The Hotel Between

by Sean Easley

  “Yes. As the Hotel’s influence spread, Stripe’s empire began to shrink. He sent your father to steal the Greenhouse, knowing that without the Vesima tree, the Hotel’s influence over those bound to it would wane, and Melissa’s plan would fail.”

  In the memory, Mom put her coin into Reinhart’s pocket. Was she performing some last-minute binding to stop him? To make him care?

  I try to soak it all in. Dad being trained by Stripe. Mom, trained by Agapios. “How’d they end up together? Couldn’t she see who Reinhart was?”

  Agapios shakes his head. “We are never as simple as we appear. Every House contains both terrors and treasures.”

  I’m not sure what he means, but it sounds good.

  “I don’t know why, or how,” Agapios continues, “but Reinhart left one connection binding the Hotel to the Greenhouse, and hid it from us.” He motions to the shattered door. “Because of this, our Hotel has survived, barely. Now that the tree is fully gone, however . . . ”

  “The binding will fail.”

  “The Hotel and its doors will unravel. Pin-failures will increase, and we will be forced to abandon this House.”

  I hang my head. “I ruined everything.”

  Agapios wraps his arm around my shoulder. His touch feels different from Stripe’s. The concierge’s fingers are cold and sharp, but they hold no lies, no hidden message except to say I’m here.

  “The Curator manipulates even the best of people with their own good intentions. You really are Melissa’s son, as well as Reinhart’s.” He stands and moves to the door. “Jehanna will attend to you soon. You are no longer welcome in the Hotel, such as it is. You and your sister will return to Dallas.”

  “What about Reinhart?”

  The Old Man scratches his bony cheek. “Your father stays. We must save what we can, and he has information we need.” Agapios bows, and opens the door. “I hope you find your destination, Cameron Kuhn.”

  And with that, he leaves.

  After everything, Cass and I will be going home empty-handed. I may be angry, but that doesn’t change the facts. I found my father, only to lose him all over again.

  26

  Out of His Hands

  Agapios isn’t there to see us off when the Maid Commander kicks us out of the Hotel. He probably has bigger issues to deal with, like getting the kids back, along with the Greenhouse. There’s a hole in my heart, knowing I disappointed him. Can you die from a hole in your heart?

  The maids take all our coins, leaving me with only my dirty Chucks to serve as a souvenir of my time here. Without the coins, my memories of this place will soon fade into dreams. When I first came to the Hotel, all I wanted was to go home. But I made friends here. Rahki, Elizabeth, Sana. Even Sev and Nico. And once I got used to it, the whole traveling thing wasn’t so bad, either. I don’t want to forget.

  The MC asks what happened to the pins I had, and I tell her how Rahki took them before she got slivered. I wish she’d tell me if Rahki’s okay. I search for her face in the crowd as the maids escort us through the Dallas Door, but she’s not there.

  It’s morning in Texas, but the kind of early morning that doesn’t show any traces of sunlight on the horizon yet. I push Cass’s chair all the way home, like the good brother I’m supposed to be. I don’t feel like a good brother, though. I failed her. Failed everyone. This is why I don’t do anything. I always screw things up. I get nervous. Freak out. I don’t belong out there, traveling the world. I need to stay home, where I don’t disappoint anyone, and where I can wish that things would happen, but they don’t, and that people would come back, but I never have to deal with what happens when they do.

  When I open the door to Oma’s, the familiar smell of mothballs and sweet tea washes over me.

  “Oma!” Cass calls out as she rolls over the threshold. “We’re back! You can call off the search party.”

  The house is quiet.

  Cass turns on all the lights on her way to Oma’s room.

  I find the note Oma left on the kitchen table, and skim over it.

  Cass and Cammy,

  I’ve gone out to look for you.

  If you come home, I expect you to STAY PUT and CALL MY CELL IMMEDIATELY.

  Love and kisses,

  Oma

  Does Oma know about the Hotel? Those secrets aren’t mine to tell. If she does, she’ll be sorely disappointed when she finds it and we’re not there. And that’s if she’s even able to find a knocker. I wouldn’t want to be on Agapios’s end when she finds him, though.

