by D. R. Perry
“Impending wolfy challenge.” At least Nox was in a talking mood.
“I’m too tired for this.” I shuffled to the stool next to hers and sat. “Just. Too. Tired.”
“Wait, why?” Something in my voice must have snapped Josh out of whatever wolfy angst state he’d been in. Or maybe there was some Alpha wolf wooj going on.
“Oh, the usual stuff for us mad Tinfoil Hatters.” I didn’t shrug, just stared at Josh. “Using my wings as a kevlar shield, watching Mother mercy-kill Wilfred, running from the detective trying to arrest me, the thousand-foot free-fall next to the Pell Bridge, Tithing Bracelets gone wild.”
Nox gasped. Beth dropped her hand from the doorknob.
“Leaping Luna!” Josh took three steps back toward the counter and leaned, looking me in the eye. “Wilfred’s dead? Your stepdad? How?”
“And kevlar? Did someone shoot at you?” Nox tugged my sleeve.
I didn’t turn to look at her, wanted just to forget she and Beth were even in the room. This was all on Josh. Kimiko and I wouldn’t have been in this kind of trouble if we hadn’t helped him. Besides, even if I didn’t feel like it was all his fault, Josh Dennison was the leader of my pack. Any Extrahuman would hold him accountable for my safety, even if that wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.
“It’s only been hours since we talked on the phone, but this is a long story.” I didn’t remember or care whether Beth knew about the Extramagus or not. Most of what I had to say would be all over the papers and the news apps in the morning, anyway. “You might not believe it all, and I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t if it hadn’t happened to me.”
I told him all of it, not stopping when Ren quietly entered the room and took a seat at the breakfast table. Despite my disclaimer, all four of them believed me.
Chapter Seventeen
Kimiko
I didn’t skip the seventh step or the thirteenth. Refusing to sneak upstairs felt like I’d defied myself for once instead of Dad. After all the rebellion and sass in the decade since Mom died and the fact that I might still be too late, letting the creaky stairs announce my presence could be the most adult thing I’d ever done.
Dad had lived in the room at the end of the hall since Mom died. Why was it always this way, a long walk and too much time to think when we didn’t want it but not enough when we did? This collection of moments stretched out, bits and bobs of time I’d have preferred metered out during the free-fall above the Bay. But we have to take time however we get it. The universe gives us no other choice.
The fact that Blaine felt his own guilt over Wilfred almost as strongly as I felt mine over Dad might have been comforting to regular humans. For Extrahumans, parallels like this smacked of coincidence. He had still been in the egg when Blaine lost the man who had sired him, and he’d lost the next best thing tonight. I’d lost my mom ten years ago. Coincidence seemed to indicate that my dad would die this evening too.
The door was ajar. I pushed by just enough to pass, not wanting to risk disturbing anything that belonged to my family more than I already had. I wouldn’t have needed my enhanced hearing to listen to the sound of Dad’s breathing. The breaths were shallow, uneven, the spaces between them more terrifying than that free-fall over the Bay. And I wondered how much of the two centuries he’d been alive had tallied their marks on his face, his body, his health. But I cut the speculation and stepped to his bedside. I had no excuse but cowardice to wonder when I could see for myself.
And it didn’t look as bad as I’d imagined. His face mapped out more lines than I’d seen framing Taki Waban’s eyes and hairline, but not as many as Professor Nate Watkins. And his color was higher than Henrietta Thurston’s. My mouth dropped open. I squinted, trying to detect magic. I couldn’t, of course. All a Tanuki like me could see was Luck, and that was there, just barely a glimmer. I closed my eyes, wishing Ismail could still help me, or that the telepathic bond between Blaine and me hadn’t been severed. Then I realized that someone could tell me what had happened. Dad. But first, he needed my help.
I’d stowed the cufflinks in the front pocket of my jeans when I’d changed, in case Hertha Harcourt changed her mind about letting me have them. Good call, considering my dip in the Bay had washed out half the contents of my handbag. The room brightened as I pulled them out and opened my fist, as though the Luck in them knew where it had to go.
