Chapter 22
HEATHER
The light from the gold blinded Heather’s eyes.
She rubbed, then opened them. Stacks of gold coins piled high against cave walls were burying the stalagmites.
The polished metal pieces had no face. The gold was so soft and pure it had been dented many times.
There was a narrow path between the stacks of coins.
Lucy was further ahead. Heather ran after her, but she couldn’t quite catch up.
‘Hey!’ Heather waved. Her fingers clipped a pile, and the gold fell over on top of her. ‘Gah!’ It stung a little. She batted the coins away.
Lucy stuck out a hand in a stop signal. The coins bounced off as if pushed by an invisible shield.
‘Thanks,’ Heather said. ‘What’s the test here? We don’t steal the gold?’
‘That seems to be it,’ Lucy said. ‘Usually, these tests are more personalised. However, mortal possessions mean nothing to me. You seem to have very little greed in your heart. As a result, we got the most generic version of the test.’
It was true: Heather had never cared much about money, as long as she had enough to get by. ‘I don’t feel tempted at all. Let’s leave.’
Lucy sighed. ‘I agree. I’ve been wondering what’s taking the others so long. Howard’s not a greedy person either. I planned to go find them, but this passage seems endless. Let’s go.’
Together, they walked back down the path and stepped through the door. The waiting room was already empty: Delilah must have got bored and left.
Staring at Heather, Lucy frowned. ‘You failed your test.’
‘What? How? I didn’t do anything!’ Heather waved her arms. ‘How about you? Did you pass?’
Lucy looked down at herself. ‘Yes, I seem to have passed.’
‘But we did the exact same thing!’
‘Odd. I can’t explain it, either.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Perhaps you failed when you knocked over the stack of coins? That’s the only discrepancy I noticed.’
‘My clumsiness doesn’t make me greedy,’ Heather grumbled. ‘Fine, I’ll do it again.’
Alone this time, she entered the cave full of gold. Coins spilled across the pathway where she’d had her accident. Kneeling down, she carefully stacked up all the coins again. Feeling confident, she strode out of the cave.
In the waiting room, Lucy immediately shook her head. ‘You failed again.’
‘How?’ Heather wailed. She had a sudden sympathy for Delilah, baffled by the same floor. ‘Can you give me a hint? I know that would normally be cheating, but greed isn’t my sin. I just want to get to the engine room and help you repair the hotel.’
‘I don’t know, either,’ Lucy said. ‘The tests are individualised to each person. Yet I confess it seems to me that you should have passed. Perhaps you were caught up in my test room and failed to find your own?’
‘But the second time, I entered alone.’ Heather sighed. ‘I suppose I could try walking further into the cave and see if I can find another test. At the least, I could see why the others are taking so long.’
With a heavy heart, Heather entered the gleaming cave again.
She kept a hand over her eyes to shield herself.
It would be mortifying to face Delilah after failing, especially after Heather had called this test easy.
Secretly, Heather had judged Delilah a little for taking so long to figure out her own test on Floor Greed. Now Heather had no leg to stand on.
The gold seemed to spread on endlessly. Heather kept putting one foot in front of the other. She reminded herself of how Delilah had tackled her own trial for fifty-four hours. This was nothing in comparison.
With her eyes fixed on the ground, Heather didn’t even notice when the gold vanished. But she noticed the smell of roast meat and pastries.
Heather looked up. The cave had converged with a banquet hall.
A dozen long white tables spread out down the room.
Magnificent golden chandeliers cast light on the cream-coloured walls.
A massive ceiling painting depicted a choir of angels.
Every five places, each table had a bouquet of tropical flowers as tall as a person, blossoming towards the artificial sky.
A single table at the front was surrounded by a red and golden curtain.
Heather gaped. Was that the king of the United Kingdom?
Well, of course it couldn’t be the real king. Nothing here was real.
The food smelled very real, though. The spread across the tables included smoked salmon, filet mignon, Yorkshire pudding, shepherd’s pie, Scotch eggs, scones so fresh that steam rose off them and rice pudding topped with whipped cream.
Each table had an elaborate roast swan as the centrepiece.
Heather’s mouth watered as she looked at the feast. This was more tempting than Floor Gluttony!
The elaborately dressed people around the room sat frozen, perhaps because no one had entered yet. Howard stood at the edge of the room, gazing at it all with an indecipherable expression.
A waiter in a black waistcoat put his arm round Howard.
‘This is what you could have had,’ he murmured.
