Haunting at the Hotel Read online

  Dedication

  To Robin Magaziner,

  STAND

  I

  that you’ve been waiting

  your your your your

  Well, welcome to this page!

  M U ALWAYS BELIEVE E

  and

  Flip MOM upside down, and that’s the kind of parent you are.

  Thank you for all your help with this series—

  for buying the whiteboard, for hashing out my ideas with me,

  and for distributing bookmarks to every human you’ve ever talked to for exactly one second.

  But mostly, thanks for being my forever best friend!

  You are MILONELION.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Books by Lauren Magaziner

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  * * *

  Day One

  * * *

  ELIZA IS DEAD wrong. It doesn’t happen that often—because my best friend Eliza is a logical, puzzle-solving genius. But right now is one of those rare times when she’s incorrect, and it feels like the Earth is tilting on its axis. As we pile out of the car, we shake our heads at each other.

  “For the last time, Carlos,” Eliza says, “there are no such things as ghosts.”

  Like I said: dead wrong.

  “No such things as ghosts!” I scoff.

  “That’s what I said.”

  I pull my coat closer to me. It’s not snowing at the moment, but there are a few inches of powder on the ground.

  Mom had warned me about the snow and the altitude, but no one said anything about the wind-chill factor. The wind at the top of Sugarcrest Mountain is no joke. It’s like being smacked in the face repeatedly with an icicle. It’s especially cold now that the sun is starting to set.

  “Eliza, come on.”

  “Prove there are ghosts,” she says, her cheeks bright pink from the cold.

  “Prove there aren’t!”

  She groans. “That’s not how proof works. It’s impossible to prove something doesn’t exist. But very possible to prove something does exist.”

  “Well, of course there are ghosts!” I shout. “Thousands of people around the world have seen ghosts with their own eyes. What do you call them?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Are they going to stop arguing soon?” Frank asks, tugging on my mom’s sleeve.

  Frank is Eliza’s younger brother. He’s a triple threat: loud, weird, and annoying. But after working on two mysteries together, I’ve actually grown fond of him. No one can crawl into small spaces or find random clues better than Frank.

  Mom smiles at Frank. “Carlos and Eliza have been arguing about this for the last hour—why stop now?”

  “I bet you already regret inviting us along,” I tease.

  Mom grabs my coat and pulls me into a side hug. “I was actually just thinking the opposite, mijo.”

  This isn’t our first case, but this is the first case Eliza, Frank, and I have been allowed to be on. We’ve solved two cases before this, and we had to sneak our way into both of them.

  Mom co-owns a detective agency with her partner, Cole. For a while, Las Pistas Detective Agency was in danger of going under. The first case we ever solved, at a millionaire’s mansion, we flat-out stole from Mom to help save Las Pistas. Our second case was at a TV studio, on the set of my favorite show, and technically, we weren’t allowed to be investigating. Mom caught us trying to solve her mystery. And we ended up working together.

  The four of us teaming up worked so well that Mom decided to make us junior detectives for her next case . . . this case.

  A ghost has been terrorizing the Sugarcrest Park Lodge, a small bed-and-breakfast at the top of a mountain. Nearly every night for the past six weeks, there’s been some kind of haunting. Guests have been running away from the hotel screaming in the middle of the night. Nearly everyone who shows up has a harrowing ghost story. The reviews online have been terrible. The owner of the hotel, Reese Winters, hired us to save her quickly dying business and to stop this ghost before something truly horrible happens.

  “So we’re on a haunting case,” I say to Eliza, “and you don’t believe it could be a real ghost?”

  “It can’t be a real ghost,” Eliza says, “because, again, there’s no such thing as a real ghost.”

  I throw my hands up. “Unbelievable!”

  Frank rolls a snowball in his hands and pelts it at me. It hits me in the neck, and ice slides down my back. I glare at him.

  “What?” he says, blinking innocently. “A ghost did it!”

