One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3)(54)

“Okay,” Maud said, stretching the word out. “Mind sharing?”

The crimson fire was still burning.

“I sequenced the DNA.”

“That was fast.”

“There was a match in the database.”

Maud stared at me. “Are you telling me that thing is… was human?”

I pointed to the corpse. “It’s Michael.”

She frowned. “Michael…?”

“Michael Braswell.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

I waved at the screen. A picture of an innkeeper filled it, a man in his thirties, honest face, light brown hair, blue eyes.

We turned to look at the crimson fire at the same time. It was easier to watch it burn than to face that I had killed the abomination who used to be my brother’s best friend.





CHAPTER 9


“How is this possible?” Maud paced by the body.

“I don’t know.”

It was too disturbing. I didn’t want to think about it. I would have to, but I didn’t want to. When I was twelve years old, I decided to attend middle school. I lasted one week. I desperately wanted to be accepted, but instead of making friends, I ended up being the odd kid. Middle school fights were vicious. Everyone there was a ball of insecurity and hormones, which I realized much later, and they were ready to pounce on any target that stood out from the pack. My family loved me so much. I was a sheltered kid. I couldn’t even imagine that anyone could be so mean.

When I called to the house on the last Friday of my glorious middle school experience, crying and picking mashed potatoes out of my hair, my parents were out. Klaus was minding the inn and couldn’t leave. It was Michael who came to pick me up in his massive pickup truck. He’d been planning to visit Klaus for the weekend, but instead he drove with me three hours to his parents’ inn where I got to take a shower, have dinner with his family, and pretend that the Friday never happened, because I couldn’t face my family yet. It was Michael who brought me back home the next morning and told me it would be okay.

Now he was dead and his body was a host for something too terrible to describe.

“Did he say anything? Did he recognize you?” Maud asked.

“If he did, he sure had a funny way of showing it.”

“Is it related to the Archivarius? Is it the Draziri?”

“I don’t know.”

Maud stopped and stared at me. “What’s next?”

“Next we report this to the Assembly.” That part was easy.

Maud resumed her pacing. “And they come and get it? Please tell me they come and get it.”

“They will eventually.”

My sister paused again. “How long is eventually?”

“I don’t know. I can’t contact the Assembly until tonight.” The rules for emergency contact weren’t just strict; they were draconian. A stray transmission could give away the existence of the inns, so the session had to be no more than thirty seconds and transmission had to be sent according to the time chart provided to every inn in the beginning of the year. I had checked it before, when thinking of accepting the Hiru’s bargain. My emergency session time was at 11:07 pm Central time.

“It’s still alive,” I said.

“What?”

“We have to store it and there is something… corrupt that’s still alive inside the body. Something that wants out.”

“How? Is it a creature? A parasite?”

“I don’t know. It attacked me when I got the sample. I had to stab it several times to get it to retreat. That’s the screech Helen heard.”

Maud swore. She and I looked at the resin coffin.

“What would it be afraid of?” she asked.

I rubbed my face. “There is no way to tell unless we analyze it and Gertrude Hunt won’t let me do that. Forcing the inn to take further samples is out of the question. We’re not set up to do this sort of analysis safely, and I won’t let this corruption infect us.”

“Fire?” Maud mused.

“Too difficult. It would have to be very hot and sustainable over time, and the inn doesn’t like open flames. It can deal with a small fire or even a bonfire outside, but flames of that intensity inside are a bad idea. No, we need something strong but viable long-term.”

We looked at the tube again.

“Acid,” we said at the same time.

It took me twenty minutes to build the chamber out of stone and fill our largest anchor tube with hydrochloric acid. We sealed the resin coffin inside another smaller tube, and suspended it in the acid. It wasn’t perfect. I would’ve preferred dumping it on some unknown planet, but one was responsible for what one set loose, and I didn’t want to shoulder the burden of unleashing this horror on anyone.

Once the tube was suspended, I set the alarms. If the plastic moved a fraction of an inch, the inn would scream in my head. We retreated to the lab, where I made the inn show me the chamber on the big screen. I sat and watched it. If it tried to break out after we left, I wanted to see it. Maud sat next to me.

Neither of us said anything.

“The Assembly will notify the family,” I said.

Thinking about looking at Mrs. Braswell as I struggled to explain what her son had turned into made me nauseous.