Sunshowers - Part Fourteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
The hotel is a lot less busy today. I don’t think any hunter with a dog returned this morning. Last night probably shook them up, especially after all the eerie stories they’ve heard about the monster in the forest.
“Port Sitka’s an old sea town,” Eduardo explains, pushing a cappuccino to me across the counter in his cafe. He picks up a little bowl and starts beating some chocolate in it, tossing his head in the direction of town. “Superstitious folk. Nobody took it like a good sign when their dogs all bolted for no reason, then all came back to the hotel at once spooked to hell. I think most everyone’s gone home and agreed not to speak about it.”
“I can’t say I blame them,” I admit, glancing out at the abandoned, rain-wet picnic tables.
No one came just to hang out today. There’s only a small handful of hunters left, and they’re all out in the forest, which means the hotel is quiet. Quieter than it’s been this whole weekend. Even on our first night here, when I came in while it was closed to get Nolan, there were hunters and their friends hanging around right outside by the cafe. I knew that I could run out there and immediately be surrounded by people.
Now the place is just empty, and I’m feeling forcibly reminded of just how creepy this hotel is. I almost miss having the saucepan here. At least the chaos it caused was noise and movement and - I don’t know. It was better than the muffled silence and stillness that’s fallen over the gloomy old building now.
I remember that time when Aiden briefly gave me the ability to listen to our house as it spoke. It sounded peaceful and contented. I wonder what the hotel would say and sound like, if it could talk. Something about the inherent grimness of the place makes me wonder if it’s at all happy, continuing on its existence as Morden’s hotel. Nolan has lived here his whole life, and he sure thinks the whole place should come down. Noah came to the same conclusion after being here for about five minutes, and I can’t say I disagree with him.
There’s almost a physical change to the air when I step out of the hotel and into Eduardo’s cafe. It makes me want to breathe a sigh of relief. The cafe is small, warm and cozy. I think Wendy doesn’t care about it that much, or maybe she doesn’t consider it worth her time, because I can tell that Eduardo is the one who picked out most of the decor.
Not because I know anything about his style, but because things in here seem to be chosen for comfort over appearances. Even the seats at the counter are comfortable and squashy, made of smooth, worn leather. The windows are big and airy, latticed with dark wood. They fog up when Eduardo is cooking, and the fog collects the warm golden glow of the lights.
The awful silence of the hotel doesn’t reach the cafe, either. Eduardo is always happy to chat. Even if he’s busy, there’s a little, old-school TV tucked into one corner on the counter. He’s left it on today for football reasons, so it’s making some cheerful noise, too.
Aiden and I ducked into the hotel to get out of the sudden sweep of rain. We’ve been hanging out in here for longer than we meant to. Aiden chiefly because of the football, and me because of my chattiness. But taking a break for a chat was sanctioned by Ralph, this time. Eduardo is a good source of general information about what’s been going on.
I’m happy to take that job. The cafe is the nicest place to be at the moment. Especially given the other option is the cold, silent hotel.
“Eduardo,” I ask slowly, looking through the connecting doors at the hallway leading off into the darkness. “If this hotel could talk, what do you think it would say?”
Eduardo pulls an exaggerated, dramatic face of agony, then adopts a groaning voice like the Cryptkeeper. “Kill me!”
I let out a startled laugh, and Eduardo chuckles, going back to arranging croissants on a baking tray.
“Nah, but really. Feels like it’s ready to fall, doesn’t it? It’s only a shame my cafe is attached to it.”
“Seriously.” I stir my coffee thoughtfully, then let out a regretful sigh. “Too bad you can’t just buy the cafe from Wendy.”
Eduardo rolls some of the chilled dough between his fingers, glancing up at me over the counter. “You know… I’ve actually thought about it.”
“What - really?” I sit up some more, a hopeful, encouraging smile lighting up my face. “Dude, that would be great! But then again it’d still be attached to the hotel… and would Wendy ever part with it? I’d be amazed if she ever let go of anything on this property.”
“You’d be surprised,” Eduardo informs me confidentially, leaning the edges of his floured palms against the counter. “Wendy’s not as old as you’d think, but running a hotel like this takes a lot of work, especially now her son doesn’t work here no more. And the place looks grand, but the big secret is it’s falling apart. You seen the renovation stuff at the far end of the hotel?”
I nod at him, caught by surprise.
“That’s not just to make it look prettier, or whatever. It’s because there was a roof cave-in on that side.”
“Whoa.” I sit back, startled, then glance at the hotel again. “Wait - if that side fell in, isn’t there a chance the rest of the hotel is unstable? Even once they fix what already broke?”
