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  To aid in the relaxation experience, a fully stocked bar with lounge seating ran along one wall of the suite, backed by a massive ceiling-to-floor mirror. Dusty containers of nuts and bags of chips were surrounded by chocolate bars and other assorted candies on an ornate rack located next to the bar. Lively wandered over to look at them, his stomach starting to rumble. Quite a few of the items hadn't been available out in the real world for many years now. It was like a graveyard for discontinued snack foods; dusty brown plastic bags of Maple Buds nestled next to faded yellow and black-wrapped Neilsen Four Flavour bars, their labels peeling at the corners. On the shelf beneath, foil-encased King Dons reigned over several different varieties of Old Dutch potato chips.

  Lively's stomach snarled at the sight of all the food. "Down, big fella." Despite his hunger, he wasn't going to risk eating decade-old chips or chocolate bars, unless he was starving and there was no other choice. Thankfully, he had come prepared and brought some high protein snacks to keep him filled up temporarily when hunger struck, but they were in his Tourister suitcase back in the middle of the hallway. He should have kept them in his messenger bag. — he loved how accurate his twenty-twenty hindsight was. If he were ravenous, there were some American MRE meals in the back of his 4Runner, but he didn't feel like getting them tonight, all things considered. Still, he would need to do something about the food situation soon and at least get a snack from his suitcase before bedding down for the night.

  The furnishings in the royal suite were eclectic, to say the least. Different periods clashed with each other in a war of the ages. Near the bedroom door, King Louis XIV armchairs flanked Elizabethan end tables. In the far corner, an imposing Chippindale credenza towered over a Napoleonic knick-knack cabinet currently sitting empty.

  There was damage to the bathroom and bedroom doors, looking like someone had tried to break them down with their foot, judging by the big black bootprints on them. “Must have been quite the evening,” Lively said in a low voice.

  Lively moved into the bedroom. “A circular bed that looked about the size of Vancouver Island sat on a raised platform in the middle of the room. At his back, the wall was covered with yet another floor to ceiling mirror. Moving to the ensuite bathroom revealed a full, frosted glass shower next to a toilet and an ornate bidet. Across the black and white tiled floor, a colossal clawfoot soaker tub with feet like eagle talons sat on yet another platform. To Lively, it looked more than ready to scrabble down from its perch and go on the hunt for fresh prey to drown in its voluminous recesses. Whatever else you had to say about this place, he mused, the Sinclair Resort Hotel's high-end suites didn't skimp on raised platforms on which to display their massive beds and horrifically designed bathtubs.

  Despite having emptied his bladder at the gate, it started squawking again at the sight of the toilet, creating a new sense of urgency. The three cans of root beer he'd drunk, almost in a row, were not finished with him yet it seemed. Before he had any accidents, Lively decided to use the facilities while he was in the appropriate room. He left the door open at his back as he urinated. Shortly, a shudder went through his body, and he sighed in relief as things trailed off to a thin dribble. “Ah, the pause that refreshes."

  The bathroom door behind him suddenly pounded shut, closing so forcefully that it cracked the tile accents around the doorframe's edges.

  Lively jumped as if electrified, spraying some of his remaining Barq's wildly across the toilet seat and floor next to it. He quickly got things back under control, zipped and turned at the same time, expecting someone or something to be standing behind him, but there was no one there.

  He tried the doorknob and found it turned freely. After a bit of a pull to dislodge the door from the frame, he peeked out into the suite.

  The room stood empty.

  Looking as startled on the outside as he felt on the inside, another Lively Deadmarsh peered back at him from the mirrored wall opposite. "Caught you by surprise too, eh, buddy?" he inquired of his reflection, laughing slightly, and shaking his head. The Lively across the way shook his head in commiseration, matching his movements and laughing slightly as well.

  Moving through the doorway from the bathroom into the suite, across the room, his doppelganger did so as well. They both approached the king-sized bed in the centre of the room. In both of their universes, something had changed in the room.

  The enormous circular bed had a new occupant, the American Tourister suitcase.

  A series of disturbances in the thick layer of dust on the carpet around the bed were evident. "Looks like my heavy-footed friend is playing bellhop and making luggage drops now." He looked up toward his mirror-mate a final time, saying, "I guess that's part of the full-service package they provide around here." His reflection looked back at him, grinning widely, and enjoying the joke.

  Lively froze.

  There was one small problem. When he'd made his lame joke just now, he hadn't smiled.

  But his reflection had.

  And it still was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  December 24th, 2021, 0725

  Strains of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto drifted from the BMW’s powerful sound system as Minerva Deadmarsh wove the Alpina XB7 through the winding highway’s curves. Although she exceeded the posted speed limit on occasion (okay, on most occasions), she didn’t consider it speeding. Speeding implied driving with reckless abandon, but she never did so — she only drove with control and finesse.

  Her three-hour nap last night just wasn’t cutting it. She sipped the steeped tea she’d picked up at the Tim Hortons in Entwistle, glad to have something hot to keep her awake. Fortunately, she hadn’t had any issues so far, and the XB7 had swept her through the deep snow in the narrow lane that led up to the Sinclair Resort with no difficulty whatsoever. Then again, for what the SUV cost, she hoped there wouldn’t be an issue.

