Shanghai's obnoxious alarm blared at five A.M. sharp, sending Cairo jolting upward so aggressively that he tumbled in a covers-tangled heap off his bed. His brother howled with laughter.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. Breakfast is earlier now. That's showbiz."
Cairo grumbled something about Shanghai misusing common sayings as they hastily changed and readied themselves for the day, out the door and down the hall in four minutes flat. This time he was squished between the brat he knew and the brat he didn't, Antalya attempting to force-feed Blue hash brown casserole off her plate. Blue didn't seem to be a fan. Cairo ignored the glass of water in front of him and poured himself a coffee, guzzling it like it was his last hope for keeping his weary eyes plastered open. Eye. Whatever. He was still getting used to it.
Cairo glanced down at his plate before shooting Paris an accusatory look. "Did you just steal my cheese Danish?"
The brat dabbed his crumb-littered mouth delicately with a cloth napkin. "No," he responded innocently.
He didn't get the chance to retort, because Mrs. Quimby tapped her glass lightly with a spoon to get everyone's attention.
"Children," she said smoothly, her voice a midnight stream. "This is a conversation your father and I have intended to have with you for a long while. Since the arrival of your brother—" she nodded to Cairo, and knowing everyone's eyes were on him made him want to crawl under the table— "we can finally discuss it with all of you here together."
Even Shanghai straightened and suddenly displayed excellent manners, so Cairo figured something important must have been going on, and his brother could sense it.
"We're not going to operate this place forever," said Mr. Quimby in his laid-back drawl. "As many of you are already quite aware, the world isn't safe for In-Betweens." Cairo was sure he was looking directly at him, and his throat ran dry. "This is a place where those with magic, those without, and everyone residing in the middle can find a temporary home. That was always the goal, and that goal should transcend our lives and yours."
His wife nodded, looking around at all of them one by one. "Many of you are getting older now, and eventually it will be time for you to carry on our legacy. Now that most of you are at the age where you understand your responsibilities in the hotel, we would like to present the opportunity for at least one of you to inherit the building someday."
Cairo's fork clattered to the table. No one else seemed to notice.
"Because of the..." She smiled lightly. "Unconventional nature of our family's structure, it would only be fair for all of you to be provided the same fighting chance—regardless of who or what is in your blood."
Oh, brother. Cairo shifted glances toward his siblings across the table, to his right and his left. Vienna was not hiding her eagerness well, that power-hungry smirk twisting its way onto her lips. Rome had stiffened, his eyes hard, and Shanghai was giving him a reassuring grin.
Rome was the oldest, and as far back as Cairo could remember, his sights had been set on becoming head of the hotel someday. He was good with the customers, he knew the place inside and out, and he was rarely doing anything other than working, so really, it would have made sense to pass the mantle on to him. Unfortunately, it also wouldn't necessarily be fair. Automatically giving the keys to Rome would take the opportunity away from Cairo—who was also, technically, the oldest. The oldest of Hattie's children, that was. And, of course, the oldest of both would be Vienna. To avoid a bloodbath between the three of them, it seemed, and to give Berlin and Havana a fighting chance, their parents had come up with this ridiculous compromise.
They would have been better off just giving it to Rome.
Several pairs of bloodthirsty eyes were now trained on Cairo, and the unspoken demand was clear: give it up. He hadn't been working in the hotel for five years. That was a long time to leave and suddenly return only to snatch up the management position. He could practically feel the pressure closing in on him like walls. Defiantly, he lifted his chin and continued to eat as if nothing were amiss.
HQ licked her lips, priming the words on her tongue before she spoke. "Why suggest the race now rather than wait?"
Mrs. Quimby furrowed her brows. "Clarify, darling."
"It just seems to imply that one or both of you are at risk of immediate peril."
Their mother nodded. "Ah. Actually, we have realized that it may be wise to bring up the issue as many of you are at or nearing the age where you consider parting ways with the family and the hotel, to pursue other things." Cairo didn't miss the point directed at him. Again. Mother, however, was notably looking anywhere but his way.
