“What makes you so sure I’ll take them up on it?”
He grinned at me, turning into the old Sean Evans. The transformation was so sudden, I blinked to make sure I didn’t imagine it.
“You’re a carebear.”
“What?”
“You’re the type to get out of a perfectly dry car in the middle of a storm in your best dress so you can scoop a wet dog off the road. You help people, Dina. That’s what you do. And the Hiru need help.”
“I’m sensible,” I told him.
“I’ll give you till tonight,” he said. “You won’t even last twenty-four hours. I bet my right arm on it.”
* * *
Sean backed the truck up my driveway and paused for a moment, pondering something.
“What?”
“I’m wondering if your sister murdered Arland in the back.”
“Did she?”
He tilted his head, listening. “No. I still hear both of them. Damn it. Oh well, a man can dream.”
We parked the truck. I got out and opened the back. Maud hopped onto the grass, shielded from the street by the bulk of the vehicle. Her face was a cold neutral mask.
Arland heaved the Ku and the bike to the edge of the truck. I waved my hand. Long flexible shoots burst out of the ground, wrapped around Wing and the bike and dragged them under. “Take him to the stables,” I murmured. “And keep him there.”
Arland jumped off the truck. “I quite enjoyed that. Thank you for this pleasant diversion.”
“Thank you for your assistance.”
Arland smiled, displaying sharp fangs, and went inside the inn.
I closed the truck back up and waved to Sean. He drove out. He’d return the truck and drive his car back.
Beast exploded out of her doggie door and jumped into my arms. I hugged her, but she was wiggling too hard, so I set her down and she streaked away in a fit of doggie excitement, tucking her tail between her legs for extra speed.
“Where is Helen?” Maud frowned.
“In the kitchen.” I pointed. A window opened in the wall. Helen was perched precariously on a stool above a large pot. Someone had trimmed one of my old aprons, the one with sunflowers, and put it on her. She was stirring the stuff in the pot with a big spoon. The inn’s tendrils hovered on both sides of her, ready to catch her if she fell.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and took a picture.
“He put her to work?” Maud stared.
Orro said something in his gravelly voice.
Helen nodded and sprinkled something into the soup and squeaked, “Yes, chef!”
“Give me that phone!” My sister grabbed the phone out of my hand and started snapping pictures.
Maud couldn’t feel her daughter in the kitchen. It would come back. It had to come back. She’d spent years at our parents’ inn and she never had any problems connecting to it.
“So what did you and the vampire talk about in the truck?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Was it a small talk kind of nothing or not going to tell you kind of nothing?”
“It was a keeping my mouth shut nothing. We didn’t speak. I have no interest in vampires. I’ve had enough of them for a lifetime.”
I smiled at her.
“Have you decided what to do about the Hiru?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Dad would approve,” she said. “He never could resist a down-on-your-luck story and there is no one more down than the Hiru.”
“Mom wouldn’t,” I said.
“Mom would, too. After the first Draziri showed up on the doorstep and issued threats.”
“I pity any Draziri who tried to threaten Mom.” If anyone could make them rethink an invasion of Earth, it would be our mother.
Our mother and our father. This was the entire point of the inn. This was why I had come back to Earth and hung their portrait in the front room. I’d planned to grow Gertrude Hunt into the kind of inn that was flooded with visitors. Sooner or later one of them would recognize my parents and tell me what happened to them. The galaxy was huge and the chances of that happening were tiny, but it was all I had.
“What do you think I should do?”
Maud pursed her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. “I think you should do what you think is right.”
“And you said I turned into Mom!”
Maud headed for the kitchen door. “You’re not pawning the decision off on me. You’re the innkeeper.”
I rolled my eyes and followed her into the kitchen.
“Mommy!”
Helen leapt off the stool, dashed across the kitchen, and jumped into Maud’s arms. It would’ve been an amazingly high jump for a human five-year-old.
“Here is my cutey!” Maud wrinkled her face.
Helen wrinkled hers, and they rubbed noses.
“I’m a soup chef,” Helen announced.
“Sous,” Orro growled from the pantry.
“And I have to say ‘yes, chef’ real loud.”
They were so cute. That’s not an adjective I normally would associate with my sister. How could I possibly ruin that?
But then, the ugly truth remained: the Hiru needed help and we needed to find our parents. Maud and I had so carefully talked around it, but both of us knew what was left unsaid. This was our best chance to find Mom and Dad. And if I let my sister catch one whiff of me wavering because I worried about her safety, she would skin me alive.
“When you and Klaus showed up that time to tell me the inn disappeared, I was in a different place.” Maud threw Helen up and caught her. Helen squealed and laughed. “I was the wife of a Marshal’s son, who was making a bid for the post of the Marshal. My world was very defined then. I knew where we were going and how we were going to get there. I had my husband and his House, all the other knights who served with him and respected him. I had friends. We were admired, me and Melizard and our beautiful baby.”