by Lily Webb
“Even in the face of danger, apparently,” I said, and we all burst out laughing. “In all seriousness, though, I’m so glad you came into the café that day, Aunt Blair. You’ve changed my life in more ways than I can count.” I’d only known Blair and Kiki for a few days, but amazingly, I already felt much closer to them than I ever had to my parents.
“Oh, I’m sure there are many more changes in store for you, Selena, but I’m happy to be here for them all. Now, let’s get cooking, shall we? We have hungry guests waiting!”
Chapter Twelve
Defying all the laws of usual food preparation, in less than twenty minutes, Kiki produced several massive, bubbling pots of vegetable soup and an impossibly large loaf of steaming, freshly baked bread bound up by cotton cloths in a woven basket. With skills in the kitchen like hers, I couldn’t help wondering why they ever needed to hire Emile.
Kiki waved her wand for the hundredth time and a two-shelved metal cart appeared. An expensive white cloth draped over both sides of the cart. With another wave, one of the deep steel pots floated from the stove where it bubbled to the surface of the cart. Kiki flicked her wrist, and the basket of bread soared to join the pot on the cart.
“Almost perfect,” she said as she placed a small metal rack of butter and jam packages on the cart. On the lower shelf, she stacked trays, bowls, small bread saucers, and three sets of silverware, one for each person, individually wrapped in fancy cloth napkins complete with a ghost-shaped pendant holding them together.
“There, I think that’s everything,” Kiki said with a satisfied smile. “Oh, wait, a bread knife!” she shouted and waved her wand again. A serrated, ten-inch knife from Emile’s collection that hung magnetically on the wall flew off the strip and through the air to Kiki’s free hand, nearly shearing Jadis’ head off. Thankfully, she ducked at the last second and only lost a few stray hairs.
“Oh, dear Lilith, I’m sorry!” Kiki said as she tucked the knife into the side of the breadbasket. “I’m not used to having any help in the kitchen.”
“It’s okay. I had a few split ends, anyway,” Jadis said, and Kiki snorted.
“I like your sense of humor. Now, remember to dish up the soup for Ms. Dupree but not the bread. Clear off down the hall far enough that she won’t see you waiting through the peephole, and when she opens the door, rush her with the breadbasket.”
“Okay, but what about the other guests? Isn’t the food going to get cold by the time we get to them?”
Kiki tapped the pot of soup with her wand and winked. “I’m already one step ahead of you. I enchanted the pots and breadbaskets to keep their contents at the perfect temperature, so you can spend as much time as you need with Tara. Just don’t forget to feed the others, particularly Aron. He gets cranky when he goes too long without eating.”
“A hangry dwarf? I love it,” Jadis said and chuckled.
Kiki nodded. “He might be small, but don’t let that fool you. He’s a real bear when he’s hungry, and that’s pretty much always. Anyway, you’d better get going. It’s now or never.”
“I’ll escort you two upstairs, just to be safe,” Blair said.
“Probably not a bad idea. The imposter might have recovered by now,” I said, and shivered. While cooking and clowning around with my new family, it’d been easy to forget my aunts might’ve trapped us inside Kindred Spirits with a paranormal and potentially dangerous enigma.
“Let’s go,” Blair said and headed toward the dining room. Jadis and I each took a side of the cart and followed, carefully pushing to avoid spilling any of the soup or knocking anything off the cart. Thanks to the stone flooring, it wasn’t easy, but we made it to the elevator without issue.
Blair slid the grate open and stepped aside. “You first,” she said, waving us inside. We wheeled the cart into the far corner and Blair squeezed in alongside us. She pressed the button for the third floor, and as the elevator jumped upward, my heart jumped along with it. There were so many ways this plan could go wrong that I couldn’t count them all, but as we’d all agreed, we didn’t have a better one available. More than that, as Blair had made clear, we didn’t know if we’d find anything damning — assuming we got Tara to talk to us at all — but we had to try, we had to know one way or another she wasn’t the imposter.
