Page 34 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

“Hudson Ward, this is Alice Seastairs, our furnishings consultant. Alice, this is Hudson, our construction project manager.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alice said, smiling brightly.

Hudson gave Alice a respectful once-over while shaking her hand. He looked at Collin. “I get it now.”

“Would you excuse us, please?” Collin asked, his exasperated huff making Hudson laugh. He made a hand motion and the crew followed him out of the suite.

“What is this?” she gasped. “Is this the tub?”

“No, because my insurer wouldn’t give us a bond if we installed an extremely old glass bathtub in a guest room,” he admitted, making her laugh.

“But this is as close as I could get, molded out of Plexiglas and plastic and all sorts of sturdy things that won’t hurt guests or my floors or the infrastructure of the building—but looks like the real thing. ”

“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, slipping her arms around his waist.

“You mentioned that cowslips are considered really valuable in fairy lore, and they’re used to symbolize something precious found,” he murmured.

She gave him a warm smile and practically melted against him.

“That, combined with what you said about the tub being the bathing place for a fairy queen—I thought it was an appropriate theme.”

She leaned her head against his chest. “It matters. That you listened, you remembered.”

He cupped the back of her head and kissed her. Suddenly, she pulled away. “Can I be the first one to try it out?”

“I was kind of hoping I could be in there with you when that happens,” he purred.

She bit her lip and made what he could only describe as “heart eyes” at him. “I am so looking forward to seeing you trying to fold yourself into that flower tub.”

“I live for your amusement, however I can make it happen,” Collin told her.

She practically squealed. “You realize that it’s going to become a huge booking point, right? Guests in all the other suites are going to be jealous they don’t have one.”

“We’re going to install this one and see if it works. If it does, copies are going in all the other suites too.”

“You took my suggestion that seriously?” she asked.

“Of course, I did. I mean, it’s not exactly true to period and it’s not going to be as profound in the other suites without fairy flower connotations, but oof —”

She threw herself into his arms and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled at her, bumping her nose with his. “And I think we need to talk about the guy in the doorway again.”

She turned and winced at the sight of the same bloodied man who’d been staring at them that night in her room. It was weird, seeing a ghost in the daylight. It made his lanky grayscale form not as scary, he supposed, and less “lurky.”

Alice slowly detached herself from Collin. “Oh, hi. Samuel, right?”

He nodded and tried to open his mouth, but only a croak emerged. He huffed in frustration and clutched at his throat.

“OK, OK,” she said, approaching him slowly. “Do you have something to show us?”

He nodded and motioned for them to follow.

“Again, with the following ghosts without question,” Collin muttered.

Samuel Proctor led them down the sunlit, recently de-oranged hallways.

The crews had only primed the walls, waiting until construction was finished to give them the final coat, but they just couldn’t stand working inside a tangerine hellscape anymore.

It was strange, walking through the hotel with work crews milling about, completely unaware of the ghost in their midst. They couldn’t see him because they weren’t prepared to, and because Samuel didn’t want them to see him.

But now, thanks to Collin’s connection to Alice, he could see more. Not everything, but more.

Samuel led them back to the service hall near the guesthouse, to the kitchen storage. Collin unlocked the door before Samuel could glide to it. He flipped on the light switch. Samuel stopped just short of the brick and stared at them, his lip curling back in seething rage as he pointed to the wall.

Pointing to a wall, Collin said, “I looked at the blueprints and the entrance to the basement used to be behind this wall. But in the seventies, they rerouted staff foot traffic down the hall because the staircase was made of wood and was becoming a hazard.”

She followed him as he dashed back out into the hallway, fumbling with the key ring.

“And apparently, someone on the staff tried to store contraband down there and my grandfather wanted the access out in the open,” he muttered as he unlocked the door.

“What kind of contraband?” Alice asked.

“I’m not sure, but illegal substances come to mind, considering that one of the previous owners stored a whole bunch of illegal Canadian whiskey down there, ‘waiting out’ Prohibition. But I suppose anything’s possible.”

The cold, dry smell of concrete and dust hit them full in the face as they carefully picked their way down the cinder-block steps. Overhead fluorescent light cast a corpse-like green pall over them both. But Samuel, who was waiting for them at the bottom, somehow looked the same.

