Lord Robart bared his fangs.

They wore their armor as if it were their second skin. He would never…

Lord Robart unsheathed a short brutal axe and clasped the House crest on his armor. The black metal fractured, falling off him, leaving him standing in a plain black bodysuit. He stepped out of his boots, primed his axe with a flick of his wrist, and jumped into the water. It came up to his chest.

“Seal the doorway, please,” George said.

I let the wood flow back, hiding the vampire knight from view. We’d need a countdown. I murmured to the inn and a large digital clock appeared on the wall, counting the seconds down from sixty minutes.

George turned to me. “We still have the problem of the car and the police officer.” He gave me a brilliant smile. “This is your area of expertise. The delegation of the Holy Anocracy, my people, and I are at your disposal, my lady. How would you like to handle that?”

I turned to Arland. “Marshall, I’ll need your best engineer. The rest of you must go to your quarters.”

“Hardwir, with me,” Arland commanded.

An older dark haired vampire shouldered his way to the front of the group.

“I’m coming as well,” Lady Isur announced.

“Rest of you, through the hallway on the left. Go. Do not attempt to leave. The inn won’t permit it.”

The majority of the knights left the room, but five of them remained behind. “We cannot abandon our marshal,” a female knight said.

Lady Isur glanced at me. “Innkeeper?”

“You may choose two of your number,” I told them. “You can keep watch here. If you attempt to move from this room, you will be detained.”

The female knight and older grizzled vampire took up post by the wall. The rest went to their quarters. Caldenia still sipped her tea, looking perfectly satisfied.

Now I had to fix this nightmare.

“Follow me.” I started down the long hallway. The stables occupied the north-eastern corner of the house, opening into the orchard. From the outside, they would look just like a screened in porch.

Beast darted back and forth in front of me, scampering in pure excitement. Well, at least someone was having fun.

“I could kill him,” Lady Isur offered.

“That would only make more problems,” Jack said.

“Law enforcement here is very well organized,” Arland said. “If one falls, the rest converge on the area. It would make everything exceptionally difficult.”

The door flew open in front of me and I emerged into the stables. My hands shook slightly. Too much adrenaline and too much magic expended too quickly. With the guests within the inn, I would rebound, but right now I felt jittery, as if I’d drank three cups of strong coffee on an empty stomach.

Officer Marais lay on the floor, next to his ruined squad car, flanked on both side by the stalls. A female from Nuan Cee’s clan was quietly distributing feed to the buckets. She saw us and stopped. As I approached, the filaments slid off his body, leaving the inn’s hard roots anchoring him to the floor. The filaments streamed to me, smoothly reforming into the broom in my hand. The roots gagged Officer Marais’s mouth, but his eyes told me everything I needed to know. He was furious. If he could’ve gotten loose, he would fight all of us for his life.

I glanced at the car. It was even worse than I thought. The axe had gone straight through the hood, slicing through the engine like it was made of Jello. I could see the floor through the gap.

The stables were quiet, save for the rhythmic chewing coming from the donkey camels in their stalls.

“I can make it painless,” Lady Isur murmured. “He won’t feel a thing.”

I held up my hand. “Give me the Last Resort.”

The wall of the stables spat out a small syringe. I crouched by Officer Marais and injected the contents into his arm. He glared at me as if he was wishing with every fiber of his being that my head would explode. His face softened. His breathing deepened. His body went slack, his eyes closed, and he slipped into a deep sleep.

“What did you give him?” George asked.

“A tranquilizer.”

“But he will still remember what happened,” Jack said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “To be believed he will need evidence. We’re going to remove the evidence.”

“This is it?” Lady Isur frowned. “This is the plan?”

“Yes,” I told her. “It has worked many times for many different innkeepers. Sometimes simple plans are the best.” I turned to Arland’s engineer. “Please fix it.”

Hardwir stared at the cruiser. “You want me to fix that?”

“Yes. It must be restored to its original condition exactly as it was before the blow.”

The dark-haired knight frowned, approached the cruiser, glanced through the gap and wrenched the hood up. “This is an internal combustion engine.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“This is an abomination against nature.” Hardwir let go off the mangled hood. It fell, broke off, and crashed to the ground. “I won’t do it.”

Arland’s eyes blazed. He gathered himself, somehow turning larger. “What do you mean, you won’t do it?”

“I won’t do it! I swore an engineer’s oath. I own obligations to my profession, obligations which bind me to practice my craft with integrity and to preserve the precious nature of the Universe.” Hardwir stabbed his gauntleted finger in the direction of the engine. “It poisons the environment, it’s horribly inefficient, and it runs on fossil fuels. It requires a finite, high-pollutant resource to function. What idiot would build an engine based on a finite non-renewable resource?”