  After purchasing the BMW, when she’d first told Lively the model’s name, he’d joked with her that the XB stood for ‘Xtra Bucks’, of which a person needed a profusion in order to own one. There weren’t many things that Minerva spent her money on in life, but a nice ride was one of them. When her brother bought vehicles, he only wanted something reliable and serviceable. She, on the other hand, wanted something safe and stylish. The fact that this vehicle cost almost as much as her small condo in Yaletown was beside the point.

  Her flight had been delayed several hours by the storm, and she’d arrived in Vancouver much later than she’d wanted last night. After her plane finally landed, she’d dropped by her apartment and picked up a few things she might need, along with a few hours of sleep. The weather office had predicted the storm would break overnight and she wasn’t the sort of person to risk life and limb to get somewhere a couple of hours earlier, fighting against inclement weather, unlike her more thrill-seeking brother.

  But it wasn’t that she didn’t like thrilling things as well. She was an amateur rock-climber in addition to her other talents, so she knew what adrenaline was when she felt it. She’d picked up the hobby from one of her roommates in college, Christine Moon. Minerva had always been a person who liked to know the risks when she did something. That’s what appealed to her about rock climbing — you’re continually assessing the rockface ahead as you plan your ascent, looking for the safest and fastest route, most of the time. Manageable risk, she figured, was where it’s at.

  Already the kind of person to be up before the dawn, today Minerva had risen extra early. This was one of the shortest days of the year. It had been pitch-black outside when she’d left the city, the sun not yet ready to peek over the horizon for several more hours. Unfortunately, this early day would cause her to miss out on her morning yoga practice. But her downward dog would have its day again sometime soon, of that she was sure. It was all worth it, though, just to be able to sneak up on her unsuspecting brother and surprise him.

  The resort’s entrance appeared around a final bend in the winding road, and Minerva slowed her BMW to a crawl. One o
f the gates stood open and she could see faint tracks in the snow from another vehicle going through many hours earlier. The snow lay thick in the lane, but she felt confident the Alpina would do its job and get her up to the hotel safely.

  At over two hundred acres, the resort’s property was enormous. The massive hotel suddenly came into view and she gasped. It sat in the centre of a large clearing, flanked by old-growth forest on either side. Imposing and cold, its rough stone exterior stood exposed and naked to the world. It seemed made of nothing but sharp angles, each one jutting out starkly against the brilliant blue of this post-blizzard day. Currently bathed in dazzling golden light that flooded over a serrated series of mountain peaks in the east, the building’s castle-based origins were more than evident. On the ramparts that ran along its top, she expected to see vats of boiling oil ready to pour over any barbarian hordes that might happen to wander by. Wherever there were windows along the ground level, they were boarded over with exceedingly sturdy looking lumber, presumably to keep vandals or looters out of the place. A huge snowdrift ran up the side of the building at the far corner, stopping near the base of a second-story window. Minerva smiled, thinking it looked like an excellent room to check into with your bag under one arm and a Crazy Carpet tucked under the other.

  A green Toyota 4Runner sporting a yellow bumper sticker on its back hatch sat parked beneath the hotel’s covered entrance. Minerva smirked slightly as she got close enough to read the sage words on the sticker, ‘Sometimes, I struggle with my personal demons, other times we just snuggle’. Her big brother had apparently made it up here safely last night after all. As to what happened to him since he got inside, she was about to discover.

  Surprising Lively was one of the things she enjoyed doing in life, but it could be quite challenging. Despite her best attempts to fool him, he almost always seemed to know what she was up to. But not today. She figured this time really would be a surprise since Lively had no idea she was now part of this investigation.

  After her brother had signed on, she had been contacted about participating in the investigation as well. Minerva assumed he had come on board under similar contractual circumstances to hers. She’d been asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement not to share her participation in this investigation or share the outcome publicly. Along with the NDA had been an appropriately dumbfounding amount of money offered for her acceptance, and a disclaimer of equally steep penalties if she were ever found in breach of the agreement.

  Minerva had done her fair share of research regarding the Sinclair incident over the years, just like Lively. She could understand the trepidation on the part of the holding company regarding safety and liability issues before their tentative reopening.

  Back in 1985, after several years of legal wrangling, the lawsuit had been settled between the relatives of the missing people and the Sinclair Development Corporation. The company had been found liable for negligence, and the victim’s families had received almost two-million dollars each. A tidy sum to be sure back then, these days it would have been closer to six million per person. After the settlement and all of the court costs were tallied up, most of the Sinclair Corporation’s capital had been wiped out, and bankruptcy had ensued.

  With liability payouts these days usually in the billions, she could understand the desire for the resort’s holding company to keep things as safe as possible and as quiet as possible. If they were to reopen, they didn’t want to have any repeats of the past and wanted to know that the building was ‘safe’. Safe was a relative term, Minerva realised when it came to paranormal events in a building like the Sinclair. Until she, Lively, and whoever else may be involved in the investigation could determine what might have caused the incident, they could offer no assurances one way or the other that it wouldn’t happen again in the future.

