Chapter 39 Hwang's residence

Joana never thought that she would enjoy her stay in China this much with the rest of the coven. She even felt bad that one week had already passed, and now it was time to find the black dragon. Derick was the one who even reminded her, as she had gotten carried away by the sightseeing and the good times she was having with the others. She went to her room to search her things for the map that would guide them to the temple. The Shaanxi province was quite far from Beijing, and they would have to fly the whole night to get there.

“Take care of her,” Dana whispered to Derick as they began to leave Dana’s room where they usually had their meetings and headed towards the exit of the hotel, leaving Dana, Edmund and Hillary behind. They held each other’s hands and began to walk. The business district had too many people around it, and they would have to walk for a while until they reached a safe deserted place where they could begin their flight. When they did, they took off.

As they flew, she began to think of something else that would push her mind away from Derick, even though that was all she wanted to think of.

By the time it was daybreak, they reached the province but couldn’t fly any further. None of them thought in mind to take along some vamscren.

“We can’t stay under the sun for a long time, we have to find a place to hide until it’s nighttime,” Derick told her after their little argument about the vamscren. They landed in an area around the center of the province. It was early in the morning and a lot of people hadn’t come out yet. They began walking around, hoping they would find someone who could speak English on time. Luckily for them, they found a department store that had just opened for the day. They walked in and began to ask some of the customers, but were shunned. The people here probably too busy to respond. He went to the cashier who stood at the counter, and began speaking to him.

“Hello, do you understand English?”

“I know…... little English…...little,” the cashier said with a struggle.

“He’ll do,” Derick said to Joana before turning back to the cashier.

“Hotel, sleep,” he was describing the words to the cashier with funny expressions Joana couldn’t help but laugh at.

“The cashier nodded his head,” indicating to Derick that he understood what he said.

He pointed to the right side, trying to show him where he could find one.

“Hwang hotel, Hwang hotel, not far from here.”

“Ok, thank you,” Derick took Joana’s hand and walked out of the store. He listened around for anyone saying Hwang hotel, when he heard, he led her there.

Like the cashier had said, the hotel wasn’t too far from the store, and it was a bit of a struggle to get there as the both of them had begun to feel the sun rays burning their skin. At last, they reached. It was a small guest house. Both he and Joana walked into the large reception, thankful to escape the wicked sun.

One of the desk staff who spotted them walked towards them and offered them a seat in the hotel lobby, she recognized that they were foreigners, and went to speak to her partner at the desk who was fluent in English.

The partner left the desk while she took over and walked towards Derick and Joana, who were cooling off with the shade from the reception.

“Welcome to the Hwang’s residence,” she told them. “We are happy to host you during your stay here, and we hope that you will like here very much.”

“Thank you,” Derick didn’t want to waste time. “Two rooms please.”

“What’s your name? Let me check if you have a reservation with us.”

“Reservation? We need a reservation!?”

They both clearly hadn’t thought this through. It was times like this that Joana wished Dana came along.

“Yes,” the receptionist answered. “We have only 14 rooms, and we have a lot of guests daily, so you need to have a booking in advance before you come here. Unfortunately, you can’t book now, as all the rooms have been taken.”

Derick placed his head in his hands, so they would have to go back outside to look for somewhere else to stay? They were toast.

Suddenly an angry customer walked into the reception with his luggage and threw a key on the table before he began to yell.

“This place has the worst customer service ever; I am going to leave a bad review on your website!!!”

He grabbed his luggage angrily before anyone could reach him and strode out of the hotel.

The receptionist, after seeing what had just happened, turned back to Derick and Joana.

“We are sorry about that, we have a room available now, would you like to take it?”

Joana cringed at the thought of sharing a room with Derick, but given the circumstances, she didn’t have much of a choice. At least they were lucky that there was even a room to share in the first place.

“We’ll take it,” Derick said.