One Fell Sweep

CHAPTER 5

Silence claimed the room.

Maud was looking at me. It was my inn and it was up to me to respond.

“Will you give us time to discuss your proposal?”

The Hiru nodded. “My time is short, but I’ll wait until the beginning of the light cycle.”

We had until the next morning to decide.

“Follow me, please.”

I led him through the hallway, forming a new room downstairs as we walked. So little was known about the Hiru, but the one thing my mother told me was that reproducing the Hiru’s native environment was beyond the inns’ capacity. Gertrude Hunt could create almost anything with my direction and the proper resources, but some things, like intense heat, for example, were off-limits. The inns could handle small controlled flames, like fireplaces and pits, but large scale blazes put them under undue stress.

According to my mother, the Hiru’s environment required a very specific combination of gasses, pressure, and gravity, and we simply couldn’t match it. A Hiru was never truly comfortable anywhere, but they liked water. When one stayed at my parents’ inn, my mother made her a room with indigo walls and a deep pool at the end. That had to be my best bet.

The Hiru moved behind me, his gait slow, ponderous, and labored. Our galaxy loved tech in all its incarnations. A high tech assault suit or a bastard sword, it didn’t matter—once it was made, someone would almost immediately try to improve on it. The Hiru were the glaring exception to this rule. There was nothing sleek or efficient about them. They were clunky and slow, as if some mad genius had tried to build a robot with things he’d found at a junkyard, but died before he could improve his design past its first, barely functional prototype. Even his translator was so ancient, it failed to associate “morning” with “beginning of the light cycle.”

But there was so much sadness in his voice. The translator may have been antiquated, but the emotion was there. I had to do better than an empty blue room.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried my best to feel the being standing next to me. If I were he, what would I need?

I would want beauty. I would want hope and tranquility, and above all, safety. But what did beauty mean to a Hiru?

“Tell me about your planet?” I asked.

“There are no words.”

Of course there weren’t, but this wasn’t my first day in the inn. “Tell me about the sky.”

The Hiru paused. “Colors,” he said. “Twisting and flowing into each other. Glowing rivers of colors against the dark blue sky.”

Mom was close with indigo. “Red, yellow?”

“Red, yes. Lavender. And lights.” The Hiru slowly raised his massive metal hand and moved it. “Tiny sparks of lights across the sky to the horizon.”

“Clouds?”

“Yes. Like a tall funnel, twisting.”

We reached the door. I pushed it open with my fingertips.

The round room stretched up, rising three stories high. At the very top, a maelstrom of clouds turned ever so slowly, a 3-D projection streaming from the ceiling. An aurora borealis suffused it with light, alternating among deep purple, red, pink, turquoise, and beautiful, glowing lavender. Tiny rivers of glowing dots swirled, floating gently through the illusory clouds. The chamber’s walls, deep indigo stone, offered two seats shaped to accommodate the Hiru’s body protruding from the far wall. In the center of the room, right under the sky, a pool of water waited, twenty feet wide, round, and deep enough to submerge the Hiru up to the chin of his helmet.

“Enjoy your stay.”

The Hiru didn’t answer. He was looking at the sky. Slowly, ponderously, he moved to the pool, the openings on his metal body hissing shut. He stood on the first step of the stairs, half a foot in the water. The glow of the aurora borealis played on the metal of his suit. The Hiru took another step, moving in deeper. The water lapped at his body, he turned, and collapsed into the water, floating, his face to the sky.

I stepped out and let the door shut behind me. I grinned in victory. Nailed it.

A quiet sob filtered through the room behind me. I froze. Another, sad and tortured, the sound of a being in mourning.

All my triumph evaporated.

He was all alone in the galaxy, one of the last thousand, all that was left of his species, and now he wept in my inn.

I tiptoed away, back to the front room. Maud had landed on the couch. Arland elected to stay where he was, in the doorway. Sean hadn’t moved from his spot by the wall.

“You know an Arbitrator?” Maud asked.

“As much as anyone can know George. He’s a complicated guy.” And he had just done me an enormous favor.

“Was he the same one I met?”

“Probably.” It had to be George. Only he would look at this situation and figure out a way to help me and the Hiru at the same time.

“Are you going to take the offer?” Sean asked.

“We would be fools not to,” Maud said. “We couldn’t afford to ask the Archivarius a question if we worked nonstop every day for the rest of our lives.”

She wasn’t wrong. George had given us a once-in-a-lifetime gift, but it came with serious strings attached.

“Our brother and I searched for our parents for years,” I said. “We found nothing. The Archivarius has an enormous wealth of knowledge. If anyone knows, it does.”

“I sense a but coming,” Maud said.

“We would be facing the Draziri. Sooner or later they will show up. We’re putting the inn at risk of exposure and the guests at risk of injury.”

Maud rubbed her face.

I thought of the Hiru in the room, weeping quietly at the memory of his planet’s sky. You would have to be completely heartless to say no. If the inn had no other guests… No, not even then. It would be irresponsible. Sometimes my job required me to be heartless. I knew the correct thing to do, so why was it making me feel sick to my stomach?

“Also, we don’t have the manpower,” I said.

“You have me,” Sean said.

“I appreciate it, but you are not part of the inn.”

Sean pulled his wallet out of his pants, took out a dollar, and handed it to me.

Okay. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Hire me.”

“I will be more than delighted to lend a hand,” Arland said.

“You are a guest,” Maud said.

“I’m on a sojourn,” he said. “Trying to improve my physical and mental state. A little exercise is good for the body. It is my understanding that an innkeeper must meet the needs of her guests. I require a battle.”

“Nobody asked me,” Caldenia said, gliding into the room from the kitchen. “Because I’m apparently, what is the saying, chopped kidneys.”

“Liver,” I said.

“Thank you, my dear. Chopped liver. However, I would welcome some excitement as well. Life can be so dreadfully dull without a little spice, especially around the holidays.”

