9

Embarrassed and reluctant, Jerry had cleaned himself up, put on clean clothes and caught a cab to the rows of brownstones on Bleecker Street where Professor Danvers lived amongst normal people as a retired professor of anthropology, but that was just his cover. He was also a very powerful wizard married to a beautiful red-haired demigoddess, and Jerry went to him at times for consultations in the mystical arts, but it would not happen this time. When Jerry arrived, Ally Danvers revealed that her husband was visiting Alexandria, another secret school for Wizards in northern Greece, but she had heard through the magic community that Alex had taken off and told him that she would pass his message along to her husband to get back to him. Crestfallen and defeated again, Jerry turned around and returned back to Waverly Place, but this time he walked the way back to Waverly Place. For some reason, he had the idea he might cross Alex somewhere in the street.

Had his trip deviated through the shopping district of Boston, Massachusetts, he would have seen Alex coming out of Irene's, one of the most expensive dress shops in the city. Carrying a small bag, she was assisted by seven employees carrying her purchases out to her limousine, which she then rode back to the Tipton Hotel. At first, the popular hotel was going to be a temporary thing, but she enjoyed the stay there so much that she stopped looking for a house in the area and started to stay there. She was also starting to see investors and accountants to invest her money to keep from depleting it. Between donating money to local charities, she was also dealing with brokers and businessmen from other major companies. It seemed once the word went out through the business world that the Frost family properties were available for sale, companies with eyes on those properties descended like locusts upon Monica Frost at the Tipton Hotel. Most of them seemed like decent reputable representatives of their companies, but a few of them reminded her of the fancy-talking horse traders of the 19th Century who tried to sell swamp land while lying out the side of their mouth.

"The Old Hawthorne Hotel…" Barney Stinson was a certified public accountant for the Goliath National Bank in Manhattan and one of their favorite employees. "Built in 1836, it once stood as a beacon of hope for travelers, politicians and ambassadors passing through Boston in the Nineteenth Century, but look at it now…." He covered up the old tintype photo with a modern one from the same angle. "It has become old, retired, faded… a former shadow of its old self. It's a soup kitchen where homeless people sleep in the halls and rooms. Hookers frequent out front…"

"He knows about hookers." Marshall Eriksen was the GNB lawyer who accompanied him to legally observe this acquisition.

"Shut up…" Barney whispered to him then continued. "Just think how beautiful this neighborhood would look with…" He flipped up the artist rendering of a GNB building on the site. "…another Goliath National Bank in the area! We're growing! We're expanding! We're coming to you!" Barney was quite the showman, but Alex was not impressed.

"What about the soup kitchen that has been renting the location since 1957?" Alex sat in a slinky white gown in her leather chair with a snifter of brandy in her left hand.

"What?" Barney was not prepared for that question. "Um, uh, there's a nice diner just down the block. We'll give out coupons!"

"The homeless eating in a diner?" Alex made it sound ridiculous, but mostly because it sounded ridiculous.

"I hear the soup is awesome." Barney grinned. "Have you tried their chili?"

"Is he serious?" Alex looked to Marshall.

"I'm afraid he is…"

"GNB has been wanting to get their hands on this building since 1996." Barney tried his hand. "The ownership has been in limbo since 1967. We can take it off your hands for this amount." He slid a check face down across the glass coffee table toward Alex, but she took it and ripped it up without even looking at it.

"You made a mistake. You accidentally tore it up." The skinny blonde investment banker mugged confusingly. "You tore up the check."

"No, no, accident…" Alex dropped the torn check before the two men.

"I get it…" Stinson grinned trying to tell what she wanted. "You want more money…." He looked Alex over. She was a hard person to read. No emotion, no response, no nothing… She sat in the chair palming and sipping her glass snifter of brandy as if she were a member of the Royal Family of England.

"Maybe we can do this another way." Barney made the look. "I mean… I'm a man, you're a woman…"

"Oh, God…" Marshall predicted Barney was about to drop his pants.