  “Okay, okay, enough,” Mom says, pausing at the shoveled path to the lodge’s front door. “We’re about to go in and make our first impression, and we have to be professional. That means no more fighting. The only way we’re getting to the truth is if we gather as much information as possible and work as a team. And that means you both have to open your minds to each other’s theories.”

  “What about ME?” Frank says.

  “Empty your pockets,” Mom demands.

  Frank reaches into his pockets and takes a snowball out of each one.

  “Again.”

  Frank sighs and pulls a second snowball out of each pocket.

  “One last time.”

  Frank frowns. “But it’s my snow pet! I’ve named her Snovember.”

  “Drop it!” Mom says, like she’s talking to a dog with a ball.

  Frank puts Snovember on the ground gently. Then smashes it with his foot. “I’m a yeti!”

  “No snowballs, Frank,” Mom scolds. “No farting in front of our client, either.”

  The hotel sits alone at the top of a peak. Not the highest peak in the mountain region, but we’re high enough up that my ears started popping in the car. Mom has us drinking a lot of water to avoid altitude sickness.

  There’s almost nothing else around. No town. No supermarkets. No houses. The closest thing nearby is another hotel, a little ways down the mountain. That one is called the Super Hotel Express, and it looks about five times bigger.

  But it isn’t nearly as cute as the Sugarcrest Park Lodge, which has a log cabin feel to it. The outside is wood, with two chimneys made of tan stones. The fire is going right now—a cloud of smoke rises into the white sky.

  “Looks like it’s going to snow,” Mom says, squinting up. “I’m sure it’ll be a light flurry. Just a dusting.”

  Famous last words, I think with a gulp. Then I follow Mom as she heads inside.

  The lobby of the Sugarcrest Park Lodge has a concierge desk in between two staircases that wrap around it. To the left, there’s an open door to a fireplace lounge, with a rustic look. I walk closer to get a peek inside. There’s a double-sided fire with couches encircling it, and a door in the back of the fire den that leads to the library, which I can tell because there’s a sign that says QUIET IN THE LIBRARY . . . UNLESS YOU’RE PLAYING PIANO. THEN FORTE!

  Which strikes me as very odd, because who puts a loud piano in a library? Unless maybe personal home libraries can break the rules.

  I walk back to the lobby, where Mom, Eliza, and Frank are hovering. All around, the decorations are . . . awful, if I’m being honest. There are bearskin rugs everywhere. The walls have all sorts of stuffed animal heads—deer, moose, elk, and boars—with beads for eyes.

  Eliza makes a disapproving noise as she looks at them.

  “Don’t worry. They’re fake,” says the woman at the front desk. She’s younger than my mom. I’m really bad at guessing adult ages . . . but if I had to bet, I’d put her somewhere in her twenties. She’s got bright blue hair, a nose ring, lo
ts of colorful makeup on her pale face, and eyes that are two different colors: one blue and one green. She looks like a mermaid. “Welcome to the Sugarcrest Park Lodge,” she says. “My name is Cricket McCoy, your concierge. Checking in?”

  “In a sense,” Mom says. “We’re the detectives from Las Pistas Detective Agency. Can you let Reese Winters know we’re here?”

  Her eyes widen. “Of course, yes.” She opens a drawer and picks up a walkie-talkie. “Mrs. Winters, your detectives are in the lobby.”

  “Be right there,” Reese Winters says through the speaker.

  Cricket puts the walkie-talkie back in the drawer. “We’re all so glad you’re here! It’s been, like, a spectacle around here lately. Like, ridiculously terrifying.” She glances out the window, where the sun has gone down fast. “It’s sundown. . . . I hope you’re prepared.”

  “Prepared?” I ask.

  “For the ghost,” she says, nervously playing with the frayed ends of her hair.

  “I am SO READY!” Frank shouts, pumping his fist in the air.

  “You say that now. But it’s a nightmare. We had thirteen cancellations today alone. Half of our guests have been ditching us in the middle of their stay. I’ve been asking permission to go home at sundown,” Cricket says in a low voice, “so I can get out of here before the ghosts come. But sometimes Mrs. Winters makes me work well into the night, now that guests are checking out at like three in the morning. . . .”

