The Thief

by Aine Crabtree

  Her blood flushed in anger and she struck out, lightning quick. Her fist connected with his jaw and he reeled. Before he could recover she landed a kick to his back that collided him against a pillar. He dropped to avoid a second and caught her leg, swinging her against the pillar instead. Winded, she angled back, in a defensive sideways stance.

  The dizziness was overwhelming her. The dark, spiky image of Hyde in front of her blurred. She stumbled, and that was all the opening Hyde needed. He swept a kick that knocked her into a table, and she slid to the floor, groaning. Pain flared through her midsection.

  Hyde approached, standing over her with a grin. He pressed a foot down on her chest.

  “Still don’t want to tell me where the sword is?” he asked, eyes bright.

  Her breath became belabored as the bracer pinched tighter. “Go...to hell...” she said.

  Hyde’s heel ground into her sternum. Blearily, she saw a shape rise up behind him.

  Crash! Hyde stumbled disoriented. Jul stood holding the remnants of a broken jar. Camille curled up on her side, coughing.

  Hyde cursed, shaking bits of glass and loose tea from his hair. “That was a bad move, Graham,” he snarled, as she backed up in terror. He tried to make a grab for her, but Camille managed to grab his foot and pull him off balance. He fell forward onto the stone floor, breath collapsing out of him.

  The front door opened, chime ringing.

  “What fresh hell is this?” Gabriel said. He was framed in the door with rain behind him.

  Hyde took one look at him, scrambled to his feet and sprinted past him, out the door. Camille looked after him, baffled. Hyde was afraid, now?

  Gabriel also took note of his retreating form, but swiftly crossed to Camille. He knelt beside her, taking up her arm with the bracer, inspecting it, then checking her pulse. Her skin froze while she sweat buckets. His face was grim, but he said, “You’re fine, kiddo. Calm down, you’ll be fine.” Her eyes focused on him, briefly. She took a deep breath, as muscles in her limbs spasmed.

  “Calm is for losers,” she muttered, back to Japanese now that he was here. He chuckled, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. He cleared her hair away where it stuck to her face.

  “Is...is she alright?” Jul’s voice quavered. “She looks so pale...”

  He glanced at Jul. “Ah. Yes, Camille will be fine. Excuse me a moment, I’ll be right back.” He picked up Camille gingerly and carried her up the stairs. This feeling of weakness was driving her insane.

  “Hyde,” Camille said, as he laid her on her bed. “He wanted a sword, said he wouldn’t leave without it.” She could still smell him, that acid tobacco stench that hung in the air. Iron, he’d said. The iron one. Her left hand flexed. “Just like Tailor...”

  Gabriel shushed her. “You need to rest, right now. Don’t think about that. Remember your lessons. Think about the ocean. Think about that nasty fish smell you like so much and how sand gets in literally everything.”

  She coughed, certain her ribs would be black and blue tomorrow. “You mean the crisp ocean breeze and the calm waves.”

  “Or that.” He checked her pulse one more time, and seemed satisfied. “I’ll check on you later, I need to go take care of your friend.”

  Her friend. She had a friend. That had never mattered before. Suddenly it mattered a lot. Jul had smashed a guy over the head for her.

  “Hey, Gabriel,” she asked, “do we really not have a sword?”

  “I don’t,” he said. “Try to sleep,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

  She couldn’t help but note his choice of pronoun. Tailor’s warning bobbed up in her mind, and she pushed it back down. Anything Gabriel did, he did for a reason. Still...

  Instead of sleeping, she kept her ears open, hoping to catch the conversation downstairs, but she couldn’t hear a thing. It was just like when Tailor and Charlotte had come over - like someone had thrown a blanket over her senses. What was wrong with her?

  Jul

  I’d found a broom behind the counter and I was sweeping up the broken glass and tea leaves. I felt obligated - I’d broken it, after all. It still felt a bit unreal. Had I just participated in a fight?

