“Sadly this doesn’t work on human anatomy.” Otherwise Officer Marais would’ve been much less of a problem.
Maud pulled up, the big white-out cannon slung over her shoulder, and drove into the Ryder truck, wedging her cre-cycle next to Arland’s. I handed her two more capsules. “If Wing stirs, drug him.”
She nodded.
Sean slammed the door closed. I dashed to the cabin, opened the door, climbed up, and punched in the code in the photon projector. The unit’s pale blue light blinked. I jumped down and took a few steps back, careful to walk in a straight line.
The Ryder truck vanished. If you looked very closely, you could see the slight wavy disturbance, but you had to be only a few feet away.
“Are we good?” invisible Sean asked.
“We’re good.” I walked straight back and almost jumped when the truck popped into existence eighteen inches in front of me. I climbed into the passenger seat. Sean eased the truck out of park and we crept across the grass onto the interstate. Sean picked up speed.
“How are we doing?” Sean asked.
I checked my phone. “Two more minutes before the mine effects dissipate. Twenty-three minutes before the photon projector runs out of charge.”
He stepped on it. The Ryder rocked and rolled. It was just me and him in the cabin. This whole thing wasn’t just risky, it was reckless. If we were caught, there would be hell to pay.
Sean sat in his seat, focused on driving. He didn’t say anything to reassure me. He just projected a quiet, competent calm. I had a feeling that if a spaceship suddenly appeared in the sky and fired at us, Sean would somehow pull a massive gun out, shoot it down, and keep going, the same calm expression on his face. If Sean wasn’t here, I would’ve done all of it myself, but right now I was glad he was in the cab with me.
“You asked why I have to turn the Hiru down,” I said.
“I did.”
“Maud. And Helen. I just rescued my sister and my niece after they lived through hell. Maud deserves some peace and quiet.”
“Your sister looked pretty excited when you handed her the white-out warhead.”
“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. If I put the inn in harm’s way, she’ll be on the front line cutting off heads.”
“It’s her choice,” Sean said.
My alarm chimed. I flicked it off. The highway patrol was about to wake up.
“I know it’s her choice. My brother-in-law brought a lot of what happened to him on his own head. Melizard was responsible for their exile, and once on the planet, he lost his mind. From what Maud said, he grew desperate and wasn’t thinking clearly, and eventually he betrayed the House that hired him and got himself killed. A normal human thing for Maud to do would’ve been to try to get off the planet or try to establish some safety net for herself and Helen. Instead, my sister declared a blood feud and pursued it for months.”
“Like a proper vampire,” Sean said.
“Yes. We’re not in the Holy Anocracy now. We’re on Earth. This is her home. It will take time for her to remember what it’s like to be human. I’m not going to make her choices for her or tell her what to do. I just don’t want to thrust her into another bloody fight with no breathing room between that and what she went through. I want to give her a chance to adjust to humanity.” I sighed. “The Draziri are single-minded. They will go to any lengths to kill the Hiru. You went through… things. How do you deal with it?”
“I can’t speak for your sister,” Sean said. “Everyone deals with it in their own way. People say you need peace and quiet and while you’re there, in the thick of it, when everything is death and blood, you think so, too, because you idealize that. And then you get home.”
He fell silent for a moment.
“It feels fake,” he continued. “I get up, I wave at neighbors, I go to the grocery store, I gas up my car. The whole time I’m pretending to be someone else and I worry I might get my lines wrong.”
“Sean…” I had no idea he felt that way.
He glanced at me, his face resolute, his eyes clear. “Peace and quiet doesn’t help, because what’s wrong isn’t out there. It’s inside me. This right here is the most normal I've felt since I got home.”
I reached out and took his hand. He took his gaze off the road and looked at me. His eyes caught the light, their irises golden-brown amber. “And this.” He squeezed my hand. “This feels normal. This feels like coming home.”
Sirens blared behind us. He was still holding my hand, his strong fingers wrapped around mine. I remembered him walking away from me into the tear between the worlds. He’d wanted to see the galaxy and he owed Wilmos a favor. He went through it and was gone, and I'd stood on the grass, hugging myself. Guests left and we stayed. That was the fact of the innkeeper’s life. My parents vanished, my brother left to look for them and disappeared, Maud had gotten married… But I got Sean back. He was in the cab with me, holding my hand and not wanting to let go.
“Slow down,” I said. “It’s coming up.”