The Second-Best Haunted Hotel on Mercer Street

by Cory Putman Oakes

  Mr. Fox’s eyes went wide.

  “Blueberries,” Evie told him before he could ask. “The inspector is allergic to blueberries, like you.” She turned to squint at the picture again. “I should have figured it out when I saw you two together at the Hauntery. The wig threw me off. You really are almost identical, aren’t you? Are you twins? Or just brothers?”

  “Ms. MacNeil—”

  “You said your entire family was allergic to blueberries. He could be a cousin, for all I know—it doesn’t really matter. Related is related. I wonder if the Zagged Guide knows that their senior hotel inspector is related to the Hauntery’s vice president of quality control?”

  Mr. Fox did not respond.

  “That explains why all non-Hauntery hotels he visits receive such poor reviews in Zagged while the Haunteries all get raves. Then again, he’s only one reviewer . . .” Evie paused, thinking out loud. “You must have other people working inside Zagged, altering reviews, making sure that especially bad ones mysteriously never show up on the website. Like the one Willow left after she visited here. It must be enormously complicated, manipulating an entire organization like that . . .”

  Evie trailed off, hoping Mr. Fox would take the bait and confirm her suspicions by bragging about his evil plan. He looked tempted. He was giving her one of his patented cold stares, but the right corner of his mouth was starting to twitch.

  Evie snapped her fingers.

  “Oh, I see,” she said, then gave him a sympathetic smile. “It was probably your brother who thought up the plan. Or maybe Corporate. You’re just going along with it.”

  Mr. Fox finally smiled. “My brother couldn’t plan his way out of a cardboard box, Ms. MacNeil. And neither could Corporate. I am the brains behind this operation. I was the one who got him a job at Zagged under an assumed name. I was the one who figured out which Zagged employees to bribe so that the reviews always favored Haunteries. I was the one who managed to keep the whole thing secret from everyone except a few select individuals at Corporate. Even his wig was my idea, so no one would notice the resemblance between us. You have no idea how deep this conspiracy goes.”

  “I think I do,” Evie argued. “I know about the Fading. About ghosts like Patricia who Fade, but who you say have been ‘transferred.’ Is the Hauntery covering that up, too?”

  “Of course. Hauntery ghosts never Fade was my idea as well.”

  “You made everyone believe a lie!”

  “I did.” Mr. Fox was smiling freely now, smug about his own evil brilliance. “Of course Hauntery ghosts Fade. All ghosts do. It takes a bit of doing to keep up the ruse of transferring them, but no one said being vice president of quality control was easy. That’s where Professor Torrance came in.”

  “The scientist?” Evie asked. “The one who proved that fear keeps ghosts from Fading?”

  “Professor Torrance was paid by the Hauntery, of course. Fear has nothing to do with it, at least as far as we can tell. But we can’t let the ghosts know that. We’d never get decent staff if they knew the truth.”

  “They will know,” Evie said darkly. “I’m going to tell everyone.”

  Mr. Fox’s grin turned nasty. “And who do you think would believe you? You’re nothing but a disgruntled ex-employee. A little girl. A dead little girl. With no proof.”

  “I—” Evie paused and eyed the picture frame.

  Mr. Fox laughed. “Far too young to manipulate objects, aren’t you? It’ll be your word against mine. How do you think that’ll go?”

  Evie didn’t answer. Her fingers twitched. The picture frame was so close . . . so close . . .

  Mr. Fox sighed and leaned against the far side of the desk. “It’s a shame, really. You had such a good thing going for yourself and your family. All you had to do was stay in your place. Do as you were told. Smile. Giggle. Spout out tiny snippets of adorable ad-lib . . .”

  Evie felt her upper lip curl into a sneer. She thought about what Bree had said:

  Nobody’s going to believe it for you.

  Mr. Fox tapped the Handbook. “It was all here, laid out for you by your betters. But you had to go and try to prove us wrong. How’s that going for you, little girl? Huh?”

  Evie surged forward and snatched the picture frame off the shelf.

