Amazed, page 4
The man’s name was Rufus Shaw and he was accompanied by his wife, Melody, and two other couples, the names of whom Harry didn’t catch.
He simply checked them in and moved to the next group in line. This group was a trio of women. “Second floor,” the first woman said.
“On the side facing the woods,” the second woman said.
“A suite,” the third woman said.
“Oh, no, we don’t need that much room,” the first woman argued.
“A suite,” the third woman insisted.
Harry stood patiently as the first and third woman got into a whispered argument, only a few words of which he caught. Those words were harvest moon and enchantment or possibly enchanting, he wasn’t sure.
“Enough.” The second woman ended their argument by turning to Harry and stating emphatically, “A suite.”
Harry nodded and checked in the three women. They all had the same last name. Sisters perhaps or cousins.
He handed over their key, an old-fashioned brass key with a tag that said 273 in elaborate script. “Welcome.”
“— to Hotel Shenanigans.” Megan suddenly appeared beside the women, all of whom squealed and descended on her with hugs and demands to know how she was doing.
Harry barely had time to wonder why Megan had given the bar’s name to the entire hotel before the next person in line stepped up, demanding the suite of rooms in the attic.
“The attic?” Harry didn’t even know this hotel had one!
“Yes. And I require privacy. No services at all.”
Not knowing what else to do, Harry simply nodded and checked the computer system. Sure enough, attic suite was one of the options in the list of rooms available.
This was not good. The attic suite Harry hadn’t even known existed was probably in terrible shape. Dusty, possibly mice-ridden, no clean towels.
All of this raced through Harry’s mind as he checked the man in and then searched for the key to the attic. Keys were located in a small closet-like room to the side of the reservation counter. They lined the walls, east wing keys on the left, west wing keys on the right.
Attic keys though.
Harry had no idea whether the attic was on the west or the east side of the hotel. Maybe it spanned the entire hotel, in which case how big was that suite anyway?
He scanned the west side keys first. Nothing but numbers on all the key tags.
East side.
And there it was.
Fourth row, far right, last key in the line, with “Attic” in elaborate script on its tag.
Harry quickly grabbed the key and carried it back to the man who nodded and strode away toward the elevator.
Fingers crossed that the attic rooms were in better condition than he feared, Harry turned to the next person in line, who demanded rooms in the far west corner of the fourth floor.
Harry had no idea why all these people seemed to know exactly where they wanted to stay, but he continued checking them in and handing over their keys with a smile. His hotel was seeing more business in this one day than it had seen since he’d moved to town four years before.
When the long line was finally dealt with, and all of his guests dispatched to the various floors of the hotel with keys he’d never thought to use, Harry came out from behind the counter to see Megan grinning at him. “I knew you had it in you, Harry,” she said.
Before he could ask what she meant, she darted across the lobby into the demon elevator where the three women he’d checked in nearly an hour before were waiting.
And then they were gone.
Harry whispered a prayer that the elevator wouldn’t eat one of the nicest people he’d ever met, then froze when he heard a voice he’d begun to fear he’d never hear again.
“Don’t be silly, Harry!” A soft giggle. “Elevators do not eat people. Not even bad ones.”
Heart pounding, Harry turned around and stared.
Sitting on the counter, the one he’d just been standing behind not a minute before, was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
One leg crossed over the other, bare foot swinging in time to a song only Lily could ever hear, bright blue eyes twinkling with joy, pert little nose tilted up just a little, gray and white wings resting lightly against her back, Lily was just as he remembered her—shining and bright and so very full of magic. A purple dress hugged her curves and a purple flower, one that reminded him so dearly of the single petal that rested in his pocket even now, was tucked behind one ear, nestled in the straight lines of her gorgeous black hair.
“Lily,” he whispered.
“Hello, Harry.”
In all the years Harry had imagined this moment, he’d pictured many things happening.
A hug filled with joy.
Lily in tears, happy yet sad for all the years they’d lost.
A passionate kiss.
Definitely a passionate kiss.
What he hadn’t expected was that he’d be so overwhelmed with emotion, he was the one who would burst into tears.
He was the one who would fall to his knees and cover his face to close out the shiningly beautiful dream that he’d never dared to really believe in because in the real world, dreams aren’t meant to come true.
That Lily would be the one to comfort him, to sift her fingers through his hair and murmur his name, that she would be the one to cradle him close and promise that this time, everything would truly be okay.
He should have expected that though.
After all, Lily had always come to him when he was in distress.
She’d always comforted him when he would hide from his parents’ raging fights.
She was the one who’d gifted him a flower to take with him on his journey into the real world.
And she was the one who had finally returned to the hotel of their childhood, to transform his life once again.
Chapter 8
THEY TALKED FOR hours.
Tucked into an alcove off the lobby.
And as they talked long into the night, they witnessed many strange things.
