And he knew my father.
“Your father is a problem.” He had a terrible voice. It faded as he spoke, brushing against my skin like cold slime. “Your mother is a problem. Your brother is a problem. Now you are a problem.”
“Is.” He said “is.” My parents were still alive.
Everything in me wanted to lash out at him. No innkeeper could see that putrid husk of the inn and not want to disintegrate the one responsible. He was an abomination. But I had to talk to him. If I didn’t, we would never know why any of this had happened.
The man turned his head and looked at the olive ocean outside. I could just make out the narrow sliver of his jaw. It was an odd color, a kind of slightly purple tint, like a Caucasian body frozen in mid-livor mortis.
“There are two of us. You and me.”
Okay, we established he could count.
“Did it hurt when the seed died?”
How did he know about the baby inn? Should I answer?
I took a shot. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Does it still hurt?”
“Yes.” It hurt me every time I thought about it. Most innkeepers never survived the death of the inn they were bonded to. Even though our bond had lasted mere minutes, witnessing that inn’s death nearly ended me. I had been very lucky to survive it.
He nodded. “It hurt me too when I killed my inn. Every inn I kill hurts. The pain is never-ending.”
What inns? How many?
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why would you kill your inn? It trusted you. It loved you. Why would you betray it?”
He turned to me, and I saw the bottom half of his face. “Ask them.”
Them who? “The other innkeepers?”
“Ask them about Sebastien North. Ask them what they’ve done. How I have suffered.”
Oh.
“You have.” His voice rolled through the dome, melting into a hiss. “They didn’t tell you.”
“What didn’t they tell me?”
“Of all of us, you and I are the only ones who survived to know the pain. We carry it with us, always.” He paused. “I will give you one chance. Take the werewolves and go. Leave your inn. Leave your planet. Don’t look back, and I will come for you last.”
“Why would I need to leave the planet?”
“Because I will devour it. Every inn, every innkeeper, every ad-hal. Every human.”
There was an awful finality to the way he said it. He wasn’t angry, or hurt, or conflicted. He simply stated a fact.
He wouldn’t tell me anything more unless I found common ground. He sympathized with me because we had both endured the greatest tragedy an innkeeper could suffer. If what he said was true, he existed in a state of constant suffering. There had to be some shred of human emotion left in him. I had to find it and exploit it. I needed to know why he was doing this.
“Did you have a cat?”
He didn’t answer.
“I found a cat, a big gray Maine Coon with green eyes. He has a collar with the initials SN on it.”
“Belaud.”
Oh wow. It was his cat.
“He yet lives? Is he well?”
“Yes. If I had my phone, I would show you. I took pictures of him. He walks through the inn as he pleases. It opens walls for him.”
The man’s voice was almost wistful. “That was always his way. I found him during a thunderstorm. He was so small, he fit in one of my hands. It was May 30th. I remember because the next day, Royal Governor Martin fled the Tryon Palace for New York, and my father had opened a treasured bottle of whiskey. That was my first sip of spirits.”
Tryon Palace was in New Bern, North Carolina. My father had taken us there to visit. Martin was NC’s last Royal Governor, and he’d fled in 1775. I knew this because dad remembered Martin and didn’t like him. Holy crap. This man was my father’s age.
“Why do you hate my father?”
“I don’t. The Wanderer got in the way. He always gets in the way. Now you are in my way.”
And we had come full circle.
“I know you are looking for my soul,” the man said. “You will not find it.”
“I want to understand why. What is it you want?”
“To kill us all.”
“But to what end? Something terrible must have happened to you but murdering everyone won’t make you feel better.”
“It’s not for me. I will feel nothing. The inns and innkeepers shouldn’t be. I will purge their symbiosys from existence. It’s not necessary for you to understand it. Accept it as inevitable and go.”
“No.”
A deep sigh echoed through the dome. He turned, his robe swirling. “Why do you persist in being difficult? Take my gift. Get out of my way, foolish child. Do not trample on my last act of kindness. There will be no more.”
“You were an innkeeper once. You felt the bond with your inn. They rely on us. They trust us. Whatever faults innkeepers have, whatever crimes they committed against you, the inns are innocent. Does that not mean something to you?”
“Why should it? My inn was taken from me. My family, my face, they took everything, and I will leave them with nothing. I will kill every inn in the galaxy, so the innkeepers can never resurrect themselves again.”
“But you still feel the pain. You still long for the bond.” I pointed to the remains of the room at the other end of the dome. “You brought an inn here, and now it’s dying. It’s rotting and suffering. How can you stand this?”
He turned to fully face me. His bloodless lips stretched, and he smiled, showing sharp conical teeth.
“I brought it here for you.”
What?
“Do you still not see? Look around you. Does it not look familiar? Does it not feel like home?”
I stared at the semicircle of the rotten floor, the slimy walls, the remnants of the decaying furniture… There was a couch on the left. Mildew had slicked its upholstery, but some of the original color remained, a happy summer sky blue with big yellow dandelions. My mother had upholstered that couch for me when I was seven years old. I had picked out the fabric. Our dog, an old boxer, had chewed on the front leg of it, and the bite marks were still there…
Oh my God.
I saw it now. The crooked lamp—Maud and I had knocked it over when she was chasing me around the house, and we could never get the lampshade to sit straight again. My old desk. The remnants of my rug.
This was my bedroom. This was my parents’ inn. My home. He ruined my home. He was torturing our inn.
I stumbled away from him, toward the rotting floor and the magic that waited for me there. It washed over me, stabbing into my heart, and I felt the last weak pulses of Magnolia Green. The magic I had sensed, the one so desperately trying to touch me, was the lifeblood of the inn spilling from its dying core.
His voice chased me. “Do you understand now?”
I made my mouth move through the pain. “Yes.”
I understood.
“This is a demonstration of my power.”
“It’s a demonstration of your fear.” I called on my magic and poured my pain into it. I shaped and molded my power as only an innkeeper could. “You feared my parents. You tried to kill them and failed, so you defiled their inn in your impotent rage. You used its suffering to convince yourself that you won. And now you fear me. You have gone through all this trouble to give me a warning, because deep down you are afraid. You’re right to be afraid.”
He sighed. “So be it.”
The man smashed his white broom into the floor. Corruption burst from him in twisted dark currents and bit into the walls, burrowing into the inn, forcing it to comply. The wooden floor moved like a churning sea, speeding toward me.
I sank all my magic into the floor under me. It burst through the currents and eddies of Magnolia Green’s lifeblood, colliding with the corruption squirming through them. My power shot through the fading inn, rushing through its branches, its roots, all the way to its injured core.