Bone Key (15 page)

“She Gotta Butt,” about a woman with a big ass. That song particularly resonated, as the singer’s description perfectly matched Susannah’s mother. As sunset rolled around, the white-haired guy was done, and the place just had jukebox music until after sunset, when the evening’s band would start playing. Once that happened, Susannah moved on to beer—she’d been sticking with cola until sunset, as she always believed that alcohol was only meant to be consumed when it was dark out.

Then Alberto and Fedra sat at her table—all the other tables were occupied, and she had one all to herself ever since that gay couple left—and offered to buy her a harder drink.

Usually Susannah was good for four gin-and-148 SUPERNATURAL

tonics before the room started spinning and she started losing inhibitions (and, sometimes, articles of clothing), but she barely finished the first one before she started to feel woozy.

“I—I don’t feel so good,” she said to Alberto, who had the sexiest accent. If he hadn’t been there with his wife, she
so
would’ve been hitting on him. True, she’d promised to get together again with Dean on Saturday, but that was two days away, and as nice as Dean’s eyes and smile and biceps were, Susannah was thinking about
tonight.
Except now she wasn’t thinking about much of anything. The Schooner’s Wharf was spinning around in circles, and bile built in the back of her throat.

Alberto grabbed her arm in an iron grip, and Susannah practically collapsed into him, letting him bear the brunt of her weight.

“Come,” he said, “we will take you to our hotel. We are at the Hyatt.”

Susannah said nothing, focusing all her energy on not throwing up all over the Schooner’s Wharf floor. She was staying at one of the motels way the hell over on Route 1 right on the other side of the bridge from Stock Island, a choice made by her dumb-ass cousin, whom Susannah kept promising herself she’d never travel with again because she did stupid stuff like that. Why would you come to Key West and stay so far from Duval Street?

Bone

Key

149

In any case, if Alberto and Fedra were staying at the Hyatt, they were only a block away or so. Right now, Susannah wanted to worship at the porcelain god, and a bar bathroom was most definitely
not
where she wanted to do it. She didn’t have any actual memory of walking to the hotel. The ringing of the elevator button echoed in her skull, though.
Christ, it’s like I went
straight to the hangover.
She kept her eyes shut tight, as the nausea got a thousand times worse when she opened them.

As soon as Fedra put the plastic key into the slot, Susannah ran into the room and went straight for the bathroom. Dimly, she registered that the do-not-disturb card was on the handle (
why, if
they weren’t in the room?
) and that the bed was propped up against the wall (
usually that means
a party
), but mostly she just wanted to get to the damn bathroom already.

Her stomach, perhaps realizing that solace was at hand, chose the moment she crossed the threshold into the bathroom to start heaving. Panicking, Susannah practically leapt to the toilet, throwing the lid up and opening her mouth wide. But, though she heaved, nothing came out. She felt a cool hand on her warm neck. It was Alberto. “Come, Susannah, we will take care of what ails you.”

God, why can’t I throw up?
Susannah just knew 150 SUPERNATURAL

that if she could throw up, everything would be better. That was what always happened—mainly because throwing up was the worst thing in the world, and you could only go up from there. Alberto pulled her to her feet, but she almost collapsed again. Her legs felt like noodles, and if Alberto hadn’t caught her, she would probably have cracked her head on the sink or the toilet. Her feet were dragging on the linoleum floor as Alberto all but carried her back into the main part of the hotel room. Everything was fuzzy, but then her bare feet (
how’d they get bare? what happened
to my sandals?
) rubbed against the carpet, and the rough surface against her skin actually forced her to focus a bit.

There were black candles all over the place, and they were all lit. Susannah didn’t
think
she’d been in the bathroom long enough for Fedra to have lit all the candles—but then, her sense of time was seriously screwed up.

“Everything will be fine,” Alberto whispered gently into her ear as he dragged her over to where the headboard was nailed to the wall. Only then did Susannah notice the thing painted in dark red on it. It looked like—a Star of David? No, that wasn’t right. A pentagram, maybe? She’d had a Wiccan roommate named Stephanie back in college, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember any of that stuff anymore. Besides, Stephanie kept Bone

Key

151

to herself, just lit a lot of incense, which Susannah had found really nice.

