“Wait, what the hell?” Jon’s voice turned my head.
I swerved closer to him, followed tightly by Zia and Rowan as Jon stood before one of the guest bedrooms, mouth agape.
Warm lamplight illuminated a spacious single suite with a queen bed. The air shivered with fresh magic, bedsheets fluttering as if they were just settling.
The bedding, the wallpaper—all of it held shades of ocean blue and forest green. Our shared favorite colors. The wall boasted framed posters of the dearest movies he had shared with me, and there was even a stocked bar with rare rum and small-batch beers that he wandered to at once, marveling at the labels. I was certain I’d find even more personal touches for us both when I took the time to explore. Hopefully, clothes were somewhere in here. Having been forced to abandon our vehicle outside the hotel, we’d sacrificed everything we’d stored in the trunk—weapons, clothes, my stash of trinkets I’d collected from motel rooms over the months.
I flew down the hall to the next room to confirm whether Cliff’s was also perfectly outfitted to suit his taste. His room, to my surprise, was rather…tame. Despite the tension lingering between us like a stain, a part of me was prepared to laugh when I stumbled into a veritable brewery-turned-bedroom. But that was not the case.
Part of me was not even sure it washisuntil I saw the way his face changed when he tentatively stepped into the room. The walls were a dusty rust color, with a plush armchair by a floor-to-ceiling window covered with long, velvet curtains. Hazy images of landscapes were framed on the wall. Upon closer inspection, I saw that these were all places we had passed through at onepoint or another on our journey. The blurred edges of each still picture almost made it seem like they’d been pulled straight from his memory.
All of it was seemingly built for comfort and quiet. I gave Cliff a sidelong, curious stare as he pulled back the heavy curtains to peer outside.
Hearing Zia give a cry of delight, I peered into the next room and found it absolutely bursting with greenery. It may as well have been a contained forest, vines crawling along the walls.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Zia gasped, squeezing Rowan’s arm.
He shrugged, his face a mask of something that could only be described as a begrudgingly impressed glare. His dark eyes caught on a flowering plant in the corner, and his mouth twitched like he was wrestling back a smile.
I flew down the hall to look into the last door on the right, the only guestroom unoccupied. This one was dark, unremarkable, as though it knew its guest had not yet arrived.
I knew who it would belong to.
Resting my hand on the doorway, I wondered what it would look like when Father returned with Hazel and Mother. Iris wallpaper to suit Mother’s favorite flowers? Blue hues on the bedding and carpets that matched Father and Hazel’s eyes?
The image of him sat heavily in my mind. Hewascoming back. Would he really have them with him?
Have they known all this time?
A stab of jealousy panged me as I thought of Hazel and Mother knowing of Father’s miraculous resurrection months before me. How long had they been reunited?
But to be fair,Iwas the one who went and got banished from Elysia and ran away with two human monster hunters.
We would certainly have a lot to talk about, but almost everything paled in comparison to the news that Hazel was officially an animal affinity. The thought made me swell—firstwith pride, then with the threat of tears. I’d always had my suspicions, of course, but I desperately wished I had been there the moment my sister discovered it.
Swallowing hard, I pulled away from the empty room after imagining it with a wide window, one where Hazel could watch the birds swooping through the air.
23
Sylvia
After freshening up as best I could, I wandered out of the guest hall in time to look over the railing and see Jon coming back inside through the front door. I had little doubt what he’d been doing: taking multiple laps around the property, ensuring it was safe from stray monsters or unwanted tails.
As he passed under the stairway, tension lined his shoulders on his way to the kitchen.
I found him exploring the walk-in pantry. Like everything else in the house, it was remarkably welcoming and stocked. Non-perishables lined the shelves like they’d been waiting for him. Perking up at the sound of my wings, Jon frowned over his shoulder at me.
“Does this look like crushed-up bugs to you?” he asked, indicating the labeled spice jar in his hand.
“I doubt Delilah is mixing up her potion ingredients with oregano.” I glanced behind me warily. “Did you get permission to rummage through her kitchen? I’d hate for us to be thrown out in the snow for being rude.”
“She said she wasn’t much of a cook and offered to throw instant ramen on the stove. She was more than happy to pass the job to me when I told her I could put something together.” Though he said it nonchalantly, there was an unmistakable focus to the way he selected his ingredients from the shelves.
As he stepped out and prepared the burners with pots and pans, I nearly teased him for choosing to labor over a hot stove after fighting for his life, but then I remembered who I was looking at. Hunters had odd ways of soothing their nerves. The frantic gleam in his eyes began to ease when he stirred paprika and cumin into a simmering pot of red beans.
This was where he found solace, though it wasn’t airtight.
A news broadcast drifted from the TV in the adjacent sitting room. At once, I understood why the volume was being turned up. The newscasters spoke of an upturned, obliterated shuttle.
