The Second-Best Haunted Hotel on Mercer Street

by Cory Putman Oakes

  “Loan agreement,” Willow read out loud, “between the Ivan family and Francisco Pierce . . . wait, what?”

  Willow read farther down, skimming through the legal-ese until the document got to the point.

  “Francisco Pierce agrees to loan the Hotel Ivan the sum of money agreed upon above, and in exchange, the Ivan family agrees to make him an equal co-owner of the Hotel Ivan . . .”

  On the last page, there were spaces for two signatures: Pierce’s and “a representative of the Ivan family.” Both were blank. There was a sticky note next to the blank lines that read, “Talk to Pierce about this ASAP.”

  The note was written in her mother’s swirly cursive.

  There was a loud whisper from the other side of the door. “Willow! Willow! It’s Evie!”

  “What’s going on?” Willow asked, putting the file down and throwing the door open. “Is it going OK? Is the inspector happy? It must be almost dinnertime, right? I have to be there, Evie. I can’t miss—”

  “We know,” Evie said, then gestured to Bree, who stood behind her holding a black top hat with a long black veil. “We have an idea! Come on!”

  The Hotel Ivan’s private dining room had been set with the hotel’s second-finest china—the red set, Willow noted with satisfaction, not the blue one with the chipped plates. Mr. Renard was seated in the place of honor at the head of the table. Officer Myers was to his right, deep in conversation with both of the Ms. Loustrouses. Across from them sat Mr. and Mrs. Prescott and Kylie (who was still absorbed in her phone). Bree was perched in the corner, her phone in one hand, poised to film the whole dinner scene, and her Nikon in the other, to catch the occasional candid still shot.

  The room was lit entirely by candles. The tiny flames bounced off the crystal chandelier, making the wineglasses sparkle mysteriously.

  Behind her, someone let out a low whistle. Willow turned in the doorway and tried to hide her surprise at the sight of her father in an enormously hairy fake beard.

  “It looks beautiful in here,” Mr. Ivan breathed.

  “It does,” Willow agreed. She caught sight of Pierce standing at attention near the kitchen door and gave him an approving nod, exaggerating the movement so that Pierce would notice even though she was wearing a heavy veil. The unflappable concierge gave her a half smile before schooling his face back to his usual deadpan expression.

  “Willow,” Mr. Ivan said hesitantly, drawing her attention back to him. “I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . I’ve been thinking about what you said to me that day in the lobby. I went to my appointment with Dr. Strode.”

  Willow’s heart leaped into her throat. She took one step back out into the hall so the guests wouldn’t overhear their conversation.

  “She gave me a prescription, and I’ve been taking it. It’ll take a while, maybe a few weeks, until it fully kicks in. But I already feel a little better.”

  Willow squeezed her father’s hand. “Dad, that’s great. The best news.”

  Mr. Ivan squeezed her hand back. “I’m going to make things up to you, Willow. Starting now. Tonight.” Then he frowned, looking over Willow’s shoulder. “Where’s Molly? Shouldn’t she be here by now?”

  “I hope she didn’t forget!” Willow wrung her hands. “Go on inside, Dad, I’ll go look for—”

  “I’m here! I’m here!”

  Mr. Ivan gave Willow’s hand one last squeeze before he disappeared into the dining room. Willow turned to ask Molly what had taken her so long, but the sight of her made Willow’s breath catch in her throat.

  The Headless Horsewoman—not actually headless at the moment—had traded her usual brown curls for platinum-blond locks. Her Medium robes were the brightest possible shades of pink and purple. She was standing taller than usual, teetering only slightly in her sky-high silver heels.

  “You look like—” Willow’s voice failed her.

  “Do you think so?” Molly asked, giving a small twirl, then grabbing the wall to keep from tripping over her heels. “That’s what I was going for. Leonata would have loved this whole evening.”

  “Yep,” said Willow, fighting back tears. “She really would have.”

  Molly grinned.

  We’re going to pull this off, Willow thought to herself. And since she knew her veil fully obscured her face, she didn’t fight the urge to beam with pride as she and Molly entered the dining room.

  “Gentlefolk,” Pierce boomed. “Please welcome Madame Zabarnathy, our Medium, and Tabitha, her mysterious veiled assistant.”

