“Dina!”
Sean picked me up. He kissed me. He hugged me to him, but I felt nothing. The darkness was too thick.
He was calling my name, but I had no will to respond.
He looked terrified. I didn’t care.
“Dina, talk to me. Please talk to me. Please.”
I felt nothing.
“Say something. Anything.” He squeezed me to him again. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
We jumped up then, and he carried me up the cliff and through the rip in reality back into Gertrude Hunt.
The inn’s magic reached for me. I watched it try. It battered against the wall around me and fell back. There was no point. My little inn had died. I held it and then it died. I felt it die and I died with it. Everything was over.
My sister cried and hugged me. My niece cried, too. Orro brought me cookies. Caldenia said something, so did Arland. None of it mattered. There was only me and darkness.
*
“Fix her!”
My sister again. Some other innkeeper. Tony. His name was Tony. He looked like he saw a walking dead. That’s what I was. The walking dead. Breathing. Listening. Watching. But nothing alive remained inside.
“I can’t. She bonded with the seed. She couldn’t let it die alone, so she connected. Her inn is dead.”
“Her inn is right here,” Sean snarled.
“The inns are organisms of immense power,” Tony said. “They root through different dimensions, they distort reality, and they create matter out of basic components. People forget how powerful they are, because they obey the innkeepers, but their magic is immense. An inn requires an innkeeper. It can’t exist without one, so it forms a symbiotic relationship with a human and then it directs all of its magic and power into strengthening that bond. The innkeepers exist in the microcosm of the inn for years, exposed to their magic and influenced by it. They undergo a change we don’t fully understand, because the inns exist on planes and levels we can’t comprehend. We do know that preserving and bonding with the inn becomes the very essence of the innkeeper’s being.”
He paused, looking them over.
“If the inn had sprouted anywhere within a ten-mile radius of Gertrude Hunt, Gertrude Hunt’s magic would smother it. This inn would’ve felt the death of the seed and it would likely die itself and kill all of us within. She couldn’t let that happen. She took the seed out of Gertrude Hunt’s area, but once she’d done that, Dina was outside of her power zone.
“At the moment of its birth, the inn has only one objective: to find an innkeeper. That little inn on the cliff was weak and fragile, because it had been trapped in its shell too long, but its power was still greater than any of us could imagine. Dina couldn’t let it die. It’s the same instinct that would make a human dive into ice-cold water to save a drowning baby. The inn was terrified. It sought a bond, and Dina comforted it and bonded with it, because that’s who she is. She couldn’t let it suffer and die alone. The bond, as short as it was, was real. When the seed died, in that moment, on that cliff, she lived through the death of her inn. Innkeepers do not usually survive this. She knew it would happen. She sacrificed herself for our sake, for Gertrude Hunt, and for that little seed.”
“But she’s still alive,” Sean said.
“Technically, yes.”
“What do we do? There has to be something that can be done?” Arland demanded.
“There is nothing that can be done,” Tony said. “I’m so sorry.”
Above us, far within the inn, the corruption awoke within its prison. It smashed against the inside of the plastic tube, coated it, burrowed into it, and made a tiny crack. Gertrude Hunt screamed, but nobody heard it.
*
We lay in bed. He held me. His arm was around me. I couldn’t feel it.
“This is the part when you tell me, ‘Sean Evans, get out of my bed. You’re not invited.’”
I said nothing.
“I will stay here with you,” he said. “I’m not leaving. I’m not taking you to the Sanctuary.”
The darkness thickened, trying to block his voice, but I still heard him.
“I love you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I won’t let anyone take you away. You’re not alone. Just come back to me, love. Come home.”
*
Time had no meaning in darkness. The darkness was jealous. It pushed everything else out. Joy, anger, sadness. Life.
They brought me to the heart of the inn. I lay in the soft darkness, while around me the inn wept tears glowing with magic.
Maud was crying again. “Why isn’t she bonding?”
“Because her inn already died,” Tony said. “Right now you are the only thing keeping Gertrude Hunt from going dormant.”
“But she was only bonded to it for a minute.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’s beyond our reach. If Gertrude Hunt can’t reach her, nobody can.”