"You can't go away?" I asked over my shoulder as I worked the lather into my hair.
It took the man a moment to answer. I was beginning to think perhaps he was slightly stupid, until I turned around to look at him and caught the glaze of desire in his eyes.
Oh. Perhaps not stupid, then. At least, no more stupid than any other man in the throes of lust.
"Why can't you leave?" I clarified, once he had dragged his eyes up my body to rest on my face. Humans have such a strange fascination with unclothed bodies. It's rather like they don't know what lies underneath all those layers—as if they forget, from disrobing to disrobing, what other bodies look and feel and smell and taste like.
"I think," he said, finally figuring out how to answer me, "that someone wants me here." He paused, and his next words were almost a whisper. "Maybe even The Hotel itself."
I nodded. It made sense—I wasn't certain he would have been able to get into this room if The Hotel didn't want it that way.
"You don't seem surprised."
"I'm not." I finished rinsing out my hair, and turned off the water. Wrapping a towel around myself didn't seem to dim his interest in my physical form at all. That could be a problem if we were to spend much more time together.
I continued speaking as I dried myself off and pulled on the dress left for me by The Hotel—or possibly its staff. I had stopped making any distinction between the two decades before. "I assume the statues directed you to this room?"
He nodded.
"Then yes, you are meant to be here. I was similarly invited—at least a card was left for me to find and I made my way here."
"I found a card, too." The human seemed unduly excited. Then again, if this was his first visit, perhaps he had reason to be.
For that matter, I might be making unwarranted assumptions. "What are you?" I asked bluntly.
I was beginning to recognize that long, slow blink as a play for time as he considered his options. "A police officer," he finally said. "From Dallas. A detective."
"Human?"
"Yeah."
"No other abilities?" Now I was irritated. Why would The Hotel pair me with an untalented human male? What could he possibly offer that I couldn't manage on my own?
"No special skills that I'm aware of. Not unless you count marksmanship." He watched me warily as I plaited my still-wet hair into a braid and spun it into a bun on the back of my head, tucking the ends under to hold it in place and out of my way.
"Marksmanship. That means firearms, right?"
He nodded.
Hm. Potentially useful against other humans. Or some supernaturals, if we had the right ammunition.
But guns would be no use against the Titans.
"We should see what Selena has to tell us." Smoothing my skirt over my hips, I slid my feet into the soft black flats on the floor beneath the clothing hook.
"Selena?"
"The bartender."
"The bartender. In the magical hotel. Of course."
I chose not to acknowledge his muttered comment, instead leading him out of the pool room into the hallway that I had grown to consider mine, with its soothing ocean blues. If I stayed overnight, my personal room would also be on this floor. I knew there were other floors, as I had seen Hotel guests staying on them enter and exit the elevator—but never had I been placed anywhere else.
I wondered where The Hotel would house a human.
Come to think of it, I had never seen a human here except in the company of a supernatural. Usually as food, albeit a willing meal.
I shook my head. It didn't matter where The Hotel expected him to sleep.
However, it might be useful to be able to call him something other than "the human."
"What is your name?" I asked. I suspected that by human standards, my words were abrupt, perhaps even rude, but I had not chosen the man as my companion. That The Hotel did so probably meant I needed him.
I didn't have to like it.
Or him.
"Stavros," he said. "Zale Stavros."
"Kirka," I replied.
"No last name?"
I hesitated before giving him the rest of it. Names are power, and I knew it, even if Zale Stavros did not.
In the end, I gave him only my Siren clan name. "Kirka Tritones."
By then, we were at the elevator, and having traded names, I believed I had fulfilled my social duty for chitchat.
Apparently, Zale Stavros felt the need to fill silences. "Have you been here before?" he asked as we stepped onto the lift and I pushed the single button.
"Occasionally," I answered shortly.
"Often enough to know the bartender."
I couldn't help but smile. "Everyone who comes to The Hotel gets to know Selena." Some of us better than others, but he didn't need to know that.
Some memories should be kept private.
The elevator dinged and the door slid open. I led the way across the mostly empty lobby. I could hear the low hum of conversation and the sound of glassware, so I wasn't surprised to find the bar busy, full of Hotel guests.
There must have been a few night-dwellers, possibly blood-drinkers, as the windows overlooked a midnight cityscape. It had been bright, Mediterranean daylight outside the windows of the pool room, but the Hotel served its guests' needs.
I scanned the room for two empty seats, found some around a low table near the back, and headed toward them.
But when I turned to speak to Zale Stavros, he was no longer behind me, and I couldn't see him in the doorway.
I stood staring from the door to the table, wondering what I should do next.
"Well, flounderfuck."
Zale
The Hotel bar was like the cantina scene in Star Wars. I half-expected someone to come along and tell me these weren't the droids I was looking for. Or maybe shoot me from under a table.
I was pretty sure that was a wookie in the corner.
Or maybe a werewolf.
Suddenly, I was absolutely certain that whatever might happen in here, it wouldn't end well for me.
