Deadly Visions Boxset

by Alexandria Clarke

  Jazmin’s stomach contracted as she laughed, jostling my head. “Maybe you should take it as a sign to start listening to someone other than yourself, Madame Lucia.”

  In most scenarios, Jazmin’s unfiltered honesty prevailed above her other personality traits. Today, I wished she’d keep it bottled up. I sat up, detangling Jazmin’s fingers from my hair.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Stella visited me last night.”

  “Are you kidding me? I thought the ghosts were tied to White Oak,” she said. “I thought we were done when it burned down.”

  “According to Stella, ghosts can occupy a person or a place.”

  “Like possession?”

  My head throbbed, and my stomach flipped again. “No, she’s able to follow me around because our energies are attached, or something like that. None of this ghosts science crap makes sense.”

  Jazmin rolled off the couch. In the kitchen, she dropped an entire miniature scone in her coffee and swirled it around with the sugar spoon. “What else did she say?”

  I stretched across the couch. “Not much. She vanished after accusing me of murder. This morning’s visit wasn’t helpful either.”

  “You saw her again?”

  “She was my unrequested wake-up call,” I grumbled. “Too bad I can’t complain to White Oak’s guest services about her. How’s everyone else? Did the King and Queens employees make it here? Is Nick okay? I told him to have that cut on his head looked at. I hope he did. And what about King and Queens? Daniel’s body is there, and Tyler’s, and probably Oliver’s. My God, everyone’s dead.”

  Jazmin abandoned her chunky coffee-scone combo. “Take a deep breath, Lucia. You’re venturing into no man’s land, and if you go there, it gets pretty hard for me to pull you out.”

  I followed her instructions, breathing in and out with shaky control over my lungs. The headache didn’t get any better, and neither did the rumble in my stomach.

  “Tell you what,” Jazmin said. “Let’s get dressed and have breakfast at the Slopes Café. I looked at their menu online, and everything sounds delicious.”

  “I can’t eat right now.”

  Jazmin raised an eyebrow as my stomach gave an audible growl. “You need to eat, Lucia. We’ve been living off snack food and vending machine garbage for three days. It’ll do you good to put away some real sustenance. Besides, we should take advantage of our free White Oak stay while we have the chance. Look at this place!” She spun in a circle, arms outstretched to show off the pristine suite. Her copper hair fanned out in a perfect wave. Dazed from her pirouette, she planted her palms on the couch and leaned over the back of it to put her dizzy eyes near mine. “Come on, Lucia. You can’t sit in here and mope all day. If Stella’s around, it means there’s more work to be done, and you can’t work without breakfast. Tell me I’m right.”

  I shoved her away. “Annoying is what you are.”

  She rounded the couch to my feet and yanked on my pinky toe to pop the knuckle. I yelped and curled my feet into my chest. She knew I hated that.

  “Get up or I’m coming for the rest of them,” she threatened.

  With my toes in distress, there was nothing to do but get up. Half an hour later, we arrived at White Oak’s ground floor, elevated above the ski runs. If you sat near the angled glass lookout, you could watch the skiers and snowboarders finish their runs beneath you. The flawless streamlining of the building’s architecture mimicked the clean lines of imaginary futuristic societies. It was a complete one-eighty from King and Queens’s outdated red brick masonry and octagonal domed roof.

  The guests took full advantage of the fresh snow. The powder was deep and untouched. The ski lift chugged steadily to the top of the mountain. Excited riders waited in line at the bottom to board. I gazed at them through the lookout with wanton longing. If only Jazmin, Riley, and I were visiting on the same terms as the other guests. These people were here for vacation, to get away from their daily lives and work schedules. Sure, the storm had derailed any outside activities for a while, but they had all of White Oak to explore in the meantime. They didn’t have the weight of King and Queens pressing in on them from every direction. Each time a new skier passed below us, a fresh pang of self-pity tidal-waved over my heart.