“Mhm. Exactly. And these walls are old as hell, thin as paper. I honestly think a bad storm could bring the whole place down.” Eduardo shoots me a meaningful look over the trays of pastries in the glass case. “Lately whenever Wendy gets pissed off she starts threatening to sell the whole place, move away, and retire. She’s always making threats all the time, but that one is new. I started wondering if maybe she really means it.”
I fold my elbows on the counter, leaning closer to keep my voice down. “What makes you think so?”
“Well… not like I know for sure, but - when the roof caved in on that side, Wendy immediately got those construction guys out here to get to work fixing it, right? But after they got set up, she didn’t give them the go-ahead to get started. Still hasn’t. That’s why that stuff is all just sitting over there. I think maybe ‘cause she’s not actually sure she wants to sink all the work and money into fixing it all up. Might be she doesn’t want to do it anymore. And the place is only getting older, and the more it breaks down, the more work it becomes.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Wow… so wait, she said something about selling the cafe to you? I thought you’re still letting her believe you don’t speak any English.”
Eduardo lets out a laugh, grinning sheepishly.
“Yeah, I am. But also I knew better than to talk to her about buying the cafe. She’d never sell it to me, ‘cause she thinks I’m below her. She’s a hotel owner, a fancy heiress.” He holds out one hand palm-down, then puts the other out a few inches beneath it. “I’m a guy who works in her cafe, so I’m down here.”
I can’t help but crinkle up my nose in extreme disagreement. Eduardo breathes out a laugh, then makes a gesture in the general direction of the hotel.
“In her mind, I mean. So I got my brother to act like a big businessman and give her a call, see what she’d want for the cafe. I thought it had a zero percent chance of working, but - she was willing to talk about selling it.”
“Oh, shit!” I sit back in amazement. “So did you make an offer, or…?”
Eduardo shakes his head, a crestfallen expression flashing through his eyes.
“Nah,” he says quietly, turning back to the croissants. “The price she gave him was… there’s no way. It’s too much.”
He lets out a disappointed sigh, nibbles his lip for a moment, and shrugs his shoulders.
“Guess it doesn’t matter. I don’t think she would’ve actually sold it, and I don’t think she’s actually gonna retire and move away. Not unless the whole hotel comes down. Just kinda sucks. Would’ve loved to have something good to hand down to him one day.”
Eduardo nods across the cafe at his son, who’s standing just beneath the overhang outside, animatedly talking to Ralph and Noah about something. He’s clearly a little spitfire. His friend’s mom dropped him off with a torn shirt and a bloody elbow. We watched him stop for a second outside the cafe to drop his adventuring grin and adopt an innocent expression before he went inside to see his dad.
I can’t hear what he’s saying over the rain, just the eager cadence of his little voice, but both Ralph and Noah look extremely entertained listening to him.
I take a thoughtful sip of my cappuccino, letting my eyes drift back to Eduardo.
“Well - maybe Wendy will retire, after all,” I answer hopefully. “You never know! There’s no reason she should hang onto the hotel forever. Especially because - like you said, Nolan doesn’t want it. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“I wouldn’t, if I was him.” Eduardo shudders, glancing at the hotel. “Poor guy. Imagine having Wendy as your mom! She’s always talking about what an ungrateful brat he is, like anyone would want to inherit this hotel. Besides me, anyways.”
“What, you’d take the whole hotel?” I ask, once again caught by surprise.
“Yes, but purely to live out my fantasy where me and my son and all my brothers smash it down with big hammers until only the cafe is left.”
I let out a startled laugh, reaching across the counter to swat Eduardo’s arm. He flashes me a grin, then takes the tray of croissants and disappears into the kitchen.
“Back in a little!” he calls.
“Okay!” I take a second to process everything, then look over at Aiden, nudging him in the ribs with my elbow. “Hey. Were you listening to any of that? Or are you just watching the game, now? You don’t even care about either of these teams!”
“No, but it’s an interesting game,” Aiden answers, without breaking his gaze away from the TV. “Might turn out to be an upset. Tied right now, back-to-back fumbles, only like a minute left in the-”
“Stay focused, you.” I catch him by his jaw and turn his face towards me. “I’ll admit this has been a surprisingly low-chaos morning, but we should stay on our toes. Hanely and Grimm are parked out front, and the Witch must be around somewhere. We should probably go looking for her if she doesn’t show up soon.”
“Or we could relax in here, finish watching the game? You can make your overly-sexual, homoerotic commentary on it.”
“I barely have to,” I laugh, sweeping a hand at the TV. “The commentators basically do it for me.”
Aiden playfully crinkles his nose up at me. “Everything sounds dirty to your ears, Little Demon.”
“Oh, yeah? Let’s listen for a second, shall we?”