  The man I assumed was Camille’s guardian came back down the stairs. I don’t know what I’d expected, but he wasn’t it. He looked far too young to be her guardian. He couldn’t be more than thirty. He had a friendly, open expression and distinctly Asian features, reminding me distantly of Kei. I hoped he wasn’t actually anything like Kei. He tucked his chin-length ebony hair behind his ear and I noticed unusual scars at the base of his neck, peeking up from the collar of his shirt. They were puckered and shiny like old burns.

  He saw me sweeping and gave a half-smile. “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said.

  “I didn’t want anyone to step in the glass,” I said. Rhys could have just melted it away. I shook my head. No, not here, I remembered. This isn’t In Between. “I’m, um, sorry about the jar.”

  “Don’t be, it went to a worthy cause,” he said. “Ah, my apologies, we haven’t met. I’m Gabriel Katsura, Camille’s guardian. You’re Juliet, of course. Please, have a seat. Can I get you something? Water, tea, hot chocolate? You look pale.”

  I laughed shakily. I probably did. “Hot chocolate would be nice, thank you.”

  He went behind the counter to make the drink and I gazed unfocused at my hands. What in the world had just happened? Hyde wanted a sword from this man? He’d assumed, because of my name, that I’d know something about it. Clearly, at least some of the things Rhys had told me were true. I wasn’t sure how much of it I could live up to, but...

  I’d helped Camille. I hadn’t run away, and maybe it was the adrenaline that hadn’t left my system yet, but that felt good.

  He brought back two mugs and set a steaming mug of cocoa in front of me. He leaned back in the booth with a cup of tea. I took a sip; the sweet taste of chocolate and cream further bolstered my spirits.

  “Mr. Katsura...”

  “Gabriel, please.”

  “Gabriel. This doesn’t...um...” I laughed nervously, “this doesn’t happen to you often, does it?”

  “A teenage redneck attacking my ward in a cafe? I can safely say that has never happened before,” he said with a smile. “Granted I’ve only had the cafe a couple of months, so it’s hard to form a pattern that quickly. But I’ve cleaned up my share of broken jars over the years.” He gazed calmly over the chairs the fight had put in disarray. “Someone put him up to this...that boy isn’t clever enough to hatch a plan on his own. Are you familiar with him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Probably for the best,” he said. “He was never going to have a simple life. But then, never was Camille.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked. “She started off so strong, but then it all drained away so quickly.”

  He gave me an evaluating look, seemingly satisfied by my concern.

  “Camille has a condition,” he said. “She has amazing strength, agility, and endurance - but she has a limit, and a temper that drives her to it. If she crosses that line...” he shook his head. “I don’t know what will happen to her. I can’t be with her all the time. Can I ask you to watch over her while you’re at school? Help her stay calm, and avoid confrontations. It would ease my mind.”

  “Um, sure,” I said. “It’s just...” I trailed off.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, we have a lot of annoying people at school,” I said, thinking it sounded silly.

  He smiled. “I expected as much. That’s normal.” He glanced at the broken jar of tea. “Granted, this sort of behavior isn’t.”

  “Do you have any idea what that guy wanted?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. And I’m not in any position to improve the situation. Several people are convinced I have this particular weapon, and the simple fact is, I do not. It used to belong to the Tailor family. It’s an old heirloom of theirs. It went missing several years ago and
somehow the blame fell on me.”

  “So you don’t have any idea where it is?”

  “I have several,” he said lightly, “none of which have satisfied your English teacher. I hadn’t expected others to come looking for it, though...just one more twist to the puzzle, I suppose. Would you like a ride home? I’d hate to think of you walking in this mess.”

  I looked out at the rain, falling heavier now. “Thank you,” I said, embarrassed I didn’t have my own transportation.

  “Just let me go check on Camille and we’ll get you ferried home.”

  In the car, rain pattered against the windshield as we left the cafe parking lot.

  “Now that we’re out of her earshot, I have to tell you something,” Gabriel said. “You should stop looking for your father.” For Dad? I hadn’t thought about him in days. The brief guilt I felt was pushed aside by the fear that always accompanied thoughts of him.

