3.0 - Shadows In The Garden Hotel

by Krista Walsh

  If the only way she could prevent Matthew’s influence over her was to not speak with him, then that’s what she would do. Avoid him until she managed to kill her craving for him.

  The busy schedule Courtney had planned for the rest of the week would be a good start. Unless he found Penny’s body.

  Her hand paused as she moved to bring her brush to her hair, and she grimaced. Would she regret asking him for help? It would only give them more reason to spend time together.

  Only if he’s the one who finds the body, Allegra realized. If she met with success first, there would be no further reason for them to speak.

  She set her jaw and cut the teeth of her brush through her damp locks. As if her motivation hadn’t been great enough, she was now even more determined to find Penny’s corpse.

  ***

  Allegra spent the first session of the day by the indoor pool. The air was humid with the steam rising from the hot tub, and the heat contrasted sweetly with the water of the pool as it lapped against her toes.

  That was all she remembered from the shoot, her thoughts too wrapped up in what might be happening in the rest of the hotel.

  She was fairly certain she’d pushed Katie into a fit of fury as the girl worked to fix her eye makeup following a few in-water shots, but she couldn’t remember what she had said to upset her. It hardly mattered — the girl was too sensitive to be working in the fashion industry. If she hadn’t learned yet what models were like, she deserved to be torn down a peg.

  Twice Matthew had come to the pool to speak with Courtney, and Allegra had focused her gaze in any direction but his. She didn’t know if he’d glanced her way or if he was just as indifferent as she was, but she wouldn’t be caught checking first.

  At the very least, his silence toward her confirmed his lack of success in tripping over a corpse on his way to the billiards room.

  Every hour felt like three. Allegra’s toes had pruned with the constant exposure to the water, and the chlorine in her hair had undone all the work she’d put into smoothing it. When they’d almost lost one of the cameras in the water, she’d thought about throwing up her hands and threatening to quit, but found she couldn’t be bothered. Instead, while they’d sorted out the fiasco, she’d kicked her legs against the edge of the pool and tried to think of where Penny might be hiding.

  Lunch came at last, and the models were released. The crew skirted a concierge standing in the doorway as they left, looking down their noses at him, and Allegra’s lip curled in irritation when she recognized Cody.

  “I don’t know how else to disappoint you,” she said as she approached him, but his response lacked his usual flirtation.

  “I refuse to give up hope that you’ll come around eventually, but that’s not why I’m here. I was asked to come find you.”

  Allegra raised her chin and narrowed her eyes. “By whom?”

  No one she could think of would have anything pleasant to say to her. She thought of Tim and the way her last conversation with him had gone, and wondered if he’d decided to give her another tongue-lashing for prying into his personal affairs.

  But then she thought of Lee. Maybe he had new information to share. Had he remembered something about Penny’s disappearance? The second idea perked her up.

  Cody smiled at her, and only then did she notice the way his mouth was wobbling with forced cheerfulness.

  Thrown by his odd expression, she looked at him more closely, taking in the way his dark hair was plastered against his forehead under his round cap. His uniform was in disarray, the tails of his shirt sticking out from beneath his jacket. She spotted a hint of dirt on his chin and glanced down at his hands to find them filthy.

  “That magazine guy, Matthew. He…” Cody trailed off, his face fading into a ghostly pallor. “We found a body in the garden.”

  ***

  Allegra tightened the belt of her terrycloth robe, then followed Cody outside without hesitation, not even taking the time to go upstairs and change out of her wet bathing suit.

  “Where did you find her?” she asked, unwilling to wait to see for herself.

  “Under the asters, by the cement planters,” Cody said, his skin still pale. “I think it would have been found soon enough without Matthew poking around. The gardener, John, had already started digging up the bushes. That was about three days ago. He made it about two feet down before Tim caught him and told him to stop. I remember John barging into the staff room bitching about the wasted work. Fortunately, he was pissed off enough to throw his shovels into the half-finished hole out of spite. We were just lucky to get there before anyone else came to clean up.” The wobble of his words revealed how lucky he really believed himself to be.