We both fall silent, so we can hear what the commentators are saying.
“When you’re breaking in a young quarterback, what you need is a lot of prep. What we’re seeing here is the result of hours and hours of drilling, paying off.”
“Tireless guy, never stops smiling, even when things get rough, and what excellent ball handling!” the other commentator adds approvingly. “You can see why he’s such a popular man both on the field and in the locker room. Favorite among the coaches, too.”
Aiden looks at me, and I raise my eyebrows, then slowly take a sip of my cappuccino.
“Okay,” Aiden says, biting his lip. “That - was - come on, if you’re looking for it, then obviously-”
“Well, now that I’ve made my point, should we check in with Ralph?”
“It’s too quiet,” Ralph murmurs a moment later, keeping his voice soft enough that the sound of the rain covers up our conversation. “What’s the Witch up to?”
We all gaze out at the soft rainy greyness of the day around us, the white mist hugging the grass. The bright sunshine from earlier is hidden now behind the clouds, giving the air a darker tint. It looks to be much later in the day than it actually is.
Somehow this has the conflicting effect of making the hotel look spookier, and Eduardo’s cafe even cozier, a bubble of warm orange-gold light against the chilly scene.
It’s all too calm, though. Too quiet.
“Kasey still hasn’t come back to report anything weird in the forest,” I tell Ralph, as he leans back against the wall and folds his arms over his chest. “Hanely and Grimm haven’t left their squad car, not that we’ve seen.”
The gleaming, glossy squad car that Noah destroyed has been replaced with a very old model. Given that Hanely and Grimm have had the windows rolled down this whole time despite the rain, I think the air conditioning is probably broken.
The vehicular downgrade has clearly not been taken lightly. They both had such irritated expressions on their faces when we got here that Noah had to hastily slip to the back of the group so they wouldn’t see him laughing. They don’t know we’re the ones responsible for what happened to their squad car, but clearly they’re ready to hold us responsible for every problem they’ve had this whole weekend. Possibly every problem they’ve had their whole lives, based on the way they glared at us as we crossed their line of sight.
Technically they’re still here to monitor what’s left of the hunt. But I think at this point, in their minds, the task has become to catch us doing something, anything, that they can arrest us for.
It dawns on me that I’m gazing absently into Eduardo’s cafe, lost in my thoughts. Watching his son, who’s alone behind the counter, trying his best to roll up a croissant with some leftover dough. It’s coming out badly. His little face is very focused, though, his lip pinned between his teeth in concentration.
I find myself with a bittersweet smile on my face as I watch him. It's a cute sight, but it makes me sad that Eduardo can’t have the cafe for his own.
“This whole situation is too peaceful,” Ralph murmurs, biting his thumbnail. “Feels like all the chaos is gonna happen at once. We should-”
He breaks off and straightens up sharply, his eyes widening. We all spin around to face the forest, hearing the distant echoes of a shot someone just fired.
It’s immediately followed by a second shot, and then silence. I think we’re too far away to hear any voices, even if someone was shouting.
Everyone starts forward at once, but Ralph seizes me and Aiden by our arms.
“Wait a sec,” he says, in a calm, steady voice. “If that was the Witch, she’s trying to draw us away from the hotel. Otherwise she wouldn’t strike that far out in the forest.”
“Shouldn’t we check on it, though?” Aiden asks, his deep voice full of worry. “Make sure everyone’s okay?”
“Yeah,” Ralph agrees, “But if she wants to get us away from the hotel, and it’s not because there’s a crowd here we can hide in, then she may have come back to steal some more power.”
That possibility hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes sense. She must have spent a lot of magic to drive Aiden and Noah apart last night with the dogs. It only makes sense that she’d be looking for more.
“Noah and I will go find out what that was in the forest,” Ralph goes on, deciding as he says it. “You two wait here in case she shows up. Jamie, you might have to help Aiden channel his power. I have a feeling that me and Noah are the ones headed towards the false alarm.”
“Be careful!” I call anxiously, as Ralph and Noah break into a trot, then a run.
“We will!” Ralph calls back, briefly running backwards to point at us. “Don’t let her get her hands on any more power! And follow my directives from this morning, alright?”
Aiden and I nod. Ralph and Noah race through the rain and towards the trees, disappearing together into the misty forest. I watch them go, then turn back to Aiden.
“What should we do?”
“Just gotta wait and see what happens.” He puts an arm around me, his deep voice vibrating through me in comforting waves. “Could be nothing. Could be a false alarm the Witch didn’t even cause.”
“True,” I answer nervously. “Okay, well - we’re still mostly on the rails. Haven’t failed at any of Ralph’s directives yet-”
I break off in surprise and alarm as keep Nolan out of it becomes the first directive we fail.