"You've been looking at me like a lost lonely kitten wanting someone to stroke it…"

"Oh, please…" Alex laughed under her breath and sipped her brandy. "You smell like Vaseline, your personality stinks, and I feel as if I'm going to vomit just from the scent of your cheap cologne."

Marshall started laughing.

"It's not cheap." Barney sniffed his sleeve. "It costs fifty bucks a pop."

"Here's my counter offer…" Alex dropped a printout from her computer in the bedroom. "The old bottling plant in Echo Valley, it may be a bit out of your way, but the location turned into a ghost town after the plant closed down. Blocks of empty homes and old businesses at cheap property prices plus you could make a lot of money cutting up the factory and selling it as scrap metal. Building a bank here would do wonders for the economy there and get rid of the street gangs."

"You're kidding, right?" Barney scoffed. "Let go of a prime piece of Boston real estate for a piece of nothing in Nowheresville, USA? No, GNB won't go for that."

"Actually, Barney…" Marshall reacted. "That sounds like a really good idea. We wouldn't have to get all those building clearances we'd need in a large town like Boston." Barney shot a very annoyed look at him to stop talking.

"What did I tell you about trying to get involved?" Barney chided him then turned back to Alex. "I know what you want. Even more money, a few shares in GNB? A ride on the Barney Express?" He swayed his hips toward her, but Alex just reacted repulsed. "What will it take?"

"We might as well reschedule this meeting…." Chuckling in disbelief under her breath, Alex rose in her long dress. "I think you're going to be having other problems…" She passed her hand over the crystal ball on the table behind her sofa after briefly looking into it and then tugged at her left ear. Stinson made a scoffing noise.

"I don't have any other problems in my life." Barney grinned. "I'm awesome. My life is awesome. My job is…" His cell phone rang. "Excuse me… Hello?" It was the garage manager at the GNB building where he worked in Manhattan. Something had happened. There was a lot of noise and alarms going on the background. "Mr. Espinoza, what's the problem? What about my Mercedes? What do you mean it exploded? It was just sitting there in the GNB parking garage, how could it have exploded?"

"Oooo…" Alex cringed apologetically. "Karma is a bitch."

"My car?" Barney stood in a state of stunned shock and clicked his phone shut. "I just got that baby. I never even got a chance to break in the back seat." He broke out of his self-imposed state of lament and suddenly rediscovered Alex standing before him. She was a beautiful woman in that form fitting white dress. Her long dark hair hung down her shoulders almost down to her waist. Her dark brown eyes were distant to him. Her presence was practically mystical as if he were standing before an immortal.

"You knew…." Barney looked to Marshall and back to Alex. "Somehow you knew!" He forced a nervous snicker. "What are you? Psychic or something?"

Alex didn't speak. She just forced a knowingly little grin and a warm color rushed to her cheeks. Her eyes even twinkled a bit as her head tilted to one side and her long brunette locks over her shoulder suddenly spilled down her chest. Her hand lifted her brandy up to her red lips.

"I have another opening…" She turned to her planner on the writing desk to her right. "Next week at five on Tuesday…" She looked up with a mysterious enigmatic glint to her expression. "Will I see you then?" Her eyes looked back to Eriksen and Stinson standing before her fireplace under her family portrait.

"Maybe I'll see you sooner…" Barney replied.

"I don't think so…" Alex lightly shook her head. Before her, Barney just shook his head trying to break whatever spell he felt he was under. Was this girl a witch or just a really good manipulator? As she held the door open for her guests to leave, Marshall suddenly recalled his briefcase by the chair and reached to lift it up. As he turned, the woman he knew as Monica Frost was standing over him in that white and baroque designed dress.

"I like you." Marshall had never met another girl who could put Barney in his place. "I don't know what it is, but I really like you."

