One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3)(12)

“We’re not going back to the Holy Anocracy.”

“I don’t want to make trouble between you and your vampire. I’ve put you into a bad position and I’m so sorry. House Krahr is one of the most powerful Houses.” She raised her hands. “Look at this ship. I don’t want to ruin it for you.”

“It’s not a problem.”

In the bath Helen dived and surfaced, laughing.

“Dina, I saw his face when the two of you were talking.”

“You threw him off his stride. His cousin is married to a human and he has an odd fascination with Earth women. He just didn’t realize not all of us are shrinking violets. He was explaining to me how you sealed your armor while wearing it and how it didn’t compute in his head.”

Maud frowned. “The two of you aren’t together?”

“No.”

“Then how?” she raised her arms, encompassing the ship.

“I asked him for a favor. He offered, actually.”

“The Marshal of House Krahr just offered to take his destroyer and come rescue me because you asked him?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me. “Why?”

“He’s a frequent guest at the inn and he felt obligated to help because the inn hosted a peace summit that saved a lot of vampire lives and resulted in his House making a lot of money. Also, he’s a kind man.”

“The inn? You found Mom and Dad?”

Pain stabbed me straight through the heart. “No. My inn. Gertrude Hunt.”

She looked at me, her face blank.

“I’m an innkeeper,” I told her. “We’re not going to the Holy Anocracy. We’re going to Earth, to my inn. We’re going home.”

All the blood drained from Maud’s face. She looked at me as if she didn’t understand, then her lip quivered and my sister cried.

*

It’s amazing how much dirt could come off one little girl. When we finally extracted Helen from the bath, the water had turned a muddy brown. We toweled her dry and put her into one of my T-shirts. She yawned, curled up on the soft covers, and held out her hands. “Fangs.”

Maud handed her two daggers in dark sheaths. Helen hugged the daggers and fell asleep. Maud gently covered her with a blanket.

I pulled a T-shirt and a pair of jeans from my backpack. Maud was taller than me by two inches and shaped differently. We both had Mom’s butt and her hips, but Maud’s legs were always more muscular and her shoulders broader. I offered the clothes to her.

“I had to guestimate the size. Go clean up.” I told her. “I’ll watch her.”

Maud touched the place where a crest would’ve sat on her armor and grimaced. “Old habits.”

They had stripped the crest from her when they threw her and her husband out of House Ervan.

She bent her left arm, slid aside a bulky looking chunk of armor at least two shades lighter than the rest of the charcoal-colored armor plates, and typed in the code. If Arland ever saw that, he would have a heart attack from the sheer inefficiency of it. It was like trying to type commands into a computer except instead of the keyboard, you had an old, rickety typewriter with half the letters missing.

A few seconds passed. Maud bared her teeth. “Work, damn you.” She slammed her arm into the bulkhead. With a faint whisper, the syn-armor came apart, separating into individual pieces. Maud shed the breastplate, the wrist guards, the shoulder pads, the sleeves, one by one adding them to a pile against the wall, until she stood in a dark blue jumpsuit. The jumpsuit had seen better days - the elbows were threadbare. The smell of sweat, blood, and human body that hadn’t been washed for far too long spread through the room. I wrinkled my nose.

“Do I stink?” she asked.

“No. You smell like a fresh lily in the middle of a crystal-clear pond.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, took the clothes, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Someone knocked on the door, gently, almost apologetic.

“Open,” I said. The cabin’s door slid upward, revealing a vampire man carrying a black round case about two feet tall and three feet wide.

“With compliments from the Lord Marshal,” he said and departed.

It seemed like forever before Maud finally emerged from the bathroom. The clothes fit her well enough, and if I ignored the look in her eyes that said she’d seen too many ugly things, I could almost pretend that she was the old Maud, before my parents disappeared and Klaus vanished into the starry vastness of the Cosmos. Except for her hair. The last time we met, she’d had a long waterfall of hair all the way down to her waist, like most vampire women. She loved her hair.

Maud saw the container.

“Arland sent you an armor repair kit,” I told her.

“How considerate.” Her voice had a touch of ice to it. She peered at it and smiled.

“What?”

“I just realized I don’t have to wear the armor ever again.” She paused. “I should probably repair it anyhow. You never know.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the kit and touched its polished surface. The container split into petals curving from the center, lit from within by a soft peach glow. The kit opened like a flower, its center slid upward, turning and opening into a tower of shelves containing small intricate tools and several crystal vials filled with colored liquids: red, black, pearlescent, and peach.