The floor at the far wall split and a massive Christmas tree rose, growing out of a fifteen-foot-wide drum. I sank the drum just below the floor level and let the mosaic close over it. I’d gotten this tree last year, the second Christmas in the inn. It came to me cut, and then the inn touched it with its magic, and overnight it had rooted and grew. It was twenty feet tall now, full and healthy, its green needles ready for the decorations, which appeared out of the wall in a dumpster-sized bin.
I waved my hand and the inn gently plucked a five-point star from the top of the bin and lowered it onto the tree top. It blinked and glowed with golden light.
Helen stared at it in awe. “Christmas?”
“Christmas,” I told her.
The look in her eyes was everything.
“Look at this.” I reached into the bin and picked out a glass orb. About the size of a large grapefruit, and ruby red, it glowed gently, as if fire was trapped within. I held it out to her.
“Breathe on it.”
Helen blew a puff of breath onto the glass. A tiny lightning storm burst inside, the crimson lightning kissing the glass. She giggled.
“Where should we put it?” I offered her the sphere.
She pointed to a branch seven feet off the ground. “There.”
I held out the orb. “The master decorator has spoken. If you please…”
A thin tendril slipped from the wall, picked up the orb, and neatly deposited it on the branch.
“Is there more?” Helen asked.
“There is more,” I told her. “This whole box is full of treasures from all around the Ggalaxy. It’s a magic box for a magical tree.”
I dipped my hand into the bin and drew the next ornament out. It was a little bigger and crystal clear. Inside a tiny tree spread black crooked limbs. Triangular green leaves dotted its branches and between them clusters of light blue flowers bloomed. Everything within the globe, from the details of the roots to lichen on the trunk, was amazingly lifelike.
“Oooh. Is it real?”
“I don’t know. The only way to find out is to break it. But if we broke it, that would be the end of the mystery.”
She put her nose to the glass. Her eyes crossed slightly, trying to focus on the tree. She was killing me with cute.
“You can keep it,” I told her. “That can be Helen’s ornament.”
Her face lit up. Helen stepped toward the tree, turned, catlike on her toes, and looked toward the door.
The Hiru had left their room and were coming toward us.
“Don’t be afraid,” I told her.
“They smell,” she whispered. “And they look gross.”
“I know. But they are still sentient beings. They never hurt anyone. They are gentle and the Draziri hunt them and kill them wherever they can find them.”
“Why?” Helen asked.
“Nobody knows. Try talking to them. Maybe they will tell you.”
“Why do you protect them, Aunt Dina?”
“There are killings that are justified. Killing someone who is trying to kill you is self-defense. Killing a being who is suffering and is beyond help is mercy. Killing someone because you don’t like the way they look is murder. There is no room for murder in this inn. I won’t stand for it.”
The two Hiru made it through the door, Sunset in the lead, moving one step at a time, their mechanical joints grinding despite lubrication. The odor of pungent rotten fish hit us. You’d think I would get used to it by now, but no. I strained to not grimace.
The Hiru came closer. Helen looked a little blue. She was trying to hold her breath. The smell must’ve been hell on vampire senses. Sean never gave any indication it bothered him, but it had to be terrible for him.
Helen opened her mouth with a pop, pointed at the tree, and said, “Christmas!”
“Yes,” Sunset said, his voice mournful.
Sean walked into the ballroom and moved along the wall, silently, like a shadow. He leaned against a column, watching the Hiru.
“The needled one explained it,” Moonlight said. “It is a time for family.”
“Do you have family?” Helen asked.
“No,” Sunset said.
“Where is your father?”
“He died,” Sunset said softly.
“My father died too,” Helen told him. “Where is your mom?”
“She died too.”
Helen bit her lip. “Do you have sisters?”
“I had two.”
“Where are they?”
“They are dead.”
Helen hesitated. “And brothers?”
“Also dead,” Sunset told her. “We are what remains of our families, little one. We are the last. We have nothing.”
Helen pondered him with that odd intensity I noticed about her before, stepped toward the Hiru, and held out the ornament to him. “Here.”
“What is it?” Sunset asked.
“A gift for you.” Helen stepped closer. “Take it.”
He reeled. Servos whirled somewhere within the Hiru, desperately trying to deal with what he was feeling. “A gift?” the translation program choked out, turning emotion into a screech.
“Yes,” Helen put the ornament into his palm. “Now you have something.”
Moonlight made a choking noise.
The Hiru swayed. His legs quivered. Somehow he stayed upright. “It is very beautiful,” he said, his voice suffused with emotion. “Thank you.”
He turned and held it out to Moonlight. Their mechanical hands touched. They held it together for a long second and then she gently pushed it back into his palm.
“That one is yours, but there is more,” Helen told him. “Come, I’ll show you.”