He leaned a little closer. “Are you inviting me in?” His voice held just a touch of suggestion to it.
Suddenly I wasn’t so cold anymore. “Well, you’re already here, it’s freezing, and we can’t just stand here on the balcony and talk. Someone might see us and get the wrong idea.”
Actually, nobody would see us, because it was the middle of the night and if we got in trouble, the inn would screen us from the street.
He leapt off the branch and landed softly next to me. He was so very… tall. And standing too close. And looking at me.
“Wouldn’t people get the wrong idea if they see me sneaking into your house in the middle of the night?”
I opened my mouth, trying to think of something clever to say.
The sky above Park Street split in an electric explosion of yellow lightning and spat a boost bike.
Sean whipped around.
The needle-shaped aboveground craft tore down the road a foot above the payment, its engine roaring loud enough to wake the dead. The windows in the inn vibrated. Car alarms blared down the street.
Oh no.
The deafening blast of sound receded and came back, growing louder. The idiot had turned around and was coming back this way. Sean took off, leaping over the balcony.
“Smother cannon,” I barked.
The roof of the inn split open, the shingles flowing like melted wax, and a three-foot-long cannon barrel slid out.
The boost bike thundered, engine roaring.
Lights came on in the two closest houses. Damn it.
The boost bike shot into my view.
“Fire.”
The cannon made a metallic ting. The lights in the Ramirez residence went out. The lamp post turned dark. The engine of the boost bike died like someone had thrown a switch.
An electromagnetic pulse is a terribly useful thing.
The bike spun, rotating wildly, crashed into a lamppost and bounced off, landing on the pavement, and skidding to a stop. Twenty feet from the inn’s boundary. Crap.
In a moment Mr. Ramirez would realize his lights refused to come on and he would do exactly what most men did in this situation. He’d come outside to check if the rest of the neighborhood had lost power. He would see us and the boost bike that clearly didn’t look like it belonged on Earth.
I leapt over the balcony. A massive root snaked out of the ground, catching me, and set me gently on the grass. I dashed to the street, the broom in my hand splitting to reveal its glowing blue insides and flowing into a spear with a hook on the end.
Sean darted to the bike, grabbed the small passenger, and threw him backward toward the inn. Roots snatched him out of the air, the lawn yawned, and they dragged him under. I hooked the boost bike with my spear. Sean grasped the other edge, strained, and we half-dragged, half-carried it to the inn’s boundary.
Behind me a door swung open. Sean grunted, I cried out, and we heaved the bike and my broom over the hedge. I spun around and faced the street.
Mr. Ramirez walked out, his Rhodesian Ridgeback, Asad, trailing him.
“Dina,” Mr. Ramirez said. “Are you okay?”
No, I’m not okay. “Some dimwit just drove his bike up and down the street!”
I didn’t even have to manufacture the outrage in my voice. I had outrage to spare. All visitors to Earth had to follow one rule: never let themselves be discovered. That was the entire purpose of the inns. I’d had too many close calls already and as soon as I got inside, the rider of the boost bike would deeply regret it.
“We’re fine,” Sean said.
“This is completely ridiculous.” I waved my arm and pulled the cardigan tighter around myself. “People have to be able to sleep.”
“People have no sense,” Mr. Ramirez said. “My power went out.”
“Looks like he hit a lamppost. Might’ve damaged the power lines,” Sean offered.
Mr. Ramirez frowned. “You might be right.” His eyes narrowed. “Wait. Isn’t your house all the way down the street? What are you doing here?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Sean said. “I went jogging.”
Asad sniffed the metal skid marks on the pavement with obvious suspicion.
“Jogging, huh.” Mr. Ramirez looked at him, then at me, taking in my cardigan and T-shirt, then at Sean again. “At two o’clock in the morning?”
I wished very hard to be invisible.
“Best time to jog,” Sean said. “Nobody bothers me.”
Asad pondered the marks and let out a single loud bark.
“Hey!” Mr. Ramirez turned to him. “What is it, boy?”
It smelled like something inhuman had landed on the pavement, that’s what.
The huge dog put himself between Mr. Ramirez and the marks and broke into a cacophony of barks.
“Hmm. He barely ever barks. I better get him inside. I’m going to file a police report in the morning.” Mr. Ramirez looked at Sean and me one last time and smiled. “Good luck with your jogging.”
No. He didn’t just wish Sean and I happy jogging.
“Come, Asad.”
I shut my eyes tight for a second.
“You okay?” Sean asked.
“Jogging?” I squeezed through clenched teeth. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
“What else was I supposed to tell him? He isn’t going to believe that I woke up out of a dead sleep, got dressed, and ran four hundred yards here in the time it took him to go downstairs and open the door.”
“He thinks we’re sleeping together.”
“So what if we are? We’re adults last time I checked.”
“Tomorrow he’ll talk to Margaret and by afternoon the whole subdivision will be talking about our ʽjogging’. I’ll be fielding rumors and questions for a week. I don’t like attention, Sean. It’s bad for my business.”
Sean smiled.
Ugh. I turned around. “Come inside.”
“You sure?” He was grinning now. “People might get the wrong idea.”
“Just come inside,” I growled.
He followed me in.
Inside my front room, the long flexible roots of the inn pinned a creature to the wall. He was about the size of a ten-year-old human child, four-limbed, and wearing a pocketed leather harness from which hung a wide brown cape. A beautiful crest of emerald-green, yellow, and crimson feathers crowned his head. Earth’s evolutionary theory said that feathers evolved from scales and therefore were unlikely to ever appear on the same creature. Nobody mentioned it to the biker, because the rest of him was covered in beautiful green scales, darkening to hunter green on his back and lightening to cream on his throat and chest. A male Ku. I should’ve known.
The Ku were actually reptilian and had more in common with dinosaurs than birds. They lived in tribes and stumbled onto the greater galaxy by accident while they were still in the hunter-gatherer stage. They’d never moved past it. On Earth, climate change combined with the rising population created starvation, which became the catalyst for the development of horticulture, which in turn eventually led to agricultural society and feudalism. The Ku faced no such pressures. They didn’t try to understand the galaxy and the complicated technology of other species. They simply accepted it and learned to use it. Talking rules to a Ku was like reading a modern law brief to a toddler. This one, apparently, decided it would be a great idea to bring his boost bike to our planet and drive up and down Park Street.
“Have you lost your mind?”
The Ku looked at me with round golden eyes.
“This is Earth. You can’t make noise. You can’t ride boost bikes. Humans can’t know. You almost got all of us into big trouble.”
The Ku blinked. His eyes were clear like the summer sky: no thought clouded their depths. I sighed. I wanted to yell at him some more, but it would accomplish nothing.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
He opened his mouth, showing sharp teeth. “Message!”