Siren's Curse (Hotel Paranormal)

by Bond Collins,Margo

  She turned serious, the bite of her prickly humor pushed back under her professional Hotel employee's persona. "Find the source of the incursion into The Hotel. The Titans have not managed this alone. Someone is helping them, and we do not know who or how. We find that troubling."

  The we in that sentence sounded like it might include The Hotel itself.

  "I know my own powers. How can a human police officer aid in this?" I didn't glance at the officer in question as I posed it, unwilling to offer him the same kind of insult he had offered me, but knowing I had to ask.

  Selena gazed at Zale, then reached out and touched him again before she spoke. Her voice took on an almost dreamy quality, as if she were channeling something beyond herself. "He has a bond with the other human, the one of earth who aided the Siren Skyla in the first rebuff of the Titans from human space. He carries a power of his own, as well. He is descended of the first bards, who joined the Sirens in singing the Titans' imprisonment. His song will join with yours."

  I felt an almost physical jolt at her words.

  The first bards? Humans with the ability to channel power in ways similar to that of the Sirens, whose magic had helped us lock the Titans away in the first place? I had assumed they were all gone, their magic bred out of them as they mixed with the rest of humanity.

  I stared at Zale with a new respect—for just as long as it took him to speak again. "What the hell does any of that mean?" he asked.

  Selena laughed aloud this time. "That is for the two of you to discover." She gestured into the air, and as if waiting for the signal, the rest of the hotel employees rejoined us, sitting around the table. "Let us discuss your next steps."

  * * *

  "You're telling me that this hotel can set someone out in any city in the entire world—hell, maybe more than one world—but it can only let me leave through the door I used to enter?" Zale's skeptical tone told me everything I needed to know about his opinion of this rule.

  Ava, the quietest of the Hotel employees, folded her hands in her lap and nodded. "That's the way it works." I had gotten this line from the staff several times over the years, and although I'd heard rumors of The Hotel making exceptions to the rule, I hadn't ever experienced it myself.

  Zale's expression matched the clerk's, right down to the slight moue of apology on her lips. "That's bullshit."

  A bark of laughter exploded from me, and Zale cut his eyes my direction briefly. "Seriously," he said. "If the building can access these doors in space and time, and more to the point, if someone is using the hotel to create them, then whatever rules you thought you knew about the way travel works through The Hotel is simply wrong. Someone has figured out how to circumvent the rules the rest of you have been living by."

  Selena's forehead creased into an open frown, and Ava was openly wringing her hands. Max looked as stoic as ever, but I thought I detected lines of worry around his eyes.

  None of this was news to them. They simply hadn't wanted to admit it, not even to themselves.

  Zale stared around at them, coming to the same conclusions. "But since you already know this, we can skip right past the revelations portion of this evening and get to the mechanics of how we'll be travelling."

  Zale was still shaking his head in irritation as the bartender stood and gave a slight tilt of her head. "We thank you for your assistance. Know that we will aid you in any way possible, though those ways may sometimes be more limited than we would prefer. Your cards will always allow you to return to The Hotel, and the limitations on returns are lifted for the duration of your investigation."

  Zale had hastily stood when Selena did—I was glad to see someone had instilled manners in him at some point—and I followed suit more slowly. I returned Selena's nod. "Do you have a suggestion as to where we should begin that investigation?"

  The four hotel employees glanced back and forth at one another, until finally David, the porter, spoke. "I can show you where you'll need to go."

  "So you can get us to the last breakthrough point?" I asked.

  "You misunderstand." He shook his head. "I would if I could. But The Hotel has … made it clear … that it will be determining your entry and exit points."

  "The Hotel is deciding. Great," Zale muttered.

  "Understand," Selena said, leaning forward and placing a calming hand on Zale's forearm. "We four have worked here for …" she paused, tilting her head, as if considering whether or not to name a number. In the end, she simply ended with, "a very long time. In that time, we have learned to trust The Hotel. Though we might not always understand why she makes the choices she does, it always ends up to the guests' benefit."

  "Well," Max started to interrupt, but Selena overrode him. "It always ends up to the guests' collective benefit," she said forcefully. Max subsided at the correction.

  "We are all absolutely certain that you and Kirka have been invited here to take care of a disturbance that would, in the end, be to no one's benefit. The Hotel will do whatever is necessary to make sure you are able to correct the problem."

  Zale nodded, not necessarily agreeing, but acknowledging that he followed her argument.

  "We trust The Hotel. We trust that you are the right pair to track down the source of the problem." She opened her hands in her lap and leaned back, as if that completed the discussion.

  "And you're willing to simply turn us loose to take care of your problem?" Zale raised one eyebrow.

  When everyone else around the small bar table nodded, I raised my own eyebrows. "So. Partner. What do you say we go track down some bad guys?"

  A half-laugh huffed out of the cop, but he nodded. "Fine. Let's go open a door and see where it leads us."

  "Excellent." David stood up and put his porter's hat back on, along with his porter's manners. "Follow me, sir, madam. Right this way."