Speaking of which, something was burning, and Susannah suddenly felt the urge to light one of Stephanie’s incense sticks.

Jesus, where am I again?

She tried to make her brain work right, but it just wouldn’t. Now she was hearing strange noises.
No—that’s Alberto. He’s chanting something.
A long-ago high-school language class—the private high school her fat-assed mother insisted on sending her to actually required students to take
Latin
for God’s sake—allowed her to recognize the language he spoke, though she couldn’t remember all the words.

Then Fedra turned around and stared at Susannah with dark eyes. No, not just dark eyes,
blacked-out
eyes. No iris, no pupil, just deep, unending
black.
It was the single scariest thing Susannah had ever seen in her life.

After the brothers had finished lunch (and Dean had gotten Paula’s phone number without asking; she provided it with the check), they went back to the Naylor House to change into their suits. While Dean was changing, Captain Naylor decided to show up. “Pardon me, Mr. Winchester, but may I enquire as to your progress?”

152 SUPERNATURAL

Dean wasn’t really inclined to answer, but the captain
had
held up his end of the bargain. “We think a demon has cast a spell that makes spirits like you more powerful.”

Naylor recoiled. “To what end?”

“Hell if I know—that’s what my brother’n me are gonna try to find out.” Tying his tie, Dean said,

“Sit tight, Cap’n. We’ll get to the bottom of this and send you on to your reward.”

“I hope so, Mr. Winchester. Existence has been hellish enough, being tethered to this place for so long, but the awareness I now possess has only intensified that emotion.”

Dean actually felt himself feeling sorry for the poor bastard.

Once he was changed, and double-checked the fake ID, he and Sam hopped into the Impala and drove it slowly to the end of Duval, then turned right onto Front, then into the parking lot for the Hyatt Key West Resort and Spa.

“You know,” Dean said, adjusting his tie, “we could’ve just walked it.”

“We’d stand out like sore thumbs in these suits on the main drag, Dean,” Sam said. “Besides, it’s humid as hell.”

Dean doubted hell was that humid, but said nothing.
I’ll be finding out soon enough,
he thought wryly. But he also saw Sam’s point. Easier to con-Bone Key

153

vince someone you’re a fed if you aren’t dripping with sweat. And they’d be less obvious walking on Duval with big sirens on their heads than they would in suits.

Still, driving hadn’t been much faster, since it was close to sunset, and everyone was making their way toward the boardwalk for the daily sunset celebration. As soon as they walked in, someone with a nameplate that read yuri headed right for them. He was wearing a blue button-down shirt, khaki shorts, and moccasins, which was as close to formalwear as Dean had seen on anyone on Key West save him and Sam right now. “Good afternoon, sirs, how may I help you today?”

Flashing his fake ID, Dean said, “I’m Special Agent Danko, this is Special Agent Helm. We’re searching for a couple of fugitives, and we think they might be staying at this hotel.”

Yuri swallowed, his face going pale. “Oh my God. Are you sure?”

Sam was stone-faced, and spoke in a hard tone.

“Very sure, sir. These are cultists who are performing satanic rituals.”

“Well, Agent Helm,” Yuri said with a smile,

“what people do in the privacy of their room is their business.”

Ah, Key West
, Dean thought, recalling his and 154 SUPERNATURAL

Sam’s
laissez-faire
conversation. Sam had probably mentioned “satanic” rituals to get a rise out of the concierge, but nobody here was that uptight. However, Sammy swung at the curveball like a pro. “These rituals involve murder, sir. That’s what makes it
our
business.”

Now Yuri blanched. “Oh dear. What can we do to assist you?”

Dean put a reassuring hand on Yuri’s shoulder.

“It’s all right, Yuri, we’ll take of this as quietly as we can. Don’t want the tourists all upset, we get that.”

“Thank you,” Yuri said, relieved.

Good-cop-bad-cop may be the oldest trick in
the book,
Dean thought,
but that’s ’cause it keeps
working.
“Great, Yuri, great. What we need you to do is tell us if anyone from housekeeping has found any sulfur when they were cleaning up.”

That confused Yuri. “Sulfur?”

“It’s part of the ritual,” Sam said.