Dad’s hand felt like an old book, leathery and heavy. When I tipped the cufflinks into the cup of his palm and closed his fingers over them, the surrounding glow dimmed, but his eyes opened. Rheumy brown irises gave way to gold. Dry lips parted as he mouthed my name. His breath went in and out like the bellows he used to get the fireplace going in winter.
“Kimi, get the lights.” His voice wasn’t up to closing arguments volume, but it was close enough. I just barely made out his hand going to the front pocket of his pajama shirt, but my ears picked up the muffled clink of the cufflinks dropping in.
“Anything, Daddy.” My eyes stung as I fumbled blindly at the panel. I’d gone through all that—wishing myself into a hoard, defying scary old dragons, being shot at, fighting Pharaoh’s Rats and getting dropped from a thousand feet—and now here I was, unable to flip a light switch. Finally, I made contact, but by then, I was crying. The last thing I wanted to do was let Dad see that.
I leaned my forehead against the wall, mouth open and eyes shut, forehead pressed against cool plaster and a hot flood on my cheeks. I put a silencer on my vocal cords, but the rush of my breathing, intermittent like Morse Code, whooshed in my ears, drowning all other sounds. All the same, the renewed Luck energy around my father told me he’d gotten up and come to comfort me. His hand on my shoulder reminded me of the last time we’d been together this way, the night Mom died. I opened my eyes.
“I always knew you’d do it.” The rubber tipped end of a cane dented the carpet to the left of his feet. I swallowed past the bottled up angst I’d been carrying since I realized Dad was aging without his pin.
“Do what?” I couldn’t look at him yet, not anything but his feet, anyway.
“Come through this. Be a hero.” He patted my shoulder. “Make me proud.”
“But I almost killed you.”
“I knew you wouldn’t.” He didn’t lead me to any conclusions. But he never did. He always expected me to figure things out on my own.
“Joyce Watkins. The Precognitive.”
“Yes. She was the best in Rhode Island. And one of her last predictions had to do with you and Blaine Harcourt.”
“Our betrothal?”
“No. She fibbed on that one, said the two of you weren’t destined. Otherwise, Hertha would never have agreed to the arrangement.”
“Why?”
“She believes her son should be spared any chance of heartbreak.”
“That’s twisted. I mean, what if he met his mate after he’d gone and married someone else?”
“He’d be expected to ignore her, the same way she ignored coincidence’s choice for her to marry Wilfred instead. Your future mother-in-law hasn’t got a heart of stone, but she’s encased it in ice nearly her whole life.”
“How did you manage to stay alive? You look in better shape than I expected.”
“I got help. Some old friends helped slow down my aging.” He sighed. “I have more work to do.”
“Brodsky’s trial.” Blaine was the only other person who could make me look away from my father at that moment. “You’re defending him.”
“Perhaps. But you don't work for me.” Dad’s chuckle turned into a cough. “Even if I didn’t need rest, I can’t discuss my clients or cases with anyone but my staff.”
“I get it.” Blaine put his arm around me. “You need sleep. And so does Kimiko if she’s going to hold me to that promise I made back when we left the vault.”
“Go. You’re welcome to rest in my house.” Dad limped back to his bed and got in it, then closed his eyes. His breathing sounded normal now.
“Come on.” I
took Blaine’s hand and led him out of the room, closing the door behind me. We stopped at a room across from mine. When I opened the door, Blaine hesitated.
“A guest room? Really?” He blinked, eyes round. “After all we’ve been through?”
“Dad wouldn’t mind, but Ren wasn’t so happy to see you.”
“That was before the discussion we had with Josh, Nox, and Beth in the kitchen.” He sighed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Somehow he managed to look exhausted and nervous at the same time. “Actually, it was more like the Harcourt Family Roast. But anyway, Ren understands now. I couldn’t believe it, but he said he thinks the betrothal’s a good thing.” He closed the door to the guest room and crossed the hall in one giant step.
“I’m a complete mess.”
“So am I, in more ways than one.”
“I’m exhausted and tomorrow will be a long day regardless of whether we get thrown in the Newport jail or go to a dragon funeral.”
