“But that’s what I am.” His voice rose in pitch as he blinked several times. Could ghosts cry real tears?
“Let’s sit down,” Hunter urged him, and we moved to the musty Victorian-style couch. “Tell us everything, but first do we need to check on the old man? Anu?”
The clerk, Nigel—I decided to think of him as Nigel—tilted his long chin toward Hunter.
“Master Anu is ill, I’m afraid. It is so, so, so sad. I don’t know what I am to do.” His ghostly hands twitched in his lap. “Without Master, I am nothing.” His body shimmered, flowing from transparent to fully there and fading again.
“Nigel,” I said. “May I call you Nigel? I chose—” I glanced at Hunter. “Or rather, we chose something close to night clerk. Is Nigel Clark agreeable?” Previous conversations had made it obvious the spirit didn’t remember his true name.
The man blinked his watery eyes again and gave us a tremulous smile. “Yes. Nigel sounds official, doesn’t it? That’s lovely.”
Now that we were out of immediate danger, I studied the being closer. His dark hair was thin and flattened against his head in an old-fashioned style. Dark eyes, deep set into his long face, held enough innocence to make him seem quite young, but I figured his mortal age to be late thirties. Nigel was a mortal being, fully present and touchable as evidenced by couch cushions indenting under his physicality. Yet he could appear and disappear at will, like a purely spiritual entity. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Who is Master Anu to you?”
Nigel’s chest heaved as he struggled to gain control of himself. “He brought me here. I have a purpose. ThebeforeI do not recall.”
“So how long have you and Master Anu been here? At the hotel?” Hunter asked.
“Before we had our lovely bar, it was a clandestine place.” He beamed with the memory. “A speakeasy. Oh, the ladies with their fringe and glitter! The gentlemen in their Panama hats. It was all so glamorous and…and—”
“Fun?” Hunter supplied.
“Oh yes. Now things are so dull and dreary.”
Hunter gave me a look. “Okay, so you’ve been here since the 1920s, I think. That means that Master Anu is… over a hundred?”
“A hundred what?” Nigel asked.
“Years.” Hunter’s tone lost some of its patience. “He’s over a hundred years old?”
“Don’t be silly. He’s much older than that.”
This time it was me who rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We will talk to him. Would you translate for us?”
“I would indeed. I am happy to be of service to all our—”
“Yes. We know, Nigel.” Hunter shook his head, and we went upstairs again.
We found Master Anu lying down in the room with the broken window, a thin blanket over him. Nigel fussed over the broken window for a moment before stepping into the hallway and snapping his fingers.
“We will move him to another room.” Hunter looked at Nigel, waiting for him to translate. After a moment, the old man rose, and we shuffled him out of the room.
In the hallway, we met a middle-aged, brown-skinned man in coveralls. Nigel seemed to know him.
“Kenny, we need new panes for the window in room 306,” he said in a businesslike tone. Kenny looked accusingly at us but said nothing as he turned and headed back downstairs. Nigel turned to us. “Kenny is our jack of all trades around here. I could not do my job without him.”
“Great,” I said. “Where was he when we were being chased by blackguards with guns?”
“In the basement of course.” The clerk looked ridiculously nonplussed.
“Of course.”
Once Master Anu was settled back into a fresh bed and clean room, we asked questions about the men who chased us.
Nigel had that annoying expression again. “I know what the men wanted. They wanted the Master of course.”
I wondered if this man had been as irritating when he was alive. My next question was interrupted by a smattering of gibberish from Master Anu.
