by Bonds (epub)
“Then you and I will go one way, Mom. The doctor another. They don’t know who he is and I don’t think they care. After a couple days, we dump it somewhere and run again. We hid before, we can do it again.”
Daisy’s mom placed her hand on Dawnstar’s head. Quickly, she closed her eyes and leaned against the dog. A soft woof sounded from the back of the shepherd’s throat and she shook the way she would shake off water.
And Daisy got the distinct sense of Yes, I understand.
Dawnstar padded over to Daisy. The dog looked up once, then dropped her butt onto Daisy’s feet and leaned against her leg.
“She’ll protect you,” Cecilia said. “Be good to her, daughter. She trusts you. She’s always trusted you.” Her mom waved her fingers through the air.
The gesture said I’m fine. But it also said I’ve given up.
“Mom! The plan will work.” It had to work.
But her mom shook her head. “Doctor,” Cecilia whispered. “I don’t think my daughter and I can hide anymore.”
Dr. Torres closed his eyes for a second. “No, you cannot.”
“What?” Why did the adults just give up like that?
Her mom didn’t look at the big man. She stared at Daisy. “Help me get the camping equipment. We need to get you out of here.”
14
When Cecilia glanced at the doctor, Daisy saw a big dose of I’m sorry on her face. Not “I’m sorry you have to take care of her,” or “I’m sorry this all happened and I was so freaking weird about it.” No, Daisy saw “I’m sorry you have to deal with the future.”
Cecilia stepped over the dead dog and into the hallway, effectively turning her back on any question Daisy might ask. “The equipment is in the hall closet.”
The doctor nodded. Quickly, he and her mother pulled out the big hiking backpack, the tent, the little stove, and the two sleeping bags.
“Daisy,” Cecilia pointed at her bedroom. “Get your kangaroo and your koala toys. And clothes. Hurry.”
Daisy dashed into her bedroom, Dawnstar on her heels, and threw open her closet doors. Under the pile of dirty clothes on the floor, beneath the shoe box with her one pair of “nice” kitten heels, below the old plastic grocery sack full of last semester’s English Lit assignments, Daisy found the cloth bag containing the two toys she’d carried out of Australia.
She pulled it out. A deep royal purple, it still felt slick and smooth, and glimmered in the light. Her mom had brought it home from work one day, saying it had been in a damaged crate shipped to the company where’d she’d done a house call that day, though she probably stole it, too. Said Daisy could have it, if she wanted it.
Inside had been the kangaroo and the koala toys.
They weren’t big. Both were approximately the size of the softballs her gym teacher tossed around. Both soft and cuddly, the kangaroo was brown with a tail good for a little kid to grasp, and the koala gray, with ears good for a little kid to chew.
Daisy flicked her finger over the koala’s left ear, feeling the thinned fabric under the pad of her thumb. On the flight across the ocean, she’d almost chewed it off.
Behind her, Dawnstar whimpered.
“It’s okay, girl.” Daisy scratched at the dog’s ear. They needed to leave, to calm down. Find a place to think things through and make a real plan. Or not make a plan, if making a plan made it easier for Fates to find them.
Daisy inhaled slowly, held her breath for a moment, then exhaled with even more forced slowness. She was good at rolling with the world. The universe dropped ugly, biting things in her path all the time and she long ago become good at jumping barriers, picking up gold coins, and stealing healing mushrooms.
No more chewing on ears. No more fear. Daisy gathered her clothes, stuffing most into the purple silk bag that used to hold the toys. She pulled on her lightweight jacket, the one she wore on the few evenings the San Diego air actually cooled, and stuffed her talisman-hiding toys into the inside pockets, one on each side, before returning to the living room.
In the kitchen, the doctor stuffed shelf-stable food into the backpack. Her mom, cash into the pockets of her cleaning service uniform.
A lot of cash.
“You’ve been hiding all that money? Did you steal that too?” What the hell. “How come Kobayashi’s goons didn’t find it?”