‘You were on track to complete a business degree and inherit your father’s company.
You could have lived a life of luxury. Instead, you threw it all away to help a friend who sold their soul to a demonic entity. ’
Orchestral music filled the banquet hall, drifting up from the floor. The enchantingly tempting lilt could have made her believe that the unseen instruments came straight from Hell.
At one table, a bride in a white dress sat arm-in-arm with her groom. She blew a kiss at Howard. ‘We kept the riches from the bargain while you ran for your life.’
The groom called, ‘Thank you for stealing Lucy’s ring for me after I injured my leg. Convenient how my leg healed in time for my next rugby match, wasn’t it?’ They giggled and kissed.
A portly older man called, ‘You disappointed me, Howard. Fleeing the country, babbling about a demon chasing you? How could my only son turn out to be a lunatic?’
The waiter clucked his tongue and patted Howard’s back. ‘While you got hunted around the world, everyone else lived happily. Your entire future was wasted. But it’s not too late. You could still join this world.’ He waved a gloved hand across the banquet hall.
Heather cleared her throat. ‘Is it tempting?’
Howard turned to look at her. All the illusionary people froze in place.
Howard said, ‘Actually, no. I’m quite happy with the life I lived.
I became a far more interesting person than if I’d followed the path my father laid out for me.
I wasn’t wealthy, but I lived an exciting life and helped many people in my travels.
I saved someone who I loved from going to Hell. ’
‘Then she married someone else? That’s a raw deal.’
‘He, actually. He never felt as serious about our college fling as I did. He didn’t force me to ride to his rescue.
I made the choice myself. I wouldn’t want someone to only love me out of obligation.
’ Howard smiled. ‘We were never meant to be. As a direct result of my journey, I met someone who I love far more deeply.’
‘You did? Who?’
Howard flushed and bit his lip. ‘Let’s just say I have a bad habit of falling in love with people who are out of my reach.’
Heather didn’t push any further on that subject. ‘If you don’t want this –’ she gestured at the banquet hall – ‘then why are you still here?’
‘Guilt, I think.’ Howard sighed. ‘I let my father down when I vanished to travel the world as a vagabond.’
‘It’s your life. You couldn’t spend it making someone else happy.’
‘That’s true. I wouldn’t have been much of a businessman, anyway.
’ Howard smiled. ‘My sister did a far better job running the company than I ever would have. Even my stubborn old man admitted that, by the end. I should stop fretting here in the past and get back to what matters in the present: helping Lucy repair her beloved hotel and saving the guests.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Heather pointed at a door where the cave met the banquet. ‘I think that’s your door.’
‘It is. Are you coming too?’
Heather sighed. ‘I keep failing my test. I don’t know why. I entered the cave of gold; I didn’t take any. What more does the test want from me? Yikes, I really do sound like Delilah now.’
Howard adopted a very serious expression. ‘You know, I was wondering why the ball was getting bigger, then it hit me.’
Heather groaned. ‘I thought you were going to give me useful advice, not another bad pun.’
‘Would it help if I told you that the power to succeed lies within yourself?’
‘No.’
Laughing, he slipped out of the door.
Heather longed to grab a pastry off the banquet table, but she wouldn’t be tricked into failing that easily. She walked past the long tables, stopping to curtsey at the frozen monarch.
Pushing back the red curtain behind the dais, Heather revealed a room filled with shelves of trophies on all four walls. A framed cheque for a million pounds hung on the wall. Another picture showed Jaime accepting an award in a robotics contest.
Jaime’s former foster parents grovelled on the ground. The mother wailed, ‘Please come back to our family.’
The father said, ‘We lost all our money in poor investments, and now we’re destitute.’ His trousers had patches and his beard looked grizzly.
Jaime threw back her head and laughed. ‘I don’t need you any longer! I’m rich and famous. Anyone in the world would be delighted to adopt me.’
‘I certainly would,’ Heather called.
Jaime’s cheeks paled as she looked over their heads at Heather. ‘Oh, H-Heather.’
‘Did you stay here to gloat a bit?’ Heather adopted a reassuring tone. ‘I couldn’t blame you, even if this is a fantasy.’
‘I did, but I don’t need their approval any longer. There’s no object in this room that I want to take with me.’ Jaime swallowed hard. ‘You passed Floor Anger. Good job.’ She did not sound happy about it.
‘Yeah, I passed my trial, but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving the hotel. We need to talk about—’