Chapter Six
The first session of the peace summit took three hours. The leaders of the three factions sat stone-faced behind the transparent wall the inn and I had made, while their subordinates formed three distinct groups in the ballroom. The Merchants chattered with each other while the otrokars and the vampires proceeded to flex their muscles, lounge about, and give each other the stink eye. There was no point in having them in the ballroom, but as long as their leaders were in each other’s company, nobody would leave on the chance a fight might break out. I would have to figure out some entertainment for them if the summit went on for more than a few days.
I had to split my attention between the ballroom and the stables. The repair of the police cruiser was proceeding well, but keeping an eye on both areas at once tired me out. I would have to practice more. My father could track five or six areas of the inn at once. It was a learned skill that got better with practice, and I had been slacking off these past few months.
Finally Khanum slammed her fist on the table—which looked surprisingly comical without any sound coming through—and George waved the wall down.
I unsealed the side doors that led to the sleeping quarters. The otrokars exited first and the door melted into the wall behind them as if it had never been there. The Merchants were next. Nuan Cee paused by me.
I nodded at him. “How did the negotiations go, great Nuan Cee?”
“It is too early to tell.” He pointed to Cookie, who began picking up the gold off the floor, carefully depositing it into a large satchel, and smiled. “My thrice-removed cousin’s seventh son is working so hard. Such diligence. The blood always shows true in our family.”
“I can have the inn gather the gold and jewels for him,” I offered.
Nuan Cee waved his paw-hands. “Menial labor is good for the soul. I have done it for my family when I was his age, his father has done it, and his mother has done it for her family… It is a fine lesson to learn. When one starts at the bottom, there is no place to go but up. He is responsible for the riches; let him gather them.”
“It will take him a while,” I said. “I may have to lock him in the ballroom until he is done for his own safety.” Having a tiny fox running around the inn carrying millions in jewels and gold in a canvas sack wasn’t a good idea.
“I take no insult.” Nuan Cee waved his hand again. “Keep him under lock as long as you wish.”
The Merchants filed out. The vampires followed, all except Arland and Robart, who both made a beeline for me. Almost instantly both of them realized they were going to the same place. Arland glowered at Robart and sped up. The Marshal of House Vorga glowered back, matched Arland’s pace, and then went faster. Arland accelerated to keep up. The sight of them rapidly marching in full armor was like standing on train tracks and watching a locomotive barrel toward me at full speed.
I wondered if they would sprint if the distance was great enough.
I brushed the floor with the bristles of my broom. I had turned it into a staff at the beginning of the ceremonies, but an hour into the session, I let it flow back into the broom shape. The past couple of days and the lack of sleep had taken their toll, and the broom felt comfortable and familiar. The floor stretched slightly, then more and more, rising at a slight incline and flowing toward the vampires like one of those moving sidewalks that transports people at airports. Except my sidewalk was moving in the opposite direction.
Neither vampire noticed that they were now going uphill and sliding backward with each step. They were still neck and neck and not getting any closer.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
At the wall Jack chuckled into his fist.
I put a little more speed into the floor. They had to notice now.
The Marshals redoubled their efforts. They were almost running now. If I didn’t stop this now, they might crash into each other and I would have blood on my hands.
“My lords! I’m not a castle. You don’t have to storm me.”
Both vampires stopped in their tracks. The floor stopped as well. Normal people would have lost their balance, stumbled, and possibly landed on their faces. The two vampires leapt up simultaneously, like two great jungle cats, and landed on their respective sides of what was once a moving sidewalk. The floor thudded, accepting the full weight of their armor.
Jack dissolved into a coughing fit.
Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh…
The two vampires strode toward me and said in one voice, “Lady Dina…”
Oh no.
The Marshals clamped their mouths shut and tried to kill each other with their stares.
I squeezed my left hand into a fist. If I guffawed in their faces, I could kiss any further business from the Holy Anocracy good-bye.
“Lord Robart, how may I help you?”
Robart shot a triumphant look at Arland. “I’ve paid the Arbitrator’s price for the car.”
“Yes, you have. Thank you, the giant water serpent was delicious.”
Robart blinked, momentarily thrown off track, but recovered. “I will have my knight returned to me.”
Knight? What knight? Oh shoot. I had completely forgotten about the vampire who’d almost chopped the police car in half. I’d left him in the basement holding cell for almost four hours. I concentrated. The knight was alive and well. He was sitting on the floor meditating. I gave the floor a little push and felt it slide up, carrying the knight with it.
“You will find your knight in your quarters.”
Robart nodded. His gaze narrowed. “Perhaps if you were less heavy-handed in your treatment of the guests you claim to honor and protect, your inn would have a higher rating.”
He did not. Oh yes, yes he did. “Perhaps if you trained the knights under your command to follow simple orders, your House would’ve reached greater prominence within your empire.”
Robart locked his jaw.