So, when the elevator dinged to announce its arrival on the third floor, I sucked up my fears and anxieties and helped Jadis roll the cart out as confidently as I could.
“I’ll watch from here. She’s not likely to see me,” Blair said and slid the elevator’s grate almost all the way closed. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, and nodded toward room 321. “Let’s do this.”
“We’ve got it under control, don’t worry,” Jadis said and started pushing. Thankfully, the carpeted landing made maneuvering the cart much easier. Outside the door to Tara’s room, we stopped, and I kicked down the latch on the cart’s wheel to lock it in place.
Jadis pulled a tray from the lower shelf of the cart and plopped a bowl and a set of silverware on it. She carried it to me and, using the ladle Kiki had left in the pot of soup, I carefully spooned the steaming contents into the bowl until it was nearly full.
“Here we go,” Jadis said and sighed. She carried the tray toward the door as delicately as if she were handing a newborn child to their mother and set it on the floor, managing not to slosh a single drop. “Phew,” she breathed and knocked on the door. “Hello, Ms. Dupree! Room service. Your dinner is outside,” she called, then hurried back to the cart to help me push it far enough down the hallway that Tara couldn’t see us waiting through the door’s peephole.
I stood holding my breath for what seemed like forever, waiting for the sound of the door’s lock sliding open, or for anything that might indicate movement inside Tara’s room, but nothing happened.
“What do we do?” Jadis hissed, and I shrugged. I didn’t have an answer, so I stole a glance back toward the elevator where I could just make out Blair’s shape through the grate. She held up a finger to tell us to wait, so that’s what I did.
Finally, just as I was ready to give up, Tara’s lock clicked, and the door creaked open to barely more than a sliver. From where I stood, I couldn’t see much, but the slash of white that was Tara’s bandages was unmistakable. A single, gray eye darted back and forth as it searched the landing for evidence of others, but she must not have seen us because the door flung open and Tara darted out, leaning down to snatch the tray.
“Now’s our chance!” I hissed and snatched the breadbasket and jam tray off the cart to run in Tara’s direction. “Oh, Ms. Dupree! I’m sorry, we completely forgot to offer you bread. Would you like some?” I called as Tara stood with the tray in her hands. Though I couldn’t see her face behind the thick layer of bandages covering everything but her eyes and mouth, her terror came across in the rigid way she stood staring at me.
“No, thank you,” she snapped and stepped frantically backward into the room, nearly fumbling the bowl of soup off the tray.
“Oh, come on, you can’t have a bowl of soup without a nice heel of bread to go with it!” I said and kept walking toward her.
“I thought I made it clear to Blair that I didn’t want to interact with any of the staff,” Tara said tersely.
“Yeah, she relayed the message, but it was an accident. You know, we’re new to all this. I’m so sorry, I swear it won’t happen again, but here, let us slice you off a bit, okay?”
Tara said nothing, just continued standing and staring as if the sheer force of her will could make us disappear, and Jadis rushed the cart toward us so I could use it as a hard surface to cut the bread. While I sawed at it at an intentionally glacial pace, Jadis filled in the silence.
“Is everything else okay for you, Ms. Dupree? Do you need your room cleaned or clean sheets or anything like that?”
Tara shook her head. “No, thank you. I thought I made that clear, too.”
“Right, well, I just thought I’d ask to be su
re,” Jadis said with a smile. “I know you’ve been here for a while, but you can always call down to the front desk if you need anything.”
“Noted,” Tara snapped. “Are you almost finished? My soup is getting cold.”
Fearing our window of opportunity might soon slam shut, my mind raced trying to think of something to do or say to prolong the conversation — because as soon as the bread landed on Tara’s tray, I knew she’d slam her door in our faces, and we wouldn’t get another opportunity. Unless…
“Just about,” I said as the knife collided with the surface of the cart, making me jump. I laughed nervously as I picked up the slice of bread and turned back to Tara. “Does that look like a large enough piece for you, Ms. Dupree?”
“It’s fine.”