“Oh, no,” I whisper, watching in mounting dismay as Nolan comes rushing across the lawn, headed directly towards the hotel. “What is he doing here?”
Aiden strides out into the rain, and I rush after him. Nolan doesn’t slow down as we hurry out to meet him.
“Nolan!” Aiden tries to catch his arm, but Nolan speeds up, unwittingly evading him. Now suddenly Aiden and I are practically chasing him to the hotel. “What are you doing, dude? Hanely and Grimm are right here, Wendy’s right inside!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have time to talk right now!” Nolan calls over his shoulder. His face is pale, his eyes wide and wild. “I’ve just gotta - take care of something - don’t worry about me!”
He darts through the open doors of the cafe. Aiden and I exchange an alarmed look, then rush in after him.
“Hey, Nolan,” Eduardo’s son calls over the counter.
“Hey, Ramón, how’s it going, buddy?” Nolan answers breathlessly, without slowing down.
“Pretty good! I’m gonna go help dad in the cellar…”
He trails off, watching in confusion as we all go bolting past him into the grim darkness of the hotel.
Nolan pulls up to a stop as soon as the light from the cafe fades out. All of a sudden he seems to remember where he is. He swallows hard, trembling a little beneath his rain-spotted clothes. Once again, he carefully didn’t wear his forest ranger’s uniform here.
He drags a shaking hand beneath his nose, then forces himself back into movement. He strides out into the lobby and stops in front of the display case of loaned objects from the Bratton Collection.
“Mom!” he calls out, his voice slightly fractured.
There’s a silence, and then a door opens upstairs. Wendy appears at the top of the stairs and peers down over them.
To my immense surprise, she immediately smiles. But it’s the same smile in the portrait of M.N. Morden, the sweet one that doesn’t totally reach her eyes.
“Nolan.” She sweeps down the stairs, crosses right to him without noticing me and Aiden hovering in the entrance to the hallway. “You’re back. Excellent.”
“Yeah, I got your text about how you were getting rid of all my stuff!” Nolan anxiously draws back when she reaches for him, then starts to go around her towards the stairs. “I told you I’d be back for it! I just needed to leave it here for a little since I lost my apartm-”
“No need to rush off upstairs, Nolan,” Wendy says evenly, folding her hands in front of herself, still smiling. “I’ve already cleared it out. But don’t worry, I kept what you’ll need to move back in.”
Nolan stops where he is, staring at her over his shoulder. “You got rid of all my stuff?”
“Not all of it, of course not! But your little run-away-from-home excursion was an excellent opportunity for me to get rid of some junk. As I said, I’ve kept what you need.”
Nolan lets out a sharp, short little breath, his eyebrows drawing up and together. “What, so - so all my old journals-?”
“I’m sure a real man doesn’t need such things,” Wendy says lightly, still smiling. “I burned them.”
Nolan just stares and stares at her for a long moment, then manages, in a scraping voice, “So that’s my punishment for my run-away-from-home excursion, as you called it? Which was actually me moving out for good?”
“Oh, Nolan.” Wendy adopts a consoling tone of voice, drawing closer to him, cupping his face in her hands. “So upset! I’m sure this whole thing has been painful. But don’t worry, you’re home now, with me.”
“I’m not coming back,” Nolan insists, in a hoarse voice.
“Of course you are,” Wendy says chidingly. “I’m the only one who’s ever taken care of you, and the only one who always will. Honestly, who else would put up with tantrums like this last one of yours! People do get tired of behavior like that, you know.”
Nolan stares down at her silently, breathing unsteadily, his jaw working.
“You’re upset about how it went with the police,” Wendy says understandingly. “I realize now I shouldn’t have sent you to work there! Oafs, all of them. You belong working at the hotel, a place of nobility and refinement. As I did tell you before, when you insisted on quitting… but it’s all in the past, now.”
She drops her hands, briskly straightening up.
“Go upstairs and shower,” she says, issuing her orders over her shoulder as she crosses towards the staff door at the far side of the lobby. “Change into some more presentable clothes. I left a nice outfit on your bed. Be quick about it. I’ll need your help with the new generator, it should be dropped off soon. I’ve already had the old one taken away.”
With that, she disappears through the staff door and closes it behind herself. Silence falls over the lobby. Nolan just stands there, staring after her.
After a moment I haltingly step forward, gently put a hand on his slender shoulder.
“Nolan?” I try gingerly. “Are - are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer, only goes on breathing shallowly and unsteadily.
“You’re not moving back in here, are you?” I blurt out, unable to stop myself.
