Page 37 of Room Serviced
Chapter Ten
It wasn’t a romantic walk on the beach at night. That was partly because walking on the beach at night wasn’t actually all that romantic: When it was dark you couldn’t see the water, the waves could sneak up and get your feet wet, and the oceanside had plenty of nocturnal creatures lying in wait to surprise you. As a kid, Sloane had visited relatives in New Jersey, and when they’d gone to the shore, she’d taken a walk at night and stepped barefoot on a crab. It was a core memory.
Thankfully the beach by the Bellwether was (mostly) crab-and-other-animal free, not to mention ghost-free. So once they’d done some night-vision filming of sand and waves and the two of them bickering, they spent a while walking up the beach toward the north end of the property. It was nice, and if Sloane was being honest, she was putting off saying good night and going to bed because she had to go home the next morning and this whole vacation had been…nice. Well, some parts had been significantly better than nice.
“How come Lawson’s not here?” she asked after a lull in their conversation. “If his tragic death is the whole reason this place exists, how come he’s not haunting it?”
“I guess he doesn’t have unfinished business anymore,” Max said. “Or, at least, nothing tying him to the mortal plane, something he can’t let go.”
“The mortal plane,” Sloane muttered. “How do you say this shit with a straight face?”
“Practice.”
“So, ghosts are just…stuck,” she said. “Emotionally. In theory.”
“It’s the best we’ve got,” Max admitted. “Though there are ghosts who seem like they’re just hanging out and talking to people with no particular emotional attachments, so it’s kinda hard to say. There’s an old hotel in Reno that had a ghost who liked to sit at the bar, talk to people, and play poker sometimes.”
“Poker’s a very emotional game.”
“I guess he could’ve had a gambling addiction,” Max allowed. “Huh. That’s more of a bummer than I thought.”
“Sorry.” Something scuttled to the water in front of them, and they both stopped. They didn’t have their flashlights on, but they could see well enough in the light of the three-quarter moon for a stroll. “Are there ghosts who’ve stuck around for happy reasons?”
“Not as many as you’d hope,” Max said. “Though, speaking of Lawson, he might have been one.”
“You just said he wasn’t.”
“I said not anymore,” Max told her, and their arms bumped together, then separated. Sloane wondered what he’d do if she…put her hand on his arm or something. Holding hands seemed presumptuous for a casual-sex friend, but arm holding was kind of neutral, right?
Not that Sloane had a ton of experience with either. Sex, relatively speaking, was easy: You found someone attractive, willing, and eager, and you both got off. Holding hands on a nighttime beach stroll was several orders of magnitude more complicated.
“He used to be a ghost?”
“It was rumored,” Max said lightly. “We don’t have any records of people seeing him, but it was frequently reported that Belle could be heard in her rooms, late at night, consorting with someone who had a masculine voice. But no one ever saw anyone go in and out of her room except her.”
Consorting. Max had the vocabulary of a nineteenth-century monk sometimes. “Belle was allegedly fucking the ghost of her dead husband?”
“You said it, not me.”
“You said consorting, which might be worse.”
“How is that worse?”
Sloane ignored that, because consorting was obviously worse and she didn’t have to explain herself, and tilted her head back to look at the sky. There were, like, three stars. The price you paid for city living. She was happy to do it.
“I thought ghosts were incorporeal.”
“I thought you thought ghosts didn’t exist,” Max said, sounding way too smug.
“Of course they don’t exist,” Sloane said, and didn’t push him into the sea. Good for her. “The current mythology and lore around ghosts are that they’re incorporeal, right? I’m just trying to wrap my head around ghost sex. If they can walk through walls, they don’t…go through…humans?”
“Well, they don’t go through floors,” Max pointed out. “According to ghost lore. There are reports of ghosts sitting in chairs, opening cabinets, all kinds of things. Poltergeists throw shit.”
Which, as far as Sloane was concerned, was yet another reason that ghosts were clearly not real, but she didn’t bother pointing that out.
“So they can choose what’s solid and what’s not?”
“No one knows,” he said, and smiled over at her. “One of the great mysteries of the universe.”
