Five minutes later the final fox finally stepped onto my porch. “Nuan Couki, my thrice removed cousin’s seventh son!” Nuan Cee triumphantly announced. “This is his first trip.”

The seventh son looked at us. He was barely three and a half feet tall, with pale sandy fur and huge blue eyes. He waved his paw at us, squeaked “Hi!” in a tiny voice, and dashed after the procession of Nuan Cee’s relatives into the inn.

“Phew.” Nuan Cee wiped imaginary sweat off his brow. “I work too hard. Let us see our rooms.”

He disappeared into the inn and I followed him.

“Cookie?” Jack said behind me.

“Just go with it,” George told him.

I made it back to the porch right at eight o’clock. Dealing with Nuan Cee’s clan took longer than expected. I barely had a minute to spare. At least they didn’t make that much noise. If all went well with the vampires, we’d dodge the bullet.

We waited in silence.

A minute passed.

“It’s very unusual for them to be late.” George frowned.

My magic chimed in my mind. Oh no.

“In front!” I dashed through the house. The men chased me. “They’re coming through the front!”

I burst out of the front door.

“Get down on the ground!” a male voice barked.

In the middle of the street twelve knights of the Holy Cosmic Anocracy in full blood armor brandished their weapons. Officer Marais stood by his vehicle, pointing a taser at the leading knight.

“I said get down on the ground!” Officer Marais roared.

The vampire nearest to him gripped his enormous axe. Streaks of bright red shot through the weapon. He’d just primed it.

“No!” I sprinted into the street.

Officer Marais fired the taser. The electrode darts snapped at the vampire’s blood armor, sparking with blue.

The vampire roared. The huge axe swung in an arc and sliced the hood of the police cruiser in a half like it was an empty coke can. For a second Officer Marais stared at it in stunned silence. His hand went to his gun.

I couldn’t let him fire.

Magic shot from my hand into my broom. The handle split into dozens of long filaments and shot at Officer Marais like some face-hugging monster from a horror movie. The filaments wrapped around him, binding his body into a cocoon. He spun in place and toppled onto the asphalt.

The vampires roared in triumph.

Chapter 5

I spun to the vampires. I was so furious, I couldn’t even speak.

The knight with the axe saw my face. A second later he also realized that I was wearing an innkeeper’s robe and that he had done something really, really bad.

I marched to him. He took a few steps back, toward the inn, moving away from the car like a toddler who broke something and was now trying to distance himself from it. His foot touched the inn’s boundary. A root whipped out of the gloom, grasped the vampire, and yanked him back into the ground as if he weighed nothing. One second he was there, the next he vanished.

I glared at the other vampires. “Pick up this car and this man,” I said, forcing the words through my teeth. “Bring them into my driveway undamaged, or I’ll reduce you to bloody spots on this pavement. Now.”

To the right two points of light announced an approaching vehicle.

“Move!” Arland snarled from somewhere behind the hulking vampires.

Lord Soren, Arland’s uncle, grabbed Officer Marais and sprinted to the inn as fast as his enormous armor would allow. Two vampires grasped the cruiser, lifted it, and carried it onto the driveway. The moment the wheels touched the ground, the cruiser sank into the driveway. The ground gulped it and the car vanished. The vampires streamed into the house.

The lights were almost on us.

I stepped behind a tree. The house shifted, hiding the weapons. George stepped behind a different tree.

At the door Arland barked a short command. Three remaining vampires dropped flat.

A white truck roared by.

I waited a couple of seconds and nodded to Arland. The knights rose and ducked into the house. George followed. I paused and surveyed the street. It lay empty.

I waited, straining to hear any stray noises.

No sirens, no outraged neighbors racing out of their houses to see what was happening, no shots fired. The dreary weather and the cold night on a regular old Tuesday kept the inhabitants of Avalon subdivision indoors.

Could we have dodged a bullet?

As an innkeeper, I had only two official duties: to safeguard my guests and to keep their existence hidden from the rest of the planet. The vampires knew this. Arland and his uncle, in particular, knew and understood this extremely well. How could they have put the inn in jeopardy?

Cold drizzle sifted from the night sky.

The subdivision remained silent. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked in short plaintive yips, asking to be let inside. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard a door swing open. The barking stopped.

I exhaled slowly and went inside.

The vampire delegation crowded in my front room.

A huge knight, his hair jet black, stood chest to chest with Arland, their armor almost touching. Both had their shoulders back, legs planted, their powerful muscles flexed, ready to grip and tear at each other. Their mouths gaped open, fangs on display, their faces contorted with rage. They radiated aggression like two space heaters emitting heat. Everyone else had backed away, giving them room. They were a second away from direct violence and they were almost exactly the same size and height. It would be a bloody and terrible.