  When they stepped outside, sharp rain pellets struck Allegra’s legs as the wind caught the edge of her robe, but she ignored the discomfort and followed Cody around the hedges until they reached the far back corner of the garden. The area was set well away from the graveled path, half hidden by the hedges. Not a place anyone was likely to wander past on a day like today, with the grass as sodden as it was.

  Although it was only midday, thick gray-black clouds had covered the garden in a twilit darkness. Over the course of the morning, the rain had pelted mercilessly at the windows before clearing, and based on the hue of the sky, Allegra suspected another fierce storm was on its way. It seemed everything had worked in Matthew’s favor to dig unnoticed, even if it had left him a mess. He was holding a flashlight in his grip with the beam pointed toward the ground, the shovel in his other hand.

  As she approached where Matthew was standing, Cody turned away, his arms crossed and his mouth pressed into such a thin line the skin around his lips had gone white. The hole between her and Matthew was no more than four feet deep and five across. Mounds of shoveled earth lined the sides. Allegra stopped at the edge across from Matthew and peered down. There wasn’t much of the corpse left, but she wrinkled her nose with distaste at the dirt-smeared remains.

  After a decade of being in the ground, Penny had wasted away from the indomitable woman Lee had described into a grinning shadow of herself. Her skeleton was in near-perfect condition, the tatters of a gray wool suit clinging to her yellowed bones. Her arms and legs lay at odd angles where they disappeared under the dirt.

  Allegra’s attention shifted from the corpse to Matthew. His usual trace of amusement had drained out of his expression, the lines around his eyes hard and the set of his shoulders stiff. His jaw worked in a steady rhythm, and Allegra swore she heard him grinding his teeth.

  Although he’d worked all morning in the rain, he’d obviously done nothing to cover himself. The falling droplets had caught in his hair and glittered like diamonds, and his white shirt, rolled to the elbows, was soaked through. He’d removed his jacket, which sat on the edge of a planter, and it appeared to be as ruined as the rest of his attire. Dirt and mud stained his shirt and smeared his cheeks and forehead.

  She thought of the comment he’d made earlier that morning about the sense of adventure he derived from picking up a shovel, and wondered if that enthusiasm had been lost with this macabre discovery.

  The hair on the back of Allegra’s arms rose as, amid everything else in the garden, the sense of someone watching her, of something creeping up on her around the hedges, became too sharp to ignore.

  Hoping to break the spell created by the silence, Allegra walked around the hole toward Matthew. In a low voice, she said, “I would say your skills are more advanced than you let on.”

  He grimaced and cast a glance at Cody, but the younger man had walked toward the gravel path and bent over to catch his breath. “I walked the hotel all morning before I caught a trace of the body out here. It’s not her energy I sensed, but there’s something strong connected with it. After that, it was just a matter of following it, like a smell.”

  Allegra kept an eye on Cody, who had approached again and finally dropped his gaze toward the corpse. His jaw worked and he clenched his hands at his sid
es. By the way he swayed back on his heels, Allegra suspected he wanted to look away, but couldn’t. It was the same sort of fascination with death she’d noted was common among humans. “And you believed it wise to bring a partner into your search?”

  Matthew frowned at the younger man. “That wasn’t the original plan, no. He found me sniffing around and asked what I was doing. I told him I was following up on a rumor. He offered to help. I told him to go away. He insisted and told me if I didn’t explain myself, he’d go tell the manager I was making a mess of the garden.”

  Allegra arched an eyebrow in Cody’s direction. The young man did enjoy gathering stories to spread around the hotel. She suspected that desire had been his motivation in wanting to help — discovering what had brought this successful businessman to start digging around the grounds to set off a new wave of rumors.