Megan and her two sisters, plus the three women Megan had hugged hours before, stepped off the elevator stark naked, causing Harry to slam his eyes shut and Lily to giggle at his embarrassment.
A moment later, the door to the stairs slammed open and three men stormed out. Harry thought their names were Cole, Dan and Karl, though he wasn’t certain.
They hurried after the women, brandishing robes and shouting. The women just laughed and disappeared out the back door, calling back something about harvest moons and celebrating skyclad.
The men followed and silence descended again.
Harry cleared his throat, too embarrassed to even look at Lily.
What must she think of him?
Their first night together as adults and six of his guests were parading around naked!
Lily plopped herself into his lap and kissed his cheek. “Stop worrying, Harry. They’re witches. Of course they’re going skyclad on the harvest moon. Truthfully, I’m tempted to join them.”
Harry was horrified.
Just the thought had him hardening and she was sitting on his lap! There was no way she wouldn’t notice!
She smiled at him and squirmed a little. “I’ve missed you so much, Harry. I waited and waited. You took an awfully long time to come back and then when you did, you looked right through me.” Tears welled in her eyes.
Wait. What?
“What do you mean, Lily? I’ve been here, searching for you for years. You’re the one who’s been missing!”
“I’ve been right here, Harry, but no matter what I did, you never noticed me.”
“What does that mean — no matter what you did?”
“You don’t really think those bulbs kept burning out on their own, do you?”
“What?”
“Or the elevator only taking you to the same spot between the 2nd and 3rd floors, but everyone else wherever they wanted to go?”
“That was you?”
“Or all the lights flickering, the doors banging, that time you got locked in the basement?”
“For heaven’s sake, Lily, I almost left because of all that nonsense!”
Lily leapt off his lap, braced her fists against her hips, and snapped at him, “Well, if you weren’t so stubborn, you would have seen me sitting on that sign or on the counter in the lobby!” She lifted off the ground, wings batting wildly, and began to pace back and forth in front of him, feet storming through the air as if she was still walking, even though it was the power of her wings that moved her forward and back.
It was the weirdest thing he’d ever seen.
“It’s like you forgot all about me! I kept calling your name and you acted like I wasn’t even there! I was here day after day and all you did was stare right through me. And it’s not like I locked you up all by yourself down there. I was down there too, you know! Waiting for you to wake up and see me!”
“Well I’m seeing you now,” Harry pointed out, quite reasonably he thought, but apparently, Lily didn’t agree because she froze in place and turned to glare at him.
She’d been in the middle of a step forward, so one leg was lifted mid-stride. Her wings beat at the air behind her and she glared at him for a very long moment.
“Um, I’m really happy to see you, Lily.” Harry smiled at her tentatively.
“Harumph. I don’t think you are at all, Harry.” She began pacing again, wings whirring, feet pumping the air. “I think you forgot me. I think you came back here, just to torment me. I was so excited when you came back.” She glared at him. “And then nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing! Four years, Harry! Four years! I was ready to give up on you. No, I did give up on you. Three times I gave up. I said month after month, year after year, one more day, one more month. I’ll try one more thing and this time he’ll see me. Well, it never worked, did it? Not until—” She stopped pacing and hovered, the beat of her wings the only sound in the room.
“Until what?” Harry asked tentatively.
“Never you mind that! I have better things to do than hang out here with a non-believer.”
“Wait!” Harry leapt to his feet, but it was too late. From one instant to the next, Lily was gone. If she’d flown away, he hadn’t seen it. She’d simply disappeared, just like she used to when they were kids. “Lily, come back! I do believe, I do!”
“Who’s Lily?”
Harry jumped at the unexpected voice.
Glory and Max stood there, staring at him, Max with a very suspicious look on his face. What was his problem? “What?”
“Who’s Lily?”
Harry sighed. “An old friend.” Maybe. Or maybe he was just going crazy and imagining her again. Like his mother had always said.
But no.
He wasn’t going to second guess himself.
Lily had just been here.
Letting out a huff, he stalked across the lobby toward the front desk. Why was she always disappearing on him like that?
“What kind of friend?”
Harry startled. He’d already forgotten Glory and Max. Glory was leaning over the counter, a look of expectation on her face as she stared at him. Max stood behind her, a scowl on his face.
“Just a friend.” He wasn’t going to share Lily with anyone else. She was his own hallucination.
“Well where is she?” Glory asked.
Harry shrugged. That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it?
Or the decade.
He let out a soft harrumph.
More like the question of his lifetime.
Where was Lily?
“Well?” Glory asked impatiently.
“She’s probably just a figment of my imagination,” Harry snapped.
“A figment of your imagination! How dare you?”
Harry cringed at the squeal of rage as Lily suddenly appeared mid-air in front of him.
“Now, Lily,” he began, but was interrupted by the torrents of water Lily tossed on him from the bucket that hovered beside her.
A bucket that appeared to have a never–ending supply of water.
