by Skylar Finn
“No, what are you talking about?”
“They’re dating,” Riley said matter-of-factly. “Sounds like their parents aren’t down with the idea of it. That’s why they’re keeping it a secret. That and the fact that my dad is really strict about employees dating each other. He says he doesn’t want to deal with the sexual harassment lawsuits.”
“They’re not dating,” I argued. “That’s too simple.”
“Have you seen the way they look at each other? It’s right out of a mushy rom-com.”
“They’re pals,” I said. “They’re close. By your standards, Jazmin and I are dating.”
Jazmin grabbed me around the waist, knocked me off balance, and pulled me into her lap. “You caught me!” she cried dramatically. “I’m madly in love with you, Lucia.”
Riley grinned. “The two of you do have a freakishly close bond.”
“That’s because Jazmin knows all my secrets,” I said, wrestling out of Jazmin’s playful grasp. Odette’s words from earlier, so similar to mine, came back to haunt me. “Can we be serious for five seconds?”
“Fine.” Riley crossed her arms. “What else would they be so worried about?”
I rewound the video, pushed play, and watched the entire conversation on mute. This time around, it was hard to ignore how much of the girls’ body language was indicative of an intimate relationship.
“You think they were so desperate to keep their relationship a secret that they killed you brother?” I asked Riley. “It seems like an overreaction.”
“Is it though?” Riley asked. “Crimson Basin might feel progressive, but there are a lot of people who aren’t okay with this sort of thing.”
“She’s got a point,” Jazmin added. “My sixteen-year-old cousin lived with me for two years because his mother kicked him out. If Imani and Ari’s parents are anything like my aunt, they would do anything to keep it quiet.”
“What am I supposed to say?” I said. “‘Hey, ladies, I know you’re dating even though your parents disapprove of it. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a murder weapon lying around, would you?’”
“Tact was never your strong suit,” Riley commented.
I aimed a playful smack to her shoulder, but she ducked under it. Jazmin rolled her chair between us to stop the anticipated tussle before it started.
“Find out what they have to say,” Jazmin told me. “I’m sure they’ll be more comfortable talking to you than anyone else. After all, they are some of Madame Lucia’s biggest fans.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before Madame Lucia was real.”
Riley knew exactly which room had been assigned to Ari and Imani, more evidence that she was a better spy than anyone expected her to be. The girls were staying on the first floor in the same hallway as Nick Porter. These were the least expensive rooms in the entire resort, the ones with a single queen-sized bed, no ensuite kitchen, and a crappy view of the air conditioning and heating units along the side of the building. To me, it was a surprise that Oliver had stuck them there. He’d been so generous with me from the beginning, but I guessed his employees didn’t rate the same treatment. I knocked on the door to Room 105.
“Hello?” I called. “Imani? Ari? Are you in there?”
I rapped again for good measure, but no one replied. No one was around, so I took a master key card that Riley had stolen from the front desk, swiped it through the card reader, and opened the door.
“Anyone home—whoa!”
It turned out Ari and Imani were present, but the reason they hadn’t come to the door was because both girls were in the shower. They must not have heard me knocking over the running water.
“Oh my god,” Ari gasped as she disentangled herself from Imani, turned off the water, and grabbed two robes hanging from the hooks. “What the hell are you doing in here, Madame Lucia?”
I turned around to face the wall and buried my head in my hands. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t think anyone was in here.”
“How did you get in?” Ari demanded.
“Better yet, get out,” Imani added. Her voice shook. She was either scared or angry. Either way, this was not going the way I intended it to. “Since you apparently already know where the door is.”
“I have to talk to you two about something,” I said, grimacing. This was the most embarrassing thing I’d ever done. “About this actually.”
I waved a finger at the general vicinity of the bathroom door. One of the girls grabbed me with her own steamy palm. It was Imani, thankfully covered up in her bathrobe. She glowered down at me from her supermodel height. She was taller even than Jazmin.