  I went very still. The sound of the car’s wipers was overloud. “What do you know about him?” I almost whispered.

  “Oh, goodness, I began that badly. What I meant to say was, I’m very certain that he’s in no danger. The one you should worry about is you.”

  “I’m...I don’t understand,” I said.

  He sighed unhappily. “Simon is not a good man. You have probably gathered this. Others will have been too polite to tell you directly. And perhaps you’ll write off my words as untrustworthy, not knowing me, but I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to speak with you again, and you deserve to know the truth.” His eyes were on the road ahead as he spoke. “The day after your father left New York, I saw him in Tokyo.”

  “What?” I gasped. What could he have been doing there?

  “There was a certain artifact I possessed,” he said grimly, “that protected Camille from being found by someone very dangerous. I spotted Simon in the subway, but he was too far away to reach. When I got home, the item was gone. I’m not accustomed to being stolen from.”

  “It could have been a coincidence,” I said. “Maybe someone else took it.”

  “I can’t help but notice you took the premise of a protective artifact very easily,” he said. “May I be more candid?”

  I nodded, though unsure what he meant.

  “It was a mirror. Not just any mirror, mind you, a magic mirror.” He glanced at me, gauging my reaction, and continued. “Different mirrors do different things. This one was small, a mere hand mirror, by appearance of no consequence. But it projected a protective barrier wide enough to cover our neighborhood and run interference on those who would locate one as powerful as Camille. With the barrier gone, we had to move, and quickly. There was only one other place in the world I knew of with a similar barrier - a larger one, practically built in.” His mouth twisted. “Practically. So, we moved to Havenwood.”

  I suddenly remembered the book I’d seen in the apartment, with the illustration of a silver-handled mirror with a vinelike design. All his research - had he been looking for a magic mirror the whole time? I fought to keep my expression even. “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

  “Because I fear what Simon has planned,” he said. “And not just me. Your grandmother...Tailor...well, not Charlotte, but she’ll come around soon enough. I’m telling you all this because you have been the only person near him in the past fifteen years. I’m telling you this because I’m hoping you can help me piece together what he’s been doing.”

  He pulled into the driveway of Bea’s house and shut off the engine. He looked at me, expectantly.

  Right then, I wanted nothing more than to be in the Tower, where confidence would flood me, and I could hold my own. I wanted to be where I had some control. Instead I was stuck outside my mirror, in this car, with a man who clearly knew too much and yet still was demanding information from me. Unbidden, I began to shake. “What do you want from me?” I asked. “He never tells me anything. Never. I come home from school, he’s not there. I ask what he’s doing, he yells at me for being nosy. I try to stay out of his way, he says I’m not taking care of the apartment.” I started to cry, all of it coming back in an unwanted rush. “He lives at the university, he hides in his room. He doesn’t care what I do as long as the place is clean and I don’t make a noise. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. I’m a maid, not his daughter, and I think...I think he hates me...” I broke down, in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car. Did I hope he’d be comforting? I didn’t know what to think.

  He reached over and pulled a packet of tissues out of the glove compartment, and handed them to me.

  I made a choked sort of laugh, and blew my nose.

  “I know this is difficult,” he said. “And unfortunately, it’s going to become more difficult before it gets any better. You’re a teenager,” he said wryly. “It’s a horrible time of life. But it’s also when you begin to choose the sort of person you want to be. You can give in to fear and doubt and selfish impulses, or you can become the person you wish others would be. Kind. Giving. Supportive. You know, the sort of person who breaks jars over thugs to help their friends.”

  I made a weak smile. “Is Camille really going to be okay?”

  He smiled. “With good friends, she will be. I’m certain of it.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,” I said. I wondered if there was some connection to the orchard mirror, but I couldn’t tell him about that. I’d promised Rhys, and as nice as he’d been, I wasn’t sure I trusted Gabriel yet.

  “If you think of anything else,” he said gently, “you know where to find me.”