  “In the end, I figured having an extra set of muscles would make the job go faster, which would make it less likely that anyone spotted us.” Matthew dropped his gaze to the bones. “I confess, I didn’t think we’d actually find anything.”

  Allegra sighed. She stepped over to Cody and slid her arm around his shoulders. He stood taller than her, so the gesture was awkward. Even more so because of her lack of experience in comforting the traumatized.

  “I guess you were right about my curiosity getting me into trouble,” he said.

  “Have you never seen a dead body before?” she asked.

  Cody shook his head.

  “Does it make it better or worse to know that, from everything I have heard, she was a brute of a woman whom no one misses?”

  Cody’s bottom lip trembled, and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. Allegra sighed again and shifted away from him, not sure what else to say to make him feel better. She was used to spending time around people for whom death was a regular part of their lives.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “I believe her name is Penny Orlay, the previous owner of the hotel and the current owner’s aunt.”

  Cody’s eyes widened, and he tilted his head to meet her eye. “Tim’s aunt? What happened to her?”

  “I believe she was murdered.”

  “Whoa…” he whispered, and returned his attention to the body, this time with more interest than fear. “And you heard he buried her in the garden? From who?”

  Allegra bit down on her desire to correct his grammar. “Various sources.”

  Cody stared at her, waiting for more of an answer, but she didn’t give it. There was no point — he wouldn’t believe her.

  She thought of the banishing spell Vera had taught her and hoped she remembered it all. It was written on a slip of paper upstairs, but she didn’t want to leave the body alone long enough to fetch it. She wouldn’t put it past Tim or the draugrs to discover the unburied corpse and steal it away to hide it somewhere new, ensuring their continuing reign at the Garden. She also worried that the longer they stood out here, the higher the risk that someone would stumble upon them. Better to move quickly and ensure the rest of the task was completed.

  She opened her mouth to send the others away so she could carry out the ritual, but the words stuck in her throat. She remembered Vera’s recommendation about the banishment spell being stronger with more people adding their energy to it. At the time she’d been sure she could handle it on her own. Now that she stood over the body, with the energy of the draugrs closing in around her, she wasn’t so certain.

  If she wanted to make sure this was finished, she had to do it properly.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and the first raindrops of the returning storm began to fall large and fast, reducing her visibility of the garden. The drops pattered on Penny’s skull, removing the last traces of dirt from her bones.

  “I guess we should go call the cops or something,” Cody said.

  Allegra squeezed her hands at her sides and swallowed the lump of pride in her throat. “Before you do, I wonder if I might ask both of you for your help with one more task.”

  Matthew rested his hands on top of the shovel handle, the flashlight beam disappearing into the rising fog, while Cody just looked at her, his face apprehensive. “What kind of task?” he asked.

  Allegra cleared her throat. “I believe that this woman’s death has a connection to the haunting of the hotel. That the monsters appeared as a direct result of her murder. The only way to ensure we remove them from the hotel is to break the connection.”

  Cody snorted a laugh, a hint of color returning to his cheeks. “You can’t actually believe that. The walking corpses Lee talks about? They’re just a story to scare the guests.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, seeing no point in arguing with him. “But whether it is true or not, this woman should not be here, and there have been consequences as a result.”

  “So what are you going to do? Steal the body?”

  “Absolutely not,” Allegra said, rolling her eyes skyward. “Do not be absurd.”

  “Then what?”

  Allegra shifted to face Cody head on and mirrored his stance, raising her chin. “You believe these spirits cannot exist. I have seen them and believe they do. There is a ritual that will sever these spirits from the source of their power, effectively ending them. Similar to pulling the plug from an outlet. I intend to carry out this ritual and ensure the safety of the hotel guests.”

  Cody hooted as another roll of thunder echoed overhead. “Really? You’re planning to get rid of this mumbo jumbo with more mumbo jumbo? Lady, you are hot, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Allegra ground her teeth and glanced at Matthew, who had covered his mouth with the back of his hand, no doubt to hide a smile.

