by Sean Easley
Mom points to a woman in a long coat and boots. There’s a distant look in the woman’s eyes, as if she’s trying to remember something just out of reach. Adm. Virginia Dare, the banner reads.
I run my finger over the figure, and the lines around her blur and constrict, crumpling the drawing into a scribble. The transformation is sharp—angry, almost—and all I’m left with is a jagged, inky blot where the image of Admiral Dare once graced the page.
Mom’s image frowns, as if she’s disappointed. Maybe this is the practice that Agapios was talking about. Or maybe it’s something else. Oma did say that no one knows what happened to the colony and young Miss Dare all those years ago.
“Sorry,” I say. “Can you show me Mr. Nagalla instead?”
Over the next hour I thumb through the pages, gleaning what I can about the ambassadors, and the Embassy’s fleet of ships, and the admiral. I find lots of information about most of the members-in- permanent—scenes and stories and complicated histories—but every time I try to learn more about the woman whose binding day we’re celebrating, the images struggle to form. The harder I try, the worse it gets.
After several frustrating minutes, I decide to focus on something else.
“Show me Nico,” I say.
No sooner are the words out of my mouth than an angry black slash rips through the page. A few stray ink lines even mar Mom’s image in the corner, where she’s giving me a pitying look.
“I only wanted to see what he’s doing,” I say, but the acknowledgment is all it takes. The slash grows into a scribble, and with it comes the acrid smell of smoke.
I snap the Ledger shut, blinking away the ache behind my eyes. Even Mom doesn’t want me looking for him. Or maybe it’s the Hotel. Regardless, Rahki and Cass were right. I can’t jeopardize my relationship with the Hotel.
No more searching. That sliver will have to stay right where it is, and I with it.
12
The Road Behind the Curtain
I cannot work like this!”
Chef Silva throws another copper pan into one of the enormous sinks of the main Hotel kitchen and turns on the hot water. Steam billows around him as he tosses dish after dish into the scalding tubs.
“Nothing works!” he exclaims, hurling a stock pot past me. “There is food caked all over every pot, pan, and plate.”
“Can’t you just rewash them?”
The executive chef roars his displeasure. “We have tried! The food is stuck! Bound and rotting, no less! And that awful smell . . . I sent Carlee to hunt it down, but she says it’s coming through the vents. No one wants to eat around such an odious stench.”
The “stench” he’s referring to is the overwhelming odor of something like manure that permeates the entire kitchen area. It started out as a minor stink but grew to I’m-going-to-puke levels as soon as the kitchen crew began fifth-dinner preparations.
The chef tearfully eyes a row of his magnificent three-tiered tres leches cakes. “My kitchen smells like poop. It’s even in my mouth—like eating poop cookies—and my poor cakes . . .”
“We’ll get Chef Chowdhury to cook in a different kitchen tonight,” I say, trying to be encouraging.
But mentioning the sous chef only seems to make him more emotional. “Nakul cannot make my dinner. He spices everything with coriander. That’s almost as bad.”
“It’ll be all right,” I assure him. “I’ll find the source of the smell as quickly as I can. I’ll take care of it.”
“You better, or I’m going back to Perú.”
I start to leave, but then I remember that I never did get an answer to the message I sent him two days ago. “Chef Silva, I was wondering . . . did you get a chance to check the menu I sent over for the gala?”
His eyes narrow. “That monstrosity will not come out of my kitchen.”
“But I—”
“No!” He chucks another skillet into an already overflowing sink. “Now please do something about this disaster.” He goes back to his dishes, muttering about magic doors and uppity hotel kids being the source of all his worldly woes.
I turn to Orban, who’s standing beside me holding a cloth over his face. His eyes are wide and wet with tears.
“Why are you crying?” I ask, surprised.
“The smell . . . it burns,” Orban says, pinching his nose. “I’ll get the housekeepers to help us. Or maybe Cass will know what to do.”
I do a double take. “Cass?” He can’t be serious. “Why her?”