If my smile were any sweeter, you could pour it on pancakes and call it syrup. “Good night, Marshal. Lord Arland, how may I assist you?”
Robart turned and stalked off to the vampire entrance.
Arland nodded at me, his face grave. “I’ve come to check on the progress of the car.”
“Of course. Give me a moment to set things in order.”
“Take all the time you require,” Arland said.
I watched Robart exit and dissolved the door behind him. Caldenia rose in her box, waved at me, and retired, Beast following her. I’d have to pick her brain tomorrow for any insights. Only Arland, Cookie, Jack, and I remained. I turned to Jack. “Did you need anything?”
He shook his head. “Just making sure everyone goes to bed like good boys and girls. See you in the morning.”
Jack went out the front entrance.
I exhaled quietly and walked over to Cookie, who was crawling around on his hands and knees. “Hey there. I have to leave for a couple of minutes, but I’ll be back soon. I’m going to lock the doors so you’ll be safe in here. But if something goes wrong, call me and I’ll be right over.”
Cookie nodded and dropped a sapphire the size of a gummy bear into his bag.
I led Arland back to the stables, sealing the ballroom with Cookie inside it as we left. Beast caught up with me and hopped into my arms, gazing at me in canine adoration. That’s the wonderful thing about dogs. If you’re gone for a day or for an hour, they’re just as ecstatic when you come back.
The engineer knight and Nuan Cee’s niece were quietly chatting. Officer Marais still lay on the tarp on the floor where we’d left him. His chest rose up and down in a measured rhythm. A small smile spread over his lips. He must’ve been dreaming about something fun. For a moment I envied him the sleep. I was so tired.
The cruiser sat in the middle of the stables. It looked intact.
Hardwir opened the hood and showed me the engine. “Behold.”
I beheld. It looked just like a normal, somewhat grimy, engine.
“No modifications?” Arland asked.
“None,” Hardwir said.
Arland peered at him. “Are you sure? I know you. You didn’t improve on it at all? In any way?”
“No improvements.” Hardwir spat to the side. “Just as ugly and poisonous as it came to me.”
I checked the hood, the inside, and the trunk. Everything seemed to be in order. The car looked exactly as it had before it was hit with a blood axe.
I turned to Arland. “Would you mind helping me? I have to leave the inn grounds and position Officer Marais in the car and he’s heavy.”
Arland nodded at me, his face grave. “It would be my honor.”
Something was wrong. He normally wasn’t this somber. “I need you to change clothes.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Of course.”
I stepped out and returned with a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and size-fourteen athletic shoes. Arland arched his thick eyebrows. He had worn this outfit during his last visit when he pretended to be human. He took the clothes and went to change behind the cruiser.
I turned to Hardwir and Nuan Cee’s niece. “Please don’t leave the stables.”
“You have my word,” Hardwir said. “We will stay put. I was never a good swimmer. Besides, I will watch over the Marshal’s armor.”
“I will stay as well,” Nuan Cee’s niece said. “I’m weak and helpless, and I don’t want to be punished.”
Weak and helpless, sure. Next thing she would try to sell me a lovely coastal villa in Kansas.
Arland emerged, camouflaged as a very large human. The camouflage wasn’t exactly working. Dressing Arland in Earth clothes was like putting bunny ears on a tiger. The ears were cute, but the tiger was still scary. The T-shirt stretched on his shoulders, too small for his arms. He was built like a bear: broad shoulders, carved arms, a wide chest, and a flat, hard stomach. It was the kind of frame that could effortlessly support the weight of vampire armor and let him swing a heavy weapon for hours without slowing down. If an NFL linebacker ran full speed at Arland, the football player would just bounce off.
The Marshal picked up Officer Marais as if the fully grown man was a child, put him in the backseat, and slid into the passenger seat. I started the engine, put the car in reverse, and drove backward slowly. The walls slipped out of the way. A moment later and we slid into my driveway, the rear of the car facing the street. I killed the engine and sat quietly, listening. This plan hinged on having no witnesses.
It was ten past midnight, and the subdivision lay silent. I eased the cruiser into neutral and let the slight incline of the driveway do the rest. Whisper-quiet, the police car rolled out of the driveway, across the street, and down Camelot Road. I gently steered it back to the spot where Marais had parked before the whole affair started and pulled with my magic. I only had a fraction of my power outside the inn’s boundaries, but a fraction would be enough.
The air next to the driver's window shimmered, and the Eye materialized out of thin air behind and a little to the right of the car, its outer shell, once silver, now swirling with the perfect reflection of the road. I was off by three feet.
“Stop recording,” I told it. “Erase last ten minutes. Project position.”
The Eye emitted a pale beam of greenish light that snapped into a holographic projection of the dashboard camera. I slowly slid the car in place, trying to match it. It took me three tries. Officer Marais liked to park very close to the curb. Finally the real dashboard camera and the holographic projection matched.
