Smiling, he got out, glancing up at the first stars, almost unseen behind the town’s lights. Stiff from the long ride, I followed him into the tiny office. It was empty but for an astounding display of knickknacks and pamphlets. Hands out, Jenks headed for the shelves of miniatures like a starving man, his pixy curiosity and need to touch making the display irresistible. The door shut behind us, and seeing him lost in the throes of pixy bliss, I punched him in the arm.

“Ow!” he exclaimed, holding it and giving me an injured look. “What was that for?”

“You know why,” I said dryly, finding a smile as I turned to the casually dressed woman who came in from a back room through an open archway. I could hear a TV in the background, and smell someone’s lunch. Or dinner, rather, seeing as she was human.

She blinked as she took us in. “Can I help you?” she asked, becoming hesitant when she realized we were Inderlanders. Mackinaw was a tourist town, and probably not big enough to draw a huge resident Inderland crowd.

“Yes, a room for two, please,” I said, reaching for the registration card and pen. A frown came over me at the form. Well, we could go under my name, I thought, writing Ms. Rachel Morgan in my big loopy script. The clicks of the ceramic and pewter figurines being picked up and set down were audible, and the woman behind the counter winced, watching him over my shoulder. “Jenks, could you get the plate number for me?” I asked, and he slipped out, the seashell door chime clunking roughly.

“That will be two twenty,” she said stiffly.

Great, I thought. Cheap, cheap, cheap. You gotta love small towns in the off-season. “We’re only staying the night, not the week,” I said, putting down the church’s address.

“That is the nightly rate,” she said, her voice tartly smug.

My head came up. “Two hundred twenty dollars? It’s the off-season,” I said, and she shrugged. Shocked, I thought for a moment. “Can I get a discount for Were Insurance?”

Her eyes were mocking. “We only offer discounts for AAA.”

My lips pressed together and I went warm. Slowly I curled my hand up and brought it below the level of the high partition, hiding my bandaged knuckles. Crap, crap, crap. You gotta love those small-town mentalities. She had upped the rates for us, hoping we’d go somewhere else.

“Cash,” she added smugly. “We don’t take plastic or personal checks.”

The chipped sign behind her said they did, but I wasn’t going to walk out of there. I had my pride, and money was nothing compared to that. “Do you have one with a kitchen?” I asked, shaking inside. Two hundred and twenty dollars would really take a chunk out of my cash.

“That will be thirty extra,” she said.