The Last Inn

by Rachel Gay

  Lani watched the door shut and did not put up a fight when they ushered her out of the room and into her own. Miles claimed the key to his own room, but as Erin went downstairs she had no doubt the vampire would sit up somewhere he could keep an eye on both the tamer and the wolf.

  Entry 60: Grasping at Straws

  A thin layer of snow covered the ground when Erin looked outside the next morning, brilliantly white except for the dark trail left by the first lot of guests to check out. To her surprise, Lani was among them, and left without a single word. She did give Erin a small grin as she stepped out the door, which worried her more than anything the tamer could have done, but Erin watched her walk away amid a group of strangers until they disappeared out of sight on the road heading south.

  “Kota sleeping in today?”

  Erin turned away from the window and saw Terra walk across the room and lean against the other side of the window so that he could look out as well. “Yeah, he’s been pulling a lot of all-nighters lately, so I guess he’s earned it.”

  “Hm.” Terra’s eyes roved over the ground and he smiled. “Love snow. Makes tracking easier, if you know how to walk in it.”

  “Walk in it?”

  “So you don’t scare everything away,” Terra said, and imitated a crunching noise. “No use if the animal knows you’re coming, yeah?”

  “Guess so.” Erin watched a drift of snow slide off the roof and crash into the ground. “Don’t think this stuff will be lasting long, though. Lani left this morning.”

  “Really?”

  “Why do you look so disappointed?” Erin asked, turning on the hunter. “I thought you hated her.”

  “Oh, hate’s a bit rough, but yeah. It just would’ve been more fun, seeing the look on her face when I caught the wolf.” Terra shrugged and smiled at Erin. “I’ll just have to settle for when she got licked by the it.”

  Erin grinned a little and said, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to check on something upstairs.”

  “No problem, I was planning to step out anyways,” Terra said, absentmindedly waving Erin on as he went back to looking out. “Tamer distracted me, put me off schedule, I’ll have to make up for that.”

  Erin fled up the stairs and, after looking to make sure that no one else was around, knocked on Kota’s door before trying to open it, only to find someone had locked it. She knocked again, and was just about to turn around and get the master key when it opened and Miles peeked out. “Can I help you?”

  “What are you doing in there?” Erin asked as the vampire stepped aside and let her in. A quick look around showed the room was otherwise empty. “Is he still in the closet?”

  “Yes,” Miles said, but stopped her from opening it. “I haven’t actually checked on him yet, he’s still asleep.”

  “How do you know if he’s asleep if you haven’t checked?”

  Miles tapped his ear and said, “Different heartbeat. The girl left, yes?”

  “Yeah, this morning. I saw her leave. Is Kota okay?”

  Miles pulled her a little farther away from the closet and spoke in a lower voice. “I haven’t checked yet, but...Well, let’s say he wasn’t. Maybe we should–”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Erin said, pushing past him and yanking open the closet door.

  A groan greeted them from the bottom of the closet and Kota put a hand to his eyes as he sat up. Voi, who had been curled up in a ball on his chest, looked around and leapt off at the movement to scurry into the corner. “What time is it?”

  “You’re okay!” Erin flung her arms around the young man and pulled him up onto his feet.

  “I am?” Kota swayed and steadied himself on the doorframe. “Then why does my head hurt so much?”

  “Too much noise,” Miles said, tugging on the back of Erin’s shirt until she got the hint and let him go. Speaking louder, he added, “Good to see you again, by the way.”

  Kota groaned again and clapped his hands to his ears as he glared at the vampire. “When did you get here?”

  “Last night, same time you had your little accident.”

  “Accident?” A look of panic crossed Kota’s face. “What accident, where?”

  “Ah, so you don’t remember,” Miles said as he leaned in closer to examine Kota’s face, burning mark and all. “Tamer, flute, turning into a wolf, the savage attack?”