“Home,” I told the Eye. It landed in my hand and ejected the SD card. I slid it back into the dashboard cam.
The neighborhood was still empty. Great. Nobody had noticed my late-night maneuvering. I stepped out of the car and nodded to Arland. He exited the vehicle, picked up Officer Marais, and sat him in the driver's seat. I locked his seat belt in place, reached through the open window, careful to stay away from any mirrors, and pushed Record on the camera. We quietly moved to the side and went deeper into the subdivision.
“What are we doing?” Arland murmured, looming next to me.
“We’re going to make a big circle and come into the inn through the back so the camera doesn’t see us.”
“Won’t there be a break in recording?”
I shook my head. “The Eye recorded over four hours of video and then looped it into seven hours of footage, using a random algorithm complete with a false time stamp. It overwrote your arrival completely. Right now the real dashboard camera is recording over that video. By the time he wakes up, the tail end of the looped footage will be overwritten with the real video as well. When Officer Marais watches it, he will see hours and hours of the inn sitting there with no activity.”
The only indication of foul play might be the slight jump in the view of the camera. The Eye had analyzed the footage on the SD card and had positioned itself to match the view precisely, but it was very difficult to match the position of the car. Given more time, I probably could’ve gotten closer, but sooner or later someone would notice me inside the police cruiser.
“Clever,” Arland said.
Yes, clever and very expensive. The remote camera had cost me a lot of money and a favor that had been difficult to repay.
We turned right on Bedivere Road.
“Dina,” Arland said. His voice had a slightly rough quality to it. Not Lady Dina, but Dina. He was up to something. That wasn’t good.
“Yes?”
“I’m but a humble soldier.”
Here we go. He had given me a version of this speech before. This definitely wasn’t good.
“You and I, we have a history.”
Okay, what could he possibly be upset about?
“We were comrades-in-arms, fighting at each other’s side for the common goal. We have broken bread together.”
Was this about the food? Was he upset that we didn’t serve red meat at dinner? But we’d told them not to expect a big meal the first day because separate meals would be served in their quarters. We wouldn’t set up the big dinner until tomorrow.
“That kind of connection, it stays with you.”
Was he offended because I let the otrokars fire a weapon? Was it because the otrokars were scheduled to be the first to arrive to the inn and the vampires were last? But we had compensated the Holy Anocracy by inviting them to be the first to officially enter the ballroom.
“Dina…”
He dipped his head and looked into my eyes. A small shiver ran down my spine. Arland had focused completely on me. His face was handsome, but his eyes were breathtaking. Deep, intense blue, they usually communicated power or aggression, but right then they were warm, softened by emotion until they seemed almost velvet. He reached over and took my hand into his, the calluses on his strong fingers scraping against my skin.
I realized we had stopped under an oak by some house. The night was suddenly very small, and Arland had filled it completely.
I had left my broom at the inn. It was just me, the darkness, and the vampire knight.
He held my hand, running his thumb over my fingers. “I want to know what I have done to offend you. Whatever blunder I committed, I will strive to remedy it.”
It would help so much if I knew what he was talking about. The way he looked at me made it difficult to concentrate.
“Tell me.” He was standing too close. His voice was too intimate. And he was still looking at me with that warmth, as if I were someone special. “What may I do to get back into your good graces?”
He stroked my hand. For some reason it felt more intimate than a kiss. My pulse sped up. This was ridiculous. If I didn’t put some distance between us, I might do something I would regret. If you said yes to a vampire, he heard “I surrender,” and I had no intention of surrendering.
“You’ve done nothing to offend me.”
“Then why did you acknowledge Robart before me?”
What?
“You addressed him before you addressed me.”
I cleared my throat. “Just to be clear, you’re upset because I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you? In the ballroom just before we went to check on the car?”
“I understand that the circumstances of the summit prevent frank exchanges,” Arland said. “An appearance of propriety must be maintained and any hint of favoritism is to be avoided at all costs. But when one travels so far, one looks for the small things. A chance glance. A brief kindness, freely offered and gone unnoticed by all except its intended recipient. Some hint, some indication that he has not been forgotten. One might take an acknowledgment of a bitter rival before him, in public, as an indication of certain things.”
It dawned on me. His feelings were actually hurt.
“You haven’t been forgotten,” I told him and meant it. “I looked forward to seeing you. I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you so I could get him to leave. If I hadn’t, he would still be in the ballroom waiting for me to return.”
Arland smiled at me.
Wow.
When they said a smile could launch a thousand ships, they had Arland in mind. Except in his case, that thousand ships would be an armada carrying an army of some of the best humanoid predators the galaxy had managed to spawn, ready to slaughter their enemy on the battlefield.
I wanted to exhale and back away slowly. But he was still holding my hand.
I pulled whatever will I could scrape together and made my voice sound casual. “Arland? Can I have my hand back?”
“My apologies.” He opened his fingers and let my hand slip back through. “It was quite forward of me.”