HQ nodded her agreement, but Cairo didn't think she seemed completely convinced. It was terribly strange timing, deciding to discuss inheritance the day after he set foot through the doors, and he wasn't fooled by the idea that his arrival was the catalyst that had invoked the conversation. No one in this room honestly thought that he was going to run the Quimby Hotel someday. Not only had he never expressed interest in the position, but he hardly contributed anything to the establishment in the first place. Cairo had had the most mundane, humble job when he worked here previously: he scrubbed floors.
"How might we prove ourselves?" Antalya asked eagerly, practically bouncing in her seat.
Father looked at her carefully. "Demonstrate responsibility in every area imaginable," he said finally. "Give me reason to find you worthy of running the hotel. Go above and beyond in your work. Seek out more work if you run out of it. Know the place backwards, forwards, and sideways, and prove that you can look out for both the individual customer and the bottom line. Then perhaps we can talk."
Cairo resisted the urge to laugh. He should have expected such a cryptic and vague answer from their father, but it was still quite funny watching Antalya's calculating little face screw up trying to decipher how to work with that sort of unclear assignment. The thing was, Rome was probably already fulfilling all those goals on a day-to-day basis. He wondered if the real test was whether Rome had the guts to look Father in the eyes and ask to be handed the keys.
Cairo finished his breakfast as quickly as possible, already bored with this conversation; this whole thing was likely only a ploy drawn up by their mother to entice the kids to behave. Even so, it was an interesting prospect to turn over in his mind: who would take over the hotel when Richard and Hattie were gone?
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"Cairo."
Cairo reluctantly turned at the sound of Vienna's voice, interrupted on his way to monitor guests at complimentary breakfast for the spy. "What?" he said impatiently, already knowing exactly what she was going to say and hoping to get it over with fast.
Berlin hovered silently behind her, holding the brat on one hip. Vienna's smug, rose-painted lips curled upward in a smile, but her eyes practically seethed. "Drop out."
He pretended to have a long, good think about it. "You know, I was going to," he began, "but now that you've brought it up, owning the hotel doesn't sound so bad." A bluff. He couldn't care less about his parents' inheritance. Of course, if it meant robbing Vienna of her greatest desires, this might be one competition in which he was willing to fight.
"Don't play games, brother," she said dryly. "We all know you can't stand this place anyway."
Cairo flashed grinning, biting teeth. "You misunderstand, Vienna. It's only you I find loathsome." She scowled, lashes lowering. "But fear not, dear sister," he added as he turned back to head downstairs. His voice trailed behind him, sure as steel and slick as glass. "As manager, my first order of business will be to fire you."
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Sitting at a round table by his lonesome in a strategic corner of the dining hall which gave him an excellent view of customers sitting down with their plates, Cairo Quimby was eavesdropping. Disappointingly, observing this many figures at once with only one set of vision and only half of that set intact made for dismal results. He couldn't look at the book he was pretending to read and watch others at the same time; he had to lower it slightly and glance about, which seemed to him to be painfully obvious. Thankfully, though, his eavesdropping skills were still five-star.
He had so far located several of the men who came in Sunday, each suspicious in their own right. Presently, he was innocently overhearing a conversation concerning some sort of gang activity, but kept getting interrupted by the woman talking heatedly into the nearest payphone. He probably shouldn't have sat so close to the phone wall, but it didn't matter, anyway—this particular breed of scumbag clearly wasn't the guardsman. This task seemed more impossible by the minute. Every skinny fellow who passed by with loads of gel in his hair pricked up his nerves, despite not showing any signs of irregularity.
This eavesdropping was a bust. Cairo had never realized how heavily he had always depended on his second vision for spying. He dropped his book and began to down his second cup of coffee, frustrated with himself. And, of course, his head was pounding behind his eyelids. He suspected such would be the new norm.
