by Cutter, Leah
“How will you know when you find them?” Orlan asked, confused.
“I can’t explain it,” Kai said, standing and starting to pace, the walls of the room closing in, making the space feel smaller. “I just have to find them.”
“Are they Buddhist priests?”
“No. Taoists,” Kai said. “But they’ll probably be at regular churches.” That’s what Rilke had thought.
“Why would they use churches?” Orlan asked. “It’s a completely different religion.”
Kai thought for a moment. Would they be more likely to use churches because they were demons? Or less likely?
More likely. They reveled in desecration. “Old churches. What would be considered sacred ground,” Kai insisted, though she knew that was just a human distinction.
Orlan turned back to his keyboard, but he didn’t start typing. After a long moment, he said, “No.” He looked back at Kai. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
Shit. Kai had always known this day would come, when Orlan would demand answers.
“I—I can’t,” she said.
“Bullshit.”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Kai said. It was too far outside his nice, orderly world of bits and bytes.
“Try me.”
A sinking feeling hollowed out her gut, leaving nothing but skin.
Maybe Ingrid wouldn’t be so horrible—not if she’d lost everything before it even started raining. With a strangled laugh, Kai kicked out the last of her supports.
“There’s a whole other world you don’t know about, can’t see or touch. Xita, creatures of the dark, with abilities you can’t even imagine. And though I’m human, I’m part of that world, too.”
Kai stood defiantly in front of Orlan, hands clenched into fists on her hips, ready to fight, flee, fuck, she didn’t know.
Orlan broke into a huge, crazy grin.
What the hell?
“I know,” he said.
Chapter Eight
“What do you mean, you know?” Kai asked Orlan, her head spinning.
Since visiting the Floating Court the night before, she’d felt as if she’d gone down a rabbit hole. Now, she was certain she hadn’t come back up yet.
“Here, let me show you,” Orlan said, spinning back around and typing on his keyboard.
Kai slowly approached the large bank of seven screens. The live video feed in the top right corner was replaced with a static black-and-white image.
It was her, in an alley, with Caleb.
Fear sank through Kai. Orlan had captured them? On video? How? She’d thought that kind of thing was impossible to catch on video; Caleb had tried to record himself transforming a few times. The screen always just showed up blank.
“I wasn’t stalking you, or following you, or anything, I swear,” Orlan said earnestly. “I was hired by this company to do surveillance. “
Kai nodded, believing him. Orlan generally told her the truth, or he didn’t talk about it, or wouldn’t answer her question.
“So you and this guy appeared—”
“Caleb.”
“Caleb. Right. So y’all show up and—” Orlan pressed a key.
The figures stood, talking, then the video fuzzed over. Seconds later, Kai reappeared alone, walking out of the alley. No other figure was there.
“Do you know how long I spent cleaning that recording?” Orlan asked, then answered his own question. “Weeks. It was impossibly messed. Every algorithm I found, every setting I tweaked, just made it worse.”
Orlan played the original sequence again, stopping it during the fuzz.
“Where did he—Caleb—go? It wasn’t ’cause I cared about you and him, but the place I was hired to do surveillance for got robbed and I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t find it.”
When Orlan paused, Kai asked the question he seemed to be expecting. “What did you do?” she said, giving him the space he needed to show her.
“I went back to the original. Though it’s only a couple of seconds or so of fuzz, it seemed—compressed. Instead of trying to clean the entire thing, I broke it down and worked on it a microsecond at a time.” Orlan moved his mouse and the screen divided. The left showed the original, fizzy version, while the right showed a new version.
“I learned that every microsecond would take something different to clean it, that there was no pattern, that I couldn’t repeat anything I’d already used. And the result, well, it isn’t perfect. But it finally shows what you were doing in that alley.”
