Owl and the Japanese Circus

by Kristi Charish

  Byzantine. Please call me when you get this.

  This last one was followed by a phone number. I looked at it, trying to decide whether I wanted to break my World Quest tradition.

  What the hell. Everything else had gone out the window lately. I dialed.

  “Yeah, who is this?” The male voice that answered was familiar but lower than the one that came over the mic—lower than I’d expected for a computer geek—and slow, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. Shit, I probably should have checked the time zone.

  “Hi, Carpe. Wow, so you’re actually a guy. What’s up?”

  “Byzantine? Is that you?” The groggy tone vanished. His voice was hesitant; I’d say scared if there hadn’t been a confidence behind it. Wary might be the best description.

  “Yeah. Listen, I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time. Your message just said call.”

  “It’s fine, I’m up.” A pause. “Your voice is different than I expected.”

  Hmmm, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. “Look, Carpe, I just wanted to give you a shout and let you know I was OK—your message sounded worried . . . and you said something about my account . . .”

  “Please don’t get me wrong. I just expected the voice of Owl the antiquities thief to be more . . . refined.”

  I went cold. OK, calling strangers you meet over the internet is in fact a bad idea. “Nice talking to you. Bye.” And I hung up. And blocked his email address. I was about to block him on my World Quest chat, when my phone rang. Same area code, different number. I ignored it and fired off a chat message. Leave me alone.

  The phone in Nadya’s office rang next.

  “Don’t answer it, Nadya,” I yelled.

  “Yes, one moment,” I heard Nadya say.

  Too late.

  Nadya stuck her head out of the office, confused, phone in hand. She passed it to me, frowning. “It’s for you.”

  I jumped off my barstool and grabbed it. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want—”

  “Relax, will you. I’ve been watching your account since after you disappeared. I thought you would want to know about some strange worms being dropped in. I chased them down, but they were pretty high-tech—not cheap. When you didn’t get back to me, I did some searching. You cover your tracks pretty well. Tell your guy he needs to cover manually scanned reports and images better than he has.”

  Shit.

  Carpe laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about it—it took me a while to put together a search program. Not just anyone could do it.”

  I didn’t say anything. I really wanted this situation to go away.

  “Look, Byz, I didn’t mean to scare the shit out of you. I’ll do the fix myself, for free this time—”

  “Why?”

  He paused. “I know we haven’t met in person, but I consider you a friend. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Who are you? Really?”

  He hung up.

  “Son of a bitch.” I was getting sick and tired of people hanging up on me. I handed Nadya the phone. “I’ll explain in a sec.”

  An encrypted message from Carpe appeared in my inbox. How much did I trust him, really? I thought back to all the hours we’d spent dungeon crawling and writing messages back and forth. I opened it. A picture of a comic book with the name “Sojourn” written across the top appeared on my screen, then vanished, along with the email.

  I closed my laptop. Holy shit. My campaign buddy was a hacker. Sojurn—a famous one.

  “I can’t make normal friends,” I told Nadya. “I am not physically or mentally capable of connecting with people who aren’t as fucked up as I am.” Then I filled her in on Carpe.

  Speaking of connecting with people of a pathological nature, I called Rynn next. For someone who was supposed to be my convenient friend, he’d certainly injected himself into my day-to-day life as of late.

  He answered on the fifth ring. “Whore of the Orient. How can I be of service?” he said, sounding like he was still in bed. I wiped that thought from my head fast.

  “Knock it off. I was wrong, I was mean, and I don’t want to fight about this anymore.”

  “And I said don’t apologize again unless you’re sincere. What did you wake me up for?”

  At least he got to sleep. I was still on awake duty for the next twelve hours, damned concussions. I filled him in as quickly as I could about what Alexander had told me about Sabine.

  “Do you think he’ll stay out of things?” Rynn asked when I was done.

  “Well, he’s a vampire. And he would prefer me dead. Normally I’d say he’d help Sabine out of principle, but this time Alexander has a hell of a lot on the line.”

