelei actually feared, it was Arista, half witch, half banshee, all boss. She had no idea Lorelei was human either and would have hated her for it. But Arista wasn’t scary because she could bind you up with magic or drain you of your blood—though those things were possible, and Lorelei had experienced tangentially the horror she could bestow—Arista was just sort of mean.
Lorelei stuffed the box up the front of her sweater while the woman adjusted her glasses. “Sorry,” she mumbled and hurried back behind the desk.
“I’d like to see you in my office after lunch, if you can find the time.” Arista swept off into the sitting room, and Lorelei panicked, but there wasn’t a long enough moment for her to consider what that really meant before the front door opened again.
A tall figure entered with fair hair and a long coat. He pulled sunglasses off and blinked into the foyer, taking in the space as most did without noticing the person behind the counter right away. He examined the massive iron chandelier hanging from the second story ceiling, flickering with thick candles that never dripped, the matching set of French doors inlaid with frosted glass on either side of the foyer that opened into cozy spaces, the damask wallpaper, the walnut wainscoting, and the twin staircases running up on either side of the reception counter all before his steely eyes finally fell on her. She grinned a little wider, and he made a beeline for the desk.
“Welcome to Moonlit Shores Manor, sir. Do you have a reservation?”
His brow wrinkled, and she recognized that look immediately.
“No worries, you don’t need one; we always manage to find the space for everyone. How long did you plan to stay with us?” She shifted the box under her sweater and used her free hand to thumb through the guest book to the sign-in page.
“Oh, well?” His eyes darted across the foyer at a noise in the other room, then came back to settle on the alalynx who was stretching and fluttering her dappled, grey wings. “I’m not actually sure.”
“That’s fine, we have lots of indeterminates,” she chirped just as the doors to the dining room swung open to reveal Grier and Ziah looking irked and miffed in kind. Lorelei glared at them, and the two froze. “If you could just fill this out for me, I can find you a room.” She flipped the book toward him single-handed, and Grier made his way across the foyer, offering to take his bags. The teen’s sweater had a curious, bright red stain across it that looked not exactly like the raspberry jam it was. The guest looked him up and down. “There was a little mishap in the kitchen.” Lorelei waved Grier away. “Maybe you should go clean up, and put the axe away while you’re at it.”
The guest watched him go before carefully taking the pen and filling out his information. Lorelei flipped the book back toward her, read off his name, Jordan Carr, and thumbed through the pages to find the room the manor had chosen for him while Ziah came to stand behind the counter.
Before Ziah could get close, Lorelei snapped the book shut and pushed it into her friend’s arms. “Thanks for watching the desk, I’ll take our new arrival to his room.” She grabbed the key from where it had materialized in the velvet-lined shadow box on the wall and flitted off.
The man’s bags were light, probably enchanted to be despite being filled to the brim, and she hastened up the stairs with him behind, eyeing the foyer to be sure no one followed. On the landing at the second floor, she sighed. “Mr. Carr, is it?”
He nodded, his eyes wandering up the long, carpeted hall. Most people in their early twenties like Lorelei insisted on being called by their first names, but she could tell from the shine of this man’s shoes and the designer tag on his bag that he was definitively going to be a Mister. His eyes lingered on the candles in their sconces, dripping wax that never reached the floor.
“Enchanted,” she said with a smile, as if he wouldn’t know, and led him to his room. Just as s
he went to slip the key in, she paused and glanced up to the number above the door: 210 and a half, the same room she had been given when she’d first shown up on Moonlit Shores Manor’s doorstep.
Well, they were quite full, so no wonder an extra room had to be squeezed in. With a chuckle, she unlocked the door and placed his bag on the rack just inside. The room was lined with paisley wallpaper and metal, half-moon sconces, a modern, low-profile bed in the center, and sleek, black side tables, starkly different from the gentle blues and fuzzy blankets the room conjured up when Lorelei occupied it for a few nights months earlier. “Here we are, Mr. Carr. Lunch is at noon and dinner is between five and eight, and if you need anything,”—she got up onto her toes to spy the slimline telephone beside the bed—“There it is. You can reach us by phone. No number, just ask for the front desk, and it’ll connect you. Enjoy your stay.”