“You can turn around now,” she said.
I rotated on the spot, lifting my hands as if both girls had a gun on me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to barge in.”
“Really?” Imani stood in front of Ari, blocking the shorter girl from view. “Because to me, it seems like that’s exactly what you meant to do. What do you want?”
“You can’t say anything,” Ari blurted out before I had a chance to reply. “Please, Madame Lucia. You can’t tell anyone about us.”
“She won’t,” Imani said. “Will you, Madame Lucia?”
“You don’t have to threaten me,” I told her. “You don’t have to call me Madame Lucia either. It’s a stage name. I’m not here to question or expose your relationship. I don’t care about that, but I do need to know what your beef was with Tyler Watson.”
Ari peered around her Amazonian girlfriend. “How do you know about that?”
“The kid,” Imani answered for me. “She’s a damn ghost.”
For a hot second, I thought she was talking about Odette. Then I realized she meant Riley. “Riley’s got a way of getting around without being noticed. She overheard your conversation in the lounge yesterday and brought it to me. I couldn’t let it go.”
“I have money,” Imani said. “That’s what you were after in the first place, right? I can pay you to keep quiet.”
“Keep your money, Imani,” I told her. “I’m not interested in bribery or blackmail. All I want to know is what happened between Tyler and the two of you. If you don’t tell me, you’re going to end up talking to Detective Hawkins, and I can assure you he will not be nearly as discreet as me. If I can figure this out before he does, you’ll both be in the clear and no one has to know about any of this. Deal?”
“Just tell her,” Ari urged.
Imani squinted at me. “What do you get out of this? Who are you working for?”
“Every person in this resort right now,” I said. “Including the dead ones. I’m not a cop or anything like that, but I do have an invested interest in this homicide case. Who would you rather talk to? Me or Detective Hawkins?”
Imani glared at me. Ari nudged her in the back. “Fine,” she said, stepping aside to allow me deeper into the tiny room. “We’ll answer your questions.”
We all sat down. Imani and Ari took the edge of the bed, their hands folded together in Imani’s lap. I lifted myself to sit on the dresser since there was no other furniture in the room.
“Let’s start with the an easy yes or no question,” I said. “Did either of you kill Tyler Watson?”
“No, of course not,” Imani said.
“Absolutely not!” Ari answered at the same time. “Blood makes me queasy. Ask my brother. I threw up on him over a paper cut once.”
“Why would you ask us that?” Imani said.
“Because your conversation from yesterday suggested he knew something about the two of you that you didn’t want getting out,” I replied. “And that you knew something about his death.”
Ari squeezed Imani’s hands tighter. “Tyler found out about us a few weeks ago. He didn’t tell us he knew at first, just kept dropping hints and making terrible comments. It was awful.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Imani added. “I was about five seconds from drop-kicking him across the mountain, but I would nev
er kill someone. Not even Tyler Watson.”
“But you got back at him somehow,” I guessed. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be wondering whether or not to confess something to Detective Hawkins.”
“How much did Riley Watson tell you?” Imani demanded.
“Enough. So?”
“It’s not a secret,” Ari said. “A few months before Tyler’s mom died, patients’ prescriptions started disappearing out of their rooms. Xanax, Valium, Adderall, Vicodin. You name it. If it had a withdrawal warning, it went missing at King and Queens.”
“So what?”
“Tyler was stealing them and selling them,” Imani explained. “Mr. Watson tried to blame it on the maid service, but we have friends who work in housekeeping. They didn’t deserve to get fired over Tyler’s dumb decisions, so we followed him one day. Sure enough, he would wait until the guests left their rooms to go to the slopes. Then he’d use a master key to get into their rooms. We recorded him breaking into a couple suites and selling the pills to his idiot friends.”
“Then we told him we had him on video,” Ari added.
“He flipped out,” Imani continued. “We were in the café after hours. He started throwing chairs and turning the tables over.”
