I did sometimes stumble in my vegetarianism, but on those occasions I tried to at least admit it. But I refused to take the shame of the side-eye that nonvegetarians were always eager to bestow on those they saw as backsliders when I had in fact not engaged in the practice.
The addition of the blood to our fridge had necessitated a serious roommate summit discussion, with the outcome being the official lie that I had integrated a new, absolutely disgusting, protein drink into my fitness routine. Dan had assured Jaison that I’d forced him to try it, and that it had been like drinking raw sewage mixed with Moxie soda—a description that we’d agreed would keep any rational person from asking for a taste.
After one last check to make certain that the Post-it notes were prominently displayed in a way that could not be ignored, I pulled out the other addition to our fridge since my transition—the bag of baby carrots. Over the past several days, I had been unable to ignore the increasing soreness in my upper jaw and teeth. It had left me in a distinctly crabby mood, in addition to the personal surprise about the sharp increase in my saliva output (i.e., I was drooling like a leaky water hydrant). I was very unfortunately aware of the problem—I was teething. Specifically, my body was preparing to grow in my adult vampire teeth, which I’d been assured (by my siblings, with a notable lack of sympathy) would actually take a few months. In the meantime, I found myself preferring to gnaw on cool, hard things, like baby carrots, which I discovered was actually fairly soothing and distracting, in addition to adding to the healthiness of my diet. I’d also made a surreptitious trip to the grocery store and stocked up on frozen Popsicles, which were not healthy in the smallest sense, but were almost blissfully effective in numbing my irritated jaw. I’d stuffed them into the back of the freezer, and so far Dan had done me the great favor of pretending that he hadn’t noticed their presence.
I checked the clock. This was one of my free evenings, and Suze had told me that she’d swing over after she ate dinner. Since it was also the night that Dan had his weekly dinner study group, I’d been looking forward to this. I’d found myself, surprisingly, still employed at Redbones. When I’d called Orlando to make arrangements for my final paycheck, he told me that the replacement that he’d hired for me had just quit—apparently she’d been something of a musical connoisseur and had been unable to last more than three nights on the job until the constant mangling of musical notes had finally broken her—and had offered me my old job back. So far it was an awkward balance with the daily meetings down at the mansion, but the truth was that I could use the money, and I knew that the alternative was taking money from my family. Also, in the midst of so many fundamental changes to both my life and my very physicality, there had been a strange comfort in continuing the old routine of heading to a crummy job.
I heard the rhythm of shave-and-a-haircut rapped into my door, and moved toward it with a big smile, knowing who was on the other side. Even after my mother’s death vigil ended, I’d still been spending a lot of time down at Newport, so I’d missed seeing Suze a lot—some days the business of not agreeing on anything had lasted so long that all I had time to do was go to work, then come home, collapse into bed, then get up just a few hours later to repeat the whole process. And while Suze had kept me up to date by texting me every amusing YouTube video or Internet meme that caught her interest, it just wasn’t the same as getting to drive around with her, focusing on territory business in my mother’s name.
I pulled open the door, and there she was, a brilliant smile covering her face as she held out a brightly wrapped box, tied up with a neon yellow bow. “Hey, Fort!”
I stared at the box she held out to me, confused. “You got me something?” I racked my head. We were too early for Valentine’s Day, and my birthday wasn’t until June, so did that mean . . . “Are we doing anniversaries?” Panic rose inside me, and I immediately started trying to figure out what item in my apartment I could quickly wrap while her back was turned and present as a prebought gift. This would be made even more difficult given that I didn’t think we even had wrapping paper in the apartment.
Suze snorted loudly. “Ew, fuck that madness. No, I just thought that since you’ve been having such a crappy few weeks, I’d find something to perk you up.”
Relief rushed through me. Then I really processed what she’d said, and I smiled. We moved over to sit on the sofa, and while there was a part of me that remained cautiously prepared in case this turned out to be snakes in a can, the larger portion of me was just wallowing in the pleasure of having been given a present “just because.” I unwrapped a corner of the paper, and laughed at what I saw.
