Page 2 of Icy Reception (SOS HOTEL #9)

CHAPTER 2

Zee smothered the camera in hair wax, blinding it and muffling any microphone. We then searched the rest of the suite for more cameras, but came up empty.

Maybe the hotel didn’t have wards, so they relied on technology to keep guests behaving? It was the only reason I could come up with, but Victor didn’t seem convinced. His thousand-year-old instincts were sending out warning flares, but it was just for the one night. After some food and some rest in a real bed, we’d get back on the road tomorrow.

Unpacked, showered, and dressed in clean clothes, we headed downstairs and followed the hubbub to the bar.

“Fuck,” Zee gasped in awe. “Don’t show Tom Collins this place or he’ll quit and come work here.”

The bar was a Tom Collins dream, all shiny surfaces, well stocked with a vast array of brightly colored bottles, and lit up like a jewelry store. They even had a real bartender—not that ours wasn’t real. Just real glitchy.

I scooped us up three glasses of wine from a tray and handed two over to Zee and Victor, then we loitered near the edge of the room, getting our bearings. Larimer had been right; there were at least three other SOS Hotel management trios here, meaning our arrival didn’t raise a single eyebrow.

“Hey!” Another Zee lookalike finger-gunned us. “Bros!”

I waved, Victor scowled, and Zee finger-gunned back. The guy sashayed on, making the most of the heels he wore to put some sway into his hips. The sweep of his artificial wings almost took out a tall fake fae.

“Those heels are so last year.” Zee took a breath. “Is this weird? This is weird, right?”

“Indeed, it is peculiar.”

Zee downed his glass of wine in one gulp. “Imma tell everyone who I am.”

“Do not do that,” Victor advised. “We’re here to rest up, consider our next steps, and move on. We are not here to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves.”

“Easy for you to say, Fancy Daddy, but I feed on attention, and right now I ain’t gettin’ any.”

A pair of enthusiastic men stumbled against Victor, knocking him into me. “Wow, you guys didn’t try hard, did yah?” The blond on the left laughed. “You a vampire or an accountant?”

The pair high-fived each other.

Zee’s tail lashed. He stepped forward, but stopped when I laid a hand softly on his hip. We didn’t want to start anything. If we ignored them, they’d soon get bored and move on.

“That a wig, bro? Or are you like Native American?” Blondie got all up in Victor’s stoic face. “Where’s your pointy teeth?”

“Shows us your fangs!” the dark-haired friend urged.

They’d clearly had too much wine, which was probably why Victor hadn’t reacted... yet.

I may have stopped Zee from stepping in, but I was a heartbeat away from doing so myself. Victor could take care of himself, though.

“C’mon, you got fangs? Did you forget th?—”

Victor hissed, baring fangs that gleamed as deadly as daggers, and the two tipsy bros grabbed hold of each other and bolted, stumbling into the crowd that soon swallowed them up.

“Perhaps I shall go hunting later,” Victor said, slow-blinking after the pair of idiots.

Zee snorted, but his tail lashed. “Do you think the barman serves cocaine chasers?”

“I doubt it.”

“Fuck I miss Tom.” Zee gulped his wine.

“Zodiac,” Victor rumbled. “Has it occurred to you that you likely have a drug addiction?”

“Pfft, drugs are great. How else am I gonna deal with my PTSD, ADHD, and all the other acronyms I’m collecting?”

“Therapy?” Victor suggested.

Speaking of therapists. “We could call Tom?” I suggested, steering clear of the drugging-customers conversation. “See how he’s getting on.” I knew from first-hand experience that the SOS Hotel did not run like a well-oiled machine; it ran like a possessed wreck about to blow at any second.

“Last time I called him he told me to go hang myself by my balls, so imma pass.”

“That’s his love language.” Tom was still angry we’d left him behind, but someone had to run the hotel in our absence.

Zee snorted. “Imma go find snacks so I can eat my feelings.”

“Zodiac,” Victor said in his daddy voice, pulling on Zee as though the word was a physical leash. “Be careful. There’s an underlying sense of deception within these walls, the motive for which has eluded me.”

“Always am, Fancy Fangs.” Zee saluted, two fingers at his right horn, then plowed into the crowd. As the tallest person in the room, he should be easy to keep track of. However, it was strange to see multiple wing-tips and Zee-horns in the crowd too.

“Adam, now that we are presumably some distance from your brother, have you considered how we might defeat him?” Victor asked, taking a sip of the wine and wincing, then setting it aside. We hadn’t talked much in the van about my brother. There hadn’t been much to say, other than if Syros found us, Victor and Zee would be dead. And I didn’t want to think about that... or talk about it, or deal with it in any way.

“Oh sure, lots of considering.” I nodded and swigged my wine. We hadn’t talked about Syros, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been thinking about him while on the road—hour after hour, mile after mile. What should I do about my psychopathic brother who was back from the dead and really wanted to eat me, Victor, and Zee, and probably everyone else on this side of the veil too? Dragons weren’t known for their peace-loving qualities. We mostly just took what we wanted and ate anyone who stood in our way. There had never been a nice dragon... until me.

