Page 22 of The Legend of Lovers Hollow

Roger tuts. “My, my, you must’ve really upset him. Should I ask what you did?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I say desperately. “Look, Roger. Ellis has gone to a lot of trouble to get new guests in. I can’t let anyone see me roaming the hallways like a pastel wildebeest.”

“The question is, why are you roaming the corridors in that rather fetching robe? Whose bed have you just crawled out of?”

I glower at him. “Like you don’t know.”

“True.” He takes a drag of his cigarette and waves his hand. “There’s not much that goes on in this hotel I don’t know about. Would you like to know about the kinky Germans in room 309? It’s positively salacious.”

“No, I want you to let them have their privacy and help me find some clothes,” I grate out between clenched teeth.

“You’re even grumpier in the mornings. You should pop downstairs and have some coffee. Aggie’s just brewed a fresh pot.”

“I’d love to, but you know what I’d love even more?”

Roger stares at me.

“Clothes.”

He huffs out a loud breath and rolls his eyes. “Good grief, you fleshies are so touchy about casual nudity.”

“I’m not nude. I just want some damn clothes,” I point out in exasperation.

“Fine.” Roger dissolves into a strange noncorporeal form that looks a bit like fog. It swirls down the corridor, then rematerialises into Roger’s form twenty paces from me. He cocks his hand on his hip and stares at me expectantly. “Well, are you coming or not?”

With a cautious glance behind me to make sure no one can see, I hurry after him. He leads me into a disused section of the fourth floor, then up a winding servants’ staircase to a large storage room.

It’s freezing in here. I can feel my balls shrivelling up and trying to climb back inside my body. My breath is expelled as a fine mist, and I shudder hard.

“There’s no heating up here,” Roger says as he skips lightly across the room, shimmying between boxes, trunks, and bits of old furniture. “And even if there was, they probably couldn’t afford to heat it. No one ever comes up here anymore.”

“Then why are we here?”

“This!” He points to an old steamer trunk that wouldn’t have looked out of place being loaded onto the Titanic.

I stare first at the trunk and then at Roger. “Do I even want to know what’s in there?”

He gives me a saucy wink and I sigh. The heavy scent of mothballs smacks me in the face as I open the lid and peer at the contents before raising my gaze to his.

“Seriously?”

“It’s this”—he waves a hand in front of me—“or that.” He points to the trunk.

I sigh again.

A few minutes later, I’m staring down at myself in absolute horror. I’m wearing a pink, ladies blouse from the eighties made from some sort of slippery satin material that makes my skin cringe. It’s got long sleeves and a ribbon that’s tied in a limp bow attached to the collar.

Over the top of the god-awful blouse is a tan, knee-length, belted suede coat with an enormous, and I meanenormous, collar of matching golden fur that resembles a lion’s mane. I feel like I should be in an old episode ofStarsky & Hutch.

And if all of that isn’t traumatic enough, I’m wearing wide bell-bottoms made from patches of denim in various shades of blue, which really sets off the bright blue plastic eyes of the unicorns poking out from underneath.

“I want to die.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Roger huffs. “Being dead isn’t nearly as bad as those trousers.”

“I can’t go around dressed like this. I’m one bushy moustache and a bad accent away from a seventies porno.”

He bounces on the spot and claps his hands in delight. “Oh, Morgan, you’re too much fun.”