  The Slopes Café was at the bottom of the ski runs. It was packed with neon snowsuits and wayward equipment. Jazmin led the way through a sea of waterproof polyester, snowboards, and ski poles. Smiling guests—their faces pink and exhilarated from the cold—chugged coffee and tea as they chatted about the conditions. According to the overlapping conversation, the snow was too deep for beginners but perfect for advanced riders. As someone who fell into the former category—and “beginner” was stretching it—I didn’t care about the excited chatter.

  “Bad morning?” the barista asked as we approached the counter. He was a short college-aged kid with blue hair. The Slopes employees were all eclectic in their own way. The barista, whom we’d met last night before White Oak’s medical team cleaned the blood and soot off us, tapped his nametag. “It’s Dalton, remember?”

  “Yes, of course,” Jazmin jumped in with a generous smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Dalton. Can I get an Americano and a White Oak Breakfast Plate?”

  Dalton typed her order into a handheld tablet. “Coming right up. What about you, miss?”

  “Uh…” I studied the menu on the chalkboard behind Dalton’s head. It was full of unconventional food combos and odd ingredients like cashew cream and watermelon radish that I didn’t feel like Googling.

  “She’ll have the Breakfast Plate too,” Jazmin said. “And a cappuccino. Sound good, Lucia?”

  The Breakfast Plate included a stack of pancakes, your choice of meat, a side of oatmeal or grits, two eggs, and a fresh cup of fruit. “Throw in the kitchen sink while you’re at it, Dalton.”

  He tapped on the tablet screen. “Would you like something else instead, ma’am?”

  “The Breakfast Plate’s fine, Dalton,” Jazmin answered for me, pinning my hands behind my back. “She’ll eat it.”

  Dalton input our order and spun the tablet around for Jazmin to pay. Before she could swipe her debit card, he yanked the tablet away again. “Oh, I almost forgot. Mr. Porter says everything you order is complimentary.”

  “But the tip’s not.” I shoved a few crumpled dollar bills into the jar on the counter. “Sit anywhere?”

  “Anywhere you like. Let me get your coffee first.”

  Dalton was a talker. As he bustled around to prepare our drinks, avoiding the other busy employees in a well-choreographed dance, he chatted incessantly.

  “You look better,” he said, tamping freshly ground espresso beans. “When you came out of that storage room, you looked like a nightmare. What happened to you anyway?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jazmin offered. “We’ll leave it to Mr. Porter to fill you in.”

  “Right, right,” said Dalton. “Is everyone okay?”

  Genuine worry colored his tone. Nick raised his employees right, but no amount of hot chocolate would help our situation. I was unbalanced. Riley was likely traumatized. Daniel, Tyler, and Oliver were all dead. Jazmin and Nick were the only two people holding it together.

  “Everyone’s fine,” I assured Dalton. “The coffee will help.”

  He topped off my cappuccino with a foam heart. “Your breakfasts should be out soon. We’re slammed this morning because the slopes reopened, but the cooks are doing their best to keep up.”

  “No worries,” Jazmin said. “We don’t have anywhere to be.”

  The only open table was in a corner by a window. No matter where you sat at Slopes, there was an excellent view of the mountain. It careened toward the sky, the main ski path bordered by thick trees on either side.

  “I wish I could ski,” I mused, shaking off my coat and hanging it over the back of my chair. “Or snowboard. That would be cool too.”

  Jazmin freed her long hair from the
collar of her jacket. “Did I hear that correctly? Lucia Star wants to learn how to ski?.”

  “It must be nice to get out on the mountain and forget all your crap,” I said. “Look at these people. Do you see anyone else moping around like us? No, because they’ve all been riding down the mountain all morning.”

  “It’s called endorphins,” Jazmin said, blowing cool air across her Americano. “That’s what happens when you exercise. Look, there’s Nick.”

  Mr. Porter, as Dalton referred to him, stepped into the café. A gust of snow swirled around him, ruffling his fine strands of dark hair and causing his blue eyes to glisten like rare gems. As he tapped his walking cane against the welcome mat, every employee turned to greet him like each of them possessed radar to sense his presence. The guests waved and said hello too. Nick was not only the owner and operator of White Oak; he was the face of his own brand.