“Peeps?” I asked, that unmistakable colored and shaped marshmallow delight peering up at me. I yanked off the rest of the paper and confirmed it unequivocally. “I thought you could only get them around Easter.”
“Actually, it turns out that with the kinds of preservatives they pack into these things, Peeps can last for years. I got these on eBay. Apparently, there’s something of a collectors’ market. Oh, and as an additional surprise . . .” She reached into the pocket of her parka and, with full fanfare, removed something. After a pause, she opened her hand to reveal the second part of my treat—a tube of infant oral gel teething pain medication. As I stared, she grinned at me. “Yuzumi says that this is what she used on the triplets when they were teething.” She looked at me brightly. “Cherry flavored!”
Then she raised her free hand for a high five.
I stared at her. “You told your cousin that I was having teething pain,” I said slowly.
“No!” Suze denied immediately. “No, I would never betray a confidence. I definitely never even mentioned your name. I just mentioned that it was for an adult vampire.” She paused, and pondered what she’d said for a second. Then, “Okay, bad news. It’s possible that Yuzumi might figure out that it’s for you. She has pretty good deductive reasoning skills.”
I sighed heavily. Apparently hoping that the embarrassment of teething at the age of twenty-seven would remain a secret known only to those closest to me had been something of a futile dream. I reached over and closed Suze’s hand around the ointment container again. “I’m offended,” I said, “but I do appreciate the effort.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss, which she returned with added interest. When we finally came up for air (it had been a while, after all), I reluctantly extricated myself from her and headed back to the kitchen to grab us each a beer.
“So, do you want a watch a movie, or watch a little TV?” I asked, pulling the bottles out. It had been Dan’s turn to get groceries, which was why it was the good stuff in the fridge—Stella Artois. “I could make some popcorn if you want.”
“If you’re in the mood,” Suze said, shedding her jacket and stretching lazily on the sofa. “But I actually did have something kind of serious to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” I asked, popping the lids off, then handing Suze her beer. “Serious how?”
Suzume took a long sip of her beer, watching me steadily with her dark eyes as the movement exposed her long, pale throat. I noticed with interest that her sweater was rather aggressively scoop-necked for the season and the heating in the apartment, and reconsidered whether I really wanted to spend our time together watching TV. Suze finished her sip, then tilted her head slightly. “My grandmother wants to talk with you.”
I shrugged a little—it wasn’t exactly surprising. Most of the groups within the territory had kept their distance since my mother’s death other than several very thoughtful floral arrangements, but it had been inevitable that they would eventually want to talk with what was essentially the new management, and it made sense that the kitsune would be the first to come forward, given that they’d been the group that had enjoyed the most freedoms and internal control under my mother. “Oh, sure. Well, tell your grandmother that she should call Loren Noka and make an appointment to see us, and I’m sure that a date can be found—”
> “No.” Suze slid onto her knees, folding her arms along the back of the sofa and watching me carefully—there was something in her body position that reminded me very strongly of when she was a fox and was crouched and coiled up just before she would spring to attack something—usually a paper ball. “You’re misunderstanding, Fort. My grandmother, Atsuko Hollis, the White Fox, wants to see you.”
“Ah.” I considered Suze’s expression, and comprehension filled me. “So, this is an off-the-record meeting? The kind that I don’t mention to my family?”
Suze smiled slowly at me. “I knew you’d catch on.”
“And when is this private meeting supposed to take place? I assume that you’ve told your grandmother about my schedule and availabilities, for example.”
“Of course. My grandmother would be very flattered if you came to her house tomorrow, after your meeting in Newport. She’ll have tea waiting for you.”
I considered her. “You’re not going to tell me what this is about, will you?”
Suze set her beer down on the coffee table with exaggerated care, then shot me a playful look and slowly tugged her sweater out of her jeans. “Church and state, man friend,” she said, her voice throaty and rich. “It’s not a good idea to cross those lines.”
