“You’ve got to tell her,” Mackenzie said, scooting me towards the crowd surrounding my grandma. Some of the older guests had left for their rooms. Most of the younger guests were heading to the ice maze. Blake and Katrina left out the front door together.
“I’ll tell Grandma later in private,” I said, digging my heels in.
“Tell Ariadne what?” Shauna appeared next to us, clipboard in hand.
“Nothing,” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about my suspicions yet. All I really had was a vial of fish food and a gut feeling. I didn’t want to upset Grandma and Shauna unless I was abso-freaking-lutely sure.
“I need your help,” Shauna said. “This Alexia thing has wreaked havoc with my schedule. Change into your snowsuits and set up Sven’s demonstration in the ice hotel lobby.” She handed us a sheet from her clipboard. “This details everything you need to do. I’ve ask reception to call Sven. He should be there soon.”
“Will do,” I said, happy for the distraction.
“What about…” Mackenzie started.
“We’ve got work to do,” I interrupted and led the way to our room. “I promise I’ll tell Grandma later,” I said to Mackenzie once we were safely in our room. “We need more proof before we make such a wild and crazy accusation.” We quickly changed into our snow gear. I tucked the vial of fish food in the pocket of my snowsuit.
The atmosphere had changed. I could feel it as we trudged to the ice hotel. The snow was falling heavily. We could barely see a few feet in front of us. We huddled together to battle the wind, but it was more than the weather. Everyone and everything felt on edge. Mackenzie twitched at every sound. I wondered what or who might be lurking nearby. Was someone plotting another “accident”?
The ice hotel lobby was empty, which made the space seem colder. Mackenzie called out the to-dos from Shauna’s list and soon the lobby was ready for Sven. A huge block of ice, taller than Mackenzie and as wide as the two of us side by side, had been placed in the centre of the lobby. Sven would transform the big ice cube into something amazing right before our eyes. I’d seen him do it before.
“Where’s Sven?” Mackenzie asked with a worried look on her face. People were arriving.
“Maybe I should go look for him?”
Mackenzie grabbed my arm. “Don’t leave me.”
Just then we heard the clink and clack of Sven’s tools as he jogged through the main corridor. Mackenzie and I met him at the table we’d set up for his demonstration. Sweat dotted his forehead. “C-can you help me get organized?” he asked as he lobbed a big tool case on the table. His hands were shaking.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“Ja, ja,” he said but didn’t look at us. He concentrated on laying out his equipment.
Was he upset about Alexia? I doubted it. He probably hadn’t met her. Did he know what happened?
Sven prepared his chainsaw while Mackenzie and I positioned the chisels and other sharp blades that he used to shave the ice. More and more people arrived.
“Do you want some water or a cup of tea?” Mackenzie asked Sven when everything was in place.
He shook his head. “I am ready.”
I clapped my hands. “Can I have your attention please?” The room was packed with snow-suited figures. I introduced Sven and he got right to work. His chainsaw roared to life. He cut away large chunks of ice.
“What’s he making?” I whispered to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie consulted her checklist. “Says here he’s supposed to be carving Cupid.”
I cringed at the lameness.
“I know, right?” Mackenzie groaned.
We cocked our heads and tried to see Cupid emerging from the ice. I could see a heart taking shape.
My body was twitching to move. “Sven’s got everything under control,” I whispered to Mackenzie. “I think we should check in at the ice maze and make sure no one’s lost in that one tricky dead end with the howling wolf ice sculpture.”
Mackenzie nodded. She knew I wasn’t concerned about our guests. I wanted to investigate, find more clues and prove to Grandma and Shauna that something deadly was going on here.
Sven’s audience blocked the front door. “We’ll have to go out the back.” We slowly edged around the room and slipped down the main corridor and wound our way through the hotel. The hum of voices and the rattle of Sven’s tools faded the further we moved into the hotel.
Mackenzie gasped and hugged me close. “Did you see that?” she whispered.
“What?” I jerked free and spun in a slow circle. Panic electrified my body. I didn’t see anything.
“I thought I saw something move over there.” She pointed down the corridor a few feet away. “A reflection or something.”
I inched forward and to check it out. Up ahead the shadows seemed to shift in the ice. I darted back to Mackenzie.
“W-what i-is it?” she stammered.
“I didn’t see anyone,” I said, which was true but didn’t feel like the whole story. I didn’t need Mackenzie freaking out on me. “We are jumpy after, you know, what happened. I’ve got you imagining things,” I said with a fake laugh. “We’ll feel better once we’re outside.”
We turned the corner and stopped dead in our tracks. “You saw it this time, right?” Mackenzie asked. I nodded. The shadows had returned.
“It’s probably a trick of the light.” I took a step forward.
Mackenzie stopped me. “I bet it’s TnT.”
