“Breakfast and all of your meals will be served here. We ask that you remain in this chamber at all times for your safety. We are expecting a Drífan liege.”

The elder whipped his head around to look at me and his headdress nearly fell. One of his assistants jumped up and slid it back into place.

“Understood,” the elder said. “I shall keep my flock contained.”

“Should you need anything, call my name and the inn will put you in contact with me. I’m called Dina.”

“Very well, Dina. I’m called…well, it’s really too long. Please call me First Scholar Thek.” He raised his voice. “Come, students of thought. Let us find our comfort.”

The koo-kos streamed around me, heading straight for the amphitheater.

I bowed my head and escaped.

From the hallway, Sean watched me beat a strategic retreat. The door slid shut behind me and I leaned against the hallway wall.

“Got them settled?”

“Sort of. We won’t know if the coops are adequate until this evening.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“It will take them that long to debate who takes which identical coop.” I started down the hallway. There was no sleeping now. I’d get a strong cup of tea and work on the Drífan palace quarters.

“When do you want to call the evil millionaire?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s an east coast number. Around ten?”

“I want to be there.”

“Okay,” I promised and kissed him.

The first batch of ten Grand Burgers arrived at 6:15 a.m., as soon as we could get them. Unlike most fast-food chains that delayed burger grills until 10:00 a.m. or so because they served breakfast items, Burger Feast would give you a hamburger any time, day or night.

Orro had studied the collection of burgers the way a hunter studied prey. His long sensitive nose had twitched. He’d unwrapped one, moving his scary claws with surgical precision to peel off the trademark orange and purple wrapper, raised the burger to his eye level, evaluated the meat, took off the bun, looked at the patty smothered in the special sauce, put the bun back on, and finally took a bite.

Silence.

Orro chewed.

More silence.

He’d turned around and spat the burger into the garbage disposal. “She wants this?”

“Apparently.”

“This isn’t food. This is a crime against the art of cooking.”

It was 9:50 a.m. now, and Orro had produced his seventh burger, the first he deemed good enough for me to try. It rested on a plate now, waiting for my verdict.

I took a bite. Oh my galaxy.

Orro hovered over me. “Well?”

“Mmmhghpph.” I swallowed. “It’s the best hamburger I’ve ever had.”

“But does it taste like the Grand Burger?”

“No. It tastes better.”

He snatched the hamburger back.

“Orro!”

The hamburger hurtled through the room into the garbage bin. I almost cried.

“I do not understand how they achieve this unnatural texture,” he murmured. “Or why anyone would eat it.”

“It’s a fast, cheap meal. It tastes delicious when you’re hungry.”

“Callowinian spider squids also taste delicious when one is hungry, but that doesn’t mean one should bring oneself to cook them.”

I had no idea what callowinian spider squids tasted like or why it was a bad idea to cook them, but now was the perfect time to talk him out of his burger quest. “As I said, this is a meal unworthy of your skill. It’s beneath you.”

He drew himself to his full height. His chest expanded.

Oh no.

“I shall duplicate it! Perfectly!”

“Orro…”

“FIRE!”

He spun around. The inn opened the pantry door for him, and Orro vanished into the pocket within reality to look for the ingredients.

I rubbed my face. Sean walked through the doorway and landed in a chair next to me, brushing his hand over my shoulder on his way there.

“Didn’t work?” he murmured.

“Fire,” I told him.

“That good, huh?”

“I’m on a tiny planet, and there is a comet heading my way and I can’t do anything about it.” I picked up the phone. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

I dialed the number. It rang once, twice…

“Yes?” a clipped male voice said into the phone. The man sounded too young to be Rudolph.

“I have a message for Mr. Rudolph Peterson.”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you Mr. Peterson?”

“I will deliver your message.”

“I would prefer to speak to him.”

“That’s not possible.”

I glanced at Sean. He nodded. We didn’t exactly have a choice.

“Tell him that the meeting he’s been waiting for will take place on January 16th at 5:00 p.m. Central time at the following address.” I gave him the address for Gertrude Hunt. “The time window for this visit’s very short. He must not be late, or he will miss her.”

“Understood.”

The man hung up. Well, that’s that.

“I looked into Peterson,” Sean said.

“What did you find out?”

“He is an asshole.”

“Okay. Strong statement, but not informative.”

Sean leaned back. “He made his money in real estate. He started as an agent and moved into being a builder. When the housing crisis happened, a lot of builders went out of business, and he bought their equipment and the land they were stuck with, dirt cheap. He also hired most of his competitors as project managers complete with their work force. His people spun it as him being a hero, giving the out-of-work tradesmen a chance to put food on the table. In reality, he locked them into restrictive contracts with non-competes, making him effectively the only builder in several key markets in Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. In some cases, wages haven’t been paid, and benefits weren’t granted. When people complained, he fired them. If they continued to complain, he would drag them to court. He’s a big believer in NDAs.”

“This sounds worse and worse.”

“An Arizona newspaper did an article on him, and he filed a SLAPP suit. It dragged on for three years. The newspaper eventually won, but the suit took so long, they went bankrupt meanwhile and had to close. By that point he’d expanded into other businesses. New song, same dance—he goes after failing enterprises, grabs them cheap, and then cashes in on their desperation.”

I didn’t like any of this. Rudolph Peterson sounded like the kind of man who would make trouble, and I wanted to avoid trouble at all costs. I already had my hands full.

“Do not worry,” Orro said, emerging from the pantry and cold storage with a heap of groceries in his arms. “If this human creates problems, we will feed him the Grand Burgers. Once he consumes enough of them, his body will surely fail.”

If only it were that easy.

I’d spent the entire morning refining the Drífen rooms. The distance between me and Gertrude Hunt kept getting in the way. I felt it every time I needed to do something elaborate. It was like trying to do an intricate drawing with a blunted pencil. I could make the inn do what I wanted it to do, but it required a lot of concentration and occasional do-overs.

I had never in my life experienced anything like this. I was born in an inn; for all of my life it had been a constant presence, a third parent, always ready to catch me if I stumbled. Yesterday, I’d read some of the innkeeper diaries Gertrude Hunt had stored in its database, looking for someone having a problem with my symptoms. I found nothing. The distance was there, and the more I felt it, the closer I edged to panic.

I couldn’t tell if it was getting better or worse. In the end, I sat down on the ornamental staircase to catch a breath and rested, feeling Gertrude Hunt around me.

“It’s alright.” I stroked the stairs with my fingertips. “We will figure it out. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

That’s where Sean found me.

He came through the doorway with measured grace, no wasted movement, no deviation from the course, and headed straight for me. Beast trailed him, making happy snorting noises.

He sat next to me and looked at my handiwork. “Beautiful.”

“Thank you. How are the weapon systems?”

“Deadly.” He sank a ton of sarcasm into that one word.

“Really?”

“No. The northern particle cannon is trashed. One of the Draziri must have sank a long-range heat burst into it. Everything’s fried. The HELL units won’t talk to me.”

“I bought them secondhand from a Morodiak. The inn partially integrated it but if you want to run diagnostics, you have to speak its language.”

“So, I have to growl at the HELL units?”

“Pretty much. I know you can growl, Sean. I’ve heard you do it.”

His upper lip trembled in a snarl, betraying a flash of fang.

“Ooh, scary. The Morodiakian HELL units don’t stand a chance.”

“Are you humoring me?”

“Yep.”

I leaned against him. He put his arm around me.

“We need to upgrade. Or at least repair,” he said. “The stealth guns in the front are in good condition, but they’re antiques. About a third of the long-range weapons that face the field are out of commission, and there is only so much I can do with bubble gum and duct tape. We need to replace them.”