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CHAPTER TWELVE

I’D ONLY BEEN RUNNING THE hotel since January—just over three months—but even in that short period of time, I’d stopped dropping my jaw every time I saw someone whose appearance was a little different from the average human. Wim’s flecked brown flesh looked quite normal to me, now.

Yet I found myself coming to a halt in the middle of the foyer, while I absorbed the appearance of our newest guest.

He was at least seven feet tall and built like a concrete dam. In Hollywood, tall people got lots of work in strange roles that needed someone their height, but most of them were no stouter than those of us less gifted in the height department. Peter Mayhew, who had played Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies, had been seven foot three, but painfully thin. I had been careful when I shook his hand.

My guest, though, was the opposite. His shoulders were massive . Even for his height, they were disproportionately large. I wondered if he had to turn sideways to walk through doorways. He was standing with his back to the closed front door as if he had stepped just inside the door then halted. I couldn’t see the edges of the door from where I stood, dumbstruck. His shoulders hid them.

And that was not the only strange thing about him. His skin was blue—the shade of the sky just before the sunset hides it—and from where I stood, it looked as though it might be thick enough to turn a blade, like cured leather. His ears leaned back, forming long points. Between them, his hair was a coarse black, raked backward from an exaggerated widow’s peak, over a flat, deep forehead. His eyes were orange, and I wasn’t certain, but I thought they might be glowing. His nose was a squashed triangle with creases on either side running down to the point. He had a wide mouth. Inhumanly wide, with lips so narrow they were barely there at all. They were pressed together in an unhappy bow, right now.

He was wearing heavy pants and a cotton button-up shirt. The pants were held up with an ordinary leather belt. His boots were enormous. The normal human clothing looked incongruous on him, and I wondered for a moment where he had found them. The size alone would increase his difficulty of finding clothes.

The shirt would make curtains for a small window—a lot of fabric laid over the big shoulders and a chest that matched the shoulders in size.

I was not even remotely petite, but I felt small and weak, looking at him. He was staring back at me. And yes, the orange eyes were glowing. I shivered.

Then he spoke. “I. Orrin Stonebrunch.” His voice was low and graveled, like rocks tumbling together.

I found my voice. “Can I help you?”

He nodded. Once. It was a slow, deliberate acknowledgement. “A room,” he intoned.

Hirom was right. We didn’t have a bed this man would fit into. But then…neither would anyone else.

A flutter of worry curled in my upper chest. How could I tell this…person to go elsewhere? There was nowhere else. Not for miles. And he wasn’t human. He couldn’t rent a room at the nearest Super 8.

I didn’t want to know what he might say if I refused.

“Give him a room,” Harper said, from just behind me.

I jumped a little. I hadn’t noticed her. She did move silently.

“Get him upstairs.” Her tone was urgent. “Before King’s people spot him.”

“Right.” I headed for the sideboard.

“Screw the register,” Harper said. “Give him a key and get him out of here.”

“But…he has to pay.” My nascent business sense was appalled. Give a room to someone when we were going to be overrun with paying guests?

“I pay,” Orrin Stonebrunch declared. He reached into his pants pocket.

I looked at Harper and raised my brow.

“Take it, and get him out of here,” Harper said firmly. “Give me the keys. I’ll get the room key. You take his money.”

That meant getting closer to him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. But Harper was right. Orrin Stonebrunch did not look human. We couldn’t let Axel King and his agents see him. And turning him away, so he could walk past the windows where everyone could see him was a bad idea. Getting him upstairs and tucked away in a room with a closed door was safer.

I gave Harper the key to the key drawer and made myself move over to Stonebrunch as he withdrew…not his wallet. He held out a bunch of weeds that had been cut like flowers. Their stems were bunched together and tied with twine.

“Oh…” I said inadequately and took the weeds. They were parched and limp.

Harper thrust one of the room keys at Stonebrunch. “Here. Room seven.” That was at the other end of the hall from the four rooms King had rented.

Stonebrunch took the key between thumb and massive forefinger and looked at the stairs. I wasn’t sure if I imagined his sigh. I suppose someone with his boot size would find the normal depth of steps an inadequate perch.

“I’ll keep the feds’ attention away from the foyer so he can get up the stairs. Wait thirty seconds.” Harper whirled and strode back into the dining room.

I looked at Stonebrunch. “There are humans in there.” I wasn’t sure he would understand.

But he nodded again. The same single movement of his head. “I wait.”

After thirty seconds, I stepped aside. “Please. Up the stairs and to the right.”

Stonebrunch strolled over to the stairs. If I wanted to keep up with his stroll, I would have to run to do it. He took the steps four at a time, the toe of each big boot pushing up against the back of the step.

The stairs groaned. It was well beyond the quiet creak they normally gave out.

He turned on the landing and I tracked his progress up the other half of the stairs by each mournful groan of stressed wood.

“What’s happening, Anna?” Broch said, startling me for the second time in a few minutes. He moved as silently as Harper.

I drew in a calming breath. “We have a new guest.”

“Harper gave me a sign to come and help,” Broch said.

“Me, too,” Trevalyan said as he moved up beside Broch. “What’s going on?”

“Describe the guest,” Broch told me.

“He paid with weeds.” I rolled my eyes and held out the wilted plants.

