Dead and Breakfast

by Lily Webb

  Chapter Six

  I woke the next morning to the sweet scent of gourmet coffee and freshly baked pastries drifting upstairs from the kitchen. Since Emile apparently didn’t need to sleep at night, I wondered if he spent all that free time cooking and baking breakfast for the guests every morning.

  I sat up and rubbed the crust from my eyes; I’d slept like a baby. Jadis was already awake, sitting with her back against her bed’s headboard with a book in hand. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

  She laughed and set the book on the bed beside her. “Are you kidding? I’ve been smelling it for hours.”

  “Hours? What time is it? Where’s my phone?” I asked, disoriented, as I searched the nightstand for it. I was sure I’d plugged it in and set it there before I fell asleep, but I saw no sign of it. Had I knocked it down or something?

  “No clue. My phone’s missing too.”

  “What? How?”

  Jadis shrugged. “I dunno, but I’m not worried about it. It’s not like I’m gonna have much use for it up here, anyway. My signal was terrible.”

  I hadn’t thought about or noticed that since we got to the inn — understandably, I’d been a little too distracted by other, more pressing things since our arrival. “Well, they have to be around here somewhere.”

  “Who cares? Let’s just go get breakfast. I’m starving and I’ve waited long enough for you to wake up, sleepy bones,” Jadis said. “I can only listen to you thrashing around and talking in your sleep for so long.”

  “I was not!”

  “You were too. If I’d been able to find my phone, I would’ve recorded it. Were you having bad dreams or something?”

  My face flushed, and my throat squeezed shut. Until she’d asked, I’d had no recollection, but Jadis was right; repeatedly, throughout the night, I’d seen the shadow spilling from behind room 666’s cracked door and someone or something — a faceless humanoid — sneaking up from behind to shove me inside the room with their other victim.

  My vision and dreams were too foggy for me to say for sure I saw Feal locked in the room, but whoever was in there, their captor clearly didn’t want me to know how or why their victim ended up inside.

  I shivered at the memory.

  “You okay? I wasn’t trying to freak you out,” Jadis said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. This is all just so weird. Why am I seeing stuff suddenly? I hope I’m not going crazy.”

  “Going? Girl, you’ve already been there for a while.”

  I scowled at Jadis and hurled one of my pillows in her direction, but she dodged it with a laugh. She sprung out of bed, sending her book clattering to the floor, and launched herself through the air like a torpedo. She landed with a thud on my bed, bouncing me everywhere, and I whopped her in the head with another pillow, sending her squealing off the edge to the floor. “You’re gonna pay for that!” she shouted as she recovered. “After breakfast, I mean. Come on. Let’s go see if there’s an update on Feal or anything else.”

  “Fine,” I sighed and set my fluffy weapon aside. Jadis stood and got dressed, and though I could’ve easily slept for another two hours or more, I dragged myself out of bed and threw on my clothes from the night before; I didn’t feel like finding something else. Out of a bad habit, I glanced at the nightstand to make sure I’d grabbed my phone before I remembered it was missing — but then something else hit me: the key that had sparked all this weirdness wasn’t there, either.

  “Jadis, wait!” I called to her. She froze with her hand on the doorknob.

  “What is it?”

  “My key.”

  “Oh, I’ve got my room key in my pocket, don’t worry.”

  “No, not that one. The key.”

  Jadis turned and stared at me wide-eyed. “It’s gone?”

  “I dunno, but it’s not on the nightstand where I left it before I went to sleep. You didn’t mess with it, did you?”

  “No, why would I do that?”

  Panic clamped my chest like a vice. As strange as our phones disappearing was, I could’ve chalked that up to a magical building playing pranks on newcomers, but the key? Nothing was funny about that.

  “I know I set it on the nightstand last night, and I didn’t touch it after that.”

  “Well, maybe we knocked it down while we were having our pillow fight?”

  I dropped to my hands and knees to look under our beds and the nightstand, but I didn’t spot the chromatic glint of the key anywhere.

  “Anything?” Jadis asked.

  I shook my head slowly as fear crept up my throat. “Do you think someone came in our room while we were asleep?”