He looks everywhere but at me.
“Orban,” I say, knowing full well that there’s something he’s not telling me, “why Cass?”
He shrugs. “She always seems to know what to do.”
“And I don’t?”
Again with the shrugging. “Cass and Rahki have been fixing a lot of things while they are beefing up the security. And if they don’t know what to do, they find someone who will. Besides, you’re always so busy. . . .”
I clench a fist, but it’s not him I’m irritated with. Somehow my sister has managed to turn even Orban into one of her groupies.
The air-conditioning clicks on, and we’re engulfed in another sickening burst of stench. “No,” I say. “I will handle this. Boost me up.”
He glances at the vent. “You really shouldn’t, Cam. It’s okay. Let us take care of it. You have other preparations to make.”
Yeah, but it’s my job to make Chef Silva happy, to keep Mr. Nagalla from finding anything else wrong with the Hotel, and to prevent Nico from ruining everything. The Hotel’s counting on me.
“I’ve got this. Just help me up.”
Orban boosts me up onto his shoulders, giving me enough height to hoist myself into the vent.
The air inside forces me to gag almost immediately. Even my eyes are watering, and I have the world’s worst sense of smell.
“All right, Hotel,” I say. “Time for you to lead me to whatever’s causing this mess.” I don’t feel anything, of course, but I’m hoping I can now get some help from the House without using the Ledger for once. Reading the ancient book has gotten easier over the past few days, but there’s still a lot it won’t show me.
And still, the Hotel remains silent. Fortunately, the smell’s enough to start me in a direction. I crawl forward, scraping knees and elbows and bumping my head a couple of times. I’ve never liked cramped spaces. There were lots of entries on my Worst Ways to Die list that involved claustrophobic corridors back before I joined the Hotel.
I can’t believe Orban would trust Cass to solve this problem before me. It’s not that she doesn’t have good ideas—even great ones—but this is my job. She doesn’t even do her own, and he’s seeking her help. I don’t understand that.
I’ll show them. I’ll prove that I can keep everything under control just fine on my own.
Oof, it’s getting hot in here.
Up ahead, a noise. A quiet, padding sound, like something . . . moving. My arms prickle. It’s gotta be rats. I hate rats. I hate rats so much.
I force my eyes shut and take a slow, clawing breath of the rancid air. I can do this. Rats are small. But what if there’s more than one? I’ve got nothing to fight them off. Man, I’ve gotta get Rahki to teach me how to wield a duster. No matter what Agapios says about knowledge being a weapon, lugging an enormous book around is not the most effective way to defend yourself.
I wipe sweat from my brow. The air-conditioning should be on, so why is it so warm?
The scratching sound grows, and I spot movement at the T-junction up ahead. A shadow turns and looks at me with shiny, green, glowing eyes. That’s no rat. It’s a cat. And in the dim light coming from the vents below, I can barely make out a card stuck to its back.
A queen.
The cat darts out of sight.
“Oh, no you don’t, Queenie,” I say, and burst forward on my hands and knees, squeezing around the corner.
The cat with the queen of clubs speeds down to the next junction, and I hurry after her. Is
she a part of this prank too? Will she lead me to the source of the smell?
A burning sensation starts to spread from my pocket, and a feeling of dread that’s more than just adrenaline, and . . . Wait. Is the crawl space getting smaller?
I jerk to the side as a section of metal dents in toward me.
I freeze, startled by the sudden movement. That’s weird. It’s as if someone hit it with a hammer from the outside.
“Hello?” I wait for a response. There’s no way to tell what part of the Hotel lies below me. Maybe it’s Orban—he sometimes does odd things that only he thinks are funny. “Orban, is that you?”
No answer.
But the heat in my pocket is still growing. I reach inside and draw out Mom’s key—which stings against my skin. That’s new. I’ve felt it get cold before, but never hot like this.
Another dent punches up under my knees with a loud screech of bending metal, knocking me forward. My nose smashes into the duct wall ahead, and I almost drop the topscrew.