“Broke my favorite mug,” Ari grumbled.
“Full on rage fit,” Imani said. “It was nuts. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We threatened to call the police if he didn’t stop, and he calmed down pretty quickly after that,” Ari added.
“So you came to an impasse?” I guessed. “Made a deal with him, right? If he didn’t tell anyone about you two, you wouldn’t tell anyone about his drug dealing habits?”
“Exactly,” Ari said.
“Except it didn’t go down like that for long,” Imani said. “Tyler started messing with us again, right before his mom died. Said he had something else on us, and he was going to use it to get us all fired.”
“Did you ever figure out what it was?” I asked.
“Nope,” Imani said. “He forgot about it for a while after his mom died, but maybe that was because he was too busy being extra awful to Karli.”
“And Liam.” Ari tapped Imani’s knee as if to remind her of something. “He started acting really weird after Mrs. Watson died. When I asked him about it, he told me Tyler wouldn’t get off his back about something.”
“Sounds like Tyler had something on everyone here,” I said. “Do you think that was what got him killed?”
Imani shrugged, tugging the fluffy white robe up to her neck. The heat hadn’t kicked on in the chilly room. “I don’t doubt it. It was probably some client he ripped off.”
“Yeah, but none of his clients were staying at the hotel when he was murdered,” I pointed out. Imani and Ari exchanged a look with each other, eyebrows raised. “Were they?”
“Tyler sold to a lot different people, not just his friends,” Imani said. “We can’t be sure that none of his clients stopped by that night, can we?”
“King and Queens was already snowed in by then.”
“There are plenty of people desperate enough for a hook-up to walk through that,” Imani said. “My bet’s on Johnny Salvatore. That dude from the gas station in town? Guy’s a walking time bomb.”
“Forget about about Johnny Salvatore,” I said, getting frustrated. “I need to know about the people in this hotel. Where were the two of you the night Tyler was murdered? You said you weren’t involved, and I already know your big secret, so you might as well tell me.”
Ari leaned into Imani. “We were right here. Sleeping.”
“And you’d swear that on the Bible in the bedside table?”
Imani laughed. “I don’t do anything by the Bible. Look, if you don’t believe us, go ask Liam. He’s been staying in the adjoining room. He would’ve heard if we got up and left.”
“I think Liam needs some time to cool off,” I said. “He had a run-in with Mr. Watson earlier.”
“Is he okay?” Ari asked.
“Just upset,” I assured her. I hopped off the dresser. “Thanks for talking to me. This could’ve gone a whole lot worse.”
Imani followed me to the door. “Is it true? What you did to Matisse?”
“Word travels quickly around here.”
“The employee break room is basically a gossip mill,” Imani agreed. “So is it true? Did you sick a ghost on him?”
I let myself out of their room without answering.
6
Iwoke up screaming. The nightmare had already faded from my head, but Odette’s face, mere inches from mine, didn’t. She hovered above the bed, her pale ghostly visage even creepier as the moonlight filtered through it like pearly smoke. Next to me, Jazmin jumped out of her slumber and reached across Riley to comfort me. Riley, God love her, stayed dead asleep.
“What is it?” Jazmin mumbled, eyes half shut as she pulled herself into the waking world. “What’s wrong, Lucia?”
Between the nightmare, Jazmin, and Odette, my energy was all over the place. I writhed against the pillows, biting my lip as the familiar sting poked and prodded my body. I tasted blood, saw Jazmin’s eyes switch to solid worry.
“Where’s the key?” Odette hissed over Jazmin’s shoulder.
“What key?” I gasped.
Jazmin looked behind her, staring through Odette. “You’re not talking to me, are you?”
Odette pushed in, her shoulder crossing paths with Jazmin’s. Though she wasn’t on fire, her anger was just as hot. I hadn’t seen her like this before, terrifying on her own terms. The whites of her eyes shimmered in the darkness. “The key you stole from the old wing this morning. Where is it?”
