“Not yet,” Sean said. “But there will be one.”
I groaned. This was exactly what I was afraid of.
“I can get her. We can have the inn hold her and tell her,” Sean offered.
“She would be mortally offended.” I sighed. “Do you want to deal with her carrying a grudge for the next six months? Because I don’t.”
Orro had stopped scrolling and was staring at the screen, his eyes distant.
“Orro?” I asked gently. “Are three hundred guests too many?”
He raised his head. His eyes focused. “What are you implying? Are you implying my skills are not sufficient?”
Oh no, no, no, we’re not taking that scary road into Orro’s Offended Woods.
“She is asking if you need some assistance,” Sean said.
The chef frowned, pondered it for a second, and his eyes brightened. “Two!”
“What?” I asked.
“I will need two assistants! Maybe three. I need the species list. I need to go shopping. I need to go to Baha-char! I need things and money!”
He jumped up and ran at the pantry door. The inn helpfully slid it out of the way before Orro could collide with it head-on, and the chef vanished into the storage room.
Sean turned to Marais. “We would like to hire you for security to watch the place from the street. Just in case.”
“You don’t need to do that. I’ll help you anyway.”
“We absolutely have to pay you,” I told him. “It would be time away from your family.”
Marais thought about it. “I have to check regulations. There might be something in there that prevents me from taking a part-time job. Let me figure this out.”
“Thank you,” I told him.
He got up and left. It was just me and Sean now.
“Do you have any contacts who deal in bioweapons?” I asked.
“Wilmos has some nasty stuff in his shop. I can take it, I’m sure he won’t mind. Why?”
“One of the candidates is backed by the Dushegubs.”
Sean frowned. “I’ve read about those. They are sentient trees. Are they problematic?”
“They are not sentient. They are sapient, but unable to feel emotions. Dushegubs are calculating, homicidal, moving trees that feed on animal life. They know that other creatures have emotions and what those emotions are, and they don’t care. Their first option is murder, their second option is murder, and if that fails, they go straight to murder.”
“Well, at least they have their priorities straight.”
“They are banned as a species from the inns. I will have to apply for special permission to host them, and if we get it, we might have to kill one as an example.”
Sean stared at me.
“Trust me on this,” I told him. “Every time Dushegubs stay at the inn, someone dies. If we are lucky, it’s one of them.”
“Won’t it cause an issue with our bachelor?”
“I told them up front about it. They don’t care if we burn the entire Dushegub delegation to the ground. Apparently, their presence is so oppressively bloodthirsty, they give the Holy Ecclesiarch migraines.”
“This is going to be fun,” Sean said.
That was one way to put it.
7
George knows a way to the inhospitable planet Wilmos is trapped in, and he knows how to trade a favor to get access to it. Color none of us surprised.
Will the latest caper he gets Gertrude Hunt involved in be too dangerous for even our beloved innkeepers to host?
Cue the Intergalactic Bachelor show!
The inn chimed, announcing visitors. I groaned softly and opened my eyes, abandoning the Dushegub containment unit in mid-renovation. The tangle of Gertrude Hunt’s branches cradling my body hummed with energy. I had cocooned myself to speed things up.
We had managed to convince the Seven Star Dominion that 48 hours was an unrealistic timeline. I used the Assembly as a shield and told them that we needed to file for the necessary permits, which was only a half-lie. Being a Republican Monarchy with a developed bureaucracy, the Dominion agreed that the need for proper procedure had to be followed. It bought us five days to prepare. Today was day three. Tomorrow the Sovereign’s chancellor would be stopping by to inspect the premises so we could make adjustments.
I had spent the last three days working from the moment I opened my eyes to the moment I passed out in our bed. I ate little, slept less, and this evening I had reached a kind of weird, depersonalized state, where I was still sort of me, but mostly I was Gertrude Hunt, frantically shaping rooms out of nothing.
The effort of calling up a vid screen to see who was outside was beyond me. I needed a few seconds.
A wall parted, and Sean emerged, looking haggard. The lines of his scars were more pronounced, and his eyes were red. Even the werewolf genes couldn’t compensate for the sheer amount of work we had done in the last 72 hours.
“It’s Brian,” he said.
Brian Rodriguez ran the largest regional inn located in Dallas. He knew my parents before they and their inn disappeared without a trace, and we had helped each other in the past. Like my parents, he also sat on the Innkeeper Assembly. Innkeepers were notoriously reluctant to leave their inns unless it was absolutely necessary. Why was he here in person?
Sean waved a screen into existence. On it, Mr. Rodriguez got out of a blue Toyota 4Runner. He was in his fifties, a man of average height with bronze skin, dark hair sprinkled with gray, and a short beard.
My brain very slowly made the connection. Mr. Rodriguez <- Assembly <- Requests.
“They are denying us the Dushegub permit.” I pushed the branches wrapping me. They parted, lowering me to the floor. “He’s come to tell us in person.”
The passenger door popped open, and Tony stepped out. Tony was Mr. Rodriguez 2.0, but about twenty-some years younger, three inches taller and without the beard. He was the nicest guy. He was also an ad-hal.
In his everyday human shape, Tony looked perfectly harmless. He had an easy smile and an even temper, and if you walked into a room full of people and tried to pick out the one capable of paralyzing his targets and taking them to a planet with a dying sun where they would suffer a century of solitary torment, he would be the absolute last pick.
Innkeepers wielded near absolute power within our inns, but outside of them, our capacity was very limited. The ad-hal had no such problems. Their power came from within them. They weren’t tethered to any inn, and they only showed up when a problem went from a disaster to a full-blown catastrophe. Some innkeepers went decades without encountering an ad-hal. We knew our regional ad-hal by name and fed him dinner on a regular basis. Except this time, he wasn’t coming over to fanboy over Orro’s cooking.
“If the Assembly refused to grant us the permit, I’m going to appeal,” I said. And I would be very insistent. They would give me that damn permit.
Sean growled under his breath. His opinion of the Assembly wasn’t high.
Each innkeeper was an island unto themselves. We had great autonomy, and since all the members of the Assembly were prominent innkeepers themselves, they jealously guarded that independence. That also meant that assistance was in short supply. We were expected to solve our own issues. However, the Assembly did have the power to block certain guests and entire species from visiting Earth. Technically, they could veto our entire event and there wasn’t much we could do about it.