“What can I do for you?”

“I happened to be in a neighborhood and stopped by to check on Sean. Haven’t seen him for a while.” There, that didn’t sound too desperate.

“He’s out on a cruise with Solar Shipping freighter,” Wilmos said. “He owed me a favor, and I owed a friend of mine. The friend has a shipping route and picks up credit vouchers from a couple of leisure planets, so he gets boarded a lot. He needed a good security person, so I gave him Sean for a year. It’s good for him. He wanted to see the glory of the Universe and now he gets a tour.”

“You want me to get a word to him?” Wilmos asked. “I can probably leave a message for him. I’ve got the codes for the freighter.”

Hmmm. I gave him a nice sweet smile. “Sure! That would be great.”

Wilmos tapped the glass of the nearest counter. It turned dark and a small circle with glowing symbols appeared in the corner. “Sorry, it will have to be text only. They’re too far out for face to face.” He tapped the circle, spinning it with his fingertips. An English keyboard ignited at the bottom of the rectangle. I was about to send an interstellar text.

“Go ahead,” he said.

I had to send something that only Sean would know. At least I would find out if he was dead or alive. I typed It’s Dina. The apple trees recovered.

Wilmos touched a glowing symbol. The message flashed brighter and dimmed. Seconds ticked by. I kept my smile on.

A message flashed in response to mine. I told you I wasn’t poisonous.

Sean was alive. Nobody else would know that I nearly brained him with my broom for marking his territory in my orchard.

“Anything else?” Wimos asked. He was trying to be nonchalant, but he was watching me very carefully.

“No, that was it. Much appreciated.”

“Any time. I’m sure he’ll visit when he gets shore leave.”

“He’s welcome any time and you as well. Come on, Beast.”

Beast gave Gorvar one last parting snarl and we walked out of the shop, joined the crowd and kept going down the street.

It made no sense. Wilmos built and sold weapons. Some of the gear in his shop looked too new to be antique. He must’ve had a lot of connections in the soldier for hire world. When Wilmos recognized Sean, he’d become unglued. Sean was a natural biological child of two alpha strain werewolves, who weren’t supposed to have survived the destruction of their planet. A normal werewolf was bad news, but Sean was stronger, faster, and more deadly than ninety nine percent of werewolf refuges strewn across the Galaxy. Wilmos had acted as if Sean was a miracle.

“You don’t stick a miracle onto a freighter where he’ll be a security guard,” I told Beast. ‘There are more exciting ways to see the glory of the universe.”

It was like finding the last known Tasmanian tiger and selling him to some rich guy to be a pet in his back yard. It just didn’t add up.

Wilmos didn’t want me to know what Sean was doing. I didn’t know why, and I really wanted to find out.

***

It took me almost half an hour to get to the Quillonian’s place. The shop owners pointed the door out to me, but it was three floors up and I had to find the way up and then the right set of stone bridges to get to the terrace. Quillonians were a reclusive race, proud, prone to drama, and violent when cornered. A couple of them stayed at my parents’ inn and as long as everything went their way, they were perfectly cordial, but the moment any small problem appeared, they would start putting exclamation marks at the end of all of their sentences. My mother didn’t like dealing with them. She was very practical. If you brought a problem to her, she’d take it apart and figure out how best to resolve it. From what I remembered, Quillonians didn’t always want their problems resolved. They wanted a chance to shake their clawed fists at the sky, invoke their gods, and act as if the world was ending.

My father was brilliant at handling them. Before he became an innkeeper, he was a very good conman, excellent at reading his marks, and he finessed our more difficult guests. Before long, they were eating out of his hand. I tried to remember what he’d said to me about it. What was it? Something about plays…

I crossed the terrace to a stone bridge. The bridge had no rail and was barely two feet wide. At the other side, the bridge terminated in a narrow balcony with a dark wooden door. Deep gouges scoured the wood as if something with superhuman strength and razor sharp claws had attacked the door in a frenzy. I squinted. The scratches blended into a phrase repeated in several languages. KEEP OUT. Wonderful.

I leaned and looked over the side. At least a fifty foot drop to the street. If the Quillonian jumped out of his door and knocked me off the bridge, I would die for sure. I’d be a Dina pancake. Beast whined.

I picked her up and started across the bridge, taking my time. I didn’t mind heights but I would’ve liked something to hold on to.

Step, another step. I stepped onto the balcony and knocked. Before I could get the second knock in, the door flew open. A dark shape filled the doorway. I saw two glowing white eyes and a mouth studded with sharp teeth.

The mouth gaped open and a deep voice roared, “Go away!”

The door slammed shut inches from my face.

I blinked. Really, now. I think he actually blew my hair back with that. I knocked again.

The door sprung open, jerked aside by a powerful hand and teeth snapped in my face. “What? What is it? Do I owe you money? Is that it? There is no money! I have nothing!”