Chapter 1

Chapter One

A simple thing, really, how I came to know of monsters.

P eople were monsters.

I wiggled free a clump of hair, soap, and dead skin from the clogged shower drain. There had to be any number of bodily sheddings caught in the slimy mass. Humans were disgusting creatures, really; our habits , the workings of our insides, who we were… the vices we kept buried.

"Ugly through and through." I smiled and tossed the congealed mass of miscellaneous into a bucket along with the plunger.

Towels changed.

Dishes washed.

Surfaces wiped.

Once the floor was gleaming, I grabbed the checklist from the cleaning cart outside, then walked through the studio, ticking off tasks to ensure I'd completed everything to perfection. I'd worked at the only hotel in Vitale for three months, and a promotion and pay rise were so close, I could almost feel them. Soon, this job would pay the entirety of our bills, and I wouldn't need to pawn our belongings to make up the difference.

In six months, I'd run this place.

Despite completing my tasks to perfection, the room itself had parted ways with that potential long ago. Stale smoke saturated the furniture. Floral wallpaper was torn on corners and cracked around fittings. I'd never seen wallpaper before starting here, so the cracked and torn stuff still seemed luxurious. In the apartment rooms, the wallpaper was even pristine, holding its rich burgundies and warm beiges. I preferred studios like this, worn and ripped from stories absorbed. Stale smoke trumped the conventional lemon-spray scent of the highest-rate apartments any day. Those apartments held the same grime as this studio, but only one wore theirs for all to see.

Straightening a wrinkle on the yellowed lace valance, I then vacuumed and mopped.

After a third check of the list, I forced myself to push the creaking cleaning cart forward past room twelve—where a guest had hung a Do Not Disturb sign—to room thirteen.

From the top.

A violent hiss jolted the air.

"Goodness." I pressed a hand against my chest, feeling the rapid thumps of my heart.

Ssssssssss came the hiss again.

Mornings tended to be quiet, with guests still asleep, checked out, or already exploring Vitale.

I peered over the metal balustrade of the first level and scanned the cobbled courtyard below.

A man, if that was what he could be called, lurked outside the dusty, glass door of reception. The guy must've eaten a wilder ox when young, for he'd taken on some ox traits, but the enormity of his canvas didn't distract from his conventional beauty. What a shame—though many friends I used to have would find him extremely handsome.

Ox rattled a can of spray paint. Clink, clink, clink. Another violent hiss disturbed the quiet as he finished spraying a giant red X on the reception door.

My brows shot up. How brazen. Frank's forehead veins would bulge over that one.

"Keep your head down, Patch," I chided. Graffiti, ox men, and bulging veins were none of my business. All I needed was a job with the right hours and pay. This job, in other words.

Back to work.

I slipped a master key from my lanyard and knocked on the door of room thirteen. "Housekeeping!" I waited, then knocked again, then waited some more.

When no reply came, I pushed inside. More violent hissing erupted from the direction of reception, and that was none of my business. I wouldn't look.

I looked.

Ox stepped back from his painting, and I read the word he'd sprayed above the X in angry capitals.

CLOSED

My heart thumped a smidgen faster despite the ridiculousness of the statement. He, a stranger—albeit a tall, conventionally beautiful one, couldn't spray a word on someone else's door to declare them closed. This was the only hotel in Vitale, and in this day and age, that meant something.

I whistled low. "Frank will be very upset."

This was Frank's hotel, so he should be. I, on the other hand, just needed a job with the right hours and pay.

Entering room thirteen, I started by yanking off bed linens. The wet kitchen cloths were next, then the sopping towels from the bathroom. I heaved the pile outside and stuffed the linens into the cleaning cart.

I peeked at reception again.

Another man stood next to Ox. Conventionally handsome too. This one must've eaten a stag when young, for he'd retained its powerful grace. Though his physique was slender by comparison to Ox, I couldn't say which of the men might've won in a fight.

I turned from the double trouble. Frank would arrive soon. The hotel owner wasn't around often, but he always came today around this time to hand out the weekly pay. I shouldn't get caught gawking. None of the other cleaners had intervened, and they'd all been here longer than me.

I'd follow their lead.

I walked inside to do the dishes. This guest had used one cup, a knife, and a plate. My favorite type of guest.

Shower next. That meant bleach.

I smiled on my walk to grab the spray bottle from the cart. If dishes were the least enjoyable part, then the smell of bleach was the most enjoyable. And?—

I stopped in the doorway, staring at the empty landing.

"Where's my cart?" I blurted.

I'd left the cart right here. Someone must've taken it. Maybe another cleaner had wanted to start the laundry? Yet that didn't make much sense. We had a process at the hotel, and pinching carts to start laundry wasn't it.

Frank could arrive any second to find me fumbling around and not working. I hastened to lock the studio, then jogged to the laundry bay at the end of the landing. My feet slowed at the sight of a giant red X slashed across the laundry door. More graffiti .

I glanced over my shoulder, but the two men weren't up here any longer.