  The rest of the staff members meeting with them dispersed to their various jobs, though more and more, I was beginning to wonder what those jobs actually were. We moved out of the bar and into the Hotel lobby, where David stopped beside the fountain, with all its statues of naked, cavorting creatures. I was certain some of them were different from the ones I had seen the last time I had visited.

  "You have your cards and your keys?" David asked. We both flashed both—the cards the original ones that had led us each to The Hotel, the keys the ones Max had handed us in the bar.

  "Good." The porter clasped his hands. "Your card will lead you to the nearest door at all times. Unlike our usual guests, we won't be able to guarantee that you will always enter and exit from the same door. You realize, of course, that this is an unusual circumstance, and The Hotel will not be able to ensure your absolute safety as it does most of our guests.

  "That said, we will also be able to extend some unusual courtesies, as well. Unlike our average guests, you will not be penalized for violence on Hotel grounds, so long as it is neither gratuitous, nor directed at non-participatory guests."

  "Don't hit the wrong guy?" Zale asked dryly.

  "Precisely." The short man began walking down a hall as various statues began pointing. "Finally, please note that The Hotel will determine when you have completed your mission. If you have any questions at that time, please feel free to ask any of the staff."

  I stopped in the middle of the dark red hallway the statues were pointing us down. "You mean we might not know if we stop whoever is helping the Titans?"

  David stopped in the middle of a step. "How will we know when to quit looking?"

  "The Hotel will ensure you are aware that you have completed the mission."

  Zale and I glanced at each other. I could tell he didn't like that any more than I did, but I didn't know that there was anything we could do about it, particularly since it wasn't actually a problem yet.

  "Fine," Zale muttered, and picked up the pace again.

  Zale

  Part of me didn't believe The Hotel was going to deposit me somewhere other than the Ath
enian street on which I'd entered.

  Despite the giant hotel inside the tiny, two-story house.

  Despite the Star Wars cantina scene of a bar set farther back in that hotel than the house went.

  Despite the fucking mermaid who had shed her fins to come walkabout with me.

  Apparently I drew the line at teleportation.

  No real reason. That was just my limit.

  Until the Little Person Porter pushed open the perfectly ordinary, run of the mill, average interior hotel door.

  And it opened onto Broadway—or at least, the corner where some lesser-known street intersected with Broadway.

  The one in New York City, with all the bright lights and shows. And snow. It was snowing on Broadway in New York. I was dressed in shirtsleeves. Thin ones. The kind you'd wear in the Mediterranean.

  I turned, the beginning of a complaint on my mouth, when David reached behind him and snagged a couple of overcoats, along with scarves and boots—from where, I couldn't tell.

  With a quick little flourish of a bow, he handed over the clothing, turned to re-enter The Hotel, and shut the door behind him.

  "What would happen if we opened it again?" I asked Kirka as I shrugged into the coat.

  "There aren't too many choices. Either we would be back in The Hotel—though with no more information than we started with—or we would step into …" she took a step back to look at the sign over our heads, "... the delivery entrance of Alfonso's Famous Pizza."

  I couldn't help but laugh. "You hungry enough to bother trying the pizza route?"

  "No, thanks. You?"

  "Nope. Guess that means we're on board for tracking the Titans."

  "Yeah." Kirka's voice dropped and she stared around the corner at the bustling winter scene.

  I stepped closer to her, making sure no one who pushed past us would brush up against her, and lowered my own voice. "You don't spend much time around this many humans, do you?"

  "No. Everything about my training tells me they're…you're … dangerous. Unpredictable."

  "And yet you're the one who can turn people into pigs?"

  Her eyes flashed a purple-blue light at me and she grinned. "Figured out who I am, did you?" She waved a hand dismissively. "I didn't say you had cornered the market on unpredictable."

  "Took me a while. But I speak Greek." I shrugged. "There's enough language slippage—and enough time has gone by—for me to put together that Kirka might have become Circe over the years."

  "Good. Then you know I don't mind using my magic against men who piss me off."

  That was better. I preferred her smiling and defiant to cowering and frightened.

  "Okay, then. Let's see what these keys can tell us."

  We pulled the brass tabs out and dangled them from our hands, watching the colored gems in the center as they … did nothing.

  "What do the stones normally do?" I tilted my head, peering at it closely.

  "Honestly, I'm not sure." Kirka jangled the key ring against her palm a couple of times experimentally. "I don't think I've ever actually paid attention to that part of the key ring before. I just followed the statues' directions." She paused, a slight reminiscent smile crossing her features. "I've never had reason to complain before."

  I closed my eyes. "I don't want to hear tales of Hotel Escapades in Days of Yore." Though I had to admit, if only to myself, that the more time I spent around Kirka, the more interested I became in possibly coming up with our own.

  "I wasn't going to tell you anything," she replied primly.

  Pulling out the Hotel card, I peered at it. "Hey. This is different." I pointed at the address.

  "I assumed it would be a New York address," Kirka said.

  "Yes, but it's not this New York address. Maybe we're supposed to head toward the new address."

  The mermaid shrugged. "Seems as good a plan as any."

  "Tell me more about the Titans," I said as we headed toward Broadway itself, shoulders tucked up around our ears.

