Jordan woke up in a panic with his face pressed against the wall. Something was terribly wrong. Something was shrieking...his alarm! He fumbled for the clock, fighting gravity across the lolling bed. Beast watched him, amusement twinkling in the wolfdog's eyes. 

Panting and sweating, Jordan finally got his hands on the alarm clock and smashed buttons until it turned off. Dread was settling deep in his gut. He couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up to the alarm clock, it was always Lana. She would come home from work, make coffee, and bring it to him before his alarm even had the chance to go off. He'd be awake enough to turn it off before it could rip through his skull with its obnoxious screeching. Where was she? Why wasn't she there? He groped through the covers for his phone. Maybe something happened at work, or maybe she got in a car accident, maybe...no, those were all the maybes he could think of. 

No calls. No messages. He started to sweat as he scrambled out of bed, tripping over Beast as he lunged for the window. The car was in the driveway, just as it should be. She's home? Frowning, Jordan grabbed a pair of pants off the floor and stumbled as he moved to the door. Clothes all over the damn floor, what the hell happened? 

He yanked the door open. Before he could open his mouth to call her name, he heard a strange woman's voice coming from the den. Hackles up, he stalked down the hall and listened at the door. 

"That's it," the voice said. "Just relax."

His heart lurched and adrenaline raced through his body, making his mouth and the tips of his fingers tingle. He jerked the door open, barely noticing the hinge pins flying as the door came out of its frame. 

The first thing he noticed was Lana in her underwear. She screeched as she fell to the ground from some unknown height. The voice continued chattering, annoyingly calm. It slowly dawned on him that the voice was coming from the TV, where a woman in bright pink spandex floated four feet off the ground in a seated lotus. Lana glared at him from the floor. 

"Uh--what's going on?" He asked. He looked at the door still clutched in his hand and gently leaned it against the wall, patting it in a sort of apology. Embarrassment crept over him and it didn't mix well with the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. 

"I was practicing," Lana snapped. She smashed a button on the remote and the voice cut off mid-word. 

"Practicing? Let me ask you something, Lana, what time is it?"

"Six thirty-two," she replied defiantly. She hadn't even looked at the clock. She knew. Damn it all, she'd done it on purpose! 

"Is there coffee at least?" He demanded.

"Yes." She snapped her fingers and instantly her soft, overflowing curves were hidden behind a robe. His frown deepened. Her robe was literally right there and she used magic to put it on? The laziness irked him. She marched toward him. 

"Excuse me."

He shifted his weight and let her pass, getting out of the way so she could fix the door. But she didn't stop--she just kept walking.

"You're not going to fix this?" 

"Why should I? You broke it, you fix it."

It was too early for this. Rage rippled up his spine. "Oh yeah, let me just snap my fingers and magically put it back together--" he snapped exaggeratedly, and magically, nothing happened. "--oh wait! That's your thing!"

"You have hands," she called from the kitchen. "Tools are under the bathroom sink."

His retort was interrupted by his phone ringing. Growling, he stormed back to the bedroom and snatched up his phone. "This is Jordan."

"Jordan, hey, it's Christy. Look, I've got a man checking in who says you gave him a discount last time and told him to just mention your name to get the same rate?"

Jordan pinched his nose. "What's the man's name?"

"It's, uhh--Barney Rubble? Wait, is that your real name? Wow! Okay, so yeah, the man's name is Barney Rubble. So, what rate am I supposed to give him?"

"Rack rate," Jordan said shortly. "Just tell him it's special."

"Oh--oh, okay, um--right, well, I um--already told him what that was, though."

Of course she did. "Fine. Manager special, take twenty percent off."

"Okay, I'm sorry, I--"

"Stop talking, Christy."

"Yes but I messed up and I'm--"

"Still standing in front of the customer," Jordan interrupted. 

"Oh. Yes. Okay, let me handle this and I'll call you back. Oh, wait, one more thing! A guest told me that the pool is freezing, and I guess there's trouble in the boiler room and--"

"Christy. Stop. Talking. I will be there soon. Just get Rubble checked in and keep your mouth shut, all right?"

"Okay, okay, see you soon."

Jordan hung up the phone and raked his fingers through his shaggy hair. "Just spoonfeed that travel blogging son of a bitch some dirt, why don't you," he growled. 

Beast looked up at him and made a sympathetic noise. 

"Women," Jordan said. "Right?"

Beast barked. He wholeheartedly agreed. Women. 

Jordan sped through a shower and threw his clothes on. His shoes weren't where they should be. Neither were his keys, sunglasses, or tablet. After tearing through the room, he finally found them exactly where he'd dropped them yesterday afternoon. That only made him angrier, but he didn't have time to figure out why, since his phone had racked up six missed calls and fourteen messages since he stepped into the shower. 

He raced down the hall, but had to stop short before he mowed down his son, who stood just outside his bedroom rubbing his eyes. "Look out," he said impatiently, patting his kid on the head as he nudged past. 

Lana was on the couch with her lapdragon curled around her shoulders, sipping a cup of coffee. She gestured at the cup sitting on the little table beside her. 

"No time," he said. "Shit hit the fan."