Only Caldenia would call the threat of an interstellar invasion “a little spice.”

My phone rang. I stuck the dollar into the pocket of my jeans under my robe and went to pick it up.

“Dina,” Brian Rodriguez said, his voice vibrating with stress. “So glad I caught you.”

“Mr. Rodriguez, what’s wrong?”

Mr. Rodriguez had never asked me for anything. Please don’t be the Ku, please don’t be the Ku…

“Do you get the Dallas station?”

“Which one?”

“Any network.”

I covered the phone with my hand. “Screen. I need the feed from WFAA8 from Dallas.”

A screen slid from the wall, blinked, and flared into light. A stretch of a highway, shown from above, clearly filmed from a helicopter. A pack of police cars sped down the asphalt, lights on. In front of them a pale oval of light slid at reckless speed, zigzagging back and forth among the vehicles.

“You know what, Jim, we are some distance away,” a male voice said through the mild static. “We’re going to try to push in on it, but so far we have been unable to see the nature of this vehicle. We are still quite a ways away, so we’ll try to get close and see if we can make out what is underneath that light. We’ll have to see what happens as this vehicle keeps going down the highway here.”

“We know how dangerous these high-speed pursuits are,” a female newscaster said. “Whether on a freeway or on surface streets. But when you have such a bright light obscuring the vehicle, that can’t possibly be safe. It is clearly blinding the officers who are pursuing this person. Can you imagine seeing that in your rearview mirror?”

Sean swore.

Oh no. Please no. I was very clear when Wing checked out of the inn before we went to get Maud. Very clear. I said to stay at Casa Feliz and behave or leave the planet.

“Well, as we can see, Jean, the police aren’t really following too close behind. In fact, they are giving this driver plenty of room, trying to keep him from panicking and doing something reckless…”

“I’m so sorry to ask you for a favor,” Mr. Rodriquez said. “But this is one of my guests. A Ku. His name is Wing.”

Damn it!

“He checked into my inn last night, went out just before sunrise, and now we have this mess happening. I have no idea where he is going.”

I knew exactly where he was going. He was heading down I45 toward me. He was coming back to Gertrude Hunt.

“Thank God someone fitted his boost bike with a daytime obfuscator,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

I looked at Sean.

He raised his hands and mouthed, “It was all you had in the garage.”

“I was his last stop,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He never checked out.”

Wing was still a guest. If Wing was caught, Mr. Rodriquez would be hauled before the Assembly, and the Assembly wouldn’t be kind.

“He’s barreling down the highway toward you and he’s got half of the Dallas PD behind him. He’s about to clear the city limits and then the State Troopers are going to get involved. I can’t get to him fast enough. We’d have to get in front of him to grab him. Any vehicle we’d have to use to get to that kind of speed would be too attention-grabbing in daylight, and the news channels are having a feeding frenzy. Is there any way you could help me?”

“Why in the world would you put an obfuscator on his boost bike?”

Sean and I sat in the back of the Ryder truck we had rented forty minutes ago. We’d attached a photon projector to it, drove here, and parked it on the grass well away from the road, on the side of I45. In front of us the highway rolled into the distance, completely empty.

“Because he had nothing at all, and he is a Ku.” Sean rested his arms on the wheel and checked his phone.

“There were refractors in the garage. And a photon projector.”

“I didn’t see those, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have put one on his bike.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is a Ku. We used them as scouts on Nexus. He barely follows the rules as is and he drives like a maniac. If he got it through his thick skull that his boost bike was now invisible, he would zip around in daylight. We’d have a pileup on every major interstate after he was through. I put the obfuscator on there and told him it was only for emergencies and if he used it, law enforcement would come and hunt him.”

Put that way, I had to agree. Wing was a menace. He wouldn’t just cause accidents. He would cause many accidents. People would be hurt, possibly die.

Sean growled under his breath. “Arland is ignoring my texts.”

“Have you tried sending a kissy face?”

Sean looked at me for a moment.

“Maybe he’s just not that into you.”

He tapped his ear piece. “They’ve just passed Madisonville. They threw out the spike strips, but of course he blasted right through them since he’s riding two feet above the ground. He should be in range in about two minutes.”

The Texas State Troopers must’ve reasoned that eventually the unknown vehicle would run out of gas, because all indications said they resolved to run it to ground. They also blocked the highway in both directions around Madisonville, and we had to creep past their road block. I held my breath the whole time. A photon projector could do wonders for making you near invisible, but it didn’t mask sound. Every time the truck springs creaked, I’d braced myself.

We were up against eight police cars and a helicopter. They had helpfully exiled the news helicopters ‘in the interests of public safety,’ so at least we didn’t have to worry about that.

I got my phone out and dialed Arland’s phone. I’d given him one of the spares we kept for guests and showed him how to use it. He didn’t seem enthusiastic.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Come on, Arland.

Beep.

“This is a ridiculous communicator,” Arland’s voice said into the phone.

I put him on speaker.

“What is with the swiping and the pushing? Why isn’t it simply voice activated?”

“The Ku will be in range in one minute and forty-five seconds,” I told him.

“Understood.” He hung up.

The phone might have been ridiculous, but it was safer than radio transmissions.

I dialed my sister. She picked up on the first ring.

“A minute and a half.”

“Got it.”

I drummed my fingers on the wooden floor of the truck’s back. It would work. It was a simple plan, and it relied on the thing vampires did best—hunting. Arland would apprehend the Ku, my sister would run interference against the cops, and we were the getaway drivers.

“Are you going to help the Hiru?” Sean asked.

“I want to.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“It would be a logistical nightmare. It would require me to be away from the inn, probably on short notice. The Draziri would invade in force, and I don’t think they care about being discreet. As an innkeeper, I’m supposed to avoid situations that put the inn at risk of exposure.”

“Mhm,” he said. “What’s the real reason?”

“Those are the real reasons.”

“I saw your face,” Sean said. “You almost cried when he told his story.”

