Chapter Seven

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I met Saori in Fox Chapel. Which really wasn’t something either of us was a huge fan of; I didn’t like it because the borough reeked of conspicuous consumption, and she didn’t like it because it was a joke at her expense. Giving the kitsune a house in Fox Chapel was just…her benefactor had a terrible sense of humor. And there was also the fact that it was associated with Saori’s benefactor.

I didn’t know much of anything about that whole topic. Didn’t know what situation she’d needed out of so badly, didn’t know who she asked for help, and didn’t know what she paid for it. But favors like that usually came with a serious price tag. And, really, the fact that she hadn’t talked about it at all was a statement in itself. I highly doubted she liked to be reminded of them.

But it was where her house was. And, as a result, it was where her connection point was. My understanding was that Otherside portals could be opened from anywhere, but the destination point had to be somewhere you knew very, very well. Otherwise, they had a tendency to fail, and that apparently did Very Bad Things to someone. So, Saori only had a limited number of places she could travel to this way, and she only had one in Pittsburgh, which she’d learned to use as soon as she moved here.

I got there early. It was still distinctly morning, and I wasn’t thrilled by that. But I was also already awake; the nightmare last night had made sure of that. And I had no particular reason to stay at Derek’s for a few hours longer. Raincloud and I just left once she’d woken up properly, and went to wait on site.

It seemed like a pretty odd place to have chosen. Just some random back alley behind a hair salon, it had nothing to distinguish it from any other alley in this neighborhood. But Saori had made a point of showing me where it was, and I was sure this was the right spot. Raincloud and I checked to make sure there was nothing obviously wrong, and then settled in next to the dumpster to wait. I would rather have been further away—waiting directly at the meeting point made me nervous, and I’d rather have been a short distance away from it, somewhere I could have a view of the alley without being obvious to anyone else surveilling it.

Unfortunately, in this case that was…challenging. There weren’t a whole lot of places that did have a line of sight to this spot, and most of them were very visible. Not only did that defeat the purpose of hiding, it was also liable to cause me other problems. This was not a neighborhood where a heavily tattooed girl in a trench coat and jeans could loiter indefinitely without attracting attention, and “walking my dog” was not an excuse that would work for very long when we weren’t moving.

So we sat in the alley, where the dumpster would hopefully keep anyone from seeing us. This wasn’t a neighborhood where people paid attention to alleyways much, and this salon didn’t seem to use it very often, so I thought we had good odds. I could feel Raincloud chiding me for not thinking to bring any dice as we settled in to wait.

And wait. And wait some more. Saori had texted me yesterday (I had to assume she was ducking back to the mortal world to do so, though some of the photos she had sent me were definitely not taken here) to confirm, but the window of time she gave me was pretty broad, from late morning until well into the afternoon. Apparently lining up time between domains could get very strange at times, and she hadn’t been sure how it would go. I was pretty far into that window, Raincloud having long since fallen asleep from boredom, before anything happened at all.

But just when I was starting to actually worry, I felt…something. I couldn’t really identify it, but there was a sort of energy stirring, one I didn’t recognize. It had no obvious physical source; nothing was overtly happening. But I could feel it, faint traces like the brush of a cobweb against my skin. Even with how finely tuned my senses were, I could barely tell it was there.

At first it felt aimless. It wasn’t really doing anything that I could tell, wasn’t moving in coordinated ways. It was centered on the spot where the portal was supposed to happen, but not centered very tightly. Over about the next five minutes, though, the magic started to get stronger, and started to feel increasingly tightly focused on that spot. I could see it there, barely, a trace of not-light playing over the surface of the wall in ways that felt slightly off, as though there were a pattern in it, but not one I could see.

It didn’t feel like Saori’s magic. Not at all; there was nothing like kitsune in this, no scent of fox or spice, nor was there any of the smoke and wild laughter that I associated with her more specifically. This felt strangely anonymous, energy without any of the identifying marks or emotional overtones I normally perceived when someone was using magic. It felt so pure, so completely lacking contextual meaning, that it was kind of creepy. I’d never encountered anything quite like this before.