Her mom looked up. “Tony’s an idiot.” She stuffed the last wad into the front of her bra and pointed at the door as she sniffed the air. “I sense no enthrallers. Doctor?”
Dr. Torres sniffed as he zipped up the bag. “Me, either.”
On the floor, the Fate he’d zapped with his death-making healer-hands moaned.
Daisy’s mom stepped back, toward the door, like she’d just been slapped. “Why hasn’t the rest of her triad appeared yet?”
Dr. Torres swept his hand toward the door as if to usher Daisy outside. “I don’t know. I’m surprised they split up in the first place. Makes me wonder about their future-seer.”
“Maybe they didn’t split up on their own,” Daisy said, a thought dawning. “Maybe someone split them up. Maybe that Fate who keeps calling us did something useful for once.” Maybe the woman decided to actually help instead of yelling and ordering them around like her personal servants.
Neither the doctor nor her mom said anything and Daisy got the distinct sense that neither adult believed a Fate would actually help help. Because they’re assholes.
The doctor handed Daisy one of the sleeping bags and she stuffed her bag of clothes into its center. Easier to carry that way.
Next to her thigh, Dawnstar—Dawn, now—woofed again.
Daisy patted the dog’s head. Each time the animal made a small barking sound, or nuzzled her side, or tried to sit on her foot, Daisy felt a little better. Like this beast had her back in ways the doctor and her mom did not. Could not.
Dawn seemed to think guarding Daisy was the right thing to do, no matter what, and she looked like she was taking her new job seriously. Whatever her mom told the dog seemed to have made sense to her canine mind.
Daisy hitched the sleeping bag’s strap up her shoulder. The doctor, for his part, pulled the pack onto his back, but watched her mom, who now carried the bundle with their tent, more than Daisy.
He probably thought her mother was losing control. Daisy thought Cecilia was losing control, the way she twitched and stuffed cash into her bra.
Cecilia sniffed again as she ducked her head out the door. “Kobayashi must have turned tail when the Fate showed up.” But she still glanced around like they were about to be attacked.
Next to Daisy’s leg, Dawn let out a soft bark. “Quiet, girl.” No monster was going to get past the German shepherd. Daisy had to believe that. At this point, any other thought would send her into a tailspin.
Her mom walked out into the hallway first, Daisy and the dog in the middle, the doctor behind. They quickly and quietly moved down the back stairs and out the same door they came in.
Out in the lot, the doctor and her mom both did the weird nose wiggle again.
Would she look like that after her mom activated her? Both adults looked like someone stuck a rotten-egg-soaked bumblebee up their noses.
She bet only Shifters did it. The doctor’s Fate tell gave away a lot of his thinking, but the twitch gave away who he was. “You two both do a freaky thing with your nose when you smell for calling scents.” Daisy ran for the doctor’s car and opened the trunk when he unlocked it.
Dr. Torres and her mom threw each other knowing-but-weird glances. “Remember what it looks like, Daisy,” he said. “Knowing when you are in the presence of an enthraller is half the battle.”
Luckily, Daisy had only experienced Kobayashi’s enthralling. Who knew what a really strong one could do to her mind. She didn’t want to think about it right now.
Daisy stuffed the sleeping bag i
nto the trunk and stepped aside so the doctor could put in the pack and the tent, which he took from her mom.
Cecilia nodded. “If you can resist—” Her head swiveled toward the other apartment building, across the lot. The one that was just as ratty as theirs. The one with people yelling and shouting as they pushed through the front door into the parking lot. “Damn it.”
People who probably were wondering why Dawn pressed against Daisy’s leg and not their drug-dealing neighbor’s.
Daisy’s mom leaned toward Dawn, her mouth open. The dog pressed her big doggie body against Daisy’s thigh and her mom nodded.
The doctor moved between them and the other building, presenting himself as a big mountain of man-target. “We need to go. Now.”
Cecilia pointed at the pocket of Daisy’s jacket. “Take out the koala, honey.” She started digging in her own pockets, but didn’t pull out the cash in the open, in the parking lot of their drug dealer infested apartment complex.