Nolan finally looks at me, his light green eyes blazing with helpless rage and tear-inducing frustration.
“I hope Noah gives this hotel the same treatment he gave the squad car,” he answers, dragging the back of his hand over his eyes.
I let out a startled laugh, then quickly grow serious again, biting my lip. “Shit, man, I’m so sorry about your journals…”
“It’s okay,” he stammers breathlessly, hanging his head. “I actually got most of them when I snuck back in here the other night. And I’ve got another one hidden upstairs, not in my room.”
“Should we go get it?” Aiden offers immediately. “Or check your room for anything she left that you want? We’ll help you.”
A little burst of love for Aiden goes through my heart, but Nolan shakes his head, pressing his lips tightly together.
“I don’t want anything she left for me. But - oh-” He looks up in surprise, absorbing the rest of what Aiden said. “Thanks, that’s nice of you. I would like to get that journal… guess I could use a lookout.”
“Let’s do it now.” Aiden catches his wrist and pulls him up onto the stairs. “While she thinks you’re here because you’re staying.”
“Aiden, I’ll go!” I whisper hastily, catching a handful of his shirt. “You stay by the cafe and keep an eye out for the - the, um-”
I break off with a swift glance at Nolan, but Aiden knows what I mean. He comes back down the two steps he went up, and I go up them to join Nolan.
“Be careful,” I whisper, and Aiden nods, brushes a kiss onto my lips before he takes off.
Nolan is already quietly rushing up the stairs, so I hurry to join him.
He pauses for a moment in the hallway, standing outside of an open door. Staring into what must be his bedroom. I’m only guessing that based on the fact that there are clothes that would fit him neatly folded on the bed. Nothing else about the room gives away that it’s anything different from one of the rooms for the guests. There are no posters, no books, nothing.
Nolan stares into it for a second, then puts his head down and surges past it.
“Nolan,” I say softly, trotting to keep up with him. “You know what your mom said isn’t true, don’t you?”
Nolan flinches, upset that now we undeniably know the truth about Wendy being his mom.
“Which thing?” he asks hollowly.
“Basically all of it, except the part about Handjob and Grimm being oafs, that’s true-”
Nolan jolts to a stop and whips around to face me, smothering a gasp of laughter behind his hand. “What?”
“Oh - I mean Hanely!” I correct hastily, blushing to my ears. “Goddamnit, Noah! This is his fault!”
“Holy gosh,” Nolan laughs weakly, rubbing his eyes. He gives himself a shake, then sets off again. “Come on, we better keep moving! If she hears me laughing she’ll know I’m doing something I’m not allowed.”
I bite my lip rather than comment on that, and follow him down the hallway to a dresser at the end with several large drawers.
I expected Nolan to start going through them, but instead he scrambles up onto the dresser and reaches up to open a little storage hatch set into the wall above it. Seamlessly blended in, so well-hidden that I wonder if even Wendy knows about it.
“Seriously, though, Nolan,” I go on softly, as he starts feeling around in the dark little cabinet. “What she said wasn’t true. I can think of someone who’d be happy to take care of you.”
Nolan pauses with his hands in the cabinet. He draws his narrow shoulders in, doesn’t look at me. It’s like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible.
“Not that you’re helpless to take care of yourself,” I quickly add. “In fact, you’re the one taking care of him right now, aren’t you? By helping us.”
Nolan draws a thick journal out from the cabinet, closes it, then drops back down to stand beside me. Hugging the journal to his chest, he glances out through one of the windows, in the rough direction of the ranger’s outpost. But the glass is fogged up from the rain, impossible to see through.
“I - I’m trying. I’m afraid every night of that ghost coming back and spooking him…”
“We’re working on it,” I promise, as we set off back towards the stairs. “Firstly, though, we need to get you away from the hotel. Do you have everything you need?”
Nolan nods, running a hand over the heavy journal in obvious relief.
“Thank god she didn’t find this one,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. “I wouldn’t have left it here, but it probably would’ve been just as stressful if I stashed it at the outpost and Tucker found it…”
He briefly runs through the pages, as if checking to make sure that no one has touched it. I only glance at it very briefly, but I can see that the second half of the journal is blank, which I think means it’s his most recent one. My eyes automatically read the one line of neat, tidy handwriting they have time to.
…old guitar of Tucker’s. When he plays it and sings a little, when he thinks I’m not…
Actually, Tucker’s name is all over that one page I glimpsed, appearing often enough that my eyes took notice of the repeated capital T in the two seconds they had to look. Presumably that’s one of the reasons why Nolan is so relieved to have the journal back. If Wendy had found it, and chosen to read it instead of burning it, she’d probably have a pretty good guess about where to go to find Nolan.
