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Chapter Eight: Checking Out - Part Three
Rowan
Rowan blinked and looked around at the beautiful sun and the garden full of flowers. Red roses, delicate foxgloves, and perky daisies. Yellow flags nestled next to bluebells. Ivy towered and twined up high stone walls and twisted around elaborately carved wooden gates. Rowan inhaled. He was home.
“Rowan?” his father’s voice said from behind him.
He turned toward the familiar timbre of his voice, but without the excited expectation he’d felt before. He didn’t need to jump this time. It was just another dream. He knew that. Even so, his heart gave a small lurch when he saw his father smiling at him, pride and love shining in his eyes.
“You did it.” Fraser Drury sat next to his son on the warm stone bench in the middle of the castle’s garden. “We are so proud of you.”
“I was thinking of you when I did it,” Rowan said with a smile. But the expression didn’t last. This was a dream, he knew. But dreams were in-betweens too and there were things he had to know. “How are you? All of you? Are you all right?”
“I won’t lie to you, son,” his father said, his smile turning sad.
Rowan frowned. His father only said that when the answer was too horrible to speak of, when the news was better left unsaid. Rowan sighed. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” His father’s voice started to grow fainter as a blustering wind began to whip. “Never be sorry;” he insisted,” be safe.”
Rowan watched with tears in his eyes as his father’s figure paled, the color and vibrancy leeching out of him until only a ghost remained. Be safe, my boy, until you find your way back.
With his throat too choked to speak, Rowan just nodded. He fisted his hands at his side, fighting the urge—the desperate need—to reach out and try to hold on to the wintry wisps of his father.
But that would be useless.
And too heartbreaking. Trying to touch a ghost of a shadow. A nightmare within a dream.
So he just sat and watched his father fade.
Come back to us, Rowan. Come back.
He woke with a start, blinking up at the high, lofty ceilings of his Elysium suite. He pushed the blankets off and sat up. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, determination and resolve banishing the drowsy remains of the dream as the barest bit of sunlight pierced the still purple night.
He would make it home.
He’d do whatever he had to, but he would get back to his father and his mother and all his family.
He couldn’t allow himself to stay here. To get trapped here. Like Mei. There’d be no more distractions. No other plans. No other missions.
He would never regret helping Mei, but it was all clear now. From now on, his only goal was to get back home.
I’ll need help, he decided as he quickly changed clothes. If he wanted to leave, he needed to learn more about the hotel and how it worked before he could even attempt to figure out a spell or potion or some such magical solution.
He needed to talk to Calla. For weeks now, ever since she started trailing Mei, she’d filled notebooks with her scribblings, little facts and theories about the inner workings of the Elysium—how it tracked time and how it moved through space. He needed those notes.
Running up the stairs to the second floor with nothing but Calla’s small, slanted print filling his head, Rowan tripped on the last step as a door creaked open in the silent, still dusk. He held his breath—the memories of the twilight-tinged castle still vivid in his head—as a man crept out into the hallway. Rowan waited until the shadows gave way to the morning, letting light quickly flit over the man’s features. “Lenten?” he asked incredulously, blinking madly at the man.
The man stiffened and stayed a moment before he turned to face the boy. “Rowan.” He tried to straighten his crooked and hopelessly wrinkled suit. Rowan took in the tired, weary look on the manager’s somber face before he glanced up at the door he’d just left.
Suite 206.
Mei.
“Oh.” Rowan peeked through the slim opening into the empty room.
Not empty.
In the back of the room, he could sense, more than see, the figure quietly tidying the room.
“Oh.” Rowan couldn’t tear his eyes from the door even as Lenten stiffly, firmly, shut it behind him.
The manager nodded and swallowed, avoiding the boy’s gaze. “Suite 206 is closed for cleaning,” the man said matter-of-factly, “as Mei is no longer a guest at the Elysium.”
The manager moved past, heading up the stairs—to his own room, Rowan supposed.
Without thinking, the boy reached out an arm to stop the man. For a moment, they both stood with tense breath. Rowan looked up at the man with sorrow and sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Lenten.”
The man let out a ragged breath and smiled ruefully at him with a shrug and a shake of his still rumpled head. “Guests aren’t really guests,” he said, his voice broken as he adjusted his glasses, “if they stay forever.”
Then Lenten patted his hand before dislodging it. He turned again to hurry up the steps, leaving Rowan in the now sunlit hallway, as he disappeared into the shadows of the stairs.
THE END OF BOOK ONE
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