Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles Book 2) (14 page)

“My lords! I’m not a castle. You don’t have to storm me.”

Both vampires stopped in their tracks. The floor stopped as well. Normal people would have lost their balance, stumbled, and possibly landed on their faces. The two vampires leapt up simultaneously, like two great jungle cats, and landed on their respective sides of what was once a moving sidewalk. The floor thudded, accepting the full weight of their armor.

Jack dissolved into a coughing fit.

Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh…

The two vampires strode toward me and said in one voice, “Lady Dina…”

Oh no.

The marshalls clamped their mouths shut and tried to kill each other with their stares.

I squeezed my left hand into a fist. If I guffawed in their faces, I could kiss any further business from the Holy Anocracy good-bye.

“Lord Robart, how may I help you?”

Robart shot a triumphant look at Arland. “I’ve paid the Arbiter’s price for the car.”

“Yes, you have. Thank you, the giant water serpent was delicious.”

Robart blinked, momentarily thrown off track, but recovered. “I will have my knight returned to me.”

Knight? What knight? Oh shoot. I had completely forgotten about the vampire who’d almost chopped the police car in a half. I’d left him in the basement holding cell for almost four hours. I concentrated. The knight was alive and well. He was sitting on the floor meditating. I gave the floor a little push and felt it slide up, carrying the knight with it.

“You will find your knight in your quarters.”

Robart nodded. His gaze narrowed. “Perhaps if you were less heavy-handed in your treatment of the guests you claim to honor and protect, your inn would have a higher rating.”

He did not. Oh yes, yes he did. “Perhaps if you trained the knights under your command to follow simple orders, your House would’ve reached greater prominence within your empire.”

Robart locked his jaw.

If my smile were any sweeter, you could pour it on pancakes and call it syrup. “Good night, Marshall. Lord Arland, how may I assist you?”

Robart turned and stalked off to the vampire entrance.

Arland nodded at me, his face grave. “I’ve come to check on the progress of the car.”

“Of course. Give me a moment to set things in order.”

“Take all the time you require,” Arland said.

I watched Robart exit and dissolved the door behind him. Caldenia rose in her box, waved at me, and retired, Beast following her. I’d have to pick her brain tomorrow for any insights. Only Arland, Cookie, Jack and I remained. I turned to Jack. “Did you need anything?”

He shook his head. “Just making sure everyone goes to bed like good boys and girls. See you in the morning.”

Jack went out the front entrance.

I exhaled quietly and walked over to Cookie, who was crawling around on his hands and knees. “Hey there. I have to leave for a couple of minutes but I will be back soon. I’m going to lock the doors, so you will be safe in here. But if something goes wrong, call me and I will be right over.”

Cookie nodded and dropped a sapphire the size of a gummy bear into his bag.

I led Arland back to the stables, sealing the ballroom with Cookie in it as we left. Beast caught up with me and hopped into my arms, gazing at me in canine adoration. That was the wonderful thing about dogs. If you are gone for a day or for an hour, they are just as ecstatic when you come back.

The engineer knight and Nuan Cee’s niece were quietly chatting. Officer Marais still lay on the tarp on the floor where we left him. His chest rose up and down in a measured rhythm. A small smile spread his lips. He must’ve been dreaming about something fun. For a moment I envied him the sleep. I was so tired.

The cruiser sat in the middle of the stables. It looked intact.

Hardwir opened the hood and showed me the engine. “Behold.”

I beheld. It looked just like a normal, a somewhat grimy, engine.

“No modifications?” Arland asked.

“None,” Hardwir said.

Arland peered at him. “Are you sure? I know you. You didn’t improve on it at all? In any way?”

“No improvements.” Hardwir spat to the side. “Just as ugly and poisonous as it came to me.”

I checked the hood, the inside, and the trunk. Everything seemed to be in order. The car looked exactly as it had before it was hit with a blood axe.

I turned to Arland. “Would you mind helping me? I have to leave the inn grounds and position Officer Marais in the car and he is heavy.”

Arland nodded at me, his face grave. “It would be my honor.”

Something was wrong. He normally wasn’t this somber. “I may need you to change clothes.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Of course.”

I stepped out and returned with a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and size 14 athletic shoes. Arland arched his thick eyebrows. He had worn this outfit during his last visit when he pretended to be human. He took the clothes and went to change behind the cruiser.

I turned to Hardwir and Nuan Cee’s niece. “Please don’t leave the stables.”

“You have my word,” Hardwir said. “We will stay put. I was never a good swimmer. Besides, I will watch over the Marshall’s armor.”

“I will stay as well,” Nuan Cee’s niece said. “I’m weak and helpless and I don’t want to be punished.”

Weak and helpless, sure. Next thing she would try to sell me a lovely coastal villa in Kansas.

Arland emerged, camouflaged as a very large human. The camouflage wasn’t exactly working. Dressing Arland in Earth clothes was like putting bunny ears on a tiger. The ears were cute, but the tiger was still scary. The T-shirt stretched on his shoulders, too small for his arms. He was built like a bear: broad shoulders, carved arms, a wide chest, and flat hard stomach. It was the kind of frame that could effortlessly support the weight of vampire armor and let him swing a heavy weapon for hours without slowing down. If an NFL linebacker ran full speed at Arland, he would just bounce off.

The marshall picked up Officer Marais as if the fully grown man was a child, put him in the back seat, and slid into the passenger seat. I got in on the driver’s side and held my hand out. The wall spat the dashboard camera at me. I put it in my lap, started the engine, put the car in reverse, and drove backward slowly. The walls slipped out of the way. A moment and we slid into my driveway, the rear of the car facing the street. I killed the engine and sat quietly, listening. It was ten past midnight and the subdivision lay silent. This plan hinged on having no witnesses.