I roll over onto my back to see the misshapen duct behind me. There’s no way I can fit through there anymore. Not good. Very not good.
Another loud metallic shriek as the walls pull in toward my shoulders on either side. I scramble away from the collapsing ducts, stuffing Mom’s key into my pocket and diving farther down the already-too-tight tunnel. The sound of bending aluminum echoes down the crawl space, above my head this time. Screech! I duck and barely manage to avoid getting hit.
This isn’t someone banging on the ducts. The ducts are closing in around me.
I race onward. The cat’s shadow stays just out of reach, a silhouette against the light up ahead. But at least there is a light at the end of this.
My knees and palms ache as I clamber for the exit. A sharp edge catches my sleeve, rips my tailcoat. Another scrapes my cheek. But I press on, scrambling as fast as I can toward the slatted vent.
I slam my elbow down into the cover as soon as I reach it, dodging another spike of metal as it shrieks toward my head. Is it aiming for me now? I hit the vent cover again, and it falls out beneath me.
I fall with it, and crash to the hardwood floor below.
A shot of pain radiates through my hip, but my yelp is drowned out by the shrill noise of the ducts bending and contracting above me, retreating into the ceiling as they collapse.
The hall goes quiet. The stench dissipates, closed off in the mangled tubes that I can no longer see.
I stand, checking the rip in my jacket. The Laundry Service is going to eat my lunch for ruining yet another suit. Thank the binding that I made it out of the crawl space before it crushed me. But where am I now?
Heart still racing, I take in the old hall around me. Lots of doors, but that’s not unusual—could be almost any of the non-dedicated corridors. Though . . .
I spin to find a familiar gray-brick wall at the end of the arched corridor. It’s the hall where I lost Queenie more than two weeks ago. It can’t be a coincidence that the ducts collapsed over the same exact hall that the cat disappeared in.
If Nagalla finds out that the Hotel’s air ducts tried to squeeze me to death, it’ll be bad news. He already thinks the Hotel isn’t secure. I’ll worry about that later, though. Right now, I need to take another look at this hall.
I feel along the walls with one hand, absently rubbing the ache in my side with the other. None of these doors bear the nameplates that most turners and knockers have, because these doors aren’t bound. They all lead to useless, dusty rooms. And the hall dead-ends into a solid brick wall. No connection, no binding.
Or is there? When I really listen, I can almost hear something on the other side of the wall at the far end. It’s not the hum of the binding; it’s more . . . a whistle. Like wind.
My gaze falls to a few tiny green shoots sprouting from the corner where the arch meets the floor at the end of the hall. The flowering growths bend as if caught in a light breeze. That’s weird. There’s no way a plant could have forced its way in here from the outside.
I squat down and reach for the buds, and the wind behind the wall picks up, rustling the tiny leaves. When my fingers brush the soft, cool petals, the cluster of blossoms retreats.
“Wait,” I say. “Come back.”
The leaves shudder, as if actually listening. I reach for the blossoms again, and this time they grow toward me, curl around my index finger, and blossom into a brilliant lime-green flower in my hand.
I caress the petals, and the vines tickle my palm. These aren’t like the dried, dark things I found outside the elevator—they’re warm and damp, like the plants the groundskeepers tend to in the Greenhouse, only without any of the sickness. The flower makes me smile, like I found something truly special and it’s all mine.
The vines tense. Tendrils of green draw tight around my hand, swirling up my wrist and squeezing.
No. NO! I lean back and brace my foot against the wall, trying to pull out of the vines’ grip, but they keep growing, pressing deep into my skin. Now they’re moving up my forearm, around my biceps. I pull harder, struggling to break free, but the vines won’t let go.
“Help!” I shout. The vines have reached my shoulder now and are splitting the rip in my sleeve even wider. They wrap around my waist, dig into my pocket.
Then, they stop. The hall is quiet for a long breath.