I nudged Raincloud awake and stood up, eyeing the brick wall of the hair salon warily. There was still no physical effect happening, and the energy still wasn’t all that strong, but I could tell that something was building. I didn’t like how much it didn’t feel like Saori.

After about another minute, the structure seemed to snap into position fully. Now it clearly was forming patterns, though I was only seeing parts of them, like looking at a three-dimensional cross-section of a four-dimensional object. And it did smell, just a tiny bit, like Saori. And there was, finally, a physical effect, though it was very faint. Just a slight distortion in the air, like the heat haze over asphalt on a hot day. I could only tell it was real because Raincloud could see it, too.

Saori stepped out of that haze a moment later, and it disappeared behind her. The kitsune looked…odd, in the moments after the transition. Her eyes were firmly closed, and she was moving in a way that seemed…strange, clumsy in a way she usually very much wasn’t. She took a few steps like that, seemingly at random, and then collapsed to the ground.

Is that…supposed to happen? Raincloud sounded spooked.

I didn’t blame her. I had my back to the opposite wall of the alley now, and Thorn had shown up at some point, its hilt now in my grip, though I didn’t draw it. I have no idea, I told her. And then, out loud, “Um. Hi?”

There was no response. Saori was seemingly unconscious, and I was nervous as hell. Nothing seemed to be happening, though. The portal itself, or whatever that had been, was gone, the energy completely dissipated. No one else was showing up. Nothing was happening.

It was five full minutes before Saori stirred. And, at first, that was just to roll onto her side and groan.

“You okay?” I asked, still feeling somewhat freaked out.

“Yes,” she groaned into the wall. “Stop shouting.”

I was pretty sure I’d been speaking at a normal conversational volume. But I complied with the request, dropping to a whisper barely audible with her hearing. A human couldn’t have made out the words at that distance. “What happened to you?”

“A slightly worse crossing than usual,” the kitsune muttered, barely audible to my own, similarly preternatural hearing. “Ow.”

“They’re usually this bad?” I asked, feeling a mix of incredulous and disturbed. I could feel Raincloud echoing that sentiment.

“More or less. It varies. It’s too fucking bright out.”

“It is,” I agreed. “We should complain to the sun, maybe start a petition.” She laughed at that, and I smiled a little, relieved. At least she felt well enough for absurdism. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Not really. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” Saori pushed herself up to a seated position, though she was still leaning back against the wall, and spat. “First layover on the way back was worse, actually threw up that time. That hasn’t happened in a while.”

“Do you want me to get you some water or something?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll be up by the time you’d get back.” She opened her eyes, wincing at the light. “And I need something to eat anyway. Can get some soda with that.”

I laughed. “Of course soda’s the first thing you ask for. Who am I even kidding suggesting you touch water.”

“Of course I touch water,” she said, in a mock-offended tone that made Raincloud giggle in the back of my head. The husky wandered closer, and Saori obligingly provided ear scritches. “Water’s great for swimming. And showers. And shower sex, which is usually disappointing but still. I have no problem with touching water. It’s only drinking it that counts as cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Compared to half the shit you do for fun, I’m not sure waterboarding counts as cruel, and it definitely doesn’t count as unusual. Drinking water doesn’t even tip the scale.”

“Spoilsport. Oh, hey, your coat is longer, you mind carrying this?” Saori produced her carbine (she’d gotten annoyed when I called it a rifle, which seemed strange to me given that a carbine was just a lighter form of rifle, but it was easy enough to humor her) and tossed it to me without waiting for an answer.

I didn’t even have to ask to know it was loaded. Which was spectacularly bad gun safety, of course, but this was Saori. And I suppose that in her defense she did know my reaction time and movement speed were better than a human’s. Much like her driving, it was still dangerous, but actually much less so than it initially seemed, if you didn’t know to adjust for that capability.

