“Good evening,” he said, his voice cultured and clear. Unlike the Hiru, he obviously had access to expensive tech.

“Good evening.”

“I desire a room.”

“We don’t have one available at the moment.”

He blinked, his feathered eyelashes fanning his cheeks. “I was led to believe your inn has few guests and more than ample accommodations.”

“If you’re familiar with innkeepers, then you must know that we reserve the right to choose our guests. At this time, unfortunately, I can’t provide you with a room. Perhaps at a later date.”

“I must have a room,” he said.

“There is a wonderful inn over in Dallas, only a few hours from here.”

The Draziri stepped closer.

“I know the Hiru is here,” he said, his voice quiet but charged with menace.

“You should be on your way.” Take the hint.

“Let me in. It will be over quickly.”

“The Hiru is beyond your reach.”

“You have a beautiful inn,” he said. “I can hear other guests and a child playing on the grass.”

You bastard. They would shoot Helen. That was the plan. Shoot Helen and trade her or her dead body for the Hiru.

“Your situation is complicated,” he said. “I have led many raids in my lifetime. They can be easy and fast or slow and messy. There are so many beings on the grass who could accidentally get in the way. And a child. Such a lovely child. It would be a shame if she got hurt.”

The two others moved toward the lawn. The roots shot out, impaling both figures. There was no sound. No screams. I pulled with my magic. The roots sank into the ground, pulling the two bodies with them.

The conversation on the lawn died.

The roots surfaced behind him with a rustle.

The Draziri turned and saw two corpses suspended above the ground, each with a thick inn root piercing its mouth and exiting out of the back of the skull.

“You’re right. My niece is a lovely child. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”

The Draziri stared at me, unblinking. “You’re arrogant. I’ll have to teach you humility.”

I felt Sean behind me.

“You didn’t do your homework. This is my domain. Here I own the air you breathe.”

“I always get what I want. One way or—”

“Out.”

He flew from the driveway as if jerked back by an invisible hand, cleared the hedges, and landed on the street in a clump. A truck roared down the street, threatening to run him over. The Draziri leapt out of the way, like a length of black silk jerked out of sight, and vanished into the Avalon subdivision.

“You should’ve killed the scary white one,” Wing said behind me.

“Better the devil I know than the one I don’t.”

I turned. Wing stood in the kitchen doorway. The feathers of his crest lay so flat against his head, they looked wet. He was terrified.

“Do you know of Draziri?”

The Ku nodded. “They don’t kill because they are hungry. They kill because they like it.”

“You’ll be safe here at the inn,” I told him.

“We have his face,” Sean said. “We’ll know his name, and then we’ll figure out what makes him tick.”

I dug in the pocket of my jeans, pulled out the dollar Sean had given me, and offered it to him. “You’re hired.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said and took the dollar.

“I know.” I put my arm around Wing. “Come on, we haven’t finished dinner.”

Outside everyone at the table looked at me. Helen sat on Maud’s lap.

“They found me,” the Hiru said quietly. An awful finality resonated in his voice. He sounded like a being who was looking certain death in the face.

They found a world of hurt, that’s what they found. “Gertrude Hunt accepts your proposition. We will grant the Archivarius sanctuary.”

You could hear a pin drop.

“Why?” the Hiru asked finally.

“Because nobody threatens me or my guests in my house. They don’t get to intimidate me, they don’t get to harm my family, and they don’t get to kill my guests. They need to learn what the word no means, and I’m going to teach them that lesson over and over until they get it.”

Nobody said anything.

Arland reached over, speared a heap of brisket with his fork, and put it on his plate. Caldenia smiled without parting her lips and sliced through her chicken with a single, precise stroke of her knife.

“We’re going to have fun, my flower,” Maud told Helen.

Helen bared two little fangs.

“Dessert!” Orro announced. “Roasted pears with espresso mascarpone cream.”

“I’ll take two,” Tony said.

CHAPTER 6

I closed my eyes and envisioned the inn. When one entered Gertrude Hunt through the front door, they saw a perfectly ordinary front room. Directly opposite the front door, on the wall, hung the portrait of my parents. It was unavoidable. If you entered the inn, you saw the portrait. During the peace summit, I formed a hallway behind the wall, moving the portrait back slightly. If you walked to the portrait, you had the option of turning right or left. One way would take you to the stairs leading to the Holy Anocracy’s wing and the other would bring you to the barracks of the Hope-Crushing Horde. Both places opened to the Grand Ballroom. According to human science, I’d bent space in ways it wasn’t supposed to function, but the inn was its own microcosm, reaching through dimensional boundaries and tangling the fabric of space.