  Her hands trembled for a moment, and she nearly dropped it. The frame wobbled. But then she felt the solid weight of it, allowed her fingertips to feel the grooves in the cool, smooth metal. She was doing it—she was holding it. Every bit as solidly as she had ever held anything when she was alive.

  She looked up at Mr. Fox. “How’s it going?” she repeated, pretended to consider his question. “Pretty well, actually. Thank you for asking.”

  Mr. Fox’s jaw dropped.

  Evie used his moment of hesitation to move behind the desk, being sure to keep it between them. Then she casually leaned over and picked up the journal. It felt solid in her hand, too. Heavy with the weight of the proof it held. A record of all the Faded Hauntery ghosts.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Fox?” Evie asked icily as a slight wind kicked up around them. “Did I forget to smile?”

  Mr. Fox’s face turned purple with rage. He opened and closed his mouth as though he were trying to speak but couldn’t find the words. He looked around nervously, trying to figure out where the wind was coming from.

  “I guess I forgot to giggle,” Evie said as the temperature in the room dropped abruptly.

  She sprang up on top of the desk. When her feet hit the wood surface, she didn’t hesitate; she threw her head back and let out the loudest, deepest, most bone-chilling Phantasm cry she had ever uttered. The one she had meant to do at the dinner party before Louise had ruined it. She’d been looking forward to the reaction that a room full of people would have to the sound, but seeing Mr. Fox’s reaction was even sweeter.

  His face instantly went from purple to sheet white. He seemed to forget how to stand up properly, and he tripped over his own feet twice as he scrambled backward toward the office door. Once he finally made it there, he fumbled behind his back for the doorknob, trembling all over, unable to take his eyes off of Evie.

  With a small sigh of satisfaction, Evie hopped down from the desk. Clutching the picture frame and the journal to her chest, she walked purposefully toward the office door.

  “Out of my way,” she growled, “before I yell again.”

  After two more panicked attempts, Mr. Fox finally managed to get the doorknob working properly. He opened the door and stumbled through it, throwing one last terrified glance in Evie’s direction before running headlong down the hallway.

  Evie walked grandly through the open door and smiled at the fleeing vice president of quality control.

  “How about that for ‘adorable ad-lib’?”

  CHAPTER 21

  WILLOW

  Willow waited until she was sure Evie was gone before she went back to the lobby. When she did return, she was shocked to find her mother there, floating behind the front desk.

  “Mom!” Willow exclaimed, gulping as her mother flashed in and out of focus. At times, she could only see her thin, transparent outline. “You’re—you’re—”

  “Fading,” her mother finished. “Yes.”

  “But—no! You were just starting to get back to normal!”

  “I’m a WISP, Willow.”

  “No, you’re not! You can’t be, you—”

  “Willow, please. I think this might be my Last Gasp. We need to talk. And I don’t know how much longer I have. Walk with me. Please?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Willow’s mother drifted through the lobby. Willow ran to catch up.

  “I just had a long conversation with your father,” she said.

  “Is he—”

  “He’s gone to the police station to deal with the truancy business,” she said, giving Willow a very deliberate look. Then her frown softened. “He told me about Anna. And about Leo and Alford.”

  Willow swallowed. “It’s all m
y fault, Mom. I’ve done everything wrong.”

  “Willow—”

  “I trusted that wannabe Phantasm. I was trying to do something special for the inspector. Something exciting! And scary!”

  “Scary? Why?”

  “So that everybody would stop Fading! That scientist, that Professor Torrance guy, says that ghosts need to inspire fear to stay on this plane. And we were losing all of our business to the Hauntery, and . . . I’ve made a mess of everything, haven’t I?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Willow’s mother said, turning slightly to make her way down the first-floor hallway. “It sounds to me like you’ve been working very hard. Your heart is in the right place. But the Hotel Ivan has never been about scaring people. It’s about service, and family, and fun. Never fear. We’ve had our ghosts for centuries longer than any Hauntery. Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know,” Willow grumbled.