  “Is Mrs. Winters a good boss?” I ask.

  “So good! Super good! Best boss ever!” Cricket says with a big smile. But her voice rises an octave.

  She’s lying.

  I look at Eliza, who is busy staring at a piece of paper on the concierge desk. It’s like she’s not even paying attention to the conversation.

  So I turn to Mom instead, and without even moving a muscle in her face, Mom’s eyes flash. And somehow I know that she too noticed how Cricket’s voice changed when she talked about Reese Winters.

  There’s a weird silence, which is Mom’s favorite interrogation strategy. She likes to leave awkward pauses in the conversation to make people uncomfortable.

  It doesn’t work on Cricket, though. She clears her throat and stands up straighter behind the desk. “You can, like, wait near the fire for the Winters family. I’m sure they’ll be down any moment.” Then she turns back to the computer and starts typing.

  Clearly, we’ve been dismissed.

  We walk over to the fire den, only to find a round, white, middle-aged man already on a couch by the fire. Even though he’s sitting, I can tell he’s short. Probably not much taller than Mom. He has half-frame glasses, bags under his eyes, and a bit of stubble on his reddish face. He’s definitely been up all night.

  He’s typing furiously into his laptop, while three books and a notebook lie open beside him.

  Suddenly he looks at us. “Guests! Welcome!”

  Mom holds out her hand. “I’m Cat Serrano. This is my son, Carlos. And his friends Eliza and Frank. Do you work here?”

  “No,” the man says. “I’m a guest too. The only guest brave enough to stay multiple nights, it seems. This place has been a ghost town lately.” Then he chuckles at his own joke. “The name is Byron. Byron Bookbinder.”

  “So what are you still doing here, Mr. Bookbinder?” Mom asks.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Frank hums. “Blinking! No, wait, breathing! No wait, both at the same time. Very impressive.”

  “I’m writing,” Byron says. “A nonfiction book. About ghost hauntings.”

  “So I take it it’s not a coincidence that you ended up at this hotel?” Eliza says.

  “No,” Byron says. “This lodge has a ghostly history, and I wanted to check it out. Imagine my surprise to find my EMF reader going out of control.”

  “EMF reader?” I say while Eliza asks, “What ghostly history?”

  Byron Bookbinder smiles, reaches into his bag, and pulls out something that looks like a TV remote. “This is an EMF reader. EMF stands for electromagnetic field. Often you can’t see a ghost, but you can feel it. As their spirits move through our world, there’s a disruption in the electromagnetic field. When you see a red light, all is normal. But when you see a green light? A ghost is nearby!” he says excitedly.

  “Does it ever go green?” I ask.

  “It goes green every night I’ve been here. This place is flooded with ghosts.”

  “Let’s push it now!” Frank says, reaching for the power switch.

  “It’s not a toy, young man,” Byron says, and he tucks the EMF reader back into his bag.

  “You were saying something about the history of this lodge?” Mom reminds Byron.

  “Oh, yes. Very interesting story. About seventy years ago, six hikers stopped to stay in this lodge as they were climbing the summit. They broke in because the place was all boarded up. No heat, no food, no supplies. In the night, the storm got so bad that the lodge was almost completely buried under snow. By the time anyone found them . . .” He pauses. “Well, let’s just say they no longer had need for oxygen. Legend has it that they’ve haunted this lodge ever since, still desperate to finish their climb.”

  “Six,” I whisper. “Six people died here. Does that mean there are six ghosts?”

  It seems suddenly colder in here, despite the blazing fire.

  For a moment, I regret letting Mom bring me on this case. This was the first time she’d ever let me be a junior detective on one of her cases, and I wanted to be involved. I was afraid to say no, but now that I’m actually here? I’m afraid that I’ve said yes.

  Afraid, because ghosts are terrifying. And afraid because I don’t want to let Mom down. Now that she expects something of me, I feel more pressure than ever to prove that I really belong by her side as a detective.