The basement was walled off into compartments, if for no other reason than to support the structure.

It was ten degrees cooler down there, below the Michigan permafrost. And it was relatively clean.

For all Robert’s faults, at least he was organized.

The various storage rooms were meticulously labeled.

The Christmas decorations, only used in “low-snow” years, were stacked neatly against their lakeside wall, their cords coiled and tethered.

There wasn’t anything particularly creepy about the space, aside from the bad lighting and the ghost standing by the far wall, under the restaurant section, staring angrily at the wall.

“The wine cellar?” Collin muttered. It was one of the oldest sections of the hotel, made from rough-hewn stone as opposed to concrete.

“Where the illicit whiskey was kept?” Alice asked.

“No, it’s older than that,” Collin replied. “It goes back to the original footprint of the hotel.” He unlocked the wine cellar door with an old-fashioned skeleton key.

“How big is that key ring?” she marveled. He wiggled his eyebrows.

The wine cellar was carefully lit, so as not to expose the bottles to damaging wavelengths. They were stacked on fluted shelves by vintage and, like the rest of the basement, recently swept and dusted.

“Well, this is kind of disappointing,” Alice muttered.

Samuel was standing by the wall left of the door, pointing, looking angry.

Alice frowned. “The room isn’t even.”

“Sorry, what?” Collin asked.

Alice nodded to the door. “The door isn’t centered to the room. The wall is three feet closer to the door on this side than the other.”

“Maybe it was a load-bearing wall issue?” he guessed. “There’s no architectural rule that doors have to be centered, I suppose.”

“All of the other doors down here are,” Alice noted, walking out of the room. Collin followed. She was right, of course. The door was off-kilter, and there was no discernible reason for it. But that could have been an issue of stonemasonry, materials, or the whims of an architect.

Samuel didn’t follow them out of the room, Collin noticed, just stood inside, glaring at the wall.

Behind them, they heard a female voice pleading, “Please, no.”

They turned to see Victoria backing away from the wine cellar door as if the room contained all her nightmares.

She looked terrified. All the pink seemed to drain out of Alice’s cheeks as she watched Victoria’s face contort in dread.

She didn’t just look scared. She looked heartbroken , wretched.

And she was staring at the spot where Samuel had just been hovering.

“Victoria?”

The lady ghost didn’t respond.

“Why isn’t she responding?” Collin asked. “All the ghosts at the house responded.”

“Victoria, can you hear me, or is this like…an echo?” Alice asked loudly. “Are you not really here?”

When Victoria didn’t respond, Collin turned to the wine cellar.

Samuel had disappeared. Were there rumors about him killing Victoria?

Had they chased him off the island? If Collin had killed someone, he wouldn’t be able to bear to stick around and watch the repeating record of the worst of his sins play out like a bad movie.

Victoria turned on her high-heeled boot and ran, not for the newer staircase they’d used, but for the far side of the basement, to where the original staircase stood.

They heard heavier footsteps chasing her, and saw the outline of a thin, long-legged shadow chasing her from the wine cellar, passing them.

“So, an echo.” Alice nodded. When Collin just blinked at her, she explained, “She’s not really there.

She experienced something so traumatic that it left a sort of psychic stain on the location, and we’re seeing that play out over and over.

The ghosts at the house are present . It’s like a hologram versus interacting with someone in person. ”

“Ghosts as people,” Collin said, blowing out a breath with a contemplative quirk to his brow. “A whole new world.”

“It’s strange, but you’ll get used to it.” She tried not to let the little pat on his shoulder come across as too condescending. “And she seemed afraid of Samuel. Samuel was delivering wine racks the day before he disappeared. The day before Victoria’s body was found.”

“Well, that’s a lot of circumstantial…circumstances,” he muttered. “So… What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Alice said.

“Are we ever going to have a romantic moment without it being interrupted by a ghost?” he asked.

“There’s probably a fifty-fifty chance with me, from here on out,” she admitted. “Can you live with that?”

He pulled her close, hugging her tight. “Yes, I can.”