by Cutter, Leah
Maybe something could go right today.
Amita nodded at Kai as she came in. “You come to pay your tab, hon?”
“Just one more,” Kai said, ignoring her guilt. “I’ll pay end of the week. Promise.”
If any money came in…
“That’s what you said last week,” Amita grumbled, though she was already moving to fill Kai’s order: a large drip with two shots of espresso. “You’re gonna get me fired.”
“Money comes in, you’ll be the first I pay. Promise,” Kai said, already reaching for her cup, already anticipating that first bitter hit.
“Not so fast.” Marcus was suddenly standing there, pushing the cup away from Kai.
Damn it. Kai should have smelled him, ferretted out his scent over the intoxicating scent of fresh roasted beans and fresh brewed coffee.
“Amita, we talked about this,” Marcus said patronizingly. “About letting people run tabs.”
“If I’m paying for it, I don’t see what the fuss is,” Amita sparked at him.
Kai hid her smile. Amita might only be five-foot-nothing, but Kai would bet on her against Marcus’ six-foot, pimply white ass any day.
“I’ll make sure it’s properly deducted this time,” Marcus said, sliding the cup back toward Kai.
Kai winced. Amita needed every penny she earned—her son was barely three and already diagnosed as special needs.
“You’ll get the money,” Kai said guiltily as she took the cup, the weight welcome in her small hands.
Amita glared at Kai before nodding and saying, “So go and find something then.”
“I will,” Kai said, though that wasn’t the problem. She could find things all damn day long. In post-Katrina New Orleans, everyone had lost something. Even ten years on, people were still searching.
Problem was, no one was paying for her to find them.
Though Kai blew on her coffee and waited after she’d walked at least half a block, she still scalded her mouth with the first sip. Disappointment flooded her. First Amita, now this: Even her coffee turned against her.
Her empty stomach rumbled, but Kai ignored it out of long habit. Skipping a few meals here and there wouldn’t kill her. Once some money came in, she could start having eggs again. And cereal. And toast. And…
Kai forced herself to stop thinking about food. Maybe instead, she should make the rounds of the major hotels again, hand out more business cards. However, more cards meant spending more money printing them, and Kai was already at the end of a very short rope.
Was it time for her to ask Papa for money? Or could she make it until the end of the month? She could stay with either Orlan or Caleb, but she’d rather go begging to her relatives than give up her independence that way.
Plus, Kai couldn’t take a regular job, something Papa had never understood. Being in the same place at the same time every day, unable to walk around the city, would kill her. It was worse than a cage.
But she needed to do something to get the cash flowing in.
Could she give up her crappy room in her crappy rental house and move into her office? Problem was, it had no running water and iffy electricity. At least she paid for the office with barter and not cash; she supplied her landlord Buddy with matching wood or materials from abandoned houses. Once he’d finished renovating the building, Kai knew she’d have to find someplace else. If he ever finished—three years and the brick was still being tuck-pointed, the plaster was still falling off the walls, and the first floor was unlivable.
As Kai climbed the rickety wooden stairs, she caught scent of the ocean, wild and storming. The feeling it brought with it was water, running strong, unstoppable. She’d never smelled anything like it, not even the week before Katrina hit.
Cursing silently, Kai dragged her cell out. It blinked with unread messages. Orlan had set up her security system so she just got text messages when someone walked into her office. As Papa, Caleb, and others often stopped by when Kai wasn’t in, it had seemed better than some kind of alarm.
Not like the police would have come to investigate if it had been a real alarm, even though their headquarters was only a couple of blocks away.
Kai sniffed the air. Violence and ill-intent didn’t have a scent, as much as she might wish they did sometimes. She didn’t smell any blood, though; just expensive silk, European perfume, and under all that ocean, a hint of tears.
And money.
* * *
“Morning,” Kai said as she sauntered into her office. A quick glance told her nothing had been touched. The scattered books, papers, and knickknacks on the shelves only looked random; Kai knew the exact placement of every item. Plus, the scent of the strange woman stayed centered where she sat. The woman held herself primly on the very edge of the chair in front of Kai’s desk. Was she scared or something? Those chairs were surprisingly comfortable.