So much for my inscrutable innkeeper face. “Just because I sympathize, doesn’t mean I can’t objectively evaluate the situation.”

He didn’t say anything.

On my left, in the distance, a dark dot appeared in the sky, quickly growing larger. The helicopter.

“Three… two…”

“One,” Sean said.

A white ball engulfed the helicopter. Maud had fired the white-out.

The ball expanded, turning gray and growing denser in mid-air. A second explosion flared, also blinding white and low on the road. The State Troopers had crossed the white-out anti-personnel mines we seeded minutes ago. The fleet of cop cars had just been blinded.

The explosion solidified, losing its brightness. The first pale ball from the white-out fell into it, pulled like iron to a magnet. The caravan of police vehicles would come to a gentle stop, with the helicopter softly landing somewhere, hopefully not on top of them. The sphere would hold them for up to six minutes, just long enough to knock out everyone within the cars, and then dissipate into empty air. The white-out tech was developed a few centuries ago by an enterprising galactic criminal cartel specializing in kidnappings. It cost an arm and a leg. I was watching two hundred thousand credits worth of ammunition in action. A good chunk of my peace summit profits. Two steps forward, one step back. But even so, I still came out ahead.

Here’s hoping the mines worked as advertised. Don’t get caught, Maud. Don’t get caught.

I jumped out of the truck, ran along the side, climbed into the cab, and pushed the off switch on the refrigerator-sized photon projector we had strapped to the truck’s cab. If someone had been watching us from the highway, they would see the Ryder truck suddenly pop into existence out of nowhere.

A lone rider shot into view on a monstrous-looking anti-gravity glider bike, pulling a net behind him. Arland, riding a cre-cycle and dragging the boost bike and the Ku behind him in a black net. He screeched to halt in front of me. “Bagged and delivered.”

Wing stared at me with terrified eyes.

Behind Arland, a second cre-cycle sped toward us. Maud. My heart hammered in my chest. She was in one piece. It was okay. Everything was okay.

Sean jumped to the ground, pulled out the retractable ramp, and lowered it to the pavement. Arland drove the cre-cycle into the truck, dragging the Ku behind him. I pulled a capsule out of my pocket.

“No!” Wing cried out.

“Yes. You’re in so much trouble.”

I stuck the capsule under his nose and broke it open. Green gas puffed and the Ku passed out.

“Nice,” Sean said. He and Arland grabbed the net containing Wing and the boost bike and heaved it into the truck.

“Sadly this doesn’t work on human anatomy.” Otherwise Officer Marais would’ve been much less of a problem.

Maud pulled up, the big white-out cannon slung over her shoulder, and drove into the Ryder truck, wedging her cre-cycle next to Arland’s. I handed her two more capsules. “If Wing stirs, drug him.”

She nodded.

Sean slammed the door closed. I dashed to the cabin, opened the door, climbed up, and punched in the code in the photon projector. The unit’s pale blue light blinked. I jumped down and took a few steps back, careful to walk in a straight line.

The Ryder truck vanished. If you looked very closely, you could see the slight wavy disturbance, but you had to be only a few feet away.

“Are we good?” invisible Sean asked.

“We’re good.” I walked straight back and almost jumped when the truck popped into existence eighteen inches in front of me. I climbed into the passenger seat. Sean eased the truck out of park and we crept across the grass onto the interstate. Sean picked up speed.

“How are we doing?” Sean asked.

I checked my phone. “Two more minutes before the mine effects dissipate. Twenty-three minutes before the photon projector runs out of charge.”

He stepped on it. The Ryder rocked and rolled. It was just me and him in the cabin. This whole thing wasn’t just risky, it was reckless. If we were caught, there would be hell to pay.

Sean sat in his seat, focused on driving. He didn’t say anything to reassure me. He just projected a quiet, competent calm. I had a feeling that if a spaceship suddenly appeared in the sky and fired at us, Sean would somehow pull a massive gun out, shoot it down, and keep going, the same calm expression on his face. If Sean wasn’t here, I would’ve done all of it myself, but right now I was glad he was in the cab with me.

“You asked why I have to turn the Hiru down,” I said.

“I did.”

“Maud. And Helen. I just rescued my sister and my niece after they lived through hell. Maud deserves some peace and quiet.”

“Your sister looked pretty excited when you handed her the white-out warhead.”

“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. If I put the inn in harm’s way, she’ll be on the front line cutting off heads.”

“It’s her choice,” Sean said.

My alarm chimed. I flicked it off. The highway patrol was about to wake up.

“I know it’s her choice. My brother-in-law brought a lot of what happened to him on his own head. Melizard was responsible for their exile, and once on the planet, he lost his mind. From what Maud said, he grew desperate and wasn’t thinking clearly, and eventually he betrayed the House that hired him and got himself killed. A normal human thing for Maud to do would’ve been to try to get off the planet or try to establish some safety net for herself and Helen. Instead, my sister declared a blood feud and pursued it for months.”

“Like a proper vampire,” Sean said.

“Yes. We’re not in the Holy Anocracy now. We’re on Earth. This is her home. It will take time for her to remember what it’s like to be human. I’m not going to make her choices for her or tell her what to do. I just don’t want to thrust her into another bloody fight with no breathing room between that and what she went through. I want to give her a chance to adjust to humanity.” I sighed. “The Draziri are single-minded. They will go to any lengths to kill the Hiru. You went through… things. How do you deal with it?”

“I can’t speak for your sister,” Sean said. “Everyone deals with it in their own way. People say you need peace and quiet and while you’re there, in the thick of it, when everything is death and blood, you think so, too, because you idealize that. And then you get home.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“It feels fake,” he continued. “I get up, I wave at neighbors, I go to the grocery store, I gas up my car. The whole time I’m pretending to be someone else and I worry I might get my lines wrong.”

“Sean…” I had no idea he felt that way.

