brain waves from flowing into her brain. That will stop the magic circling her mind and break the barrier naturally.”
Patience shuddered. “You’re going to cut into her brain, won’t that kill her?”
“It’s a dangerous procedure.”
Grim squeezed her shoulder. “Patience, Doc Remedy is the best, and magical surgeries aren’t like mortal ones. We can do far more than any mortal could, and what other choice do we have?” She bowed her head, knowing he was right. “There’s no point us staying here, so I suggest we follow Bernard’s clues.”
“To the Moonlight hotel?”
“It seems so.”
They began to walk out. “Call us as soon as she wakes up, or if she doesn’t. Just keep us informed.”
Doc Remedy nodded her head. “Of course.”
As they climbed into Bessy, she realised that Mortus was no longer with them. He must have slunk off into the darkness while they were worrying about Mercy. It didn’t seem all that important.
The drive was silent for the first ten minutes. All she could hear were the wheels scraping against the road as they skidded around corners.
Grim broke the silence. “Cheer up.”
“Cheer up? Our friend is lying in a coma, possibly dying or never knowing who she is again. How can we possibly be happy out of all this?”
“Well we managed to get in and out of there alive. The doc knows what’s wrong and is trying to fix it, and now we have what could be our most solid clue since the start of all this.”
She lowered her eyes. “Sorry, you’re right.” She sat in silence for a moment before letting the corner of her mouth slip into a smile. “Has anyone ever told you how big your head is, seriously, it’s massive?”
“That’s more like it.”
“So, what’s this Moonlight Hotel thingy that we’re going to?”
Grim’s eyes dazzled as though he was replaying a memory in his head. She wondered if he had been there the time Bernard had visited it. “It’s called a hotel, but in reality it is anything but. Think of it more as an asylum, or a safe haven for those who don’t have a place in society.”
“Like you.”
“This is going too far. Anyway, it is place for monsters, who are perfectly friendly in themselves. Some of them are the nicest people you could ever meet, but no matter how kind they are, society just doesn’t accept them.”
“That’s sad,” she said.
“Society sucks.”
They pulled up outside the hotel. It was fairly late and they would have to get in and out quickly if they were to get back in time for a proper night sleep. Patience looked up. It resembled a skyscraper that reached high into the clouds, though she could see a faulty flashing sign high up near the top.
“How do no mortals walk in here?” she said, “it’s not exactly subtle.”
“Well there’s nothing to suggest it’s not a normal hotel, they just tell them they’re fully booked. The plan is flawless.”
“Not exactly.” They walked in, finding themselves in an empty foyer. It was eerily silent, though most of the ‘monsters’ were probably hidden away deeper into the hotel.
They approached the reception desk where a short, fat man, with a sharply combed moustache, had his pointed nose stuck into a newspaper. “We’re booked up,” he said, without even looking up.
Grim dented the wood with his fist, though she could tell it was an accident. “Sorry,” he muttered.
The man looked up, surprise spreading across his face. “Oh, it’s you.” He seemed unhappy to see him.
Was there anyone he hadn’t annoyed? “Go ahead, just get out my sight. Go through before you break anything else, again” Maybe people hating him did have its benefits on the odd occasion, but this didn’t make up for all the times that it made life harder.
They walked to the side and went through a set of double doors, and her eyes opened wide as she resisted the urge to clap her hand over her mouth. Now she understood everything.
A man strode past her. She says man, but really it didn’t resemble a human male in any way apart from the humanoid figure. He was caped from head to toe in thick brown hair, his hands were huge like ginormous mittens and his dozen eyes blinked in sync.
“Good evening,” he said, politely waving his hand towards them as he walked past as though there was nothing strange or unusual going on. Ahead of them was a man covered in scars, one of his eyes was missing. Another had green skin and a massive bulge on his stomach, and so on. There were loads of them, all with appearances that looked like something from another world.
“I see what you mean,” she muttered, her mouth still hanging wide open.