“Good morning,” the woman replied. The German inflection matched her Sonja de Lennart black capris. Her silver silk blouse looked custom made, and perfectly matched her Manolos.
Nothing she wore was a knockoff. Could Kai double her fee? Quadruple it, maybe?
Platinum blond hair flowed over the woman’s shoulders, looking as it if had just been blown out. Her eyes were a clear gray, like water of Lake Pontchartrain after a good rain. She had a small, sharp nose and a sharp chin, and the corners of her mouth were turned down, probably permanently.
As Kai walked to her chair on the other side of the oak desk (also scrounged), she asked, “How y’all doing this morning?”
The woman glared at Kai.
Kai kept a pleasant, innocent look on her face. Courtesy before business, even if the woman already looked like she regretted coming here. Kai had been raised right. Besides, it was fun riling Yankees. “I’d offer you some sweet tea or something, but I just got in and haven’t had time to make any yet.”
“I don’t require tea,” the woman said in clipped tones.
“You sure?” Kai asked, pushing. “We could go get coffee or something,” she added, lifting her cup and making as if to get out of her chair.
“This isn’t a social visit,” the woman snapped. “I’d like to hire your services. My name is Rilke and—”
“Really?” Kai interrupted, leaning back in her chair and taking a sip of coffee. The woman didn’t look like a threat, but Kai had learned early on to be careful. “And what services might those be?”
“I need you to find my sister, Gisa.” Rilke’s mask of anger cracked and grief showed through. Then she swallowed it down. “Someone kidnapped her.”
“Kidnapped, huh? That’s serious business,” Kai said. “Why me? Why not the police?” Kai had never been asked to help in a kidnapping. Missing kids, sure, but usually, they’d all wanted to be lost.
“You’re not…” Rilke waved her hand toward Kai. “Human,” she finally ended with.
Kai put her cup down on her desk very deliberately, planted her feet on the ground, and stood slowly, intending on showing this woman the door. Kai was human. Just—extra. She wasn’t xita, and she only dealt with them when she had to.
Before Kai could start yelling, Rilke indicated herself. “Neither am I. I am a nixe. Water spirit. Siren.”
The ocean scent that Kai had never smelled before suddenly made sense. The sense of rushing water came over her again, willing her to be bowled over and sit.
Though still irked at being called non-human, Kai found herself curious. “Why would someone kidnap your sister?”
“I think it was because she was foolish, and alone. It wasn’t her they wanted, but a siren. Sirens call men, yes?” Rilke’s accent grew heavier. “We need them, to live.”
Kai nodded. She vaguely recalled something like that from a high school English class, way back before she’d dropped out.
“We also need water. When our need is great enough, we can call water, too.” Rilke stared hard at Kai. “Enough water to reach wherever we are, even if we are held in the middle of a city on dry ground.
”
The humid air suddenly felt like a weight pressing against Kai, ready to pounce and drown her. She sat slowly.
The sense of rushing water increased—that unstoppable force, overflowing and drowning everything in its path.
Last night, the news had talked about a new tropical storm brewing off the coast.
“No,” Kai breathed out.
Not her city. It couldn’t be drowned. Not again.
* * *
They didn’t negotiate a fee. Kai gave Rilke an amount and a timeline—half now, half on completion.
Though it was six times what Kai usually charged, the siren didn’t blink. Without pausing, Rilke reached into her bag and started counting out hundreds, laying them on Kai’s beaten-up desk in the one clear patch of warm wood.
Kai’s mouth went dry as she watched the bills pile up on her desk. The sound of the construction work across the street faded away. The sun hadn’t found its way through the old wooden-paned windows, but Kai still thought she caught a golden beam shining on the stack. It looked obscene and fake, caught between the piles of newspapers and stacks of folders.
Even without picking it up and smelling it closely, Kai knew it was real. All of it. Not fairy or silke gold. Actual American dollars.
