by Sara Hanover
“You think we need to be heroic?”
“No. But I do think we need to be wise.” Brian suddenly looked very tired and rubbed each eye gently.
“I think being wise is harder,” I told him. At least it was for me.
“Oh?”
“Anybody can react to a situation, but to figure out what should be done and the best way to do it, and how things will look on the other side of the action—that’s going to be hard.”
“That’s what it is to be human, isn’t it? Knowing that sometimes we have to do things the hard way.” He placed his hand on top of his box.
I reached out and gave him a comforting pat, uncertain as I felt inside myself. Neither of Brian’s personalities seemed at peace, and I didn’t like thinking about the future that would give that to them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
REMY DIDN’T SHOW UP at my next meal run, thankfully, although Mrs. Sherman seemed a little hesitant when I gave her hers. She held the tray carefully between her two palms, standing quietly in the doorway, almost afraid to turn away while I stood on the porch.
“Is everything all right?”
“Oh, fine, dear, fine. I was just thinking.” She giggled a bit. “Stopped to smell the roses and got a bit lost, isn’t that what they say?” Her wig had returned to its proper place on her head, though it seemed to sit a bit askew.
Did she remember being held hostage? I told her gently, “I can stay and talk a while, if you want to.”
“Oh, no. No, I’m fine. Just filled with old memories, some of them so vivid, it’s like being there again.”
Had Remy done that to her? “Good memories, I hope.”
“The best, the very best, when I and Arturo were young. He was quite a dashing young man, you know. Came from one of the families with money in Cuba. They got out before all the trouble and did well for themselves.” She gave a wistful smile and tucked a curl of vigorously red hair behind her ear. “He didn’t believe in saving for tomorrow though, and when he died, I had just enough to move to Richmond and buy a modest house. He never lived here, but in my memories, it’s almost as if he’d come home.”
“That’s adorable, but your dinner is going to get cold if you stand around dreaming about him, right? So go in and enjoy the stroganoff while it’s piping hot, then go sit out back in the shade and wait for the moon to rise!”
“Quite right.” She nodded briskly. “Off to it then. Give the others my regards. I’ll be at bridge on Thursday.”
I watched her march back into the house and shut the door behind her firmly. Then the click as the dead bolt snapped into place, the sound echoing through me sadly. She’d never locked the door after me before. She seemed all right but wasn’t, not quite, and all I could do was hope time would make her feel safe again.
When Remy and I met next, we were going to have some words.
By the time I pedaled back to the house, a dewy sheen covered me. We don’t like to sweat in the south. We shine. I was shining a lot and maybe even stinking a little, with a whole summer of heat and humidity awaiting me. I came out of the shower and dressed with as little as I could wear and get away with, which was actually pretty conservative because my mom has rules. Most of them have to do with her feeling like a good parent when she enforces them, but a few also reflect on her standing as a college professor in a certain layer of society and the responsibility to project an image, blah blah blah. So I stay pretty hot because I can’t wear a string bikini around the house. Not that I even own one. Or would anyway, but it’s the protest that counts.
Brian’s eyes widened a bit as I came downstairs.
“You’ve seen legs before!” I told him.
“Not that long. Did you spend some time on a rack while you were out?”
“Very funny. Deal with the short-shorts.” I opened the fridge and didn’t see what I wanted. So I went to the pantry. “I’m going downstairs.”
“By yourself?”
“Unless this is some slasher movie and I shouldn’t do that, yeah. We have a second refrigerator down there now, remember? It’s where I hide the Cokes from you.”
He brightened. “I knew they had to be around here somewhere.” He hung around the top step as I went to fetch a couple.
My momentum slowed near the bottom of the steps. I hadn’t been down here since exorcising my dad and finding out that part of him, a substantial part of him, seemed to consist of bad guy. I rubbed my wrist brace, but the stone under it remained cool and calm. The lack of salt slowed me down even more. Even though I’d vowed never to go anyplace ever again without a pound on me, my pockets were empty.