“You should close it before your jaw hits the ground,” he said, “don’t look so surprised, or you’ll offend them.” They walked past a small café which attached itself to the ‘real’ hotel foyer, estranged customers sitting inside it. “We should go upstairs. Your uncle and I stayed here a few years ago, we were just passing through as we’d done a favour for the owner a while back, and we threatened to arrest him.
But anyway, I have a feeling that’s where we’ll find the clue.” Patience nodded and let him lead the way.
They climbed a set of stairs, laden in a thick red carpet, and then went onto another spiral staircase which took them even higher. She looked up into the sky room, it felt like a tower even though it was just a separate part of the hotel. Certainly not a section which she was able to see from the outside. She shrugged, magic.
“Okay,” said Grim, “let’s just look around. There’s bound to be some kind of clue around here somewhere.”
Patience started scanning every inch of the floor as if each floorboard was somehow leading her closer to whatever she was looking for. “What’s a clue?” she said.
“Well, it’s some kind of entity which leads us further on in our investigation to find the Lamina, or Mr Big, or both.”
“That’s not what I meant, anyway. Why didn’t we just go straight to the journal?”
Grim narrowed his eyes. “Seriously, I wonder what you were doing while watching all those films. It is never the most obvious answer. Except when you don’t expect it.”
“Like now.”
“Yeah, oh right I’m not helping my case. What I am trying to say is that your uncle, God rest his soul, wanted us to come here for some reason. Whatever that might be, who are we to question the clues of a dying man?”
“Dead man,” corrected Patience.
“Yes, thanks for that.” They carried on searching, though Patience was betting on Grim finding something rather than her stumbling across something. It seemed like they were looking forever, and she became aware that she was looking through the same drawers for at least the fourth time.
“This isn’t working,” she said at last, “there’s nothing here.”
Grim scratched his chin, where his beard would be if he hadn’t shaved his growing stubble that morning. “Maybe we missed something on the letter… do you have it on you?”
Patience took it from her coat pocket. It was torn and crumpled, but once she flattened it she was able to make out the words once more. Bathe this letter in a bask of Moonlight. It seemed so simple, yet so elusive at the same time.
She looked outside the open window, a small round glow being positioned on the floor. It was almost midnight, if not midnight already. No doubt she had been robbed of a proper night’s sleep. She could already feel the skin under her eyes starting to sag.
“What does it mean?” she said, frustrated by it all, she never was good at difficult puzzles.
“I’m not sure.”
She groaned, screwing up the paper in a fit of rage and tossing it across the room. As it fell, it streaked through the illuminated glow from the window, positioned in the centre. Her eyes opened wide. She had solved the riddle. Completely accidentally.
The paper began to glow, the light seemed to get absorbed into it as it formed a soli
d object. As it dimmed down she realised what it was, a key. She scooped it up off the floor and held it close to her eye, it was fairly small with small jewels embedded into the golden metal.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Grim sighed. “Yes, but that’s not the important thing here. We have a key, which means?”
“We solved the riddle.”
“You’re really not grasping the gravity of this situation,” he said, shaking his head, “what does a key open?”
“A lock.”
“For God sake,” he cried, “a DOOR, if there is a key there must be a door.” Patience widened her eyes in realisation, he was right of course. It’d be a pretty useless key otherwise, and there was only one thing that key could possibly open, the door to wherever the Lamina was being kept.
“So, now we need to know where the Lamina is,” she said, “so as the expert junior apprentice of high super detective Grim….”
“…. Not really my title…”
“....I say we should go back to my uncle’s house and finish what Mercy started. We need to find out where it is, surely it’s finally time.”
Grim nervously got her attention. “Well actually, see, I saw your schedule when you were flicking through your phone a while back. Didn’t I see some kind of family gathering… or a work party, or something.”
“Yeah, my dad is taking us to his work do, nothing big. Just gonna be a load of boring old men sat around sipping their wine, trying to make themselves look better than everyone else. I’ll just make up some excuse so we can go after the Lamina.”
“See, staying in your