“If you’ll both wait here,” Yuri said, pulling a cell phone out of his shorts pocket, “I’ll get the head of housekeeping. Actually,” he said as an older woman walked by giving Dean and Sam strange looks, “why don’t you follow me?”

All things being equal, Dean would’ve been happy to people-watch in the lobby, but he didn’t want this guy to be any more nervous than he was.
Could be worse—he could find out what’s
really Bone

Key

155

going on.
So he and Sam followed Yuri into a back room, which turned out to be a tiny, cramped office with a wooden desk holding a laptop and an in-box full of papers, a cork bulletin board on the wall with tons of brochures, receipts, and flyers attached to it, and a ceiling fan keeping the air (barely) moving.

A few minutes later, a short, stout, middle-aged Latina woman came into the small office. She stood demurely with her hands clasped in front of her, though Dean read into her facial expression that she’d rather be just about anywhere else.

“Gloria, these two men are from the FBI,” Yuri said. “They need to know if anyone has found sulfur in their rooms.”

Speaking with a thick accent that sounded Cuban to Dean’s ears—not surprising, since Key West was closer to Cuba than it was to Miami—

Gloria said, “No, I don’t think so.”

She sounded tentative, so Dean said, “It’d be a yellowish dust or powder—smells like a burned match.”

More confidently, Gloria said, “No, I see nothing like that. Neither do my girls—they tell me things.”

Dean had been hoping one of the housekeepers would report it, but it was a long shot. The alternative, which was rapidly becoming necessary, was to go door to door.

156 SUPERNATURAL

However, Sam, bless his geeky little heart, had another idea. “Has anybody refused housekeeping service?”

“Many people,” Gloria said. “If they want to be filthy, I can no stop them.”

Dean asked, “Anybody who’s been staying here since before the new year, and has been consistently refusing it?” No way the demons would want the staff near their ritual knives and bowls and things.

Gloria wrinkled her nose, and said, “Oh, that’s 333. Their room must be very very filthy now. It’s disgusting.”

Yahtzee.

Yuri tapped some keys on the laptop on the desk. “That’s the Fedregottis—a married couple, Alberto and Fedra.”

“Great,” Dean said. “Can we have the key to that room, please?”

Yuri nodded. “Sure. Thanks, Gloria and please—

don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

All Gloria did was shrug and walk back out the door. Yuri then led Sam and Dean to an elevator down the hall, away from the main lobby. He fumbled through a large key ring that was in a cargo pocket of his khakis and pulled up a creditcard-style key, which he put into the slot over the elevator call button, then pushed it.

“Uh, look, Yuri,” Dean said, again putting his Bone

Key

157

hand on the man’s shoulder, “we appreciate your help and all, but we need to handle this ourselves. A civilian would just get in our way, y’know?”

“Oh!” Yuri actually sounded relieved, which Dean was hoping for. “Yes, Agent Danko, of course.” He fumbled through the key ring and pulled up another key. He extricated it from the ring and handed it to Dean. “Here you go. This will open any of the rooms.”

“Thanks.” Dean entered the elevator, and pushed the button with the 3 on it. As soon as the doors closed, he looked at Sam. “Jesus, 333? How much more obvious could they get?”

“Well, they could’ve gotten 666, but this hotel doesn’t have six floors.” Sam dropped the federalagent act and smirked.

“Yeah.” The elevators parted at the third floor, and Dean and Sam wended their way through the back corridors—passing a housekeeping person in the usual maid’s outfit that wasn’t nearly as skimpy as it was in porno flicks—and came out into the hallway through a door that said staff only. The right room would have been easy enough to find even without the “333” emblazoned on it. Dean knew the smell of sulfur anywhere, and this place was swimming in it. The door handle also had a privacy please card hanging off it.

“No way housekeeping just missed this,” Sam said.

158 SUPERNATURAL

“Yeah—that ain’t residue. The Fedregottis’re doing something right now.” Dean unholstered his nine-millimeter pistol which, like the shotgun, had rock-salt rounds, but unlike the shotgun could be easily brought into a public crowded hotel, especially if one had fake federal ID. Before they could get within twenty feet of the door, though, Dean saw a sight he wasn’t expecting: Captain Naylor.