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“Do some investigating,” I suggested.

Victor made his way over to my side and leaned in close to the door too.

“Fuck. Right . . . How exactly?”

“Discreetly search the hotel,” Victor said. “Look for anything suspicious. Find Larimer but remain undetected. It is imperative nobody is aware we are the real SOS Hotel heroes.”

“Do sneaky shit, pretend to be fake Zee, and find Larry. Got it.”

“Zee?” I asked, after a few moments of quiet. I was about to tell him to be careful, but no reply came. He’d already left. I lifted my gaze to Victor’s concerned face.

“The chances of him not being seen are precisely zero,” Victor said, voicing my same thoughts.

It was highly unlikely he’d pull this off without somebody noticing him, but we could brush it off and deny that any sightings were our Zee. There were plenty of other Zodiacs staying in the hotel.

“Are you thinking a sorcerer?” I asked, steering the conversation back toward the source of all this. That kind of elemental control on this side of the veil had to be something or someone with lots of power . . . Gideon Cain kind of power.

“It’s possible, but as I made clear to Zodiac, I do not know everything, and there are pockets of Lost Ones even I have not encountered.”

So, it could be something rare, like the loup-garou? Or did we have another unlicensed dark sorcerer on our hands? I hoped not. We’d barely survived Cain.

Were we just really unlucky, or did we cause the chaos that seemed to erupt wherever we went? Was it somehow our fault people kept randomly dying when we showed up? Nobody knew we were staying at this hotel, so it couldn’t be anything related to us or the SOS Hotel. But it was clear we were now involved, and as official heroes we’d have to fix it.

“I should have picked up the anti-ward ring before we left the hotel, but I wasn’t thinking.” Pushing off the door, I paced. “I had to get you out. I knew my brother would come. There wasn’t time⁠—”

“It’s alright, Adam.” Victor captured me in his arms and reeled me in until I was tucked against his chest, surrounded by his solid, reassuring warmth. “Whatever this is, we’ll deal with it as we always do. We have faced far worse than this peculiar hotel and its questionable management.”

Sighing, I let him hold me, relishing the feel of him. “That sounds like a description of our hotel.”

“There are similarities. But the SOS Hotel is first and foremost a safe place for all, largely because of your passion to make it so.”

“You don’t think this hotel is modeled off ours, do you?” I leaned back and looked up at his contemplative face. “We make sure everyone is safe, Lost Ones and humans, but what if someone managed a hotel who didn’t have the same idea? What if instead of creating a safe place, they created the opposite?”

“You mean . . . what if the Stephanie Hotel is a trap?”

A chill ran through me. I did mean that, but when Victor said it, the idea suddenly felt very real . . . and possible.

The SOS Hotel was a sanctuary, and always would be. It had to be, or the guests would probably all eat each other. Barely controlled gremlins, shadowbeasts in the attic, safety wards, a bartending djinn, a powerful warrior demon, an ancient vampire lord, Madame Matase with her Romany heritage and vow to protect the last dragon, and an all-powerful dragon manager. The SOS Hotel worked because we all wanted the same thing—to help others—but what if all of those things had turned out to be bad?

What if The Stephanie Hotel was an evil SOS Hotel?

“Oh dear.”

CHAPTER 4

Zee was gone long enough that we began to worry he’d been caught, or kidnapped, or distracted by something shiny. Thankfully, not long after midnight, he poofed back into our room in a hail of sparks carrying an armful of plastic-wrapped mini sandwiches.

“You guys hungry?” His eyebrows bounced. He dumped the mini sandwiches on the table and tore off the wrap. “I met the chef. He was gonna throw all this out, so I rescued ’em. Destination, my fuckin’ insides.”

“You do recall your objective was to spy, which implies by its very nature that you were not to be seen?” Victor said cooly.

“Yeah, but it was just the chef. The rest of the place is deserted.” Zee flopped into a chair and tossed a tiny sandwich into his mouth, devouring it in a single bite. “I vote we stay here, ignore all the creepy shit, eat the tiny sandwiches, and check out in the morning.”

I gripped the back of a chair and glared at Zee. “We talked about this; we can’t leave. What else did you find—where’s Larimer?”

“Larry is not at the front desk, and I even rang the bell.”

Victor sighed heavily enough for the both of us. “Demon, ringing the bell is also not stealthy.”