  “What? No, no,” Kota said, sparing a hand to stop the vampire. “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “Oh, good, because that last bit didn’t actually happen.” Miles took a look in the closet and then around the rest of the bare room. “You don’t go in much for decorating, do you? Not even a poster in your little hidey-hole. So depressing.”

  “Where is Lani?” Kota asked Erin, glancing at the door as if expecting her to come barging in at any moment.

  “She left, Miles scared her off.” Erin heard the vampire scoff behind her as he checked under the bed. “You don’t remember any of it?”

  “I think I remember music, and then...” For a fraction of a second, Kota’s eyes widened before he squeezed them shut. “No, nothing else. What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing,” Miles said as he straightened up. He spotted the red journal sitting on the nightstand and flipped it open. “Oh, someone’s been doing some reading. Anything interesting?”

  “That’s right!” Erin shouted and Kota pressed his hands even harder against his skull as she turned around. “A mer told me that Mr. Sollis was looking for something to break a curse!”

  Miles could not quite hide his surprise and he said, “Really?” without thinking. At Erin’s expression, he cleared his throat and said, “I mean, I can’t believe you found a mer. Not very talkative people when it’s cold out. Tell me more about this curse.”

  Erin hesitated. “Well, the mer just called it a ‘chain’ or something, and said Sollis was looking for the key to breaking it.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “I tried asking how to find it,” Erin said, trying hard not to look at Kota right now. “But the mer acted like I should already know.”

  Miles looked over her shoulder at Kota, staring hard at him as if looking for something before he went back to the journal. “The mer knew you had this, right? Did the old man say anything useful in here, any maps, anything?”

  “No, just a lot of gossip about guests,” Kota said behind her.

  The vampire frowned and flipped through the pages so fast that Erin did not think he could have seen any of it, but he stopped and turned over the last couple before holding the book up so they could see the drawing of a sun and moon, interlocked.

  “You said you had seen this before, right?” Miles said, looking now at Erin.

  “Yeah, I told you, it’s the town emblem.” Erin sighed as she felt her hope draining away. “There’s a couple of them around, at the bridge and the clock tower. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Miles glanced at Kota and Erin again, and to her it sounded as if he were grasping at straws when he smiled and said, “Who wants to go into town today?”

  Entry 61: The Clock Tower

  Erin took her time returning to the inn with her brother, Art. She figured Kota would try to worm his way out of going into town, and it was nice to talk to Art for longer than a few minutes. They vented to each other, her about the guests at the inn and him about the shop. He surprised her when, as they passed the patrol going the other way, he said, “I wish I could work in the inn like you.”

  “You haven’t been listening to me at all, have you?” she asked. She had literally just finished talking about how one of the guests from last night left his room completely trashed and somehow managed to stop up both the toilet and the shower. “Come on, working for Mr. Beyar can’t be that bad.”

  Art snorted but didn’t answer, and walked the rest of the way with his head bowed and his forehead scrunched up like he always did when he was thinking about something. Erin knew better than to bother him when he was in this sort of mood, and ho
ped he would be alright by himself when Kota and Miles surprised her by appearing at the door just as they walked up.

  “About time,” Miles said. He looked up at the sky, which was dark and overcast. “Do you really think someone is going to come while we’re gone?”

  “They might, if they want to stop before the snow starts again,” Art said, looking up at the sky too. “Icy roads are bad for horses and wagons.”

  Erin barely had enough time to give him directions on what to do before Miles started to walk away, forcing her and Kota to follow along or be left behind.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Erin asked Kota as they started to pass the outlying homes.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said, but he looked surprisingly like Art as he studied the ground while they walked.

  Miles stopped on the bridge and nearly fell into the water trying to look over the side of the railing. “Ah, there’s one. You said there’s another at the clock tower?”

  “Yes,” Erin said as she stopped next to him and peered down at the engraving of the sun crossed with the moon. She saw that Kota was at the foot of the bridge, looking at something else and probably out of earshot, so she took the chance to ask, “Do you really think there’s something there, or are you just guessing?”

