Page 80 of The White Octopus Hotel
“It looks like the mice are all wearing masks,” Eve said. “I hadn’t noticed that before.”
Nan glanced up at her. “Everyone wears masks,” she said matter-of-factly. She held the box up to Eve. “Well, aren’t you going to press the lever?”
Eve did so and the four mice sprang enthusiastically to life once again, bashing at their instruments in their clockwork frenzy, but it wasn’t just whirs and clicks this time, it was music. The same extraordinary, life-changing music Eve had heard on a day that was both yesterday and seventeen years ago in the frigidarium.
She closed her eyes and heard theclip-clopof a horse’s hooves on mosaic tiles, felt sweat run down her bare skin as Max whispered her name in her ear, and the snow fell outside, and red apples shone in the dark. Someone tugged at her hand, and she looked down to see Nan, pointing up towards the ceiling.
“Look,” she whispered. “A fairy.”
Eve squinted towards the lights. There wassomethingup there—some bright, fluttering thing, dancing and dashing about in a wordlessly joyous way. It was difficult to tell what it was exactly; it almost looked like a piece of broken mirror, if glass could frolic in the air. Certainly if any music could draw out fairies, it was this song.
But eventually it finished, and the tin mice were all still once more. The shiny, bright whatever-it-was fluttered down towards the bookshelves, landing briefly on a small model of a globe before twinkling into nothing.
“They like the music too,” Nan said. “But when it finishes, they always go back to the mountains. Dad says you can’t keep fairies in the hotel. You have to let them leave when they want to.”
Eve walked over to the bookshelf, still looking at the globe. It was a small model of the world she’d noticed before, but now that she looked closer, she noticed there was a seam running down the middle of it. When she pressed her fingertips into the groove, it split into two halves, like an Easter egg.
One half of the globe held a small clock—the last one on the scavenger hunt list. The other half had space for a single photo—oftwo little girls in a garden. One was about three years old, and the other was an infant. They weren’t looking at the photographer, but at each other, both laughing helplessly at some long-forgotten joke.
“Nan,” Eve said, turning around with the clock. “Do you know who these two girls are?”
The child looked at the photo, then shook her head. “Is one of them me?”
“No. This is me.” She pointed at the older girl. “And that’s my sister. Bella.”
Nan peered closer. “How did they get it in colour? Normally pictures are black and white.”
“Nan.” Eve crouched down to the child’s level. “Do you know what’s really going on at this hotel? Do you know what the scavenger hunt is all about?”
“Yep.” She nodded.
“Will you please tell me?”
“I’m not allowed,” Nan said at once. “It’s a secret.” She leaned a little closer to Eve. “Aunt Anna thinks I can’t keep a secret. That’s why I’m not supposed to talk to you. But my granny said I’m really, really good at them. That’s why she told me about the mice and the beautiful song. And I know you’re going to win the prize.” She sprang forwards and planted a kiss on Eve’s cheek. “I’m glad you saw the fairy. I need to go help Aunt Mila in the Sugar Room now.”
Before Eve could think of stopping her, she’d snatched the mouse band from the shelf and skipped out the door. Eve looked back at the globe. How could a photograph of herself and Bella possibly have found its way to the White Octopus Hotel in 1935? Just then, a couple of guests walked into the Billiards Room with their scavenger hunt cards, so Eve slipped out into the corridor. When she found Max, he’d had no more luck with the octopus statue than she had.
“Maybe it didn’t originally come from the hotel at all,” he said. “I can’t find a place anywhere for it to go. Perhaps there’s someother room like the Sugar Room that only appears at a certain time, under particular conditions. Maybe there’s some password or secret entrance that we’ll never have any hope of discovering.”
Nevertheless, they searched together for the rest of the day, poking into every corner of the hotel they could think of. When the rabbit appeared, Eve tried to ignore it at first, like always. Max couldn’t see it, so she knew it was part of her own haunting and not the real flesh-and-blood creature that belonged to Anna Roth. But then the rabbit did something it had never done before. It bit her. Sharp little nips of her ankles that stung more than she expected.
Eve had never deliberately touched the rabbit, but this time she grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, and was very tempted—oh, so tempted—to throttle the damn thing. But then she saw a bedroom door reflected in the rabbit’s eyes, and it wasn’t right because they were standing outside Room 11, but the number the rabbit was reflecting back to her was a 7. She heard Bella’s footsteps as she pitter-pattered her way down the corridor, but when she turned around there was nothing there.
“What are you doing?” Max asked, staring at her.
She dropped the rabbit and watched as it hopped away down the corridor towards the stairs.
“I think we need to go downstairs.”
She and Max followed the rabbit down to the floor below, where it stopped before Room 7. The next moment, it rose up on its back legs and began scrabbling and scratching at the door.
“It’s trying to get into Room Seven,” Eve said. “The rabbit.”
She walked over and knocked. No one answered or spoke, but when she looked at the gap beneath the door, she saw that telltale flicker of light and shadow that told her someone was there, just out of sight on the other side.
She balled her hand into a fist and hammered it against the wood. “Who’s in there?”
There was no reply, and the shadows didn’t move this time. Itwas almost as if Eve had imagined it. Yet she knew that she hadn’t. Therewassomeone in the room. Another time-travelling guest. She could feel them breathing. She could feel them staring at her through the wood. When she looked down again, the rabbit had gone. From downstairs, the sound of jazz started to filter through to them.