The old fridge stood in the corner. The wrecking crew had dragged it out of the garage, checked it out, and plugged it in before finishing the new cellar door that led up through the side yard. It hummed invitingly. I approached it, yanked open the door, got the Cokes, and bolted back to the exit. At the bottom, before I could take the stairs two at a time, a warm current passed over me. A warm and soothing current, with a feeling of being loved.
I turned around to see nothing unusual. The stone stayed quiet in my palm. There was only one thing I could think of, so I said, “Thanks, Dad.”
Nothing more happened. I guessed I couldn’t expect any more, but I waited a few heartbeats before I finally took the stairs, Cokes icy in my hands but the rest of me welcomed and reassured. It had to have been my father. Not that I wouldn’t put it past Malender to yank my chain, but frankly, I think he had more important conquests in the works than to stop for a minute and give me the equivalent of a mystical hug just to spook me. Brian gave me a look as I pressed both cans into his hands. “One of these is mine,” I warned him. “Go on, I’ll be up in a few.”
I shut the door and went back down to sit on the bottom step. “Don’t materialize, Dad. You need the rest. But if you could talk a bit, that would be nice. I need some advice that Mom can’t give me.”
Like a tropical ocean current, warmth eddied up and swirled around me, ever so gently.
“Thanks. I need to understand, if you can tell me, why Joanna Hashimoto upset you. She’s a friend, not a close one, but I know her and, well, she’s getting spooky. I think she has a foot in the magical world, if not both feet, and I don’t know if I can trust her.”
“Hironori runs gambling dens.” His answer, breathy and uneven, came after a long silence.
“Oh.” So that might explain some of her interest in my long-gone father and me. Not magic at all, just malice. “He was part of the trap, huh?”
“No. I tried to find evidence on him.”
I blinked. “You . . . were you working with the police?”
“Feds. After I got in too deep. They were going to help me out.”
“Dad. You should have told us.”
“Trouble for everyone.”
“Mom could have helped, you know that. She loves you.” I crossed my arms, thinking. Carter might have known, too. Was that why he’d been so secretly protective all these months?
“Hironori uses power.”
That skipped off my thoughts. “Power. Influence? Bribery? Or do you mean something more?”
“Unnatural.”
“Then the Hashimotos are into more than money.” And that bounced back to my first fears. The Hashimoto luck came from more than hard work and education, never to knock that, but if they’d tapped into magic to reinforce it, they had to have education and relics to refine their talent, and with that came the inevitable thirst for more. I hadn’t imagined Joanna’s keen interest in the journal, and in me, augmented by the stone, which she hadn’t seen but might be able to feel, like a magnet. Magic seemed to be an ever-expanding force. Their strength might be attracting Malender, and his them, a mutually beneficial partnership if Hashimoto brought strong allies to the table. And if Hironori had uncovered the fact that my dad had gone to work for the Feds,
he could be the very reason my dad existed as little more than a ghost of himself. I stood up. “I’ve got to stop whatever Joanna has planned.”
“Danger.”
“Oh, I got that.” I pulled my bracer off to see my stone glowing softly in the dim light of the basement. It didn’t like organization. Plans. Power that depended on thinking within a box. I knew that much from a little reading. Some things in creation lived beyond explanation and boundaries. Like love. “A little chaos should unravel anything she has scheduled.”
“Tessa. Take care.”
“If they put you here, I intend to take everything back that I can from them. And that includes you.” Before the warmth could disappear, I bolted up the basement stairs, shut the door behind me, and began to make plans.
One thing I didn’t have to worry about: I had already been invited over the Hashimoto threshold. I could get in. I just had to be concerned about the options for getting out.
Brian waylaid me in the foyer. “Problem?”