Digging with the same giving up look on her face she had back in the apartment.
“Why?” Daisy suddenly had the sense her mom was about to do something stupid. She smelled it in the air, coming off her mother like a bad perfume. She smelled determination. And a strong indication of fuck it.
Her mom was about to do what Daisy had thought the doctor wouldn’t be able to resist. Like taking a dare and doing a stupid kind of behavior because she wasn’t going to be seen as a pussy by anyone. Not Kobayashi. Not the goddamned Fates.
Daisy’s gut knotted up into a tight, hard ball. As tight and as hard as the thing her mom hid inside the belly of her kangaroo that waited inside her other pocket.
“Because you need the cash.” Quickly, she wadded up all the twenties and fifties and jammed them into Daisy’s jacket.
Cecilia took the koala. It vanished into her left pocket at the same time as she slammed the trunk. The sound echoed through the lot like thunder. “Go.”
“No, Mom!”
Cecilia wasn’t coming.
The doctor pushed Daisy around the car but he was talking to her mom, not her. “You have to come. She needs activating.”
“You know as well as I do what happens when a Shifter activates. Time is of the essence, here. Do you want her…” Cecilia’s mouth rounded, then she slammed it as tight as she’d slammed the car’s trunk.
On the other side of the lot, one of the yelling people pointed at them.
The doctor pointed at Daisy. “Activate her now!”
Her mother crossed her arms and her foot slipped back. “No.”
Dr. Torres pushed Daisy into the car. “Stay down.”
“Hey!” Daisy fought but he was big. And strong. Dawnstar didn’t help but instead hopped in and over Daisy’s lap, her claws wisping on the cloth seats of the doctor’s sedan.
He slammed the door. Outside the car, he leaned toward her mom. Both sets of adult hands gestured; both adult mouths flapped at high speeds. They yelled at each other in quiet whispers for what felt like a millennium.
Then the doctor stood up straight and opened the driver’s side door.
Her mother walked away.
“Mom!” Daisy tried to crawl over the seat but the doctor pushed her down.
“Stay down. Tell the dog to stay down.” He started the car.
“Why isn’t she coming with?” Daisy couldn’t think of anything stupider than what her mom was about to do. Except, maybe, going to the Fates.
The sun had dropped to the horizon and the lot’s one street light popped on just as they drove under it. The brief flash lit the backseat of the car and Daisy squinted. On the floor, tucked in tight, Dawn sniffed at her nose.
Daisy, alone and unactivated, felt like whimpering right along with her dog. “That’s right, girl. Stay down.”
They watched the few trees surrounding the little lot vanish. The doctor took them out along the side drive, the one that led into an alley where no one ventured. Because it wasn’t safe.
“Does my mom think Kobayashi will protect her from the Fates? Because I don’t think he wants to be on their bad side.” Her mom should have come with them.
The doctor turned his sedan into the alley. Daisy sat up enough she could see out the side window. Slowly, he crept the car along before turning into the parking lot of another building. Once through that lot, they turned onto a suburban street.
“What the Fates do is out of her hands,” the doctor said. “She’s accepted that.”
“Then why didn’t she come with us? You’re strong. You know how to handle yourself. You’re a better choice than staying behind!” A much better choice. That hard lump in Daisy’s belly got harder.
The doctor glanced over his shoulder. “She can handle Kobayashi. He’s her best option right now.”
“She told you this?”
The doctor’s grip on the steering wheel looked extra tight. Like his knuckles would start bleeding or something.
“The talisman isn’t the only thing of value in your stuffed toy.”
“What?” Her mom was a total klepto. “What else did she steal?”
But Daisy knew before the final word left her mouth. She knew the obvious truth—and who was the one person capable of hurting her mom more than Kobayashi’s goons. Or all the Fate triads in San Diego.
“All this time, we weren’t hiding from Kobayashi, were we?”
The doctor nodded as he turned the car onto a freeway on-ramp. “No. She’s been hiding from your father.”