He kissed her goodbye and hugged his son, pet the dog who had followed him out of the room, and swiped a hand across the lapdragon's forehead on his way out the door. 

If the bed and den door weren't fixed by the time he got home, he and Lana were going to fight. Hell, speeding into the day without his usual routine already had him in a fighting mood. She obviously wanted it. He didn't know why she wanted to fight, but if she didn't she would have done what she always does. And what was with the pushback about the door? Yeah, he could fix it, sure. If he had the time. Which he didn't. It would take her a fraction of the time it would take him, and she wouldn't run the risk of hurting herself or making the problem worse, either. Just a wave of her hand and everything's all better. Why was she being so stubborn about it all of a sudden?

"Women," he growled again. 

He could sense the chaos before he'd even parked the car. A couple was bickering out front, an overpacked trolley was leaning precariously as a small man tried very hard to make it all in one trip, and there was a small dog running around off-leash. Farther down the sidewalk, a young kid was running after it with leash in hand. 

This is why we have a fenced-in dog park, ya dingus.

With a massive groan, Jordan pried himself out of the small car, slammed the door, and marched toward the inn with his war face on. One glance at the ratty little dog stopped it in its tracks. As Jordan adjusted the trolley, the kid reached the pup and put it back on its leash.

"No, you said you made the reservation!"

"Why does it matter, huh? Why? We got a room, everything's fine!"

"Yeah, but if you reserved it when you said you did, we would have saved money!"

"Excuse me, ma'am? Sir? Is there a problem with your room?"

The snappish woman looked up at Jordan and her eyes widened. "No, no, it's fine, see my husband doesn't always understand how these things--"

"It's just that she's a penny pincher, you know, and--"

Jordan adjusted the cart again and looked over his shoulder. "Sir, it's full. I can get you another, but you aren't fitting that box on here."

"Oh, well, I guess you're right..." The man continued to mutter to himself as Jordan turned his attention back to the couple. 

"I'm the general manager here. If there's an issue with your rate, I'm the one you need to talk to. Now, if you can step aside so we can get this gentleman's things to his room, I would be happy to discuss this with you inside."

Jordan helped guide the trolley into the lobby, where more issues awaited him. An older man was shouting about something while Christy fell all over herself apologizing and flapping her little hands around, making pleading eyes at the printer. 

"I can't get reimbursed without a receipt! This is bullshit! Why does nothing ever work in this godforsaken place?"

"I'm sorry sir, it's just jammed, I can email your receipt to you again--"

"What the hell am I supposed to do with an emailed receipt?"

"Print it," Jordan told him. 

The man whirled around like he was going to take a swing, but froze when Jordan's eyes met his. Jordan spotted the porter wheeling a housekeeping cart down the hall behind them.

"Tony! Come help this man to his room."

"Right away, sir!"

Jordan passed off the cart and turned his attention to the printer. 

"It keeps jamming," Christy said helplessly. "I don't know why!"

Jordan hit all the right buttons and nothing happened. He opened up the printer three different ways while Christy was chattering on, telling him everything she'd tried and how it was all Amber's fault because Amber obviously messed with it somehow. He tuned her out. The jam was bad, but he managed to pry it out.

"Look at it, look at it, you'll see," Christy crowed. "It was one of Amber's things, wasn't it?"

Jordan held up the wadded, ink-soaked paper clog and gave her a flat look. She stared back expectantly, so he tossed it to her. "You tell me," he said. 

She looked at it. Flustered, she told him, "I can't read this!"

"Huh. How bout that," Jordan said absently as he hit the reprint job button. The ancient machine squeaked at him, so he hit it again, and once more for good measure. It shuddered and shrieked to life, spitting out page after page. Before Christy could get her meddling fingers on everybody's prints for the last twelve hours, Jordan snatched up the whole stack. He peeled the man's receipt from the top of the stack and handed it to him. 

"Thank you for staying at the Underlook Inn," he said flatly. "Have a nice day."

The man mumbled something halfway polite and scurried away. Jordan twitched the handful of papers out of Christy's reach just as she went to grab them out of his hand, and gave her a furious scowl. 

"Remember who the boss is around here," he growled under his breath. 

She chuckled nervously. "I just wanted to see if it was Amber. You know she never listens to me when I tell her how to use the printer, or when the house accounts are getting too high or anything, so I know she messed up the printer! Did you hear about her daughter? She's pregnant again! She swears up and down that it's Louis' kid, but I don't believe her for a second, I saw the way she was looking at Martin..."

Her chattering nonsense faded away as Jordan hurried down the hall away from her, and disappeared completely as he slipped through the hidden door which separated hotel operations from the guest-facing facilities. Here, the screeching whine of the pump room was a gentle song compared to Christy's incessant shit-stirring. 

Idly curious, he flipped through the stack of reprints. Halfway through, he stopped short. The rest of the papers fluttered to the floor as he pinched the edges of the page that caught his attention, his knuckles whitening as if he could squeeze some sense out of what he was seeing. 

It was an itinerary printout. One ticket, one way. $345 to get to the other side of the country in a steel box. Leaving out of Underlook Station at three o'clock in the goddamn morning...tomorrow. 

And the name on the ticket was Lana Firesong.