Nolan stops suddenly, staring down at the journal. He swallows hard, his eyebrows drawing in and up.
“She’s right about some things,” he stammers, in a shaky voice. “You know, I could never get why Tuck puts up with all the - the - me. I don’t see how he’s not tired of it yet. What does he even get out of this? When is it all going to - to turn around on me?”
I blink hard, drawing back, then slowly bite my lip.
“Nolan… you grew up in this hotel, didn’t you? Spent most of your life here?”
“Basically all of it, yeah,” he says miserably.
“Well, then - you really don’t know how different things can be,” I tell him earnestly, as we walk out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. “Outside of this place. And I really think that Tucker-”
I cut myself off sharply, catch Nolan’s arm, and try to pull him back into the shadows. But it’s too late. We’ve already been spotted.
A flash of pure victory goes through Grimm’s eyes as he stops just inside the lobby doors, staring up at me.
Fuck. There’s another of Ralph’s directives failed. Check avoid Hanely and Grimm off the list. And - oh no - I have Nolan with me.
“Shit,” I whisper, wondering if I have time to shove him away before Grimm notices him, too.
The answer is a resounding no. Grimm’s eyes are locked on both of us, and he’s only barely managing to conceal his delight. Nolan and I don’t even have the chance to exchange a panicked glance.
“Get down here!” Grimm calls sharply, much more loudly than necessary.
I hesitate, shifting from foot to foot, wishing desperately that the others were here. I’m not sure if we should go down there, but Nolan meekly obeys, and I can’t let him go on his own.
I hastily follow him down the stairs, cringing internally all the way. Please, god, just don’t let me have to lie… Oh, man, Ralph isn’t gonna be happy.
Nolan certainly isn’t happy. He looks very much like he wants to die, in fact. We stop anxiously in front of Grimm, who seems to immensely enjoy this opportunity to leer over both of us.
“Two for one,” he says frankly, with an unpleasant smile on his face. He points a finger at me, then at Nolan. “You broke into the hotel, and you - pukeshirt! Back with your mama, I see. Chief’ll be glad to hear it. We all agreed that’s where you best belonged.”
Nolan hangs his head miserably, swallowing over and over again. I find myself puffing up with indignance, quickly swelling into anger.
“You’re so mean!” I hear myself say scoldingly.
Grimm’s smile only widens, crinkling up the bandage on his broken nose. “Being mean isn’t a crime. Breaking into the hotel is, and it’s closed today, without the hunters going in and out.”
“I didn’t know that!”
“Regardless,” Grimm says disinterestedly, and starts to stride towards me. “You’re coming with me.”
Nolan suddenly lifts his head, a flicker of defiance going through his red-rimmed eyes.
“He didn’t break in,” he blurts out, catching hold of my wrist and pulling me a step closer to him. “Like you said, I live here, and I - I invited him!”
Grimm stops in his tracks, clearly thrown off to hear any kind of protest from Nolan.
“You invited him,” he repeats blankly.
“Him and all those guys he’s with, yeah!” Nolan goes on desperately, his words speeding up as he gains momentum. “So you can leave them alone, they’re not trespassing!”
Grimm stares at Nolan, then fixes him with a smile so horrible it could peel paint. “Is that so?”
I take a defensive step in front of Nolan. “He just told you that’s so!”
I flash a proud look over my shoulder at Nolan, then freeze, catching the expression on his face. His eyes are perfectly round, his face white as a sheet. His mouth is slightly open. He isn’t breathing. He’s also not looking at Grimm.
I turn to follow his horrified gaze across the lobby. My body skips over several heartbeats, breaths, and blinks. I stand frozen in disbelief, a cold flash flood of panic icing me over.
“Oh, I get it,” Grimm snarls, glancing back and forth between my face and Nolan’s. “Yeah, Hanely told me how you pulled this stunt on him yesterday. Pretended the monster was right behind him, probably while one of your other friends made a whole bunch of noise to freak him out. Well, it’s not gonna work on me.”
Nolan and I don’t answer him. We’re busy staring at the Witch.
She’s right behind Grimm, having just wandered into the lobby through the staff-only door that Wendy left open. The Witch had to bend practically double to get through it, which is why I didn’t spot her before. Nolan’s fingers tighten around my wrist as the Witch rears up, her terrifying eyes blinking as she gazes around.
I expect her to come straight for us, but she doesn’t appear to be interested at the moment. She doesn’t spare a glance for me and Nolan, who are holding as still as two little prey animals who just realized a lion is pacing the room.
She almost has the air of being a little lost, like she’s looking for something she can’t find.