Snow still covered the screen. But it was possible to make out two figures. Caleb stripped, frame by frame, handing his clothes to Kai. That actually made Kai breathe a sigh of relief: she’d thought the video would only fuzz up after Caleb had started changing. Obviously something made it start beforehand. She wasn’t sure exactly what, though. Was it Caleb? Or was the change enough to ruin the earlier footage?
Then Caleb changed. Kai made herself watch carefully, so she would see exactly what Orlan had seen, not letting herself fill in the details.
The transformation was jerky, and took less time that it did in real life, probably something to do with the video. But the result was the same: Eventually, Kai stood in the alley with a very large dog. Even in the fuzzy footage she could see the sharpness of his teeth.
Finally, she placed the night. It had been four, maybe five weeks before. Caleb hadn’t transformed into his normal Husky size; no, he’d been much larger that night, and meaner. He couldn’t change breeds, but he could vary his size, from that of a regular dog to a small pony.
Kai turned to Orlan and asked, “So what do you think happened?”
“Caleb isn’t a werewolf. But he ain’t a normal dog, either. He also works protection, right?”
Kai didn’t confirm or deny; those were Caleb’s secrets, not hers. “This happened weeks ago,” she said, not denying the truth of what Orlan had found. She wouldn’t insult his intelligence that way. “Why didn’t you ask me about it then?”
“It really did take a long time to clean up the recording,” Orlan said. “I didn’t have a mostly clean version, where I could see what was going on, until last week.”
“So again, why did you wait?” Kai asked. How far down the rabbit hole had he gone?
Orlan shrugged. “It was your business. What I do, here—” he gestured at the computer screens “—isn’t necessarily all legal. Y’all are just operating under a different type of wire.”
“Good,” Kai said, breathing a sigh of relief. “So you didn’t try to clean up any other feed?”
Orlan looked at Kai for a moment, his lips pressed together. “Honest, I did. But just one. And only after I saw you there last night.”
“The alley behind the shops on Tulane,” Kai filled in.
Orlan nodded. “I wouldn’t have, but then you were there, and I remembered that strange fuzz we’d seen on the recording before, and I—”
“It’s okay,” Kai said gently. “But you shouldn’t go cleaning up other recordings. Don’t go diving any deeper into this.” Caleb wouldn’t kill Orlan to protect his secret…probably. But she couldn’t say the same of his brothers.
Or the others she knew roamed the city.
“That dangerous?” Orlan asked.
Kai didn’t like the challenging look in his clear blue eyes. “Yes. Only more so. These are the xita, creatures, you’d never believe. You’d never be safe if they found out you had recordings of them. Not ever. Not even here.”
Orlan scoffed. “I’ve shown you my security. Nothing’s getting through that.” There was more than one false door that Kai knew about, as well as razor wire hidden in the walls and over the windows.
“How would you stop a ghost?” Kai asked seriously. “A being who is transparent and can move through walls? Or one of the snake kind, who can worm their way through any crack?”
“Really?” Orlan asked, taken aback.
“Yes,” Kai lied. Well, exaggerated. She’d seen only the one at the court, a
nd sensed that the store keeper of the Chinese knickknack shop had some kind of snake in him. “And you saw Caleb. He could track you anywhere.” He already had Orlan’s scent from her, she knew.
Orlan looked more worried. “And you?” he asked.
“What about me?” Kai replied, her fear spiking again.
“How dangerous are you to me, now?”
“Oh honey,” Kai said, laughing with relief. “You know I’d have your balls for breakfast if you decided to become a threat to me.”
Orlan gave her an amused smile. “So, we’re good?”
Kai hesitated. “I am human,” she started off. She might be part xita, but she was going to cling to her human part like kudzu clung to the trees.
“You’re also special. Different,” Orlan filled in.
“Exactly!”
“Darlin’, that wasn’t a secret. Anyone taking a good look at you would see that.”
Kai decided to take his flirtatious compliment at face value. “Thank you.”
“Now, can you tell me why we’re looking at churches?” Orlan asked, excitement turning his blue eyes bluer.