Lorelei went to wave as she stepped past him, but he awkwardly grabbed her hand, sliding a folded bill into it, not something most guests did. She was caught off guard and jerked back, dropping the box from under her sweater, and it bounced along the floor right up to his feet.
Mr. Carr bent down and picked it up before she could shout for him to stop. He lifted it, eyes on the slightly crumpled brown paper, torn at one corner, and the emerald bow that had gone askew. Lorelei held her breath, waiting for the worst, and then he simply held it out to her.
She watched him closely, his brown eyes neither glassy nor rabid, then flicked her gaze down to the box, balanced on his hand. When she took it, she saw he had an old wound across his palm, and when she deposited the key there, he winced slightly but otherwise didn’t lunge to get the package back from her. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “It’s a gift for a friend, and apparently I haven’t found the best hiding spot for it yet, but I definitely will.”
And just like that, Lorelei enacted all of The Big Three Rules of Magic at once—she set her intentions, said them aloud, and there would be a cost for it all.
CHAPTER 2
FOOLISH
Hana’s egg salad was some of the best, but Lorelei was too concerned with her looming meeting with Arista to finish the lunch she’d brought to her room. The alalynx pawed at the leftover half of a sandwich. “Don’t cause trouble, Aly,” said Lorelei as she brushed through and tied up her wavy, brown hair into a neater ponytail.
The alalynx, who had naturally fallen into being called Aly for short, collapsed in a huff on the bed and swished the darkened tip of her tail, dappled wings flicking with disapproval.
Lorelei rubbed hazel eyes and slapped pale cheeks to prepare herself for whatever was to come, and then hurried downstairs, making a quick detour to the basement before heading outside.
It was cool and dark at the foot of the stairs, the gentle lapping of water rising up to meet her. She paused only a second to take in the pinks and blues of the phosphorescent mosses growing over the rocky edges of the cavernous basement, then picked her way across the boardwalk that ran over the underground pond. At its end, she turned down the hall on the cavern’s far side where the basement was laid out much more normally, like stepping into a different dimension, but she’d done something like that a time or two already, and this didn’t come with a queasiness in her belly or a feeling like she’d stopped existing for a brief and horrifying moment.
There were many doors off this hall, the laundry, loads of storage, and a bedroom which happened to be Conrad’s. His door was predictably shut. She slowed as she passed it, hoping it might open at just the right time, but like so many times before, it did not.
At the far end of the hall there was a last door, a red flame carved into it, and she went through and down a second set of stairs to the furnace room. She hadn’t been back since the night of the seance with Betsy Jo LaReaux, there was never really a reason, but despite the warm temperature, she shivered. Here had been where the clairvoyant witch warned her about some future danger to occur during a blizzard, and here too they had all come together, clasped hands, and shared a vision of Byron running through the woods, though no one knew who or what he was at the time.
Lorelei pulled the small box from under her sweater and straightened the velvety, green bow. Looking over the card and its warning one more time, she tried to feel what the others did, but no overwhelming urge to tear into it took her. It was just a stupid, little box.
She shrugged and stuffed it behind a crate that looked like it hadn’t been moved in decades, just next to the furnace. No one would find the thing down there, and she left the basement once again being sure no one saw her. It was a quick walk down a hall and out the manor’s back door after that to cross the grounds.
She tucked her hands into the crooks of her arms, unprepared for the late November chill. She hustled down the path behind the manor, well-worn and lined with evergreen bushes that harbored buzzing creatures that sometimes glowed in a Morse-like code. The wildflower garden that sprawled at the front of Arista and Seamus’s cottage was fading with winter’s early arrival, but the orange sneezeweed and star-shaped toad lilies were holding strong, pops of color against the dull brown the encircling forest was falling into. The front door to the cottage was painted teal with a cutesy flower box attached, but it gave her only that much more anxiety knowing what it held within as she took a breath, checked the time on her phone, and knocked promptly at twelve thirty.