  He sighed. “All right. Come by my place as soon as you can—”

  “No, I’ll meet you at the club early tonight. Nadya and I are going to go corner Nuroshi first.”

  “No. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’ve thought about it, and it’s not.”

  “I’ll call Lady Siyu,” Rynn threatened.

  I bit my tongue, took a deep breath. “It’s the middle of the day. Alexander said Sabine was older than three hundred, which means she can’t go outside. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch Nuroshi in his office. And even if she’s there, she’ll have to be asleep in a box or closet.”

  Rynn paused, probably to calculate the likelihood I’d run into trouble. “All right. I’ve got some business I need to attend to before tonight’s shift, and if Nadya’s with you, at least she has some common sense. Call if anything changes, and take your damn cat leash.”

  “Hear that, Captain?” I said, and brought out the leash for him to crawl into.

  “Be careful and keep your phone on,” Rynn said before hanging up.

  Nadya locked the laptops in the office while I grabbed my bag and Captain’s carrier. Thankfully Nadya had brought my student outfit from her apartment. I changed and ducked into the washroom and fastened my rat’s nest into a loose ponytail. I would have left it at that, but I decided to add some bronzer and light makeup. Bali had left me paler than I was comfortable with. I did one last check. Yup. Trendy and forgettable.

  Nadya ditched the cocktail dress and high heels for flat boots and jeans. A strawberry-blonde wig had replaced her neon red bob, but her signature red lipstick was nonnegotiable.

  She was waiting by the door. “You haven’t said anything about Benji.”

  I shrugged my jacket on and grabbed my backpack. I handed Nadya Captain in his carrier. “What is there to say?”

  “Alix,” she said in a warning tone.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll get what’s coming to him, he’s just low on the list of priorities right now. Besides, I doubt he’s heard back from his buddy Red yet. I like the idea of him sweating it out for a while before I say hi.” I held the door open for her. “Come on, time to skin a turnip.”

  The university was a quick half-hour trip by subway from Harajuku to Nezu. It was Sunday, so Harajuku Station was packed, and neither of us fit in with the weekend cosplayers. The university itself wasn’t deserted, but it was mostly students studying on their weekend. Except for the expected glances foreigners always merit, it was less pronounced once we reached campus.

  How did I know Nuroshi would be at the university on a Sunday afternoon? Simple. Nuroshi was a thief, like me. More importantly though, he was a lazy thief that didn’t like to take chances. His main source of income was the university archives. If I was him, I’d be living there on weekends. Doubly so since it was more secure than his home. I’d want to be somewhere with good security if I had a crazy, sadistic vampire breathing down my throat.

  We entered the archaeology museum and headed for the upper floors. There weren’t any guards, as the building was completely key card–controlled, which in my mind translates to, Please, take a look around and help yourself. You’d think it’d be harder than that, but key cards from one university tend to be interchangeable with other university buildings. Has to do with lack of funding . . . and
the fact that people usually aren’t trying to break into university archaeology buildings—drug development, OK sure, but not archaeology.

  We headed up to the third floor; Nuroshi’s office was next to the washrooms. Even his colleagues didn’t have much respect for the slimy old rat.

  As we got closer, I realized that Nuroshi’s door was ajar. “Damn it,” I said, and sped up, expecting the worst.

  His office was piled with boxes, no shipping addresses. A white folder was open on the empty desk. I flipped through it as Nadya booted up the computer—the one item that wasn’t packed up.

  The first page I looked at was an official archives catalogue, printed and left for his supervisors. I imagined it was a hell of a lot lighter than a day or two ago, though no one would be able to prove it.

  “Nothing on here. He’s gone ahead and wiped the hard drive,” Nadya said.

  Smart. Even if they suspected he’d lightened the museum of a few items, Nuroshi would have disappeared by the time they’d checked the original paper files, provided he hadn’t shredded them.

  I dropped the folder and headed for the elevator, but Nadya grabbed my arm and pointed to the stairwell. “The museum archive has a bell that sounds whenever someone enters. We’ll take the stairs.”

