I didn’t have to think for even a moment. “Uh, I’ll stay with Josh.” I figured it would be fun for the two of us to share a room. Like a sleepover.
“Okay then.” Shayla handed me the keycard to our room, while she entered the single one. Swiping the card against the reading device by Josh’s and my door, it clicked open. I wheeled Josh inside before closing the door behind us.
My breath hitched as I took in the room. Wow. This was more like a full-blown suite than just a twin bedroom. And the view through the old-fashioned windowpanes was stunning. It afforded a view of some kind of park, complete with lush green lawns and a lake in the middle, surrounded by wispy willow trees. Even beneath the gray rainy sky, it looked beautiful.
The room was serene, tranquil. So quiet, I could distinctly hear both of us breathing.
We averted our eyes from the window and looked again around the bedroom.
“Well,” Josh said, clearing his throat. “Ladies first. Which side of the room do you prefer?”
Of course, my preference was the bed closest to the window, but I thought that would be nicer for Josh to have.
I pushed him to the window bed. “I’ll take the other one,” I said, before leaving him and laying my suitcase on my own mattress to begin unpacking.
As I started laying out all the clothes on the bed, intending to hang them up in the cupboard before they could get too crinkly, Josh remarked, “Did you seriously bring all those for me?”
He was eyeing the large heap of male clothing I’d taken from my father’s closet. I grinned sheepishly. “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t—and still don’t—know exactly how long we’ll be staying. We might need to extend the trip more than two nights.”
I fished out the tuxedo from the pile and held it up to show him. I quirked a brow. “What do you think of this?” I asked him.
He wrinkled his nose. “Bit posh.”
I chuckled. “Then what is your style?”
He rolled over to the bed and began sifting through the clothes himself. He picked out a casual pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt. “These are more my thing, I think,” he said.
“You’re easy to please,” I commented.
He wheeled himself back to his side of the room and watched as I finished unpacking. As I was hanging up the last three garments, there came a knock at the door. I hurried to answer it. Shayla stood in the doorway, holding a book—a tourist guide to London. She stepped inside and moved over to the table near the window. She drew up a chair and began paging through the guide.
“I don’t know London,” she said. “I’m only aware of the location of the IBSI’s base here. But I’ve been reading this book and it looks like the most logical thing to do would be to go on one of these bus tours. It seems a good way to see the main sites in London and, if Josh is really from here, maybe something will trigger… something.”
Josh and I agreed. After bundling Josh with some more layers—including a hat and scarf, as well as pulling on a thick coat myself—we grabbed three umbrellas courtesy of the hotel and headed downstairs to get directions to the nearest tour bus stop. The rain was still beating down when the open-topped double-decker pulled up. It was a shame that we couldn’t sit at the top because of Josh’s chair. Instead we ended up taking a seat toward the back, away from as many people as possible. Which wasn’t difficult. The bus was practically empty.
We made sure that Josh had a window seat, of course, and Shayla instructed him to keep his eyes out the window at all times to take in as many details as possible. As the vehicle moved forward, it truly was a strange sight to see a place outside The Shade that remained so… unaffected. I wasn’t sure what the suburbs of London were like—but in central London, I didn’t get the impression that much had changed since the supernatural invasion.
That said, one thing that struck me as weird was the lack of people around. For that matter, the hotel itself had seemed quite empty. We hadn’t noticed any other guests on the way down or up the elevators.
Now, outside it was raining, which would explain a certain amount of emptiness on the streets, but the cafés and shops that we passed by also appeared to be three-quarters empty.
“Why do you think that is?” I asked Shayla, breaking out of my own thoughts.
“What?” she asked, keeping her eyes fixed out of the window.
“There are so few people around.”
Shayla frowned. “Well, it’s expensive. You heard how much those rooms cost us—even for a luxury hotel, it’s extortionate. Even the cost of these bus passes was ridiculous. I’ve a feeling that only the very wealthiest people can afford to live in Central London these days. Perhaps the rest just got thrust out to the less secure suburbs. Though they’d be more secure than US suburbs, for example. Europe and the UK haven’t been hit as hard by Bloodless as our part of the world, though of course, there are gates for other supernaturals to pass through worldwide.”
“I wonder how many other cities in the world also operate like this,” I said.
Shayla shrugged. “Probably quite a few of the major ones.”
I turned my focus on Josh. His brown eyes were wide and shining as he gazed out of the window. We had been traveling for about ten minutes now, and hadn’t hit even a single patch of traffic.
Over the next few hours, we passed all the sites that London was famous for—landmarks that even I’d heard about or seen pictures of. The Tower of London. The Houses of Parliament. The London Eye. Frankly, I wasn’t that interested in any of it. I kept looking back at Josh, hoping that at any moment, he might have a reaction. That something might spark in his eyes and he would suddenly proclaim he remembered something. Anything. But he remained quiet, simply observing our surroundings, without any sign of recognition whatsoever.