Something enormous and green and slightly damp brushed past me on its way out the door, followed by a train of tall, elongated, powder-white humanoids. I shrank back further, equally fascinated and repelled by the cross-section of creatures inside.
Was this part of my world? Had it always been?
And if so, why the hell hadn't I ever run across it before? I worked the darkest parts of my city, dealt with the ugliest that humanity had to offer.
But what if it wasn't always humanity? I found myself mentally clicking through the worst of my unsolved cases over the years. Murders, mostly—those are the unsolveds that stick with you. One woman ripped apart, practically shredded. The wookie-werewolf could have done that. Another, a man, beheaded—and we never found the head. Was he the victim of one of these creatures? Or maybe he was one of the monsters, and the beheading was what took him out.
If I walked into this bar, would I wind up as something's dinner?
Almost hyperventilating, I backed out of the doorway and leaned against the doorjamb on the other side, as if a single wall between me and them could save me.
I wish I had my Glock.
Hell, any handgun would do.
From inside the bar, I heard the mermaid's voice ring out clearly. "Oh, flounderfuck!"
My breathing caught in my throat and came out as a laugh.
Flounderfuck? That was the sound of irritation, not terror.
She peeked her head around the door. "What are you doing?" she asked in tones of pure annoyance.
"Um. I moved aside to let … someone else go by." It came out sounding more like a question than a statement, but it was, at least, a better explanation than the truth. I didn't think she would appreciate "gibbering in fear" as a response.
Still… I had to ask. "Is it safe for me in there?"
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Of course
. The Hotel protects its guests. All its guests. You are safer here than you are in your own home."
Great. Now I would never be able to sleep in my own bed again. Not without a gun under my pillow, anyway.
"Come on. Let's go find Selena." Without waiting for my response, she wheeled around and marched back into the bar.
This time I followed her all the way to our seats.
* * *
The Hotel bar didn't improve on second impression. I mean, the ambiance was nice enough—rich fabrics, comfortable chairs, candlelight. But if I let my gaze linger too long on any one group of patrons, my heart started beating too fast, and sweat broke out along my hairline.
It wasn't even fear, exactly. It was too automatic for that. This was an ingrained adrenaline response, the fight-or-flight reaction to the danger my body knew was all around me, even if my mind told it we were fine.
The part of my brain that had evolved from animals too likely to become prey knew that we were, in fact, not fine. We were likely to be eaten at any moment, and we should run away.
Something hairy two tables over suddenly stuck a snout into the air and inhaled deeply. When it turned to look my way, its lips peeled back in a wolfish grin.
Perfect. I was giving off fear pheromones. Now I not only looked like dinner, I smelled like it, too.
"Mm. You keep doing that, and I might eat you up myself." The smoky, female voice came from behind me, and it was all I could do to keep from leaping up and away. When I turned around, though, the woman standing behind me looked human.
And stunning, in a femme fatale kind of way, if you like that kind of thing. I don't generally go for that type—and in this bar, I'd be keeping my distance from anything that even hinted at 'man-eater.'
She was tall and dark-haired, with golden-olive skin that might have made her Greek. Her accent, though, was something else, something I couldn't place. She wore a full-length, deep red dress with a plunging neckline that highlighted the long sweep all the way up her bare neck to the intricate up-swept hairdo—she might have stepped right out of a movie from the 30s or 40s.
"Kirka, darling," she said, leaning past me to plant a kiss on the mermaid's cheek. "It's been too long."
Kirka murmured something I couldn't hear in return, but real pleasure shone from her eyes—the first time I had seen any expression on her face other than mild annoyance. Delight looked good on her, highlighting the bright blue shine of her eyes and the delicate pink of her lips against her pale skin.
"You both received your invitations, I assume?" Selena asked, standing straight again. When we nodded, the bartender placed one hand on my shoulder, then jerked it back and stared at me wide-eyed.
"What is it?" Kirka asked.
"I'm not certain." Selena frowned and moved around me to take the empty chair at our table. "May I?" she asked, holding out her hand.
Somewhat reluctantly, I placed my palm in hers. She laid her other hand on top of it, her perfectly manicured nails matching her blood-red dress.
Closing her eyes, she held my hand for a moment, then carefully placed it on my knee before turning to Kirka. "It's there," she said. "Buried deep, but accessible."
"So he'll do?" The mermaid's critical glance swept across me, from head to toe.
"I believe he will, yes." With a firm nod, Selena stood up. "Shall I bring you a drink?"
"I'd like an explanation, instead." I tried to sound stern, but I feared it came out more petulant than anything else.
Selena smiled. "Of course. I'll return momentarily with everything you will need."
"I'll do?" I turned to Kirka as soon as Selena was out of ear-shot.
At least, I thought she was out of hearing range—but the grin she flashed back at me suggested I had miscalculated.
She might look human, but probably, Selena wasn't any more human than any of the obvious creatures in this bar.
"What are we doing here? I think I've been pretty patient, considering everything." I hadn't even started asking about Clay yet. But I was about to—even if I had to pin down and question every single freak in the place.