TnT, of course. How could I have been so stupid? I wasn’t going to let them trick me again. “In here,” I told Mackenzie and slipped into the next room we passed. “It’s our turn to scare them.” I looked around for inspiration. On the far side of the room was a sculpture of a bird’s nest with a load of ice eggs. The largest egg in the middle looked as if it was cracking and a tiny beak was emerging. Sven’s sculptures always had these little fun touches. “Grab a few of those eggs,” I told Mackenzie. “Just the small ones around the edge.”
“We shouldn’t wreck Sven’s sculpture,” she said, but did it anyway.
“We’ll put them back,” I said, taking the ice eggs from her. “I’ll roll one in the hall to attract their attention, and then another. We’ll hide and when they investigate, we’ll pounce on them.”
“I don’t know…”
“All you have to do is hide,” I told her and rolled one egg into the hallway. I dived behind the bird’s nest. Mackenzie flicked on her phone and looked around for someplace to hide. There weren’t many options; just three blocks of ice – a big one with a reindeer pelt for the bed, a smaller one that was the table and the third which was a chair. “Come on. You’re going to ruin it.” I chucked another egg out of the door. It hit the icy floor with a splat.
Mackenzie dived under the reindeer pelt. The light of her phone flickered again. But instead of hiding quietly, she screamed and leaped from the bed, taking the reindeer pelt with her. It wasn’t her normal girly yelp when she saw a spider. This was the kind of scream that made my insides jiggle like jelly.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I was at her side.
Her face was as white as a marshmallow. She pointed to the bed and then crumpled into the ice chair.
What had scared her? I needed to know, but part of me didn’t want to find out. I took a deep breath. It was probably nothing. She’d spooked herself. I took another step. Maybe it was another of TnT’s rubber finger pranks. I took a step closer. Yeah, that was probably it. I switched on my phone and directed the light to the bed.
I stifled a gasp. It looked like a body was frozen in the ice, but that couldn’t be. My phone light faded. That was ridiculous. I wasn’t going to let TnT fool me again. They could have put something in the ice bed, like they did the block of ice in the courtyard. It was probably a mannequin. I looked behind me expecting to find the snickering pair peeking around the doorway. The corridor seemed darker than it had a few minutes ago.
“Is it…” Mackenzie blubbered. “It is, isn’t it?”
I stepped right next to the bed and leaned over. I slowly swept the light from my phone from the foot of the bed to the head.
I screamed and backed away, landing on Mackenzie and then falling hard on to the floor. My phone skidded across the room.
It was definitely not a mannequin. That was a body. A dead body was trapped inside the ice.
“Is it?” Mackenzie asked again.
I nodded. My brain and body were frozen in fear. I knew it was a real body because I recognized the face. “It’s Lucinda Sterling.”
I scrambled for my phone as we staggered out of the room and towards the exit. We stumbled into the cold on wobbly legs, holding our phones in the air searching for a signal. The snow was coming down so heavily we could only see the faint glow of the lights that lead to the lodge.
“What do we dial for emergencies?” I couldn’t remember what they’d told us earlier when Alexia needed an ambulance.
“One-one-two,” Mackenzie said.
I pulled off my gloves and dialled. “Hello, police,” I said when someone answered. “Emergency.” I remembered the phrase Shauna had taught me. “Jag talar inte Svenska.” I know I messed up the pronunciation, but I hoped the operator understood that I didn’t speak Swedish.
“What is your emergency?” The man’s voice was calm and reassuring.
“Dead body. Dead body.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.
“Calm down and tell me what happened,” the man said. “Are you saying that you’ve found a dead body?”
I nodded, in my panic forgetting that they couldn’t see my head bobbing in agreement.
Mackenzie took the phone from me. Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath. “We are at the Winter Wonder Resort.” Another huge breath. “There’s a dead body frozen in one of the ice beds.” I had to hand it to her. She wasn’t Miss Action-Adventure, but she could pull it together when she needed to. If she could suck it up and be brave-ish, I could too. I shook off the shock.
She listened and nodded. “Lucinda Sterling.” She paused and nodded some more. “No, but we will do that right now.” Another pause. “I see. Are you sure?” Another pause. “Yes, I understand.” She hung up and handed the phone to me.
“Shouldn’t we stay on the line until they arrive?” I was speaking fast and tripping over my words. “Should we block off the crime scene?”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking. The roads are closed. They will arrive as soon as they can, but it could be more than twenty-four hours. They are a small police station, and the snow storm has already caused several accidents. We are supposed to alert the resort’s security and let them handle it until the police can arrive.”
“Right,” I said as fear surged through me again. I’d been in worse situations before. “We saved the day in the Maldives, and we can do it again,” I said, faking a load of confidence. Fake it until you make it, Dad used to tell me. Pretend to be brave and eventually you will feel brave.
“I don’t want to do it again,” Mackenzie whispered.
“We don’t have a choice,” I told her. “If we can survive a heist, vicious eels, a bomb, man-eating sharks and a kidnapping, we can handle one little old dead body.”
“The dead body’s not the problem,” Mackenzie said, looking over her shoulder. “It’s the killer.”