  Much like her reason for taking this offer, it was also the reason she had been in Ireland for the last week — to verify the paranormal status of a heritage building. It had been something she’d been doing more and more of lately, utilising her gift to help out where she could. Some clients wanted to verify they had a supernatural addition to their property, first, before buying it, while others wanted to know what they needed to do to get rid of it. She hadn’t been making a career out of things like this in the same way Lively seemed to be doing since he resigned from CSIS. That being said, she didn’t object to assisting someone if they approached her, and they wanted to pay her as well. And that is what happened here. For her personally, this one contract would set her up almost for life, paying her condo fees and keeping her in BMW XB7s for many years to come.

  The reason for her visit to the Emerald Isle had been to help out a good friend of hers from London who was looking to purchase an ancient public house and inn. This pub was also pitched as being very haunted. Her friend, Angus McGregor, wanted someone with her abilities to verify the claim and stay there for a few nights, and hopefully make a recommendation. But after what happened in the rooms above the pub on the first night of her stay, Minerva had been more than ready to whole-heartedly endorse the place well before her flight back to Canada had been ready to depart.

  The Dublin job had been exciting and dangerous, especially for someone with her more sensitive abilities. When she’d been there, she’d figured she had never before been in a more haunted building. That was until now, with her upcoming visit to the Sinclair. What exactly had happened in that resort’s grand ballroom on New Year’s Eve 1981? No one knew, and they could only speculate. The only thing everyone agreed upon was that it was one of the most intriguing and shocking paranormal events ever recorded. And now, Minerva was going to attempt a reading there, amongst other things, to help make sense of this midnight of madness known as the Sinclair Incident.

  She placed her Alpina in park behind the 4Runner and killed the engine. The SUV was relatively high off the ground, sporting twenty-three-inch wheels, but Minerva had no trouble climbing down out of it, thanks to her long, leather boot-clad legs. Though she was Lively’s twin, they were not identical. However, one of the things they did share in their dizygotic relationship was their height genetics. Although not as tall as Lively’s six-foot-four, at five feet, eleven inches tall, Minerva towered over most men when wearing even her most modest, three-inch heeled boots. A strikingly beautiful woman with auburn hair and piercing hazel eyes, she was as gorgeous as her mother, or so she was told. Selene Deadmarsh had died giving birth to her twins, never revealing to anyone who their father was before her passing. Minerva and Lively had been raised by their maternal grandparents in Vancouver, and had grown up always wondering of their heritage, but never knowing anything for sure.

  Old photos and motion pictures were now the only way for them to remember the mother they’d never met. From what Minerva had seen, Selene Deadmarsh had been as talented as she was lovely. A model by trade, her mother had also been an up-and-coming actress in the growing ‘Hollywood North’ entertainment industry. Before her untimely passing, Selene had made several films and guest-starred on quite a few TV shows, finally getting noticed more and more by actual Hollywood studios down south. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Minerva had done some modelling herself and been paid quite well for it when she was younger, but unlike her mother, acting never held any appeal for her.

  Minerva closed the door of the SUV and stood for a moment, stretching, and breathing deeply. She hadn’t been out of the XB7 since she’d left the city and still felt electrified by the drive. Clean mountain air filled her lungs, scouring them of the pollution from living in the city. The air was stingingly cold up here since the storm had cleared. According to the Alpina’s external temperature sensor, it was currently sitting at minus twenty-nine Celsius, and that was without the bitter wind that currently buffeted Minerva’s faux fur coat. She shivered, wanting to get inside the hotel as quickly as she could.

  Something caught her attention near the top corner of the stairs leading to the front doors. A deflated, golden-coloured balloon
with an uncanny resemblance to shrivelled skin partially covered a striped noisemaker and party hat sitting next to it. She shook her head. “Lively’s already gone and gotten this party started without me. How typical.”

  The front doors to the resort were hideous. As soon as Minerva saw them, she couldn’t unsee the grotesquely carved faces that had immediately leapt out to her observant eye. She shook her head, supposing it was somebody’s idea of fine art. Fortunately, one of the doors was unlocked, and she didn’t have to look at them long. The knob turned freely, and she pushed one of the heavy doors inward, following it through into the hotel.

  Minerva closed the door firmly to keep the cold out, then turned back toward the cavernous lobby. Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes seemed unable to blink. The opulence on display was mind-numbing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen so much stone, marble, and brass together in one place. Her lungs suddenly remembered to breathe, and she let out a small gasp, finally blinking her eyes several times as well.

  The chandeliers overhead shone bright as day, flooding the corners, and banning any shadows in the vast expanse of the lobby. But something felt ‘off’ in here. Perhaps it was because it was so bright, overly so, almost. But no, she shook her head, that wasn’t it. And then it dawned on her. Somehow, it was larger on the inside of this building than it appeared on the outside, and it was already huge to start with.