she said. “I’ll meet you back here tomorrow, okay?”
“Yes, please,” said James, and held out the book for her to take.
“You keep it,” said the girl. “Practise.”
She smiled, then she ran off, and James smiled and looked at Amber.
“Her name’s Molly,” he said. “She likes me and I like her.”
“So I see,” said Amber.
“Tomorrow someone is going to snatch her,” said Amber’s demon-self.
James’s smile faded. “I know,” he said. “A tall man in black clothes. He drives a carriage for funerals.”
“A hearse?” Amber prompted.
“Yes,” said James. “A hearse. I’m going to help her. She’s the first person ever to be kind to me, and I like her so I’m going to help her.”
Amber nodded, and it was night and they were outside a wooden building with a sign that said STROMQUIST’S UNDERTAKERS & COFFIN MAKERS, and the undertaker, a tall man in black clothes, was walking towards them, his face twisted in anger.
Amber woke.
She thought about the dream, but her thoughts started to rebound in this quiet room. This unnaturally quiet room.
She got up, went to the window. Tapped it. Double-paned? Triple-paned? Something more? She went to each of the walls, rapped her knuckles against them. The sound was dull. Heavy. She stood in the middle of the room. So what? It was a motel beside a diner. Of course noise pollution would be a problem. Of course they’d have had to tackle it.
She clicked on the light and sat on the end of the bed, caught her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t look convinced. She looked like there was something nudging at her thoughts.
Amber went over to the mirror. It was screwed to the wall. Okay. Made sense. Some people might want to steal a mirror. It could happen. It could even be a thing. Mirror-thieves, for example – that ever-growing threat to motel owners everywhere. Screwing the mirror in place was a perfectly acceptable thing to do and she accepted this. Although, by doing so, the motel owner did make it impossible to check behind the mirror. Not that there would be anything behind it. Nothing except more wall. Not a hole, that’s for sure. Definitely not a camera. Nope. This was just an ordinary mirror. Nothing two-way about it.
Amber sat back on the bed and looked at the mirror for another minute.
There was an ashtray on the nightstand, even though the motel was one big no-smoking area. It was heavy in her hand. Glass. Nice and thick. She threw it at the mirror and the mirror smashed.
“Yep,” she said softly to herself.
Behind the mirror was a hole in the wall. It was covered with more glass, and Amber had a pretty strong suspicion that it was glass as thick as the window. No camera, though, and no pervert standing there. She walked over and peered through. Beyond the hole was an unlit corridor.
She straightened. So the Catching Z’s manager liked to peep. Gross, an invasion of privacy, but okay. Probably liked to take pictures, too. Gross, gross, gross, but whatever. But there was still something more. Something extra.
Chasing a half-formed thought, she pulled back the sheets on the bed, exposing the mattress to the light. All the stains she would have expected, plus a whole bunch more. Darker too.
Dried blood. And lots of it.
AMBER COULDN’T SAY SHE was surprised. This was a motel on the Demon Road, after all. It was bound to have had the odd murder or two. Or three. Or whatever.
She pulled on a pair of jeans and sneakers and walked to the manager’s office. He wasn’t around. No one was. She went into the room at the back. A cluttered desk, an old computer, a broom closet and plenty of filing cabinets. Inside the broom closet were mops and buckets and a shelf full of bulbs and various bits and pieces one might need as the manager of a dirt-cheap motel such as this. But all of this stuff, every last thing, was on the left side of the closet. The right side was bare. Amber pressed her hand to the wooden wall and it rattled. She pushed, and the wall swung open.
She stepped through.
The corridor smelled of stale sweat and men. She passed the holes, peeking through each one she came to. She saw Milo, already asleep. He looked agitated. She knocked on the window, but he didn’t wake.
She heard someone cry out, and hurried round the next corner to a window as the lights came on. It was Clarissa’s room. Clarissa herself was curled up on the bed, clutching her hand.
There was a switch on the wall and Amber pressed it, and a door clicked open beside her. She pushed it wide – it was heavy – and Clarissa looked up, saw Amber come in, and jumped off the bed, wobbling slightly.
“What are you doing?” she shouted.
Amber tried to get her to calm down, but the door swung shut behind her. There was no handle. There was barely a seam.
“What’s going on?” Clarissa shouted again.
Amber turned back to her. “We may be in trouble,” she said.
“Where did you come from?”
“It’s the manager,” Amber said, “the guy from the front desk. He’s got a tunnel behind the rooms. He spies on people.”
“But why are you here?” Clarissa asked, panic edging her voice.
“Clarissa, listen to me. I didn’t mean to scare you. I found the tunnel, I followed it, I heard you scream and I pushed the door open.”
“That’s the wall!”
“It’s also a door. I’m on your side, okay? Why did you scream?”
Clarissa hesitated, deciding whether or not to trust Amber. Then she picked up her jeans and pulled them on. “I went to turn on the bedside lamp and it gave me a shock,” she said. “Faulty wiring or something. I could have been killed. I’m definitely gonna sue. Why were you back there?”
“I went investigating,” Amber said.
“Investigating the manager?”
Amber picked up the glass ashtray and hurled it at the mirror. Clarissa jumped back, then saw the window, and the man behind it who wore a surgical mask with a snarling mouth drawn upon it. Even Amber jumped at the sight of him.
The man scuttled off, and Clarissa marched forward.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, asshole! What the hell is your deal?”
“Come on,” Amber said, heading for the door. “We’ll catch him when he runs.”
She took the chain off the door and turned the handle and the floor gave way beneath her. Clarissa grabbed her, held her, and Amber dangled for a moment before Clarissa pulled her back.
“What the hell?” yelled Amber, once she had her feet under her once again. They peered down into the hole. It was a four-foot drop on to metal spikes.
“Are you kidding me?” Clarissa whispered. “Are you kidding? What the hell kinda place is this? That could’ve killed you!”
“I think that was the point,” Amber said.
“But why? What does he have against you? Or me? He doesn’t even know us! Why would he want to kill us? Oh Jesus, we’re gonna be killed. We’re gonna be killed.”
“Stay calm, Clarissa.”
“That’s not my real