“Don’t you worry about old Hattie. I’ve been around poisons and potions, elixirs and venoms, every kind of nostrum and bane that you can think of. It’s worn out this old body, but it’s left me immune to about everything made or grown on this earth.”
She looks at the bottle, smacks her lips, and puts it in her pocket.
“Let them up, boys,” she says, then points at me. “But keep an eye on the scarred one. He looks shiftier than a drunken sidewinder.”
Diogo and his boys grab ropes suspended over the stairs and pull. A makeshift ramp made of old pieces of scaffolding wired haphazardly together swings up into place. With a thud, the ramp bangs into the bottom of the steps and Hattie’s boys tie off the ropes.
“You first, Cortés,” I say, and shove Delon onto the ramp. It sways and the ropes creak and Hattie’s boys laugh, but the thing holds together. Delon walks up the ramp like he’s barefoot and stepping on razor blades.
“One at a time,” I say to the others, and start across. I let go of the Colt so I can put out my hands to keep my balance. I don’t bother looking down. I have a pretty good picture in my head of the garbage heap twelve floors below. I don’t want to end up another empty juice box on the pile.
I make it across and Candy stumbles up behind me a second later. Then Brigitte and the rest.
Diogo and his boys take us into the remains of the Blue Pavilion Hotel. The place is in better shape than downstairs but could still use a good hosing down. Hurricane and smaller oil lamps light the lobby and surrounding halls. The lobby furniture is patched with duct tape and random swatches of fabric. Some of the chairs have no legs and sit flat on the floor. All the glass in the panoramic windows is covered with heavy curtains, which makes sense. They don’t want anyone on the beach to see the lights from up here. Duct tape covers slits in the curtain every ten feet or so. Spy holes. It’s a damp, depressing place, but at least we’re high enough that there isn’t fungus and mold everywhere.
“Come sit by me,” Hattie says to Delon.
She perches on a heavy wood-and-gilt chair against the wall. Her secondhand throne. Delon goes over and sits in a smaller chair slightly off to the side.
Up here, the Mangarms look a little less like the Texas Chain Saw psychobillies I thought they were on the stairs. In here, with their patched robes and mangy furs, they look like sad, faded royalty. The bluebloods of a kingdom as long gone and dead as Atlantis.
“Tell me why you’re here,” Hattie says. “You didn’t come for potions since it’s clear you have your own. You’re not looking for sanctuary because . . . well, this isn’t the place for it and we aren’t the kind of people likely to give it.”
Diogo and the boys chuckle and elbow one another. They love their mom. I wonder how long they’re going to last when she finally kicks it. I give them six months.
“We’re looking for a ghost,” says Delon.
Hattie leans back on her throne and laces her fingers together.
“There are many ghosts in here. Are you looking for one in particular?”
“An old one. A little mad they say. He thinks he knows secrets.”
Hattie nods.
“Yes. The old Roman. I know of him. Why do you want him?”
Delon smiles.
“We want to know his secrets.”
Hattie glances back at us.
“There are six of you. That’s a lot of people for a dead man’s secrets.”
“Too many people, if you ask me,” says Delon. “I’d prefer to be doing this on my own.”
“Then you’re a fool,” says Hattie. “No one goes alone here. Especially to the old ghost. He’s at the very bottom of this castle keep, in the old baths in the basement.”
“You mean a spa?”
Hattie makes a face.
“No. Roman baths. Saltwater baths from the sea. Some lunatic’s idea of a health balm. Me, I’d rather bathe with rats than the fetid ocean that surrounds this place.”
Finally, Hattie and I agree on something.
The rest of us sit on the patched furniture across the room from Her Royal Highness. Diogo and his crew stand around us. One with close-cropped white hair has noticed Candy’s shiny backpack. He pokes at it with the tip of his sword. Candy pulls the pack onto her lap.