Still. A part of me wanted to chide her for it, if only because that habit was instilled in me deeply back in the day. I didn’t, of course; even if I actually cared, it would just encourage her. I just caught the gun, checked the safety (it was off, naturally, because this was Saori, which I corrected), and tucked it under my coat. It didn’t really do much more to alter my silhouette than the shotgun that was already there.

“I’m surprised you brought this,” I commented. “I thought guns didn’t work well on the Otherside.”

“Mm. It’s hit-or-miss, but yeah, a lot of domains they don’t. And I don’t normally bother, but the last place I had to hit up they do work, and it’s not hard to carry if I don’t have to hide the damn thing.” Saori pushed herself upright, slowly, and then shook her head as though to clear it. “Alright, I’m good. Let’s go get that soda. Also food, but priorities.”

I laughed, and followed her out of the alley.

---

Saori and I had initially met at a café not far from there. My understanding was that at the time she had been eating lunch there more days than not. I hadn’t asked why; it seemed very…out of character for the kitsune, who was normally allergic to routine. I hadn’t asked much about those first few months in the city. I knew they were very bad for her, and that it was related to whoever had given her that house. And that was a topic she avoided like the plague, so I’d left it alone.

In any case, though, that wasn’t where we went now. Topics of memory and association aside, their food was only passable, and I knew better restaurants around here. This time it was a burger place set a few blocks back from the major thoroughfares which we were both fond of. The food was good, and the staff were unusually willing to do things like bring out a bowl of raw beef for the dog who wasn’t supposed to be on their patio. It probably helped that Raincloud was ridiculously good at pleading looks, and that we always tipped generously.

“So what did I miss, anyway?” Saori asked me once she’d gone through half a carafe of soda and was thus willing to entertain ideas like conversation. I genuinely had no idea how she could tolerate the amount of sugar she consumed; diabetes risk aside, I was pretty sure trying would make me physically ill.

“Almost literally nothing,” I told her. “So much nothing that it’s worrying me.”

“Shouldn’t it make you less worried?”

“No,” I told her. “Because there should have been something by now. An attack, a threat, a nasty rumor, something. And so if there hasn’t been, that means I didn’t notice whatever it was.”

Saori drank some more soda. “Okay,” she said eventually. “I know you dislike it when people use the word wrong, but I’m pretty sure this time that actually is what paranoia sounds like. Treating the absence of threat as a sign that you’re in more danger is pretty textbook, right?”

I paused, and then sighed. “Yeah. Not wrong. And I don’t know why I feel so sure there is, either. I…fuck. I really hope I’m not actually lapsing psychotic again.”

Saori paused and looked at me oddly. I could feel much the same feeling from Raincloud, too. “Again?” the kitsune asked me after a moment. “Have you…done that before?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “I mean, diagnostic criteria are hard to apply when the supernatural is involved,” I hedged. “But…yes, for a while when I was a teenager I was pretty far gone in that direction. Mostly paranoid, a little bit of other delusions, a bunch of actual hallucinations to go with the synesthesia and magic. I think mostly the hallucinations were the product of stress and sleep deprivation, though. I’m much closer to sane these days.”

“Considering how sane you are now,” Saori said dryly, “I think I might be glad I didn’t know you for those days.”

I stared at her. “You’re really going to talk shit about insanity? You?”

“Okay, fair point,” she admitted. “But when I do insane things it’s fun and exciting, like a building on fire or something. Not being lost in a nightmare inside my own head. That just sounds…sad. Oh, hey, food’s ready.”

The conversation lapsed after that in favor of food. When we did talk, it wasn’t about madness, exciting or otherwise. There were lighter topics to be had, and I once again noticed how much I liked that about Saori. It wasn’t just that she could recognize when I needed to move away from serious topics and divert to a discussion about the practicalities of using molten sugar as a siege weapon. Anyone could do that, though I expected most people would pick a less absurd topic.

