“That’s how you determine success?”
“It’s one method,” Max went on and shot Sloane a quick glance. She was trying not to smile. “I’m not familiar with the symbol in the middle of the star, but maybe that’s the name of the demon they were trying to contact? And those symbols around the outside are…”
He trailed off, frowning.
“I think that one is the symbol for yen,” Sloane said, still off camera. “The Y with the lines through it.”
They were quiet for another moment, and then Max pointed. “Is that the Do not iron laundry symbol?”
More silence.
“I think it is,” Sloane finally said, and kept moving the beam of her flashlight around the circle. “Is someone trying to summon a…Japanese finance demon? Who doesn’t iron?”
“Sloane,” Max said, his camera still trained on the circle. He bit the inside of his lip so he wouldn’t start laughing.
“What?”
“I know what they want the demon for.”
“What? Why does your face look like that?”
“Money laundering.”
“Oh, my god,” Sloane muttered. She was obviously trying not to laugh. “That’s it, I’m done. I’m leaving. The ghosts can have me if they want.”
“Come on,” Max said, laughing. “That was good.”
“Did you make this thing? Did you put this on the floor just so you could make a terrible money-laundering joke?”
“Please,” Max said. He was actually a little offended. “If I’d put it here, I’d have come up with a better joke.”
Sloane grumbled an unconvinced grumble, and Max remembered the camera was on.
“Hard to say who, or what, drew this,” he started.
“A person,” Sloane offered.
Max cleared this throat. “The chalk looks very recent, though in an environment like this, I’m not sure how long that new-chalk look would last. There’s no sun or wind exposure up here.”
“Whoever did this didn’t want to burn the hotel down,” Sloane went on. Now she was crouching on the floor and holding up one of the melted candles. “This wasn’t stuck to the floor. I think they melted the candles somewhere else and then brought them up. Do demonic cultists care about that kind of thing?”
“Maybe?” Max said. “It’s not like there’s fire exits. Maybe they’re smart demonic cultists.”
Sloane put the melted candle back on the floor, then poked at one chalk line and examined her fingertip in the beam of her flashlight. “Pretty sure you’re right that this is chalk,” she confirmed, rubbing her fingertips together. “There was an outside chance it was ash or something, maybe? But I don’t think so.”
She settled onto her knees, playing her flashlight over the circle again. Max wondered if she remembered that she was being recorded, but then she looked up, directly into the camera.
“I’d put, like, fifty bucks on bored teenagers or something,” she said.
“Are teenagers responsible enough not the burn the place down?”
“Some of them probably are.”
Max sure hadn’t been, but decided not to bring that up.
“That would help the symbols make sense. Though I’m pretty sure you can google demonic letters or something and come up with, you know, not these. Is there something else in the middle there?”
Carefully, with his camera still up, Max stepped forward. Sloane put one hand on a blank spot on the floor, frowning. Then she leaned in slowly, her denim shorts riding up over her hamstrings. Max knew he probably shouldn’t be looking, and he definitely knew he shouldn’t be fucking staring, but it was happening and Sloane wasn’t paying attention and as long as he didn’t start drooling or barking or something, he was probably fine.