“Great, great,” I said and raised my hand up to plop the bread on her tray — but collided with the underside of it instead, flipping the tray and the bowl of soup so it splattered all down Tara’s blue robes.
“You wretched little—!” Tara shouted and dropped the tray to glare down at the mess I’d made all over her and the floor.
“Oh, my goodness, Ms. Dupree, I’m so sorry! Please, let me help you clean this up,” I said and forced my way into her room before she could object.
“Out! Get out!” Tara screamed, thrusting her hand through the air at the door, but the horrendous condition of her room consumed me. She’d strewn dirty clothes, robes, and used bandages everywhere, accompanied by plates piled with half-eaten food. The room smelled strongly of something rotten, and I couldn’t figure out whether it came from Tara’s filthy environment, her wounds, or a combination of the two.
“I’ll have your jobs for this, I swear to Lilith,” Tara said, though her voice had turned to more of a sob than a shout.
“Please, Ms. Dupree, let me help,” I begged and stepped around her into the en suite bathroom to look for a hand towel or something I could use to wipe off the excess soup from her robes, but froze when the sound of glass crunching under my feet met my ears. “What the…?” I muttered and reached for the light switch. When I flipped it, I found that she’d shattered the mirror above the sink, though by hand or by magic, I couldn’t tell.
“If you looked like I do under these, you’d understand why I did it,” Tara mumbled from the floor where she’d sunk in defeat. She threw her head back and broke out into laughter. “This is it. I’ve really hit rock bottom, haven’t I? Divorced and hiding out from the world in a bed-and-breakfast with a lap full of soup? I couldn’t think of a better metaphor for my life and career.”
I retreated from the bathroom to stand over Tara. Jadis had crouched down beside her, a hand resting on her shoulder. She and I swapped worried looks, neither of us sure what to do with Tara.
“It was an accident, Ms. Dupree, I swear,” I said, but she held up a hand to quiet me.
“Nothing in this life is accidental. Trust me, I’ve learned that the hard way,” she said, pointing at her bandaged face. “When our behavior is ugly, our lives eventually reflect it.”
Neither of us knew what to say to that, so we said nothing.
“Well, since I’m sure you’ve already heard Lilith knows how many rumors, and since I’m sure you’re dying to know what might cause someone like me to implode so horrendously like this, I’ll tell you: a curse I intended for a backstabbing rival of mine backfired. It disfigured my face, and now I’m the monster instead of her.”
So, the rumors Delia had heard about Tara were true, which meant Blair had been right about Tara all along; her hermetic behavior wasn’t suspicious, it made perfect sense — even the shattered mirror. Though I’d never seen her prior to her accident, given how rich Delia claimed she was, I assumed she was probably beautiful, too. If I were in Tara’s robes, I probably would’ve felt depressed and misanthropic, too.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Dupree, we really weren’t trying to pry,” I lied — that was exactly what we were trying to do. “Why don’t we just get you another bowl of soup and leave you be?”
“That’s okay, just go. I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Well, at least let us leave you some in case you get hungry again later?”
Tara waved her hand through the air as if the effort took all the energy she had left. “Do whatever you like. I’m going back to sleep,” she said and shoved herself off the ground, using the wall as a balance. She stumbled toward her bed and flopped on it, face down.
As suspicious as I’d found her before, as I stood staring at her sobbing on the bed, I couldn’t believe I’d suspected her for half a second of being the imposter. If she had so little energy that she couldn’t even tidy her own room, how on Earth could she have been sneaking around the inn and snatching members of the staff?
“Please go,” Tara said. “And whatever else you do, don’t you dare send that brownie in here again to clean or I swear, in Lilith’s name, I’ll make sure this inn never has another guest. Do you hear me?”
Did that mean she didn’t know Feal was missing? I decided not to mention it. “Loud and clear,” I said instead, and locked eyes with Jadis. I jutted my chin in the door's direction, and she hurried out of it with me hot on her heels. As soon as I closed the door behind us, an all-too-familiar wail drifted from the room along with a series of pounding noises I could only assume was from Tara banging her fists against the wall and sobbing. Who could blame her?