15
They stopped just long enough for Daisy to hop into the front seat. Dawn paced in the back, her tongue lollygagging out one side of her mouth. She’d woof every so often and paw at the window, but the doctor wouldn’t roll it down.
“Not chancing beheading the dog.” He said it dispassionately, like he’d given up as much as her mom.
Daisy slumped in the seat, silent. The doctor said her mom wouldn’t tell him who her father was. Said that the people he associated with were “too dangerous.”
More dangerous than Kobayashi? Than the scary evil Fate with the big knife?
The doctor only shrugged.
“Where are we going?” Daisy asked. They’d been driving for half an hour but they weren’t heading out of the city. They were heading into the suburbs.
The doctor didn’t answer.
“That Fate said you’re not supposed to go to your house.” But at this point, Daisy wasn’t sure if she cared.
“Mira needs to know. Then we go.”
“You’re coming with me? But it’s not safe for you. I’m supposed to help you get away from Fates, not lure them to you.” Daisy patted the little kangaroo in her jacket pocket and she felt her face crunch up the same way her mother’s did when she was frustrated. “Besides, Mom left me with enough money to get a bus ticket.”
Daisy felt tired all the way to her bones. Tired of the running and the chasing and the too-much-thinking. Her head hurt. Worrying about the doctor’s safety wasn’t helping.
“I don’t care what that Fate said. I am not abandoning you and slinking off into the night like some rat because she told me to.” He sniffed, but not like he was sniffing for enthrallers. He sniffed like a man flattened by the world. “You’re not active.” He glanced over at her. “You need protection.”
“And here I thought I was supposed to be taking care of you.” Daisy rolled her eyes.
The doctor laughed. “You sure do know how to throw your surgical instruments. I’ll give you that.”
Daisy laughed, too. The sound pushed up from her gut to her throat and it felt like all the hard knots in her belly just unraveled in her mouth.
In the backseat, Dawn barked and paced.
“The Fate hasn’t called again.” Daisy was beginning to wonder if the woman had abandoned them.
The doctor’s han
d flicked to his pocket, where he held the phone. He pulled it out. “Probably because the battery’s dead.” Frowning, he tossed it into the backseat. Dawn sniffed it before settling down and placing her head between the seats.
Daisy scratched the dog’s ear. “Do you think she’ll figure out another way to contact us?” The fatigue in Daisy’s bones slumped her shoulders and her back and everything else. She felt so tired she wasn’t even conscious of all the smells in the car—Dawnstar, the doctor’s fatigue, the dry, dirty air blown in by the AC.
She wasn’t even hungry. And she for sure didn’t have the will to fight with the doctor about stopping at his home.
“I don’t know. Fates are fickle,” he said.
Daisy chuckled. “The fickle fingers of Fates find the most vulnerable eyeballs to jab, huh?”
The doctor chuckled, too. “You have no idea.”
Daisy watched him for a long moment. She could tell he was having problems concentrating. “Do you want me to drive? I have my license. You look like you need a break.”
The grin that worked over his lips was more sad than anything else. “I hope my daughter grows up to be like you.”
Daisy didn’t know what to say. No one had ever said that to her before. It’d always been “Get on a better path, young lady,” and “Why can’t you live up to your potential?”
She tried not to act too shocked. “I’ve been suspended twice. Once for punching a popular kid and once for grinding a boy’s face into the gravel behind the school because he groped me.”
The doctor laughed again. “Now I really do hope she grows up to be like you.”
Daisy grinned. “Maybe I should stick around, huh? Teach her how to fight.” Quickly, she jabbed her fist into the air, like she was boxing. “And throw.” She flicked her wrist like she was throwing a dagger.
All it did was make the doctor look even more sad. “I tell my wife that if my daughter knew her potential, she’d have something to work toward. It helped me before I activated, to know what I was destined to become. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t concentrate.” He shrugged. “Though when I activated, no one diagnosed attention problems and being physically active as a ‘disorder.’ No one diagnosed anything back then other than bad humors and devil possession.”
