Chapter Three – Ryder

 

A witch, huh?

Curses?

And the most haunted town in America?

Shit, this little stopover for the night was turning into a bigger case than I’d ever imagined Philadelphia being.

Not to mention the gorgeous, fair-haired woman behind the bar. Even in the bar’s dim lights, the gold in her locks had shone brighter than anything else in the room. Petite, but still with all the curves in the right places. Good bartender, too. She was slinging the drinks better than I ever had during my little stint between school and joining the military. And, I’ll be damned if she couldn’t take charge of that crowd, in spite of her size. Almost reminded me of my drill sergeant, back in basic.

Personality-wise, of course. The owner of Stan & Sons was a hell of a lot prettier.

Realizing I’d never gotten the beautiful owner’s name, I almost turned around right then and walked back to the bar.

But still, as I moved through the pile of humanity crammed into Stan & Sons, I couldn’t help but think about why I’d never heard of Camelot, or their rash of hauntings.

And what about the woman I’d hit on the bridge outside of town? I knew what I saw, even if there was no evidence of any of it happening. What made it even stranger was that the woman I’d run down hadn’t been like any ghost I had experience with. If she was the ghost of this Winifred O’Bannon woman, and actually the ghost of a witch, could she have some kind of special properties to her spectral existence? Ones I wasn’t familiar with?

I didn’t know for sure, but I could call either Kris or Tabitha in the morning, and they’d likely have the answers. Of course, what if this was just another wild goose chase, like my trip to Philadelphia had ended up being? If I didn’t have anything definitive, I was going to look like an idiot all over again.

No, I needed more information. I needed to have a grasp of the town history, of the reports of sightings. All I had at the moment was a half-dream about hitting some woman on the road, and her body disappearing afterwards. I’d definitely have to find somewhere to spend the night so I could poke around more tomorrow.

Now, as I took a breath of cool night air, the whoops and hollers of the roaming crowd of revelers and the sound of the Wizard of Oz song about dead witches set to a techno beat filled the streets. Up and down the road in both directions, kids in their early twenties roamed like they were at some Mardi Gras of the north, drinking and carrying on like it was Fat Tuesday.

My eyes settled on the little hotel, a wide, two-story clapboard building with sets of large bay windows set into the front, across the way from Stan & Sons. The mountain rose behind the building, stretching up into the night. A large placard, painted white with a red border and lettering, stood off to the side of the parking lot. Camelot High Street Hotel. In the window hung a neon “No Vacancy” sign, its glaringly red words proclaiming to the world that the inn was full.

I squared my shoulders and headed across the road. I still wasn’t exactly sure how I’d managed to find a parking spot anywhere in town, especially with the way the crowd seemed about two sizes too large for the city limits. And I still wasn’t exactly sure, either, about how I was going to get a room here, or any other place, in town.

If worst came to worst, I’d just pack my gear up in the trunk of the Charger and leave it parked in the woods somewhere no one would stumble across it. While the idea of spending my night on a tree branch wasn’t really all that appealing, you sometimes had to take what you could get. Lord knows I’d spent plenty with my back propped against a rock, my rifle across my legs. Spending one stretched out on an oak branch wouldn’t even make me bat an eye.

Though it might make any passing farmer that happened to catch sight of me bat one, that was for sure.

I stepped into the full parking lot, slipped between an Audi and a BMW. Something told me all the fancy luxury cars crammed into the small rectangle of blacktop belonged to out-of-towners, and not the locals.

I headed up to the heavy, ornately carved front door, coming to a stop as I looked at the handiwork. The yellow porch light illuminated the work from overhead, casting a glow over the sculpted profile of a man with two faces, just below a large frosted window set into the door. One face looked forward and into the future, and one always looked backward. Just like all of us.

After I’d left the military, I’d been recruited by a man named Col. Harrington to join a government agency named the Paranormal Research Board, where I’d fought supernatural threats to our nation. My training there had been steeped in mythology and stories, research about old gods and religions, creatures that reared their heads every now and then.

“Janus,” I said to myself as I reached for the door handle and pulled it open.

I stepped inside the small lobby, with its wood paneling on all sides and thin carpet on the floor, headed right for the receptionist desk with a little bell on the edge. I leaned against it with one arm and popped the bell once with my hand, the little silver service instrument seeming to reverberate through the whole building, and the high, tinny noise humming in my sensitive ears for longer than I’d expected.

The light in here was better than in Stan & Sons, but not by much. During the day, it probably got plenty of daylight, but at night, the bulbs of faux gas lamps set into the wall did little to brighten the interior. Two hallways and a small set of stairs led off the room, making me feel like I was at the center of a spider’s hospitality web, where everything was accessible at any given moment. Behind the desk was what looked like an office door, closed now, that led farther back into the building.

From behind the shut door, I heard muffled movement, and then the doorknob turning.

I turned my attention back to the desk.