  “What? No way. Don’t be paranoid. It has to be in here somewhere.”

  “I’m not paranoid! Unless the key grew legs and waltzed out of here on its own, someone must have taken it out. And if it wasn’t either of us, then who was it?”

  “Lox and Keez!” we shouted in unison. It made perfect sense; in their minds, I’d probably “stolen” it from them, although they’d stolen it first — and Blair had even said that she thought they had their own secret way of navigating the inn. The twin imps were just devious enough to think they could sneak into the new girls’ room and get away with it. Well, not on my watch.

  “Blair sent them to the basement last night, so I wonder if that’s where they live?” I asked.

  Jadis nodded. “Probably. But let’s go downstairs and talk to Blair about all this before we go chasing after demons. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I agreed, and followed her out of the room, double checking that I’d firmly sealed and locked the door — not that it would be much of a deterrent for mischievous, magical imps.

  Since apparently neither of us wanted to get trapped in an enclosed space alone, we took the stairs rather than the elevator down to the kitchen. Inside, Blair, Kiki, and the rest of the guests and staff we’d met the day prior had already taken seats at the huge wooden table.

  Blair’s face lit up at the sight of us, and she threw her bright red-robed arms wide from the head of the table. “Ah, there they are! Good morning, girls! Or should I say afternoon?” she asked as she dabbed her mouth with a napkin and pushed back from the table to meet us. She gave me a hug and a peck on the cheek. “I assume you slept well then, love?”

  “All things considered, yeah, pretty well,” I said, and though a hint of concern flashed on Blair’s face, it passed when she hugged Jadis next.

  “And you, Jadis?”

  “Until Selena woke me up thrashing from her nightmares, yeah,” she said, and my heart dropped into my stomach. I had no intention of telling Blair about that, but the cat was out of the bag now.

  “Thanks a lot,” I hissed in Jadis’ ear, and she shrugged.

  “Nightmares?” Blair whispered to me with her eyebrows raised.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call them nightmares. I just kept having the same vision from last night over and over,” I clarified, but given that Blair’s eyebrows stayed firmly planted at the top of her head, I doubted I’d convinced her.

  “I see. That’s… Disturbing.”

  “It’s no big deal, really. I have dreams like this a lot, even back home,” I lied. Blair eyed me suspiciously, proving once again I’d failed to fool her. Did she have some psychic ability herself? It wouldn’t have surprised me. “Anyway, any updates on Feal?”

  Blair shook her head. “Still no sign of her. No one’s seen her since Friday morning when I left for Denver.”

  “See? I’m telling you! Something happened to her, and my visions are trying to tell me what,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure I believed it myself.

  “You might be right. Anyway, I know you must be hungry, but please come with me, girls,” Blair said and motioned to Kiki to join us. We followed Blair further into the kitchen, through a set of swinging double doors, and entered a huge prep area, which I guessed must’ve been where Emile did all his amazing work.

  As if he knew I’d been thinking of him, the vampire zipped into e
xistence beside Blair with his hands clasped. “Hello, my new friends. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Hi, Emile. Would you mind putting together a breakfast bowl for the girls while we chat?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” the vampire said and whizzed away. Doors opened and closed on their own so quickly I could barely keep up, and before I knew it, Emile stood before us with two hearty bowls of fruit-laden oatmeal. “Please enjoy. I’ll leave you be,” he said and blurred away to a large metal table where he’d been slicing vegetables for dinner. I watched in awe as his hand, clutching a blade as big as my forearm, machine-gun chopped a cucumber in less than a second, filling the room with a sound like a woodpecker on speed.

  Blair told Kiki what I’d shared — or, rather, what Jadis had shared for me — and leaned against another metal table to stroke her chin.

  “Was there anything different about the vision in your dreams, Selena?” Kiki asked.

  Hesitantly, I nodded. “It was mostly the same, but at the end, I felt a sense of dread like someone was watching me. In the dream, I’d turn around and I’d see someone or something — a humanoid without a face or other details — creeping toward me to push me into room 666.”

