Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

The next day began well. The sun blazed outside, birds tweeted, and the hotel had a lively buzz about it. I didn't matter that our guests were staying for free. We'd done a good thing, even if it had been an accident. We'd killed the queen who had plans to enslave the human race. It felt good. And I'd told Zee everything about me. No more skeletons in my closet. Although, we did still have one up a chimney. But in the grander scheme of things, we were mostly doing okay.

Guess what? Yeah... Let's just say, those happy feels were about to be severely tested.

I headed down the stairs to meet Madame Matase at the reception desk for our typical morning catch-up. But the tall, green-haired, well-dressed fae standing at the desk put an unwanted trip in my step.

Agent Leomaris.

I'd have turned on my heel and vanished back up the stairs, had they not already seen me.

"Good morning, Mr. Vex," they droned in their smooth, syrupy voice.

"Hit the Road Jack" played in my head, or maybe I'd heard it coming from the bar. Plastering a big grin on my face, I sauntered toward the desk. "Agent Leomaris. How... nice, you're here."

Leomaris reached inside their long coat and withdrew a notepad and pen. "Do you have a few moments to discuss the events of last night?"

"Events?" I blinked too fast. "Last night?" This was fine. Nothing to worry about. I tried to lean casually on the front desk, and missed, almost toppling. "Oops, wow, has that moved? No. Never mind. Nothing happened last night. Nothing at all." I definitely was not looking at Madame Matase's pinched frown. Nope.

"Then you were not at the royal vampire estate, and these additional guests you have staying here weren't victims of a plot to summon the vampire queen by way of ritual sacrifice?"

Oh, my stars, they knew so much. I opened my mouth but all the excuses got stuck. Seconds passed. Time dragged. I had to say something. "Oh that happened? Right. It slipped my mind. Yes. Uhm. Sure. Ritual sacrifices. Yup."

Did Leomaris know Zee had chopped off the queen's head?

Agent Leomaris's piercing eyes skewered me to the spot. "And the recent blaze at Reynard—correction— Cain Technologies. There are reports of a casually dressed human, a demon, and a man who fits Baron Reynard's description walking away from that scene shortly after the building was razed. Would you happen to know anything about that?"

"Whaaat?" I squeaked, then cleared my creaking voice with a cough. "There must be other vampires, demons, and humans out there who like to hang out with each other in that area?"

"It's possible, but unlikely. Especially given your personal feud with Gideon Cain? "

"Feud?" I chuckled. "Me and Gideon? What feud? Gideon and me? My pal, Gid? We're like this." I hooked two fingers together. "Best friends, really. Why, has he said something about me?"

Leomaris was not impressed. "Are you going to assist in this investigation, Mr. Vex? Or are you going to make this difficult? I can do difficult, if you wish, but the protracted outcome will be the same."

Help . I needed Victor, right now. He could talk people around and bamboozle Leomaris with big words. "Of course we'll help. We're all about helping here at the SOS Hotel. Uhm... I just need to, uh... do a thing... If you'll wait here? I'll be right back. After doing... the thing... Wait, right there." I backed toward the elevator. "Right there. I'll be back. Just..."

Madame Matase and Leomaris stared after me.

I hit the elevator button, and after the doors opened I stepped in and jabbed the button for the doors to close again, forgetting the Out of Order sign. It didn't matter. The elevator had been fine for years. We'd only sealed it off because of McDongle's advice.

The doors creaked, got hung up, then sprang free. "Everything is absolutely fine," I muttered, eyeing the painfully slow doors gradually coming together. "Find Victor. He'll know what to do."

A guy dressed like a tourist slipped between the closing doors moments before they clanged shut.

The old floor-indicator arrow gave a judder, cables clanged, and the elevator groaned underway. Finally, I had a moment to breathe and think.

Leomaris was a problem. One of those problems that weren't going to solve themselves. They were clearly on our scent trail, but what did they want? Was it really justice? Or like any bounty hunter—which Leomaris had been long before working for the SSD—could they be bought for the right price?

Thoughts awhirl, I bowed my head, and caught a glimmer from a thick signet ring on the guest's finger.

A signet ring marked with the letters GC .

I looked up, spotted the sunglasses, and my heart sank.

I'd been so preoccupied with Leomaris's arrival, I hadn't noticed the guest beside me was no guest at all.

Armin removed his shades. "It's over, Adam Vex."

"Wait—"

He lunged. Steel-like fingers grabbed my neck. My back slammed into the wall. The car lurched, screaming to a halt. Armin's sneering face filled my vision. His fingers cinched tight, choking off air. The sudden, unexpected attack had me stunned. It didn't seem real. How was this happening? Why hadn't the wards activated? I tried to pry his fingers off, tried to swallow air, but none came. My heart pounded, my head throbbed. Too fast. It couldn't end like this. I had to get control. I was stronger than this.