The generator, the one still-functioning voice in my brain whispers. Wendy had the old one removed, and the new one hasn’t been delivered yet…
I think I must be right, because the Witch begins silently, slowly gliding across the lobby, glancing from side to side with a gaze like a searchlight.
“What do you two think this is?” Grimm snaps suddenly. “You think it’s funny? You think you’re gonna pull one over on me? Did you forget I’m an officer of the law?”
The Witch pauses at the abrupt outburst of noise. She glances disapprovingly at Grimm, and seems to decide the generator isn’t in here. She sweeps back towards the staff door she came in through, then pauses in the shadows beside it, next to the portrait of Morden. There’s a power outlet there. She bends low again to examine it closely.
Oh, shit. Can she steal power from any outlet?
My eyes grow even wider with horror at that thought, and Grimm finally loses his patience. He flashes a cursory glance over his shoulder, barely looking.
“There, are you satisfied?” he shouts, turning back to us. “Now, you-”
He does a double-take, then stares blankly at the Witch. She’s huddled over in the shadows, a barely discernible outline, but he saw her move.
Right as he looks back at her again, she abandons the outlet in disappointment and slinks like a shadow through the staff door.
“What the fuck!” Grimm shouts.
The Witch straightens up on the other side of the doorway. Only half of her is visible through it, all swirling darkness. When she hears Grimm yelling, though, she bends down just enough that the edge of one flaming purple eye is visible.
Grimm lets out a startlingly high-pitched shriek, whips out his police-issued Glock, and aims it at the Witch. Nolan and I both throw our hands over our ears with a gasp as he starts firing.
Grimm’s shots are nothing like the neat, precise one that Ralph took to stop the squad car the other night. Grimm’s shots zip through the Witch, thud into the walls on either side of the door, shatter the mirror to its left, and send an ornamental wooden carving at the crest of the doorframe crashing to the floor. One bullet ricochets off of something and must have hit the chandelier, because the entire thing shudders, old crystals sending off a shower of dust.
I’m watching from the floor now, having wrenched Nolan down with me when I threw myself flat. He’s too frozen with shock to do anything, watching blankly as Grimm keeps shooting frantically at the Witch, strafing half of the lobby with every round in his weapon.
One more bullet flies, lodging neatly in the forehead of M.N. Morden, right between his painted eyebrows. Grimm must be all out, or else his Glock jammed. He lowers it shakily, panting hard.
The Witch leans down a little lower in the doorway, clearly starting to get a little annoyed by all this.
Grimm catches one glimpse of the purple eye that descends to peer irritably at him from the doorway, and flings himself away with a huge, shuddering gasp. He backs himself up until his back hits the glass display case full of plates and ceramics from the Bratton Collection, which somehow, unbelievably, didn’t get hit even once during the bullet storm.
Grimm hurls his spent sidearm at the Witch, then desperately feels around behind himself for something else to throw at her. He feels the display case, and seems to realize he’s got all the ammunition he needs right there.
He winds up his muscled arm, then slams his elbow behind himself into the glass front of the case. It shatters instantly, and Grimm seizes an armful of the statuettes, knocking over and shattering half the others in his rush.
Nolan and I watch from the floor with our mouths hanging open as Grimm begins to fling statue after statue at the Witch, sending up explosions of broken fragments wherever they hit the walls or the tile flooring. When he’s through the statues he moves over to the plates, hurling them at the Witch with enough force to atomize the delicate ones into dust upon impact.
When everything that can be thrown has been thrown, the Witch pauses for a moment, in a way that silently seems to ask: Are you quite finished?
Then she straightens up, disappears behind the doorframe, and glides off down the hallway. The door silently swings shut after her, but I have just enough time to see her leave through a window.
All in all I don’t think she offered Grimm a view of anything more than black smoke and a dot of purple fire. I’m not sure he even looked directly at her. Even now he’s not looking; he’s trying to scramble away and run, apparently thinking she was moving because she was about to start chasing him.
He doesn’t get far, though. He slips on the broken pieces of ceramic and glass and topples uncontrollably over, his arms flailing. He lands flat on his stomach right as Hanely throws open the lobby doors and races inside.
The Witch is long gone, but Hanely’s eyes are wide with panic. Understandable, given that they just fell on the sight before him. He definitely heard all of those shots, too.
Eduardo and his son probably missed hearing it from the cellar, but Aiden heard it. He comes sprinting in through the hallway from the cafe, his blue eyes huge with alarm. Just like Hanely, he jolts to a stop in the doorway, staring in disbelief at the shattered ruins of the Bratton Collection loan, the bullets sprayed across the walls, the glittering wreckage of the mirror and the display case, and the portrait of Morden, which is smoking slightly from the bullethole in his forehead.