  Kiki’s brows scrunched together. “How strange.”

  “That’s not the weirdest thing. When Jadis and I woke up this morning, both our phones were gone, and so was the key I’d taken from Lox and Keez last night.”

  Blair scoffed and shook her head. “Those imps, I swear. I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve these two haunting me like this,” she sighed. “Anyway, I told them to leave you and your room alone, but did they listen? Of course not.”

  Once more, fear clenched my stomach and my appetite disappeared. I set the still-warm bowl of oatmeal down on the table next to Blair. “So, the imps really were in our room overnight?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but it’s likely. Come on, we’ll put a stop to this right here, right now,” Blair said and swished away toward the dining area, leaving us no choice but to follow her.

  “Wait for me!” Jadis called through a mouthful of goopy oatmeal as she shoveled several more spoons of it into her mouth. She tossed the bowl on the table and tore after us.

  As we stormed through the dining area, the eyes of all the guests and other staff members followed us suspiciously, but I tried not to let it bother me. For all they knew, we’d had a staff meeting; no more, no less. I wasn’t sure how much Blair had shared with any of them about what’d happened the night before, but from the way she’d taken us into the back room for privacy, I guessed it wasn’t a lot.

  We entered the foyer and crossed it quickly to the other side of the building where an unassuming, thick wooden door built into a far wall waited. Blair yanked it open and a frigid blast of air shot out from somewhere deep underground like we’d entered an ice tunnel.

  “This is the entrance to the basement. The imps live down there with their collection. Despite the inferno they were born in, they like the cold,” she said and pulled her wand from the folds of her robes to lift it over her head. “Lumino,” she said, and the tip of her wand flared to life, revealing a stone staircase that descended further underground than the light traveled. Though I’d already seen her and Kiki both use magic several times, I still couldn’t get used to it.

  “Watch your step and your head,” Blair said as she started down the stairs. Despite the second wall of arctic air that crashed into me when I entered the staircase after her, I kept going, carefully putting one foot in front of the other and using the icy stone walls for balance and guidance.

  We descended for an eternity until, at last, we reached a landing and the light from Blair’s wand bloomed across and reflected off the stone ceiling of the cellar, bathing the space in warm, diffuse rays. I’d expected to find the floors littered with bones and rats, but there were several wooden crates of non-perishable food and supplies, interspersed with haphazard piles of shining, metallic scraps and knickknacks.

  “Lox! Keez! Are you here?” Blair called, and her voice echoed all around me like it’d come from every direction. A squeal of laughter answered, followed by the sound of furiously buzzing wings.

  “Imps are here, but where is Blair?” a high-pitched voice answered. “Blair come find Lox and Keez if she need them!”

  Blair rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the time for your impish games. Get over here now! I won’t ask nicely again.”

  A few moments later, the imps floated into view behind Blair with their eerie yellow eyes flashing in the darkness like a stray cat’s in an alley. They landed back-to-back on Blair’s shoulder, and Lox, the red-haired male, tugged at Blair’s ear and screeched in laughter as Blair shooed the pesty imp away.

  “Yes, yes, hilarious. Now, I believe you have some things that belong to Selena and Jadis. Give them back,” Blair ordered.

  Keez, the blue-haired female, fluttered into the air by Blair’s face, raised her tiny fists to her razor-filled mouth, and gave Blair the saddest puppy dog face she could muster. “But sweet Blair, Keez love shiny buzzy noisy bricks!”

  “I’m sure you do, Keez, but Selena and Blair love them more. And they’re not yours.”

  Keez wailed and tiny tears spilled from her eyes. “Mine now!” she howled. “Mine! Mine! Mine!” she shrieked, her voice like nails on a chalkboard as it soared in pitch with each word. She zipped away from Blair, pulling Lox along with her by their tied tails.

  “Keez! Get back here!” Blair shouted and pointed her wand in their direction to summon them back with magic, but the two imps had already vanished into the darkness. Annoyed, Blair sighed and turned back to us. “I’m so sorry. They’re not normally this troublesome.”

