I pressed my back against the bed rail. Through the bathroom’s open door, I could see the edge of Camila Aster’s luggage where it had landed when I kicked it away before crabwalking to safety as fast as my body would let me.
The box, I assumed, still sat in the suitcase. I wanted to leave it where it was, get the hell out of that yurt, and never look back. But my mental commands to my limbs to hoist me off the floor were half-hearted at best, and my body didn’t listen. I just sat there, staring at a dead woman’s luggage from an uncomfortable, hunched position on the floor.
At least I knew what had possessed me to commit a felony and break into an empty motel room. That had become crystal clear the instant I saw the box. I had conjured up a decent enough reason for trespassing here, but the seed of the idea hadn’t come from my own mind.
It had been planted there by the box.
The box had called to me, just as Horace’s jewelry box had done in the clearing in the woods weeks before, just as it had while it was locked in Graham’s garage on the night Horace’s men stole it from us. I now suspected it had even drawn me to look in the back of the van with New Mexico plates, the same van that had given me the idea to come back to my first home.
My fingers curled around the piece of black tourmaline around my neck. I clung to the cool stone, unsure if the protective powers it offered had stopped working. Would Horace be able to find me? If I closed my eyes, would he be standing above me when I opened them again?
Striker trilled from the bathroom as she rubbed her jaw on the zipper running along the suitcase’s open edge. Then, as daintily as a model stepping into a swimming pool, she climbed inside the luggage.
I frowned. She had reacted much differently to the first box, bolting down the stairs at Primrose House to attack something only she could see, something that floated just above the box’s polished surface. Her calm demeanor now was enough to tilt the scales in my indecisive brain. I stood to get a better view of her.
She loafed inside the suitcase, paws tucked under her chest and eyes closed contentedly.
“Striker?” I asked uncertainly.
“Brrrllll.”
I moved closer, feeling as though an invisible hook had wrapped itself around my waist. Unseen hands tugged me into the bathroom, pulling me toward the box like a magnet. As the word entered my brain, a nervous laugh bubbled out of my lips. A deputy I was friends with liked to call me the Donn’s Hill Body Magnet, and whenever she said it, I imagined corpses and spirits being drawn to me, a stationary object with some kind of ghostly gravitational pull. All this time, I’d had it backward. They were the magnets, and I kept getting sucked toward them like a stray piece of metal with no will of its own.
It was a disturbing thought.
But as Striker’s purrs rumbled up from the open suitcase, I remembered the other times I had been drawn to a spirit. Striker never hesitated to make her feelings known when unseen entities were present. She attacked a violent poltergeist in my apartment, went ballistic about the first jewelry box, and growled like a dog when Horace appeared.
She didn’t growl at this box. Instead, she purred as throatily and contentedly as she might while sitting in the lap of someone she trusted.
Carefully, I crept forward and lowered myself onto the ground beside the suitcase. I wanted to be close to the floor in case I experienced a repeat of the time I had picked up Horace’s box in the woods. I wasn’t super excited to black out again.
I had only briefly seen the inside of that first box. It had a red velvet interior, just like this one. And I knew in my gut that when I lifted this box out of the suitcase, it would have a matching Seal of Solomon on the bottom.
Gingerly, I picked up the box and flipped it over.
The bottom was empty. No interlocking star waited for me there.
I ran my thumb over the smooth, varnished wood.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” I muttered, turning it over and inspecting every side. All were bare. But as my fingers explored the box’s surface, part of the velvet lining puckered along its lip. I slid my finger into the opening and along the inside edges, popping the thin fabric away from the weak adhesive that held it in place.
The velvet fell away. Beneath it, on the bottom of the box’s interior, a series of symbols were burned into the wood. They looked similar to the ones Graham’s friend Stephen had carved into one of his rune sets: sharp, angular letters you might get if you were trying to spell out a message with nothing but popsicle sticks.
Striker swatted the back of my hand. She sniffed the corners of the box and scraped her teeth along the bottom edge.
“What?” I asked. “Done napping already?”
She pulled the box down with her paw the way she often did when I was holding a crumpled ball of paper. I let her tug the box downward a few inches, then raised it back up, teasing her.
That was a mistake. She lunged at the box, knocking it out of my hands and sending it flying across the bathroom. In a flash, she pounced on it and rooted around inside with an urgent industry usually reserved for her litter box.
“Hey!” I shouted, standing to retrieve it from her. I needed to take her back to our room as fast as possible, or at least outside where she could do her business in the dirt.
As I stood, it felt like I was stepping out of a fog. My head—which I hadn’t even noticed was fuzzy—cleared. I was as alert and refreshed as I felt after a solid night’s sleep followed by a cup of Graham’s atomic coffee.
