“Like this?” he asked, making a cut.
“A little more angle, honey,” Bhumika said. “You want a clean cut at around forty-five degrees.” Chivalry gave a heavy sigh, and she said encouragingly, “You’re getting better.” Before she’d been confined to the wheelchair, she’d spent all her time in the summer out here with the roses. Not just pruning and caring for them, but also crossbreeding them to try to create new varieties. Their suite of rooms in the mansion was stuffed with huge pots filled with grafted roses and all of her experiments in new varieties. Two years ago, at Chivalry’s request, Madeline had had the old house conservatory renovated and expanded so that Bhumika could work with her roses even in the winter.
My foot scraped on the stone, and they both looked over at me. Bhumika was surprised, Chivalry was grim and resigned. He would’ve felt me coming.
Bhumika glanced over at Chivalry as he got up and walked over to me. She was concerned, and I knew why. I’d never just dropped by the mansion before—I’d only ever come after campaigns of nagging. I wondered how much she knew about what was going on.
Chivalry kissed the top of Bhumika’s head as he passed her. “This will only take a minute, honey,” he told her.
“You know too,” I said. “You know about those girls.” I didn’t even try to keep the accusation out of my voice. Chivalry wrapped a hand around my upper arm and began hurrying both of us away from Bhumika, and I let him. Behind us, Bhumika turned back to contemplate her roses, shutting out our conversation.
“Yes, I know,” Chivalry said from gritted teeth. “And there’s nothing I can do about it. You heard Mother last night. I am under direct orders not to have anything to do with Luca or his activities.”
“And you’re just going to do that? Let those little girls get hurt, be raped, when you could stop him?” I was yelling at him now, and I saw something spasm in his face. His pupils began to bleed out, his eyes now huge and black with temper.
“Yes, Fort!” he screamed. It shocked us both, and we froze. He drew in a long breath, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the hazel was visible again, and there was nothing that would’ve suggested he was anything but human. “Fort,” he said, his voice quiet and controlled. “I know that this is upsetting, and that Luca’s actions are disgusting and wrong. But you have to let this go. I’d help you if I could, you know that I would, but Mother has forbidden me.”
“Let it go,” I repeated. I looked away from him. All around us it was roses, green grass, and sea breezes. It seemed almost impossible to imagine that anything wrong could happen here.
“Yes,” he said. “Just let it go. You can’t help them. You can’t save them. You’re going to live for centuries, Fort. You have to stop thinking like a human or you’re just going to break yourself.”
I turned my back on my brother and walked back into the maze. With one turn, Chivalry was completely obscured by bushes.
“Fort!” Chivalry called to me.
“Go back to Bhumika,” I said, knowing he could hear me. “Go back to pretending that people don’t matter.”
The grounds are large, and it was a long walk back to my car. I was sweating as I opened the car door and dropped myself into the driver’s seat. I sat and stared at the steering wheel, trying to sort through everything I knew.
Suzume had put her seat completely back, and was napping in the sun. The newspaper was stuffed up on the dashboard, open to the crossword puzzle, partially completed. I pulled it down and reopened it to the front-page sketch of Maria.
Suzume opened her eyes and watched me with mild curiosity.
“How much of all that did you spy on?” I asked.
“Rooms without windows in mansions stuffed with staff members are a bitch to get to,” she said, not showing any surprise or even bothering to deny it. “But two people yelling in a rose maze is pretty easy.”
“So you know that I was right.”
“Yep. What are you planning on doing next, Miss Marple?”
“Miss Marple?”
“I’ve promoted you from Nancy Drew.”
“Ah.” I thought for a long minute. “Suzume, do you think you could take on a vampire?”
She gave a lazy, arrogant smile. “You guys don’t seem so tough.”
“But would you?”
“I’m being paid to keep you safe. If you decide to go knocking on a vampire’s door, keeping you safe would probably involve kicking his ass.”
“Good to know.” I thought for another second. “Luca isn’t like my siblings. I can’t just figure out where he is, and I don’t know how I’d find him in a place as big as Providence.”
“I know someone who could probably help us with that,” Suzume said.
I slanted a suspicious look at her. She gave me wide, innocent eyes.
“Why are you being helpful, Suzume?” I asked bluntly.
She gave a little shrug and pulled her seat out of the reclining mode. “This sounds interesting.” She held up one cautionary finger. “But there’s one condition.”
I braced myself, trying to imagine what she would demand. “What?”
She held out her hand. “I get to drive.”
I took a deep breath and handed over the keys. Her gleeful smile told me that this had been a mistake.
Suzume’s driving was erratic and frightening, but I realized that if I could pry open my eyes and stop trying to push the invisible passenger brake, she tended to slow down. Her reflexes were a lot better than mine too, and she did seem to have a good understanding of just how fast she could get the Fiesta to go around turns without breaking loose. All the windows were down, and she’d found a radio station that played frenetically paced punk music, which she now had cranked up loudly enough that conversation was rendered impossible. We were both a menace and a public nuisance as we blared our way over bridges and through idyllic towns
At one point we were sitting at a red light and I turned down the music enough to ask her who we were going to see. After a few Wizard of Oz jokes that weren’t nearly as funny as she seemed to think they were, she finally gave in and told me that it was her grandmother.