Kai told him everything about Rilke and Gisa, and the Taoists who’d made pacts with demons.
She didn’t mention Mama or the court. It was better to stick with individuals, rather than trying to explain a whole community that she wasn’t really a part of. Besides, Mama was family; that was different.
“Looking at churches don’t really make a whole lot of sense,” Orlan said when she finished. “Where else could we go looking?”
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “I don’t really know anything about the priests.”
“Does Rilke?”
Kai shrugged. “She might. But her ideas about them might be—old fashioned.”
“Classics get repeated all the time,” Orlan pointed out. “Maybe if we knew a bit about the old-fashioned side of the priests, we could figure out where the modern ones might be hiding.”
“That’s a good idea, Kai said. “We could go talk with Rilke.” She couldn’t go back to the court. “Want to come with me?”
“Who, me?” Orlan asked, surprised.
“Sure. You might ask questions I wouldn’t think of.” Orlan was one of the smartest people she knew: book smart and street smart.
Smart enough to worm his way into her heart when she wasn’t looking.
“Great!” Orlan said, standing.
Kai tugged him over for a soft kiss. “You’re taking this much better than I thought you would,” she murmured.
“You didn’t see me at the start of the week, when I finally had a clean feed,” Orlan said with a grimace. “I spent a good day confused, hurt, and in denial.”
“A whole day, huh?” Kai teased. “And now?” she asked, shyly slipping her hand into Orlan’s, intertwining their fingers together.
Orlan shrugged. “You adapt. You move on. Or you get stuck. I was stuck, for a while, in the streets. I don’t plan on being stuck again. Not ever.”
For that, Kai had to kiss him just one more time.
* * *
Thick, brown marble columns framed the reception desk, making it a very expensive cage. The concierge was in a full tuxedo, complete with strangling bowtie. Glass chandeliers graced the ceiling, looking like they’d come directly from the French court over a hundred years ago.
Despite the two-story-high ceilings, the barrage of conversations from the tourists in the lobby was both startling and deafening. This lobby only had two modes as far as Kai had seen: deathly quiet—like a crypt late at night—or deathly loud.
“Come on,” Kai said, tugging Orlan to the modern bank of elevators. She would have preferred the stairs, but all the stairwell doors were rigged and would sound the fire alarm if opened.
“Which floor?” Orlan asked as the doors opened, showing the usual half-smoky-glass, half-wood-paneling tiny box.
Kai looked at the lights above the door, trying to get a sense of where Rilke would be. Generally, she’d say lower floors, but— “What floor is the pool on?”
“They’ve got two,” Orlan said, reading the little plaques next to the buttons. “One on the fourth floor and one on the fourteenth.”
“Let’s start on the fourteenth, then we’ll try the fourth,” Kai said.
“You don’t know?”
“No. But don’t worry. I can find her,” Kai assured Orlan.
“How?” Orlan asked as they started going up.
Kai just shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
Orlan blinked at her, obviously processing the information. “Your business is finding things,” he stated.
Kai nodded.
“And you don’t find things how I would, by searching records, interviewing people.”
“Sometimes I interview people,” Kai pointed out as the door dinged open. “But you’re right. Mostly I just…find things.”
“So how—”
“Shh,” Kai said, reaching out and squeezing Orlan’s hand. “Later, okay?”
“Okay,” Orlan said, squeezing Kai’s hand back.
Kai closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her senses tug at her.
Rich. Many people passed through here, all of them with cash to burn. The scent of industrial cleaners lingered in the air, as well as stale perfume.
There. To the left. An echo of Rilke, fresh water and wild winds.
Kai walked down the tan hall slowly, running her fingers along the red-stained chair rail, then across each modern beige door. Dim lights barely lit the place, and the thick carpet muffled their steps. Kai could easily have nightmares about this place—no windows, no sunlight or fresh air, every door looking the same, the hallway art modern and boring and bad for her soul.
