Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles #4) - Ilona Andrews Page 0,4

her their parents’ inn had disappeared. One moment the charming colonial was there, hiding a microcosm inside, the next it vanished, taking everyone inside with it. When Klaus had come home from running errands, he had found an empty lot. Nobody, not even the Innkeeper Assembly, knew where or how the inn had vanished.

Her siblings were going to search the galaxy for answers. She wanted to join them, but she was pregnant and Melizard begged her to stay by his side. He was in the middle of another scheme, and he had needed her.

Two years later, just as her husband had started on the path that would land them on Karhari, Dina and Klaus had come again. They found nothing. Klaus wanted to keep looking, but Dina had enough. She was going back to earth. Of the three of them, Dina longed for normal life the most, always wanting things the innkeeper families couldn’t have, like friends outside the inn or attending high school. Maud still recalled the bad feeling that had washed over her as she watched the two of them walk toward the spaceport. Something told her to grab Helen and follow them. But she loved Melizard and she had stayed…

By now Dina probably had a normal job. Maybe she was married, with children of her own. Klaus was universe alone knew where. She told the Arbitrator as much and he smiled at her again and said, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Messages have a way of getting where they need to go.”

Maud took off her necklace, scribbled a few words with the coordinates of the Lodge on a piece of paper, and handed them both to him. It felt right somehow, as if this was a test and she had given the correct answer. Now they waited.

She had no idea how long it would take. Her mercenary job had earned them two and a half weeks of stay, the rest of her money would buy another two weeks or so, then she would have to search for jobs.

Helen was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.

Will somebody really come for us?

“Yes,” she said. “If your aunt or uncle get our message, they will come for us and they will take us away from here.”

“To a different place?” Helen asked.

“Yes.”

“With flowers and water?”

Maud swallow the hot clump that wedged itself in her throat. “Yes, my flower. With all the beautiful flowers and water you can imagine.

Maud drank her mint tea. Next to her Helen nibbled on a dry cookie and flipped the digital pages of a book. The book, Weird and Amazing Planets, a paper-thin single use tablet, showed photographs of landscapes from different planets. It had cost Maud a month’s worth of water, but Helen had found it at a trader’s stall and hugged it to her, and Maud couldn’t say no. There were almost a thousand photographs and by now Helen knew every one by heart.

The Lodge was full tonight. First, two convoy guard teams, each consisting of a dozen vampires, came in one after another; then, to make things interesting, a group of fourteen raiders. The two convoy guards, the traders, and the lone travelers had taken the tables along the perimeter of the Lodge, near the walls, and the raiders were left with a chunk in the middle, exposed and surrounded. The convoy guards and the raiders were eyeing each other, but so far nobody had gotten drunk enough to start any trouble. If a brawl broke out, she’d grab Helen and head upstairs.

The door of the Lodge slid open, and three travelers made their way inside. The first was tall and broad, his cloak stretched over his wide shoulders in the familiar way it did when the fabric rested on vampire armor. The man right behind him wore dark pants and a windbreaker, his movements graceful and liquid. He didn’t move, he glided. Or rather, he stalked in, ready to fend off an attack.

The windbreaker looked Earth-made.

Human.

Her heart sped up. The man pulled back the hood of his windbreaker. Maud scrutinized his features: scarred face, russet-brown hair, clean shaven…

The human inhaled, scanned the room with his gaze. His irises caught the light, reflecting it with an amber glow for a split second.

Disappointment slammed into her. Not a human. A werewolf, a refugee from a dead planet.

The towering cloaked figure headed for the bar. The werewolf followed. A third person trailed them, wearing a tattered gray robe. The cut of the