  “Hey, Mr. Porter!”

  “Good morning. How are you?”

  “Mr. Porter, I did a one-eighty this morning,” a small child beamed as Nick passed her parents’ table. “Just like you said I could!”

  “That’s wonderful, sweetheart!” Nick replied, ruffling the girl’s hair. “I knew you could do it.”

  Nick’s smile faltered once he made it to the counter, where the guests couldn’t read his expression. He ordered something from Dalton then spotted me and Jazmin in the corner.

  “Do you mind if I pull up a chair, ladies?” he asked.

  “Not at all.”

  He settled in an empty seat and rested his cane against the window. With a groan, he stretched out his bad leg. His head wound was covered with a neat bandage.

  “How are you holding up?” Nick asked. “Did our medical staff take care of you? Did you sleep well?”

  I tapped my shoulders, which were padded with gauze and antibiotic cream to calm the bruises and scrapes I’d acquired yesterday. “Still pretty sore, but hanging in there. Do either of you feel nauseous? I inhaled too much ash.”

  “Check in with my doctor,” Nick said. “What about you, Jazmin? How’s the ankle?”

  She rotated it left and right with a wince. Neither one of us planned to tell Nick that a demon ghost in the basement of King and Queens caused the injury.

  “All good,” Jazmin said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Nick said. “I have a few updates on the state of things if you’d like to hear them. I can understand if you don’t. This entire ordeal has been overwhelming. I can leave it for later—”

  “We want to know,” I jumped in.

  Dalton delivered our food. Nick also ordered the Breakfast Plate, and there was barely enough room on the table for all three meals. We finagled everything into place like a flat game of Tetris before digging in. The pancakes soaked up the acid in my stomach, and my feeling of unease settled as my blood sugar evened out. Nick ate everything, including his fruit, with a knife and fork.

  “I spent last night doing damage control,” he explained between bites. “They’re plowing the roads now. As soon as they’re finished, the authorities will send the fire department out to investigate what’s left of King and Queens.”

  “Why didn’t they come sooner?”

  “According to my inside buddy at the Crimson Basin police force, our dear Detective Daniel cried wolf one too many times,” Nick said. “The spotty cell coverage was problematic too. How’s Riley?”

  “Upset,” I said. “What are the odds her dad’s still alive?”

  “Slim to none.” Nick speared a strawberry with relish. “That’s my guess at least. That fire burned too quickly for him to escape.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

  “Is it bad if Oliver is dead?” Jazmin asked. “He murdered his wife and son, and he tried to kill Riley.”

  “I agree it’s almost a mercy,” Nick added. “At least Riley’s safe.”

  “He was a human being who made mistakes,” I reminded them. “We’ve all been there at one point or another. I’m not condoning murder, but Oliver was out of his mind. Maybe if someone had noticed the signs earlier, none of this would’ve happened.”

  Nick patted my arm. “We can’t change the past. Oliver is resting peacefully now. All that’s left is to clean up King and Queens and take care of Riley. I notified a social worker—”

  My fork, halfway to my mouth, clattered to my plate and splashed syrup across the table. Nick dodged the sprinkles, but Jazmin wasn’t so lucky. The sticky sugar droplets coated her sleeve.

  “You did what?” I said.

  He dipped his clean cloth napkin into his water glass and offered it to Jazmin. “Riley’s a ward of the state, Lucia. She doesn’t have an appointed guardian.”

  “I’m her guardian.”

  “Not legally,” Nick said. “If you like, I can speak to the social worker on your behalf. I’m sure we can work out a temporary foster parent situation to let Riley settle down before they integrate her into the system.”

  “The system? I’m not letting Riley get sucked into foster care.” The pancakes suddenly tasted too sweet. They roiled in my stomach. “Most foster parents don’t give a crap about the kids. They’re in it for the tax break.”

  Jazmin unfurled my fingers from where they were clenched around a butter knife. “Does Riley get a say in any of this? She’s old enough to decide who she wants to live with.”

  “You’ll have to ask the social worker,” Nick said.