  There was polite applause as Molly took her place at the foot of the table, across from Mr. Renard. Willow took the seat to Molly’s left, across from her father.

  “Madame Zabarnathy is here to assist us in communing with the spirits,” Pierce explained. “But first, Chef Antonia Fiore, the acclaimed head chef of the Hotel Ivan, is proud to present to you an exclusive five-course tasting menu. Your server tonight will be none other than Francesca Fiore, Chef Antonia’s protégé and niece. Bon appétit!”

  The kitchen door swung open, and Francesca came in with the first course.

  Willow glanced down at the menu in front of her.

  Willow grinned as she picked up her appetizer and maneuvered it up and under her veil. She took a bite, but her grin quickly faded as the tang of raw garlic burned her tongue and brought tears to her eyes.

  “Oh my!” Mrs. Prescott cried out, shuddering over her own bite of toast. “Is this garlic raw?”

  “It is!” one of the Ms. Loustrouses confirmed, setting her toast back on her plate.

  “It is,” Mr. Renard repeated from the head of the table. Willow stiffened, but the inspector finished his toast in one enormous bite, dusted off his hands, and sat back in his chair with a satisfied grin. “The raw food movement is quite trendy at the moment, isn’t it? I do like a chef who isn’t afraid to be avant-garde.”

  “Yes,” Officer Myers agreed, although he pushed his appetizer plate discreetly to one side. “Avant-garde is . . . really super.”

  Willow, who was 100 percent certain the raw garlic had been a mistake, let out a sigh of relief as Francesca reappeared with the soup course. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she’d been so busy preparing for the inspector’s visit that she’d skipped lunch. She dug into the bowl of ghost pepper soup Francesca set before her, scooped an enormous spoonful into her mouth behind her veil—

  —and tried not to gag.

  The soup was not just spicy. It was five-alarm, set-your-mouth-on-fire, burn-your-stomach-up-and-make-you-breathe-flames-for-days hot. Willow sputtered over her mouthful and barely forced herself to swallow. Not all the guests were as lucky; both Mr. and Mrs. Prescott spat their soup back into their bowls. One of the Ms. Loustrouses started choking, and Officer Myers pounded her industriously on the back.

  Willow kicked her father under the table.

  “Mhhhmmm,” Mr. Ivan said quickly, still holding his first untasted bite of soup in front of his lips. “Ghost pepper soup! Not for the faint of heart!”

  “I should say not,” Mr. Renard agreed. Willow could hardly bring herself to look up at the head of the table, but when she did, she saw that the inspector was licking his lips and mmm-ing approvingly as he brought another spoonful to his mouth. “Such flavor! Wonderful to find a chef who’s not afraid to go all out with the spiciness. I find that so many celebrity chefs are afraid of heat. It’s such a shame. Don’t you agree, Detective Myers?”

  “What? Oh, um, yes. Such a shame,” Officer Myers agreed, then turned away to gulp down the entire contents of his water glass.

  “I like it,” said Kylie, and Willow watched incredulously as the sulky teen slurped down spoonful after spoonful, seemingly unaffected by the volcanic level of spice. Her parents also looked on in amazement.

  The kitchen door opened a crack, and Willow spotted Francesca waving to get her attention.

  “Excuse me,” said Willow, scooting her chair back. “I, um, need to use the bathroom.”

  From the
corner, Bree was shooting Willow questioning looks over the top of her phone. Once Willow was sure she was out of the camera’s range, she spread her hands in an I don’t know gesture before making a beeline for the kitchen.

  When she pushed the swinging doors open, she found herself in the middle of a cloud of smoke.

  “Francesca? What’s going on?” Willow asked, fumbling to get her veil out of her eyes and struggling to be heard over the steady beep-beep-beep of the smoke alarm. “Francesca? Antonia? Hello?”

  “Here!” A hand reached through the smoke and pulled Willow to the other side of the kitchen. “Help me!”

  Francesca threw open a window and started frantically fanning cold night air into the smoke-filled kitchen. Willow opened another window and did the same until the smoke thinned out a bit and the beeping finally stopped.

  Francesca slumped against the counter.