  Willow’s mother paused beneath the portrait of Gracey Ivan. “Our family has always been a little quirky,” she said, smiling up at the Hotel Ivan’s legendary founder. “Starting with Gracey. We’ve been explorers. We’ve been writers. Scientists. Inventors.”

  “Musicians,” Willow added, thinking of her mother at the piano.

  “Plus, there was the bank robber. And a gambler. And I know he’s not technically an Ivan, but I’m almost positive that Pierce was a pirate while he was Living, if you can imagine that!” her mother added with a laugh. “Whatever else you can say about the Ivans, you’ve got to admit that we know how to live. I don’t know about all of this fear business—that feels cooked up to me. As long as there’s been a Living Ivan in this hotel, our ghosts have gotten along fine.”

  Willow hesitated. “What about me, then? I’m a Living Ivan, and I haven’t been able to stop them from Fading.”

  “Yes, you are alive,” Willow’s mother said carefully. “But have you really been living, Willow?”

  “Of course I have!”

  Her mother raised an eyebrow. “Name one thing you’ve done in the past six months.” And when Willow opened her mouth, she added, “Something that has nothing to do with the running of this hotel.”

  “I—” Willow stopped to think for a moment. The last six months had been an endless cycle of linen deliveries, taking reservations, checking guests in, checking guests out, dealing with complaints . . .

  “I went to the library!” she remembered suddenly. Then she shuddered. “I met Evie.”

  “Yes,” Willow’s mother said, stopping beneath the most recent portrait, that of Willow’s grandmother. “You’ve been working so hard, night and day, for months now. You’ve been working, and grieving, and worrying. Your father—well, he’s been no better, and I know he’s been no help to you. He finally saw a doctor, though, and went back on his medication. And you started visiting the library, where you made a friend. It’s no coincidence that once both of those things happened, I started being able to see things clearly. I think they were what pushed me toward my Last Gasp.”

  Willow shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  Willow frowned and looked up at the portraits. All of those Ivans. The Ivans who had been so much, done so much . . .

  “Dad and I are Living, but we haven’t been acting like it,” Willow said carefully, flinching at a memory of Evie shouting, All you want to do is hide behind your ghosts and skulk around your haunted hotel. “You don’t think it’s fear that keeps ghosts from Fading. You think it’s being close to Living people who . . . who are really living?”

  Willow’s mother nodded.

  “But I’ve been working so hard!” Willow protested. “These past few months, I’ve been busier than ever! I’ve barely slept! I’ve been—”

  “Skipping school.”

  “Well, yes. I had too much to do here.”

  “And your piano lessons?”

  “I tried to keep those up, but they conflicted with too many staff meetings—”

  “Your friends from school? When was the last time you spoke to someone your own age?”

  “Well, there’s Evie—”

  “Someone your own age who doesn’t work at this hotel?”

  Willow opened her mouth, and then shut it again and sat down hard on a nearby bench. That couldn’t be the answer. It couldn’t be that everything she’d done to try to help had actually been hurting them. It couldn’t be . . .

  Could it?

  “So it is my fault?” Willow asked, fighting back tears. “Everything I’ve been doing, it’s been making them all Fade even faster?”

  Her mother knelt down in front of her. “No, sweetheart. Fading isn’t as simple as that. For all the theories out there, even mine, nobody really knows how Fading works. Or why some people come back as ghosts and some don’t. Or why some, like me, come back as WISPs while others take centuries to Fade. And you know what? Maybe that’s okay. Life’s always been a bit of a mystery. Why shouldn’t death be?”

  “So, it wasn’t my fault that Leo and Alford Faded? Or Anna?”

  “Anna started Fading well before the Ivan’s financial troubles started. And Leo and Alford had been winding down for the last decade or so. They were ready to Move On. Alford didn’t expect them to make it to this year. They chose to go. Somehow, they knew they were ready. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Willow nodded. She felt lighter all of a sudden. As though a heavy weight had been lifted from her heart.

