Free Jacaranda by Cherie Priest Page A

that’s all. No message spelled out, no notes left behind.”
    “But why Constance? What did it want with her?”
    “Why not Constance?” he countered. “Why not any of us?”
    The nun shrugged softly, uncertainly. Then she straightened and said, “Oh dear…what should we tell her husband, when he arrives? If he arrives,” she amended.
    “Should the time come, we will tell him the truth. A gentle version…perhaps she died in some strange accident.”
    “What if he wants to claim her body, and bring it home to a family plot?”
    “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said, just a hint of crossness in his words. “She’s dead, and we don’t know why.”
    “No, we don’t,” she agreed diplomatically. “And there’s a chance we never will. Do you think there’s anything to be learned from the room? Any reason we shouldn’t have Sarah clean it?”
    “It’d be better to do as Constance suggested, and burn the place to the ground.” He thought of Sarah, so fragile and nearly useless; he thought of the next guest who might occupy the room. “But leaving that option aside for now, I suggest we lock the door and leave it. There are many other rooms, ready to collect other unhappy souls.”
    Sister Eileen sighed. “I have no objections to that plan—and I’d be surprised if Sarah did. Besides, it’s getting late.”
    “We’re on the far side of late; we’ve nearly come around again to ‘early.’ We should rest, while there’s still time and peace enough to do so. If the storm comes tomorrow…” he wasn’t sure where he meant to take the thought.
    “If the storm comes tomorrow,” the nun echoed, and the padre saw exhaustion on her face, in the shadow of her habit. “Then we’ll all be trapped inside until it’s finished. And even should the hotel stand when the worst is over, I don’t know if any of us will escape the place alive.”
    “It’s only a storm. We mustn’t assume the worst.”



The padre ate breakfast alone in the oversized hall that presently passed for a dining area. It was early—far earlier than he’d prefer to be awake, given the previous night’s adventures, but he’d never been able to sleep very long past dawn. In drips and drabs, the surviving guests came and went, taking coffee and toast, fruit and milk. Some sat down at the large round tables with a newspaper for distraction, and others carried the meals back up to their rooms.
    Unlike the evening before, when everyone clustered together, that morning they scarcely spoke to one another—or to Mrs. Alvarez either; and when they moved, they shuffled about like phantoms in a daze. The light made all the difference.
    Their calm, passive demeanor belied the scene outside the great hall’s windows—where the clouds churned low and slow, as gray as mop water; and the trees leaned and strained, branches whipped out and leaves stripped away with the wind that rose, lifted, lilted, and hummed against the corners of the big brick building.
    The storm was coming, yes. Sooner than the absent nun expected, and no one was ready. Or maybe that wasn’t right at all. Maybe they all were ready—as ready as they were going to get.
    But it didn’t feel that way to the padre. It felt like a lie, one they told to themselves and each other: Nothing is strange, and no one is dead, and no one has anything to be afraid of. The storm will come and go, and leave us all behind. We will all go on with our lives. We will all leave this place, one way or another.
    And so they refused to speak any ill of their surroundings, as if lending the weight of words to the hotel’s curse would give it more power.
    Or else they knew there was nothing to be done, except look away.
     
    When the padre finished eating, he went to the lobby in search of Sarah. She wasn’t present, but one of Mrs. Alvarez’s daughters had taken up a post behind the desk. In Spanish, he asked her name because he could not remember it. She told him it was