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.”