“A hotel is a place where mates may spend the night and enjoy each other’s company,” Zav stated, forgetting the hairy heckler and gazing down at me as we walked.
My body was already flushed and highly aware of him. I didn’t need a sultry gaze or thoughts of exploring the bounciness of a hotel bed with Zav, but then again… why couldn’t we spend the night here? It wasn’t as if I had to go home, and it might be fun to have a weekend fling downtown. Besides, the hotel was a lot closer than my house.
“Maybe after we check to see if the thief is there,” I said.
“I will do this swiftly and efficiently while you acquire a room for us. A private room with no drunken voyeurs.”
“I think most hotel rooms are free of that amenity.” While we waited for the crosswalk light to turn, I looked up the Cadillac, trying to remember why it rang a bell. I’d never stayed there. “Oh, that’s right.” I sighed.
“Problem?” Zav asked as we crossed the street.
“Yeah. It’s not an operating hotel anymore, and it’s haunted.”
8
“Haunted?” Zav asked.
“So the internet informs me.” I summed up the description of the hotel to him. “Back in the late 1800s, it was popular with loggers, fishermen, and shipyard and railroad workers. It fell into disrepair in the 1900s and was trashed in the Nisqually Earthquake of 2001. It’s since been restored and is the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.”
“A park may be in a building?”
“Apparently. Here’s the haunted part: Apparitions reputedly wander the offices in the upper floors, strange sounds are heard now and then, and a ghostly presence is felt in the elevator. At night, the ghost of a woman and her child can be heard crying in the halls. Some say she’s a prostitute who performed her own abortion and bled to death in her room.” I grimaced. What a story.
“What does this have to do with thieves?” Zav asked.
“Probably nothing.” After the morning’s events, I was more squeamish than usual at the idea of hauntings, and my neck throbbed in memory of skeletal fingers wrapped around it. “She wouldn’t have been able to get a room there.” I stopped at the corner of the restored brick building. It still had a sign that read Cadillac Hotel, but Klondike Gold Rush signs were by the front doors, and the building was dark inside. “Let me see if there are any other hotels around here.”
“Hotels with beds available for mated couples.”
“Yes, yes, I’m horny too.”
“Excellent.” Zav reached for me but paused and looked toward the building’s third-story windows.
I started to ask him if he’d seen something—such as apparitions haunting the offices up there—but my phone buzzed.
Dear robber, Zoltan texted, why have you left this ghoulish parcel on my front door?
You, of all people, are bothered by ghoulish things?
When they’re left on my door, certainly.
I left a note to explain it. I’d like to know what person, magical being, or creature the bone came from. It attacked me earlier.
It attacked you, and you weren’t able to identify it?
No. It was invisible.
It’s not invisible now.
I know that. I managed to cut off some of the fingers grabbing me, even though they were invisible. I decided the story sounded implausible to anyone who hadn’t been there. Hell, Willard had been there, and she found it implausible. I was fortunate she’d seen me floating horizontally and being pulled toward the corner by an invisible force.
You are my strangest client.
Aren’t I your only client?
You forget my legions of fans that support my YouTube alchemy channel.
Those aren’t clients; they’re stalkers. I’ve seen the emails.
Such judgment. I will examine this bone, but there will be a fee.
I expect no less.
“I sense something.” Zav was still gazing at the windows.
“Ghosts?”
“No. It is either a magical artifact that is being camouflaged, only partially effectively, or it is some magical residue.”
“You think it’s related to a certain half-dwarf thief?” It was possible my thief had decided to use the place as a bolt hole—a museum that closed at five might be a better place to lie low than an actual hotel. It was also possible that magic left by a passing mage or enchanter accounted for the place’s supposed hauntedness, and that this residue had nothing to do with my problem.
“I do not know. We will investigate.”
“I’m sure the door is locked, and breaking and entering is a crime in Seattle. Especially on a busy, well-lit intersection.” I eyed the cars zipping past us, the late hour doing little to diminish the traffic. Maybe there was a back entrance we could use.
“The door is not locked.” Zav stepped under the covered entryway and opened one of the glass doors.
“Did you do that or was it unlocked?” If the latter, our thief might have come this way after all.
“Dragons are versatile.”
Guess that answered my question. I joined him in the doorway. It would only take a minute to investigate whatever residual magic he sensed. As of yet, I didn’t sense anything.
I paused before entering fully, holding my hand up to stop Zav. In this neighborhood, any commercial—or historically significant—building would have an alarm system. Yup, a little red LED glowed from a wall-mounted detector. We could probably be in and out before the security company showed up, but I would rather not trigger anything at all.
“Alarm.” I nodded toward it, then spotted a larger unit on a back wall, beyond displays of information and faux artifacts from the late 1800s. “I might be able to disarm them with my lock-picking charm.” I’d never tried to get through an alarm system before, but the magic had proven versatile.
Both units disappeared in flashes of flame, leaving only smoke and ashes wafting down to the floor.
“Or you could utterly destroy them with your magic. Was there teriyaki sauce on them?”
“There is no reason to waste time on human impediments.” Zav strode into the room, his elven slippers—thank goodness, he’d made the Crocs disappear—barely whispering across the hardwood floor.
“Someone’s grouchy because this isn’t a real hotel and there aren’t beds,” I muttered.
“I do not require beds.” He gave me a smoldering look over his shoulder, but that might have been left over from lighting things on fire.
I drew Chopper, using its blue glow for illumination rather than drawing attention by turning on lights, and trailed Zav toward an elevator. Halfway through the bottom floor of displays, my nerves started itching, and I thought I detected wisps of fog similar to what had been in Willard’s artifacts room.
Maybe it was my imagination. The haze wasn’t as dense or nearly as obvious as what I’d experienced that morning.
“Do you sense something?” I asked.
Zav was waiting at the elevator, a sign saying it was for staff only. “Residue.”
“What does that mean?” I couldn’t put a finger on it myself. As before, it registered to some other sense than my built-in magic detector. More like what normal humans would call a sixth sense. A seventh sense? A hunch or intuition that something unnatural was here…