  She cleared her throat and pressed her lips together. She could let Cody go. Matthew would help, she was certain of that, and maybe the two of them would be enough. But what if they weren’t? Three would be better.

  Maybe I should send Cody to ask Lee, she thought, and the idea held enough appeal that she opened her mouth to suggest it, but the words fizzled on her tongue. Asking Lee would mean drawing more attention to the garden, and who knows who else Cody would tell along the way. They had to act quickly. She sensed the draugr energy moving closer.

  She lifted her voice to be heard over the rising drum of the rain. “I can understand why someone as closed-minded as yourself would believe I was making up stories, but this is your opportunity to learn the truth. Think of it as a way to sate your unlimited curiosity.”

  “Fine. So if you think the body is connected to these monsters, why don’t you just get rid of the body? Burn it or have the cops take it away or something?” Cody asked. “Why stand out here in the rain doing some kind of weird voodoo chant?”

  “Removing the body might help,” Allegra said, “but it is not a guarantee. The ritual offers better odds.”

  “Of course it does.” Cody glanced toward the hotel, then he swung back toward them and shrugged. “What the hell. Don’t let it be said that I ever turned away from a new experience. Let’s get this thing started.”

  Allegra released a breath and closed her eyes until the tension between her shoulders eased. “All right. First, we should spread out around the hole to cover as much ground as possible. Then it would probably be best if you closed your eyes. It should make it easier to concentrate.”

  Keeping their eyes closed would also make it less likely that one of them would accidentally glimpse the draugr stalking her if it attempted to stop them.

  Cody removed his cap and set it on top of Matthew’s jacket, then stood across from Allegra at the top of the hole, leaving Allegra to stand at the bottom with Matthew to her right. Matthew dropped the shovel and flashlight to the ground, then stepped to the edge, his hands outstretched at his sides. Cody mirrored his stance. His condescending smile remained in place, but she didn’t care. He didn’t need to believe what he was saying in order for the spell to work.

  Above them, the sky had turned ominously dark and lightning flashed be
hind the clouds.

  Allegra closed her eyes and brought the incantation to mind. The language was old, and not one she was familiar with, but the sounds had a soft musical quality about them that made them stick in her mind like a familiar song.

  As she said the words the first time, she waited for Matthew and Cody to repeat each line after her. By the third repetition, they spoke as one voice. The air around them danced with a strong wind, and rain and mud from the pile around the hole struck against Allegra’s legs.

  At first she sensed no other change in the energy around them, and she worried that the words were wrong or that she’d forgotten an important element to make the spell work. The wind’s display was impressive, but she hadn’t come out here for a performance. She looked to Cody and Matthew. They both stood with their eyes closed, their lips moving clearly around the words. She saw nothing that would prevent the magic from spilling into the garden.

  So why is it not working?

  Just as she was about to call a stop to the chant and consider it a failure, a whistling cry rose in the air from the direction of the corpse. The sound carried on the wind as though it were a scream of agony. An echo from the moment of Penny’s death, or a fresh trauma as they tore her spirit from the grave?

  Cody’s voice stumbled at the sound and his eyes flew open. Allegra caught his gaze, and under her steady stare, he continued on, holding the rhythm of the spell. After a moment, he relaxed into the chant and closed his eyes again. Allegra squeezed her hands at her sides and followed his lead.

  The metallic tang of blood coated the back of her throat, and something wet splashed against her face. Reason told her it was rain, but it smelled so much like blood that her stomach revolted. She focused on the cold wind blowing against her cheeks to prevent herself from retching into the dirt.

  She spoke the verse again, and the earth beneath her feet shifted with an ear-rattling rumble, the sound hidden beneath a fresh thunderclap. Matthew’s deep voice and Cody’s younger one merged with Allegra’s, each of them forming a strand of rope that braided with the others, strengthening the magic that wound its way into the hole and around the dark energy seeping out of it.