The night lay silent. I eased the cruiser into neutral and let the slight incline of the driveway do the rest. Whisper-quiet, the cruiser rolled out of the driveway, across the street, and down Camelot Road. I gently steered it back to the spot where Marais had parked before the whole affair had started. I opened the dashboard camera, extracted the SD card, rolled down the window and pulled with my magic. I only had a fraction of my power outside the inn’s boundaries, but a fraction would be enough.

A small camera floated into my hand, a mirrored sphere about the size of a ping-pong ball. I squeezed the sphere. A thin metal tendril snaked out and flowed over the SD card. The sphere pulsed once and the tendril slithered back into it. I slipped the card back into its place and returned the camera back to its mount.

The neighborhood was still empty. Great. I stepped out of the car and nodded to Arland. He opened his door, picked up Officer Marais, and sat him in the driver seat. I locked his seat belt in place, reached through the open window, careful to stay away from any mirrors, and pushed record on the camera. We quietly moved to the side and went deeper into the subdivision.

“What are we doing?” Arland murmured, looming next to me.

“We’re going to make a big circle and come into the inn through the back, so the camera doesn’t see us.”

“Won’t there be a break in recording?”

I shook my head. “My camera recorded over four hours of video and then looped it into seven hours of footage, using a random algorithm complete with a false time stamp. It overwrote your arrival completely. Right now the real dashboard camera is recording over that video. By the time he wakes up, the tail end of the looped footage will be overwritten with the real video as well. When Officer Marais watches it, he will see hours and hours of the inn sitting there with no activity.”

“Clever,” Arland said.

Yes, clever and very expensive. The remote camera cost me a lot of money and a favor that had been difficult to repay.

We turned right on Bedivere Road.

“Dina,” Arland said. His voice had a slightly rough quality to it. Not Lady Dina, but Dina. He was up to something. That wasn’t good.

“Yes?”

“I’m but a humble soldier.”

Here we go. He had given me a version of this speech before. This definitely wasn’t good.

“You and I, we have a history.”

Okay, what could he possibly be upset about?

“We were comrades at arms, fighting at each other’s side for the common goal. We have broken bread together.”

Was this about the food? Was he upset that we didn’t serve red meat at dinner? But we told them not to expect a big meal the first day, because separate meals would be served at their quarters. We would not set up the big dinner until tomorrow.

“That kind of connection, it stays with you.”

Was he offended because I let the otrokari fire a weapon? Was it because the otrokari were scheduled to be the first to arrive to the inn and the vampires were last? But we had compensated the Holy Anocracy by inviting them to be the first to officially enter the ballroom.

“Dina…”

He dipped his head and looked into my eyes. A small shiver ran down my spine. Arland had focused completely on me. His face was handsome, but his eyes were breathtaking. Deep intense blue, they usually communicated power or aggression, but right now they were warm, softened by emotion until they seemed almost velvet. He reached over and took my hand into his, the calluses on his strong fingers scraping against my skin.

I realized we had stopped under an oak by some house. The night was suddenly very small and Arland had filled it completely.

I had left my broom at the inn. It was just me, the darkness, and the vampire knight.

He held my hand, running his thumb over my fingers. “I want to know what I have done to offend you. Whatever blunder I committed, I will strive to remedy it.”

It would help so much if I knew what he was talking about. The way he looked at me made it difficult to concentrate.

“Tell me,” he asked. He was standing too close. His voice was too intimate. And he was still looking at me with that warmth, as if I were someone special.

“What may I do to get back into your good graces?”

He stroked my hand. For some reason it felt more intimate than a kiss. My pulse sped up. This was ridiculous. If I didn’t put some distance between us, I might do something I would regret. If you said yes to a vampire, he heard “I surrender” and I had no intention of surrendering.

“You’ve done nothing to offend me.”

“Then why did you acknowledge Robart before me?”

What?

“You addressed him before you addressed me.”

I cleared my throat. “Just to be clear, you’re upset because I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you? In the ballroom just before we went to check on the car?”

“I understand that the circumstances of the summit prevent frank exchanges,” Arland said. “An appearance of propriety must be maintained and any hint of favoritism is to be avoided at all costs. But when one travels so far, one looks for the small things. A chance glance. A brief kindness, freely offered and gone unnoticed by all except its intended recipient. Some hint, some indication that he has not been forgotten. One might take an acknowledgment of a bitter rival before him, in public, as an indication of certain things.”

It dawned on me. His feelings were actually hurt.

“You haven’t been forgotten,” I told him and meant it. “I looked forward to seeing you. I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you, so I could get him to leave. If I didn’t, he would still be in the ballroom waiting for me to return.”

Arland smiled at me.

When they said a smile could launch a thousand ships, they had Arland in mind. Except in his case, that thousand ships would be an armada carrying an army of some of the best humanoid predators the Galaxy had managed to spawn ready to slaughter their enemy on the battlefield.

I wanted to exhale and back away slowly. But he was still holding my hand.

I pulled whatever will I could scrape together and made my voice sound casual. “Arland? Can I have my hand back?”

“My apologies.” He opened his fingers and let my hand slip back through. “It was quite forward of me.”

Judging by his self-satisfied smile, he didn’t have any regrets. He had wanted a reaction and he got one.

I made a mistake. I’d dealt with plenty of vampires before. Few months ago, when he helped Sean and me destroy the dahaka assassin, he’d all but said that he was interested in me. I hadn’t heard from him in months, but that changed nothing. Vampires tended to be infuriatingly single-minded.