Chapter 10 #2
“I don’t think it’s in there,” she said. “If it’s anything at all.”
“I’m looking for a—ah,” he said, and pulled the iron off its spot on the wall.
“An iron?”
“A better weapon than a ballpoint pen.”
Sloane looked down at her hand. She’d forgotten she was holding it, and in retrospect (and better lighting), it wasn’t as threatening as she’d maybe hoped.
“I had to think fast, and the lamps are all attached to the furniture,” she said as Max hefted the iron in his hand and walked into the room at a half crouch.
He looked objectively ridiculous, but in a shirtless way.
In a ready-to-brain-an-intruder-with-an-iron-because-she’d-screamed way, which Sloane appreciated.
He walked around both beds—nothing—and then held the iron up high and pulled back the curtains with a flourish, revealing…
…a smudged glass door and the balcony behind it, empty except for two chairs and a side table, which were supposed to be there.
They looked at each other, then around the room. Max tossed the iron onto the bed and then ran that hand through his hair.
“I think something did hit your window,” he said, looking at the smudge. It was about head height and…smudgy. “Does San Diego have owls?”
“Maybe?” Sloane said, and walked over to join him, tossing the ballpoint pen onto the desk as she did. Were there owls here? She didn’t even know if Los Angeles had owls. It had bats—did that count?
There was a zero percent chance a bat had made that noise or that smudge.
“I’ve heard of birds getting confused and flying into glass doors,” Max was saying. “Something about the reflection looking to them like—”
The corner of the hotel room howled, a thin, tinny sound that was nothing like a real howl but still made them both jump, and Sloane grabbed Max’s arm as the howl kept going, long and weird and quiet.
Max grabbed the iron, crouched again, and crept toward the air-conditioning unit installed in the wall next to the sliding glass door.
Finally, the howl stopped, and Sloane realized something.
“Oh, what the fuck,” she said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Max straightened up, iron down at his side, and stared at the AC unit. “I think it came from there,” he said, pointing.
“It’s haunted,” Sloane said, and sat on the end of the bed, then rubbed her face with her hands. “What the hell.”
Max kept staring at the AC unit. He didn’t look awake just yet. “Wait,” he said, and was interrupted by the sound of something scrabbling, then the quiet, spooky moan that had awoken Sloane ten minutes earlier.
“That’s what woke me up, by the way,” she said. “And then the thing with the window happened.”
“It sounds like a recording,” Max said, walked over, and knelt about two feet away from the unit. “Why is there a creepy recording in your air-conditioning?”
“Isn’t that why our rooms got moved? Haunted air-conditioning?”
Still staring at the AC, still on his knees, Max shook his head and said, “This is the weirdest one of these trips I’ve ever been on, and I almost got killed by a man-eating tree.”
There were several seconds of total silence, and then Sloane said, “A what?”
“I guess it was a people-eating tree. I don’t think it had a gender preference,” Max corrected himself. “Sorry.”
“That’s not…” Sloane started, then chose to abandon that line of discussion and pick it up later. During the daytime, preferably.
Max turned his head to look at her, presumably waiting for the rest of the sentence, but instead a pained, pre-recorded groaning sound emanated from the air-conditioning.
They both looked at that instead, and Sloane half wanted to start laughing and never stop, and half wanted to chuck the thing off the balcony.
Instead of either of those options, she said, “Can I come sleep in your room and deal with this in the morning?”
Max suddenly looked more awake. “Of course,” he said. “Or, if you want, we can switch.”
Sloane stood, looking over at Max. He was still kneeling in front of the suspicious AC unit, wearing nothing but boxers, and Sloane couldn’t remember why they hadn’t shared a room in the first place. Clearly having her own room hadn’t worked out all that well.
“Not really,” she said, shrugging. “Unless you’d rather switch.”
“I can’t sleep in here,” he said, seriously. “The air conditioner’s haunted. I do have to record it, though.”
“We should probably tell Manager Brian all about this,” she said.
“I have a sneaking suspicion Manager Brian knows,” said Max, and Sloane snorted.
“You think this was him?”
“It was obviously someone, and he was very enthusiastic about the haunting.” Max pushed himself to standing, then picked up the iron again.
“A lot of paranormal investigators will go along with obvious fakes and play it up, even if they know it’s not real,” he went on.
“I kinda suspect he thought we’d do that.
You know, find the tape deck or something in there and claim we found a real ghost. Or try to exorcise the demon in the attic. ”
“Bad luck for him that you’re one of those ethical charlatans.”
“I should put that on my business cards,” Max said, padding barefoot to the door of her room and stopping to put the iron back in the closet. “Max Golding, ethical charlatan.”
“Purveyor of cloth goods and fine meats,” Sloane added, grabbing her key, phone, and charger.
“You know it,” Max said as he opened the door, and Sloane had never before rolled her eyes so hard at something she agreed with.
Sloane was nearly asleep when the door to Max’s room opened, and she was still rattled enough that she was up on one elbow, wide awake, before she remembered where she was and what was going on.
“Sorry,” Max whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
“You get the ghosts?”
“Of course.”
She flopped back onto her pillow, burying half her face in it. “Liar.”
He put something down on the table, then walked around the bottom of the king-sized bed. “Why do you keep asking questions like that when you know you’re gonna argue with the answer?”
“I didn’t know that,” Sloane said, only half lying. She’d suspected, sure. “Sometimes you’re reasonable and don’t tell me lies.”
The bed didn’t dip, but she could feel the mattress shift as he got in, the sheet and blanket fluttering over her. When Sloane had gotten in to Max’s bed fifteen minutes ago, she’d considered taking her clothes off first but hadn’t. It was three in the morning, and she was a reasonable woman.
“I’m doing you a favor, you know,” Max said, his voice closer than she’d expected. The mattress moved again, and there was a hand on her hip, slowly stroking up her side. It was warm and heavy, but there was no intent in it. “I’m giving you the chance to argue with me.”
“Wow,” she said, yawning. “Put prince among men on your business card, too.”
“Good lord, are you asleep yet?” he asked, and she couldn’t see him, but she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Almost,” Sloane said, and drifted off with Max’s hand still anchoring her hip.