Page 17 of Icy Reception (SOS HOTEL #9)
CHAPTER 17
With our only destination set as “south,” we trundled on. The little pink minivan ate mile after mile of the I-35, the snowy scenes faded into memory, and by the time we stopped at the John Wayne museum—Zee’s idea to stretch his wings while also apparently needing to feed his fascination with cowboys—the Stephanie Hotel felt like a lingering but brief nightmare.
On the next leg of the journey, Zee insisted on wearing his Stetson hat, but he was happy to drive, so Victor and I let him while we got cozy in the back.
Van life wasn’t so bad. We didn’t have any hotel luxuries, but none of us had relied on things like that anyway. Back to basics was how we liked it, and it was good. We almost felt... free.
After a few more days and nights, we arrived in Tennessee, which seemed nice—I liked the whiskey and Zee guzzled Mountain Dew.
Were a few days on the road and several hundred miles enough, I wondered, during my next driving shift. Zee gazed out the back window while Victor dozed against his side, probably unaware he was snuggled up to Zee.
Zee saw me glancing in the mirror and grinned. “I should draw a dick on his forehead,” he whispered.
“Only if you want to die,” I told him.
“Pfft, he can’t take me in a fair fight.”
“When have either of you fought fair?”
Zee went on to explain how Victor had a tell right before he was about to throw down, but my attention split between him and the cop cars parked on the side of the highway, blocking in a beaten-up old yellow car. I got a brief glimpse as we passed by, at the four cops who seemed to be surrounding a much shorter troll. It probably didn’t take four cops to pacify a troll, right? I only got a glimpse of him—youngish, well-dressed, as though maybe he’d been on a night out somewhere.
It was probably nothing.
“Fuck, Kitten,” Zee growled, staring at his phone. “Pull into that rest stop. I gotta show you this. Your brother’s online.”
Oh dear.
I took the next turn-off, waking Victor as the van rumbled over divots in the asphalt, and pulled the van to a stop in the huge busy lot. The sun was setting behind a row of trees, but at the mention of Syros, a chill had run through me.
Zee poofed into the front of the van and held out his phone, showing my brother and a news ticker along the bottom of the screen: SOS HOTEL STAFF WANTED FOR MURDER .
“Who was killed?” Victor asked, leaning between the front seats.
Zee hit the unmute button, and my brother’s dulcet tones filled the van... “ Unlikely my brother had anything to do with the Stephanie Hotel chef’s murder, but fleeing the scene does not look good. ”
“Uh, excuse-moi, is it my fault he had a heart attack after experiencing the best orgasm of his life? I think not.”
“Zodiac, did you kill the chef?” Victor asked.
Zee showed him a tiny gap between his finger and thumb. “Just a bit. But it was mostly natural causes.”
“Adam Vex should turn himself in. I’m sure he doesn’t want any other uncomfortable truths brought to light...”
“That asshole.” The video ended and Zee lowered his phone.
“Uncomfortable truths?” Victor echoed.
“How I murdered my whole family, at a guess.” Heroes definitely did not do that. Agent Leomaris would have to revoke our hero status. We’d be wanted criminals. More wanted than we already were. This was bad.
“You should have murdered him harder, Kitten.” Zee huffed and flopped back into the passenger seat.
My brother was clever enough to turn our fame against us. He might even make himself out to be the good guy, the one doing the right thing.
“He’s trying to shake us out of hiding,” Victor said. “He knows our reputation is good and is keeping us safe, but if he can damage that, we’ll have nowhere left to run to. We’d have to return home.”
“Heads up... incoming.” Zee sat upright, and we all watched a troll sprint down the road into the parking lot, posh jacket and tie flapping. He saw us, or maybe just saw the bright pink van, and veered in our direction.
Wait... that was the same guy I’d seen on the side of the road. Was he running from the cops?
“Adam?” Victor asked.
“Uhm...” Cops were notoriously unfriendly to Lost Ones, and he did look scared. Why else would he be running flat out, and where was his car? “Open the door.”