Cupping my hands around my eyes, I squinted through the tiny glass panel in the metal door and spotted my cleaning cart shoved inside. Another cleaner did take it, and without me hearing or seeing them do so. The cart was a creaky, jiggling thing too. Part of me felt impressed.

No matter, I'd wheel it back. Frank would never know.

I yanked on the laundry door, then stared when it didn't budge. Locked? At this time of day, the laundry bay always stayed open. What on earth was going on? I shoved the master key from my lanyard into the lock and twisted, then twisted harder.

Nothing.

My key, which had always worked on this door, suddenly wasn't working.

I leaned on the concrete wall beside the laundry bay and took a deep breath, holding it.

This changed things. Without the cleaning cart, I couldn't do my job. If I couldn't do my job, then Frank's veins would bulge. He'd fire me, and I wouldn't get paid. Without money, Mother and I wouldn't eat. More importantly, without money, I couldn't afford Mother's medicine. In conclusion, without a job, my mother would die. And she was very adamant death couldn't come for her yet.

Oof , I released the held breath.

Frank's problem just became mine.

I jogged down the crumbling stairs to ground level, then started across the uneven pavers of the courtyard toward reception. Strangely, the two men didn't appear to have budged a single inch. They stood in the same spots and in the same positions, too—Ox with his closed fists by his sides and Stag with his arms crossed. They didn't appear to have moved whatsoever, yet my noisy cart had been silently locked away, a red X decorated the laundry door, and they'd changed the lock too.

Frank couldn't get here soon enough.

I was halfway across the courtyard when a third man exited reception . I froze on the spot as Mother's warning blasted through my head.

Men in three, I steer clear of thee.

The presence of three men changed everything. At once, I accepted that Hotel Vitale was closed and acknowledged the threat to my life.

Get out of here.

I eased back a step, and the third man's gaze snapped in my direction. I stared at his shoulder instead of meeting his eyes. When he didn't speak, I dared to retreat another step.

The two others twisted to follow his stare.

I stopped moving and kept my gaze lowered. "I work here."

"Worked," stated the third. "Why aren't you gone?"

I no longer felt in the mood to make animal comparisons, but this man might've eaten a sand cat when young. He had a caged speed about him and enough conventional beauty to match the others. Yet who would win in a fight between them? I couldn't say.

I didn't care to find out.

As the trio observed me, I dared to steal a peek and discovered their faces shared a quality, as if—impossibly—they might be brothers despite the glaring differences in their physiques. Each man possessed the same owlish hunch in the set of his shoulders. Their eerie stillness suggested that they preyed on small, vulnerable critters from midnight perches—and rather enjoyed doing so.

I was the small critter. "I didn't know I was meant to be gone."

"You are," said Stag.

Was I the only employee here? Maggie left for the bank a while ago. I peered up at the level two and three landings but couldn't spot any cleaning carts. If I stopped to think, all three cleaning carts, along with the two spares, had been parked in the laundry bay.

The other cleaners left without warning me. But did they put their carts away, as well as mine, before fleeing? Surely not.

Goodness, parts of this didn't make sense.

I shivered under the awfulness of the trio's continued regard. No one had ever inspired the feeling of a gaping void in me. How terrible. "S-shall I call Frank for you?"

"Frank?" grunted Ox.

Everyone knew Frank. Vitale had one hotel. Owning that hotel was a big deal.

I answered anyway. "The owner."

Stag said, "Not necessary."

Some of the fear freezing me melted—enough that I recalled how difficult my life would become if the hotel closed. Today was also payday, and Frank hadn't shown up. I'd begun to suspect he wouldn't come. Mother and I couldn't see out a week without that pay.

Men in three, I steer clear of thee.

Yet I couldn't.

I gripped my gray apron. "Will there be a new owner?"

They'd started to talk in a foreign language, but interrupted by my question, the three regained their owlish demeanor and focused on me again. They appeared to have forgotten I existed.

Mother would scold me to bones for not escaping when I'd had the chance.

"The hotel is no longer possible," Sand Cat said after a lull.

"No longer possible," I mouthed, then asked, "Shut for good?"

The three men didn't answer, talking again in their guttural, clipped dialect. I'd never heard another language. Too many generations had passed in our walled cities, and myriad languages had whittled to one, though accents varied from city to city. Unless a person wanted to learn dead, useless words—which seemed a luxury to me and a waste of daylight hours—then everyone just knew the single dialect.

"Is Hotel Vitale closed for good?" I interrupted them again, wincing that my poverty had the power to drive me to such foolishness. But space in the city was a precious commodity. If the hotel shut, then another business would open here.

The feeling of a gaping void returned, and the furrow between Ox's brows spoke of his irritation. "Not our concern. This place is not possible. Begone."

That was as dismissed as a person could get. I shouldn't push them. I'd be a total idiot to keep pestering a skeleton crew past this point.

I'd also be an idiot to return home with unanswered questions that tomorrow's desperation would drive me back here to ask. I couldn't believe Frank had sold up, gone under, or become embroiled with the wrong skull and never breathed a word.

"I need this job," I whispered, a mouse pleading with cats. "Could you put me in touch with the person taking over?"

