At 12:40, the Red Swan Garden Hotel was still just an old, brown-brick building in a mid-20th-century style—it had no garden and no red swan. The only thing on its facade was a painted flamingo, as if daring people to call a deer a horse.
'Well, at least it's not a construction site,' Mai Mingle thought, breathing a sigh of relief. She started to suspect the Nest had overstimulated her imagination.
That so-called wife should have arrived before her. But could the hotel really turn into a construction site just because she said it was?
Not even the inhabitants of the Nest had the power to turn their words into reality.
"Don't stop, I'm not getting out of the car."
Mai Mingle noticed the taxi slowing down and quickly told the driver, "I need to go check out Kaine Street next."
Thank goodness for the money she'd made from the lipstick; it was the only reason she could stand to let the taxi meter tick away, each jump like a hard beat against her heart.