  “What happened?” Willow asked, looking worriedly around the kitchen. “Where’s Antonia?”

  Francesca gestured vaguely to the walk-in freezer. Chef Antonia waved at Willow through the circular window in the door.

  “I’m readying the crêpes Suzette!” she yelled through the metal door, which Willow noticed had been wedged shut with a broom handle. “Tell me when you’re ready for the flaming sauce!” Willow jumped as the chef held up something long and metal with a flickering flame coming out one end.

  “Crêpes Suzette?” Willow asked. “That’s not on the menu, is it?”

  “Aunt Antonia, I told you to put the flambé torch down!” Francesca yelled. Then, more quietly, she said, “No, it’s not on the menu. She’s lost it, Willow! I locked her in the freezer so she couldn’t set anything else on fire.”

  Willow put a shocked hand to her mouth.

  “It’s the Fading,” Francesca said defensively. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “How did she get so bad?”

  “I don’t know! Everything seemed fine. Then I noticed that she hadn’t roasted the garlic.”

  “And the soup?” Willow asked, shuddering slightly at the memory.

  “That was my fault. I had no idea how many peppers to add. She keeps all of her recipes in her head, you know! And her head isn’t exactly the tidiest of places these days.”

  “What about the rest of the dinner?” Willow asked.

  Francesca wiped her sweaty forehead on her apron.

  “I made all of the tarts earlier today,” she said, pointing to a tower of pastries safely on the other side of the room. “So dessert should be okay.”

  “And the main course?” Willow asked. “The duck?”

  “Incinerated,” Francesca reported, gesturing to the ovens, all of which were still smoking slightly. “That’s why I called you in here. What are we going to do, Willow? We have nothing to serve for the main course!”

  “Crêpes Suzette!” Antonia yelled from the freezer, and Francesca let out a small shriek as a fireball exploded in the window. “Wheeeeeee!”

  Willow looked wildly around the kitchen and a wave of panic rushed over her. Other than a giant saucepan, which was bubbling like mad and occasionally sending splatters of sticky orange goo (the blood orange sauce, she presumed) into the air, there was nothing.

  “We have to have something . . .”

  “We don’t!” Francesca spread her hands. “The refrigerators shorted out again. The pantry’s been picked clean, and the vegetable guy didn’t show up this morning—”

  “There’s got to be something!” Willow interrupted. Then she had a sudden flash of inspiration. “Lasagna!”

  “What?”

  “There’s always lasagna,” Willow said desperately. “Isn’t there?”

  Francesca frowned. “Aunt Antonia made some last week and froze them—last week’s show was about make-ahead meals—but Willow, we can’t serve lasagna! The inspector’s expecting a gourmet meal! Plus, it’s frozen solid.”

  “We don’t have a choice!” Willow insisted. “It’s that or nothing.”

  Francesca bit her lip, thought for a minute, then nodded resolutely.

  “OK,” she said, shooing Willow toward the kitchen door. “I think I can make this work. Go back out there.”

  “What are you going to do?” Willow asked as Francesca picked up a large pot lid and held it out in front of her like a shield.

  “What we always do when something goes wrong in the kitchen,” Francesca said grimly, squatting down into a runner’s starting stance. “Put it in a nice dish, give it a fancy name, and hope nobody notices.”

  She turned toward the freezer. “Aunt Antonia, put the torch down! I’m coming in for the lasagnas!”

  Ten minutes later, Willow looked up nervously as Francesca wheeled in a tea cart with the Hotel Ivan’s largest serving dish on top. She handed Pierce a notecard.

  “Gentlefolk, we’ve had a last-minute change to the menu,” Pierce announced, squinting at the card. “The duck was, regrettably, not up to Chef Antonia Fiore’s exacting standards. As an alternative, she has prepared for you one of her, er, signature dishes. One that has been passed down through her family for generations: chilled Italian ragout with sauce tomate.”

  Francesca began scooping the contents of the serving dish into bowls, and Pierce helped set them in front of the hungry diners. There was complete silence at the table as the guests dug into the main course, and Willow was sure that if it were possible to die of dread, she would have turned into a ghost right then and there. Any moment now, everyone would figure out that they were eating not-quite-thawed lasagna that had been chopped up and put into fancy bowls.