  “But,” her mother continued ominously, and a tiny bit of the weight returned, “for all of your hard work, my love, you haven’t been acting much like an Ivan lately.”

  “What are you talking about?” Willow exclaimed. “I’ve been running the hotel! Practically by myself! The Ivans have been running this hotel for four hundred years. It’s what we do!”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Ivan gently. “It is what we do. But we’ve never done it alone.”

  “What?” Willow asked, confused.

  Her mother reached up as though to touch Willow’s face, but stopped just short of her cheek.

  “You’ve taken on so much these past months. But you can’t be the housekeeper, the front desk manager, the plumber, the accountant, and the event planner all at the same time. You can’t do everything yourself, and you can’t expect to control everything. You need to let people help you. We all need a little bit of help sometimes. Look at your father—he’s getting the help he needs now, thanks to you. But I can’t Move On until I know that you’re doing the same.”

  Willow’s eyes filled with tears.

  “The Ivan was having financial trouble before I died,” Mrs. Ivan admitted. “Well before the Hauntery came to town. My plan was to ask Pierce for help.”

  “I know,” Willow said. “I saw the loan papers on your desk.”

  “Pierce has been at the Ivan since the very beginning,” Mrs. Ivan said. “Far longer than any of us. It only seemed fitting to me that he become an owner. I never got the chance to ask him. But I think you should.”

  “What’s the point?” Willow asked. “That inspector from the Zagged Guide—he said awful things, Mom. Nobody is going to want to stay here. No matter how much money Pierce lends us, no matter how nicely we fix up the Ivan, what does it matter if we don’t have any guests? It’s too late.”

  “It’s not!”

  The STAFF ONLY door flew open, and Willow and her mother both turned, startled, as Evie charged into the hallway with an armload of things—a picture frame, a big leather book, and the front desk phone.

  “Evie!” Willow exclaimed. “You’re . . . you’re holding—”

  “Proof! That’s what I’m holding. I’ll explain later. But right now . . .” Evie paused, juggling the objects in her hands until she was holding the phone out to Willow. “It’s for you!”

  Willow put the phone up to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Ivan? Freddy Thompson. Editor of the Zagged Guide. How are you this evening?”


  “F-fine . . .” Willow looked up at Evie, who was grinning like a jack-o’-lantern.

  “I wanted to apologize about Mr. Renard. None of us here at Zagged had any idea that our most senior hotel inspector was related to one of the top executives at the Hauntery. I hope you believe that.”

  “R-related?” Willow asked, squinting at the photograph that Evie was holding in front of her face.

  “Yes, your Phantasm emailed me the photo. Really threw us for a loop here. I can assure you Mr. Renard has been fired. His reviews have all been retracted. In fact, we are double-checking the accuracy of all of our reviews, as it appears many of them have been tampered with. We should be able to send another inspector in to review the Ivan by next week. How’s Tuesday afternoon for you?”

  “Tuesday? Um, sure?”

  “Great. Thank you for your understanding, Ms. Ivan. We’d hate for the good relationship between Zagged and an esteemed Vermont institution like the Hotel Ivan to be in any way damaged by this . . . little misunderstanding. Thank you, and goodbye!”

  Willow handed the phone back to a still-beaming Evie.

  “How . . .?” Willow asked her.

  “It’s a long story,” Evie assured her. “Mostly to do with blueberries. But the bottom line is, we have another chance!”

  “We?” Willow asked her pointedly.

  “We,” Evie confirmed. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry I lied. I wanted to tell you about the Hauntery. I almost did a few times. But I didn’t know how you’d react. I was afraid that you’d—”

  “Yell at you?” Willow supplied, feeling ashamed. “Fire you? You’re right. I didn’t react well. I didn’t even listen to you. I just . . . fired you. I’m sorry I did that.”

  “Oh, that,” Evie said, waving her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry. I know you only mean, like, ten percent of what you say when you’re mad.”

  “That’s right . . .”

  “We’re OK,” Evie assured her. “The important thing is that the Hotel Ivan is still alive!”