She could pay her rent. And get groceries. Even coffee. And…
“How will you find her?” Rilke interrupted Kai’s fevered planning.
“I need something of hers, that carries her scent,” Kai explained, reluctantly folding the money and shoving it in the front pocket of her skirt. She wasn’t about to lose touch with that wad before it was safely stashed.
“That’s what they said,” Rilke said, pulling out two items: a wooden comb and a peach-and-white silk scarf.
“They?” Kai asked. Who’s been talking about her?
“Other beings I asked,” Rilke said, smirking.
“Hmph,” Kai replied, picking up the comb. She was gonna have to check later.
The comb was beautiful, hand-carved from warm, dark wood, with a delicate pattern of swirls and flowers along the edge.
“This won’t work,” Kai said, putting it down. While it carried a scent, it wasn’t complete. Gisa had only used it for grooming. She hadn’t worn it.
“How about this?” Rilke said, passing the scarf to Kai using two hands, like a priest passing a sacred vestment.
Kai brought it briefly to her nose. It smelled of the leather of Rilke’s handbag, her overly sweet hand-lotion, and the fresh green of the money she kept in there. Under that, was Rilke herself. She’d cried into the scarf, tears fresh at one end.
Closer to the center, a scent similar but different than Rilke picked up. The scarf held the smell of ocean storms and wild winds. Power seeped into Kai’s fingers, and a sense of the wide open sea, empty and desolate, yet alive with magic.
“She’s stronger than you,” Kai commented. While Rilke was wound tighter than an old white church-lady, Gisa was looser, with less control. “Are you sure she was kidnapped?” Kai asked reluctantly. She wanted, needed this find, but Gisa was obviously wild.
Rilke pressed her lips together. “I feel it. I feel her. Out of water. No one, not even Gisa, risks her sanity by staying out of water for so long.”
“If you can feel her, can’t you find her?” Kai asked, puzzled.
“I’ve tried!” Rilke slammed her palm against Kai’s desk.
Kai hid her smile at the obvious cracks in siren’s mask.
“I’ve covered this city from canal to canal,” Rilke fumed. “I know she’s here. But she’s hidden. And she must be found. Soon.”
That sobered Kai up again. Yes. Soon. “When did you discover she was missing?”
“Three weeks ago,” Rilke sighed, deflating. “My sister would go travel sometimes, a day, maybe two, just to tease me. Never longer. After a week I knew something was wrong. I followed the trail here.”
Kai nodded, stretching her senses. Rilke was holding back, not just her emotions, but something else. Was it important? Or not? She needed more information; she’d never met a siren before.
Inward, Kai gave a great sigh. She was going to have to get up early and go to the Clover Grill, see if she could catch the professor, buy him breakfast, and question him about the sirens, let him ramble about mythology. He scared Kai a little, but she could pay him for more than just breakfast this time.
“Well?” Rilke said.
Kai realized she’d been sitting and thinking, not saying anything.
“Aren’t you going to go look for my sister?”
“Yes ma’am,” Kai said, pushing herself forward. “I will find your sister.”
“Call me here when you do,” Rilke said, shoving a business card from one of the best hotels in the Quarter across the desk, a room number written in an old-fashioned script at the bottom.
Kai nodded and stood up, gathering the scarf up, pushing it into her bag. She’d have to get a baggie for it later, to stop contaminating the scent. Though she had it in her nose, it would be better if the source stayed pure.
Rilke stood as well. “Where will you start looking?”
“Oh, I’m not gonna look, hon,” Kai said with a grin. “I’m just gonna wander.”
* * *
Though Kai had told Rilke that she was going to wander in part to piss her off—she couldn’t help but push the buttons of uptight Yankees—it had also been the truth. The most effective pattern for searching was crisscrossing the city, following random streets, until Kai suddenly found herself in front of whatever she was searching for.
First, though, Kai walked back to the coffee shop. Clouds still hung heavy in the sky, not threatening rain, just heat and more stickiness. Tourists blocked the sidewalk, talking in harsh voices and taking pictures of half a dozen street musicians standing on the other side of the street, warming up. Kai hadn’t seen the musicians before, and they all smelled sour-poor and desperate. New band, maybe?