Kirka chewed on her bottom lip with perfectly white, even teeth, and the candlelight flashed off a shimmer of sea-green, in the shape of scales, across the pink skin. When I looked again, her lips were back to being perfectly normal, and decidedly non-green.
When she responded, it was with another question. "Why are you in Athens?"
"I'm looking for my partner."
"Another police officer?"
I nodded, warily.
"Are you looking for Adam Clayton?"
I shot up out of my seat and had her by the throat in an instant. "What do you know about Clay?" I demanded.
Before she could answer, the tall, bald black man from the front desk was dragging me off of her with Selena standing beside him, glaring daggers at me.
"There is no problem," Kirka said loudly. "His actions were by invitation. Do you hear me, Max? He had my permission."
Slowly, the desk clerk—who was stronger than I would have given him credit for being, even if he was seven feet tall—released me. His glance at Kirka suggested that he didn't believe her, but was allowing the lie to pass.
"Because he is needed," he said, giving the mermaid a significant look.
She nodded. "I will explain the rules to him."
"And I will return when that's done," Selena said, her red-lipsticked mouth held in a tight line.
As they walked away, Kirka leaned toward me. "There is no unsanctioned violence allowed in The Hotel."
"So I noticed." I sat back down, rolling my shoulders to release some of the tension.
"I will not intervene again. We are here to work together, Zale Stavros. I will tell you everything I know about your partner, but you cannot attack me. Never again." Her nostrils flared. "I cannot guarantee that you would survive the attempt."
I wanted to blame all that pent-up adrenaline, the fight-or-flight chemicals coming out in a fighting response, but the truth was, I had been edgy ever since I stepped off the plane in Athens, well before I had encountered any actual monsters.
I held up both hands in a motion of surrender and nodded. "Got it. Now, tell me what you know."
Kirka
Selena returned with drinks for all of us, and did a good job of summarizing the situation with the Titans for the human at the table: they were immensely powerful, imprisoned, and trying to break out in a way likely to destroy not merely one world, but all worlds.
But Selena knew something I didn't. "Somehow, the Titans are using The Hotel as a focal point for their attack on reality," she said.
I blinked. The Hotel was impenetrable. Invulnerable. "How?" I asked.
The bartender shook her head, her carefully coiffed curls moving only slightly. "We're uncertain. No one on staff admits to knowing anything. That's why we decided, after … consultation … to call the two of you in." The slight hesitance in her voice suggested that I probably shouldn't ask with whom they had consulted. If I got an answer at all, I almost certainly wouldn't like it.
For all I knew, The Hotel itself spoke to the staff.
"So are these Titans monsters, or gods?" Zale asked, bringing my attention back to the issue at hand.
Selena and I looked at each other for a long time.
What humans who moved too far from the ways of magic—and let's be honest, that's pretty much all of them—what those humans forget is that to name something is to create it. No one who knew much of the Titans wanted to afford them any more power than they already had.
"What we call them doesn't matter," Selena finally said, skirting the truth without outright lying. "They are powerful and dangerous."
I nodded. "And they don't care if they destroy entire worlds in their quest to gain their freedom."
"In fact," Selena added, "some of them would do so simply for the joy of destruction."
Zale ticked off points on his f
ingertips. "Powerful. Dangerous. Able to destroy worlds." He narrowed his eyes and looked back and forth between us. "And what, precisely, are the two of us supposed to be able to do about them?"
No one answered him for a long moment—so long, that he spoke again. "I see. The entire staff of Monster Hotel is afraid to go up against these guys, so you're going to send in one human cop and The Little Mermaid here?"
My mouth tightened, but I worked to show no other reaction. He knew precisely how rude he meant to be, so it didn't matter that the basis of his reference was in fact one of my favorite stories—a tale designed to show precisely how dangerous it was for mer-folk to interact with humans at all.
Of course, I also knew that the story was one of Poseidon's fabrications, designed to keep the mer away from humanity.
I knew too much.
And in the case of the Titans' incursion into other realities, I also knew too little.
Selena laughed, and reached across the table to place her hand on Zale's forearm. He flinched and frowned, and she pulled her hand back. "You have no idea what you're capable of," she said.
Then she reached out and touched her fingertips to the back of my hand. A slight zing of electricity flashed through my skin, and I blinked. "Your power is undiminished since Homer sang his songs," she said, laughter threading through her voice.
Zale's frown deepened, and he leaned back in his seat, watching me more carefully than he had before. "What do you mean?" he asked Selena.
"Which part?" She took a sip of a blood-red drink through a tiny straw, and smiled sharply.
"Start with Homer," he said.
"Have you heard his songs?" she asked.
"I went to college. We read The Iliad and The Odyssey."
"Then you have heard of our Kirka," she said.
"Gotta admit, I don't really remember all that much of the story."
"You should study your own history." Serena's tone matched that sharp smile this time. "You might learn much of who you are, and what you might do if you but attempted it."
"Who are you?" Zale asked me.
I waved a hand at him, impatient to discuss something important. "Later." Turning to Selena, I asked, "What is it, precisely, that you need us to do?"
Siren's Curse (Hotel Paranormal) Page 5
