Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(2)

The KitchenAid vanished back into the pantry and another tendril delivered the handheld mixer into my hands. I put two large bowls onto the island and reached out with my magic.

The creature who ruled our kitchen with an iron claw was settling into his nest bed. Operation Apple Cake was a go.

I creamed the butter in the bowl and added a ? cup of sugar to it. Baking a cake for the man you love was stressful enough. Baking a cake in a kitchen run by a Red Cleaver chef was an impossible feat. Orro viewed both the kitchen and the pantry as his sole domain. Trying to cook anything meant being observed over your shoulder, treated to a detailed critique, followed by multiple offers to help, followed by hurt feelings when said offers were politely and repeatedly declined, culminating in pouting and declarations of woe. If he was really in the moment, he would throw an existential crisis into it.

Orro typically slept for at least an hour and a half. My cake only took 50 minutes to bake. If I played my cards right, it would be cooked before he ever caught on. He would not mess with it once it was cooked.

I folded my dry ingredients into my wet ones, mixed everything, poured it into a greased springform pan, and focused on peeling the apples.

Sean had gone out this morning to get more firewood. The inn required wood in the worst way, and we’d been going through a cord, sometimes two, every few days. It wouldn’t have been a problem if we were a BBQ joint, but we were masquerading as a quaint bed and breakfast that did very limited business. Sooner or later, someone would start wondering what we were doing with all that wood. Sean staggered our firewood orders between different suppliers and bought waste wood whenever he could find it. Usually we ordered firewood online, but he had found a supplier a couple of hours away who would deliver a full tri-axle load, seven and a half cords. The only catch was, they wanted payment up front in cash.

Sean didn’t like to leave the inn.

He didn’t mind it as much when he had to go to places other than our planet. Earth was home, the place where he was born and grew up, and Sean had learned how to pass for a human. But then he walked out into the Great Beyond. The universe bathed him in its breath. He saw the countless stars and other planets, fought enemies he couldn’t have imagined, and learned the true nature of his people.

Out there, he could be himself, an alpha strain werewolf. Here, on Earth, he had to pass for an ordinary man and, after years in space, it no longer came easily to him.

I mixed cinnamon, sugar, and lemon juice into my peeled, sliced apples, added a bit of flour, layered them on top of the dough, popped the pan into the oven, and exhaled. Halfway there.

“Thirty minutes,” I told the inn.

The inn creaked in acknowledgment.

Sean wanted to get the firewood. I offered to go with him, but he declined. I couldn’t make it easier for him while he was out, but I could greet him with his favorite cake when he came back.

A gentle chime rolled through my mind. A familiar presence entered the boundary of the inn. I motioned with my fingers and the wall sprouted a screen. On it, Officer Hector Marais carefully maneuvered his Red Deer PD cruiser up my driveway. Usually, he parked on the street. Driving up like that meant he had a special delivery.

I wiped my hands with a kitchen towel and headed to the garage. No rest for the wicked.





Officer Marais opened the trunk of his cruiser and bent down to give Beast a pet. In his mid-thirties, bronze-skinned, athletic, with blue-black hair cut short and a clean-shaven jaw, he was the very definition of the modern police officer. Everything from the collar of his uniform to the soles of his boots was “squared away” as Sean said. If the police department ever needed a model for a recruitment poster, there was nobody better.

He truly was a model police officer, completely committed to protecting residents in his jurisdiction. Which was why once he found out that aliens existed, and that Earth enjoyed the special protected status, he took it upon himself to add extraterrestrial policing to his regular duties. If any normal Earth mechanic ever popped the hood of his cruiser, they would faint on the spot. We were very fortunate that Red Deer made its officers buy their vehicles through a subsidized program.

I looked into the trunk. A woman lay inside it wrapped in a stun net. She was a little older than me and wore a gray combat suit. In good shape, lean, with attractive, bold features. On Earth someone would think she was a star athlete, track, or tennis maybe. Her tan skin had a slight cinnamon tint, her hair was dark red and braided away from her face, and her green eyes regarded me with open hostility.

The stun net, one of the fun modifications Sean and Marais had added to the police cruiser, was self-guiding and acted like a taser on contact, short circuiting the neural pathways. Marais had practiced firing it on Sean in an abandoned warehouse parking lot. He’d chase him with the cruiser and Sean would do his best to evade, while I served as a lookout and tried not to have a heart attack every time I heard a car coming. Marais hadn’t had a chance to use his new gadget until now.

The net should have stunned the woman into a mild coma. Instead, it seemed to just piss her off. She glared at me like I was everything that was wrong with her life. I leaned closer. A faint golden sheen rolled over her irises.

A werewolf. Made sense.

“Where did you find her?”

Marais nodded at the car. “I’ll show you.”

I nudged the inn. A thin wooden tendril slipped from the floor and brushed against the hood of the vehicle, accepting the transmission from the cruiser. Gertrude Hunt produced another screen showing the view from Marais’ dashcam camera. He had two sets in his car, one the standard issue from Red Deer PD and the other bootleg from us.