Page 11 of Icy Reception (SOS HOTEL #9)

CHAPTER 11

We raced back down the narrow spiral staircase, and near the final few steps Zee poofed ahead. Only a few seconds behind, I stumbled into the cellar and stopped dead.

Victor and Stephanie Frostweaver sat at a little foldaway table, drinking tea from china cups.

Zee gaped at them.

After everything we’d just learned—the decades of people-snatching, the evil hotel staff, how the hotel itself was a trap—Victor was drinking tea with the Big Bad.

“Is something wrong?” Victor asked, lifting the cup from its saucer to take a civilized sip.

Stephanie blinked innocently across the little table from him, as though she had no idea she’d just tried to freeze us inside Wesley’s room, or that they both sat just a few feet from frozen people in glass jars.

Victor was engaging in peace talks with someone who believed peace meant surrender.

I had to get him out of here.

“Uh, Victor . . . I just need a moment . . . over here . . . in private? ”

“Of course.” He set his cup down on its saucer with a sharp chink and began to rise from the flimsy wooden chair, but as he straightened, he jerked back. His hand was stuck to the chair’s arm. Ice glistened on his fingers, and anchored the chair to the floor too, so he couldn’t even free himself there.

Victor tugged harder as ice surged up the chair legs, reinforcing its hold.

“Hey, evil Elsa?—”

Stephanie clicked her fingers, cutting Zee off. Ice gagged his mouth. His eyes blew wide. His tail lashed. A grumbling snarl rumbled from deep in his chest.

Anger simmered in my own chest. “Stop.” I stepped forward. “We weren’t going to hurt you.”

“As if you fools could hurt me.” She smiled into her china cup and took another little sip of tea.

It appeared we’d been played. Stephanie was no weak, confused, afraid ancient one. She was what happened when an ancient fae spent centuries locked away.

Victor snarled, baring his fangs. “Adam, it appears diplomacy has failed.”

A wave of screaming announced Wesley’s arrival. He dashed from the staircase, raised the silver service bell, and brandished it as though it were a deadly sword. “Tell me where Eddie is or I press the bell!”

The bell had some kind of power besides just opening the secret stairwell? The frown on Stephanie’s pale face suggested it might. Or Wesley had lost his mind.

“Put the bell down,” Stephanie said cooly.

“No! Tell me where he is! Is he in one of these rooms? Eddie!?” Wesley dashed to the first chamber and peered through the narrow window. “Eddie...” He ran to the next door, then the next. “He’s here, he must be.”

“So tiresome,” Stephanie sighed. She raised a dainty pale hand and flicked her wrist. Ice surged from Victor’s frozen chair and climbed Wesley’s legs, capturing him. He yelped, startled and stuck. The ice kept climbing. In seconds it would consume all of him, then he’d be the latest addition to her collection.

I lunged, snatched the bell, and chimed it.

Ding!

Stephanie flinched, turning her face away. Teeth gritted, she snarled.

But the ice had stopped climbing Wesley’s body.

Ding!

Stephanie’s blue eyes blazed and fixed on me. “I never did like dragons.”

“Me neither.” Ding-ding-ding!

The bell’s chiming resonance built into a sonic wave, each chime lapping at the last, getting louder and louder. Stephanie clasped her hands to her head. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. Ding-ding-ding! Ice exploded—the ice holding Victor, the ice gag over Zee’s mouth, the ice gripping Wesley’s legs—all of it burst into a million pieces, smattering us with tiny icy teeth. I flinched away from the countless cuts, and when I looked back Zee, Victor, and Wesley were free, and Stephanie had vanished in a cloud of fading vapor.

The silver bell gleamed in my hand. “Huh. It worked.” The clues really had been a failsafe.

“Adam, are you alright?” Victor asked, moving to my side. He swiped a dribble of blood from my cheek and eyed the glistening red drop on the end of his thumb.

“Yeah, fine . . . They’re just surface cuts.”

“Good.” He quickly licked the blood away and caught my gaze, hinting he might need some more of that later.

I turned to Zee. He looked fine, but angry. “Hey, you alright?”

“The ice bitch silenced me. I am shooketh. Nobody silences me, Kitten. ”

I showed him the bell and watched his eyes go big. “Keep this safe, and press it anytime you like.”

He took it and beamed. “Fuck, yes.” Ding!

“Eddie!” Wesley threw open one of the chamber doors and vanished inside. “Eddie! What has she done to you...”

Following Wesley inside revealed the man from the photographs pinned on Wesley’s murder board, now illuminated in a frosted-glass container. Like those on the sidewalk, he’d been frozen in a moment of surprise, his mouth and eyes wide.

“We have to get him out—help me get him out,” Wesley begged, as his voice cracked.

I glanced at the others. Of course we were going to help. But there seemed to be only one way to free Eddie, and that was to break the glass, which could also break him. Assuming he was even somehow alive.

“Wesley,” Victor’s warm, measured voice brought some much needed calmness into the room. “We will do what we can.” He gripped the younger vampire’s shoulder and drew him back, away from the large glass container.

Zee and I positioned ourselves on either side of Eddie’s frosted prison. “You ready?” I asked him.

Zee nodded.

“On three. One, two, three?—”

We heaved together. Eddie’s glass container rocked forward, then tipped and fell, smashing across the hard floor and spilling frozen Eddie—intact—onto the floor too. Thankfully, the man hadn’t shattered, but he did seem corpse stiff.

Wesley tore from Victor and dropped to Eddie’s side. He hovered a hand over him, then grasped his frozen arms. With a sob, Wesley flung his glare at me. “Aren’t you a dragon? Can’t you warm him up?”

“It doesn’t work like that. I’d have to shift and there’s no room...” I trailed off to the sounds of Wesley’s sobs. He knew it wouldn’t work. Well, this was awful. It could have been Victor or Zee in one of those prisons, or even me if Stephanie had acted fast enough. I was not immune to ice.

“Quickly,” Victor knelt and scooped the frigid Eddie into his arms. “There is a faint heartbeat. If we raise his body temperature slowly, he may yet survive.” Victor vanished, I assumed heading to our room with Eddie.

Wesley was quick to follow, and he vanished too.

Zee and I stood in the middle of the cellar with the chamber doors all around us, Zee’s tail carving through the wispy mist sloshing around our ankles. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.

“Yeah.” We headed into the next chamber and grabbed the glass container there. “On three.”

It was going to be a long night.