He glanced at me, his face resolute, his eyes clear. “Peace and quiet doesn’t help, because what’s wrong isn’t out there. It’s inside me. This right here is the most normal I’ve felt since I got home.”

I reached out and took his hand. He took his gaze off the road and looked at me. His eyes caught the light, their irises golden-brown amber. “And this.” He squeezed my hand. “This feels normal. This feels like coming home.”

Sirens blared behind us. He was still holding my hand, his strong fingers wrapped around mine. I remembered him walking away from me into the tear between the worlds. He’d wanted to see the galaxy and he owed Wilmos a favor. He went through it and was gone, and I’d stood on the grass, hugging myself. Guests left and we stayed. That was the fact of the innkeeper’s life. My parents vanished, my brother left to look for them and disappeared, Maud had gotten married… But I got Sean back. He was in the cab with me, holding my hand and not wanting to let go.

“Slow down,” I said. “It’s coming up.”

We passed a sign for Leona.

The sirens chased us, getting louder. I glanced into the side mirror. The police cars were right behind us. Half a minute and they would ram right into the back of the Ryder.

“Make a right,” I told him.

Sean let go of my hand and cut across the grass. The Ryder rocked side to side, struggling with uneven ground, and pulled onto a narrow access road. The fleet of State Troopers tore past, wailing in fury.

Sean laughed a happy wolfish laugh under his breath.

“Don’t go back to Wilmos.” I hadn’t meant to say it. At least not like this, but I’d started it and now I had to finish it. “Stay here with me. At least for a little while.”

“I’ll stay,” he promised.

I looked away.

He eased off the brakes.

“Keep going down this road,” I told him. “It will come out at a Buc-ee’s.”

“I love Buc-ee’s,” Sean said.

Everyone loved Buc-ee’s. A chain of massive gas stations that doubled as restaurants and travel centers, Buc-ee’s offered everything from parfaits and fifty different types of jerky to Texas themed merchandise. They were always full of cars and travelers who enjoyed easy access to the gas pumps and clean bathrooms. All we had to do was creep past any State Troopers guarding the exit and blend into the crowd.

Finally, Mr. Rodriguez would owe me a favor instead of the other way around.

“Why do you want to help the Hiru?” I asked Sean as we pulled into the huge parking lot.

“Because someone blew up their planet and is hunting them to extinction. Somebody needs to do something about it. Also, because you’ll take them up on their offer and get involved, and I don’t want you to deal with all that on your own.”

“What makes you so sure I’ll take them up on it?”

He grinned at me, turning into the old Sean Evans. The transformation was so sudden, I blinked to make sure I didn’t imagine it.

“You’re a carebear.”

“What?”

“You’re the type to get out of a perfectly dry car in the middle of a storm in your best dress so you can scoop a wet dog off the road. You help people, Dina. That’s what you do. And the Hiru need help.”

“I’m sensible,” I told him.

“I’ll give you till tonight,” he said. “You won’t even last twenty-four hours. I bet my right arm on it.”

Sean backed the truck up my driveway and paused for a moment, pondering something.

“What?”

“I’m wondering if your sister murdered Arland in the back.”

“Did she?”

He tilted his head, listening. “No. I still hear both of them. Damn it. Oh well, a man can dream.”

We parked the truck. I got out and opened the back. Maud hopped onto the grass, shielded from the street by the bulk of the vehicle. Her face was a cold neutral mask.

Arland heaved the Ku and the bike to the edge of the truck. I waved my hand. Long flexible shoots burst out of the ground, wrapped around Wing and the bike and dragged them under. “Take him to the stables,” I murmured. “And keep him there.”

Arland jumped off the truck. “I quite enjoyed that. Thank you for this pleasant diversion.”

“Thank you for your assistance.”

Arland smiled, displaying sharp fangs, and went inside the inn.

I closed the truck back up and waved to Sean. He drove out. He’d return the truck and drive his car back.

Beast exploded out of her doggie door and jumped into my arms. I hugged her, but she was wiggling too hard, so I set her down and she streaked away in a fit of doggie excitement, tucking her tail between her legs for extra speed.

“Where is Helen?” Maud frowned.

“In the kitchen.” I pointed. A window opened in the wall. Helen was perched precariously on a stool above a large pot. Someone had trimmed one of my old aprons, the one with sunflowers, and put it on her. She was stirring the stuff in the pot with a big spoon. The inn’s tendrils hovered on both sides of her, ready to catch her if she fell.

I dug my phone out of my pocket and took a picture.

“He put her to work?” Maud stared.

Orro said something in his gravelly voice.

Helen nodded and sprinkled something into the soup and squeaked, “Yes, chef!”

“Give me that phone!” My sister grabbed the phone out of my hand and started snapping pictures.

Maud couldn’t feel her daughter in the kitchen. It would come back. It had to come back. She’d spent years at our parents’ inn and she never had any problems connecting to it.

“So what did you and the vampire talk about in the truck?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Was it a small talk kind of nothing or not going to tell you kind of nothing?”

“It was a keeping my mouth shut nothing. We didn’t speak. I have no interest in vampires. I’ve had enough of them for a lifetime.”

I smiled at her.

“Have you decided what to do about the Hiru?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“Dad would approve,” she said. “He never could resist a down-on-your-luck story and there is no one more down than the Hiru.”

“Mom wouldn’t,” I said.

“Mom would, too. After the first Draziri showed up on the doorstep and issued threats.”

“I pity any Draziri who tried to threaten Mom.” If anyone could make them rethink an invasion of Earth, it would be our mother.

Our mother and our father. This was the entire point of the inn. This was why I had come back to Earth and hung their portrait in the front room. I’d planned to grow Gertrude Hunt into the kind of inn that was flooded with visitors. Sooner or later one of them would recognize my parents and tell me what happened to them. The galaxy was huge and the chances of that happening were tiny, but it was all I had.

“What do you think I should do?”

Maud pursed her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. “I think you should do what you think is right.”

“And you said I turned into Mom!”

