Chapter 13 #2
Maisie sniffles. Which, considering she’s a ghost and can’t actually cry, is something special.
“The housekeepers were talking about it. The police took all her things, but they mustn’t have searched the room too well, because after her death was declared a heart attack and the housekeepers were allowed to go into the room again, they found her diary on the floor under the bed.
The owners called the police, who said they didn’t need it.
But the housekeepers felt it was wrong to throw it away, so they put it in the lost-and-found. ”
I take a deep breath and reach down deep for patience. “So the diary got thrown out when the hotel was closed?”
“No,” Freddie says excitedly. “The owners moved out most of the furniture and valuables, but a lot of things got left behind. The dark spirit was active then, remember. They just wanted to get out as soon as they could. When the new owners bought the place, they found the old lost-and-found box in a storage closet. They were excited, remember?” he asks Hattie, who nods slowly.
“Yes… there were some things that had been there for a long time, and they thought they’d be good for the museum. History of the hotel and all that.”
“And the diary was in there?”
Hattie shrugs. “I’m not certain, to be honest.”
“I am,” Maisie declares. “I have an affinity with everything that was ever in Room 203. That’s where I died, and part of me will always infuse that room.”
I make a mental note not to ever get between Maisie and the Garden Suite.
“Maisie,” I begin as calmly and sweetly as I can, “do you know where the diary is now?”
She nods. “Of course. I have an—”
“Affinity, yes, I know. I’m so glad for that. You’ll have to tell us all about it one day. Where’s the diary?”
“And why did you never mention it before?” Joe growls. Obviously he can’t hold himself back any longer.
“But mostly where,” I add desperately, not wanting her to get upset and distracted.
“In the museum, of course.”
My heart sinks. I might not have been here that long, but after having to help out with some museum tours, I know what’s in the displays, and a hotel guest’s diary from the 1970s is not there.
“Well, not in the museum.” She giggles. “In the storage room. When the owners curated the display, they didn’t think the diary was historic enough just yet. So they put it away for the future.”
My heart starts beating double time. “Maisie, do you know exactly where?” I’ve glanced into that storage room.
It’s fifteen feet by fifteen feet, lined with box-filled shelves, and has additional rows of shelves in the center.
I’m sure there’s some kind of indexing system, but it’s not something anyone ever showed me, since curating new displays and packing up old ones isn’t anything I’m trained to do.
If Maisie doesn’t know where it is, I’ll have to wait until morning or call Kieran.
Maisie pouts. “Not exactly,” she says. “I know which wall it’s on, but I lose track of which shelf.”
That still cuts the amount of work needed dramatically. I could potentially find it tonight and actually have some answers by the time Kieran arrives in the morning. I bite my lip.
“Come on,” I order, deciding abruptly. “Show me which wall.”
An hour and a half later, I’m wondering if this was a bad idea. Maybe I should have waited until morning. Kieran or one of the museum guides could have looked up the diary in the index and pointed me to the exact box it’s in, instead of me having to go through every one on the west wall.
That’s if Maisie even got the wall right. She’s very sweet, but not exactly bright.
I’ve only gotten through a dozen boxes so far, and that’s only because four of them were filled with clothes and easy to check.
The rest… let’s just say there are a lot of people in the county who were so thrilled about the idea of a local history museum that they sent every piece of garbage their ancestors ever hoarded.
Right down to electricity bills from only a few decades ago.
The ghosts got so bored that they all wandered off ages ago.
There are another four dozen boxes at least, and if the diary is in the last one, I’ll be here most of the night just looking for it.
Maybe I should just give up and go to bed.
My head is pounding, I’m tired, sore from sleeping on the couch last night…
and weekends are always chaos around here.
I need to be on my game, not exhausted from pulling an all-nighter.
Sighing, I lift my hands to rub my eyes, but stop myself at the last second. My hands are covered with dust and grime right now, and the last thing I need is to make my eyes more sore and itchy.
“Josh?”
Shrieking, I spin toward the door, raising my fists as though to defend myself.
“Whoa,” Ewan says. “It’s just us.”
I blink at him in surprise as he steps into the room, followed by Daniel. “What are you doing here?”
“Carter told us what you’re doing,” Daniel says, looking around the room. “It’s bad that I didn’t even know this existed, right?”
