Foreword: I'm sorry for not updating sooner! I've been VERY busy, and it took me quite a while to find a few hours for me to sit down and continue my new novel. The last chapter left off with Ned's saying that the intruder disappeared, and this chapter continues from that point. And now, the third mystery will be revealed… What is the third mystery? What happened to Nancy? Where is June? Read to find out! And PLEASE review!

Chapter 5

Bloody Magic

"He disappeared?" asked Amy, horrified.

"He might have jumped into the ocean, but I don't see anybody swimming away from this hotel. It looks like the person just disappeared into thin air right after stopping in front of June's room."

"Do you mean that the intruder kidnapped Miss Churchill?" asked Xavier.

Frank answered, "The intruder must've entered the hotel through this window, went into June's room, and then escaped from the other window, but that makes this very strange."

"How?" asked Callie.

"Do you remember the time when the windows were broken? Well, I heard the second crash just a few seconds after the first one. This meant that the intruder broke the window here, ran to the other one, and broke that window as well. But if he did that, he couldn't have gone into June's room, knocked her out, and took her out in less than five seconds. That proves one thing."

Derek had a worried expression on his face. "That means…the intruder is someone in this hotel?"

Frank nodded. "We should check Gary, Norma, and Henri. They're the only ones without alibis when the crashes were heard."

"And don't forget Nancy Drew," added Amy. Ned turned to Amy, puzzled. "Didn't you remember? She wasn't at the dining room as well. At least we should consider her a suspect in this case if she didn't have an alibi."

"Maybe we should check on her," suggested Derek. "Maybe she's sick. To tell the truth, I have this odd feeling about her…"

Ned grimaced. "Okay, let's go."

Back in Room 9, Frank knocked on the door of the girl detective's room. "Nancy?" he asked. He knocked again. No answer. The do-not-disturb sign was still hanging from the knob.

A sudden twinge of fear and panic came over both Frank and Ned.

"What happened to her?" they both thought in alarm.

Ned pounded as hard as he could on the door. "Nancy! Are you in there? Answer me! Nancy! Nancy!" No answer came from inside.

He then turned toward Edna. "Do you have a spare key for this room?"

Edna nodded. "There's a master key for all the rooms in this hotel. I have it locked up as well." She and Ned went down to the lobby once again. When they came back, Edna was holding the master key.

Opening the door, Ned and Frank saw Nancy. She was lying on her bed, and her eyelids were closed. Ned rushed to her immediately. He shook Nancy, and after a few seconds, her eyelids opened. "Ned?"

Ned sighed in relief. "I'm glad you're okay," he muttered.

Nancy sat up weakly. "I seemed to have dozed off," she said. "Ugh…My head is pounding like a drum."

Frank thought this was strange. Why didn't she wake up when they were pounding on her door? And her "headache" might mean…

His questions were never answered. Just at that moment, a scream shattered the silence. Everyone turned around. It came from Room 13!

Frank, Ned, and Callie ran toward that room. They saw Norma standing there, her eyes wide open in horror. Callie looked at the door of the room and shuddered.

There was a bloody message on the door that read: "Magician Is Back…With Vengeance."

Edna used the master key again and opened the door. When they saw what was inside, Callie screamed and covered her eyes.

In the darkened room, June Quinn lay flat on the ground with her eyes wide open, staring at the empty ceiling. Her body was smeared with something red. It was blood. Her clothes and hair were also red. Her face was now very pale.

On top of her chest was a black chapeau used by many magicians. But instead of a rabbit, a sickening knife stuck out from the top of the hat.

Frank backed up in horror. But then, the light from the hallway reflected off of the surface something shiny and metallic. Frank stared at it. It seemed to be a necklace of some sort…

"That's my pendant," Nancy muttered, her eyes wide with shock.

"This can't be!" muttered Frank. He went into the room and picked up the trinket. It had the initial ND. Opening it, he saw a picture of Nancy.

No, it wasn't the picture of her. It was her mother. Mrs. Drew looked surprisingly like Nancy, but her hair wasn't titian-blonde. She had dazzling blonde hair and the bright smile that seemed to light up anyone's darkest day.

"Nancy, are you sure?" asked he. He showed it to Nancy. She nodded.

He then looked at the other side of the pendant. Carved on it were the initials CD. "Are these your mother's initials?" he asked. Nancy again nodded.

"Her name was Carol…Carol Drew."

Edna then suggested, "I'll call the police."

She went to the lobby and dialed 911. After a while, she came back, more bewildered than ever.

"There was a landslide," she said, horrified. "The police said that they won't be able to come!"

Everyone in the room looked at the woman, shocked. "We're literally stranded here until the storm clears, and I don't know how long it'll last!" said she, trembling.

Amy gasped. "That means we are trapped here with a murderer!"

All four of the remaining guests, the three staffs, and the four detectives looked at each other in consternation. Someone among the eleven people in the hotel was the murderer, and they all were trapped inside the hotel until the sky could clear up. They just stood there and stared at each other, wondering who that person could be.

A few minutes later, the people in the hotel gathered in the dining room. They didn't speak a word to each other until Frank cleared his throat. "Okay, I'll need to know your alibis during the time of the murder."

"What are you playing, kid?" asked Xavier. "You aren't the cop around here."

Norma glared at Xavier. "No, but he is the son of Fenton Hardy. I'm sure you know of that man."