Judging by his self-satisfied smile, he didn’t have any regrets. He had wanted a reaction and he’d gotten one.
I’d made a mistake. I’d dealt with plenty of vampires before. A few months ago, when he helped Sean and me destroy the dahaka assassin, he’d all but said he was interested in me. I hadn’t heard from him in months, but that changed nothing. Vampires tended to be infuriatingly single-minded.
I should’ve never invited him to come with me. I should’ve never left the inn with him. I kept making these rookie blunders because I was too tired to see straight. I had to get some sleep. It was a necessity at this point.
I began walking. The sooner we got to the inn, the better.
The street turned. The last house had no fence. It had fallen down about three weeks ago, and the owners hadn’t gotten around to replacing it. We quietly slipped through the yard, crossed the main road to the wooded area, and started down the narrow trail that would open to the back of the inn.
“I’m glad you relied on me for assistance,” Arland said. “I once told you to call on me. I meant it. Anytime you require it, I will be your shield.”
“Thank you. It’s very kind of you.”
I stepped onto the inn grounds. The magic flowed through me, and I let out a quiet breath.
Ten minutes later I let Arland, Hardwir, and Nuan Cee’s niece into the ballroom. The inn had dimmed the lights and a soothing warm glow filled the big room. I opened the doorways and closed them after they passed through.
The floor of the ballroom was clean. No hint of gold and jewels remained. Where was Cookie?
I closed my eyes, concentrating. There he was, slumped in the corner. I walked over. The small fox was curled into a ball on the floor, his bag under his head like a pillow. I nudged him gently.
“Cookie? Cookie?”
He opened his turquoise eyes and blinked, his face drowsy.
“Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
“I can’t,” he yawned. “I have to find the emerald.”
“What kind of emerald?”
“A big one. The Green Eye. Very expensive.” His nose drooped. He looked exhausted. “If I don’t find it, I’ll be in trouble.”
I nudged the inn to check the floor. Nothing. The emerald wasn’t here.
“We’ll find it in the morning.” I took him by the hand and carefully helped him to his feet. “Come on. Off to bed.”
I led him to the door and watched him go up the stairs. He knocked on the upstairs door. Someone opened it and another fox ushered him inside.
I sealed the ballroom and dragged myself upstairs. I needed to take a shower, but the bed looked so comfortable.
Gertrude Hunt and I had survived the first day. We dealt with a major crisis, we got through a big ceremony, and we managed to get everyone to bed without bloodshed. I patted the inn’s wall. “I’m so proud of you.”
The inn creaked slightly, the wood warm under my fingers.
I meant to sit down on my bed, but my legs must’ve been tired, because they decided to stop supporting my weight. I fell onto the covers, yawned, and passed out.
#
The inn woke me up at six thirty. I dreamed that Sean Evans came back. We were having a barbecue, and he kept fighting with Orro over how to season the ribs. I lay in bed with my eyes open and looked at the wooden beams crossing over my ceiling, taking a mental tally of all my guests. Everyone was where they were supposed to be, except for George who was in the kitchen with Orro. The Arbitrator and his people had freedom of movement in the inn, with the exception of the guests’ private quarters. Each faction was secured by two doors. The outer doors opened to the ballroom. I had sealed those, but they would open at George’s request. The inner doors were controlled by the guests. George and his people would have to knock and ask permission to enter. Even though he was the Arbitrator and paid my bills, I wouldn’t let him have complete access. The privacy of my guests was sacred.
I closed my eyes. The barbecue dream had been so vivid. In the few seconds it took me to wake up, I was almost convinced that it was real.
This strange obsession with Sean Evans had to stop. It would’ve made sense if there was a relationship there, but even if I tried to lie to myself and say there was one, he had left. They all left. That was the basic truth of the life of an innkeeper: guests arrived, walked into your life, and departed, while you stayed behind, never knowing if you would see them again. I had plenty of conversations with my neighbors and Caldenia, but I had few friends. Sean had learned who I was and accepted it. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone else.
I tapped the covers with my palm. Beast jumped up and scooted toward me, caught in the complete ecstasy of being invited on the bed. I hugged her to me and petted her fur.
I needed to get my emotions in order. Yesterday was the first day, but today the real work would begin.
“Reiki music,” I murmured.
A quiet, soothing melody of flutes and drums filled the room, floating against the sounds of a distant thunderstorm. I had found the soundtrack on sale in a bargain bin, and it proved surprisingly relaxing. I sat quietly on my bed with my eyes closed. Just let it go. Sink into the music, listen to the soothing sound, and let things go…
The inn’s magic tugged on me.
I opened my eyes. A screen formed in the wall. On the screen Officer Marais jumped out of his car. Red welts marked his face—the remindermuds of falling on the pavement last night. Beast saw him and barked once, baring her teeth.
This was going to be interesting.