No, the impressive thing about Saori was that when she did this, it felt natural. Most people felt awkward or forced when they tried to change the topic that abruptly. Saori didn’t, at least not to me. My tendency to wander through topics was usually pretty noticeable to start with, which probably helped. But whatever the reason, the effect was the same. It felt like a natural, fluid shift, and the cheerful attitude felt sincere, enough so to be contagious.

I really liked that about talking with her. I was prone to depression and liable to dwell on things if left to my own devices. But Saori’s enthusiasm changed that. It was like her intensity and sheer devil-may-care disregard for things like safety and sanity were captivating, and I wasn’t at all the only one who reacted that way. It was sort of like watching a train wreck or house fire, the way you didn’t want to stare at disasters but couldn’t look away.

I was not at all sure that was a good thing in a general sense. All it took was a few seconds of looking at Saori’s…everything to suggest that for her to be that kind of charismatic might not be ideal. She was decidedly the girl one’s mother had (or should have) warned one about, and while that had its appeal, sometimes those warnings were there for a reason. She was a terrible influence by any measure, and I probably shouldn’t have been enabling her.

But that was the general case. For me, specifically, it was just as clearly a fantastic trait for her to have. It’s not like I was any less of a cautionary tale than she was, anyway, and when your life is already a train wreck on fire, it stops mattering so much whether you’re adding gasoline to it. And her ability to so consistently break me out of that sort of rumination and bitterness was something I appreciated deeply. She might be a terrible person, but she was good for me.

I could feel Raincloud’s attention sharpen at that idea. She felt…thoughtful, like she was contemplating something and trying to fit it into words. That reminded me of her question about whether I loved Saori, and that was another topic that I just was not ready to address. It was easier to lose myself in a discussion of the chemical properties of nitrocellulose than to consider how I felt about the person I was having it with.

Lunch flowed past quickly. Saori paid for it today; I let her do so without comment, though I did add another substantial chunk to the tip. Shameless bribery could do a lot to keep people on your good side, I had found, and I liked being able to bring Raincloud here. It wasn’t until that was done and we were back outside that I finally broached an actual topic.

“So, uh. Were you able to find anything?”

“Mhmm. Took a bit, and I wasn’t able to get any information about your mystery ambuscader. But I did find someone who can probably be helpful with security things.” Saori shrugged. “I haven’t worked with him before, personally. But he comes well-recommended.”

“Do you know who he is?”

Saori nodded. “Some human mage based out of, uh, I think Cape Town?”

I paused and stared at her. “Cape Town?”

“That or Hong Kong,” Saori said, with another shrug. “I forget which of those two actually answered their phone.”

“And you got them to come here? How much am I paying in travel surcharges?”

She gave me a puzzled look for a long moment. Then she seemed to realize something, and grinned. “It’s not an issue. You’re only looking at, like, three hours of travel time here.”

I was still staring. That stare had not gotten less dumbfounded; her grin hadn’t gotten less smug. “Three hours. From Cape Town.”

“Yup!” The kitsune snickered. “Your face right now, priceless. So the thing is, Otherside travel changes things. Not everyone can make their own portals, but if you can, travel…doesn’t work the same way anymore. He’ll open one from Cape Town into some domain over there. Might do one or two more layovers, hop through a couple of different domains on the way, and then open one back here. Thing is, that one can be to anywhere, it’s all the same at that point. I think he said Cleveland.”

“He has terrible taste,” I said dryly. “But okay, that makes…some amount of sense. You have to do those layovers?”

Saori nodded, sidestepping into an alley—she rarely used main roads unless she had to. “Not the layovers, as such. That’s what I call it when someone hops through multiple domains to make the transfers less miserable. But you have to do at least one, trying to open portals to somewhere in the same domain you’re in doesn’t work. I don’t really know why.”

“Huh. But you can still cross the planet in a few hours. That is…incredibly convenient. I kind of want to try it now.” I wasn’t sure of that—the state she’d shown up in sure as hell suggested this mode of travel had its own drawbacks—but this guy was apparently traveling close to ten thousand miles in three hours. That was hard for me to even wrap my head around.