  “Oh, you can count on it,” I snapped.

  “What about the other employees from King and Queens?” Jazmin asked. “Did they make it here?”

  “They’re fine,” Nick reported. “Our rescue team found them a mile from White Oak. They were half-frozen, but we got them inside in time. Almost everyone survived our real-life slasher film.”

  “Almost everyone,” I muttered.

  Nick polished off his last bite, clearing his plate in less than ten minutes. He patted his mouth with his napkin and scooted away from the table. “Thank you for letting me crash your breakfast, ladies, but I’m afraid I can’t linger. I need to be available when the emergency teams show up. Let the staff know if you need anything, okay? They can help you right away or get a message to me. Au revoir.”

  “I can’t believe he did that,” I said after he left. “I can’t believe he would throw Riley to some strange government official.”

  “It’s protocol,” Jazmin said. “What did you think was going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. Not this!”

  A bright flash reflected in the window behind our table. Across the café, a young woman hastily lowered a fat DSLR camera with a long lens and fiddled with the flash attachment. She didn’t notice I was staring at her until she raised the camera again to take another shot. She set the camera aside and pretended to drink her coffee. I stood up.

  “Lucia, don’t,” Jazmin warned.

  I pushed through the busy café to reach the woman’s table. She was in her early to mid-twenties, with stick-straight shiny brown hair and round tortoiseshell glasses. When I kicked her chair, she feigned surprise.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Did you just take a picture of me and my friend?”

  “No.”

  The lie came out with such confidence that it forced a rush of rage through my veins.

  “I saw you,” I said. “Your flash went off.”

  “I was just getting a picture of the slopes,” she said.

  I pointed through the opposite window. “The slopes are that way. Besides, if you wanted a decent shot of the mountain, you’d have to go outside. The flash reflects off the windows anyway.”

  “Which is why I was trying to turn it off,” she said.

  I held out my hand. “Give me your camera.”

  “What? No!”

  I leaned over to take it off the table, but she snatched it away. “If you weren’t taking pictures of us, then you’d let me see it.”

  She packed up her things. “You’re crazy
.”

  I cornered her against the wall of the coffee shop. “Listen up, you little weirdo. You can’t imagine what me and my friends have been through in the last couple of days. I happen to be a friend of Nick Porter’s, and if you don’t delete those photos, I’ll make sure he kicks you out of White Oak, blocked roads or not. Better yet, I’ll ask to have you arrested. How’s that sound?”

  Jazmin appeared behind me, our coats draped over her arm. She tugged on the back of my shirt. “Lucia, drop it. Let’s go. People are staring.”

  “You have three seconds to admit what you did and delete the pictures,” I told the shorter woman. “Or I’m taking your camera and doing it myself. Three—”

  The woman chuckled. “You’re insane.”

  “Two, one,” I finished. “Give me that.”

  She slipped to the side when I lunged for the camera. I overstepped and crashed into her table. Plates and a mug shattered on the floor, showering the occupants of the next table over with cold coffee and bacon scraps. As Jazmin helped me to my feet, Dalton hurried over.

  “I’m sorry, ladies,” he said. “I called security.”

  “No need, Dalton.” I brushed pancake crumbs from the front of my shirt. “The embarrassment was punishment enough.”

  In the chaos, the woman with the camera snuck out of Slopes. Jazmin stayed on my heels as we left the café and took the snowy pathway to White Oak’s main building.

  “What got into you back there?” she said, shoving my coat into my arms. “I’ve never seen you lose your temper like that. What were you going to do, slug her?”

  I zipped the coat up to my chin. “She was taking photos of us, Jazmin! Without our permission. Who does she think she is?”

  “Lourdes Calvo.”

  The woman stepped out from beneath the overhang of White Oak’s ski rental shop, camera bag slung over her shoulder.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said. “I’m sorry for not speaking up earlier, but your eyes were glowing red in the café. Didn’t want to poke the bear.”

  “You were taking pictures of us!” I said. “Are you going to delete them or not?”

  She pursed her lips. “I need as many pictures of Madame Lucia as I can get.”