“Give me that,” I scolded Striker, snatching the box and inspecting it for damage.
One of the hinges was slightly squashed, so the lid no longer closed correctly. The inside of the box had borne the brunt of her razor claws. Several long, deep scratches ran through the runes that had been carved into the bottom.
A few possibilities ran through my mind. None of them made much sense, and a few were barely more than half-formed ideas. While my brain struggled to handle the overload, my hands tucked the mango-sized box into my jacket pocket.
“Great,” I muttered. “Now I’m officially a burglar.”
Having stolen property bulging out of my windbreaker felt like a good cue to exit. I stooped and hastily refolded Camila’s clothing, tossing it back into the suitcase in roughly the same order I had taken it out. I zipped the luggage and stood it back in the tub, hoping nobody would have any reason to open it and notice how messy its contents had become.
The thought gave me a moment’s pause. Who had packed the suitcase after they found Camila’s body?
It was a question for later.
“Goodbye for now, Camila,” I told the bathroom. “I’ll reach out as soon as I can, and I hope you’ll answer.”
Then I grabbed Striker around the middle, tiptoed to the front window, and peeked through the blinds.
The coast was clear.
Like a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime, I slipped out the front door and yanked it closed behind me. Then, as casually as I could manage, I ducked around the back of the yurt and let Striker down onto the ground. I let her lead the way for fifteen minutes or so, following as she sniffed and scratched and explored the open area between the yurts and the river.
“Okay, baby,” I muttered as I picked her back up. “I think that’s a good enough cover. Let’s go wake up Graham.”
But Graham wasn’t in the yurt when we got back. A note in his messy hand sat on the bed: At the office.
I swallowed. Why was he at the office? Had someone seen me? Had they come to tell him to pack our stuff and get out? Was he in there now, pleading with them to let us stay? I couldn’t let him fight this battle on his own. I had to go apologize.
After giving Striker a post-walk treat and depositing Camila’s jewelry box into my purse, I strolled to the office with what I hoped was the casual air of a woman who hadn’t just broken into one of the vacant rooms on the property. I rested my fingertips on the central yurt’s front door for a moment and took a deep breath. I would tell them the truth, I decided. Or as much of it as I could without terrifying them.
A burst of laughter met me when I opened the door. Graham leaned back in one of the office chairs with a mug in his hands, shaking his head from side to side as he chuckled about something. Fred Hawkes was pounding on his desk, clearly overcome with mirth.
“What’s the joke?” I asked by way of greeting.
Graham turned and grinned at me. “Oh, hey, Mac. We’re just swapping stories.”
“I couldn’t handle being a landlord,” the older man said, wiping tears from beneath his eyes. “Folks do enough damage staying here a few nights. I’ve never had to paint over someone’s mural, though.”
I looked questioningly at my boyfriend.
“It was a few years before you moved in,” he said. “This guy who lived in Kit’s old apartment told me he was an artist. He used to come into my studio and critique my sculptures, especially the… uh… female ones. He thought their proportions were off.”
Fred shook his head ruefully. “You should have seen it coming, son.”
“When he moved out, he left behind a mural he’d done right on the walls. Paintings of—” Graham flushed. “Well, you can guess.”
Fred exploded with laughter again. After a few moments, he settled down enough to offer me a cup of coffee and gestured for me to sit beside Graham. I hovered by the door for a few moments, not yet confident that my adventure in the empty yurt had truly gone unnoticed. Or at least that nobody had said anything to Fred about it yet.
Across from his desk, a console table sat beneath a portrait of Fred with his arms around a smiling woman with frizzy white hair. A box of donuts waited there, its lid open invitingly. I helped myself to a large powdered-sugar-dusted creation that looked like it had pastry cream peeping out the top. As Graham and Fred dove back into comparing tenants versus motel guests, I sank my teeth into the still-warm dough.
Sweet, tangy lemon custard danced across my tongue. A hint of lavender added a note of floral richness. My eyes closed, and I briefly stopped listening to the men, choosing instead to lose myself in the simple pleasure of a damn good donut.
“I’m hoping to get my work into a few galleries here,” Graham was telling Fred when I tuned back in to the world outside my taste buds. “With a little luck, we’ll be back next year to deliver some sculptures.”
“You’re welcome here anytime,” Fred said. “We’ll make sure we’ve got a room on the Critter side for you two and your little cat.”
An errant thought pulled me out of my lemon-curd reverie. The question flew through my mind and out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop it. “Why was Camila Aster staying in our room? Did she have a pet?”
Fred’s eyes went wide, and he ran a hand over his wispy hair. “How do you know that name?”