Maud headed for the kitchen door. “You’re not pawning the decision off on me. You’re the innkeeper.”

I rolled my eyes and followed her into the kitchen.

“Mommy!”

Helen leapt off the stool, dashed across the kitchen, and jumped into Maud’s arms. It would’ve been an amazingly high jump for a human five-year-old.

“Here is my cutey!” Maud wrinkled her face.

Helen wrinkled hers, and they rubbed noses.

“I’m a soup chef,” Helen announced.

“Sous,” Orro growled from the pantry.

“And I have to say ‘yes, chef’ real loud.”

They were so cute. That’s not an adjective I normally would associate with my sister. How could I possibly ruin that?

But then, the ugly truth remained: the Hiru needed help and we needed to find our parents. Maud and I had so carefully talked around it, but both of us knew what was left unsaid. This was our best chance to find Mom and Dad. And if I let my sister catch one whiff of me wavering because I worried about her safety, she would skin me alive.

“When you and Klaus showed up that time to tell me the inn disappeared, I was in a different place.” Maud threw Helen up and caught her. Helen squealed and laughed. “I was the wife of a Marshal’s son, who was making a bid for the post of the Marshal. My world was very defined then. I knew where we were going and how we were going to get there. I had my husband and his House, all the other knights who served with him and respected him. I had friends. We were admired, me and Melizard and our beautiful baby.”

“And now?”

“And now I’ve learned the truth. Husbands can fall out of love. Friends can betray you. But when you’re stuck in a hellhole far from home, your family will move heaven and earth to get you back. We need to get them back, Dina. They would do it for us.”

The inn chimed twice,fast. Well, of course.

“Who is it?” Maud asked.

“Local law enforcement.” I made a beeline for the door.

“Friendly?”

“No.”

“Does he know?”

“He knows. He just can’t prove it.”

I composed myself, swung the door open, and smiled at Officer Marais through the screen. He didn’t smile back. He was generally not in a smiley mood around me. Trim, dark-haired, and in his thirties, Officer Marais peered at me through the screen door as if I were already in the back of his cruiser with handcuffs on. Beast squeezed in front of me and let out one cautious bark.

“Officer Marais. What a pleasure.”

“Miss Demille.”

My father always told me that all people had magic. Most never learned they did, because they never tried to do anything out of the ordinary. But in a few gifted individuals it bubbled to the surface anyway. Officer Marais was one of those bubblers. His sense of intuition was honed to supernatural sharpness. He had identified the inn as a place where odd things kept happening and mounted a full-scale surveillance of us. Which is how he ended up getting into a fight with some vampire knights. Predictably they took a blood axe to his vehicle, and Officer Marais was deposited, trussed up like a deer, in my stables, while I twisted myself into a pretzel trying to falsify the footage from his dashcam and repair the damage to his vehicle so he couldn’t prove any of it happened.

I’d managed to successfully overwrite the dash cam and the vampires did repair Marais’s cruiser, hiding all traces of the damage. Unfortunately, when a vampire engineer told you that the internal combustion engine you are trying to get him to fix is an abomination and repairing it violated his oath to do no harm, he meant it. During our last meeting, Officer Marais shared with me that he’d driven his vehicle back and forth to Houston for a week and he’d yet to gas it up.

I opened the screen door. “Please come in.”

Officer Marais took a careful step inside, but stayed by the door. I turned to Maud and Helen, who was hiding behind her mom’s legs.

“This is my sister, Maud, and my niece, Helen.”

Maud smiled at him. Helen hissed and took off like a rocket into the kitchen.

“Did that child just hiss at me?” Officer Marais blinked.

“Yes,” Maud said. “She’s pretending to be a cat. Children do that.”

“How may I help you this time?” I asked.

“There was a disturbance here three days ago. People reported loud noises and the loss of power.”

“Yes, I remember. Someone was joyriding a very loud motorcycle.” And I couldn’t wait to give him a piece of my mind.

“Did you see the vehicle?” His face told me that he was just going through the motions.

“No.”

“Are you aware that a high-speed pursuit took place today on I45?”

“Did it?”

“Were you involved in that matter?”

“No.”

“Did that pursuit have anything to do with the disturbance here?”

Officer Marais was wasted on the Red Deer P.D. We barely had any crime. In a bigger city, with his intuition, he would be knocking cases out of the park faster than they could bring them to him.

Officer Marais treated me to the serious cop stare. I did my best to keep from wilting.

“Is this the part where you tell me that you intend to get to the bottom of what’s going on here?”

“What is going on here?”

“We are considering granting asylum to an alien who is a victim of a religious crusade,” I told him. “We have a vampire and a werewolf on our side, but we’re not sure it will be enough.”

He put away his notepad. “Let me know if you see or hear anything unusual, ma’am.”

Wow. I got ma’amed. “I will, Officer.”

He left and even though I could feel him, I pulled the curtain aside on the front window and watched him until he got into his modified cruiser and drove away.

“Conscientious cop,” Maud said. “No bigger pain. I feel sorry for you.”

“Oh you don’t know the half of it. You want to come with me to talk to the Ku?”

“Actually, I thought I would take a bath.” She smiled.

“You should.”

“What are you implying? Are you saying I stink?”

“Touchy-touchy-touchy.” I stuck my tongue out at her and headed out to the stables, Beast trailing me.

Wing and his bike, still netted up, lay in the wide walkway between the stalls. He watched me approach with bright round eyes. I sat on the bench and looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Sorry was a step in the right direction. “You endangered the inn. You made trouble for Mr. Rodriguez. You almost got yourself killed. What do you think those policemen would do to you if they caught you?”

He tucked his head down as much as he could, trying to look smaller.

“What was so important that you had to run out in daylight?”

He blinked his eyes. “A present.”

“What present?”

He struggled in the net.

I nodded. A narrow barrel descended from the ceiling and fired a pulse of blue light at the net. It fell loose.

