by Skylar Finn
“Yes,” I said. “I killed my father.”
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The Haunting of Riley Watson Book 2
1
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 Her dark hair flipped away from her face in an outdated style, but it did nothing to detract from her beauty.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 me,” 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 Jazm
in’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.”
Jazmin rolled off the couch. In the kitchen, she dropped an entire miniature scone in her coffee and swirled it around with the sugar spoon. “What else did she say?”
I stretched across the couch. “Not much. She vanished after accusing me of murder. This morning’s visit wasn’t helpful either.”
“You saw her again?”
“She was my unrequested wake-up call,” I grumbled. “Too bad I can’t complain to White Oak’s guest services about her. How’s everyone else? Did the King and Queens employees make it here? Is Nick okay? I told him to have that cut on his head looked at. I hope he did. And what about King and Queens? Daniel’s body is there, and Tyler’s, and probably Oliver’s. My God, everyone’s dead.”
Jazmin abandoned her chunky coffee-scone combo. “Take a deep breath, Lucia. You’re venturing into no man’s land, and if you go there, it gets pretty hard for me to pull you out.”
I followed her instructions, breathing in and out with shaky control over my lungs. The headache didn’t get any better, and neither did the rumble in my stomach.
“Tell you what,” Jazmin said. “Let’s get dressed and have breakfast at the Slopes Café. I looked at their menu online, and everything sounds delicious.”
“I can’t eat right now.”
Jazmin raised an eyebrow as my stomach gave an audible growl. “You need to eat, Lucia. We’ve been living off snack food and vending machine garbage for three days. It’ll do you good to put away some real sustenance. Besides, we should take advantage of our free White Oak stay while we have the chance. Look at this place!” She spun in a circle, arms outstretched to show off the pristine suite. Her copper hair fanned out in a perfect wave. Dazed from her pirouette, she planted her palms on the couch and leaned over the back of it to put her dizzy eyes near mine. “Come on, Lucia. You can’t sit in here and mope all day. If Stella’s around, it means there’s more work to be done, and you can’t work without breakfast. Tell me I’m right.”
I shoved her away. “Annoying is what you are.”
She rounded the couch to my feet and yanked on my pinky toe to pop the knuckle. I yelped and curled my feet into my chest. She knew I hated that.
“Get up or I’m coming for the rest of them,” she threatened.
With my toes in distress, there was nothing to do but get up. Half an hour later, we arrived at White Oak’s ground floor, elevated above the ski runs. If you sat near the angled glass lookout, you could watch the skiers and snowboarders finish their runs beneath you. The flawless streamlining of the building’s architecture mimicked the clean lines of imaginary futuristic societies. It was a complete one-eighty from King and Queens’s outdated red brick masonry and octagonal domed roof.
The guests took full advantage of the fresh snow. The powder was deep and untouched. The ski lift chugged steadily to the top of the mountain. Excited riders waited in line at the bottom to board. I gazed at them through the lookout with wanton longing. If only Jazmin, Riley, and I were visiting on the same terms as the other guests. These people were here for vacation, to get away from their daily lives and work schedules. Sure, the storm had derailed any outside activities for a while, but they had all of White Oak to explore in the meantime. They didn’t have the weight of King and Queens pressing in on them from every direction. Each time a new skier passed below us, a fresh pang of self-pity tidal-waved over my heart.
The Slopes Café was at the bottom of the ski runs. It was packed with neon snowsuits and wayward equipment. Jazmin led the way through a sea of waterproof polyester, snowboards, and ski poles. Smiling guests—their faces pink and exhilarated from the cold—chugged coffee and tea as they chatted about the conditions. According to the overlapping conversation, the snow was too deep for beginners but perfect for advanced riders. As someone who fell into the former category—and “beginner” was stretching it—I didn’t care about the excited chatter.