He perked up somewhat at the arrival of a new neatly-dressed guest from upstairs, who slid careful looks at everyone in his peripherals as he made his way to the smoking area of the lobby. He walked with a combination of confidence and self-consciousness that made the former seem falsified, holding himself highly but lighting a cigarette with trembling hands and a tightened jaw. A stab of rejuvenation ignited in Cairo's chest. Bingo.
Now that he had a target to watch, Cairo relaxed considerably, finishing his coffee quickly so as to have an excuse to get in the refill line—closer to this man than he was now. He couldn't, of course, watch him through the back of his head, so he had to settle for angling himself towards the lobby, appearing as casual as possible.
He watched with keen interest as the man shot darting looks at the other guests, relaxing only slightly once he'd apparently determined no conceivable threat was around. He stood and smoked for several minutes, content to engage in precisely Cairo's primary source of entertainment: observation. Cairo's mind raced, thinking of the people he'd seen on HQ's tapes. He was sure he was one of them, but never sure enough—with a plain face and mildly disheveled hair, he was entirely unmemorable, only marked by his curious behavior.
That would have to do, for now.
Cairo refilled his coffee and made a slow, wide turn through dining guests and back to his table. His focus remained trained on the stranger as he ended his smoke break and followed in Cairo's footsteps, entering the coffee line. Cairo couldn't yet puzzle out his motives.
Time passed, and nothing notable occurred. Cairo was beginning to grow impatient as the man settled at an empty table that was cluttered with trash from the last guests who ate there and had evidently decided cleaning up after themselves wasn't their responsibility. It was a personal pet peeve of Cairo's when people did that, but that must have been his experience as a housekeeper talking. He inspected something left on his table, and Cairo squinted, trying to determine if he was reading a letter or note. Contact with the Guard, he thought with prickling anticipation.
Slowly, the man got up. Cairo tensed, preparing to follow him, but he very suddenly swept up the stairs, vanishing from his line of sight.
Dammit.
Cairo rose to see where he was going and found him wrestling his key into a room on the second floor just above where he stood now, visible behind the balcony that hovered over the dining hall and the connected lobby. Fantastic. He'd lost him. For all he knew, it could be hours before he emerged. He hadn't the slightest idea what had made him retreat from breakfast so abruptly, but as he wandered over to the table he'd been seated at, he realized that the stranger had taken whatever he had read with him.
Moments later, he was startled by several gasps. People in the hall were clustering together and pointing at... something.
Cairo looked up just in time to watch as the man stumbled in a drunkenlike stupor out of his room, having slammed the door open, and swayed towards the balcony. No.
It seemed to happen in slow motion.
One misstep, then another. He lurched forward, eyes swirling with dizziness before they fluttered shut. Cairo's breath hitched during that horrifying moment when he was caught between gravity and the air—
Then the man tumbled forward, a messy tangle of limbs and striped suspenders, landing with a thud on his stomach on the floor. Gasps and shrieks emerged from the crowd, but Cairo pushed past them, gaze trained on what was jutting out from his back.
He crouched down, brushing against the paper wrapped around the handle of the knife through his biker's gloves. He tore it off, unfurling it. A note.
You think this is a game, Richard Quimby?
That was all. The slip of paper was crushed to a ball in his fist, and he slowly brought himself to stare up at the open door of the dead man's room. He hadn't been the spy after all. And he wondered if whoever was knew that Cairo was trailing him. Was this a warning for his father, or himself, or both?
The crowd shifted, and Cairo swiveled, knowing this meant that Mr. Quimby was coming down the staircase. His father stood frozen, an angry vein pulsating in his neck. The crowd parted as he stepped toward the body, eventually gesturing for Cairo to pass him the crumpled note.
After a moment of reading it blankly, it dissolved between his fingers, falling to the floor in ashes. He looked around at everyone in the room, wide-eyed, and when he spoke, his words rang in deafening silence.
"Nobody. Call. The police."
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