“Same here.” He leaned against the wall as I stood in the doorway. “But I don’t want to be alone.”
“Neither do I.” I stepped backward, letting him in.
Blaine headed for my desk, but I waved him at the bed and told him to rest. I needed to get Eau de Bay out of my hair, so I grabbed a towel and pajamas and went down the hall to the bathroom. On the way back, I grabbed a towel for him from the linen closet. A red backpack sat outside the door, so I brought that in with me, too.
“So, someone left this. Maybe it made an ass out of you and me, but I just assumed it’s yours.”
“It is. Josh brought it over from India Point Park.” He got up from the bed, stretching.
“Isn’t that where we were headed before?”
“Yeah. It’s one of the few places in town where my dragon fits.” Blaine stepped up to stand in the doorway.
“So he went all the way over there just to get you a change of clothes?”
“Yeah.” His cheeks reddened as he reached for the bag. “I used to think they all just kind of tolerated me, you know?”
“I understand.” I let my hand linger on his for a moment, and he rewarded me with a smile. “Tagging you in for the bathroom match.”
“Awesomesauce.”
I curled up on my bed with my dank handbag on top of the nightstand and my completely ruined phone in my hands. It wouldn’t turn on, waterlogged as it was. All the data on LORA might as well have been on Pluto. I’d downloaded everything to the tablets in Blaine’s room, but wouldn’t be able to get them unless Detectives Klein and Weaver weren’t waiting to snag us the second we set foot in their jurisdiction. Something occurred to me just as Blaine came back in, hair still damp from the shower.
“Why would Weaver try to arrest you when she had exactly the same story Klein did?”
“Woah, you don’t waste any time.” He lifted the towel off his shoulders and rubbed his hair with it. “Hmm. A gorgeous woman once told me how Occam had a Razor, and he knew how to use it. I’d say she didn’t get the same story we gave Klein.”
“But we told him the truth.” I dropped my useless phone back in my handbag. It made a squishy sound.
“I know, which means Mother didn’t.” He rattled off a few words in a language I didn’t recognize. Probably a list of things people who had normal mothers wouldn’t call them.
“Look, there has to be a reason.” I stood and held a hand out to him. “Maybe Weaver’s hinky, connected to the Extramagus somehow?”
“Simplest is, Mother told a lie. It’s what she does.” He took my hand, using it to draw me closer. "And there doesn't always have to be a reason for her to do it."
“Well, either way, is it going to stop you from trying to attend your stepdad’s Mourning Day?”
“No.” Blaine put his arms around me. “That same gorgeous woman said I need to mourn him, and she was right. Also, just about everyone’s coming with me.”
“Everyone?”
“Yeah, all of Tinfoil Hat. Josh, Nox, Ren. Bobby and Lynn are flying up early. Tony the hinky cat. Fred. Olivia. Jeannie. Even Henry and Maddie will show up after sundown, despite the fact that they can’t actually come into the house because of the egg.” He walked me over to the bed and sat on the edge of it with me. “The people in that pack of misfit toys I hang around with are the real deal. I started talking, and Josh got everyone who was out of town on speakerphone. I told them everything, not just what happened in the vault with Wilfred dying. All of it. About Mother and the paranoia all those years. And once I was done talking, I saw their faces. Knew for sure nothing about my life growing up was normal. And you know what?”
“What?” I put my legs in his lap and leaned against his chest.
“The thing that scared me most about finding that out didn’t happen. They believed me like real friends are supposed to, even when the basics of my life seemed impossible to them. And that is why they’ll all be there tomorrow. Even if we’re in a holding cell or something, people will still be there for Wilfred. And me.”
There was nothing to say to that. Instead, I let him hold me close and hugged him back. Blaine’s mom had said some choice words about Wilfred, but that didn’t stop Blaine from caring that he’d died. And yeah, he might be angry at his mother for a long time, but I could tell he loved her anyway, even though she’d spent most of his life encouraging him toward callousness.
“Blaine Harcourt, you have the biggest heart in the world.” I looked up at him until he met my gaze. His eyes shone with emotions too numerous to catalog.