“That’s who you think is going to help us?” I asked. “Are you nuts? My mother says that she’s not going to get involved, my brother won’t cross her orders, and you think going to one of her flunkies is going to have better results?”
A slam of Suzume’s hand and the radio was silenced, and with a sudden right turn that left my insides shaking she pulled into the parking lot of a derelict Blockbuster. The car was thrown into park before it even fully stopped moving, and then Suzume was up in my face.
“Flunkie?”
I thought I’d seen every expression on Suzume’s face, but until now I hadn’t seen her really pissed off. There was a curl to her lip and a burning intensity in her eyes that made me take a few mental steps backward from my estimation of her as an ADD party girl. Her voice was flat and quiet, and the way she looked at me made me nervous. I’d seen house cats look at bottle caps like that.
“Maybe I misspoke,” I said, backpedaling. “I’m sorry.”
Suzume never blinked, just kept staring at me, but slowly she seemed to calm down, and the threat level in the car began to diminish. I still didn’t look away from her, and my eyes began to water with the effort of not blinking. It didn’t seem like a good idea to break eye contact.
Finally she eased back in her seat and gave one slow blink. I took a deep breath and blinked about fifty times, trying to rehydrate my starving corneas.
Suzume pulled back out onto the road, but she drove slower now, and she didn’t turn the music back on.
“How much do you know about the relationship between the kitsune and your mother?” she asked.
“Not much,” I admitted. “I know that your grandmother had to ask permission to live in the state, and I know that Madeline has hired you from time to time to do stuff. I guess I assumed that…” I trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase it without setti
ng Suzume off again.
“You assumed that we worked for your mother,” Suzume filled in. I watched her closely, but now she seemed completely calm. But there wasn’t any hint of her usual playfulness, and I still felt nervous.
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“I thought you were being deliberately insulting. I didn’t realize that you didn’t understand. But before you come into my grandmother’s house, I should make sure that you don’t make another mistake like that.” She glanced at me with hard black eyes. “That would be very bad.”
“Right,” I agreed.
Suzume settled down a little more in her seat. Now that we weren’t flagrantly breaking traffic laws, I could relax as well, enough to see that Suzume was actually a better driver than I was. Even when people were stopping short or pulling out suddenly, she always seemed as if she was expecting it.
“In Japan, the kitsune live in family groups,” Suzume said. “Each group has its own territory, and to cross into another family’s territory is an act of war. My grandmother grew up in the traditional way, surrounded by her mother and aunts, sisters and cousins. They lived in the city of Nagasaki, and they were known as a very famous family of geisha.”
“They were—”
“More like courtesans than prostitutes. They were primarily artists and entertainers. My grandmother was a dancer, and people came from all over Japan to see her. Then World War Two happened. My grandmother’s family decided to stay in the city instead of fleeing to the countryside, and they had enough connections that even when the war began turning against Japan, they had plenty of food and comfort. Then—”
“Oh,” I said, seeing where this had to go.
“My grandmother wasn’t at home when the bomb was dropped. One of her aunts was sick, and my grandmother was traveling to a doctor for medicine, a specialist who lived on the edge of the city. She saw the flash from miles away, and heard the explosion. She ran home, but there was no home left. Their house had been near the center of the blast, and there was nothing left. Her entire family was killed in an instant, and she was on her own.”
There was nothing to say, so I just listened. Suzume’s voice was completely calm, as if she was reciting a story that she’d heard a hundred times.
“Some of the highest-ranked officers in the military had frequented their home, so my grandmother was very aware of politics. She looked around the city and knew that if the Americans could do this much damage with just one bomb, then Japan couldn’t keep fighting. She made her way to Kyoto. After the next bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the emperor had agreed to surrender, but there were a number of officers who refused to give up. They attempted a coup to stop the orders from going through. My grandmother made sure that it didn’t happen. Japan surrendered, and the Allies moved in. No more atomic bombs were dropped.”
The car slowed, and we pulled into the town of Exeter. It was small and rural, a sleepy community under the canopy of green maple leaves.
“My grandmother stayed in Tokyo for a while, but with her family all gone, she wanted to leave Japan. An American GI fell in love with her, and she married him. He brought her to Rhode Island, and she met Madeline. My grandmother understood everything in Japan, but this was a new land. Its dangers were unfamiliar to her, and she was all alone. She and your mother struck a deal—Madeline would provide protection until my grandmother had created a strong, fortified position, and then my grandmother would return the favor.” Suzume looked at me. “We’re not subordinates, Fort. More like adjacent rulers.”
“Thank you for explaining,” I said.
“You’re welcome. Just remember that when you’re talking to my grandmother, you’re talking to Atsuko Hollis, the White Fox. And she can fuck you up.”
“Well, who the hell can’t at this point?” I muttered. But Suzume heard me, and I was rewarded with a flicker of her usual smile, and I relaxed. There had been something unnatural about having her mad at me, and despite everything I might’ve expected, I didn’t really like her serious side.