The Ku rolled to his feet and opened a large compartment on his boost bike. He reached in it and took out a bright red poinsettia. It was growing from a pot wrapped in gold foil.

“This is it?”

He nodded.

“Did you steal it?”

“I bought it.”

“What did you pay with?”

He reached into a pocket in his harness and showed me a handful of small gold drops shaped like tears. Well, someone got lucky today.

“Why?”

He crouched on the floor above the poinsettia, his voice hushed. “It’s like home.”

“Do you miss home?”

He nodded.

My righteous anger evaporated. The universe was very big and the Ku was so very small. “Why did you leave?”

“Adventures,” he said.

“Can you go back?”

He nodded. “When I’m a hero.”

“You know, bringing the message about my sister to me was pretty heroic,” I told him.

“Not enough.” He raised his arms, drawing a big circle. “Big hero.”

He looked at me as if waiting for me to confirm that it was a worthy goal.

“Everyone has a dream,” I said. “You’re brave and kind. You’ll be a big hero one day.”

The Ku smiled at me, showing a mouth full of scary dinosaur teeth.

“Meanwhile, you’re going to stay here at the inn,” I told him. “Don’t try to leave. The inn won’t let you. Let’s go make a nice place for your flower and give it some water. Did you know they come in white, too?”

Creating a room for a Ku was infinitely easier than crafting the moving ceiling for the Hiru. I’d made a few before I was even an innkeeper, while still living at my parents’ inn. I went with the usual theme of wooden walls, braided together from wooden strips, and three levels; the first being the main floor, the second strewn with floor pillows, and the third a loft nest with a hammock right next to the window that let him look out onto the street. I added a few ropes and a vine swing. By the time we came to the door of his room, Gertrude Hunt had pulled plants out of stasis storage, and garlands of flowering vines and a swing greeted Wing as he came inside. He clutched his poinsettia, dashed up the rope to the loft, and landed in the hammock. Testing all the ropes and the swing would occupy him for at least a couple of hours.

I had just finished settling him in when magic chimed in my head. This chime was deeper than usual. I puzzled over it for a moment and then it hit me. Mr. Rodriguez.

I glanced out of the hallway’s window. A white windowless van politely waited at the end of the driveway. When I went to see Mr. Rodriguez, I did the same thing. I stepped onto his inn’s grounds and waited. When nobody came to throw me out, I went in. I didn’t know what the proper etiquette was, but sitting here making them wait didn’t seem like the polite thing to do.

I went down the stairs, stepped outside, and waved at the van. It reversed, turned, and rolled up my driveway. Mr. Rodriguez got out. He was in his early fifties, with bronze skin and dark hair, touched with gray. A trimmed beard hugged his jaw.

“Dina.”

“Mr. Rodriguez.” I stepped forward and we hugged. That was probably a breach of etiquette, too, but I didn’t care.

A young version of Mr. Rodriguez hopped out of the vehicle on the passenger side.

“My son, Tony,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

We shook hands. Tony seemed to be about my age, with the same dark hair and dark eyes as his father.

“Please, come in.” I led them to the front room. “Would you like some iced tea?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

I led them through the kitchen to the patio. Tony didn’t gape at Orro, but he definitely glanced in his direction.

I settled them on the back porch, went back inside to get the tea, and had to dodge as Orro nearly knocked me over with a platter. The platter contained a pitcher of iced tea, three glasses with ice and a plate filled with tiny appetizers that looked like very small, fried to a golden crispness crab cakes topped with a dollop of some white sauce and green onions.

“Thank you,” I mouthed and took the platter outside.

“Such a beautiful house,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

“Thanks.” I sorted out the tea and sat down.

Mr. Rodriguez and Tony both took an appetizer and chewed.

I tried one. Eating Orro’s food was as close as you could get to nirvana without enlightenment.

“Did everything go well?” Mr. Rodriguez asked.

“As well as it could have gone,” I said and sipped my tea. How to say this without being offensive or trying to imply. “I just settled him in his room. He seems comfortable.”

“Why did he take off?” Tony asked.

“He wanted a flower. It reminded him of home.”

“Ah,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He’s probably on a hero’s journey.”

“He said as much.” As soon as they left, I would look this up.

“The Ku are a hunter-gatherer society,” Mr. Rodriguez said to Tony.

Tony looked at me with the long-suffering patience of an adult child who knew an educational lecture was coming and there was no way to escape.

“One can distinguish himself by being a great hunter or a great artisan. Those who can do neither sometimes decide to leave on a hero’s journey through the galaxy. They must perform a great deed and bring proof to their tribe. It would bring his family a lot of honor.”

Tony and I politely sipped our tea.

“I don’t mind taking him off your hands,” I said. “He seems comfortable here and really I have so little going on, I don’t mind keeping an eye on him. We only have three other guests right now, so he won’t bother anyone.”

“I thought as much,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “I have his things in the van.”

“No Oporians?” Tony asked.

The Oporians were basically a larger version of the Ku. Although they came from a different planet, they looked remarkably similar. They also thought the Ku were a tasty snack.

“No. Our permanent guest, a vampire, and a Hiru.”

“A Hiru?” Mr. Rodriguez sat up straighter. “That’s rare.”

“Yes, it was a bit of a surprise.”

“What did you do with the room, if you don’t mind my asking? The common wisdom says black and windowless, but I always felt some doubt about that.”

“It’s a bit difficult to explain. I can show you if you would like.”

I nodded at the inn. A screen descended from the wall and the image of the Hiru’s room appeared in it, with the glowing clouds. The inn always recorded still images just before a guest entered the room, so I would have a record.

Mr. Rodriguez stared at it. “Do you think I could see it? In person?”

He wasn’t asking to see the actual room. That would disrupt the guest’s privacy. “I’ll be happy to make a duplicate.”

Three minutes later we stood in an exact replica of the Hiru’s suite. Tony dipped his hand into the pool. Mr. Rodriguez stared at the clouds, his face lit by their glow.