  “She’s not here,” Cass calls from around the hall corner.

  “I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” I shout in reply.

  I fold the note so she won’t see it, and then head for my room, close the door, and crawl into bed. I’ll call Oma when the sun comes up. I’m not ready to answer her questions.

  A few minutes later, there’s a knock at my door.

  “Go away.” I wipe my face and bury my nose in the sheets.

  The door squeaks as Cass rolls in. I peek over my pillow. She’s got that you’re-crazy look, but I don’t care.

  I turn over and face the wall. “It’s not fair,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. He was supposed to be . . . ”

  “Different,” she says. And again, “I know.”

  Deep down, I know she does. All those years watching National Geographic and reading travel books—somehow I’ve always known she did it because she wanted to connect with our parents too. She just wouldn’t admit it.

  I roll over to look her in the eye. “Finding him was supposed to fix it.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Fix what?”

  “Everything. Like you . . . ”

  “What about me?” she snaps, and I can tell I’ve insulted her.

  “I-I didn’t—”

  She flicks her brake and scoots closer. “I’m fine.”

  “But your condi—”

  “I’m exactly who I want to be,” she says again, and if I try to say one more word about it I know she’s going to punch me.

  I’ve always struggled with understanding how she feels. After all these years, I still can’t imagine what it’s like for her. It’s easy to forget that her chair isn’t the burden I think it would be if I were trapped in it instead. I don’t think I’ll ever fully comprehend how she feels. I’m starting to get some of it, though. For her, it’s not a trap at all. It’s a door that takes her places she couldn’t go otherwise.

  It makes me realize how much better Cass is at being happy than I am. Like Nico said, she’s stronger than I give her credit for. I’m the one who’s always worried; she’s just living her life.

  “Well, I’m not fine,” I tell her. “I’m not like you. You say you’re who you want to be, but I don’t know how to become who I want to be. I’m tired of being . . . ” I trail off. I’m not even sure what I was about to say. Afraid, maybe? “Agapios said I’m like Reinhart, but I can’t be like him.”

  Cass screws up her face as if she tasted vinegar. “Then don’t.”

  She’s not getting it. “Reinhart worked for Stripe,” I say. “He stole the Greenhouse. He let Mom die.”

  “Don’t say that!” Cass chews her lip. “That’s not how it happened.”

  I bunch the pillow tighter. “How do you know?”

  “You’re not the only one who had their parent’s coin in the Hotel.”

  Mom’s coin. Of course. I’d completely forgotten. The Maid Commander took it after the Monastery, but Cass wore it in the Hotel for hours before that.

  Cass picks at the divots in the foam of her chair’s arms. “I felt her with me, when that Mr. Stripe showed up. I saw things too. Dad didn’t push her . . . he was trying to stop her.”

  “Stop her from what?”

  “She did it on purpose, Cam. Mom knew Dad had a contract with Stripe, and she did what she had to do to keep him from fulfilling it. And when she fell . . . all she kept thinking was that
she wished she could’ve saved him, too.”

  I shake my head. “No. He signed the contract with Stripe. He made that choice, and she died because of it.”

  “He did it for a good reason.”

  “There’s no excuse for what he did.”

  “Yeah, there is.”

  I scoff. “What could’ve possibly been that important?”

  “It was me, all right!” she shouts. “He signed that contract because of me.”

  I scoot back, surprised by her outburst. “You don’t know that. You were only there for what? A day? Day and a half? I was there over a week and didn’t learn that much.”

  “Because you weren’t listening!” Cass growls. “You never just listen. That’s why Oma won’t tell you what’s going on with me. She knows that no matter how good a procedure might be for my health, you’re going to pick apart all the reasons it’s bad. It’s like you believe you’re the only one who knows the truth, and you won’t even hear us when we tell you that I don’t need your help all the time, or that you’re wrong, or that things are better than you think. Dad’s coin could’ve drawn a stinking map for you if you’d just stop worrying for a minute and let things be.”

