“Roasted Duck,” Orro said. “With buckwheat porridge and apple stuffing.”

Crap.

He drew himself to his full height, somehow taking up most of the kitchen, looming like some demon hedgehog of legend.

“In all my years, since I was a lowly apprentice barely tall enough to slide a pot onto a stove, I have broken the kitchen code only once. Once I have let a dish I hadn’t tasted leave my kitchen. I have never broken it before or since. The code is my life, my religion, and my conscience. Without it,” he ripped the air with his claws, “I am but a lowly savage.”

There was no stopping it. I brought it on myself, I had to stand there and take it.

“Rise early to be at your station early,” Orro intoned. “Keep your knives sharp. Never touch other chef’s knives. Keep yourself, your station, and your food clean. Never let a dish out of your kitchen without tasting it. Know your ingredients. Respect the creatures on your prep table; honor their lives. Know your diners. Cook to the tastes of those who dine, not your own. Never serve a dish that harms your diners’ health or soul. Never settle for second best. Never stop learning. These are the cornerstones of everything I am. They are the firmament of my universe.”

He paused over me.

I nodded.

“Am I some vagrant you found on the street cooking rats in a rusted pot?”

Oh for the love of…

“Do you honestly think I would sink so low as to harm your soul by serving you a sentient being? Do you think so little of me?”

“I apologize.”

He slapped his clawed hand over his eyes in a pose that would’ve made any Shakespearean actor proud. “Go. Just… go.”

I fled the kitchen before he decided to continue with the speech.

So far I fought with Sean and Orro. The way today was going, if I lingered long enough, I would probably mortally offend Caldenia. Clearly there was only one place where I could safely be right now. I opened the floor and took the stairs down to the lab.

The corpse of the corrupted creature lay on the lab table. When Maud said “encased in a plastic container,” I took it to mean they put it in some plastic tub. They didn’t. A block of clear plastic greeted me, ten feet long and four feet wide. The corpse lay inside it, like some demented version of Snow White sleeping in a glass coffin.

How… Oh. Maud must’ve stuffed the corpse into an anchor tube, a clear cylinder of inert PVDF plastic. I had a whole section devoted to them in storage. They came in all sizes and were usually used to quarantine odd objects, provide microhabitats for small aquatic guests, and generally contain things when low thermal conductivity and high chemical corrosion resistance were a must. PVDF didn’t conduct electricity, was impervious to most acids, and resisted radiation. The argon chamber I used for the Archivarian was made of PVDF.

Maud must’ve found my storage set, or Gertrude Hunt had dug up a large container in response to stress. But securing the corpse in said container didn’t prove to be enough. The inn had somehow managed to encase the anchor tube in plastic.

I reached out and touched it. The inn creaked in alarm. No, not plastic. Clear resin. The inn had secreted resin and sealed the anchor tube in it until eight inches of its own sap shielded it from the corpse.

I would have to drill to get a sample and Gertrude Hunt would fight me every step of the way. I could feel it.

“We have to get a sample,” I said.

The walls of my little lab wavered as if invisible snakes slid just under their surface.

“We have to do it,” I said.

The walls shook.

“I know you’re scared. I understand. But you have to be brave.” I patted the wall. “It’s dangerous. We must know what it is before it hurts us or other innkeepers and other inns. I’ll be with you every step. I won’t let it hurt you. I blocked it once when I was off the inn’s grounds. I’ll block it again. Together we are stronger.”

The inn didn’t answer. I sat quietly and gently stroked the wood. It moved under my fingers like a cat arching her back. I could have forced Gertrude Hunt to respond. The inn obeyed the innkeeper. Eventually there would come a time when I would have to impose my will on it. Every innkeeper faced that challenge sooner or later. But forcing the inn’s compliance was a matter of last resort, used only to preserve life when no other way presented itself. I had witnessed my parents do it only twice, and it came at a great cost to them and to our inn.

“I know I’m asking a lot. But we must learn whatever we can so we’ll be ready. If there are more of them, if they come calling, we can’t be blind.”

Silence.

The corpse of the monstrous creature lay waiting. Even in death there was something sinister about it, almost as if a dark shadow shrouded it, permeating the body and clothes. A ghost born of the cold emptiness between the stars. It lay still but aware. It might have been my imagination, but I felt like it was watching me.

I was inside my inn, where nothing could hurt me unless I allowed it, and still this thing gave me the creeps. I didn’t want to open its transparent prison.

But if I didn’t and it attacked again, the responsibility for the lives that might be lost would land on my shoulders. I was an innkeeper. I had a duty.

“We can do it. Together.”

Silence.

I waited.

The lab’s floor parted. A small plastic container rose from the floor.

“Thank you.”

I raised my broom and channeled my magic into it. It split, the shaft fragmenting to expose the electric blue core of pure magic. I held it above the resin.