  Before we can ask Byron Bookbinder another question, three people step into the fire den. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s the Winters family, the owners of the hotel. We walk over to them, leaving Byron eagerly eavesdropping.

  “So sorry to keep you waiting,” says a woman with the most infectious smile. It’s the first thing I notice about her. She is Asian, with sleek black hair that is pulled up in a ponytail, except for a swoop of bangs tucked behind her ear. She is wearing a suit and heels, and she has an air of perfection about her. Like she doesn’t have to try to be so put together—she just is. Naturally. “I’m Reese. This is my husband, Harris. And our daughter, January Winters.”

  Reese hasn’t said more than four sentences, but everything about her radiates warmth. She’s just one of those people who seem genuine and kind.

  Her husband, Harris, is the opposite. He is a large, frowny guy in a plaid lumberjack shirt. He’s white, with ginger hair tied up in a bun, an impressively thick beard, and moody gray eyes. He looks longingly out the window like he wishes he could be anywhere but here.

  January Winters, their daughter, looks like she’s about the same age as Eliza and me. Maybe a year older. Like her mom, January has shiny black hair. Like her dad, she has a downturned mouth. Unlike both of them, she’s got big headphones on her ears.

  “January, dear, don’t be rude,” her mom says, pulling the headphones down so that they rest on her neck. “You can listen to music later.”

  “I’m not listening to music,” January grumbles. “I’m making music.”

  “Yes, dear, but you’re in the hospitality business right now, not the deejay business.” Reese turns to us with a dazzling smile. “You’ll have to excuse her. She’s learning.”

  January folds her arms.

  Mom introduces us, and Reese shakes our hands—even Frank’s, despite the fact that he holds out his hand like a limp noodle.

  “If you all could follow me into the dining room,” Reese says, “I’ve had Fernando prepare us a snack.”

  We wave goodbye to Byron Bookbinder, who looks disappointed that he’s not invited to follow. The dining room is on the other side of the lobby, so we pass
by Cricket McCoy again to get there. Cricket looks down at her feet as the Winters family walks by.

  The dining room is just as rustic as the lobby, with snowshoes on the walls, a chandelier made of intertwining antlers, a gnarled wood table, and a long wood bench on each side. There’s someone already in here—a woman dressed in a housekeeper outfit. She’s very slim, Asian, with short hair that tucks just under her ears. Her nostrils twitch as the Winters family walks in.

  She doesn’t like Reese and Harris. I can tell right away.

  “Apologies,” the woman says, in a very nonapologetic tone. “I didn’t realize you needed this room. I was just dusting.”

  “Thank you, Sunny—if you could take the Serrano and Thompson luggage up to room 237.”

  “Of course,” Sunny mumbles. She walks out of the room, looking curiously behind her as she shuts the door.

  Reese smiles. “We’ve put you in adjacent rooms—237 and 236. But I wasn’t sure how you’d want to divide up, so you can figure that out.”

  “Who was that?” Mom asks.

  “Who? Oh, Sunny,” Reese says. “She’s my . . . er. Well, she’s our housekeeper. She’ll be changing your sheets and getting you an extra pillow—if you need it. Shall we sit?” She gestures to the benches on either side of the table. Without discussing it, the Winters family all sit on one side, while we sit on the other.

  “This is a charming hotel,” Mom says. “How long have you been here?”

  Reese smiles. “I grew up here. My parents bought it when they immigrated, long before my sister and I were born. When they passed a few years ago, I took over. One day it will be January’s.”

  January grunts. She doesn’t look up from her phone.

  All of a sudden, the doors open, and a man with a curled mustache comes in carrying a tray.

  “Fried-a mozzarella, fresh-a tomahto salad, and espaghetti bites for you,” the man says in a very fake Italian accent. He puts a tray in the middle of the table and bows. “Nice-a to meet you! I will be taking a-care of all your gastronomic needs.”

  “Huh?” Frank says.

  “He’ll be feeding us,” Eliza translates.