Jazmin shuddered as she made accidental contact with Odette. She waved a hand in front of my face. “Lucia, nod or shake your head. Is this like before? Do you need me to go?”
Jaw locked, all I could do was give her one curt nod.
“Are you sure? You’ll be okay?”
Another nod. Odette watched my every move.
Jazmin slid off the bed. “I’ll be in the living room. Ten minutes, Odette. That’s all you get. I’ve had enough of you hurting my friend.”
Odette glared at Jazmin as she left the bedroom. “Like this is my fault. You got yourself into this mess, Lucia, or didn’t you tell her that?”
Without Jazmin’s energy around and Riley asleep, I managed to relax my jaw muscles. “What do you want? I’m doing my best.”
“The key,” she said again, spitting like a feral cat. She hovered horizontally above the bed. Her patience to appear as a normal human was gone. “You enormous idiot. I told you not to touch anything!”
The humiliation of having a dead twelve-year-old yell at me for something I didn’t know not to do gave me the motivation I needed to sit up and confront Odette like someone with an ounce of control over their body.
“You didn’t tell me that,” I said. “You told me not to go to the old wing.”
“Exactly!” she said. “Don’t go there. Don’t touch anything. Don’t mess this up for me.”
“I don’t know what you expect from me.”
“Better. That’s what I expect. For the hundredth time, where’s the key?” she asked.
I tossed off the covers and got out of bed to fetch the key from the drawer in the bathroom. It looked smaller and dirtier than it did earlier, but maybe that was because a bit of my blood had dried dark-brown on it.
“Here,” I said, offering it to Odette. “Take it. I don’t know why I brought it with me anyway. It’s probably just some old guest room key, right?”
“I can’t take it, you idiot. I’m dead.”
“Okay, first of all” —I held up a warning finger— “Stop calling me an idiot. That is not how this partnership is going to go. Second, what am I supposed to do with the key if you don’t want it?”
Odette rested one hand on her hip and pouted. “Are you kidding me? Find out what it unlocks, idio—Lucia.”
“I sense your patience is wa
ning.”
“Imagine that.”
“It’s only been three days.”
“It’s been thirty years for me.”
“It’s not my fault you haven’t been able to find a chosen one until me,” I shot back. “Can I get any hints about what the key might go to, or is this something else I have to figure out on my own?”
“You’ll have to go back to the old wing.”
I stopped in the middle of scrubbing dried blood off the key. “You literally just said I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Now you want me to go back?”
“You have to.”
“No way!” I peeled the bandage off my arm to show her the burn underneath. “Your buddies almost singed me to a crisp the last time I went in there. I’m not risking that again.”
Odette grabbed my hand. I didn’t know she could do that. We weren’t touching exactly, but her skin—or essence—existed in the same place as mine, like I was walking through dry ice. She leaned down and blew cool air across the red blisters on my forearm. At once, the wound faded and disappeared. I marveled at the fresh skin. There wasn’t even a scar.
“How on earth did you do that?” I asked. “How did you touch me?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “It’s an illusion. A mirage of sorts.”
“You moved my hand.”
“With the same energy I use to move inanimate objects,” she explained. “Like the vase. It’s a lot harder manipulating living things, but it can be done.”
I brushed my fingers across my arm, but no lasting sting from the burn popped up. “And your random healing abilities?”
“Also not a thing,” Odette said. “The fire in the old wing you saw wasn’t real. The ghosts used their collective energy to make you think it was. Together, they can be pretty powerful. The burn on your arm was an illusion too.”
“But Jazmin saw it too.”
“The human mind isn’t particularly difficult to fool,” she replied with a sardonic smirk.
“Thanks for the info.”
In the bedroom, Riley mumbled something in her sleep. I peeked around the bathroom door to check on her. She flopped over and spread her limbs out in every direction. For such a small girl, she took up way too much room on the enormous king-sized bed.
