Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel

Chapter One

I propose we move ITEM NUMBER ONE: DISCUSSION OF IMPENDING DOOM down on the agenda, Maddy."

The speaker, a tiny man swathed in a frothy white beard, stood on a folding chair in the hotel ballroom. His tall, red, cone-shaped hat was too big and kept sliding down his forehead when he gesticulated.

Which he did. A lot.

"I got a plugged-up crapper that needs to be addressed first."

"If you varied your diet, Denis, you wouldn't have so many issues," Maddy scolded. She pushed her black cat's-eye reading glasses farther up her nose, her hair writhing beneath a strawberry-pink headscarf.

Denis huffed and rolled his eyes. "I'm not plugged up. My toilet is plugged up."

Pax Nomen would rather eat dragon shit than run a meeting, but he did have a sense for danger and this crowd was already bubbling with tension and magic. The werewolves were eyeing the faeries a little too hungrily, the ghosts kept corporealizing in compromising positions, the dragon from the third floor had broken four folding chairs, the Fate siblings were quarreling, and the centaur refused to put on pants. Throw in the constipated gnome and an irritated medusa, things could get ugly quick.

He stepped forward from the shadows and put a hand on Maddy's shoulder. She was an incredibly efficient assistant manager, emphasis on manage, and sometimes got carried away.

Although, it wouldn't kill Denis to eat a piece of fruit occasionally.

"The agenda doesn't change," Pax said in the voice he used to discipline his troops. "Doom first. Toilets are for number two."

Denis turned red and the faery princesses broke into laughter, sending a spray of faery dust from the rafters where they perched.

It might have been actual dust-the room having seen better days. The curtains were yellowed with age, the beige Berber rug showed burn marks, and cobwebs swung gently in the corners of the ceilings.

A month ago, sheer curtains had been tied back with silk ribbons and blinding sunlight had blanketed the parquet floor. Thousands of crystals hanging from the grand chandelier had tossed confetti of tiny rainbows onto the walls and everything had smelled of roses and dancing.

The chandelier disappeared last week. In its place now hung three banks of fluorescent lights, one out of every four burnt out.

"Let's get back to the agenda," Maddy said. "Are we ready?"

Per the check-in agreement, meetings at the Number Five Wayside Hotel and World Travel Hub began with a recitation of the Wayside Oath.

We shall not kill within the walls of the Wayside.

We will show respect for the customs of all creatures.

No loud noises after ten in the evening.

The hotel manager will be informed of
any and all damages.

To break this oath is to suffer eternal torment
and a fifty-dollar service fee.

After a century of leading soldiers into the worst of battles, of hunting the kinds of monsters that nightmares were made from, of sacrificing his soul and sanity in the protection of innocents, Pax had assumed being a hotel manager would be easy.

Only took one week managing Number Five Wayside for him to accept how very, very wrong he'd been.

Number Five Wayside was the fifth and smallest of six World Travel Hubs that managed the ebb and flow of magic throughout the universe through a schedule of tides. Anyone wishing to visit another world checked into a Wayside until they traveled far enough down the flow to reach their destination.

Although the general length of time between worlds was common knowledge, there were no guarantees on this journey-Waysides had a mind of their own.

Literally.

They were living organisms: six hearts pumping rivers of magic through the universe. Beacons of hope and light to worlds under constant threat from the forces of Darkness, the Waysides were the only truly safe places in the universe.

And they were dying.

Pax had been dying as well. Lying in the mud, trapped beneath his injured horse, bleeding from a hole in his gut when lightning had flashed across the sky. He'd been promised a glorious ending as a reward for his service as a paladin in the Army of Light-a knight sworn to protect the roads between the worlds from the forces of Darkness.

Instead, a building had appeared. Manny Quintas, Number Five's previous hotel manager, had ambled out and crouched at Pax's side, oblivious to the screams of dying men and the stench of rotting bodies around them.

"I'm retiring to a time-share by the beach," Manny had explained. "Used to be the Waysides were a place to gather and get to know one another. Grand bargains agreed to, symphonies written, and legendary love stories played out in its halls. Now, it's in and out and no-kill be damned. I don't want to live like that anymore. So, you got about five minutes to decide. Burn up in a blaze of glory with a hole in your stomach or be a hotel manager as your universal reward."

