Sean sat in his seat, focused on driving. He didn’t say anything to reassure me. He just projected a quiet, competent calm. I had a feeling that if a spaceship suddenly appeared in the sky and fired at us, Sean would somehow pull a massive gun out, shoot it down, and keep going, the same calm expression on his face. If Sean wasn’t here, I would’ve done all of it myself, but right now I was glad he was in the cab with me.
“You asked why I have to turn the Hiru down,” I said.
“I did.”
“Maud. And Helen. I just rescued my sister and my niece after they lived through hell. Maud deserves some peace and quiet.”
“Your sister looked pretty excited when you handed her the white-out warhead.”
“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. If I put the inn in harm’s way, she’ll be on the front line cutting off heads.”
“It’s her choice,” Sean said.
My alarm chimed. I flicked it off. The highway patrol was about to wake up.
“I know it’s her choice. My brother-in-law brought a lot of what happened to him on his own head. Melizard was responsible for their exile, and once on the planet, he lost his mind. From what Maud said, he grew desperate and wasn’t thinking clearly, and eventually he betrayed the House that hired him and got himself killed. A normal human thing for Maud to do would’ve been to try to get off the planet or try to establish some safety net for herself and Helen. Instead, my sister declared a blood feud and pursued it for months.”
“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.”