  I start to argue, but is she right? Agapios had assumed that if the coin held the memory of what Dad did with the Greenhouse, I would have found it way sooner. Was I so busy worrying about what might happen that I missed the things that were happening around me?

  She folds her hands, trying not to cry. “Look, Mom was the one who helped Dad break away from Stripe in the first place. He’d walked away from the Competition and joined the Hotel—like, was really with them. But when Mom told him I was going to be born with all this medical stuff, he freaked. She knew he’d go to Stripe, and she didn’t get in his way. Stripe told Dad he’d heal me in exchange for the Greenhouse.” She sniffles. “When things started happening, Mom realized they’d made a mistake. So she tried to stop him.”

  “Stripe didn’t heal you, though,” I say after a moment.

  “Because Dad broke the contract. Mom knew he couldn’t defy Stripe on his own. Mr. Stripe had messed with his head too much. The only way she could stop Dad from giving him the Greenhouse was to make sure her binding with Dad was stronger than his binding with Stripe.”

  I stare into the bed sheets. “So why did—”

  Cass wipes her eyes and reaches for my hand. “Mom didn’t die,” she says. “I felt it on that elevator. Mom re-bound herself even more deeply to the Hotel. That way, with both her and the Hotel working together, Dad could resist Stripe long enough to hide the Greenhouse and get us to Oma. They did it together.”

  But in Reinhart’s memories, Stripe was there too.

  No. Not the real Stripe. More like . . . an impression. Like Stripe was inside Reinhart. That’s why whenever Reinhart caught his reflection in the elevator doors it looked like Stripe, or Agapios. He was seeing deeper, into his bindings, as if his agreements with Agapios and Stripe were tug-of-warring inside him. Mom gave the Hotel side of him what he needed to win the tug, if only for a little while.

  “That’s why no one knew where the Greenhouse was,” I say. “Mom was hiding it, through her binding with the Hotel.”

  Cass nods. “She made him promise, and that pact became a contract Dad couldn’t break. They signed it by . . . ” She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t have to.

  I look at my hands. The cut from my blood-bond with Nico is healing. It scares me to think what our contract might really mean.

  “It worked, though,” Cass says. “Dad never gave Stripe the Greenhouse.”

  “But I did. After Mom sacrificed herself to keep it out of his hands, I led him right to it. And you’re not even healed.”

  “Forget about that,” she says, her tone sharp again. “I’m me and you’re you. What I am doesn’t need fixing. We’re just us. Mom understood that, even if Dad couldn’t.” She settles her gaze on me. “Even if you don’t either.”

  Cass and I sit in silence for a long time, until eventually she rolls off to bed.

  I don’t want to sleep, though. Sleep is my enemy. It’s coming to take away my memories. The adventures. My friends. But as the clock counts toward morning, I can’t resist it anymore. I nod off, curled up in the knowledge of what Mom gave up, and what I did to ruin it all.

  This time, there are no dreams.

  27

  A Knocked Door

  A noise wakes me.

  I look to the window, now glowing with the first rays of morning sunlight, and remember when Nico knocked at that pane and whisked me away. Despite everything, I kinda miss him. I don’t know whether it’s the blood-brother bond or something else, but part of me wishes he’d come back and say it was all a mistake.

  At first I think it’s my imagination when a familiar pin crackle comes from my door, but the knock makes it real. And a knocked door is always opened.

  I hop out of bed, excitement tingling in my fingers, and throw it open.

  It’s not Nico, though. It’s Rahki. And . . . Sev?

  “We need to talk,” Rahki says.

  I shush her and motion them both into my room and off the snowy cobblestone street now bound to my bedroom door. I struggle to keep my voice down, but I’m so happy to see them, whispering is hard. “You’re okay!”

  “No thanks to you,” Rahki grumbles, sitting down on my bed. Her uniform is messier than I’ve ever seen it, and her face is dirty.

  “Do not be so harsh, Rahki.” Sev claps a hand on my shoulder. “It is good to see you. I am very sorry for my part in Stripe’s deception. Delat iz muhi slona. We have all made mistakes.”

  “Yeah, we have.” I should be mad at him, but I can’t. He tried to warn me, after all, when he came to my room that night. “It’s good to see you, too. But what are you doing here?”