Even I wasn’t all that nice sometimes.

“And?” Victor prompted.

“And . . . what?”

“Your solution, my dear.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Uhm.” The answer was simple. I gulped more wine, and said, “Keep running.”

“I see.” Victor took a breath and held it as he thought about how best to convince me to stop running and make a stand. Probably. “While I appreciate you know your brother better than anyone, I fear running is not a long-term solution. ”

“It’s worked so far.” I raised my glass to my lips, expecting more wine, but I’d emptied it already.

“Adam—”

“And now, for the pleasure of your eyes and ears... and some other parts too.” A woman wearing some kind of warrior outfit had climbed onto the bar. “Put your hands together for the one... the only... Zodiac!” she announced. The entire crowd erupted in applause and cheers.

Oh dear.

So much for not revealing who we really were. We should have expected it, though. Zee couldn’t resist showing off in front of an audience.

A growl from Victor indicated he’d thought the same.

However, the man clambering onto the bar to the music of “Spicy Margarita” was not a seven-foot-tall lust demon known for interesting ways to eat cucumbers, but was instead the much shorter Zee lookalike from earlier. His fake wings slipped. He hooked them back on, waved at the audience, cleared his throat, and began to sing.

As soon as he began to belt out “Spicy Margarita” in a voice that could curdle milk, I knew we were in trouble. There was no way Zee would stand by and let someone slaughter his reputation this way. It wasn’t possible. This would be torture for him. He’d have to go up there; his pride was at stake.

I searched for his horns over the top of the crowd. There were plenty of lookalikes, but no sign of the originals. “Where’s Zee?”

Victor scanned the crowd too, his expression growing concerned. “Hm, he does not appear to be here.”

Maybe he’d gone outside in pursuit of more snacks?

We left the bar and the tinny warbling of fake Zee’s terrible singing for the quieter foyer, where a few groups of people hung around sipping wine and eating chips from the many free bowls dotted on the tables.

“Uhm, hi.” I interrupted a group of dress-up trolls. “Have you seen a real tall demon come through here?”

“The tall Zee lookalike? Sure. He followed two guys outside.”

“Two guys?” Why would Zee take off without telling us?

“Was one of the men blond?” Victor interrupted. “And were the pair slightly inebriated?”

“Maybe. I guess... Hey!” The troll’s eyes brightened. “Are you two from the SOS Hotel?”

“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled, then headed for the main doors. We had a new problem. Zee hadn’t gone for snacks; he’d gone to teach two humans a lesson in vampire etiquette.

“This is unnecessary,” Victor grumbled beside me.

“Hm, it’s kind of cute.”

Victor almost missed a stride. “How is Zodiac potentially threatening two innocent humans cute?”

“He’s protecting your honor. I think it’s sweet.”

“My honor is fine. The last thing I need is Zodiac terrifying two intoxicated humans on my behalf when I am perfectly capable of doing exactly that without assistance.”

“He’s looking out for you.” It was adorable, and a quick sideways glance at Victor revealed his tiny smile. He thought it was kind of adorable too, but would never admit it. They’d come a long way from being bitter enemies.

We pushed through the doors, stepping onto the street and into an inch of snow. A blast of cold wind wrapped around us, whipping Victor’s hair and flapping my shirt, and big fluffy snowflakes landed in Victor’s dark locks. Blustery waves of falling snow washed down the street. The storm had come in fast . It was a good thing we’d stopped when we had or we might have been stranded on the road.

Victor squinted into the driving wind. “There. ”

The cold drove into my bones, rattling my teeth and chilling my blood. As a dragon, I definitely preferred basking under warm sunlight.

“Adam?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just w-wasn’t expecting snow.” I brushed my arms, trying to friction some heat into them as snowflakes pattered against my face and the cold bit into my lips and ears.

Victor grabbed my hand and led me up the crunchy sidewalk toward the three blurry figures up ahead. After a few steps, Zee’s horned silhouette gave him away, but as we trudged closer, it seemed as though the two people he stood with weren’t moving at all.

“Zee!?” I called over the gusting wind.

“Kitten?” He hurried over, shielding his eyes from the buffeting snowflakes. His shirt flapped in the wind and his damp, snow-dusted hair fluttered around his horns. “Before you say anything, they were like it when I got here.”

“Like what?” Victor asked, then broke from my grasp and strode the rest of the way to the two motionless figures.

Zee’s face was grim, with no sign of his signature smirk. I already sensed what I’d find, but ventured ahead anyway.

The two men from the bar stood on the sidewalk, clutching each other, their last moments of fear frozen on their faces. Literally... frozen. Ice crystals sparkled on their lashes and in their hair, and snow had gathered in the creases of their clothing.

Zee reached out, pinched a lock of frozen hair and snapped it clean off, then quickly tossed it away. “Ick.”

Oh dear.