"You kids, always leaving things to the last minute," Norma said. "Well, okay. We'll do this quickly. But you be sure to jot it all down, because I won't have time to say anything twice."

"I'm ready," said Candy.

Norma took her passkey from her pocket. "Linda?" she said to the woman working at the front desk, "I'm just going up to Room Nineteen."

The woman frowned. "Really? What for?"

The question went unanswered.

"I won't be more than ten minutes," Norma said.

She led Candy away from the reception area, talking as she went. "This is the new part of the hotel we're in right now," she explained. "It was built in 1964. But once we step through here" —she led Candy through a pair of double doors—"we're in the old hotel. It used to be called the High Seas Hotel. Don't ask me why."

Even if Candy hadn't been told that there was a difference between the portion of the hotel she'd been in and the part that Norma had brought her into, she would have known it. The passageways were narrower here and less well lit. There was a sour smell of age in the air, as if somebody had left the gas on.

"We only put people up in the old part of the hotel if all the other rooms are full. And that only happens when there's a Chicken Buyer's Conference. Even then, we try never to put people in Room Nineteen."

"Why's that?"

"Well, it's not that it's haunted , exactly. Though there have been stories. Personally, I think all that stuff about the afterlife is nonsense. You get one life and you'd better make the best of it. My sister got religion last year and she's shaping up for a sainthood, I swear."

Norma had led Candy to the end of a passageway where there was a narrow staircase, illuminated by a single lamp. It cast a yellowish light that did nothing to flatter the charmless wallpaper and the cracking paintwork.