“Why the sky?” he asked.

“It seemed right. The guest liked it. He loves to float and look at the sky.” He’d been doing precisely that for the last few hours.

Mr. Rodriguez frowned. “I don’t know if anyone told you this, but you have a gift.”

Oh wow. The highest compliment one innkeeper could give to another. “Thank you.”

He looked back at the sky. “Food for thought.”

“Of course, with the Hiru staying here there is the threat of Draziri,” I said. “What is the Assembly’s stance on Draziri?”

“Are you worried there will be repercussions against you if you continue to provide sanctuary?”

“No, but the Draziri bring a higher risk of exposure. They don’t care.”

“That’s not your concern,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

“Dad,” Tony said.

“Sorry, that sounded much harsher than I intended.” Mr. Rodriguez looked chastised.

“There are five of us,” Tony said. “He’s dealing with us all day so he can’t turn the Dad Mode off.”

“What I meant is, what the Draziri do is on them. You, as an innkeeper, have only one primary goal—to keep your guests safe. That is the foundation of who we are. You chose to accept the Hiru as your guest. It’s now your responsibility and duty to do whatever is necessary to keep him safe. Even if the Draziri choose to invade the planet because of it, their lapse in judgment isn’t your problem. Your obligation is only to your guest. The Assembly knows this. The Draziri aren’t the first threat we’ve faced and won’t be the last. We do not cower.”

Okay. Nice that we cleared that up.

“It’s good to know that the danger exists,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “I’ll help you draft a message to the Assembly. It’s the least I can do. If we have to contain a large-scale event, it’s always best to be prepared.”

“Thank you. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“Are you kidding me?” Tony said. “Yes.”

“Apparently, we would.” Mr. Rodriguez grinned.

I led them from the room.

Dangerous or not, right or wrong, the Hiru was my guest. That part wasn’t in doubt. I would do whatever was necessary to keep him safe.

I still had no idea if I would take his offer.

We decided to eat on the porch. A Texas winter had more moods than an emo teenager, and since the day turned out to be freakishly warm and beautiful, it seemed a shame to waste it.

Orro had sprinted through the kitchen for hours, slicing, and tasting, and tossing spices, and the smell coming from his stove made me drool.

Mr. Rodriguez and his son sat outside, chatting with my sister, Arland, and Caldenia. I could hear Arland’s laugh from the front room. He sounded like a chuckling tiger. Helen and Beast ran around on the lawn. I’d found a spinball in the garage. The grapefruit-sized sphere zigzagged on the grass making wild turns and changing colors, and Helen and Beast were having entirely too much fun chasing it. They had invited the Ripper of Souls, but he’d declined and now watched them from the window, scandalized.

At first Wing refused to come out because facing Mr. Rodriguez was too scary, but the aroma of Orro’s cooking finally reached his room, and he too scurried to the table. Mr. Rodriguez pretended not to see him.

Everyone was here except for one.

I retreated to the kitchen and dialed Sean’s cell.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing for dinner?”

“This and that.”

He was probably going to eat by himself in an empty kitchen. I hadn’t seen him leave the subdivision that often. He probably didn’t even have groceries. I pictured Sean sitting alone at his table staring at a piece of moldy cheese.

“We are having a big dinner. You’re welcome to drop by.”

“I might.”

“I’d like that.”

“Then I’ll be there.”

I smiled, put the phone away, went down the hallway, and knocked on the Hiru’s door.

“Enter,” a quiet voice said.

The door opened and I stepped inside. The Hiru stood in the pool. The water came up to his neck.

“We are having a dinner. I know you don’t consume our food, but I came to invite you for company.”

“It is kind of you, but my appearance makes others uncomfortable.”

He knew. “They will adjust.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Then I won’t pressure you. On Earth, we show our friendship by sharing our food. Your presence isn’t a burden. We are happy to have you with us. If you change your mind, you are welcome to join us.”

“Thank you.”

I felt Sean cross the boundary, went to meet him, and led him to the table. He decided on a chair across from me. Everyone took their seats, including Orro. It had taken a few meals for Caldenia and me to convince him that we preferred he joined us at meals rather than hanging back in the kitchen by himself to observe us devour the results of his culinary wizardry. He finally condescended to make a distinction between casual and formal meals.

The feast was unbelievably delicious. Loaves of freshly-baked bread fought for space with smoked chicken and brisket so tender, it fell apart under the pressure of a fork. Big bowls offered refreshing salads, the first made with cucumber, tomato, avocado, and green onions, flavored by a delicious mix of oil and vinegar, and the second with cranberries, spinach, and some sort of honey dressing that turned me into a complete glutton.

Midway through the meal, the Hiru stepped outside. He didn’t sit at the table, but I pulled a massive wicker chair out of storage and he rested nearby. He said nothing. He just watched as we talked, laughed, and reached for our food. It was still better than waiting alone in a dark room.

“If I eat another bite, I’ll die,” Tony declared and promptly ate more brisket.

Sean, who’d been watching him like a hawk through most of the meal, finally cracked a smile.

“I’m done!” Helen announced.

“May I be excused?” Maud corrected.

“I may be excused,” Helen recited.

Maud opened her mouth and changed her mind. “Yes, you may.”

She grabbed the spinball from under the table and launched it onto the lawn. Beast shot out from under the table as if fired out of a small Shih Tzu cannon. The Hiru watched them dash around the lawn.

The inn chimed. Someone had crossed the boundary. Three someones, two from the east and one from the south.

I pushed with my magic. All around the lawn, the inn’s roots shivered just barely below the surface, waiting.

The southern intruder meandered up my driveway, taking his time. His two friends glided silently, moving along the edge of the inn’s grounds toward the lawn where Helen was playing. They were good. I should’ve seen them from this spot, but the property appeared completely empty. Judging by the pattern of their movement, they must’ve approached and then gone to ground.

Sean looked at me, his eyes dark. He either heard them or smelled them. I shook my head very slightly.

