Calisa checked downstairs first—the library, the sitting room, the dining room, the kitchen—and then she went upstairs to the guest floors. “Auntie Zee?” she called softly.
It was as quiet as snow on the first and second floors.
She reached the third floor…and she heard whispers.
Familiar whispers.
As before, when she’d been crawling under the porch, as well as yesterday morning when she’d heard voices outside the bathroom, she couldn’t tell what the whisperers were saying—the syllables blurred together into a rising and falling hum.
Following the voices, she walked down the hallway and stopped in front of room twelve. The voices, still overlapping, were clearly coming from inside.
This had to be Melidor’s room. Mulligan was eight, Kendra was three, and Jack had said his was six, which left twelve for Melidor. It couldn’t be Auntie Zee’s—Jack had said the guest in room twelve liked cheese. Pressing her ear against the door, Calisa heard the whispers louder, but they still weren’t understandable. She wasn’t sure she even recognized the language, if it was one.
So far as Calisa knew, there wasn’t anyone staying with Melidor in her room. There were only three guests in the inn, Jack had said. Possibly four. No more than that. But she heard multiple voices from behind the door, in exactly the same cadence as before.
Who’s in there?
She knew one way to find out.
Knocking, she raised her voice and said, “Room service.”
No one answered.
The whispers continued.
Okay, so I need a second way to find out.Calisa knocked again, louder. She tried the knob, locked. “Hello? Who’s inthere? Auntie Zee?” It didn’t sound at all like Auntie Zee. In fact, it didn’t sound like anyone in the inn she’d heard.
She stepped back and stared at the door.
Really, it wasn’t any of her business who was inside. If they wanted to ignore her knocks, they could. But the whispers didn’t sound like a normal conversation. The voices slithered and wound around one another, overlapping like a song without a tune. She couldn’t just pretend she didn’t hear it. Could she? Should she?
Leave it alone,she told herself. She should just walk away, keep looking for Auntie Zee or try to talk to Melidor or Jack. Or she could forget the B&B’s little mysteries and just bake the promised cake. She certainly shouldn’t even be considering trying to get a peek inside.
Auntie Zee had only two rules: don’t ask questions (which Calisa kept breaking right and left) and don’t open doors (which she had not, so far, broken, unless you counted the bathroom linen closet door, which, now that she was thinking about it, almost certainly counted, given that opening it had resulted in Steve). Okay, she was failing this test hard.
Don’t do it, Calisa. Find another way to get answers.
The whispers were enticingly soft. It felt like if she could just listen harder, she’d be able to understand everything she ever wanted to know. What if she didn’t actually open the door but just cracked it a little bit? An inch. Or two. Just enough to hear what the whispers were saying, to identify how many were speaking, to see if they were guests or…What else could they be? Squatters? Hallucinations? She supposed she could behearing things. That wouldn’t be great.I won’t know until I look.Staring at the door, straining to hear, she felt as if she had to know. Her frustration over all the unanswered (and unasked) questions churned in her stomach. Auntie Zee wasn’t anywhere nearby. She’d never know if Calisa took one little peek. There was no harm. All she wanted was answers. Besides, if she was imagining voices, wouldn’t it be better to know?
Obviously, she was going to talk herself into this, so she might as well just do it.
Tiptoeing downstairs, Calisa peeked into the sitting room. She didn’t see Auntie Zee. Jack was still outside, presumably, with Melidor up in a tree. She guessed that Mulligan and Kendra were both in their rooms. In the lobby, she slipped behind the front desk.
There had to be extra keys to the guest rooms, in case of emergency. Or a master key that worked all the locks—Auntie Zee had to be able to get into all the rooms to clean and change the sheets and do the usual innkeeping stuff, and she’d need a special key for that.
It didn’t take Calisa long to find what she was looking for: it was the only item in the top drawer, a skeleton key with a silver ribbon.Clearly, Auntie Zee has never lived in Brooklyn.You didn’t just leave a key like this where anyone could find it. But she wasn’t going to complain.
With the key in hand, she scampered back upstairs. Her heart was thumping harder than it had the time she and Ethan had sneaked onto the roof of their high school.
Outside of room twelve again, Calisa had second thoughts.And then third thoughts. She was on her fifth but-what-if thought as she stuck the key into the lock and turned it.
The door creaked as she pushed it open. Just a sliver. Calisa listened as the whispers rolled over her like a wave, still indistinguishable. She couldn’t even tell how many voices, except that it seemed like a crowd.
Another inch open. She pressed her face against the crack, trying to see as much of the room as she could. Green wallpaper, with images of vines. She saw the frame of either a painting or a mirror, ornate gold-painted wood, and the corner of a rug that had a floral pattern. She didn’t see any movement, and the voices were louder but not clearer.
No one within seemed to have noticed the cracked-open door, and so Calisa opened it wider until she could see more of the room: all green. A carpet of plush green. A bed piled high with green pillows and floral blankets. She opened the door farther. A chair with green velvet upholstery. A footstool carved with the picture of a pine tree. A fireplace with a painting of a bouquet above the mantel. A dresser with a vase of daisies and roses.
It was an adorably floral and (most important) empty guest room, yet the whispers still rolled toward her. Calisa swung the door open wide and stepped inside.