About three-fourths of the way down the hallway, Kai stopped and turned around. She walked past 1404, then went back to it.
“Here,” Kai said. “But Rilke isn’t in right now.”
“Do you want to wait?” Orlan asked.
Kai shuddered at the thought of going back to the crowded, noisy lobby. “I don’t know.”
“You’re sure she’s not there?” Orlan asked.
Kai knocked loudly. “Rilke? Are you there?”
No one answered.
Kai sighed. “I suppose we could wait downstairs,” she said, though she really didn’t want to.
“I have a better idea,” Orlan said. He drew out his long leather wallet, which was attached to his jeans with a chain, and drew what looked like a blank, white plastic card from it. “Master key,” he said smugly as he swiped it through Rilke’s door lock.
The little light on top of the handle turned green immediately. Orlan opened the door.
Rilke was going to kill Kai when she found out.
Kai still followed Orlan into the room.
The suite was bigger than Kai’s apartment. The hallway opened up to a massive living room, all done in white: white shag carpet, white pristine couch, white wooden chairs around a white marble table in the breakfast nook in the corner, white mantel over the gas fireplace, white shades on the lamps.
Kai tasted the silence in the air. It wasn’t just that Rilke wasn’t there; no, it was something else.
“Check this out,” Orlan said from the doorway to the bedroom.
A huge bed piled high with pillows—thankfully, not all white—reigned from the corner. Yet another set of table and chairs were there, next to doors leading out to a second balcony. The door to the bathroom was open and visible from where they stood. The jetted bathtub was easily large enough for two.
“I’ve heard of places like this, seen them on the web,” Orlan said, his voice hushed. “Never been to one.”
“After this case, we could, you know, come back,” Kai suggested. “Have a, what is it called? Staycation?”
Orlan turned and smiled at her. “Naw, just seeing it’s enough.” He leaned over and kissed her hair. “Wanna wait in the living room?”
“Okay,” Kai said, though she might su
rprise Orlan with a night in a room like this sometime.
Particularly after Rilke paid the rest of Kai’s fees.
That odd stillness struck Kai again as they went back to the couch in the main part of the suite. Kai sat and thought for a moment.
It wasn’t stillness, not exactly. More like action, interrupted.
Kai jumped up from the couch and prowled the room, trying to find the source of the disruption.
“Whatcha doing?” Orlan asked.
“Shh,” Kai said, irritated.
At least Caleb knew to leave her alone when she was finding something.
There. Closer to the entrance. Near the hallway.
Kai passed by it three times before she finally realized what she was seeing: Rilke’s handbag.
It was a larger, over-the-shoulder purse, big enough to stuff an extra pair of shoes in, though Kai doubted that the siren would ever stoop to such a thing. Her shoes were probably custom fit and made to not pinch or hurt.
Kai snatched up the bag and sat down on the floor in front of the couch, dumping the contents out onto the thick shag.
“What did you find?” Orlan asked, looking over her shoulder.
Kai pawed through the pile, pushing aside the makeup compact, Gisa’s comb, lips, mascara, contact lens case (did Rilke wear glasses? Or were these to hide her eyes?). Kai shoved everything to the side, her fingers finding the smooth glass before she saw it.
Orlan gave a low whistle. Kai looked at the bottle in her hands. It felt bigger, heavier, than it looked. It was the shape of one of those bottles of fancy French sparkling water that the tourists drank, but instead of green it was a deep blue. The water inside of it glowed, rich and pure.
Kai held the bottle up to Orlan. “What do you see?” she asked, curious.
“Huh? Oh. Bottle of water. No, I was looking at this,” Orlan said, reaching over Kai to snag one of the half-dozen stacks of hundred dollar bills.
Kai should have raised her fee even higher, charged Rilke more at the start. Still. “I don’t mean that. This,” Kai said, holding up the bottle again. “This is important.”
“And that ain’t?” Orlan asked, indicating the money. “We’re gonna have to talk about your priorities, darling.”
