Chapter Four

“What are you doing here?” He had lapsed into Japanese, which was probably forgivable. He’d just had one hell of an unexpected shock.

All the same, I had no interest in doing the same, and responded in English. “Funny, I was about to ask you the same question. The hell is going on here?” The tension hadn’t faded from my voice, not even a little bit. Saori and Capinera felt tense too, like both of them were ready to need a weapon in a hurry.

They knew why I was agitated. My relationship with my father was…well. “Estranged” was an understatement. Ceasefire felt more accurate. I’d fully expected to never talk to him again and would have preferred to be correct.

Then again, life rarely seemed interested in complying with my preferences, so maybe I should have anticipated this.…

Chapter Three

That was Monday. Tuesday was…pretty much more of the same. The only information I had about this impending catastrophe was about a deal that probably didn’t actually matter. And really, I wouldn’t even be able to get much information about that part. New York City had arguably the most international business dealings of any city in the world. I didn’t have relevant connections or experience, and ultimately, I just didn’t care enough about this to actually spend much time researching it. And so Tuesday passed more or less as I would pass any other day.

My life being what it had become, this was admittedly still pretty surreal. In the morning I spent a couple hours listening to Capinera sing and attempting to maintain a steady emotional state. This wasn’t easy, because while her song was absolutely laced with magic, a lot of the effect on mood was just that she was an amazing vocalist who could put a ton of feeling into her voice.…

Chapter Two

“You’re getting better, but you’re still dropping your guard.” To demonstrate her point, Cassie reached out and hit me on the shoulder where I’d let my hand drop down out of position.

She did not hit me full force. But Cassie was a werewolf, and not a pushover even by their standards. Punching me at full force would damage things. Partial force still hurt like hell and knocked me off balance. She did not, as I had learned, believe in going easy on people.

Not for the first time, I wondered whether I could have found someone else to practice my hand-to-hand with. Cassie was skilled, enough so to have thoroughly confirmed my suspicion that she was at least a few hundred years old. But I could have done without the bruises, much as I would have been fine with learning to track someone by scent without having to deal with scent masks quite this nasty. She’d used one involving bromine last month, and that was…I had literally had photosensitive seizures that were less of a sensory hell than trying to track someone through a bromine scent mask.…

Chapter One

“Sugiyama! It’s Saito, hello. Are you well?”

I would have known without him telling me. The old gangster’s voice, high for a guy but rough, was both distinctive and very familiar. Even when he’d just woken me out of a pleasant doze (how people kept doing this was beyond me), and I was appropriately both annoyed and surprised, I’d still have known who it was. Even if he weren’t also speaking Japanese. But it was kind of him to make sure I knew who to be annoyed at right away.

“The hell are you up at this hour for?” I asked, in a tone of voice that was only moderately surly, and in English rather than Japanese. So, polite for me, but not by most people’s standards.…

Prelude

love me like a freezing shot of vodka, like pure agave, love me
when you’re lonely, when we’re both too tired to speak, when you don’t believe
in anything, listen, there isn’t anything, it doesn’t matter; lie down
with me and close your eyes, the road curves here, I’m cranking up the radio
and we’re going, we won’t turn back as long as you love me,
as long as you keep on doing it exactly like that.
-Kim Addonizio, from “Like That”, Tell Me, 2000…

Saori

On the first day, I’m jolted awake out of a sound sleep. Literally jolted; they shove something like a cattle prod against my neck, and I wake up screaming in pain. I don’t immediately remember where I am or how I got there. I’m confused and everything feels very sludgy somehow, like it’s hard to even think.

Before I can adjust to anything at all, the instant I open my eyes, someone sprays what feels like pepper juice into them. It feels like my eyes are on fire, and the vision I hadn’t even begun to sort through is immediately obscured by tears. I scream again, and then again when the first lash lands on my back a few seconds later.

Someone grabs my hands, pulling them out to either side. I struggle, something that didn’t even occur to me until they grabbed me, but I’m weak and clumsy, and they have no difficulty pinning me like this. I feel very exposed, even before the cattle prod returns and starts on my breasts. That hurts so much that I can’t even scream, even before someone grabs my hair and then hits me in the face. He yells at me and I can sort of understand that he’s telling me to look at him.…