? ? ?
Eve had grown up in Morganville, and left it only once in her entire life, and even she didn’t come to this area of town. “I thought they’d torn it down,” she said, as she pulled her big black hearse to a stop about a block from the hotel. That was as close as she could get, given the stuff littering the street ahead . . . trash, but also boards with rusty nails sticking up and broken bricks. It looked like the aftermath of a riot, but it could just as easily have been the last big storm that had swept through, about the time the water-vampire draug had attacked the town. Morganville wasn’t real big on civic services. Or civic pride, in these parts of town.
“They should,” Claire said. “But maybe the vampires don’t want it torn down.”
“Prime lurking territory,” Eve said. “Can’t imagine they get a lot of wandering victims, though. Even meth cookers go more upscale than this.”
Claire had to agree with that. There was a totally creepy vibe to this place, and suddenly she wished she’d called Shane, or Michael, even though they had work to do of their own. This is my job, she told herself, and put the steampunk moonlight on her back while Eve gathered up the weapons. Eve added a shotgun from the back—probably Shane’s—and locked up the car. Claire looked around. In the daylight, she’d have expected this place to seem more sad than scary, but nope. Still scary. The shadows were too dark in the bright sunlight, and with the warming wind hissing sand through the streets, it seemed like an alien, empty world.
“Which one?” Eve asked. She didn’t sound worried; she sounded steady, and Claire needed that just now.
“The hotel,” Claire said.
“With the creepy gargoyle? Awesome. Take point, fearless leader. I’ve got your back.”
Eve might sometimes seem fragile, but she wasn’t; growing up in Morganville either broke people or gave them a core of strength that wouldn’t bend. Eve was solid steel where it counted, and having her on hand made Claire feel steadier, sharper, ready.
She adjusted the dragging weight of the—moonlight?—and led the way through the still-open door, down the molding hallway, to the silent, dusty check-in desk. The key for thirteen was still missing. She supposed that Myrnin had held on to it. Could be a problem, she thought, and went behind the counter to rummage around in the drawers. Carefully, of course; she was mindful of the shiny black widow spider that Myrnin had discovered upstairs. There were decades of dead insects in the drawers, but under a desiccated old beetle, she found a ring of keys.
The master set for the rooms.
“So,” Eve said, in an appropriately quiet voice for the venue, “just how scary is this going to be?”
“Well, how do you feel about disappearing rooms with vampires trapped inside?”
“When you put it that way, it is a moot point,” Eve said. “Right. Let’s do this. Oliver said I could have the morning off, but it’s already nearly ten. If I’m not back on the clock at noon, he’ll want blood. I mean, literal, actual blood.”
Claire nodded and went up the stairs. She remembered running them before, but that seemed desperately unwise again, because they really were pretty rickety from dry rot and just plain old time. Nothing gave way, but the groaning was horror-movie loud.
The landing was just as she’d left it . . . silent, forbidding, and dark. Claire turned down the hall and switched on the special moon-flashlight. It cast an eerie bluish glow onto the wallpaper, and the wallpaper seemed to . . . crawl. For a shocked instant she thought she’d surprised bugs, but no, that was just the wallpaper moving, all on its own.
This place was definitely not what it seemed.
“Stay close,” she said to Eve. Eve was staring hard at the crawling wallpaper, too.
“Not a problem, sister,” Eve said. “I plan to be so close we might have to get married. Seriously, does the creepy ever stop in this town?”
Claire didn’t answer that, because she honestly had no idea. She concentrated on running the light slowly over the door to Room Eleven. It looked dusty and normal. The wallpaper crawled like ants between that door and the next, but again, Room Twelve looked sane.
The wallpaper didn’t just crawl after that; it pulsed and heaved and pushed, and as she passed the light over the center section, a door appeared. It shoved up out of the wallpaper, first in a thin line, then expanding like something drifting up out of black water. A closed door, with the number thirteen in tarnished brass on it.
Claire reached out and touched it. Cool, painted wood. She ran her fingers across and onto the wallpaper. Different texture.