If Pax had known what was in store for him, he might have chosen the gruesome death from a gut wound.

Unclogging Denis's toilet had certainly taken a few years off his life.

"Are we talking impending doom for the universe or just us?" Denis asked.

"When are we going to talk about the laundry room rules?" someone else called out. "Some people may have forgotten it is not okay to take out someone's wet clothes and leave them out-don't give me that face, Denis."

"Number Six Wayside disappeared last month," Pax said.

The room quieted at the reminder.

"Number Three Wayside is flickering in and out of existence," he continued. "Numbers One, Four, and Five are the only functioning Waysides left."

It began with a stuck door.

One of the gargoyles, Ernie, had taken the elevator up from the games room. Instead of the quiet ding that usually accompanied the opening or closing of the elevator door, there had been a low rumble, like a burp, and the shuddering doors had refused to open.

Pax had never heard of an elevator malfunction, and it had given him a bad feeling. He had dutifully consulted his handbook while Ernie complained about his fear of small places and a need for the bathroom and other guests complained about taking the stairs.

The problem was a case of cantankeropenup. After an incantation of soothing words and a wave of cherry-scented incense, the elevator doors opened.

As soon as the elevator doors came unstuck, the exit stairway lights went out. The second Pax changed the light bulbs, the decorative wrought iron railing where the iron birds lived came loose.

The golden needle on a small gauge labeled "±Þ˜š¬¥‡" affixed to the main boiler dropped from 100 percent to 75 percent. The ±Þ˜š¬¥‡, or hypsidoodle, was the measure of fuel left in Number Five's "tank."

No one had ever heard of a Wayside running out of fuel.

Ever.

A trickle of small nuisances turned into a river of damage. Doors disappeared. Frantic pigeons had been sent between Number Five and the other Waysides with the shocking news that all the Waysides were stricken by the same strange malady.

The hypsidoodle's golden needle dropped again to 35 percent.

Five days ago, a series of low silvery chimes rang out through the building: a signal of a new world approaching. When Number Five stopped, however, it was in a world no one recognized.

No one left and no one checked in.

Days passed before the truth became clear.

They were stuck.

Stuck on a world with only the slightest trace of magic, like a ship thrown up on a beach after a storm.

The hypsidoodle was empty.

Number Five was out of gas.

Without the Waysides, travel between worlds would end. Trade would cease, families would be torn apart, and, worse, the flow of magic keeping them alive would be blocked and would stagnate, and eventually magic would disappear altogether. The battles Pax had waged for the Light to protect magic would have been for nothing and the forces of Darkness would win.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. No one knew what would come next.

"Doom" was putting it mildly.

"Impending doom for the entire universe unless we figure out what is happening with the Waysides," Pax clarified.

"What did the Wayside Operating Manual say to do when Number Five runs empty?" asked Denis.

"The manual says, 'In case of dire emergency, reboot'" Pax said.

"Reboot? What the heck does that mean?" Denis asked.

"Well," Pax said, rubbing the soft stubble on his chin, "I have an idea."


Josephine LaChiusa took comfort in the fact universally acknowledged that a lunchtime walk with two women in their mid-fifties will include discussion of what their twentysomething children are doing wrong (everything), what their husbands have gotten right (nothing), and the daily indignities of aging.

All she had to do was nod every so often and her officemates, Barbara DeVane and Jenna Brown, would tow her in the wake of their conversation, leading her across slush-covered streets and down haphazardly shoveled sidewalks, braving the stinging wind on the stone pedestrian bridges crossing the river bordering the university campus where they worked.

Josie would give anything to live in one of the old mansions renovated into lovely condos sandwiched between campus and the riverbed. Picturing mornings with a steaming cup of coffee on an unstained couch and sunlight drenching the Persian-carpeted floor, Josie decorated her apartment in her head, adding an eat-in kitchen, a clothes closet of her own, and a reading nook where she and Amos could curl up for bedtime stories.

The whiplash of reality when her daydreams faded gave her a headache. A widowed mom with no savings and no family support, Josie spent every waking moment keeping her head above water. There were no such things as leisurely mornings with coffee and certainly no such thing as a beautiful home.