Officer Marais ran to the front of the vehicle and stared at it in shock. The Reiki soundtrack kept playing. Trilling bird cries added a pleasant high note to the sound of flutes.
Officer Marais dashed back to the driver's seat, popped the release on the hood, ran back, and jerked the hood open.
“Who do you think I am, an amateur?” I murmured.
Officer Marais stumbled back from the hood, his face pale, and began to pace back and forth in front of the cruiser, glancing at the hood once in a while.
I felt guilty. I’d met some bad cops before. Sometimes when a person got a little bit of power, especially if the rest of their life made them feel powerless, they went to a dark place with it. Marais wasn’t one of those cops. He calmly followed the rules and was dedicated to his job. He wasn’t on a power trip, nor did he get off on screaming at people and bullying them. He was an Andy Griffith kind of cop, one who relied on his authority more than his gun. He probably wanted to be respected rather than feared. His sense told him that something about Gertrude Hunt was off, and he genuinely wanted to get to the bottom of it. If I were running a meth lab or a ring of car thieves, he would’ve dealt with me in no time, but the inn was so far outside his frame of reference he couldn’t even begin to guess at the truth, and if he somehow managed it, he wouldn’t believe it.
Marais pivoted and stared at the house.
“That’s right. You’ve been beaten.”
Officer Marais clenched his teeth, making the muscles on his jaw bulge, marched to the car, and got in.
“Zoom closer,” I asked.
The inn zoomed in. Officer Marais was looking at his dashcam. His face was grim.
“No, there’s nothing on there either. You lost. Go home.”
Now he would start his cruiser and drive away, and I would get on with my day.
Officer Marais stepped out of the car, slapped the door closed, and marched to the inn.
Oh crap.
I jumped off the bed and pulled on a fresh pair of sweatpants. I needed a bra. Where the hell had I put my laundry? I yanked the laundry basket out of the closet and dug through it. If only I would put away my laundry after I washed it, I wouldn’t be in this mess… Got it.
I slipped the bra on, threw a white T-shirt over it, and dashed out of my bedroom and down a long hallway. The Reiki music followed me. “Turn it off,” I breathed. The music died. Beast shot ahead of me, barking her head off. I ran down the staircase two steps at the time and burst into the front room just as the doorbell rang.
I ran into the kitchen, past Orro and George, grabbed a cup from the cabinet, stuck it under the coffeemaker, and popped the first pod I touched into the Keurig.
The bell rang again. Beast barked in the other room.
I grabbed the coffee, dumped a whole bunch of creamer into it to cool it enough to drink, and went to the door.
The bell rang, insistent.
I swung the door open and stared at Officer Marais’s furious face.
“Officer Marais! Good morning. What can I do for you? What’s happened now? Has a chupacabra been spotted in the neighborhood? Or was it a Bigfoot? Maybe someone saw a UFO? I can’t wait to hear how it’s all my fault.”
I sipped my coffee to appear extra casual.
“You…” Officer Marais pulled himself together through an obviously huge effort of will. “I know what happened.”
“What happened when? Where?”
“Here.” He stabbed his finger toward the floor.
I glanced at the floor. “I don’t follow…”
“I saw a group of men appear on the road.”
“What do you mean, appear?” George said behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. He was wearing loose gray slacks and a fisherman’s sweater of natural beige wool.
Officer Marais looked at him for a long moment, no doubt committing his face to memory. “When I attempted to question them, a large male suspect swung a bladed weapon and cut through the hood of my vehicle. Then you used an unknown device to restrain me. I was dragged through a tunnel to the stables, where I lay on the floor while you and the others discussed what to do with me. Then you gave me an injection and I lost consciousness.”
I sighed and sipped my coffee. “If everything happened the way you say it did, there should be evidence. There must be damage to your car, and your dashcam would show a record of these events. Do you have any evidence, Officer Marais?”
His face turned red. “You repaired it.”
“I repaired your vehicle? Setting aside that I’m not a mechanic and wouldn’t know the first thing about repairing a car, if I had tampered with your vehicle, there would some indication of it. Are there any signs of repair?”
Officer Marais clenched his teeth together again.
“I think that you work very long hours,” I said. “I saw you this morning sleeping in your cruiser. I think you had a very vivid dream. Your dreams do not give you the right to come here and harass me and my business. I don’t know what I have done to make you dislike me, but this isn’t right and it’s not fair. You are now interfering with my ability to make a living. I didn’t break any laws. I’m not a criminal. Does it seem okay to you that you are continuously coming here and accusing me of random things just because you don’t like me?”
He looked taken aback.
“Go home, Officer. I’m sure you must have a family who probably misses you. I am not going to file a complaint, but I do wish you would stop coming here every time something odd happens or doesn’t happen.”
I closed the door and leaned against it.
A moment later the magic of the inn chimed in my head, letting me know Officer Marais had left the grounds. George stepped to the window. “He’s leaving. Nicely done.”
