I licked my lips. "I don't know for sure. Maybe. There was a girl in a room on the third floor. She was really... odd."
"Odd how?" Juniper demanded. I looked around the table. Everyone was hanging on to my every word. Annie seemed skeptical, Juniper excited, Tristan surprised, and Moth... Moth was amused. That bastard.
"She didn't seem to know stuff about the modern world. Almost as if she'd been here a long time. But not too long, her clothes were relatively normal."
Juniper bent down and pulled out a large binder from her bag."I think I can guess who it is. Was she Latinx?"
I lifted my shoulders. "Maybe? Her complexion was a little darker than mine. Her hair and eyes were dark brown."
Juniper flipped through the book like a madman, until she stopped and thrust the book up at me. I took in the photo she was showing me.
"Was this her?"
It was.
I paled.
"Holy shit, look at her face." Juniper laughed. "What did she say to you?"
"Nothing really. Just that she liked to read, and that Gloriana was mean to her." I tried to remember exact details of our conversation, but all I could think about was the spiders. I shuddered.
"I wonder if you can see other ones." Juniper's eyes glazed over. "What does this mean? That you're being allowed to see them?"
"You can too!" I blurted out. A hard kick came from under the table, and Moth glared at me.
"I haven't seen a single ghost." Juniper sat back and crossed her arms. "It doesn't seem fair. I come up here every year and nothing."
"Poor you," Annie said. "I am super glad it's not me seeing them. I enjoy peaceful sleep."
"You should write about it," Moth commented. "Tell the world all about the horrors of the Vincent Hotel."
"Oh, I wouldn't say horrors." Tristan scoffed. "So you saw a spirit. Don't be dramatic.”
"I’m going to go try to write or something. Maybe reread what I've been working on so far."I left the group.
"Want some help? I'll join you." Moth followed me out of the bar.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I could ask the same of you. You can't tell them what you know." Moth stepped up to me, pressing me against the wall. He pinched my chin.
"Why not? Eventually, someone's going to find you. When the snow melts and people start going outside..."
"That's a problem for another day. You can't tell them because they'll panic."
"Shouldn't we be panicking? If they knew about you, then they'd be figuring out a way to leave."
"That's exactly it." Moth's eyes darkened, and the familiar green irises turned orange, like flames. "You're not leaving."
Rule 47 - Delaney
Monsters aren’t always the obvious ones.
How a dead spirit could hurt me was confusing. Had I imagined his body in the snow? I tore myself from his grip and slid under his arm.
"You're insane. We are all getting out of here. I don't care what you think. There's no way we could all die and no one catch on to things. I'm going to call my parents. They'll have some way to get me and Priest out of this place."
Moth snickered. "You really want to tell them you've got Priest here?"