Her landlord had raised the rent again, and this time, Josie wouldn't be able to swing it.

They turned the corner, Jenna and Barbara holding on to each other as they traversed craters of ice formed on unshoveled sidewalks. The enormous oaks and skeletal sugar maples on the riverside were cramped, their roots pushing through the sidewalks, adding to the treacherous footing. The larger homes were interspersed with small apartment buildings and a Donuts Delite hunkered down at the end of the street, its cheerful white-and-blue facade loud against the fading charm of the older structures.

Nodding along as Barbara complained that the drier her insides, the wetter her outsides, Josie drew in a deep breath. She exhaled a wish, one of many unheard pleas to the universe that she could find a safe place and the world would be gentle with her child.

Gradually, Barbara and Jenna ran out of complaints so only the shushing sound of tires over wet snow accompanied them. Waiting back on Josie's desk were three more hours' worth of work, a slew of emails from her insurance company about her son's latest checkup, and her boss's infernal premeeting packets. Just another day in the fascinating world of student financial aid at a private university. None of that was going anywhere, so she slowed her pace, even though her toes were turning numb.

Until her phone pinged in her purse.

She couldn't ignore the pings. Not with Amos's finicky heart. That wasn't his official diagnosis but try saying "tetralogy of Fallot" to a four-year-old and all you get is a blank stare. Josie pulled the phone from her purse and paused. She'd set up notifications for an apartment search when she found out the rent on her place was going up.

There had been nothing for three weeks and Josie was pretending not to panic. This notification said . . .

"Guys?" Josie looked up. Her walking companions were half a block ahead of her.

Jenna and Barbara turned around. The cowlick in the back of Jenna's white hair stuck up over her knitted ear warmers, and with her monochromatic white snow pants and parka, she looked like a stork. Next to her, Barbara's long gray locs were wrapped in a multicolored crocheted turban, and her green wool coat and red moon boots contrasted violently with both Jenna's ensemble and the gray-on-white snow covering everything.

"I got a notification of an apartment matching my requirements," Josie told them.

"Probably something wrong with it," said Jenna.

"Did you hear about that landlord hiding a secret camera in his tenants' bathrooms?" Barbara asked.

Josie nodded. "So, it turns out it's on this block. Can you believe the luck?"

"You'll be two minutes away from work. Don't think the boss won't take advantage of that," said Jenna.

"That's suspicious you got a notification of an apartment on this block while you were walking by. How do you know it's not a cyberkidnapping?" asked Barbara.

Again, Josie nodded. The best part about Jenna's and Barbara's intense absorption with the worst case was Josie didn't have to argue with them about the likelihood of either of those things happening.

"I'll only take ten minutes," Josie said, walking backward and waving at them as she squinted at address numbers on the buildings. "No one will miss me."

"Okay, no problem," said Jenna.

"Don't die," Barbara called, and the two of them turned their backs to Josie and started walking again.

That was Barbara's standard goodbye.

Even at Christmas.

"4473 . . . 4481 . . ." Josie counted the building numbers as she walked down the sidewalk. "5555 . . . oh, would you look at that?"

That was the six-story wine-colored brick building sitting far back from the sidewalk. A blanket of untouched spring snow covered the front lawn, and the walkway had been neatly shoveled.

The notification had said apartment tours were available today, beginning every half hour in the front lobby. Josie sent Barbara a text as she walked up to the building, telling her she would let her know as soon as she finished.

Better to head Barbara off at the pass. Josie didn't want to come back to work only to find search parties assembling.

Hedges of waist-high holly bushes flanked her at the entrance. The outside doors were made of a heavy, dark wood, and two brass knockers in the shape of opened eyes hung on each door.

Josie's skin tightened over her bones and her stomach flipped like it did at the slow climb of a roller coaster.

Something was very right about this place, on this day.

Pushing inward on the dulled brass door handles revealed a high-ceilinged lobby with black-and-white-tiled floors. A bank of stairs at her left had wrought iron banisters twisted in the shape of birds, roses, and fleurs-de-lis. The stairs stopped at a landing, where a tall, thin table held a vase of dried flowers before it continued out of sight.