Now he was dead and his body was a host for something too terrible to describe.

“Did he say anything? Did he recognize you?” Maud asked.

“If he did, he sure had a funny way of showing it.”

“Is it related to the Archivarius? Is it the Draziri?”

“I don’t know.”

Maud stopped and stared at me. “What’s next?”

“Next we report this to the Assembly.” That part was easy.

Maud resumed her pacing. “And they come and get it? Please tell me they come and get it.”

“They will eventually.”

My sister paused again. “How long is eventually?”

“I don’t know. I can’t contact the Assembly until tonight.” The rules for emergency contact weren’t just strict; they were draconian. A stray transmission could give away the existence of the inns, so the session had to be no more than thirty seconds and transmission had to be sent according to the time chart provided to every inn in the beginning of the year. I had checked it before, when thinking of accepting the Hiru’s bargain. My emergency session time was at 11:07 pm Central time.

“It’s still alive,” I said.

“What?”

“We have to store it and there is something… corrupt that’s still alive inside the body. Something that wants out.”

“How? Is it a creature? A parasite?”

“I don’t know. It attacked me when I got the sample. I had to stab it several times to get it to retreat. That’s the screech Helen heard.”

Maud swore. She and I looked at the resin coffin.

“What would it be afraid of?” she asked.

I rubbed my face. “There is no way to tell unless we analyze it and Gertrude Hunt won’t let me do that. Forcing the inn to take further samples is out of the question. We’re not set up to do this sort of analysis safely, and I won’t let this corruption infect us.”

“Fire?” Maud mused.

“Too difficult. It would have to be very hot and sustainable over time, and the inn doesn’t like open flames. It can deal with a small fire or even a bonfire outside, but flames of that intensity inside are a bad idea. No, we need something strong but viable long-term.”

We looked at the tube again.

“Acid,” we said at the same time.

It took me twenty minutes to build the chamber out of stone and fill our largest anchor tube with hydrochloric acid. We sealed the resin coffin inside another smaller tube, and suspended it in the acid. It wasn’t perfect. I would’ve preferred dumping it on some unknown planet, but one was responsible for what one set loose, and I didn’t want to shoulder the burden of unleashing this horror on anyone.

Once the tube was suspended, I set the alarms. If the plastic moved a fraction of an inch, the inn would scream in my head. We retreated to the lab, where I made the inn show me the chamber on the big screen. I sat and watched it. If it tried to break out after we left, I wanted to see it. Maud sat next to me.

Neither of us said anything.

“The Assembly will notify the family,” I said.

Thinking about looking at Mrs. Braswell as I struggled to explain what her son had turned into made me nauseous.

“They should,” Maud said.

We looked at the tank some more. Nothing moved. The Assembly had a lot of resources at its disposal. Some innkeepers specialized in research, and their inns had state of the art labs. And of course, there were ad-hal. When innkeeper children grew up, they had three paths open to them. A lot of us left the planet and became Travelers, bumming around the great beyond. Of those who stayed, some gave up on the innkeeper life altogether and rejoined human society, leading normal lives. But if you wanted to remain in our world, you could become an innkeeper by inheriting the inn from your parents or, very rarely, being transferred to a new inn. Or you became an ad-hal. An ancient word for secret, the ad-hal served as the Assembly’s, and by extension, the Galactic Senate’s, enforcers on Earth. My power was tied to the inn. The power of an ad-hal came from within them. When things went bad, terribly, catastrophically bad, an ad-hal would come and deal with it. The ad-hal knew no mercy. They would assess the situation and deliver the punishment. Seeing one was never a good sign.

Maybe the Assembly would send an ad-hal to retrieve Michael’s body.

“I will stand vigil for his soul tonight,” Maud said.

“I killed him.”

“No, you freed him. You need your strength,” she said. “He deserves a vigil.”

“Okay.”

Minutes crept past.

Maud finally spoke. “How are things between you and Sean?”

“Fine.”

“Aha. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Because I’m right here.”

“Maud…” I started, but caught myself.

“That’s my name. Don’t be afraid, you won’t wear it out.”

“You have just been through… a lot of things. You buried your husband. I don’t want to dump my romantic problems on you.”

“I never thought you would find someone who was in,” Maud said.

“In?”

“In our world. In our little innkeeper circle. I always thought that you would go off and have a normal life with someone, I don’t know, someone named Phil.”

“Phil?” I blinked.

“Yes. He would be an accountant or a lawyer. You would have a perfectly normal marriage and perfectly normal children. Your biggest worry would be making sure the other PTA moms didn’t outshine you at faculty appreciation day.”