“Bad morning?” the barista asked as we approached the counter. He was a short college-aged kid with blue hair. The Slopes employees were all eclectic in their own way. The barista, whom we’d met last night before White Oak’s medical team cleaned the blood and soot off us, tapped his nametag. “It’s Dalton, remember?”
“Yes, of course,” Jazmin jumped in with a generous smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Dalton. Can I get an Americano and a White Oak Breakfast Plate?”
Dalton typed her order into a handheld tablet. “Coming right up. What about you, miss?”
“Uh…” I studied the menu on the chalkboard behind Dalton’s head. It was full of unconventional food combos and odd ingredients like cashew cream and watermelon radish that I didn’t feel like Googling.
“She’ll have the Breakfast Plate too,” Jazmin said. “And a cappuccino. Sound good, Lucia?”
The Breakfast Plate included a stack of pancakes, your choice of meat, a side of oatmeal or grits, two eggs, and a fresh cup of fruit. “Throw in the kitchen sink while you’re at it, Dalton.”
He tapped on the tablet screen. “Would you like something else instead, ma’am?”
“The Breakfast Plate’s fine, Dalton,” Jazmin answered for me, pinning my hands behind my back. “She’ll eat it.”
Dalton input our order and spun the tablet around for Jazmin to pay. Before she could swipe her debit card, he yanked the tablet away again. “Oh, I almost forgot. Mr. Porter says everything you order is complimentary.”
“But the tip’s not.” I shoved a few crumpled dollar bills into the jar on the counter. “Sit anywhere?”
“Anywhere you like. Let me get your coffee first.”
Dalton was a talker. As he bustled around to prepare our drinks, avoiding the other busy employees in a well-choreographed dance, he chatted incessantly.
“You look better,” he said, tamping freshly ground espresso beans. “When you came out of that storage room, you looked like a nightmare. What happened to you anyway?”
“It’s a long story,” Jazmin offered. “We’ll leave it to Mr. Porter to fill you in.”
“Right, right,” said Dalton. “Is everyone okay?”
Genuine worry colored his tone. Nick raised his employees right, but no amount of hot chocolate would help our situation. I was unbalanced. Riley was likely traumatized. Daniel, Tyler, and Oliver were all dead. Jazmin and Nick were the only two people holding it together.
“Everyone’s fine,” I assured Da
lton. “The coffee will help.”
He topped off my cappuccino with a foam heart. “Your breakfasts should be out soon. We’re slammed this morning because the slopes reopened, but the cooks are doing their best to keep up.”
“No worries,” Jazmin said. “We don’t have anywhere to be.”
The only open table was in a corner by a window. No matter where you sat at Slopes, there was an excellent view of the mountain. It careened toward the sky, the main ski path bordered by thick trees on either side.
“I wish I could ski,” I mused, shaking off my coat and hanging it over the back of my chair. “Or snowboard. That would be cool too.”
Jazmin freed her long hair from the collar of her jacket. “Did I hear that correctly? Lucia Star wants to learn how to ski?.”
“It must be nice to get out on the mountain and forget all your crap,” I said. “Look at these people. Do you see anyone else moping around like us? No, because they’ve all been riding down the mountain all morning.”
“It’s called endorphins,” Jazmin said, blowing cool air across her Americano. “That’s what happens when you exercise. Look, there’s Nick.”
Mr. Porter, as Dalton referred to him, stepped into the café. A gust of snow swirled around him, ruffling his fine strands of dark hair and causing his blue eyes to glisten like rare gems. As he tapped his walking cane against the welcome mat, every employee turned to greet him like each of them possessed radar to sense his presence. The guests waved and said hello too. Nick was not only the owner and operator of White Oak; he was the face of his own brand.
“Hey, Mr. Porter!”
“Good morning. How are you?”
“Mr. Porter, I did a one-eighty this morning,” a small child beamed as Nick passed her parents’ table. “Just like you said I could!”
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart!” Nick replied, ruffling the girl’s hair. “I knew you could do it.”