Xavier's expression changed from gruffness to a pure form of amazement. To Nancy, who was looking at the man's face, he seemed almost to be in a state of fear. But he regained his composure and kept quiet.

"I was in my room," said Gary Friedrich, the horror writer. "As you may well know, I'm a horror writer and need to finish my novels. If I don't, then I won't get my money. Understood?"

Frank asked, "So do you have anyone who can confirm that you were in your hotel room?"

Gary looked away from him. "No," he answered.

The detective then went on to Norma, the reporter. "Can you tell me what you were doing then?"

Norma nodded. "I was in my room by myself finishing up that article I am supposed to submit for the magazine. I don't have anyone to back that up, however."

Frank nodded. "Mr. LaSalle," he said, facing the young Frenchman. "What is your alibi at that time?"

"I was in my room reading. I don't really like being with people and therefore enjoy eating by myself. I was planning to ask the cook there to bring the dish to me, but I refrained, thinking that it wouldn't be very nice to ask of such a favor like that," the man answered. "But nobody can confirm my staying in my room." He then remained quiet.

Ned was suspicious of this man. He seemed to be a very fluent English speaker, but he said that he didn't stay in this country for long to Edna. Why did he tell her that?

"Nancy," he said, facing the girl detective, "why didn't you come down to eat with us? Why did you stay in your room?"

The blue-eyed detective grimaced. "I…I don't remember. After phoning my dad, I suddenly felt very drowsy and collapsed onto my bed. It seemed like only a few minutes later that I felt Ned shaking me."

This made Ned even more concerned. "Did you eat anything when you came here to the hotel?"

"No, I didn't," answered Nancy.

Ned kept quiet, thinking. He had his guess that someone put some sleeping powder into her food, but that guess was wrong, for she didn't eat anything since she arrived. But her statement strengthened the fact that she was drugged…

"But don't you think that a ghost could've done this?" asked Amy.

"Why do you suggest that?" Frank asked.

"Just think about it…When the windows were broken, we rushed upstairs to Room 13. But when you looked into the room, there wasn't a soul in there. So you closed the door, checked that the door was locked, and went to see where the footprints led to.

"But then when you came back after visiting Miss Drew in Room 9, you found that bloody message written on the door. And when the door was opened, it was clear that June was murdered.

"Here is the question: how did the person get into the room if it was locked? Edna here had the only key for that room, the master key, and the only key that unlocked the key holder. The other master keys were locked in the holder at the lobby, but nobody could've gotten those keys without the one Edna had. How did the person open the door, put June inside, and exited the premise when he didn't have the key to that place?"

Callie gasped. "Are you saying that this is an impossible crime?"

Amy nodded. "That's why I'm suggesting that a ghost did it; if it didn't, then who else could've walked through walls?"

Frank bit his lip. Amy was right; the crime was impossible to commit, since he himself observed that nobody was in the room. And he was the one who checked that the door was securely locked.

Nancy suggested an idea: "But what if the person was already in that room? Frank might've missed him because he had been hiding in the bathroom or behind the door, for instance."

Frank shook his head. "No. That's impossible. Even though it was dark, I checked every single place where a person could've hidden in: the bathroom, behind the door, in the cabinet, and so on. I didn't see anyone."

After the discussion, the detectives went to the scene of the crime. The body was already removed from the room. Nancy observed the bed. "Maybe the killer hid under this bed," she murmured. But when she took the covers off, she noticed that the space beneath was too narrow for even a little child to get in. It was obviously impossible for the killer to hide in there.

Sighing, Nancy looked around the room. Frank was searching in the bathroom, Callie was at the sink, and Ned was looking at the briefcase June had brought with her.

Nancy looked at the briefcase with Ned. She then laughed slightly as she wondered if the person could've hidden in that little briefcase. She then found a notebook.

"What's that?" she asked her boyfriend. Ned showed it to her. She opened it and saw that it was a normal schedule organizer. Flipping through it, she found nothing of importance. But she then found the photo of June when she was in her thirties. Nancy gasped.

"What's the matter?" Ned asked, looking up.

"I know this person!" muttered Nancy.

Ned was confused. "What? Where?"

Nancy sighed. "Fifteen years ago. I was heading home with my mother when she got hit by a car. Nobody nearby saw the face of the attacker, but I did. But after seeing my mother die, I sealed away those horrid memories until a few days ago, when Mrs. Fontaine told us about my mom's death." She looked at June's corpse. A look of anger came across her face. "Now I remember. This woman was the one who was driving that car." Her voice trembled with fury.

"This woman was the one who killed my mother!"

Postscript: Gasp! So June was the person who killed Nancy's mother? But why did she kill Mrs. Drew? And why was Nancy's pendant in the room with the victim?

There are more mysteries: how did the killer enter or hide in the room? To those of you who love true mysteries, this is the one for you. Frank made sure that nobody was in the room when he searched it, but then, June's body appears in a completely sealed room! How can this be possible?

These are few of the questions that will be answered, but they will not be answered any time soon. So far, the mystery portion of the story is disclosed, but the romance portion has yet to come. Will Frank and Nancy choose each other or their own loves back in their hometowns?

The mystery is just getting started. The truth is more complicated than you think. Love, hatred, revenge, and money entangle in a complex web of deceit and murder. The tragedy has just begun… Can the detectives find out the answer before the Magician claims his second victim?

Please review! Your opinions will be much appreciated. (Who knows? Maybe I will send you vital clues when responding to your reviews!)

Good luck sleuthing!