“Good evening,” said a woman in a sweet voice as she stepped out from the little office, straightening her work blouse. She was tall and a little older, but her slender features were no less striking because of her age. It was hard to tell for sure how old she was, or even get in the ballpark, because of her coal black hair she wore loose down her back, which the years hadn’t even tried to touch. In fact, I’d have put her in her early to mid-thirties, if I hadn’t seen her eyes. Something about them, the little hints of crow’s feet at the corners maybe, seemed to telegraph that she was older than I’d initially thought. Or maybe it was just the eyes themselves, and how those hazel orbs seemed to look through you with a sense of purpose. Like they were searching for something you didn’t know was even there in the first place.

“Evening,” I said in a raspy, suddenly dry voice, my nose twitching a little in her presence.

“Checking in?” she asked as she stepped up to the desk, her red-painted lips widening into a broad, warm smile to reveal white, perfect teeth. Her smile had the kind of warmth you found on a summer’s day, when the sun could do as much harm as good.

A tingle flowed through my body, starting at the tips of my toes and traveling up through my lower legs and into my chest, and I found myself returning her smile. Not in a sexual way, either. Instead, it was like a warm chocolate chip cookie dipped in milk, while sitting next to a roaring fire during the first snow, kind of feel. “If possible, yes.”

“Excellent. Under which name was the reservation made?” she asked, opening up a registrar-style book on the desk in front of her, rather than turning to a computer screen.

“You see, that’s kind of my problem. I don’t have one.”

“No name?” she asked, her smile drooping into a little frown that seemed to only deepen with the next question. “Or no reservation?”

“Second.”

Her lips turned further down as her eyes flickered up and down, taking my measure. “Yes, you’re right, that is quite the problem.”

“You can see my predicament. I’m really just exhausted from the road, and stumbled into town not knowing you folks were having some kind of festival.”

She sniffed a little at the mention of the event. “Well, it is our busiest weekend of the year. I doubt you’ll manage to find a room anywhere in town.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely the impression I got. But, I figured it would be worth a try.”

She smiled that warm, welcoming smile of hers again. “Well, my mother always told me to show kindness to strangers,” she replied. “So, let’s see what we can manage, shall we?” She bent her head to the ledger in front of her, began to go down the list with one elegantly long finger. She got to a name and made a small noise of surprise.

“Find something?” I asked, straightening a little in hopeful expectation.

She glanced up at me, one dark eyebrow raised. “As it just so happens, yes, I did. At least, I think so. It looks like we had a last-minute cancellation this morning while I was off shift. If you can give me an hour or so, and your name, I can have the room ready for you.”

“Ryder Williams.” I flipped up my wrist and checked the time. It was already pushing eleven. “An hour?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t be much longer than that.”

An hour to kill? That meant I could go back to Stan & Sons, try talking to the bartender a little more. I knew she’d been joking about her mother seeing the witch’s ghost in her bar, that much was obvious, but there seemed to be something else there. Like she wasn’t telling me the whole truth. The only question, though, was how I could get her to talk to me. Especially when she was so busy?

“Tell you what,” I said, as a fresh idea popped into my mind, “I’m going to go and take in the sights of the town for a little longer. Will the night shift know what’s going on?”

“Well, you’re talking to the night shift,” she said with a laugh and a flash of teeth as she lifted up the book and put it on the ledge in front of me. “I’m pretty much it for staff, so take your time. Shouldn’t take too long for you to see what charms our little town has to offer.”

At the mention of the word “charms,” my thoughts immediately went to the gorgeous bartender across the street. I realized I hadn’t even gotten her name. “Sounds great,” I said, with a smile and a nod as I took the pen from her and scrawled my name at the bottom of the list. “I’ll be back in a few hours, then. Promise.” I turned to walk away, but quickly stopped in my tracks, about to ask if the lobby would even be open that late.

“Don’t worry,” she said to my back, almost as if she were reading my thoughts. “We’ll leave a light on.”

I chuckled as I headed back out onto the street, and into the noise of the small crowds continuing to rove up and down the streets of Camelot. Across the way, more people tried to press into Stan & Sons, where there was neither a Stan nor a son behind the bar, leaving the door hanging open to the chill spring air.

At just one glance, I could tell the owner-bartender was still in for a rough night.

I watched for a short lull in traffic before crossing the street, only getting honked at twice.

Assholus Maximus and his Queen were coming out as I joined the crowd pushing its way into the bar, their posture strange as they skulked out onto the sidewalk.

Something about them didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was the way his eyes darted around, or the way she grinned like a hyena, but something was going on with those two as they headed down the sidewalk.

“Stupid bitch,” Maximus growled as he stalked down the sidewalk, his muttered words drifting easily to my hyper-aware ears as I continued to stand in line.

“Fucking show her,” his Queen agreed as she clung to his arm. “Do what you need to do, honey. I’m right here with you. I’ve got your back.”

I glanced back to the door, stood up on my tiptoes so I could clearly see over the crowd.

The bartender from earlier wasn’t there. Instead, she’d been replaced by a heavyset woman in her late forties, early fifties, who was doling out drinks like she’d been behind the bar the whole time. Relief from another bar? One of her employees who’d made it in?

I didn’t know for sure, but one thing was clear: the gorgeous bartender from just a little while earlier wasn’t present. I glanced back to the couple who’d just passed, just in time to catch them as they ducked into a side alley.

I backed off from the crowd, and, fists at my side, I headed after the couple.

Something wasn’t right here, that much was clear. And I was going to find out what.