  They catch me up on what’s happened since I last saw them. Rahki keeps it short: Nico’s sliver transported her to the Australian outback, where Sev was waiting for her.

  “Waiting?”

  “Nico slivered me first,” Sev says. “He told me to wait, so I waited.”

  Rahki rolls her eyes. “Which, of course, you did. Without question.”

  “It is good I did. You would have been all alone out there. At least I knew where to go.”

  “Why would Nico sliver you?” I ask.

  Sev explains that after he left my hotel room that night, he went back to tell Nico that Stripe wanted him to take Nico’s family.

  “Wait . . . so Nico knew what you were about to do?”

  He nods. “Nico told me to do as Stripe asked. Which is good, I think now, because otherwise I would have lost myself.”

  “But did you . . . hurt them?”

  He jerks back in disgust. “Of course not. The Jimenezes went willingly, because Nico sent me with a note for them, telling them to trust me.”

  “It looked like . . . ” I stop. “Of course it did. . . . If Nico knew what was going to happen, he could’ve just made it look like a struggle.”

  “Exactly. When I came back to tell him it was done, he slivered me away to Australia with instructions to wait. A few maids appeared soon after, talking about Nico’s betrayal in the Corridor, but I hid until they left. It was not until Rahki arrived that I knew my help had come.” Sev laughs. “Though, I thought Rahki was going to bind me to the side of an angry bear when she saw me.”

  “I’m still confused, though,” I say. “Nico lets you steal his family, then slivers you? Then he makes a mess and pretends he didn’t know you’d taken them? Why?”

  Sev shrugs. “Who knows why Nico does anything? I have never understood him. But when Rahki popped up in front of me and told me what happened, I knew it would not be long before the Hotel sent you away. Fortunately for us, Rahki had taken the pin I bound for you, which allowed us to come here.”

  Rahki interrupts him. “Point is, now we need your help. Nico or no Nico, we can’t leave the Greenhouse in Stripe’s hands. Or those kids.”

&
nbsp; Sev crosses his arms. “Agreed.”

  “So what do we do?” I ask.

  Rahki holds her head high. “Objective number one: Get to Stripe’s Museum.”

  I purse my lips. “You should be telling this stuff to the Maid Commander. Isn’t that what the Maid Service is for?”

  “Maid Service doesn’t know where Stripe’s Museum is,” she replies. “The Corridor was the closest we’d ever come to finding it, and Nico’s pin-snap closed that door. So even if we did know where it was, the maids couldn’t get inside. The magic binding the great Houses is different from place to place.”

  Finally Sev pipes up. “What we need to know is, has your contract with Stripe been fulfilled? We cannot risk you going inside if he has control over you.”

  “Stripe never had me sign a contract,” I tell him.

  Rahki stiffens. “You mean you weren’t under Stripe’s influence when you stole the Greenhouse? You did all that stuff of your own free will, like a suit?”

  I shrink back. “Influence? I mean . . . he lied to me. And I didn’t steal the Greenhouse. Nico did.”

  “You let him in.”

  “Not on purpose!”

  “Leave it alone, Rahki,” Sev says. “We are all Stripe’s victims here. Besides”—he turns to me—“that you did not sign a contract is good. If Stripe had bound you, it would have made you his docent, as he did me.” He pauses. “However, since you did not sign a contract, we may have no way to get inside.”

  A dark thought hits me. “I did sign a contract. Just not with Stripe.”

  They shoot each other a worried look.

  I show them my still-bandaged hand and explain the blood-brother contract with Nico. “It said everything that’s his is bound to me. That’s how Nico got into the Monastery—he was still bound to the Hotel because of our connection.”

  “Blood-brothers,” Sev says, curling a lip. “That was reckless, Cameron.”

  “I thought I could trust him!” I sigh. “Thought I could trust you, too.”

  “Sev didn’t have a choice,” Rahki says. “His contract gave Stripe the power to manipulate him. Compelled him to do things he didn’t want to.” She gives Sev a sad look. “He couldn’t help it.”