Noah appears at Aiden’s shoulder, rain-damp and a little out of breath. He looks relieved when he sees me and Nolan, but he breaks into an enormous grin of delighted surprise when he sees what’s happened to the lobby.
The polar opposite expression is on Hanely’s face.
“Grimm,” he breathes, slowly spreading his hands in incredulous dismay. “What… what…?”
“The monster!” Grimm sputters, struggling back to his feet. Cringing and pressing a hand to the bandage on his broken nose, which I think he might have smacked into the floor. “It was right fucking here, Hanely! And it doesn’t bonk, you stupid bastard! If it did I would have heard it coming!”
Hanely seizes two fistfuls of his hair. “Holy shit, Grimm, are you kidding me? What did you do? Wendy is gonna kill us! She’s actually gonna kill us!”
Grimm stops and looks around, like he’s only just now realizing how much damage he did. The color that was beginning to return to his face disappears again.
Aiden rushes to me, and Noah follows him, staring around with wide eyes at the bulletholes in the walls.
“What the fuck, Grunky!” he sputters, his grey eyes darkening with outrage. “You shot up the whole fuckin’ building, you maniac, you could have killed someone!”
Grimm’s face reddens with rage. “Why the hell can’t you get my name right? It’s Grimm, Ferris H. Grimm-”
“Well, nice shooting, Phallus!” Noah snaps, helping Nolan shakily get back to his feet. “Putain, t’es un as, toi! We’re all lucky as hell that your aim sucks so bad you can’t even hit anything by accident! What’s your chief gonna say when he hears about this, huh?”
Grimm looks around at the bullet-ridden room, running a dazed hand through his hair.
“Chief’ll understand,” he stammers at Hanely. “I had to. The monster was-”
“Forget the chief, Wendy is gonna kill you!” Hanely shouts. He sprints across the lobby to the staff door, reaches out for the handle. “I have to go get her! We need to tell her before she sees-”
Hanely is cut off as the door is thrown open from the other side, so forcefully that it catches him in the face with a sharp crunching sound, then swings him back into the wall and pins him there. Wendy doesn’t even see him as she comes racing out into the lobby, then freezes where she is, staring around.
Stunned wrath begins to gather in her cold eyes.
“Uh oh,” Aiden whispers, helping me to my feet.
He catches my wrist, tugs me towards the hallway that leads off to the cafe. Noah catches a handful of Nolan’s t-shirt and starts quietly pulling him away, too.
Nolan stumbles along in dazed silence for a second, then suddenly blurts out - “Mom, I’m not moving back in, not ever, and also I’m leaving now! Bye!”
“What?” Wendy snaps, the rage in her eyes redoubling. “Get back here, you ungrateful little brat!”
Nolan turns and scrambles after Noah. Wendy starts forward, but both she and Nolan jolt to a stop as the chandelier - which was still shivering from the bullet that hit it - suddenly makes an ominous squeaking sound.
Hanely pushes the door off of himself, slumping back against the wall with one bloody hand pressed to his broken nose. The door swings shut with a hard slam that seems to shake the whole building. There’s another faint squeak from the chandelier, but other than that it gives no warning before it gently breaks free from whatever was holding it to the ceiling, sweeps through the open air, and lands with a resounding, musical crash on the floor.
Everyone stares at it in shocked silence for a second. Then Aiden seizes me, Noah seizes Nolan, and we’re all rushing into the hallway. From behind us we can hear the beginnings of Wendy shouting at the top of her lungs at Hanely and Grimm.
The four of us go sprinting back towards the cafe. Eduardo opens the door of the cellar just in time to see us coming.
“Hey, everything okay?” he asks. “We thought we heard something-”
“Everything’s fine, bruh!” Noah says cheerfully, slapping his shoulder as we rush past. “You just focus on getting lunch ready, dude, ‘cause we’re probably gonna order one of everything! Each! Also maybe avoid Wendy right now, ‘cause she’s screamin’!”
Eduardo lets out a sputter of laughter, shaking his head as he watches us sprint away. “Alright…?”
We burst free from the hotel and out into the rain. Ralph was striding over to meet us already, tucking his phone back into his pocket, but he takes one look at us and speeds up considerably. His grey-green eyes are full of alarm well before we all stop in the rain and cluster up together.
“What happened?” he asks immediately. “Thought I just heard some commotion from the hotel - and what are you doing here, Nolan? Why do you, um - look like that? What’s going on?”
Nolan is hugging his journal to himself to protect it from the rainfall. He shrugs his shoulders, looking utterly dazed. But smiling breathlessly, beaming from ear to ear.
“Nothing,” he says faintly. “Just having a nice day.”
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