“If I argued with him, he would continue to attack. Instead I acted like a victim, and Officer Marais has been trained to be considerate of victims.” I still felt bad for manipulating him.
“The summit is set to begin in two hours,” George said. “I’m afraid I have to ask you for a favor. I need your help.”
#
I looked at my cup of coffee. I didn’t want to do anyone any favors. I wanted fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time with my refrigerator. I’d barely eaten last night, and I had just downed a whole cup of coffee on an empty stomach. But I had a job to do. Maybe it would be something simple.
I smiled at the Arbitrator. “How can I help you?”
“If I give you coordinates to a particular world, could you open a door to it?” George asked.
“Which world?”
He raised his cane. A set of numbers ignited in midair, written in crimson. The first two digits told me everything I needed to know.
“No,” I said.
“But I’ve seen you open doors,” he said.
“It’s not that simple.” It never was. “Why don’t we sit down?”
We walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table. Orro swept by me like a silent blur of brown, and suddenly a plate holding two tiny crepes filled with cream and sliced strawberries materialized in front of me. I didn’t even see him slide it there. Our kitchen was staffed by a ninja.
“Thank you,” I said.
Orro nodded and went to the stove.
George quietly waited.
“The inns are not well understood.” I cut a small piece of crepe and tried it. It practically melted on my tongue. “Orro, this is heavenly.”
Orro’s needles quivered slightly.
“We live within them, we use them, but even we, the innkeepers, are unsure about why they function the way they do.”
Jack and Gaston walked into the kitchen.
“It’s easiest to imagine them as trees. An inn, like Gertrude Hunt, begins with a seed. The seed is weak and fragile, but if properly tended, it sprouts. It sends roots deep into the ground. What we see”—I made a small circle with my fork, encompassing the kitchen—“is but a small fraction of the inn’s form. As it grows, it begins to spread branches through the universe. These branches don’t obey our physics. Some puncture our reality. Some transform and evolve beyond our understanding. A single inn of some age, like Gertrude Hunt, may reach into other worlds.”
“Like Yggdrasil,” George said.
“Yes, like that.”
“What’s Yggdrasil?” Jack asked.
“A holy tree of the ancient Norse,” George said. “It extends into all nine realms of their mythology.”
“The problem is that innkeepers have no control over the direction of the branches,” I said. “We know when the inn extends into a particular world, and after a while we can access it, but we can’t make the inn grow a branch to the place of our choosing. Most inns instinctively seek out Baha-char. That’s usually the first world that opens to us. We don’t know why. People sometimes say that the seed of the very first inn was brought to us from Baha-char and that all its descendants instinctively seek the connection to their homeland the way salmon travel hundreds of miles to reach their spawning grounds. I can tell you that I know every world this inn has reached so far, and your coordinates are not among them. Furthermore, you are asking for a portal to a world that is very similar to ours. That world is another Earth that exists in its own tiny reality, splintered from the majority of the cosmos. It’s like reaching into a pocket on the universe’s coat. I don’t know the capabilities of every inn on Earth, but I can tell you that my father always told me that creating a door to an alternative dimension like that could not be done. It would collapse the inn.”
George leaned back in his chair. I ate my crepes, enjoying every single bite.
“But you can open a portal to Baha-char?”
“Yes.”
“If you get caught, there will be hell to pay,” Gaston said.
“I’ll have to take the risk.” George rose smoothly. “In that case, I would still be grateful for your assistance. I would like you to escort me to that world and back. I can find a way to it from Baha-char, but I will need you to lead me back to the inn.”
I rubbed my face. “You’re asking me to leave the inn while it’s full of guests.”
“Yes. I take full responsibility for it.”
“I don’t understand. You’re an Arbitrator. You possess the technology to find the inn from Baha-char.”
“I don’t want to use the technology at my disposal for personal reasons,” George said.
“There is something you’re not telling me.”
“He wants to go to a world that’s forbidden to us,” Jack said. “Our home world. If he uses any of the gadgets provided to us by the Arbitrator Office, he can be tracked. They’ll have his ass.”
I took a moment to mourn my empty plate and to think about what I was going to say next without completely alienating the man in charge of signing the check. “So you want me to endanger my guests by leaving the inn and escort you on a mission that could potentially cause you to be sanctioned, derailing the peace talks and my payment and ruining the reputation of this inn. Could you help me understand why I should do that?”
Gaston laughed under his breath.
George sighed. “I’m just as invested in the success of the peace summit as you are. As matters stand now, I do not believe the peace talks will succeed. The problem is Ruah, the bulletproof swordsman.”
Aha. Was he implying that Gertrude Hunt couldn’t handle one otrokar? “Do you doubt my ability to suppress him?”