  The archives were in the lower basement, five floors down. I think they put them there because they were able to make it earthquake proof, far safer for a sealed airtight room filled with expensive scrolls and fabrics. I’d never been down there. In general I don’t like B&E’s (breaking and entering)—I prefer dig sites; there are more exits and opportunities to improvise if things go wrong. Museums remind me of dungeons, and every time I’m tempted to sneak in, I get this image of crawling through a smelly ventilation shaft or sewer. Perfect place for Nuroshi though. Somehow I didn’t think either of those options bothered him.

  We reached the bottom of the stairwell and very carefully—and quietly—opened the door. I cringed the whole way, expecting it to squeak any minute and give us away. It didn’t though, and we entered a short, floor-lit hall, no more than ten feet long: the archive’s back entrance. Just wished it didn’t look so damn much like a dungeon. The end of the hall took a ninety-degree turn—good in that no one inside could see up, bad in that we couldn’t see them either.

  I could hear shuffling nearby, like someone was moving boxes around and crumpling packing paper. Something metal clanged and rolled across the floor. Nuroshi swore.

  “Bingo,” I whispered to Nadya.

  We reached the end of the hall, and I peeked around the corner. Nuroshi was standing on a chair, bent over a large box, packing the metal plates of a samurai suit. The helmet was what had rolled across the floor. Five more similarly sized boxes were scattered around the room. The turnip was sweating through his shirt, clammier-looking than usual. I peeked at Captain. No noise, no agitation. “We’re clean for vampires,” I whispered to Nadya.

  Nuroshi didn’t realize I was there until I tapped him on the shoulder. The old man screamed and spun, falling off the chair and into the box.

  “How convenient,” Nadya said, leaning over the half-packed crate. “Look, Owl, we’ve caught a large rat. One who sells out clients to vampires.”

  His face turned a deep shade of purple I wouldn’t have thought him capable of. “You! Get me out of here now.”

  “Ummm, no? You tell me why you sold me out to a vampire. Then maybe I’ll help you out and let you finish stealing from the archives.”

  “You stupid, stupid girl, I haven’t got much time left, she’ll be coming—”

  “All the more reason for you to tell me what she offered you. A cut of the artifact I’m after? Money? I’ll believe either one, I’m just curious.”

  He spit and missed. It fell back and hit him on the face. “I’m in enough trouble as it is. I won’t have anything more to do with you.”

  Nadya sighed. “Nuroshi, come on. We don’t have all day, and you clearly don’t have all day, so why don’t you tell us what we want to know and you can go back to stealing?”

  He said something in Russian. I didn’t get all of it, but I’m pretty sure I heard the word for “whore” in there somewhere.

  Nadya shrugged and looked at her nails, and when he finally finished, she said, “Well, have it your way. What we’re really here for is to recoup our costs . . .” She strode over to the nearest packed box and tapped the lid. “How does this one look to you, Owl?”

  I whistled. “I don’t know, better open it and rifle around first.”

  Nuroshi swore and scrambled amongst the armor in the box.

  “Get your filthy hands away from those, thieves.”

  Talk about the kettle calling the pot black . . . or whatever that saying is.

  I laughed and pushed him back in. “No, you had your chance.” I opened up a second box and pulled out a vase. “Hey, Nadya, what do you think this will get me?”

  She glanced up at it. “Twenty thousand if it’s first century, ten thousand if it’s more recent.”

  “Better take both,” I said, and pulled a second one out.

  “Oooooh, matching set, I have a buyer,” Nadya said, and held up a sealed scroll tube. “What do you think?”

  “Hard to say, better open it up.”

  Nuroshi managed to scramble out this time. His jaw dropped when he saw the two vases I was holding. Add to that the scroll Nadya had found, and I think we just about gave him a heart attack.

  “Harpies, give that back!” He launched at Nadya first, and she tripped him. He rolled on his back and I pinned him down with a chair. I held both vases in my hand.