The cozy front room of the cottage served as an office, lined with shelves and comfortable seating on either side of Arista’s desk. Lorelei had never seen what was beyond the door into the rest of the house, but she imagined it was more of the same, French country-esque decor and low lighting, all things that were decidedly un-Arista.
The woman was sitting behind her desk and didn’t bother to flick her eyes up at Lorelei when she entered or even when she cautiously took a seat across from her, but when she opened her mouth to say hello, Arista immediately cut her off.
“I trust you’ve said nothing.”
It was not a question, but Lorelei answered anyway. “Not a word.”
She was talking, of course, about the things that had happened the week prior right over the hill down an old, forgotten path behind the cottage. At the edge of the woods that surrounded Moonlit Shores Manor sat the old Rognvaldson house—Conrad’s family home—and it was there Lorelei had almost lost her life. But so had Conrad, and, really, so had everybody if things had gone down a bit differently.
Her stomach turned over as she glanced out the window, the shadow of the house just visible through the bare trees.
“Thank you.” Arista looked up at her then and pulled off her glasses, rubbing her eyes. Well, that was not what Lorelei had expected.
But then seeing Arista’s banshee form, starkly white, ghostly, and able to scream absolute despair into her soul was not what Lorelei had expected either, and she’d certainly experienced that too.
“I know this is…this is hard,” the woman went on, a tinge of something like sympathy in her voice. “I appreciate your discretion.”
Lorelei wasn’t doing it for her, she was keeping all of this in for Conrad because he had asked, and, well, she wasn’t entirely sure why else, but she would continue to do it even if he hadn’t found a single moment to speak to her since. Even if he had found lots of moments, instead, to have Bridgette over. Even if—she took a breath and shook her head. “You’re welcome.”
“I do want to assure you, Ms. Fischer, that things here are safe. That you are safe.” Arista rolled a pen between her fingers, staring at it hard. “I’ve warded the grounds, everything from the station to the house to the highway. They should hold now that I’ve…I’ve seen him and know for certain what to ward against.”
Lorelei squeezed her knees together, more uncomfortable under the woman’s weird melancholy than her typical haughty annoyance. The him was Byron, someone neither Arista nor Conrad had seen for a decade and a half until that night, and someone, presumably, they had once cared for when he was a child. Lorelei swallo
wed. “Conrad also said he sent him somewhere he can’t get back from for a while, right?”
Arista nodded and pulled out her cards from the desk drawer to shuffle as she spoke. “Those trow dens in the nether are like a labyrinth. I’ve never known anyone to get out of them in less than a month, and doing so will be arduous. Returning here right away would be foolish as well, and Byron was never foolish.”
Lorelei watched the over-sized cards fly deftly from one of Arista’s hands to the other, mesmerizing. “We’re going to tell the others eventually, right?” She leaned forward. “For their protection.”
Arista’s sharp eyes fell on her over the rim of her glasses, and she held out the stack. Without being told, Lorelei cut the cards, and Arista flipped up the topmost one. “Temperance,” she said, revealing a picture of an angel pouring water from one chalice into another. “You must be patient and careful.”
Lorelei sighed a bit more heavily than she meant. She didn’t like that at all.
Arista replaced the card and shuffled the deck again, then pulled another herself. Her face changed, brows raising, and she leaned back into her chair. With a simple shake of her head, she stuffed it back in without showing Lorelei and shuffled again, then pulled.
This time she let out a single laugh though it was the least amused laughter Lorelei had ever heard. She then slipped the whole deck back inside the drawer and snapped it shut. “Your trial period is over, Ms. Fischer, and it looks like we’ll be keeping you on at the manor. Ziah is pleased with your work, and so are the rest of us,” she said with a little roll of her eyes. “I’m approving a raise, some additional time off, and a second floating holiday for…whatever it is lorelei celebrate.”
She hoped the woman didn’t want her to fill in the blank—she had about as much an idea as Arista did when it came to what fae beings, including lorelei, the creature she pretended to be, celebrated.
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 2