George grimaced. “That’s not the issue. I know that you can subdue Ruah. The problem is the otrokar mindset. The otrokars acknowledge that a single vampire is a more rounded warrior; however, they have an unshakable faith in their own supremacy through the use of genetic specialization. Ruah is the pinnacle of that process. They believe he is unbeatable with a sword. As long as he reigns supreme, he makes them feel invincible. I have to shatter that faith. I have to prove to them that he and the Horde are not infallible, and I have to do it in terms they will understand.”
“Why not use the vampires?” I asked.
“Because that would simply flip the coin.” Caldenia strode into the kitchen. Her hair was meticulously styled, her pale green gown flattered her complexion, and her makeup was flawless. Her eyes were sharp and her bearing had a slightly regal and dangerous air to it. Her Grace was back.
The three men bowed. She nodded at them and accepted a cup of tea from Orro.
“If he uses a knight to defeat an undefeatable otrokar, the same immunity the otrokars now feel will be transferred to the Holy Anocracy. To get them to cooperate and work together, both sides must be humbled. He has to shake their very worldview.”
“I’m willing to put my career at risk,” George said, “because I believe it to be completely necessary. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
I had a feeling that nothing George ever did was spur-of-the-moment. If he ever had a one-night stand, it would probably be meticulously researched and organized.
The ball was in my court. Leaving so many guests unattended was crazy. But George had a point. The longer the peace talks dragged on, the more rejuvenated the inn became, but also the more money their presence cost us. The summit had to end in a reasonable time frame, and it had to end with peace, not war. If the summit failed, there would be plenty of blame to go around, and Gertrude Hunt would earn a big black eye.
What to do? We’d be gone over an hour at least. A lot of things could happen in an hour. Officer Marais could return with backup. The otrokars could try to bust through the walls and go on a rampage. The vampires could set fire to the inn…
Okay, I had to stop. Wild theories got me nowhere.
My mother would not approve of this harebrained scheme. But my dad would think it was an adventure. Even my parents were no help.
“Escort me to Baha-char,” George said. “I promise you, I can take things from there.”
If we got caught, George would be in trouble and I would be in trouble with him.
“Breakfast is due to be served to the guests in their quarters in half an hour,” I said. “According to the schedule, the summit is to begin an hour after breakfast. That gives us about an hour and a half. Your people have to uphold the peace until then.”
“Won’t be an issue,” Jack said.
I rose. “We have to hurry.”
#
I crouched on the floor of a small shop. Beautiful pale carpets lined the walls and the floor, providing a backdrop for hundreds of elaborate pieces of lacquerware painted with meticulous patterns of vivid turquoise, cheerful gold, and bright scarlet. Jugs shaped like exotic birds, plates where strange monsters clashed in battle with each other, platters showcasing foreign blooms, all filled the shelves and waited in every corner. It was good that I’d brought very little money with me, or I would have walked out of here with something.
George, wearing a plain brown cloak, crouched next to me, deep in negotiations with the owner of the shop. The shopkeeper was so swaddled in layers of blue and white tattered cloth that nothing except his eyes and a narrow strip of olive skin around them was visible. He waved his hands as he haggled with George in an unfamiliar language. His hands looked human enough, but each had only three fingers and a thumb.
It had taken us about twenty minutes to find the shop, and we had been crouching here for so long my legs were beginning to ache. I could feel time dripping away, one drop at a time. Part of me really wanted to be back at the inn. A smaller part wanted to find Wilmos again and ask him about Sean Evans.
The trader rose off his haunches. George stood up and dropped a small pouch into the trader’s hand. The shopkeeper handed a ball of blue yarn to George, tied the end of it to a shelf, walked to the back of the store, and pulled a carpet aside. Morning daylight filled the shop. The shopkeeper waved at us.
Great. Here’s a magic thread. Hold on to it so you don’t get lost and hope there isn’t a minotaur waiting to meet you.
George stepped to the light, letting the yarn pull from the ball as he walked. I got up and followed him. A vast garden spread before us, rows and rows of roses, surrounded by a forty-foot wall of burgundy-colored stone. Here and there towers punctuated the wall.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“This is Ganer College,” George said. “In my world it’s a place of healing.”
A woman walked among the roses. She was about my height. Her very dark brown hair coiled on her head in a conservative but elegant bun. A gray gown hugged her figure, falling down in straight lines, its hem brushing the pebbles of the path as she walked. A gossamer-thin length of matching gray fabric wrapped the gown from the left, draped in an asymmetric swag over the woman’s left shoulder. She seemed about my age and not particularly tall, strong, or very imposing.
I glanced at George. For a moment his cool mask slipped and I saw an intense, all-consuming longing reflected in his features. My father loved my mother completely. He also mistrusted the modern world. He understood it, but it moved too fast and all its dangers seemed magnified to him. He viewed each drive to the store as a failed suicide attempt and each major city as a den of cutthroats and thieves lying in wait for their victim. He would never dream of keeping my mother from doing something she wanted to do. But sometimes when my mother was about to leave on an errand, especially if she had to drive into the city, he would look at her just like that, as if he wanted more than anything in the world to wrap his arms around her and keep her safe with him.