  I looked up; Bea had opened the front door, looking out. I thanked Gabriel, and left the car swiftly, jogging through the rain up to the porch.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Working on that science project with my classmate, like I told you,” I said, hoping the rain hid my recent tears. “Her guardian was nice and gave me a ride back since it was raining.”

  “Her guardian?” she repeated with alarm, squinting at Gabriel’s car. Alarm showed clear on her face as she recognized him. “Get inside, Juliet!” she said, ushering me in quickly.

  “What did he say to you?” she demanded, locking the door behind her.

  “N-nothing!” I said, startled into lying. I didn’t understand her fervor. Though I still wasn’t certain of his motives, he’d been the nicest person I’d met in this town by far. “He said he was glad I was making friends with Camille, that’s all.”

  “Camille?” she said. “Camille Teague? Oh, god,” she said, running a hand over her face. “This friend of yours is Gabriel Katsura’s ward? No, no, Juliet, this won’t be any good at all. You are not to spend time with that girl any more.”

  “She’s my only friend!” I exclaimed. “You’ve been telling me and telling me that I needed to make friends, and she’s the only one who’s nice to me!”

  “You listen to me,” she said seriously. “Gabriel Katsura is a dangerous man, and I want you as far from him as possible.”

  The feeling the Tower gave me was welling up. Indignation burned. “Why?” I snapped. “Because he knows things? Because he has answers? You want to keep me in the dark forever, is that it? Weird things are going on all over, and you just want me to shut up and stay home? You’re just like dad, you know that? You’re exactly like him!”

  My words seemed to stun her. In a faltering burst of cowardice I ran up the stairs and shut myself in my room.

  Chapter 13

  Mac

  Tailor’s handing me a mop and Destin a bucket of cleaning supplies when the girls come in the front doors Saturday morning. Jul is radiant, dressed in pale pastels that make her skin and hair seem darker than usual, her ponytail twisted haphazard over her shoulder. She tugs on it when she catches sight of Tailor - a sure sign she’s nervous. She’s always pulling on her hair. I want to reach out and take her hand, reassure her, but I just can’t shake the feeling that even though she’s right there, she’s a thousand miles away from me.

&
nbsp; “Fellow inmates!” I say brightly, instead. “Welcome to hell.”

  Tailor huffs. “You’re the ones stupid enough to get in trouble. I’m the one who has to give up my Saturday to babysit you.”

  “So let’s all go get ice cream and no one will be the wiser,” I say. “Or muffins. Isn’t there a cafe just down the street? Benedict or Benvolio or something?”

  Tailor’s almost as tall as Destin, and the effect of being stared down over his glasses from almost two feet above is chilling. In church, when they talk about the wrath of heaven, I see an English teacher before his second cup of coffee.

  “Or we could clean stuff,” I say meekly.

  Tailor quirks an eyebrow, as if challenging me to suggest anything fun ever again in my life. “With the school festival in three days, Principal Umino wants the place spotless. The janitors take care of most things, but since you’ve got nothing better to do, you can do some detail cleaning. The wonder twins get the stairway railings,” he eyed me. “You girls can dust the light fixtures. Tie a duster to a broom handle, I don’t need you falling off a ladder and be forced to take you to the hospital.”

  Sentimental, Tailor is not.

  “I’ll be in the English classroom. Don’t do anything stupid,” he shoots a look at me.

  “Me? Do something stupid?” I grumble under my breath, as Tailor disappears up the stairs.

  “It’s like he knows you,” Destin says.

  “When do I ever do stupid things?”

  “In math last week when Mrs. Ragland asked what the square root of 144 was, you said Jenga,” he reminds me.

  “People laughed,” I point out.

  “And you got extra homework.”

  “Karate yesterday,” Camille says.

  Ikeda had made us pick sparring partners, and I’d picked her before Hyde could pick me. Somehow I still ended up getting thrown halfway across the room. “I thought you’d go easy on me because we’re sort of slightly friends!”