The welcoming smell of coffee greeted Kai as she pushed through the door, the air conditioning a chilled blessing on her skin.
Marcus glared at Kai from behind the counter. Two tourists in searing bright T-shirts with big cameras around their necks chatted with Amita as they ordered their drinks, pausing to rest their bare arms on the cool marble of the counter. Kai didn’t blame them one damn bit.
“Not here to chat,” Kai assured Amita when it was her turn, sliding one of the crisp hundreds to her. “Just paying my tab,” she added, glaring at Marcus. “Keep the change,” she added sweetly to Amita.
“Make sure it’s not counterfeit,” Marcus said, glaring back.
“You sure, hon?” Amita asked when she saw the number of zeros on the bill.
“I’m sure,” Kai assured her friend.
“You get a job, or rob a bank?” Amita asked as she cast the wand over the bill, barely looking at it.
Kai relaxed some when the hundred registered as legit. “Job. I’ll tell you all about it later.” Then she sobered, remembering what might happen if she failed. “You got a place to go if you have to, right? If that storm comes?”
“That storm isn’t coming inland,” Marcus said.
“Wasn’t talking to you,” Kai said pointedly. Not that she wished Marcus drowned—she didn’t wish that on anybody. Caged, with water rising, was Kai’s worst fear. Worse than being stuck, or broke, or even hurt.
Amita nodded. “Got an aunt in Baton Rouge.”
“You call her tonight,” Kai said pointedly.
No matter what Kai might have told Rilke about wandering, she knew she had to find Gisa in time. She didn’t have to imagine the consequences—all she had to do was visit the Ninth Ward, parts of Bywater, any of the neighborhoods ravaged by Katrina.
She couldn’t let that happen to her city. Not again.
* * *
Coming out from the bank, Kai paused and lifted her face toward the sliver of gray sky sandwiched between the gray buildings on either side of her. She sniffed.
Not
hing.
There were plenty of scents: musty furniture that was just for show from the antique shop next door; frying grease and three-day-old seafood from the nasty tourist restaurant across the street; plastic, cosmetics, and caged pain from the drug store kitty-corner. No scent of Gisa.
Not that Kai had expected any. Only part of what she did was based on scent. Mostly it was just feel.
Kai stepped onto the sidewalk and felt herself going right.
Even on a steaming day like today, Kai found this part of Royal Street to be chilly: When the sun broke through the clouds, it couldn’t make it past the tall, concrete-and-stone buildings that held in the cold and made hearts hard.
As Kai turned up Iberville Street toward Bourbon, she heard the steady beat of an electronic drum and the deep wail of guitars. Ten o’clock in the morning, and the party she never was invited to was already going strong.
Or maybe it had never stopped. The smell of stale beer washed over her, but at least the streets had been cleaned, the tourist cups swept away.
On St. Charles, Kai waited for the streetcar with a group of college kids. They had a schedule with them and worried that they’d missed the most recent car. Kai just laughed at them, but didn’t bother telling them that streetcars ran on “city time”—schedules didn’t matter. The car would get there when it chose, and probably more than one, since the streetcars tended to travel in herds.
Two streetcars trundled toward them a few minutes later. The old green car smelled of lemon polish and old sweat, the constant battle between keeping things up and things running down. Kai sat down on one of the uncomfortable, wooden-slatted seats and opened a window, hoping for a breeze.
Maybe once Rilke paid the rest of her fee, Kai could get a car, then get one of her friends to drive her while she stuck her head out the window like a dog, giving directions instead of being stuck on prescribed lines, her direction defined by others.
Kai pulled herself away from such daydreams. She needed to do a different sort of dreaming now.
The streetcar clattered into motion, its wheels squealing as it rounded the corner. Kai swayed with it, drifting. The buildings changed, from tall and concrete to lower, old and brick, with people in the streets, not just businessmen.