The expression flickered and vanished off George’s face, but it was too late. I’d seen it. The cosmic Arbitrator was not infallible.
George started down the path and I followed him. When we were about thirty feet from the woman, she stopped. “That’s far enough.”
George stopped.
“I’m angry with you.” She spoke with an unfamiliar but cultured accent. “I don’t like to be angry, George. I work very diligently to avoid that emotion. You should leave.”
“I need your help,” he said.
She turned around. I almost never got envious of other women. When I did, it was usually because I had gone grocery shopping. I’d stand in a checkout line, bored, and People magazine or some tabloid would catch my eye and I’d buy it, because I felt too guilty about putting it back after flipping through it. I would look at the actresses and models while drinking my tea and sometimes wish my eyes were bigger or my lips were fuller. But actresses and models were abstract people, half reality, half airbrushed perfection. This woman was real, she was my age, slightly taller, and she was incredibly, shockingly beautiful without any Photoshop assistance. Her skin was a light, golden bronze, her mouth was full and perfect, her cheekbones high, and her eyes, huge under nearly black eyebrows, were dark like bitter chocolate. When you saw her, you wanted to keep looking at her.
Right now she was looking at George, and the way her eyebrows bent, George was clearly not her favorite person.
“You didn’t tell them,” she said. “You had dinner with the family at Camarine manor. You helped little William catch fireflies in a jar, you brought presents for the girls, and you sat on the balcony and drank wine with Declan and your sister. A week later you were simply gone.”
“I left a note,” George said.
“A note that said you were going on a secret mission off-world and taking Jack and Gaston with you and that you would be back in twenty years. That is all you left by way of explanation. Do you have any idea how worried your sister is? Your nieces? Your nephew? You play with people’s lives like they are toys, George. We are all chess pieces to you. You move us around the board as you please. I could understand if you were oblivious to human emotions, but you fully comprehend our feelings. You simply choose to ignore them. I don’t understand it. You used to be so compassionate when we were children. Now we don’t matter to you at all.”
“It’s part of a job,” he said.
She simply looked at him.
“I was not permitted to say good-bye. The note was the best I could do.”
“But here you are.” Her eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you tell me that once you accepted this job, you could not come back? Are you breaking the rules again?”
“Of course I am.”
“So you have no problems breaking the rules when it suits you. Are you telling me that you couldn’t find any way to personally soften that blow for your family?”
“I’m a selfish bastard,” George said. “I didn’t want the pain of saying good-bye, so I avoided it.”
The woman sighed. “What is it you want?”
“I need your help.”
“You already asked me. The answer was no then. It’s still no. I’m not going on your mad adventure. My home is here.”
George brushed his cane with his thumb. An image of Ruah appeared in thin air. We watched him spin his swords and slice through bullets. The woman tilted her head, tapping her bottom lip with her index finger. The recording stopped with the otrokar paused in midstrike, graceful like a dancer.
“Cute,” she said. “He’s good.”
“Is he better than you?” George asked.
She pondered the still image. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to find out?”
A predatory spark flashed in her eyes and died. “No.”
“Come with me,” George said. “Please.”
“George, I worked for years to put aside what the world outside these walls made me. Out there I am an abomination. I’m a killer. No, I belong here.”
He shook his head. “Lark…”
“The name is Sophie,” she corrected.
“What is here? This?” He turned, waving his hands to encompass the flowers.
“Here I’m not a monster.” She raised her head. “Here I do not kill anyone. I’m at peace here.”
“Your peace is a lie.”
She glared at him, and I fought an urge to step back. “You have no right to tell me how to live my life. Let me be. Leave me alone, George. I want to be at peace!”
“You are not meant to be at peace. We, the human beings, are meant to live life to its fullest. We are meant to experience it all—sadness, disappointment, rage, kindness, joy, love. We are meant to test ourselves. It is painful and frightening, but this is what it means to be alive. You are hiding from life here. This isn’t peace. This is a slow, deliberate suicide.”
He stabbed his cane into the pathway. Images exploded: a vast, roiling nebula, spaceships, planets, ancient ruins, strange buildings, terrible and beautiful beings… They spun around us, vivid, bright, loud… Sophie looked at them and stars reflected in her eyes.
“Look at it!” George’s voice shuddered with barely contained awe. “Look at it! Don’t you want to experience it? Don’t you want to be brave? You are not a gentle flower who spends its whole life in a greenhouse. You are a wildfire, Lark. A wildfire.”
A sun burst on the images, its violent fury drowning the cosmos.
“Dare to take that step and I will show you wonders beyond your imagination. I will give you a chance to make a difference. Come with me.” George offered his hand to her. “Live. Join me or not, but live, gods damn you, because I cannot stand the thought of you slowly aging here like some dusty fossil under glass. Take my hand and bring your sword. The universe is waiting.”