  “Now, answer our questions and we’ll leave.” I tossed up the vases and caught them as Nuroshi made a guttural noise. “I can do this all day, and I’m sure I can find more. Have fun cleaning up our mess and getting out in time.”

  “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with—”

  “Try me,” I said.

  Nuroshi swore. “The woman vampire came and found me shortly after you did. She said she needed information. I told her what I told you.”

  “You mean you fed her the same lie you fed us?”

  He swore and spat at my feet. “I didn’t lie. You only asked about one tablet. I was deciding which one to send you to when she arrived.”

  “What happened?”

  “She already knew there were two, and suffice it to say that she was not happy with me. She ‘requested’ the files and translations.”

  “So you handed them over?”

  Nuroshi shook his head but didn’t say anything. I pressed. “Come on, spit it out.”

  “Let an old man up!”

  “No. I can’t trust you.”

  He said something in Japanese I didn’t understand—probably wasn’t very nice. “She took the computer with my files, but once she opens them she will not be happy. I couldn’t translate them. A translation key for the language used does not exist. Why do you think I was planning to send you after them? On the off chance you might stumble over something I could work with to translate the two I already had. I didn’t give you the site right there and then because I had to review my notes and determine which gave you the best chance. Be glad I did, or that crazy vampire would have found you sooner.”

  I rocked back on my feet. That . . . made sense. It was exactly the kind of below-board stuff I expected from him.

  “So . . . why the hell are you running? I would have brought the tablets back here if you hadn’t sent a vampire after me. The least you could have done was send a warning.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “What? That you got beaten up by a vampire? Join the club. This is overkill—”

  “Too late, she’s already killing everyone who knows about the site. When the police showed up this morning, both Shinobi and Aeto were found dead in their apartments, their room sacked. The police say it was a robbery, but only the computers were missing. Now get off me and let me finish running before she comes back a
nd finishes me off as well.”

  I got up. Shit. More bodies.

  I looked at Nadya and she nodded, looking less confident than a moment ago. I stashed the vases in my backpack, and Nadya stuffed the scroll in her jacket.

  “I told you what you wanted, give those back—”

  I waved with my free hand over my shoulder. “Good-bye, Nuroshi. Good luck.”

  “Nice doing business with you. Don’t call,” Nadya said.

  And we headed for the stairs.

  Nuroshi swore after us, but the swearing turned to a gurgled cough. Captain hissed.

  Both Nadya and I turned around to see Nuroshi a foot off the ground, clasping the head of a spear now sticking out of his neck, surprise on his face. Behind him stood a tall woman in a black hooded jacket and expensive shoes. Her face was obscured by the hood.

  Sabine; it had to be.

  “Run,” I said to Nadya. The two of us bolted down the hallway, Nadya’s longer legs putting her ahead. Captain was hissing up a storm, but it wasn’t until he gave a death wail that I realized she was right behind me. She had me by the hair and pulled me back. I screamed and tore at her hands. She laughed and spun me around to face her.

  At first I couldn’t say anything; it’s not every day you see a ghost from your past. “No, you’re dead . . .”

  The woman pushed back the hood. No, there was no doubt about it. Marie, an old associate of mine—a dead associate, by all accounts—was here, in front of me . . . and had just speared Nuroshi.

  She smiled, exposing the telltale hints of fang. “Hello, Owl. So nice to see you. It’s been a very long time, too long, I think.”

  I swallowed. “You’ve—you’ve been busy, Marie.”

  “Alix!” Nadya yelled, then covered her mouth with her sleeve while she fished in her pocket for her gas mask.

  The scent of rotting lily of the valley washed over me, and I followed suit. Shit. Marie was a vampire. Even though I was seeing it with my own eyes, I barely believed it. How?

  “Alix, watch out!”

  My fingers worked the straps on my mask, but I wasn’t quick enough. Marie moved fast, faster than I’d seen Alexander move, and he was two hundred years old, at least. She lifted me off the ground—what the hell was it with vampires grabbing me by the throat and picking me up lately?