Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(17)

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.

We met our visitors at the front door.

Mr. Rodriguez gave me a hug and shook Sean’s hand. “Sorry to drop in on you unannounced.”

“You’re always welcome,” Sean told him.

Tony grinned at us. “Hello!”

Neither of the Rodriguezes looked tense. Maybe this wasn’t the permit-denying kind of visit. Or maybe they were just absolutely sure that we would go along with what the Assembly decided.

“Please follow me,” I said. “Sorry about the renovations.”

I led them through the front room past the silent, empty kitchen, into the hallway just under the portrait of my parents. The hallway’s door slid open, and we stepped into another world.

A cavernous chamber lay in front of us, 100 yards long and 60 yards wide. I had expanded the main ballroom until my bones hurt. It was somewhat bare now since we hadn’t settled on the appropriate finishes.

Mr. Rodriguez raised his eyebrows.

We kept walking. On our right, a wide arched entrance led to the new kitchen. Statistics said that an average restaurant kitchen in the US ran around 1,000 sq. ft., but those restaurants didn’t have to accommodate the dietary needs of over a dozen species. Orro’s new kitchen was a 4,000 sq. ft. monster. Half of it was taken up by the culinary equipment, ovens, ranges, and stainless-steel prep tables, and the other half held another 8 long tables specifically for plating. Each of those tables came equipped with a custom-build storage unit sprouting from the ceiling, which contained dinnerware, sauces, syringes, and a variety of mysterious culinary tools.

Orro’s new assistants flittered between the prep tables, furiously chopping and blending something. Orro was trying to finalize the menu.

“An upgrade.” Tony whistled.

“We had to,” I said.

The two sous chefs ignored us. One was a juvenile Quillonian, who looked like a smaller version of Orro, and the other was an auroch, a five-foot tall, russet-furred being with delicate appendages, a vaguely antelope face, and four horns crowning her head. Like Quillonians, aurochs had a ridiculous number of tastebuds. They had evolved as herbivores and had to distinguish between toxic and non-toxic plants by taste.

“Where did you get them?” Tony asked.

“Orro went to see his mentor,” Sean said. “Apparently, Chef Adri called for reinforcements from some fancy culinary academy, which promptly fell over itself to participate.”