I took in his ever-paling skin, with the bluish bruises of fatigue growing under his eyes. The robust young man of days ago could barely be seen now. I might have been looking at some junkie just about to sink back into rehab. Whatever strength he had left, he needed for his own ritual. “Just some private family stuff.”
He rubbed the thick gold ring about his right thumb. “If you say so.”
“I do.” I started to step around him and then stopped. “Do you have any idea how weird it is to have the ghost of your father living in the cellar?”
“Can’t say that I ever had the privilege.” Brian smiled slightly. “But then, I am old enough that my parents are extremely difficult to remember in any way at all. I envy you, a bit.”
“That makes odd sense, because I don’t envy your forgetting them at all, even though it might be a little easier that way.”
He thrust a glass of ice and my can at me. “Thanks. I’m going to need the caffeine.” He stared after me, openmouthed, as I bounded back upstairs to work some more on those plans.
Saturday night needed to be spectacular. If I had anything to do with it, and the Andrews family luck, it would be.
* * *
• • •
No doorbell but a firm knock started it off, and I opened the door for the limo driver.
The driver took my garment bag from me and hung it carefully from the back passenger hook as I sat on the other side. He gave an odd look at the lumps at the bottom. “My shoes,” I told him. “And gloves and purse.” He smiled as he closed the car door. I wondered if he would be one of the provided escorts for the evening. Not too much older than me, I guessed his age somewhere between seventeen and Carter’s twenty-three years. He wore his hair shaved very close at the back of the neck and over the ears, like a Marine, but unlike a Marine, he had a big wave of dark hair on top in a trendy look. He looked good in a suit and would look even better in a tux. I scanned the car interior as the locks clicked down and we pulled away from the curb.
“Just me?”
“You are a bit late, miss, so the car is for you alone.” He gave me another short smile before turning back to the business of driving. As I watched the back of his neck, repeating in my mind all that I’d learned over the past three days of intense study, I saw a blur of color creep up his neckline. I hooked a thumb over my seat belt, prepared to bolt if the worst happened. I froze, transfixed, sighting a tattooed dragon just revealed above the collar line, its scales a pattern of beautiful, vibrant color, the whiskered snout elaborate, with white fangs. Sapphire eyes watched me, a sight as beautiful as it was incredible. I sat speechless.
My thoughts began clawing through my mind and everything I’d read in my entire life for a clue, even a worthless one.
I hadn’t studied tattoos, had I? And why not? Maybe because I had to find some time to sleep, go to campus, deliver meals and . . . oh yeah, breathe. I pulled my phone out, fingers flying over the search bar. After long minutes, the screen filled with answers.
Japanese dragons. Meaning: wisdom, strength, wind or water, and force for good.
I let the phone drop in my lap. This guy worked for Hironori Hashimoto and twin-souled Joanna. Maybe working for good was only a matter of perspective, and that put me on the wrong side.
Wonderful.
Of course, no one ever said the Internet is only full of truth and honesty.
This was not for myself. This was to find out what might have happened to my father, which the powers that evidently be around here either ignored or didn’t see in time, but I needed to straighten out. If I waited until I got permission, the opportunity to infiltrate could be gone. I had a few friends to guard my back, and that would have to be enough. I put my phone away and watched the cityscape of Richmond flow by as we drove out into the country toward the private club, with its own river access, while I planned for dealing with contingencies like dragons bolstering the Hashimoto abilities.
* * *
• • •
The Hashimoto grounds lay not too far outside town, with a white-railed fence with Japanese gates at the main drive, and a little guardhouse complete with a guard who watched us enter. Beyond that was an acre or so of immaculately groomed grass, signaling to golfers that a heavenly paradise of eighteen holes awaited on the other side of the country club, and even more manicured acres. The clubhouse stood in all-American flagstone beauty, expansive and tailored to its clientele. We went to the right, to the shops and spa, which looked tastefully Asian. The river connected both, a brilliant blue ribbon of man-made goodness, complete with bobbing barges vaguely like junks but with much more class and river worthiness docked on the shore. Joanna pounced on the car door as soon as we pulled to a stop in the parking lot. Her eyes and nose wrinkled disapprovingly as soon as she saw the brace. Both she and Evelyn walked wrapped in kimonos and wearing flip-flops as they pulled me out of the backseat.