  I held my hand out for Blair’s wand. “Let me try. They know you too well and how to push your buttons. They won’t know what to do with me.”

  Blair raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

  “Why not? You and Kiki will be here if it goes wrong, right?”

  “Okay, if you insist,” Blair said and handed me her wand. As soon as I took it in my hand, energy hummed through me like a low-grade caffeine buzz, and though the light at the wand’s tip dimmed and flickered for a moment, it eventually surged back to life, revealing Blair beaming at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  Blair shook her head. “Nothing, it’s just… I’m glad that happened.”

  “That what happened?”

  “You kept the spell going. You couldn’t have done that if you didn’t have magic in your blood.”

  “Oh,” I said, unsure what to think of that. “Well, that’s good, right?”

  “It is. Anyway, we can talk about that later, love. Go on.”

  “Right,” I said, and fixed my grip on the wand. Once I’d adjusted to the sensation of the magic coursing through me, I held Blair’s wand out in front of me and stepped down the cellar passageway in the direction the imps had fled. “Lox? Keez? It’s me, Selena. I just want to talk to you both. Is that okay?” I called out to the imps. Though it was faint, I thought I heard a sniffle from the end of the passage, so I walked faster toward it.

  The light from the tip of Blair’s wand crept along the floor ahead of me and revealed a heaping pile made of various keys in different shapes and sizes, electronics, and other shiny things I couldn’t quite make out at the end of the passage. Lox and Keez sat protectively on top of it like it was their throne, both with their arms crossed combatively over their little chests.

  “Selena can’t have! Buzzy brick mine!” Keez growled, her voice sounding decidedly more demonic than it had before. Her unsettling eyes flashed angrily as I took another step toward her.

  I held my free hand up to show I meant no harm. “Okay, okay. How about a trade?”

  Keez exchanged a wary look with Lox, who shrugged. “Human girl no trick Keez. Keez too smart!”

  “You sure are. I think you’re probably the smartest imp I’ve ever met,” I lied, as if I’d eve
r met one before now. I didn’t even know imps existed until a day ago. “How else could you have sneaked into my room overnight and take my things without me noticing?”

  Keez beamed at the compliment. Then, realizing she’d given herself away, she scowled. “Keez not need be smart. Selena sleep like dead!” she shouted, and she and Lox cackled while they jumped up and down in glee.

  “That’s true, I was! So maybe you deserve to have my buzzy box,” I said, testing the waters. Truthfully, I didn’t care if the imps kept my phone. Like Jadis said, I didn’t really need it here, and I could always buy another one if I had to; what I wanted was the key.

  Keez’s creepy eyes raked over me. “Keez… Keep?”

  “You could, if you trade me for something.”

  “Trade what?”

  “The key you took.”

  Keez shot me a puzzled look. “Keez no take. No key there.”

  “Yes, there was. It was on the nightstand by the buzzy box you took.”

  Keez shook her head so hard that the tips of her giant, pointed ears flapped against her cheeks. “No key! Keez no lie. Keez take buzzy boxes, not key.”

  That made no sense. If Lox and Keez hadn’t stolen the key from my room, then who had? Were there other creatures or people in the inn capable of breaking and entering without notice? I shuddered at the thought and wondered if I’d ever be able to sleep soundly in the building again. “You’re sure none of the keys there are mine?” I asked, pointing at the pile the imps sat on.

  “Keez sure! Imps take many shinies. Imps love shinies, but imps not take human girl’s.”

  “But you took it from someone before I took it from you, right?”

  Keez nodded and giggled. “Imps find in hall. Sixth floor. Near dwarf room.”

  “You mean Aron’s?”

  She nodded again, and I didn’t know what to make of that. “Where did all those other keys come from?”

  She smiled devilishly, revealing her horrifyingly sharp teeth. “Keez keep secrets too, human girl. Imps fast and quiet like night. Sneak and steal, sneak and steal, sneak and steal!” she squealed rhythmically while she bounced from one foot to the other, and a thought occurred to me: could one of their keys belong to the lock on room 666? Blair and Kiki couldn’t keep insisting the room didn’t exist if I found a key to it.