Stag smiled without humor. "You seek to meet the new owner."

The trio chuckled. Not all together. How curious that Stag should chuckle first, then Ox. Then Stag and Sand Cat together. Ox again by himself. Then Sand Cat once more. They sounded like a rusty wind chime. A terrifying chuckle chime.

I gripped my apron tighter. "I do. Could I get their details, please? If the new owner wants to keep the hotel open for a while, then I'm capable of managing everything. And dependable."

This could work out. Maybe my promotion would come early.

Or maybe I'd die.

Sand Cat tilted his head. "The hotel closes."

"You mentioned a new owner, though." I tried to keep my desperation hidden. Skeleton crews were notorious for playing with their food.

"The owner is the same," said Ox.

My mind squeezed at his reply and the entire situation. I'd never realized my mind could do such a thing, but it did. I closed my eyes after.

These men knew more than me, and they wouldn't impart that knowledge. They had no reason to. A skeleton crew existed to run operations smoothly for their skull, and I was a nobody to them. These men had enough power to inspire fear in the wise—which I wasn't today—but they didn't make choices. Any decisions remained the power of their skull.

And there was my answer.

"Your boss is the owner," I said.

Three humorless smiles were my prize. I'd solved their riddle… and was no closer to a job than I'd been. If only they understood how badly I needed this.

I had to make them understand. "Is your boss hiring?"

"This place cannot be," Sand Cat said in weary explanation. "This place is not possible."

Confidence, Patch. "I'll make it possible."

Ox chuckled. Then Stag. Sand Cat chimed in.

I clutched my apron. The linen dress beneath must be dreadfully wrinkled by now. "Take me to your boss, and I will make this possible. I'm capable and?—"

Stag tilted his head. "Dependable."

"Yes, I am."

"We see this," Ox answered.

How odd that they still spoke to me. They'd dismissed me several times, and I'd ignored those dismissals and pestered them to boot. I should be in a ditch already. If ever I'd seen a skeleton crew to fear, this was it, and yet they hadn't laid a finger on me. Skeleton crews one-tenth as menacing had done far worse to a person for far less.

I should count my lucky stars and make a run for it. Alas, when food, shelter, and medicine were on the line, a person didn't have the luxury of counting nonsense lucky stars, and foolish decisions felt more like necessary decisions.

"You do not see enough," I told Ox.

I released my apron, smoothed my dress, then tilted my chin and met his regard. Or tried to. My focus slid off his like water over oil. I frowned at Ox's shoulder, struck by the sudden thought that I hadn't looked into his eyes or any of their eyes yet.

But surely I had.

My mind squeezed again, but I forced my gaze back to his, and this time, I managed to lock there for the tiniest instant and not a sliver more.

Ouch!

I lifted a hand to my throbbing head. I stammered to cover the moment, noticing how still they'd gone. "There are many possibilities that your skull would see, I'm sure,"

Oh drat, I'd gone and called their boss a skull to their faces. That was it then. I held my breath, waiting for a killing blow.

Mother won't know what became of me.

Instead of killing me, the crew tilted their heads in eerie unison. I froze anew and entirely—an instinctual freeze of a critter as the owl swooped from its perch. I'd never frozen in such completeness, in body and mind, but I recognized the feeling as any animal would. My instincts screamed so that my thoughts shoved at one another and scattered. My trembling muscles couldn't decide in which direction to run. Only… a person who'd faked their mother's death to her friends and acquaintances nine months ago, moved everything including her invalid mother in the dead of night to a new part of the city, and then fought every day since to survive was not a person who always obeyed her instincts.

She didn't always ignore them, but certainly, she did not always obey them.

The skeleton crew exchanged a lengthy look, and I sagged once free of their attention, panting hard. The whirling of my panicked mind swept me away, trying its best to drown me. How did someone move my cleaning cart so quietly? Why didn't my master key work on the laundry door? Where was Frank? Where was everyone ? What would I do without a job? What would Mother do if I died here? Why had the crew tilted their heads in unison?

This skeleton crew made all others I'd seen seem like harmless children.

An enormous hand gripped my elbow.

I blinked up at Ox. Surely the ground should shake with each of his steps, but I hadn't noticed him walk over.

"You can come with us," he stated.

A reflex denial balanced on the tip of my tongue, water clinging to an icicle's pointed end. My instincts, in other words.

His statement sank in.

I can go with them.

They'd take me to their boss. I could ask him for a job. This might work out.

My focus lowered to Ox's grip on my elbow, and though my mind still wanted to shove and scatter, I noticed how he kept a surprising looseness to his hold. His relaxed grip suggested that I could pull away, and I replayed his specific wording.

You can come with us.

Did he mean to say that I could choose the opposite too? How bizarre, how… unprecedented. Skeleton crews didn't offer choice. Their skull would be enraged if he caught wind of them acting with autonomy.

Ox's grip told me I could say no, but refusal was as impossible as they'd professed Hotel Vitale to be. If they wanted to speak of possibilities, then only one remained open to me and my mother.

I nodded my permission. "I will come with you."