“We found a newspaper article the other night about her passing,” Graham explained. “We’re so sorry you had to go through that. Losing a guest must be difficult.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Fred slumped in his chair. His face lost all the youthful animation his laughter had given it, and he suddenly looked like a very tired old man. “She asked for an end unit so she could hike out to do some stargazing, and Shamrock was taken, so we put her in Tortoiseshell. We think that’s what she was doing out there in the middle of the night. Lucy, my wife, found her just a hundred yards out, not breathing, unresponsive. Lucy tried CPR until the paramedics got here, but they told us the poor girl was gone long before Lucy arrived. Doesn’t stop us from thinking about what more we could have done.”
“It sounds like your wife did everything she could,” Graham said.
“Well, we didn’t even go looking for Camila until after noon. It’s our slow season, and we don’t like to chase folks out of their rooms unless there’s somebody else checking in that day. So Lucy came up with the idea to do these early-morning meet and greets.” Fred gestured toward the donuts with his coffee cup. “It’s been working out pretty well, and it’s a great excuse to make some new friends.”
Graham raised his mug. “Hear, hear.”
I took a second donut and settled into the chair next to Graham. “I think it’s a great idea. I’ll come back just for another taste of these babies.”
“Be sure to mention that in your review.” Fred laughed, and some of the life came back into his eyes for just a moment before a troubled look settled onto his face. “Actually, if you two wouldn’t mind leaving us a review online, that’d go a long way. Last thing we want is to become another Arcane Oasis.”
“What’s that?” I asked around a mouthful of custard.
“One of our competitors. This couple from back east renovated an old thirty-room motor lodge a few years back for the summer festival crowds. You see that a lot here—motels with UFO or paranormal themes. Tourists love a themed room, and Arcane Oasis styled their whole place on this psychic power mumbo jumbo.”
Graham and I exchanged glances. Fred could have been describing the Donn’s Hill bed-and-breakfast strategy, especially during the Afterlife Festival.
“You don’t believe in psychics?” I asked.
“Well, I hope I’m not about to offend you here, but no. A lot of our summer guests try to read my palm or tell my future, and it’s a load of bunk.” He paused. “Don’t tell Lizzie.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Aliens, now—they’re all over this desert.”
I buried my nose in my coffee cup to hide my smile. I didn’t want Fred to think I was laughing at him, and I needed a moment to quash my knee-jerk desire to call Elizabeth and out her cousin as a skeptic. It was tempting to hear her launch into one of her trademark rants about true psychic abilities. But I liked Fred and didn’t want to spoil his close relationship with her. After all, when we came back, I was counting on more donuts.
“Anyway,” Fred said, “we thought Arcane Oasis would be the juggernaut around here and we’d have to pick up the crumbs when their rooms filled up. Then the disappearances started.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Disappearances?”
“Every year, one or two of their guests just up and vanished in the middle of the night. Skedaddled without a trace.”
“Seriously?” I stared at him. “They never found them?”
“Never. The owners couldn’t take it. Before long, they sold the land to a condo developer and went back to New York.” His eyes lifted to the portrait on the wall. “Lucy and I don’t have anywhere to go back to. This is it for us. We’ll do whatever it takes to hang on to this place.”
We sipped our coffee in silence for a few minutes. I didn’t know what was going through the men’s minds, but I was trying to decide what would be worse: knowing someone I cared about had died or only knowing they had disappeared and never finding out what really happened to them.
I tried to force the thoughts out of my mind. It was an unwinnable game of Would You Rather that I had no interest in playing.
After a while, Graham set down his mug and slapped his knees. “Well, we should head into the city. Ready, Mac?”
We made our goodbyes, and Graham stepped out onto the sidewalk, but I paused on the threshold. Something had been eating at me since before I snuck out of the Shamrock yurt, a question I couldn’t leave without asking.
I turned back to Fred. “This is going to sound like a weird question, but chalk it up to some psychic-power mumbo jumbo.”
He smiled indulgently. “Shoot.”
“Somebody had to pack up Camila’s things, right? After she passed?”
He nodded. “I took care of that. We’re still waiting on her next of kin to tell us where to send it.”
“Did you…” I paused. Was there a way to word this that wouldn’t tip him off to what I’d done? “There’s an image I can’t get out of my mind. I keep seeing it when I close my eyes, and I can’t shake the feeling it’s related to Camila. Did she happen to have a small hinged jewelry box? One with red velvet inside?”
Fred’s eyes went wide, and the hand holding his coffee mug slowly sank down to the desk. When he spoke, his voice shook ever so slightly. “Well, I’ll be. I figured with you being from Donn’s Hill, you might fancy yourself a psychic. But I didn’t think you could actually be one.”
“So she did have one?” I pressed.
“When Lucy found her, Camila’s body was hunched on the ground, curled around that box. We had to…” He swallowed. “We had to pry it out of her hands.”