“Is that—”
A dozen more vines burst from the seam between the wall and the arch, engulf my leg braced against the stone, and pull me toward the heart of the flower. I fight against them, but they’re too strong.
Wind gusts through a gap that has finally appeared—a small opening between the vines that glimmers with green iridescence. I struggle to turn away, desperately calling out for anyone, but no help comes. I suck in another breath, ready to scream, but the vines wrap around my mouth, stifling my cry.
I’m gonna die. I’m going to die.
Then, all at once, the vines contract, dragging me into the small, shimmering hole.
• • •
My vision explodes in a flash of brilliant emerald light; silhouettes of green tentacles and leafy sprouts hover in the darkness behind my eyelids. Wind roars in my ears and swirls around me.
And then, nothing.
I open my eyes to see an endless, pale green sky speckled with stars. Sand mixed with dirt cools my back as a gentle wind kicks up little swirls of dust around me. I sit up to figure out where I am, but I’m pretty sure that not even Carlee’s taste-testing tongue would be able to identify this place.
A single path twists and turns away from me, but a path is all it is—a trail no more than ten feet wide, suspended in a vast, star-strewn sky the color of pistachio ice cream.
Wherever this is, it’s not any part of the Hotel I’ve seen before.
I pull my dangling leg away from the edge of the path as quickly as I can without shifting my weight too much, afraid that one wrong move will send me falling for days into that gaping green emptiness. When I look over the drop-off, the empty emerald expanse continues beneath me too. It goes on forever, in every direction.
Up ahead the road curves, allowing a glimpse of what lies beneath. The path rests on a massive tangle of green. I’m sitting on a road, atop an enormous twist of vines suspended in the sky. Great.
Prr-r-r-eow.
A weight bumps into me, and to keep from tumbling off the road I squeeze the vines that form the edge.
“Queenie?”
The cat nuzzles me with the top of her head, her purr engine humming. This must be where she went when she vanished.
I take a breath to calm my nerves. Queenie disappeared and came back to the Hotel, so that means I can get back too. I just need to figure out how before some monster with a taste for people decides that I’ve brought it an afternoon snack.
I go through the steps of Oma’s game, trying to discern anything I can about this place, but I’m not even sure this is a place. The air’s cool, but there’s no sun to determine what time zone
we’re in. Unless one of those distant, tiny stars is our sun, and I’m halfway across the galaxy in a place where time doesn’t exist because the sun would change positions so very slowly and—
Deep breaths.
Queenie weaves through halfway-buried bags and shoes and all sorts of weird junk. The path is littered with this stuff—papers and notebooks and old pens peeking out of the soil, a single sock, even a few wallets and one expensive-looking purse tangled up in yellow-green flowers. They look like they’ve been here forever, just waiting for someone to find them. I wonder who left them here.
I inspect the stone wall behind me. It’s the same as the one on the other side. With the doors we have back in the Hotel, each side looks different, depending on where you are. This is more like I’m just on the other side of the wall.
Down near the ground I spy that terrible cluster of lime-green blossoms. They’re bigger on this side, growing out from the vines that form the road. Something glistens amidst the tangle of shoots and leaves. I lean close to investigate.
It’s a key—an off-white skeleton key that shimmers with a rainbow of colors in the light from the pistachio haze. I feel in my pocket, but Mom’s topscrew isn’t there, where it belongs. Which means . . . that’s my key.
I lift my hand tentatively, working up the courage to retrieve it.
The wall before me ripples like waves as soon as I wrap my fingers around the topscrew’s pearlescent stem. No, not like waves . . . like fabric. I pull my hand out—key gripped tightly in my fist—and jump back. The wall comes with me. It lifts, as if I’m drawing back a curtain, and I can see the Hotel’s sixth floor beyond. I let the curtain fall, and it shimmers as it re-forms into solid wall, leaving the topscrew in my hand.
Relief floods through me, knowing there’s a way I can leave. But there’s something else. I think that was like shaping magic. Like the icons, and Cass’s chair. The wall responded to my touch, and opened the way to the other side.