“Please excuse me.”

I picked up my broom, went to the front door, and flicked my fingers. A screen slid from the wall showing a human-shaped creature walking up the driveway, dressed in a long black trench coat. It flared as he strode forward. Rows of belts secured his sleeves. His hood was up, and pale hair, almost white, spilled from it.

Interesting. I hadn’t felt a guest quite like this before.

I opened the front door, leaving the screen door closed, leaned on my broom, and waited.

He didn’t walk, he glided like a graceful dancer, light on his feet.

Not a good sign.

The inn chimed in my head. The screen split, showing two shadowy figures, one lying flat on the grass and the other crouching behind a tree. Each carried a weapon, which the inn’s scan highlighted with white. Long barrel and curved stock. They carried needle rifles. A single shot from a needle would paralyze and sometimes kill, if the target’s weight was low enough. A needle wouldn’t penetrate the Hiru’s metal. The rifles were for us.

The intruder reached me. The house hid him from the street. He lowered his hood. In poor light, you could mistake him for a human. A beautiful, angelic human. His skin was an even golden tone and looked soft, like velvet. His hair, pure white, without a trace of gray or blond, streamed from his head, its ends tipped with black. His eyebrows were white too, thick, feathery, the ends touched with coal black. Large eyes looked at me from under the brows, the irises turquoise and full of inner fire, like two aquamarines. Glowing silver lines marked his forehead, curving in a complex pattern, embedded in his skin. His nose with a prominent bridge lacked curves over individual nostrils. Straight and triangular, it widened at the end into a semblance of a beak. An arrogant slash of a mouth and a human-looking jaw with a contour so crisp, it could’ve been carved out of stone, completed his face.

If you bumped into him in a club or saw him walking after dark, badly lit by the street lamps, you’d think, “What a handsome man.” But he was standing only feet away, brightly lit by the late afternoon sunshine. That perfect skin wasn’t bare epithelium, but a pelt of very short and dense down. What appeared to be hair at first glance was a mass of thin, fine feathers. A Draziri. One of the higher caste, too, judging by the rank on his forehead.

“Good evening,” he said, his voice cultured and clear. Unlike the Hiru, he obviously had access to expensive tech.

“Good evening.”

“I desire a room.”

“We don’t have one available at the moment.”

He blinked, his feathered eyelashes fanning his cheeks. “I was led to believe your inn has few guests and more than ample accommodations.”

“If you’re familiar with innkeepers, then you must know that we reserve the right to choose our guests. At this time, unfortunately, I can’t provide you with a room. Perhaps at a later date.”

“I must have a room,” he said.

“There is a wonderful inn over in Dallas, only a few hours from here.”

The Draziri stepped closer.

“I know the Hiru is here,” he said, his voice quiet but charged with menace.

“You should be on your way.” Take the hint.

“Let me in. It will be over quickly.”

“The Hiru is beyond your reach.”

“You have a beautiful inn,” he said. “I can hear other guests and a child playing on the grass.”

You bastard. They would shoot Helen. That was the plan. Shoot Helen and trade her or her dead body for the Hiru.

“Your situation is complicated,” he said. “I have led many raids in my lifetime. They can be easy and fast or slow and messy. There are so many beings on the grass who could accidentally get in the way. And a child. Such a lovely child. It would be a shame if she got hurt.”

The two others moved toward the lawn. The roots shot out, impaling both figures. There was no sound. No screams. I pulled with my magic. The roots sank into the ground, pulling the two bodies with them.

The conversation on the lawn died.

The roots surfaced behind him with a rustle.

The Draziri turned and saw two corpses suspended above the ground, each with a thick inn root piercing its mouth and exiting out of the back of the skull.

“You’re right. My niece is a lovely child. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”

The Draziri stared at me, unblinking. “You’re arrogant. I’ll have to teach you humility.”

I felt Sean behind me.

“You didn’t do your homework. This is my domain. Here I own the air you breathe.”

“I always get what I want. One way or—”

“Out.”

He flew from the driveway as if jerked back by an invisible hand, cleared the hedges, and landed on the street in a clump. A truck roared down the street, threatening to run him over. The Draziri leapt out of the way, like a length of black silk jerked out of sight, and vanished into the Avalon subdivision.

“You should’ve killed the scary white one,” Wing said behind me.

“Better the devil I know than the one I don’t.”

I turned. Wing stood in the kitchen doorway. The feathers of his crest lay so flat against his head, they looked wet. He was terrified.

“Do you know of Draziri?”

The Ku nodded. “They don’t kill because they are hungry. They kill because they like it.”

“You’ll be safe here at the inn,” I told him.

“We have his face,” Sean said. “We’ll know his name, and then we’ll figure out what makes him tick.”

I dug in the pocket of my jeans, pulled out the dollar Sean had given me, and offered it to him. “You’re hired.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said and took the dollar.

“I know.” I put my arm around Wing. “Come on, we haven’t finished dinner.”

Outside everyone at the table looked at me. Helen sat on Maud’s lap.

“They found me,” the Hiru said quietly. An awful finality resonated in his voice. He sounded like a being who was looking certain death in the face.

They found a world of hurt, that’s what they found. “Gertrude Hunt accepts your proposition. We will grant the Archivarius sanctuary.”

You could hear a pin drop.

“Why?” the Hiru asked finally.

“Because nobody threatens me or my guests in my house. They don’t get to intimidate me, they don’t get to harm my family, and they don’t get to kill my guests. They need to learn what the word no means, and I’m going to teach them that lesson over and over until they get it.”

Nobody said anything.

Arland reached over, speared a heap of brisket with his fork, and put it on his plate. Caldenia smiled without parting her lips and sliced through her chicken with a single, precise stroke of her knife.

“We’re going to have fun, my flower,” Maud told Helen.

Helen bared two little fangs.

“Dessert!” Orro announced. “Roasted pears with espresso mascarpone cream.”

“I’ll take two,” Tony said.