I had no idea what callowinian spider squids tasted like or why it was a bad idea to cook them, but now was the perfect time to talk him out of his burger quest. “As I said, this is a meal unworthy of your skill. It’s beneath you.”
He drew himself to his full height. His chest expanded.
Oh no.
“I shall duplicate it! Perfectly!”
“Orro…”
“FIRE!”
He spun around. The inn opened the pantry door for him, and Orro vanished into the pocket within reality to look for the ingredients.
I rubbed my face. Sean walked through the doorway and landed in a chair next to me, brushing his hand over my shoulder on his way there.
“Didn’t work?” he murmured.
“Fire,” I told him.
“That good, huh?”
“I’m on a tiny planet, and there is a comet heading my way and I can’t do anything about it.” I picked up the phone. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
I dialed the number. It rang once, twice…
“Yes?” a clipped male voice said into the phone. The man sounded too young to be Rudolph.
“I have a message for Mr. Rudolph Peterson.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you Mr. Peterson?”
“I will deliver your message.”
“I would prefer to speak to him.”
“That’s not possible.”
I glanced at Sean. He nodded. We didn’t exactly have a choice.
“Tell him that the meeting he’s been waiting for will take place on January 16th at 5:00 p.m. Central time at the following address.” I gave him the address for Gertrude Hunt. “The time window for this visit’s very short. He must not be late, or he will miss her.”
“Understood.”
The man hung up. Well, that’s that.
“I looked into Peterson,” Sean said.
“What did you find out?”
“He is an asshole.”
“Okay. Strong statement, but not informative.”
Sean leaned back. “He made his money in real estate. He started as an agent and moved into being a builder. When the housing crisis happened, a lot of builders went out of business, and he bought their equipment and the land they were stuck with, dirt cheap. He also hired most of his competitors as project managers complete with their work force. His people spun it as him being a hero, giving the out-of-work tradesmen a chance to put food on the table. In reality, he locked them into restrictive contracts with non-competes, making him effectively the only builder in several key markets in Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. In some cases, wages haven’t been paid, and benefits weren’t granted. When people complained, he fired them. If they continued to complain, he would drag them to court. He’s a big believer in NDAs.”
“This sounds worse and worse.”
“An Arizona newspaper did an article on him, and he filed a SLAPP suit. It dragged on for three years. The newspaper eventually won, but the suit took so long, they went bankrupt meanwhile and had to close. By that point he’d expanded into other businesses. New song, same dance—he goes after failing enterprises, grabs them cheap, and then cashes in on their desperation.”
I didn’t like any of this. Rudolph Peterson sounded like the kind of man who would make trouble, and I wanted to avoid trouble at all costs. I already had my hands full.
“Do not worry,” Orro said, emerging from the pantry and cold storage with a heap of groceries in his arms. “If this human creates problems, we will feed him the Grand Burgers. Once he consumes enough of them, his body will surely fail.”
If only it were that easy.
I’d spent the entire morning refining the Drífen rooms. The distance between me and Gertrude Hunt kept getting in the way. I felt it every time I needed to do something elaborate. It was like trying to do an intricate drawing with a blunted pencil. I could make the inn do what I wanted it to do, but it required a lot of concentration and occasional do-overs.
I had never in my life experienced anything like this. I was born in an inn; for all of my life it had been a constant presence, a third parent, always ready to catch me if I stumbled. Yesterday, I’d read some of the innkeeper diaries Gertrude Hunt had stored in its database, looking for someone having a problem with my symptoms. I found nothing. The distance was there, and the more I felt it, the closer I edged to panic.
I couldn’t tell if it was getting better or worse. In the end, I sat down on the ornamental staircase to catch a breath and rested, feeling Gertrude Hunt around me.
“It’s alright.” I stroked the stairs with my fingertips. “We will figure it out. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
That’s where Sean found me.
He came through the doorway with measured grace, no wasted movement, no deviation from the course, and headed straight for me. Beast trailed him, making happy snorting noises.
He sat next to me and looked at my handiwork. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you. How are the weapon systems?”
“Deadly.” He sank a ton of sarcasm into that one word.
“Really?”