  Kirka wrapped her blue scarf more snugly around her hair and ears. "I don't know what else to tell you, really. God-like monsters, trapped in an alternate dimension, trying to break out. What else do you need to know?"

  "Maybe what kinds of powers they have? How many of them are there? What kinds of weapons do we have? What are we up against?"

  She stopped in middle of the sidewalk, staring at me. I stopped, too, as grumbling New Yorkers pushed past us. "What?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "I forget how little humans remember of their own history—how little they know of their own reality."

  How little we knew?

  I might not know a lot, but I knew that somewhere, someone had information on the Titans that might be able to help us.

  "Wait." It had been years since I had been in New York, but I was almost certain we weren't all that far away.… I shoved my coat back out of the way to get to the pocket of my jeans, and pulled out my phone. Stepping back and leaning against the wall of the building beside me, I gave way to the irritable pedestrians still streaming by. Kirka followed me, frowning.

  With a few swipes of my finger, I had a map of the city, and with only a few more keystrokes, I had the information I needed. "This way," I said, reaching for Kirka's hand and pulling her back onto the sidewalk.

  She flinched a bit at my touch, but she didn't pull away. "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see." I couldn't keep a slight triumphant tone out of my voice, premature though it may have been. I knew we could find what I needed to know.

  "Is it someplace warm, at least?" she asked, blowing on the fingers of her free hand.

  "Should be." I don't know if she recognized the two stone lions flanking the stairs up to the building. Probably New York architecture wasn't as universally recognizable to mermaids from the depths of Atlantis as it was to those of us who had spent time with nieces and nephews watching Between the Lions on PBS.

  But she could read English, so by the time we walked inside, Kirka knew where we were. She wasn't as over-awed by the interior décor as many people I had known—but then again, she had been around forever.

  "Here," I said, gesturing around the marble interior. "A repository of all that humanity does know and remember."

  "You think The New York Public Library is going to be able to give you more information than I can?" she asked.

  "I think it's a warm, public place, where we can figure out our next move, and where it won't seem out of place for us to discuss ancient gods and their abilities. And yeah, maybe if you get hung up somewhere along the way, we'll be able to look up additional information."

  I didn't bother to mention that I could basically do that on my phone, too—hooray for internet. Some part of me needed to be able to show her a physical representation of humanity's accomplishments.

  Stupid, I know.

  But that Hotel had thrown me for a loop, and getting paired with a mermaid and sent to save the world wasn't making my vertigo any better. "Let's find a place to sit down and chat," I said.

  Kirka

  The human had taken me to a public library.

  If I added up all the time I had spent studying in various repositories of learning, I suspected it would add up to more years than this particular man—attractive though he might be—had been alive.

  I frowned at him in disbelief, as he began searching for seating.

  "Are you serious?" I asked. "You do realize that we could have any conversation we wanted to on the streets of New York City, and no one would even blink twice. Even I know that."

  He opened his mouth to answer, but never got the chance.

  A wave of percussive force hit the air near us like a bomb going off.

  With the carefully honed instincts of a police officer, Zale dove on top of me, his weight bearing me to the floor. He rounded his arms over his head and curved his body around mine to protect us both.

  When a few seconds pas
sed without another explosion, he chanced a glance up. All around us, people were beginning to stand, to check on one another. Zale waved off another library patron's questions—he was still watching everything with that wary gaze—as he first stood, then helped me to my feet.

  I realized the moment we both saw it: a crack in the air. At first glance, I had dismissed it as a flaw in the marble on the wall by the staircase to our right. When I looked again, though, the crack had grown, and I saw that it floated several inches in front of the wall itself.

  "What is that?" he asked in the tone of one who has seen too much recently to doubt the answer, whatever it may be.

  I scowled at the beginning of an opening between worlds, then at Zale. "It's the beginning of another attack on this dimension. You led us straight to the site of the next incursion." I took a step back and glared at him suspiciously. "How did you do that?"

  "I didn't do anything," he protested, but quickly turned his attention away from me and back to the Titan's growing entrance. "Can anyone else see that?" he whispered.

  I glanced around the lobby. People were still picking themselves up and dusting off, but it wouldn't be long before someone noticed the hole in space developing in their midst.

  "They won't." I stepped closer to the rift, feeling the magical power flowing through it in ice-cold waves.

  My own senses still reeled from the blast, and from trying to figure out how Zale had gotten us from The Hotel door to the site of the Titan attack—before it happened.

  No time for that now, Kirka.

  I had to sing a spell of distraction. One that would allow the humans' eyes to slide over this space as if it held nothing unusual.

  I focused on the marble behind the split in the air.

  The stone was cool, slow to care, slower to change. Its movements were at the atomic level, well below the ability of the human eye to detect.

  I could sing a song of stone distraction, and the human world would rush in to fulfill my wishes.

  As ever, when I first lifted my voice, everyone around me turned to see, always drawn to Siren Song, no matter its intent. Even the library guards, who had turned at the sound to ask me to leave with everyone else, either froze completely or leaned slightly toward me, yearning to possess that which they could never have.