Harry shouted in surprise and flung up his arms to protect his face. Not that it did any good. By the time the impromptu shower ended, he was standing soaking wet in a giant pool of water.
“How’s that for a figment of your imagination?” Lily spat before disappearing with an audible pop.
The bucket she left behind fell to the floor with a loud clang as her magic disappeared with her.
“So, that’s Lily,” Glory drawled. “I kind of like her.”
Max let out a bark of laughter. “Kind of nothing. I love her!”
Chapter 9
A WEEK LATER, Harry was ready to admit defeat. He needed help!
It wasn’t that Lily hadn’t come back. She had, but only to drive him mad.
Day after day, she would pop in just to prove she existed, usually by doing something obnoxious, and then before he could say anything or convince her to stick around, she’d pop right out again.
Like when the lightbulb in the lantern at the check-in desk exploded right when Harry was walking by and he jumped and screeched like a girl. He knew it was her because she giggled afterward. The same giggle he’d loved to listen to as a little boy.
Or the night she popped into his bedroom and slammed the bathroom door while he was sleeping. And then kept slamming it, always waiting until he’d just dropped off to sleep again and then BAM!
Or like the night she showed up and started yelling at him, startling him so badly, he fell out of bed. She’d glared at him, snapping, “Still think I’m a figment of your imagination?” and disappeared again.
He was at the end of his rope. She kept him running from one end of the hotel to the other as she created havoc in all the rooms and on all the floors (he still couldn’t believe he had people staying on every floor!) and she was totally messing with his sleep cycle!
He was losing it.
In fact, he was desperate enough to beg for help from the wolves.
Wolves! There were literally wolves in his hotel!
He’d been shocked to discover Phoenix was a koala and Travis was a bear. But it turned out that was just the tip of the iceberg.
There were wolves and cougars and probably all other sorts of animal shifters he’d never even heard of.
Plus there were trolls and dwarves and witches and fairies! Okay, that last one wasn’t quite as shocking as all the rest, but it turned out all the creatures Lily used to talk about were real.
Every time someone checked into the hotel, he had to bite his tongue. He wanted to ask them all sorts of questions, not the least of which was what kind of non-human they were.
But Glory (another bear!) assured him this probably wasn’t a good idea. That he should find out in other, more subtle ways.
Basically, he was supposed to wait for them to reveal their nature spontaneously.
Spontaneously?
He didn’t exactly want to see bears and wolves and cougars and–and–and dragons (surely there weren’t dragons!) spontaneously exploding into existence in the middle of his lobby. It seemed a lot safer to just ask, but he also didn’t want to get eaten by a possibly nonexistent dragon (or a very real troll!) so he figured he’d better follow Glory’s advice.
And right then, as he was thinking about all the shifters hanging out in the bar of his hotel, Harry had an epiphany. Some of those shifters were mated, which meant they could probably give him some fabulous advice around how to get a very angry fairy to forgive him.
Even better, how to make that very angry, unforgiving fairy fall in love with him.
He decided on this perfect plan at 3:00 in the morning after Lily made the sprinklers explode over his bed and he woke up to her voice crowing, “It’s amazing what a figment of one’s imagination can accomplish!”
He supposed it could have been worse.
After all, Lily could have made all the sprinklers in the hotel go off. At least he was the only one waking up miserable and wet in the middle of the night.
She was also courteous enough to shut off the sprinklers on her way out.
Still, Harry ended up spending hours mopping the floors, washing the linens and airing out his mattress. He’d probably need a new one.
It was as he was standing there, surrounded by sopping wet blankets and towels, that it suddenly occurred to him that he had shifters in and out of the hotel all the time and surely they would know how to appease a pissed-off fairy.
All he needed was a little bit of advice from the experts.
Chapter 10
“OKAY, LOOK,” MAX told Harry the next day. “Female shifters are a tricky lot. It takes a lot of hard work to woo them.”
“Lily’s not a shifter though,” Harry protested.
“She’s a fairy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Same principle. Female. Not human. Proceed with care.”
“So what do I do?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Well, you won Glory, didn’t you?”
“Well, sure, but I’m a wolf. Charisma’s in our genes.”
“Oh, please!” Glory came around the corner, rolling her eyes. “Charisma? You think you won me over with charisma?”
“Well, yeah!”
“I caught you chasing your tail.”
“That was Pete, not me.”
Glory raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on. It was just the once, Glory, and I was drunk!”
“Riiiiight.” Glory drawled the word out as she walked away.
Max went to follow her, but Harry exclaimed, “Wait. You still have to tell me what to do!”
Max shrugged and as he pursued his mate, called over his shoulder, “Take her running, tell her she smells divine and if all else fails, sniff her butt.”
An hour later, Harry still couldn’t believe that was the wolf shifter’s best advice. “Sniff her butt,” he muttered while scrubbing the front counter.