“Congratulations. It belongs to you, Kimiko Ichiro.”
He demonstrated, and I began paying him back for such a generous gift. I had the feeling it’d take a lifetime to equal it. After a while, we slept.
Chapter Eighteen
Blaine
I didn’t fly us into Newport. Dragon shifter Mourning Days lasted twenty-four hours, during which we couldn’t eat or sleep. The last thing I needed was to be starved as well as exhausted. I sat in the back of the unmarked sedan Josh had borrowed from his parents with my arm around Kimiko. Her breath was light and even, telling me she dozed most of the way over. Nox elbowed him, not exactly distracting him from driving as she pointed out my public display of affection for the woman who’d broken vault security but spared my heart the same fate. I leaned my head against hers as Josh pulled the car into the long driveway.
“So, they’re going to arrest me inside, then, I take it.”
“No one’s getting arrested, you big paranoid lunk.”
“But Detective Weaver tried it last night.”
“Detective Weaver was mistaken. The evidence supported your story.”
“How’d she get that kind of evidence?”
“You taking off like that apparently put out the cat signal.”
“You mean I have Hinky Neighborhood Cat-man to thank for not being in jail during my stepfather’s Mourning Day?”
“That’s pretty much the size of it, yeah.”
No Newport PD vehicles guarded the entrance. All I saw was an unmarked one pulling away with Tony Gitano in the back and Detective Weaver driving. He looked tired, not angry or scared to be in the back of a cruiser like that. I wondered why he wasn’t in the front if he’d been helping the police. Then I remembered. The Gatto Gang were all Italian shifters from Federal Hill in Providence, mostly big cats like lions and panthers. Tony might ride in the back so he wouldn’t look like a rat. All the same, I was pissed that I owed my freedom to a wannabe vigilante who turned into a fluffy little kitty cat.
Kimiko woke up and covered my mouth before I could get around to colorful metaphors about Tony Gitano in English. I continued rattling off words in Italian, Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, waiting to see whether she’d catch the fact that I’d switched to terms of endearment about her. Judging by the blushing smile, she did. I gazed down at her, memorizing the exact color of her cheeks, the arc of her smile, the feel of her palm against my lips. I’d need to keep my mind on all of that if
I expected to get through this day alongside Mother.
We got out of the car and headed down the path to the back where everything would be set up. There would be two crystal urns, one for Mother and the other for me. Mourning Day couldn’t happen inside, at least not for Mother and me or any other dragonish guests. And when I rounded the corner, I saw that almost everyone was there for her. I took a deep breath and turned right, so the cliff walk was on my left. A salt-tinged breeze blew what remained of my hair flat against my skull when I approached the transparent containers where each guest would leave something behind, a literal paying of respects. I stepped beside the one with my name engraved on it and dropped my item in.
The clink of the lucite keepsake locket one important woman had given me attracted the attention of the other. When Mother looked up and saw what I’d done and how I’d paid, her nostrils flared, and she actually put a hand to her lips. She stopped just short of touching them, though. Of course, she wouldn’t want to smudge that blood-red lipstick. Everything was about appearances for her. I’d cut that line of thinking off with my hair that morning.
I didn’t avert my gaze even though the color of the paint on her lips had inspired a stream of smoke to rise above me. And I rose above my anger, forgave her in my heart even if I couldn’t say the words that day. Forgiving Mother wasn’t about her. It wasn’t even about Wilfred. It was about me, and my sibling, who slept in the egg below the mansion. Kimiko had been right. My heart was big, more vast than I’d imagined. And it was like the sea I’d grown up alongside, prone to both calm and tempest. It was up to me to decide whether to be still or surge. I’d decided to reserve the latter for enemies only. Today, I’d be surrounded by friends.
“Nice haircut, Blaine.” Lynn Frampton didn’t sound sarcastic, for once. She placed a blue and white handkerchief in my urn.
“Um, thanks, I think?”
“Someone had to make up for the stink-eye over there.” The human girl who’d probably beat my GPA this semester shrugged. Lynn was smart but not always wise. Still, she knew tons about dealing with people disliking her. “You look dapper. I mean that.”