“I’ve thought about taking you across somewhere,” Saori said, turning and grinning at me. “But I’ve been kinda messed up, still not moving quite as well as I’d like yet, and trust me, you do not want to look vulnerable on your first trip to the Otherside. So it will have to wait. Give me my gun, please.”

I was impressed by how smooth she was. There was no shift in her voice, no change in her posture to indicate tension, nothing. She kept walking at the same pace, kept her grin the same. She’d already been speaking at a low enough volume that she didn’t have to adjust it to be reasonably subtle. All told, it was one of the best performances of “act casual” that I could remember seeing.

Mine was probably…less good. Then again, I hadn’t even noticed whatever threat she was responding to, and while it was better to be blindsided metaphorically than literally, it was still…jarring. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that I’d stumble a little bit.

But only a little bit. A slight stutter-step was all I really noticed in myself, at least, before I was moving to comply. Stripped gears could be helpful sometimes when I needed to adapt on the fly. Getting her carbine out from under my coat was a little tricky, though; this wasn’t something I’d practiced. I fumbled and almost dropped it, but managed to recover and toss it over to her.

By that point, apparently our company given up on stealth. People were moving towards us from the end of the alley, several. Or, I mean, they were probably people. At least a couple I was pretty sure were human, but there were others who looked…wrong, moved in ways that didn’t quite fit human anatomy. And there was definitely more magic moving around than humans alone would explain. I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t noticed it before.

At least five ahead of us. A quick glance showed another group of comparable number closing in behind us to block any retreat that direction. It wouldn’t hold up for long—this neighborhood was too wealthy and too strongly inclined towards the cultural trends that wealth brought with it. Sounds of violence would draw attention rapidly here, and the cops would actually care when someone called about it.

But at least for the moment, they had us boxed in. And in case ten people closing in on us in an alley weren’t obviously hostile, they’d kindly removed any remaining uncertainty by displaying lots of weaponry. It looked like mostly more bronze age stuff, though at least two of the more human-seeming ones had firearms.

“So you know how I said you sounded like you were paranoid?” Saori said, in a cheerful, conversational tone. “I take that back. Good call.” Her voice was light, but she had that carbine in a ready position, one step short of actually lining up a shot. “How do you want to play this one?”

I was moving closer to her by this point, and turning to put the wall of the building at my back. “Doubt they’re open to peaceful resolution,” I said. I had my shotgun out now as well. I wasn’t nearly as good a shot as Saori, but at this range with a sawed-off shotgun that wasn’t quite as important. Raincloud felt very antsy in my head, and was backed up against the wall next to me.

“You’re cute, but I meant tactics.” Saori’s voice had a mixture of affection and exasperation that was kind of funny to me for some reason. It probably was not the best thing to be thinking about at the moment, but, well. Stripped gears did have their downsides, too.

The figures advancing on us weren’t moving too quickly, at least. It was, I supposed, probably not trivial to coordinate that many people in this narrow of a space. And they had very little need to rush right now. This blockade was a short-lived opportunity, sure, but they had some time to work with. Enough that they could afford to be thorough rather than risk us slipping past them.

I frowned, taking a moment to think. Much the same as them, really; I would rather be slightly slower than react in a blind panic. “I’d like to get at least a little information about who they are if possible. If I engage the group up ahead, can you handle the ones behind us?”

Saori glanced over at them, and then nodded. “Yeah. But it’ll be loud, and it’ll be messy.”

“That’s fine. I’ll try talking first, figure that I can distract them and maybe get a name or something. Then you hit the flankers while I have their attention and we turn and bolt.”

“Sounds good,” she said, and her grin was a little unsettling, too wide and with a feverish gleam in her eyes. “But you’re going to want to bolt forward. Back will be messy.”