  Willow braced herself for the outrage. Who would be the first to point it out? Mr. Renard? One of the Ms. Loustrouses?

  But nobody said anything. Instead, she was surrounded by the sounds of chewing.

  “I’ve always been a fan of rustic, regional dishes,” Mr. Renard remarked to Officer Myers, who was nodding enthusiastically.

  “Such a wonderful sauce,” one of the Ms. Loustrouses added.

  Stunned, Willow brought her fork up underneath her veil and tried a bite. It was Antonia’s lasagna, all right. A little bit colder than usual, but still delicious. It wasn’t fancy, and it wasn’t gourmet, not by a long shot. But it was good. Undeniably delicious.

  The conversation around the table turned to the murder mystery clues the guests had gathered earlier in the day. Willow took another bite of chilled lasagna and started to allow herself to believe once again that maybe, in spite of everything, they were going to get away with this.

  She was about to turn to Molly and ask if Madame Zabernathy was ready to channel the spirits when a spirit wandered in unbidden.

  Willow’s mother glided through the closed dining room door, right behind Mr. Renard’s chair.

  Willow spat a bite of noodle into her veil.

  Mrs. Ivan was looking around the room, but not in that lost way she’d been searching rooms lately. Her gaze was pointed, focused. It landed right on Willow, piercing directly through her big black hat and veil.

  Willow’s stomach dropped to her knees.

  “Willow Ivan,” her mother thundered. “You’ve got some explaining to do!”

  CHAPTER 18

  EVIE

  From her hiding place outside the dining room door, Evie had seen Willow’s mother coming. She hadn’t properly met Mrs. Ivan before—she’d only seen her once, during her incident with the tea trolley—but she knew a thing or two about mothers. Deceased ones, even.

  Specifically, she knew that when one was clenching her jaw in the way that Mrs. Ivan was, nothing good was about to happen.

  She’d peered as far around the door as she’d dared and tried to signal Willow, but she could barely see her on the other side of the room. And because of that black veil, she’d had no idea whether Willow could see her at all.

  Judging by the way Willow jumped when her mother entered the room, she hadn’t noticed Evie’s warning.

  “Mom?” Willow asked hesitantly.
Then, apparently forgetting she was supposed to be a “mysterious veiled assistant,” she climbed nervously to her feet and pulled back her veil. “Mom! You . . . you’re you?”

  “Of course I’m me!” the ghost snapped, hands on her hips. “Don’t change the subject. I want to know why—”

  “Mom,” Willow interrupted, looking nervously around the table. The entire dinner party suddenly looked terribly uncomfortable, especially Mr. Ivan, who was staring at his deceased wife in much the same way Willow was. “Maybe we could talk in the lob—”

  “No,” Mrs. Ivan said flatly. “Nobody is leaving this room until you tell me why you haven’t been to school in six months.”

  Evie saw Willow’s jaw drop and watched helplessly as all of their careful preparation went to pieces.

  “Mom,” Willow growled with a meaningful glance down the table at Mr. Renard. “We have guests.”

  “Only one thing comes before guests, Willow,” said Mrs. Ivan, “and that’s family. Why haven’t you been in school?”

  “I—” Willow began, but Officer Myers was scratching his head.

  “Willow?” he muttered, turning to Pierce. “This is Willow Ivan? I thought she was out of town?”

  Mr. Ivan was still staring at his wife. “Six months?” he asked her. “How do you—”

  “There was a truancy notice on top of the mail stack,” Mrs. Ivan informed him.

  “You’ve been looking at the mail?” Willow ventured. Evie thought she sounded oddly glad about this.

  Willow’s father stood up from his chair. “What do you mean you haven’t been to school in six months?” he bellowed at his daughter.

  “And that—” Officer Myers squinted, and Evie could practically see the pieces of the puzzle coming together in his head. “That’s Mr. Ivan?”

  “Of course I haven’t been in school!” Willow snapped at Mr. Ivan, and the hurt expression on her face made Evie’s heart clench. “Somebody had to be here, running things. It’s been me. All day, every day, for months now. Do you really mean you didn’t notice?”

  Evie couldn’t see Willow’s father’s face, but she saw his shoulders slump.