I sighed and sipped my coffee. “If everything happened the way you say it did, there should be evidence. There must be damage to your car and your dashcam would show a record of these events. Do you have any evidence, Officer Marais?”
His face turned red. “You repaired it.”
“I repaired your vehicle? Setting aside that I am not a mechanic and wouldn’t know the first thing about repairing a car, if I had tampered with your vehicle, there would some indication of it. Are there any signs of repair?”
Officer Marais clenched his teeth together again.
“I think that you work very long hours,” I said. “I saw you this morning sleeping in your cruiser. I think you had a very vivid dream. Your dreams do not give you the right to come here and harass me and my business. I don’t know what I have done to make you dislike me, but this isn’t right and it’s not fair. You are now interfering with my ability to make a living. I didn’t break any laws. I’m not a criminal. Does it seem okay to you that you are continuously coming here and accusing me of random things just because you don’t like me?”
He looked taken aback.
“Go home, Officer. I’m sure you must have a family who probably misses you. I am not going to file a complaint, but I do wish you would stop coming here every time something odd happens or doesn’t happen.”
I closed the door and leaned against it.
A moment later the magic of the inn chimed in my head, letting me know Officer Marais had left the grounds. George stepped to the window. “He’s leaving. Nicely done.”
“If I argued with him, he would continue to attack. Instead I acted like a victim and Officer Marais has been trained to be considerate of victims.” I still felt bad for manipulating him.
“The summit is set to begin in two hours,” George said. “I’m afraid I have to ask you for a favor. I need your help.”
I looked at my cup of coffee. I didn’t want to do anyone any favors. I wanted fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time with my refrigerator. I barely ate last night and I had just downed a whole cup of coffee on an empty stomach. But I had a job to do. Maybe it would be something simple.
I smiled at the Arbiter. “How can I help you?”
“If I give you coordinates to a particular world, could you open a door to it?” George asked.
“Which world?”
He raised his cane. A set of numbers ignited in mid-air written in crimson. The first two digits told me everything I needed to know.
“No,” I said.
“But I have seen you open doors,” he said.
“It’s not that simple.” It never was. “Why don’t we sit down?”
We walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table. Orro swept by me like a silent blur of brown and suddenly a plate holding two tiny crepes filled with cream and sliced strawberries materialized in front of me. I didn’t even see him slide it there. Our kitchen was staffed by a ninja.
“Thank you,” I said. Orro nodded and went to the stove.
George quietly waited.
“The inns are not well understood,” I cut a small piece of crepe and tried it. It practically melted on my tongue. “Orro, this is heavenly.”
Orro’s needles quivered slightly.
“We live within them, we use them, but even we, the innkeepers, are unsure about why they function the way they do.”
Jack and Gaston walked into the kitchen.
“It is easiest to imagine them as trees. An inn, like Gertrude Hunt, begins with a seed. The seed is weak and fragile, but if properly tended, it sprouts. It sends roots deep into the ground. What we see,” I made a small circle with my fork, encompassing the kitchen, “is but a small fraction of the inn’s form. As it grows, it begins to spread branches through the Universe. These branches don’t obey our physics. Some puncture our reality. Some transform and evolve beyond our understanding. A single inn of some age, like Gertrude Hunt, may reach into other worlds.”
“Like Yggdrasil,” George said.
“Yes, like that.”
“What’s Yggdrasil?” Jack asked.