“Poor woman,” Jadis whispered as we hurriedly pushed the tray toward the elevator, not bothering to clean up the mess we’d made.
Blair slid open the grate as we approached. She raised her eyebrows at us. “Well done,” she said and stepped aside to allow us in. Neither of us said anything as we loaded the cart. When the lift lurched upward, Blair turned to us, her arms crossed. “I hate to say I told you so, but, well, I told you so.”
I sighed and slumped against the cool wall of the elevator. “Which means we’re back to square one,” I said, fearing we might never know who the imposter was — or why they’d attacked Feal and Emile — until it was too late.
Chapter Thirteen
It wasn’t until the elevator zoomed past the fifth floor and Delia’s room that I realized Blair had pressed the button for the sixth floor, not the fifth. “Wait, why are we going to the sixth floor?”
“We’ve kept Aron waiting long enough. We can tend to Delia after him,” Blair answered. “Trust me, you don’t want to be on the receiving end of his anger when he’s hungry.”
“Fair enough.”
“So, did you learn anything at all from Tara?”
I shrugged and sank further down the wall of the elevator. “Not really. Looks like you were right about her all along.”
“So was Delia, though,” Jadis said. “Tara confirmed the rumors about a curse backfiring on her. She seemed depressed about it, honestly. It was sad. I feel so sorry for her.”
Blair’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “I can’t believe she opened up to you about that.”
“Neither could I,” I said. “But I dunno, I guess wearing a bowl of soup when you’re already feeling down about yourself has a way of breaking your spirit.”
Blair frowned. “I can’t imagine I’d be happy if I were in her robes either.”
“Oh, yeah, and she’d shattered her bathroom mirror, so that ought to be fun to clean up when and if she ever leaves,” I said.
“Oh, dear… The poor witch must not have liked what she saw looking back at her under the bandages, but no worries. Kiki and I have cleaned up worse than that before.”
“Yeah, like the kitchen,” I pointed out, and Blair chuckled.
“True. Though I have to say, I’m not looking forward to telling Ms. Dupree that we’ll charge her for it.”
“I don’t envy you there.”
“Well, believe me, love, if you work here long enough, your time with such guests will come.”
“Ugh, I’m so annoyed, though. I really thought we were finally getting somewhere. Who is this imposter, and where the heck
are they hiding?” I asked, exasperated.
“Don’t forget, we’re all trapped in here, so they couldn’t have gotten far,” Jadis reminded me, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
“Believe me, I know, and that’s what scares me the most. While we’re running around here on wild goose chases, the imposter is licking their wounds somewhere and getting ready to attack someone else. We have to find them before that happens!”
“We’re trying, Selena,” Blair said. “I know it might not feel like we’re getting anywhere, but we are. That’s why we’re doing this.”
“Are we really getting anything out of it, though? Because at this point, it feels to me like we’ve ruled out pretty much everyone we can account for. We know it’s not Aron, Delia, or Tara, and it’s obviously not any of the four of us. So, either the imposter has already escaped, or they’re doing a fantastic impersonation of one of us — but who?”
Blair never had time to answer because the elevator dinged on its arrival at the sixth floor, and she ushered us out with the soup cart.
The three of us made our way to the giant, decorative door at the end of the hall, and Blair stopped us just outside it. “Let me do the talking, at least to smooth things over. I heard the front desk phone ringing several times while you were pre-occupied with Tara, and I’d bet my life’s savings it was Aron.”
Jadis and I nodded, and Blair knocked softly on the door. “Aron? It’s Blair with room service,” she called, and half a second later the door flung open, revealing a grumpy faced dwarf with his hammer still in one hand.
“About time,” he grunted. “I worried I’d be eating my arm for dinner tonight.”
How the heck could he be hungry again already when he’d just gotten a bowl of broccoli cheddar delivered by Emile? I wanted to ask, but also didn’t want to make things worse by speaking out of line, so I kept quiet.