“No. The northern particle cannon is trashed. One of the Draziri must have sank a long-range heat burst into it. Everything’s fried. The HELL units won’t talk to me.”
“I bought them secondhand from a Morodiak. The inn partially integrated it but if you want to run diagnostics, you have to speak its language.”
“So, I have to growl at the HELL units?”
“Pretty much. I know you can growl, Sean. I’ve heard you do it.”
His upper lip trembled in a snarl, betraying a flash of fang.
“Ooh, scary. The Morodiakian HELL units don’t stand a chance.”
“Are you humoring me?”
“Yep.”
I leaned against him. He put his arm around me.
“We need to upgrade. Or at least repair,” he said. “The stealth guns in the front are in good condition, but they’re antiques. About a third of the long-range weapons that face the field are out of commission, and there is only so much I can do with bubble gum and duct tape. We need to replace them.”
I had no room to argue. We’d taken a serious beating. I’d known opposing the Draziri would be expensive when I took the job but standing by while an entire species was being exterminated was beyond me.
“I’d do it again,” I told him. “I’d shelter the Hiru again.”
“Of course you would. And that’s why I need you to open the Baha-char door for me.”
“Wilmos?”
Sean nodded.
Wilmos owned a weapons shop at the galactic bazaar. He also ran mercenary crews and brokered deals between private soldiers and people who wanted to hire them. Like Sean, he was a werewolf without a planet, and he was the one who’d gotten Sean the Nexus job. And a small part of me worried that once Sean walked back through Wilmos’ door, he wouldn’t come back.
The anxiety pinched me, sharp and cold.
I couldn’t tether Sean to the inn. If he left, he left. It would mean we weren’t meant to be. I had to let it go.
Bringing the weapon systems back online was going to be pricy, and I really wanted to hold some money in reserve, in case the Drífen or the Assembly threw another curveball at us. I took a mental inventory of our funds.
Ugh.
“How much do you need?”
Sean thought it over and turned to me, a serious look on his face. “One dollar. Maybe three.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I was paid well on Nexus.”
“That’s your money. You earned it.”
“Damn right and I’ll spend it as I please. Right now I’m richer than you.”
“How do you know that?”
He grinned at me. “I asked the inn. It won’t open the Baha-char door for me, but it gave me complete access to your finances. I could rob you blind.”
“You think you can. Seriously, how much do we need?”
“I won’t know until I get there. Dina, you have to decide if we’re together or not.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“If I’m going to live here, you have to let me contribute. It’s fair. You’re in charge of the guests, and I’m in charge of their security. This is what I do.”
He was right. It was fair.
I pushed off the stairs. “I’ll open a door for you. But only if you promise not to spend everything you have on upgrading the inn. You bled for that money.”
“Mostly I made other people bleed for that money.” A shadow crossed his face. “Now I’ll use it for something good. Something I want.”
We walked to the kitchen together. “Will you be home in time for dinner?”
“I’ll try,” he promised.
4
Finishing the Drífen quarters took forever. Not only did everything have to be intricate and ornate, but I’d had a hard time concentrating. I kept worrying about Sean, about the Assembly, about the Drífan coming, about Rudolph Peterson…
Magic tugged on me. Caldenia wanted my attention. I opened a small two-way screen in the nearest wall. “Yes, your Grace?”
Caldenia gazed at me. “It’s three o’clock, my dear.”
Three o’clock was the time when we had our afternoon tea, provided the inn wasn’t under attack or filled with lifelong enemies trying to broker a fragile peace.
“I’ll be right there.”
I could have said no. I had too much to do and not enough time to do it. But I missed our tea, too. For months and months in the beginning, it had just been me and Caldenia at the inn, and even after Orro came to stay with us, he rarely joined us for tea. We finally convinced him to have dinner with us, but he was truly comfortable hovering in the kitchen, covertly watching our expressions as we ate his food. A couple of times I’d dared to make dinner so he could have the night off. Both times I’d aimed for simple things, like steak or roasted chicken. He ate the food and afterward awkwardly patted my shoulder or my head, whichever happened to be closer, so I’d know he didn’t completely hate it. But Caldenia and I shared each other’s company when it was just the two of us and I’d come to enjoy having tea with her.