Victor grabbed the sliding door handle and heaved it open just in time for the troll to fling himself inside, landing hard at Victor’s feet. Victor slid the door closed, and a moment later the two cop cars raced into the rest stop.
“Don’t tell ’em I’m here.”
“Stay down,” Victor said, in his no-nonsense tone.
“They’re parking up. Fuck... They’ve seen our van. One is coming over.” Zee turned to me. The last thing we needed was human cops recognizing us after my brother had suggested to the world we were murderers.
“Allow me...” Victor scooted past the hunched-over troll, opened the sliding door, and stepped out into the waning sunlight. There was still enough UV light to hurt him, but hopefully no more than a headache.
“What’s he doing?” the breathless troll panted.
“Probably his daddy thing,” Zee said, then sighed in a slightly lustful way.
Sure enough, Victor had met the cop eye to eye, and after a few moments the cop turned around and waved the others back into their vehicles. They pulled out of the lot a few minutes later.
Victor returned, wincing as he climbed into the blacked-out back of the van and shut the door again. He sat back and sighed. “I estimate you have several hours to make your escape. They won’t find you here with us.”
“Thank you,” the troll said to Victor, then to us, as he climbed off the floor and sat in one of the van’s back seats. “They took my car, all my stuff, everything. I didn’t do anything... they just pulled me over because I’m a troll.”
“Where are you headed?” I asked. “We could maybe give you a ride?”
“Uh . . . a ways . . .”
“We got time,” Zee shrugged. “And nothing better to do.”
“Really?” he laughed, as though embarrassed. “You guys are real nice. I don’t know if I can ask?— ”
“If it’s south, then we’re already headed in that direction,” Victor agreed.
“Okay so... I was going home, to Florida.” He winced. “Is that too far?”
From Victor’s sour expression, it seemed like a long way. But what else were we going to do? And this guy needed our help. And I was still running from my problems instead of dealing with them. “That’s fine,” I said.
“Wait... we need to know the important stuff first, like is Florida hot?” Zee asked. “Does it have cocktails and beach bars?”
“It’s not called the sunshine state for nothing. If you want sun, sea, and sand, it’s got it all.”
“But no frogs?” Zee’s voice had gotten very deep and serious.
The troll laughed. “Frogs? Ha, right. Sure, no frogs.” He snorted. “None at all. A few alligators, though.” He winked. “Maybe some giant snakes, but they mostly stick to the swamps.”
“Great then.” Zee grinned. “Sounds like my kinda place.”
He seemed happy, and I needed time to think how best to deal with my brother’s PR campaign against us. Victor didn’t seem all that taken with the idea, but it was probably the sun he wasn’t too fond of.
Zee leaned across and whispered, “Hey, so, what’s an alligator?”
I’d seen alligators in the hotel’s limited selection of reference books. “Small, fluffy creature, eats grains, very cute.”
“Aw.” Zee pouted, then nodded, reaffirming our decision to go to Florida.
“What’s your name?” I asked the troll, shoving the van into gear and steering us back out onto the highway.
“Toby Skrinde,” he said, taking a look around our basic van interior. “And uh, thanks again for this. My family will be real grateful you helped me out. They uh... might even pay you, you know... if you need some cash?”
“That’s nice,” I said. “And I’m sure anyone would have done the same. I’m Adam, this is Zee.”
“Howdy,” Zee tipped his Stetson.
“And Victor.”
“Good evening,” Victor purred.
“Hi...” Toby smiled and nodded. He seemed nice, and now we had a destination. Florida. Where it was hot and sunny and there definitely weren’t any frogs... or other kinds of wildlife that would eat us. Or local people that would eat us, for that matter.
I smiled again at Toby in the rearview mirror, but as he settled into the seat I caught a glimpse of a small, dark metal object tucked inside his jacket.
A gun.
Did trolls usually carry guns?
It was probably nothing, and everything was going to turn out just fine in sunny, no-frogs Florida.
To be continuedin SOS HOTEL 10: End of the Road.
The end, for real this time.
Read on for a spicy little snippet.