“I thought you were ditching that.”
“I am, I am. My gloves are in the garment bag.” I grabbed for it as the driver retrieved it and started to make away with it. “Wait a minute!”
He stopped with an apologetic nod as I unzipped the bottom and retrieved my purse for the evening. It shimmered in silver iridescent glory as I hung the strap over my shoulder. “Borrowed,” I told Evelyn.
“Well, it’s gorgeous. Come on! The masseuses—is that a word? Many massagers—are waiting.”
Joanna looked over Evelyn’s shoulder. Her gaze assessed my necklace, earrings, and focused on my bracelet, just for the sparkling, I hoped. “Nice jewelry. You’ll have to take it off for the massage and the sauna though.”
“No prob. I’m sure they’ll be safe here.”
“We have lockers for personal items.”
And I intended to circle my items with a sprinkle of holy water, courtesy of one of the two vials in my purse. If that didn’t work, then I didn’t have much hope of surviving the evening anyway. Evelyn locked elbows with each of us. “I can hardly wait!”
I lowered an eyebrow at her. “Someone has teriyaki breath, so I’m guessing you already didn’t wait.”
She blushed. “A girl has to eat.”
Never-thin-enough Evelyn eating? I bumped hips with her. She did eat, but usually on her own convoluted diet. We laughed at her now.
“Are you hungry?”
I shook my head at Joanna. “I’ll make it till dinner. We’re having it at your restaurant, right?”
“That’s the idea, with everyone else, just before the catwalking and bidding starts. If Evelyn can wait.”
Evelyn smothered a delicate burp before adding, “I’m waiting, I’m waiting!”
“Paragon of patience.” Joanna mocked her with a fake burp of her own.
I threw a look back over my shoulder at our shadows trailing behind us. We each had two, from the sun’s slanted angle. Joanna’s second shadow
grew a little as I observed it, and spikes crowned its head and . . . tails. I looked away as soon as I saw it, and any warmth in me faded despite the hot Virginia almost-summer sun. Auction night. Evelyn looked forward to fun and games, while I anticipated trouble and Joanna. I gather she expected easy prey.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
GOLD AND IVORY marble swirled about the lobby, and complementing pillars reached elegantly to the ceiling, the room sweeping and impressive. It spoke of money, not in a whisper, but with a shout. No one sat at the reception desk, a curved piece of highly polished cherry wood as imposing as a baby grand piano, a gateway to all the magnificence beyond. It seemed the spa stood open today only for our private party. Our footsteps seemed to glide over the flooring, echoes off walls muted by swags of ivory silk painted with sweeping branches of cherry blossoms, an echo of Joanna’s elaborate kimono. A faint perfume drifted through the air, so light and delicate I could barely place what it was, except for a touch of both pear and ginger.
Evelyn had evidently already been through the staging area, for she did not stop to gawk in awe as I did. I had heard of the opulent yet tasteful Hashimoto resort and spa but never thought to see it, and here I stood. A little voice inside me kept yelling “it’s a trap!” and another little voice argued back “but what a way to go!” In a slow twirl, I took in the fact that the driver and my garment bag didn’t follow us in. Not that I blamed him, this place obviously seemed to be the domain of everything female on the property, concentrated into a few glorious rooms.
I spun on one heel. “Where are my clothes going?”
“Akira is taking them around back to a private entrance and hanging them up there. Massage and sauna first!”
Ah. Another entrance and exit. I could have stood there all day, bathed in the glory of the vision while my voices argued about the wisdom of my plan, or any plan at all, but Evelyn trotted back to hook my arm.
