One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3)(26)

I’d managed to successfully overwrite the dash cam and the vampires did repair Marais’s cruiser, hiding all traces of the damage. Unfortunately, when a vampire engineer told you that the internal combustion engine you are trying to get him to fix is an abomination and repairing it violated his oath to do no harm, he meant it. During our last meeting, Officer Marais shared with me that he’d driven his vehicle back and forth to Houston for a week and he’d yet to gas it up.

I opened the screen door. “Please come in.”

Officer Marais took a careful step inside, but stayed by the door. I turned to Maud and Helen, who was hiding behind her mom’s legs.

“This is my sister, Maud, and my niece, Helen.”

Maud smiled at him. Helen hissed and took off like a rocket into the kitchen.

“Did that child just hiss at me?” Officer Marais blinked.

“Yes,” Maud said. “She’s pretending to be a cat. Children do that.”

“How may I help you this time?” I asked.

“There was a disturbance here three days ago. People reported loud noises and the loss of power.”

“Yes, I remember. Someone was joyriding a very loud motorcycle.” And I couldn’t wait to give him a piece of my mind.

“Did you see the vehicle?” His face told me that he was just going through the motions.

“No.”

“Are you aware that a high-speed pursuit took place today on I45?”

“Did it?”

“Were you involved in that matter?”

“No.”

“Did that pursuit have anything to do with the disturbance here?”

Officer Marais was wasted on the Red Deer P.D. We barely had any crime. In a bigger city, with his intuition, he would be knocking cases out of the park faster than they could bring them to him.

Officer Marais treated me to the serious cop stare. I did my best to keep from wilting.

“Is this the part where you tell me that you intend to get to the bottom of what’s going on here?”

“What is going on here?”

“We are considering granting asylum to an alien who is a victim of a religious crusade,” I told him. “We have a vampire and a werewolf on our side, but we’re not sure it will be enough.”

He put away his notepad. “Let me know if you see or hear anything unusual, ma’am.”

Wow. I got ma’amed. “I will, Officer.”

He left and even though I could feel him, I pulled the curtain aside on the front window and watched him until he got into his modified cruiser and drove away.

“Conscientious cop,” Maud said. “No bigger pain. I feel sorry for you.”

“Oh you don’t know the half of it. You want to come with me to talk to the Ku?”

“Actually, I thought I would take a bath.” She smiled.

“You should.”

“What are you implying? Are you saying I stink?”

“Touchy-touchy-touchy.” I stuck my tongue out at her and headed out to the stables, Beast trailing me.

Wing and his bike, still netted up, lay in the wide walkway between the stalls. He watched me approach with bright round eyes. I sat on the bench and looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Sorry was a step in the right direction. “You endangered the inn. You made trouble for Mr. Rodriguez. You almost got yourself killed. What do you think those policemen would do to you if they caught you?”

He tucked his head down as much as he could, trying to look smaller.

“What was so important that you had to run out in daylight?”

He blinked his eyes. “A present.”

“What present?”

He struggled in the net.

I nodded. A narrow barrel descended from the ceiling and fired a pulse of blue light at the net. It fell loose.

The Ku rolled to his feet and opened a large compartment on his boost bike. He reached in it and took out a bright red poinsettia. It was growing from a pot wrapped in gold foil.

“This is it?”

He nodded.

“Did you steal it?”

“I bought it.”

“What did you pay with?”

He reached into a pocket in his harness and showed me a handful of small gold drops shaped like tears. Well, someone got lucky today.

“Why?”

He crouched on the floor above the poinsettia, his voice hushed. “It’s like home.”

“Do you miss home?”

He nodded.

My righteous anger evaporated. The universe was very big and the Ku was so very small. “Why did you leave?”

“Adventures,” he said.

“Can you go back?”

He nodded. “When I’m a hero.”

“You know, bringing the message about my sister to me was pretty heroic,” I told him.

“Not enough.” He raised his arms, drawing a big circle. “Big hero.”

He looked at me as if waiting for me to confirm that it was a worthy goal.

“Everyone has a dream,” I said. “You’re brave and kind. You’ll be a big hero one day.”

The Ku smiled at me, showing a mouth full of scary dinosaur teeth.

“Meanwhile, you’re going to stay here at the inn,” I told him. “Don’t try to leave. The inn won’t let you. Let’s go make a nice place for your flower and give it some water. Did you know they come in white, too?”