“You don’t know anything exists if it doesn’t grow,” Ewan points out, then smiles at me. “We thought we’d come and help.”
Tears sting my eyes. It has to be because I’m so tired. Not for any other reason, like people giving enough of a shit about me to help me.
“But—” I swallow the lump in my throat. “But you both must be exhausted after moving furniture around at Skye’s whim.”
Daniel snorts. “Bossy, isn’t he? I thought he’d never be happy with where the bed went.”
“You’ve been working hard all day too,” Ewan says gently, coming over and wrapping me up in a hug. “And we’re all invested in this. Let us help.”
It feels so good to be able to lean on him that I don’t bother to argue, just nod. He leans down and kisses me gently.
“Whoa!” Daniel yells. “What’s this?” A delighted grin stretches his mouth as heat washes up my face.
“Uhh…”
“Don’t be a dick,” Ewan orders. “Josh and I are… something.” He looks down at me. “Did you still want to be casual? Because I was thinking it would be nice to date.”
Do I have heart eyes right now? It feels like I might. He wants to date me?
“I guess that would, uh, be… nice. Thank you,” I add, then want to kick myself. Thank you? I thanked him for wanting to go out with me? Why don’t I just tattoo LOSER on my forehead right now? I smooth my hands down his arms, marveling over how defined they are.
He breaks out in a grin, but it’s not an I’m-laughing-at-you grin. More like a you’re-so-adorable one. I like it. “You’re welcome,” he says solemnly. “You never emailed me back before… does this mean I can cook dinner for you?”
“Yeah, that—oh, wait! I didn’t email you back!”
“Dude, you need to get some sleep,” Daniel says, looking up from the box he started going through while Ewan and I have been doing our awkward mating dance.
“No… well, yeah, but what I meant was, you don’t know what started this whole search for the diary.” I explain what I saw on the demon site, the words coming so fast, they trip over each other.
“So finding out there’s a diary is just a side benefit of finding out this thing might actually be a demon we can… what, control? Banish?” Daniel looks confused.
I spread my hands. “I don’t know. At first I just wanted to get an idea about whether it could be a demon or if we still don’t know what we’re dealing with.
But once I heard about the diary and started looking, I thought, maybe she made some notes about what she was trying to do?
And I could, I don’t know, contact this person on the site and use the diary as a basis to ask questions?
” Wow, it sounds super lame when I say it out loud.
They must agree, because Ewan says, “Well, let’s find the diary first and go from there. If nothing else, we might get a better idea of why she came here.”
We settle back in to work. Ewan stays close enough to me for me to feel the heat radiating off him, and where before I was focused on steps I could take once I found the diary, now my thoughts are full of him.
Like… he smells so good. Does he like how I smell?
I’m sweaty and grimy from going through boxes and probably stink.
And I’ve chipped my glittery blue nail polish.
He said last night that he liked it, so I’ll have to make sure I fix it before our date.
Nervous trepidation fills me at the idea of a date.
He wants to cook for me, which seems so sweet…
but does it actually mean he doesn’t want to be seen with me in public?
No, Ewan’s not like that. Besides, he was perfectly fine being seen with me in the bar the night we met.
“This might be it,” he says, breaking into my thoughts, and Daniel and I both abandon our boxes to crowd around him. He’s holding a notebook covered in dusty green velvet. It doesn’t look like the diary of a woman who wants to summon demons. Although… what would that look like?
Ewan opens the cover gingerly. Written on the first page are the words “Emma Marie Harper, 1973 vol. I.”
“The date’s about right,” Daniel says. Ewan flips through the first few pages, which seem to be the usual kind of stuff you’d find in a diary.
A happy New Year message to herself, a list of her resolutions for the year, and then summaries of her day, of things people said, some gushing over a guy she had a crush on.
“Look at the last entry,” I suggest. We can always read the whole thing later if we need to, but if it turns out this isn’t what we’re looking for, I don’t want to waste time we could spend going through more boxes.
Ewan fans through the blank pages at the back, then nearly drops the book when a folded piece of yellowed paper falls out. Daniel grabs it and carefully unfolds it.
“Whoa,” he breathes.
We stare at the detailed drawing of a pentagram with weird symbols at each point and arrows leading to handwritten notes. The clincher, though, is the heading at the top of the page: DEMON SUMMONING CIRCLE