  “Bit of both.” Miles shrugged at her expression and smiled. “What do we have to lose, eh?”

  Needless to say, that did not fill Erin with much hope as they trekked to the center of town. She did notice that people stared as they went, but mostly at Miles, and she thought that at least he had been right about one thing. Most of the town patrol and more than a few others had become regulars at the inn, if only for the food, and one or two even smiled and waved at Kota as they passed. It certainly wasn’t the reception he would have received if they even remotely thought he could be the same person they chased through the streets over a month ago.

  They stopped again in the town circle, and all three looked up at the tall clock tower that rose up over the rest of the buildings. Miles scanned the tower, and Erin helped him out by pointing at the face of the clock. “Just beneath it, see?”

  “Good eyes,” Miles remarked, and beside him Kota nodded.

  “Everyone knows it’s there, we used to look for it when we were kids.”

  “There’s a door down there.” Kota gestured toward the base of the tower, where flowers and bushes dotted the circle of green around it. “Is it possible to go up?”

  “Oh, good, you’ve decided to participate,” Miles said dryly and Kota glared at him.

  “I...don’t know,” Erin admitted. “I don’t think I ever seen anyone go in there.”

  She looked around, but no one was paying them much attention at the moment. “I do know one way to find out, though.”

  She set off across the street and through the green up to the door. Erin tried the handle but was not surprised when she found it locked.

  “Perhaps a key–” Miles started, before Erin slid a piece of metal out of her pocket and, after a little fiddling with the lock, it clicked open. “Or that. That works.”

  “Your father taught you how to do that too?” Kota asked as the door creaked open, releasing a wave of dust and the smell of old, old wood and grease.

  “No, Marcus did.” Erin hesitated at the door, but when she spoke it was to say, “Don’t tell Dad, got it?”

  “Oh, I’m blaming you for everything if we get caught,” Miles said as he brushed past her into the dark. After a moment or so, a light went up and he returned with an old-fashioned torch which he used to light the one in the stand by the door. “Got to love a good fire hazard.”

  Erin and Kota went in, and Kota looked around before closing the door behind them. “I don’t think anyone noticed, so maybe they won’t mind if we look around.”

  The firelight cast shadows on the large round room, catching the edges of the stairs that circled up the tower to the upper floors where a steady, grinding noise was coming from. A few narrow slits along the stairs would have provided some light if not for the gloom outside, but even the brightest of days would have a hard time illuminating this place.

  “Not much to see,” Miles admitted as he paced the flagstone floor, occasionally stopping to nudge the debris on the ground with his foot. “Old parts no one bothered to throw away, trash, and dirt.”

  “Who takes care of the clock?”

  Erin glanced at Kota, whose head was tilted all the way back as he stared up at the ceiling. “What do you mean?”

  “A clock this big doesn’t just run by itself,” he said as he started for the stairs. “It has to be wound, right?”

  Miles turned to see both Erin and Kota going up the stairs, their eyes trained on the ceiling, and followed suit. His light soon lost the ground as they climbed higher and higher, but as they went through the next floor it glanced off the bottom of a swinging pendulum, which they saw in full on the next floor up, connected to a box that, by the sound of it, hid a mass of mechanisms that turned the hands on the clock face.

  “Well, it’s not exact, but then these things never are,” Miles remarked as he checked the box on his wrist. “Someone must check on it every now and then.”

  Erin wasn’t so sure, and she glanced over at Kota to see what he thought. His head was craned all the way back to stare at the gleaming bells that hung between the wide openings in the walls, and she looked up to see what had captured his attention.

  Miles turned when he heard Kota say, in an off-hand voice, “Well, someone’s taken up residence, but I don’t think Arlo’s here to keep time.

