“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.