I pushed off the wall, shoving Armin across the car. The protective wards poked at my head, warning me not to attack. But what choice did I have? The elevator rocked around us, swinging in the shaft. He sneered, fangs gleaming, while his grip crushed my throat.

The car spun, or my vision did. Pixies danced.

Oh wait, those were actual pixies.

Jimmy's pixies. They flew at Armin's face.

Armin turned his head away, and in the brief lapse, I got a knee between us, and kicked him off. The wards activated, as though piercing my skull, and I stumbled backward, falling to the floor. Slowly, so slowly, my throat opened, and air fluttered in. I wheezed, fighting to stay conscious.

As my vision cleared, I counted a whole lot of gremlins. So many, in fact, there wasn't any space between them. They clung to the walls too. And all their beady eyes were locked on Armin.

Armin hung back, sneering, "What the fuck is this?"

All the little gremlins had tiny grey boiler suits on, which would have been absurd enough, but jagged letters stitched into the backs of their suits read: Mentenants.

Maintenance?

Wait, did they work here now?

Jimmy, fluttering in the air between us, turned his gaze to me. Vengeance burned in his little eyes. Armin had taken his family. We both knew what came next.

I staggered to my feet, cleared the scratch in my throat and tilted my head, popping the muscles in my bruised neck. "I could have forgiven the bite in the chapel. What happened there was an accident. But nobody comes into this hotel meaning us harm. I will not stand for that."

Armin snorted. "What are you going to do, with that SSD agent in the lobby, huh? What are you going to do, with wards protecting this place?" He flashed his ring. "I'm immune, courtesy of a friend of yours. Gideon Cain."

I wasn't even surprised Gideon was behind this. Of course he was. "You may have noticed, we have a gremlin problem. They aren't usually vicious. Until a pixie gets involved. Did you know, wards don't work on gremlins and pixies?"

Jimmy stuck his middle finger up at Armin.

"This is ridiculous," Armin snorted. "You thwarted our plans to summon the queen. You came onto our land and murdered my kin. You took our queen's head! This is more than justice! This is my right! And your end, Adam Vex. You and your weird vermin army."

"I guess I should have waited until your queen had enslaved the entire human race and reduced this world to rubble, then taken her head?"

Armin's eyes narrowed. His thoughts must have been whirring. Why wasn't I terrified and begging for my life like a normal human? "Who are you?"

"Just Adam Vex."

Jimmy nodded, I nodded back, and at Jimmy's short, sharp whistle, the hotel's new maintenance crew lunged.

The hoard of gremlins surged up Armin's legs. He'd have screamed, if Jimmy hadn't plunged into his mouth and yanked out his tongue. Little Jimmy waved that vampire tongue like a victory flag. Then ate it.

I'd seen what the gremlins could do to hotel walls, so it wasn't really a surprise when they reduced a vampire to gristle and bone in under a minute. Unfortunately for my clothes, they were messy eaters.

After bits of Armin had been painted all over me and up the walls, the gremlins licked most of it all up, licked themselves clean—vampire insides were finger-lickin' good—then gathered the bones, taking them away, leaving me standing in a spotless elevator, coated from head to toe in gore. The only evidence something untoward had happened was the state of my clothes, Armin's discarded sunglasses, and the anti-ward GC ring.

I popped the ring into my pocket, and for no other reason than because I could, I crushed Armin's sunglasses under my shoe. There. That was better. Finally, something had gone right. We'd toppled the vampire plot, dealt with our gremlin crisis, and destroyed Cain Technologies, all in a few days. Maybe we were like the Scooby gang, or the Spice Girls? Or maybe we were just SOS Hotel management, looking out for Lost Ones.

Screw the prophecy. This was my choice.

I smiled, and plucked a bit of indistinct gristle off my shirt. I had my demon, and my vampire, and we had the hotel. We'd find a way to deal with Agent Leomaris .

The elevator jolted into motion, then gave a worrying shudder.

I reached out and braced against the side.

Metal twanged. The elevator dropped, lifting me into freefall, then slammed to a sudden stop. Thankfully, it hadn't fallen far. I scooped myself up off the buckled floor a second time and sighed. Okay, so... we definitely needed a new elevator.

A jolly ping signaled the elevator's arrival in the lobby.

The doors rumbled apart but wedged halfway. I got my hands between them and screeched them open, inch by painful inch, until there was enough room to squeeze through.

Agent Leomaris, Madame Matase, and a few other guests, all witnessed my blood-covered re-emergence, their mouths open and faces the picture of confusion. There wasn't really much to say, especially as there was no evidence anyone else had been in there with me. This wasn't what it looked like? Gremlins did it? A vampire exploded?

I squelched out of the broken elevator, leaving a trail of bloody shoe prints behind. "I'm just gonna take the stairs."

The crazy continues in SOS Hotel #6, Luxury to Die for. Check in at your next SOS HOTEL adventure. Out now.