I walked slowly over to the couch and leaned over her, setting one hand at her waist and slowly pushing upward, feeling the soft heat of her skin as the sweater bunched up under my hand. “So I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out, is what you’re saying.”
“Don’t worry, Fort,” she breathed against my mouth. “I’ll help you find a way to pass the time.”
* * *
Later that night I extricated myself from Suze’s pleasantly entwined limbs and slid out of bed and into the bathroom. I yanked open the medicine cabinet, grumpily hunting for the bottle of over-the-counter pain pills that I’d been relying on to get a reasonable night’s sleep, despite the frustrating ache in my jaw, and there, right in the middle of the shelf, I saw the tube of infant oral gel teething pain medication. Cherry-flavored.
I paused, considered resisting further, but the hour and the pain in my jaw decided the issue for me, and I squeezed out a healthy dollop onto my finger, then rubbed it against my gums.
It worked.
* * *
The next day, I dragged myself to the Scirocco and left the mansion at just after four in the afternoon. It had been yet another exhausting and frustrating day. After hours of arguing, all we’d managed to accomplish was to agree to cost-of-living wage increases for the staff members, and that, despite the death of Henry and the emptying of our basement prison area, we would keep Conrad and Maire on the payroll and in their current positions. With Maire, we’d found that in many ways it had been extremely convenient to have an in-house medical professional—she’d assisted Bhumika in her final illness, as well as Madeline, of course, and in addition to that had turned out to be very useful at giving Chivalry’s wife, Simone, her regular blood transfusion without the fuss of having to use a local clinic. With Conrad, it had actually been Prudence who suggested keeping him—she’d pointed out that it didn’t really cost us that much to allow him to continue staying in the basement apartment for now, and it saved us all the fuss of finding, training, and (most critically) getting the loyalty of someone with Conrad’s particular skill set if we ever found occasion to fill the basement cells again. It was pretty clear that Prudence was looking ahead to a time when she would be attempting to make her own host, a thought that didn’t exactly fill me with positive thoughts, given what I’d seen of her last attempt, but I’d agreed anyway. It had seemed a shame to make Conrad go looking for another job when this one suited him so well—plus, he’d turned out to be kind of like an on-site tech-support service.
Still, though Chivalry had spent a great deal of time at the end of the meeting enthusing about our progress, I hadn’t been able to get much comfort from it. There’d been really no reason to disagree in those situations—the wage increases were something that had been done a hundred times before to keep up with the inflation rate, and keeping Maire and Conrad around was really just avoiding making any changes to our current routine. On any other topics, like the running of the territory, we couldn’t seem to move at all.
I pulled into the driveway of Atsuko Hollis’s farmhouse, with its neat little clapboard shutters and wings and additions that had been stuck on in every which way over generations so that the house itself became a kind of Euclidian nightmare—but with whimsy. The house had been in the Hollis family for many years—Atsuko had inherited it following the death of her husband, after she’d killed him.
I could hear the scampering of many, many small feet as I walked up the cobblestone steps to the front door. We’d had an inch of fresh powder last night, but these steps were pristinely swept, with rock salt generously applied. The sun had just set, and I could feel the temperature starting to plunge as I knocked on the door.
To my surprise, it was Keiko who opened the door. I’d gotten very used to seeing her in the context of her own house, where in lieu of maternity clothing she’d just started wearing really stretchy and low-riding yoga pants and topping herself off with Farid’s button-down shirts or sweaters. Today, though, she looked like she’d walked off the pages of a magazine ad for the business chic pregnant woman, with charcoal tweed slacks and a matching blazer, and a forest-green silk blouse that was doing its best to achieve an elegant drape over the bowling ball–esque curve of her stomach.
“Fortitude,” she said formally, extending her hand to usher me into the foyer of the house. “It’s very good to see you again—it’s been quite some time.”