“They’re…not weeds.” Trevalyan plucked them from my hands and turned them around, examining them. “Damn…I think this is vervain. And, yes, that’s henbane. And, damn, that’s datur.” He looked at me. “Do you know how hard it is to find these?”

I shook my head. The names were vaguely familiar to me. I thought of Trevalyan’s kitchen shelves, which were stuffed full of tiny jars holding esoteric ingredients for spells and hexes. “I believe you. Why don’t you keep them?”

He looked pleased.

Behind the two of them, all the other diners streamed out of the dining room. The guests went up to their rooms. The locals brushed past us, heading for either the bar or the door. King and his people were missing.

“The guest?” Broch said in an undertone.

I described Orrin Stonebrunch to them.

Trevalyan and Broch exchanged glances.

“What is he?” I prompted them.

“There hasn’t been any for nearly a hundred years…” Trevalyan’s tone was full of doubt.

“You’re falling for the presumption of continuity,” Broch shot back. “Anna saw what she saw.”

“ What did I see?” I whispered furiously. “He scared the hell out of me just standing there.”

“That was your instincts correctly telling you to be wary,” Broch said. “Stonebrunch is a Firbolg.”

“Firbolgs are dangerous?”

Trevalyan made a harsh sound in his throat. “ Humans are dangerous. We kill off the competition with a ruthless disregard that appalls every other species.” He nudged Broch in the side with his sharp elbow. “Your kind were on the hunters’ list for centuries. You didn’t get there because you’re cute.”

Broch didn’t quite roll his eyes, but I could tell he wanted to.

Trevalyan’s eyes widened. “I wonder how long he was waiting by the door…?”

“Does it matter?” Broch asked.

“I’m thinking about the last of the eggs suddenly tasting sour.” Trevalyan’s mouth turned down more than usual.

“Firbolgs can do that?” Would I have to check every single item of food while he was a guest?

Broch said patiently, “Firbolgs are known to wipe whole villages out of existence. If you rouse them and make them angry or give them reason to think you’re their enemy, they won’t settle for killing just you. They will wipe out all traces of you and yours, and the people you live among.”

Even Trevalyan looked uneasy. I was glad I hadn’t told Stonebrunch he couldn’t have a room.

Broch frowned. “They don’t normally live inside.”

“This one does,” Trevalyan said.

“Yes, but why?”

“Because of Beltane, I assume,” I said.

“He could stay in the woods just as easily,” Broch said pedantically. “By now there will be others out there. He won’t be alone.” He looked at me. “You must tell him he has to leave.”

I shuddered. “Nope. I am not pissing Stonebrunch off. Nuh-uh.”

●

I stood in front of room seven’s door, my heart beating hard enough to make my chest and my head ache.

Broch had made it perfectly clear. “He can’t be seen by King and his agents. Period. It would be safer for all of us if he wasn’t here.”

“He paid for his room,” I hissed, keeping my voice down.

“Here,” Trevalyan said, thrusting the herbs at me. “Give them back, if it helps. You have to get him out of here.”

Now I stood with the herbs hanging from my hand, trying to wind myself up to eject a guest who could probably hammer me through the floor with one fist if he objected.

I didn’t disagree with Broch. It was critical that the ignorant humans in the hotel didn’t spot him. And I was already scrambling to put together meals for more than double the number of people I had bought groceries for. If having Stonebrunch in the hotel would make what food I did have inedible, then I was more than happy for him to be somewhere else, too.

That gave me the courage to lift my hand and knock on the door.

I could hear Stonebrunch walk to the door. The floorboards gave the same mortal groan that the stairs had done.

He opened the door and bent a little to peer at me. He didn’t speak.

I took in the angry orange eyes. The back of my neck prickled painfully. “Hi,” I made myself say. “Listen. This is…well, I have a tricky situation here in the hotel. You couldn’t have known about it. But the thing is, we have humans as guests here. Federal agents. They’re actively investigating…well, another matter. But if they saw you…”

I watched his face for signs of comprehension, but his expression didn’t shift. He didn’t blink. Could he blink?

It seemed I hadn’t made myself plain enough. “That bed—” I pointed to the bed behind him. The cover had been rumpled, probably from him sitting on it. “It’s not nearly long enough for you. And I don’t have anything longer. Bed manufacturers don’t cater for people like you. They don’t know about you, to start with.”

I made myself stop babbling. “I’m wondering if you wouldn’t find it more comfortable out in the woods. You could stretch out there, and be yourself, with no need to sneak around. You could relax. And it’s lovely and warm now, too. All the new growth is coming in.”

He didn’t move. Not an inch.

I leaned in. “You do not want the FBI to know about you, Orrin. Trust me. They will lock you up in a basement somewhere and you’ll spend the rest of your life being tested and probed and measured and answering a million questions.” And I held the herbs out to him.

Stonebrunch reacted. He nodded. “I fix.”

He closed the door, leaving me with my hand out, the drooping herbs hanging over my fingers.

My jumpy, slightly hysterical brain screamed questions at me. What did fixing it mean? Was he going to magic the agents away? I had stupidly implied that King and his people were natural enemies. Would Stonebrunch make Haigton disappear to be rid of them?

I had made things much worse.