  Entry 62: One Drop

  In the rafters above the bells, a flame glimmered and Arlo shook his head before peering down at Erin, Kota, and Miles. The phoenix gave a short, low call before shaking out its wings with a rustle of embers and gliding down to the floor below. All three backed up, but the phoenix simply landed on the box that contained the clock’s mechanisms and stared at them with first one eye and then another.

  “Arlo?” Miles asked out of the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off of the bird.

  “That’s what Lani called him,” Erin said. “I guess she really did lose control of him.”

  Arlo gave a chirruping sound and tilted his head at an angle that hurt Erin’s neck to look at, and beside her Kota tilted his head and stared back.

  “Good place for him,” Kota said after a moment or so. “High place, mostly stone, and apparently no one comes around very often. It’s not like phoenixes are normally aggressive.”

  “Just when someone’s playing the ‘make you go mad’ song,” Erin said, remembering Arlo swooping down at the wolf.

  At the words, Arlo shifted his weight and took off again, flying around the bells just as the hour hand moved and they began to ring out, peal after peal that had the people down below clapping their hands over their ears. Miles made some kind of gesture and tried to shout over the noise, but he might as well have not bothered. Amid the ringing, Erin thought she could just make out another sound: the phoenix, singing along, but by the time the bells stopped the bird had fallen silent.

  She could see Miles’s mouth moving, but Erin just shook her head and hoped the ringing in her ears would also stop. The vampire looked up at the phoenix, but Arlo settled back onto his perch in the sure knowledge that they could not reach him even if they wanted to do so.

  “Well, I doubt the last innkeeper was looking for a phoenix,” Miles said once he figured they could hear him again. He walked around the room, careful to avoid the hole in the floor that allowed the pendulum and weights to pass through, and stopped by the clock face to look out at the town below.

  “There’s nothing else here,” Erin murmured, but she was looking at Kota and wondering how he would take this disappointment. Sollis’s journal was all that they had to go on, and so far everything had been one dead end after another.

  If he was disappointed, Kota was doing a good of hiding it. His eyes narrowed and he went to the box that hid the mec
hanism for the clock. At least, that’s what Erin thought should have been inside, but when he opened it there was nothing of the sort.

  All of the cables and wires ran in a loop around a spool that slowly turned at the top of the box. Erin had no idea how the spool itself turned, but there were scrawling symbols drawn all over it. Beneath the spool there was another image of the sun and the moon carved into the wood and the rest of the box was bare.

  “Huh,” Miles said as he leaned over Erin’s shoulder to look. “So I’m guessing your dad, Mr. ‘Magic follows magic’ doesn’t know about this.”

  Erin edged away from him. “What is that?”

  “Some sort of spell,” Miles said as he used the now vacant space beside Kota to lean in for a closer look at the symbols. He sniffed and looked down at the bottom of the box. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, looks like something else used to be here,” Kota said, bending down.

  “How can you tell?”

  Kota pointed at a dark spot on the bottom of the case, near the front. “See this spot? It’s cut off, where it splashed against something. Blood?”

  “Yes,” Miles said. “Human, if you’re curious.”

  “So someone took...something out of here, and they were bleeding,” Erin said, and wished she hadn’t. “I guess you can’t tell whose it is?”

  Miles glanced at her and she shrugged.

  “No, I can’t. It’s old blood, been here for around a year if I had to guess. So we can’t blame the bird.” Miles looked up when Arlo made an irritated noise and shuffled his feathers, causing embers to come swirling down. “Oh, it was a joke, get over it.”

  “Do you think it was the key?” Erin asked, looking at Kota, but he was staring at the carving of the sun and moon as if trying to figure it out.

  Miles put a hand over his mouth and thought for a moment, his eyes shifting from the box to the other two occasionally. Finally, he reached a decision and said, “Maybe. I think I can justify using the combox on this. The wizards back at the capital might be able to tell me something about this spell here, maybe even who made it.”

  “They can do that?” Kota asked, snapping out of whatever thought was currently occupying him.