I lifted my eyebrows a little at her very pointed comment, but if that was how Keiko was preferring to play things, I certainly wasn’t going to get her in trouble. I did my best to nod politely, as if she hadn’t just recently been gleefully attempting to completely annihilate my chances of winning Small World by attacking me unceasingly with her Flying Sorcerers, and made the kind of polite noncomments that I’d make to any near stranger whose twin sister I just happened to be sleeping with.
Keiko led me through the twisting maze of the downstairs. Atsuko took a very minimalist approach to decoration—all the walls were painted white, with matching crown molding, and the floors were all the original wood, almost entirely free of the usual mishmash of area rugs or runners that would normally be seen, and showing the gleam of recent refinishing. Here and there were a few framed items—the occasional photograph of one or more of the Hollis women, some pretty nature paintings in the Japanese style, and one beautifully mounted and displayed antique kimono. I could hear the continuous scurrying of paws in the rooms around us, but I didn’t see anyone except Keiko.
Finally I was led into the same living room that I’d seen on my only previous visit to this house. Atsuko Hollis stood next to a low table that was already set for tea, steam lazily trailing up from the pot. Suzume’s grandmother must’ve been in her nineties, but she carried her years gracefully. Her hair was pure white, without a hint of gray to mute the color, and was still thick and healthy looking, twisted up on the top of her head with a single comb decorated with enamel flowers. She wore a dark blue kimono decorated with white cranes in flight, and as I walked in she gave a graceful bow of her head. I did my best to mimic the gesture, earning me a slight smile. Behind me, Keiko disappeared down the hallway, and Atsuko extended one arm with the sublime grace that hinted at her former career as a dancer, gesturing for me to join her for tea.
Just as on my previous visit, all serious discussion had to wait until the end of a precisely executed tea ceremony that lasted the better part of an hour. I did my best to be a more patient guest this time, watching Atsuko’s gestures, allowing her to lead me in small, polite conversation, attempting to ignore the numbness that began to set into my lower legs, given that I was very unused to kneeling on a thin cushion rathe
r than sitting on a sofa. As the ceremony continued, foxes began to trickle in from all parts of the house. Atsuko never acknowledged them, and they lined up against each wall and then sat perfectly still, a living honor guard of beautiful, delicately whiskered works of art, each furred tail adjusted just so. I was sure that I had probably met a number of these foxes in human form, but none acknowledged me, and I snuck glances at them from the corners of my eyes. Atsuko’s descendants boasted a range of colors—the deepest russet red, to a range of grays, to blacks. There was one fox who left no doubt about her identity when she entered, though—Suze’s fur was the perfect black ink of night, without a single spot of white except the frost tip of her tail. She sauntered in, her mouth lolling open with amusement, giving a saucy little flip of her tail as she passed me so that the tip of it trailed against my wrist. I smiled, and Atsuko gave her granddaughter a quelling frown that was met only with an added saunter around the table as Suzume made a show of deciding which side of the room she preferred to join. A little shiver of movement made its way along the watching foxes, a twitching of a tail tip, a quick licking of the jaws. Something in it made me think of barely suppressed giggles of amusement. At last, Suzume settled herself on the right side of the room and took on the same perfectly still stance as the rest, as if to dare anyone to suggest that she’d been less than behaved just a moment before. There was the slightest movement of Atsuko’s mouth that made me think that she wanted to smile at her granddaughter but didn’t dare encourage her.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, as Atsuko was carefully stacking the cups back on the tray, I noticed that all the foxes seemed to sit up just a little straighter, and a tension filled the room. They were focused entirely on me now as Atsuko made one last tiny adjustment, then said, “The last time you were in my living room, you told me very plainly that you were not fully a vampire yet, and that this was why your values were different than those of the rest of your family.” One snow-white eyebrow arched delicately. “You are now most entirely a vampire, so may I ask—did you lose your tadpole tail, little frogling?”
Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel Page 21