The house we pulled in front of was what’s referred to as a New Englander. From the front it looked like a cute little farmhouse from the late eighteen hundreds, with white clapboard siding and neat black shutters. But then you stepped to the side and realized that someone had built a long addition off the back, probably when the farmer’s wife had twins. And then a few wings had been slapped on by someone else about fifty years later. Then the second floor had been extended to cover the new ground floor, and the whole thing ended up looking like Salvador Dali had been the architect. I could see a trimmed yard in the back, but what really took the eye in was the forest. Tree management had apparently not been a priority for the kitsune, and huge old trees towered over their house on three sides, pruned back only just enough to keep them from actually leaning on the roof.
There was a wide poured-asphalt parking area, and a small barn that had been converted into a garage, but I couldn’t see any cars.
“You didn’t call ahead. Are you sure that your grandmother will be home?”
“Utterly certain. Look.”
I looked. One of the downstairs windows was open to let in the breeze, and a small red fox was pressed up against the screen, watching us. When it realized I was looking at it, there was a flick of a bushy tail and it was gone. As we walked closer, I could hear the sound of small, scampering feet and soft yips.
Suzume led me away from the front door, to a small side door that led us into a tiled laundry room that also seemed to double as a mudroom. She directed me to take off my shoes while she did the same, unlacing her boots and setting them neatly against the wall. I toed off my sneakers, then looked to her for more directions.
She was standing in front of the next door that apparently led into the main house.
“Okay,” she said. “Now brace yourself.”
She opened the door fast, and three fox kits tore into the room. One was the red fox we’d seen in the window, one was gray, and the smallest one was a kind of mottled cream. They were about the size of cats, but they were fast, and determined to sniff everything. Apparently the sight of us was a little too stimulating for the gray one, who was leaving a suspicious trail of droplets.
They surrounded us in a swarm of quick paws and fluffy wagging tails. Suzume just got a courtesy sniff, but apparently I was new and exciting, because quickly all three were balanced on their hind legs for extra height while those long wet noses snuffled at my hands and pockets.
I stood there under their furry assault. “Um, what should I be doing?” I asked Suzume, who was watching with great amusement.
“Petting them would probably be a good choice.” Then her voice snapped, “Riko.”
The red one froze, and I realized that she had a mouthful of fabric. She opened her mouth, and released my T-shirt and one of the tails of the long-sleeved flannel shirt that I wore over it. Both now had holes forming exact imprints of her teeth. I pointed at it and looked at Suzume.
“Yeah, the kits can be a little destructive if you don’t watch them. And if you don’t start distributing head rubs, I think your shoes are next.”
Yep, the cream kit currently had her entire long snout stuck into my sneaker. I began rubbing Riko and the gray kit behind the ears, and they immediately collapsed into puddles of contented kit. Jealous, the cream kit yanked her nose out of my shoe and came barreling back to get in on the petting. This began the unsolvable problem of two hands, three kits. I discovered that the kits were extremely willing to bodycheck and nip each other, and occasionally my hands.
Though I do have to admit, they were really silky, and it was like playing with puppies, except they understood what you were saying. Mostly. Riko really wanted to chew my shirts.
As I was rubbing, though, I did notice something. “Do foxes get the white spot on their tails when they grow up?” I asked. I’d seen wild foxes crossing streets, as well as Suzume’s cousin in fox form last night, and they’d always had white tips to their tails.
But all three of the kits in front of me were solid colors, with black stocking marks on their legs and a few black streaks on their muzzles.
“No,” a new voice said from the doorway. There was a tiny Japanese woman standing there in a peach kimono with black flowers embroidered on it. Her hair was pure white, not even a touch of silver or gray, and she was obviously Suzume’s grandmother. But she wasn’t wizened or decrepit—there was a little wrinkling to her face, but she still had the remains of what must have been incredible beauty, like in pictures of Sophia Loren. Her shoulders didn’t have any stoop at all, and she stood confidently and gracefully.
Meanwhile, I was crouched on the floor covered in kits, lightly sprinkled in something that I was a little suspicious was urine. Let it never be said that I don’t know how to make a first impression.
“A natural fox has a white-tipped tail from birth,” Atsuko continued. “But a kitsune must earn her white.” Her gaze was steady while she evaluated me. Apparently done, with no indications at all what she thought, she looked over at Suzume, and her expression became exasperated. “Have you been fired already, Suzume-chan?”
Suzume looked hurt. “Grandmother, why would you think that?”
Atsuko sighed. “Because I know you, Suzume-chan.”
We relocated to the living room. Atsuko had a very minimalist decorating style. The hardwood floors in all of the rooms were polished and gleaming, with as little furniture as possible. There were a few decorations on the wall—a few painted fans, a few framed photographs. It looked a little weird in an old sprawling farmhouse, but after the overgilded clutter of my mother’s mansion, this was soothing. There was a wide fireplace on one side of the room, the old kind that used to function both for warmth and cooking. Its oak mantel was massive, and completely bare except for one small sculpture, made of bone white china. It was a man in long, old-fashioned Japanese robes, standing on the backs of two foxes.
Generation V Page 11
