Page 25 of The Mystery Guest

The room goes quiet, and I’m terribly relieved. But then my feet disobey me again. Suddenly, I’m creeping forward and crouching down. I can’t stop myself. I’m lying horizontally on the floor so I can look through the ominous crack in the wall and into the roomnext door. I’m on my side at eye level. I pull myself, closer, closer to the crack until…an eye—a steely blue troll’s eye—is staring back at me from the other side of the wall.

“AHHHHHHHHhhhhhh!” I scream, which sends adrenaline coursing through my entire body. I hurry to my feet and run out of the library and down the long corridor just as I hear the front door of the mansion opening and Mrs. Grimthorpe ordering Gran to bring in all the bags from outside.

I hurtle down the main staircase, taking the steps two by two until I’m standing breathless at the entrance, trying to appear perfectly ordinary in every possible way.

“Molly?” Gran says as she puts an armful of shopping bags on the floor. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

I cling to the banister in a valiant attempt at normalcy. “Not a ghost,” I reply. “Not that exactly.”

In my dream, I’m foraging in an enchanted forest just down the path from our gingerbread cottage.

A strange-looking sheep asks me what I’m doing. “Collecting medicines for Gran,” I reply.

“You better hurry before it’s too late,” the sheep says as it trots down the path.

When I arrive at our cottage, Gran is tucked in bed, the sheets pulled tight to her chin. “I’ve got your medicines. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“You’re too late,” Gran replies. Only then do I realize it’s not Gran in bed but Mr. Grimthorpe the troll, wrapped in a sheepskin and wearing a white bonnet on his head.

“No!” I scream. “You’re dead! Go away and never come back!”

He starts to laugh, a deep, maniacal laugh. Just as he’s about to reach his claws out to grab me, I wake up to my phone ringing on my bedside table.

I’m not a child in a nightmare but a grown woman in her own bed.

I swipe to answer the call. “Hello?” I say breathlessly.

“Molly?” Juan Manuel replies. “You sound like you’ve been running.”

“I was asleep,” I say. I feel sweaty and confused.

“I’m sorry to wake you,mi amor.I just wanted to wish you a good morning and to remind you to rise, polish, and shine.”

He’s quoting Gran. I’ve told him how she used to say this every morning as she pulled my curtains open when I was a little girl. “Rise, polish, and shine!” her voice trilled, bright and cheerful like a singing sparrow. She died before Juan Manuel could ever meet her, and yet in ways I’ll never fully comprehend, parts of her live on in him just as they live on in me. This truth adds solace to all of my days.

“How was the Grimthorpe event, Molly? Did you slay it?”

“Did I what?” I ask as I sit up taller in bed. It takes me a moment to realize he’s not referencing Mr. Grimthorpe but using one of those newfangled expressions he loves so much. “For the record,” I say, “I’ve slain no one.”

Juan responds with a laugh. “Did yesterday’s event go okay?”

I don’t want to avoid the truth, but I know if I tell him a famous writer died in the Regency Grand Tearoom, he’ll be worried sick. Knowing him, he’ll be on a plane back here before I can say Jiminy Cricket, and that would be so unfair. I can’t expect Juan to be there for me every time something goes awry. Besides, I’m perfectly capable of handling this situation myself. After all, Iama Head Maid.

“Mi amor,are you there? Is everything okay?” he asks.

“Who said things weren’t okay?” I ask. “Was someone from the hotel in touch with you?”

“No,” he replies. “They’re not allowed to contact me. Mr. Snowtold the kitchen staff he expects them to figure things out for a change rather than come to me every time things go wrong.”

“Exactly right,” I say. “We all rely on you far too much. It’s high time you had a good, proper break.”

“But you do miss me, don’t you,mi amor?”

“Of course I do,” I say. “You have no idea how much.” Sadness suddenly rises in my throat, and I quickly swallow it down before it escapes. “I’d better go now. Lots of cleanup to do at the hotel.”

“I’m sure you’ll sort it out. You always do.”

We say our heartfelt goodbyes, and I hang up.

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