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“Not by choice,” she replied finally. “The hotel was booked, so he took the couch.”
“Uh huh.”
Jeremy circled the room slowly, looking at everything. He was always very good at taking things in. His sense of detail was almost detective-like in that regard.
“So you guys a thing?” he asked casually. “Or…”
“Save it,” snapped Kara.
“Because I know you two once—”
“That was a thousand years ago.” She had the urge to put her hands on her hips, but realized it would only appear defensive. Especially to Jeremy.
He shrugged. “Not my business anyway,” he said.
“No, it’s really not.”
“It’s not like I—”
“Believe me,” Kara interjected, “I begged Xiomara to come here alone. She insisted I take him. Hell, I didn’t even know you were here.”
“She did,” said Jeremy.
“Obviously. And obviously she thought fit not to tell us.” Kara grumbled. “Just another big ‘fuck you Kara’ to add onto all the other ‘fuck yous’ over the years. She’s probably back at the Blackstone right now, laughing her ass off.”
Jeremy chuckled. “Not probably. Definitely.”
“The point is, I wanted this assignment all to myself,” said Kara. She tried not to appear nervous as he picked up one of the pillows. “Now can we get on with this?” she barked. “I thought you wanted to see where it happened.”
Jeremy put down the pillow and nodded. Kara launched back into the same tale she’d told him on the way up — how the strange woman had appeared and then disappeared last night. She described what she looked like, what she was wearing. How loudly she screamed in her face, and the cold feeling of dread that practically locked up her chest.
“Here’s where she left,” said Kara, pulling back the wallpaper. “She floated right through this wall.”
Jeremy smoothed his hand over the plaster, just as Logan had done the night before.
“There was a door here.”
“No shit Sherlock?”
Jeremy made a face at her. It was very satisfying.
“So what’s on the other side of this?”
“Maintenance closet,” Kara said. “Or so I’m told.”
“Let’s check it out.”
The maintenance closet next to room 207 was locked. It took Jeremy less than a minute to pick it open.
“Forgot you could do that,” Kara smiled.
She watched as he slipped the feeler pick and torsion bar back into his tiny lockpicking set. He held up the thin leather sheath.
“What, you don’t remember this?”
“Of course I do.”
Jeremy’s lockpicks had come in handy for them back at the Manor’s huge estate. They used them to unlock doors that hadn’t been open in decades, to explore strange hallways and places they really shouldn’t have been. And of course, they came in handy whenever they wanted to be alone. To be out of the way of prying eyes…
