“Be careful,” she warned him.
“We can’t just leave it,” he said.
She followed, trying to hold aside smaller branches to make it easier for him to look.
“I think I see him,” Viktor said suddenly, and climbed into the snowy limbs, working his way up toward the trunk.
The tree shifted, and a mini-avalanche of snow began to slide down around them. The wood groaned from the sheer weight of it all.
“Get back, Drucilla,” he called to her. “That branch isn’t stable.”
The groan turned into a cracking sound as the weakened branch began to splinter.
“Get out of there,” she yelled back. “You’ll be trapped if it breaks.”
She had a brief vision of Viktor trapped beneath a massive tree branch until the sun came up.
“I almost have him, Drucilla, just go,” he cried back to her.
Reluctantly, she moved back, holding her breath for fear that something would happen to Viktor. She didn’t like the thought of not having him around.
Several long minutes later, he reappeared on one of the thicker limbs, about six feet off the ground.
His face was covered in scrapes and his clothes were most likely ruined, but he wore a victorious expression.
He’d taken off his coat, and held it in a bundle, tucked against his chest. As he got closer, Dru could see that there was a very confused raven swaddled in the ball of material.
“Can you take him so I don’t jostle him when I jump down?” Viktor asked.
She jogged back over, then reached up and gingerly took the bundle from him.
The bird lifted its head in alarm, but settled in again when she pulled him into her chest like Viktor had been holding him.
Viktor leapt down and landed like a cat in the snow beside her.
“Did he scratch you?” she asked, looking at the lines on his face.
“No, no, these are from the tree,” Viktor said. “This little guy seemed to know I was there to help.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Dru asked, looking down at the bird. His feathers were velvet black with an iridescent gleam.
“I think he has a broken wing.” Viktor said sadly.
“Can we help him?” Dru asked.
“I think so,” Viktor told her. “I’ve helped injured birds before. We just have to tape his wing and keep him calm and warm for a while.”
To be a monster, Viktor certainly had a soft side.
She glanced up at his handsome face and saw that the scrapes had disappeared.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Your… your face,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, looking downcast. “Yes, I’m difficult to hurt.”
He was clearly worried about what she must think of him.
“That’s amazing,” she said honestly, reaching up to stroke his cheek.
The raven cawed at her and she pulled back.
“Sorry,” she said to the bird. “Let’s get you inside. It’s very slightly less cold in there.”
Viktor laughed and put an arm around her as they moved through the deep snow to the hotel. It was a little easier going back, since they had forged a bit of a path on the way out to the tree.
“Why don’t you go on up to your room,” he told her when they reached the porch. “I’ll see if I can find a good box for him.”
“That’s a good plan,” Dru said. Her clothes were cold and wet. And if they hung out in the common spaces, everyone would want to look at the bird.
Without working electronics, she suspected the guests and staff were bored enough to get excited about almost anything. And she could already hear Howie lecturing her about bringing a wild creature inside the hotel.
Viktor held open the door as she approached.
Dru strode in and headed right for the staircase, making it to the upper corridor and down the dark hall toward her room before anyone noticed what she held in her hands.
18
When Dru reached the door to her room she had to shift the raven slightly in her arms to grab her key.
He made a soft scolding sound.
“You’re okay, buddy,” she told him. “We’re going to get you settled in.”
She pushed open the door and almost tripped on a sheaf of papers on the floor just inside. Someone must have slid them underneath the door at some point. She wondered if it was something from Channing about the case.
Not wanting to disturb the bird again, she stepped over the papers and across the room, where she pulled an empty drawer out of her dresser.
She set it on the bed and placed the coat and raven inside.
It was too big for him to feel cozy. Whatever Viktor found would be better. But at least this allowed her to go check out those papers and get changed.
She scooped the papers up and shut the door. She lit a jar candle on her desk that was supposed to smell like a mountain breeze, but really just smelled like laundry detergent, then came back and sat on the bed next to the bird in its makeshift nest.
The top page had a handwritten note:
Don’t trust him. He’s been lying to you about everything.
That sounded pretty dramatic. But she supposed they were in a pretty dramatic situation.
She studied the handwriting, but it wasn’t familiar.
She turned over the first page and gasped.
It was Nana’s journal.
Someone had taken a picture of the first page and printed it out.
She flipped through the rest of the pages. It was all here.
In the excitement of the storm, the murder, the secret passageway, and the realizations about Viktor, Dru had forgotten all about the journal.
But whoever had photographed it clearly hadn’t.
The first page was just as it had been when Dru last saw it, with each word carefully deciphered above the original word in her handwriting. But now, the later pages had been decoded as well.
And those deciphered words stood out in blue ink against the black and white image of the journal. Whoever had taken these photos had put in the time to translate the rest of the coded entries.
She paged through, stopping at random entries.
The sunset last night was especially beautiful. Both Miss Van Burens were playing chess in the solarium and I wished I was a painter instead of a writer. There was something about the pink light moving through the greenery on their dark hair, their colorful dresses and the black and white of the chess board.
Dru smiled. How funny that she had skipped right to a section with familiar faces.
The new guest is very charming. He stood at the counter and asked me all about the hotel and about my life here - so many questions. I wondered why he arrived so late at night, but I didn’t ask. It’s one thing for a guest to ask me questions, but I’m sure I should allow the guests their privacy. He is very handsome. His name is Michael.
Dru smiled. It was strange to think of someone flirting with her Nana, especially someone who wasn’t Grandpa Frank. But she had been young once, and apparently looked enough like Dru that the Van Buren sisters noticed it.
I have made a new friend in Michael, and it seems that he never sleeps. When the rest of the hotel is resting, he keeps me company on my long night shifts and asks me about my writing and my family.