"I get it all the time…" Alex spoke with a refined honeyed voice and looked to see Maddie standing out in the hallway. Garbed in her blue and white Tipton uniform, the young assistant manager waited for Alex's guests to depart before turning toward Alex and following her into the suite.

"I brought your mail up." She announced with her naturally vivacious personality and produced a wad of letters almost three inches thick. "It's mostly the orphans you bought all the clothes and new toys for at the foundling home."

"Well, this will give me reading material for next month." Alex responded with a light smile and an irreverent teenage girl light entering her face. "Would you like a drink while you're up here, Maddie? I'd like someone to talk to as I wash up for dinner."

"I'm on duty…" Maddie liked her new friendship with this girl. Monica was so much more philanthropic than London Tipton, the previous hotel heiress, and their bond was almost like being sisters. "So…" Maddie followed Alex into her bedroom with the huge canopy bed and grand Victorian furnishings then stopped short of the silver and light blue bathroom with the polished faucets and clear plastic water knobs. "I guess those were the men wanting the Hawthorne." She continued.

"Yes…" Alex turned on the taps to rinse her face and wash her hands.

"Why don't you sell it to them?" Maddie tried to make chitchat. "I mean… I know the soup kitchen occupies the first floor, but they're possibly going to change locations anyway. Rumors are the place is haunted."

"Is it now?" Alex sounded as if she already knew.

"Yeah…" Maddie stopped leaning on the doorway to the bathroom to lightly pace past the grand chest of drawers against the wall and back again across the carpet. "It was one of the last places Mr. Collins visited before he died. He got voices and orbs there." Maddie knew the late author and respected him almost as much as if he was her father. A horror writer by trade, Collins was known a bit more for his paranormal research and contacts in the field of haunted house exploration. In fact, she first met him when he came to try to confirm or bust the rumor about the ghost in the Tipton's Suite 613.

"Well…" Alex dried her face and sprayed herself with fresh perfume. "Isn't that the best reason to not knock it down?"

"What…" Maddie responded confused. "What do you mean?"

"Do you know what happens to earthbound spirits when their homes are destroyed?" Alex brushed out her long brunette locks. "Well, if they're lucky, they can adapt to the altered location, but when they can't, they become homeless and become bound to the cemetery or graveyard where their earthbound remains lie. The problem with that is that graveyards and cemeteries don't teem with the life energies of public locations. Spirits need ectoplasm to survive, and ectoplasm is created from the energies of the living."

"So you're like…" Maddie thought about it and tried to understand. "A paranormal conservationalist?" She stepped aside as Alex moved past her for her jewelry box on the table by the window seat.

"That's a way of looking at it."

"So, what's the deal with trying to get them to buy the Echo Valley property as well?"

"Because the ghosts there deserve a bit more attention there too." Alex announced as she took out a gold necklace with a small brooch at the end to wear to dinner.

"Of course, why did I not guess that?!" Maddie grinned with a light cynical chuckle and looked back to Alex. Upon looking at her in that expensive dress and family heirloom, she suddenly flashed back to her visit to Collinwood before Zack and Cody went off to school. Mr. Moseby and the boy's mother had gone along as chaperones, flown up with a few other guests by Sandpiper Air out of Nantucket Island. Seeing Alex made her recall all the other women at that party in fine dresses, and among them, Ally Collins had tried to match her up with a nervous young man named Justin Russo. His father was supposedly an expert in Arthurian legend or something like that, but his sister was a piece of work. She was loud, obnoxious and incredibly rude. After all this time, Maddie could still hear her loud annoying laugh after Justin had somehow slipped and ripped his pants open on the floor of the Collinwood ballroom. She knew that girl's face as well as if it had happened yesterday.

"Alex Russo?" Maddie stood in shock. After adjusting her hair in her mirror, Monica's eyes looked up to Maddie's reflection in the mirror then turned around slowly to face the blonde college student with her face slightly lowered and her eyes narrowed faintly and without emotion….