I started to respond, but there was no more time; they were closing in, now, and if I waited any longer we wouldn’t have much space to move in. I stepped out from the wall a bit, turning to face the people up ahead of us. “Hey,” I said, a little too loud. My voice sounded strange, at least to myself, and I could feel the adrenaline starting to hit in earnest. “Look who finally showed up again. Been bored out of my mind waiting for you losers.”

They stopped a short distance away, just far enough to be out of realistic lunging distance, and waited. I let them; as far as I could tell, drawing things out was currently to our advantage. From Raincloud, I could feel that the group behind us was maintaining a similar distance, that Saori had sighted in on one of the attackers but her distribution of weight suggested it was a feint, and that Raincloud herself was ready to sprint for it when we made our break.

I was several kinds of impressed by that, and I told her so while I waited for them to make their next move. In the span of a few seconds, Raincloud had assessed the situation, recognized that her capacity to act directly was pretty limited and that the best way for her to contribute was by feeding me relevant tactical data, and prepared herself to evacuate in a controlled way rather than either panic or try to fight a foolish battle. I hadn’t known many people, of any kind, who could keep their head in an emergency this well, and I was quite proud of her for it.

She was beaming at the praise. I wasn’t really sure that word applied to a dog, but I wasn’t really sure what it looked like on a human, either, and it seemed like the correct term for the moment. I smiled, and watched as the group of people in front of me shifted out of the way while one in particular approached me.

She was the leader of the whole operation, from how she moved and how they deferred to her. And she definitely wasn’t human. I wasn’t sure what she was, but even if the way she moved weren’t subtly wrong, and even if she weren’t dressed like she had escaped from a Renaissance fair, the feeling of her magic would have been a dead giveaway. She had none of the shimmering, flickery feeling I associated with humanity. Her power smelled like red wine and amber and fresh blood, and a sound like laughter just barely loud enough to hear.

“Sugiyama,” she said, her voice lower and rougher than I normally expected from women. “A pleasure.”

“The pleasure is all yours,” I said dryly. “You’re much more patient than the last girl, gotta say.”

“Yes, well. I do apologize for that; Melania’s actions were…unfortunate.” The woman had stopped only slightly ahead of the others, still just barely out of reach.

“Considering how you’re going about things today, you’re going to have a hard time convincing me you’re not intending violence.” I licked my lips, the tense anticipation leaving me nervous and fidgety. As the adrenaline ramped up, the world seemed to slow down around me. In reality, my processing and movement were speeding up, but from my perspective it was the world changing while I stayed the same.

“Oh, no, not at all. We’re absolutely here to kill you. But Melania was directed to observe you, not try to attack on her own. For her to do so, as though she were capable of handling you alone, was both stupid and an insult to your competence, and I apologize for that.” She sounded sincere in the apology. The words felt like they were slowing down as she spoke, an almost disorienting feeling.

“Well, uh, apology noted,” I said. My voice sounded strange to me, the tone slightly off somehow, the consonants a little slurred. This whole situation felt surreal even by my standards. “As recompense, mind telling me your name? Seeing as you clearly know who I am, it seems fair.”

“I am Ekaterina,” she said. It was almost creepy how much her voice lacked any menace. She sounded, if anything, friendly. “Daughter of Coronis. Now, we do have some business to conduct. Your companions are free to leave; I have nothing against them.”

I could practically feel Saori hesitating. The kitsune shifted her weight slightly, looked around like she was weighing her odds. I could catch enough of what Raincloud was seeing to know that. She hesitated, looking unsure of herself, lowering the carbine a bit so that it was no longer in a ready position.

It was a magnificent portrayal of a woman agonizing over a dilemma. Saori really was a fantastic actress. I knew the plan, knew more or less exactly what she was about to do, and I still had a moment of uncertainty, worried that she might genuinely be about to walk out on me. But as she lowered the gun further, I could feel a different tension in her, a sharpness. She still felt like she was on the precipice, but rather than an agonizing dilemma, it was anticipation, a tension that felt hungry.

And yet even with all that warning, there was still a moment of shock when she grabbed a grenade off of her belt and tossed it at the people closing in behind us.

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