Chapter Ten

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It wasn’t quite that simple, of course. It seemed like nothing was ever that simple, particularly with me around. But in this case, the complications were less the product of my tendency to attract bizarre complications, and more just a matter of scheduling. I had a few people to call, and between time zones and their scheduling patterns, none of them were going to be available for a while.

I ended up sitting at a diner to wait. It was a cheap greasy-spoon style of restaurant, just barely on the right side of trashy—the kind of place you go to because the bars are closed and you aren’t ready to go home yet. It was almost empty at this hour, and the building layout obviously hadn’t been intended as a restaurant, leaving some tables in very out-of-the-way corners.

It was, in short, perfect for my needs. I wasn’t hungry, but as a place to sit and call shady people, this was pretty good. I ordered something to pick at, found a small table in the corner, and settled in to wait. I was alone, and it was quiet. Saori had gone to acquire a car, something she phrased in exactly that way. She hadn’t said how she planned to do that so casually, and I hadn’t asked. Once Raincloud heard how long I was going to take here, she’d opted to go with Saori without an instant of hesitation.

For the first time in a while, I was genuinely alone. Maybe that’s why Thorn showed up on the bench next to me, to keep me company.

The staff were watching the news, since there was so little work to do, and it was covering the explosion live. Made sense, really; it would be surprising if the local news weren’t covering a recent explosion of that scale. The cops hadn’t yet released a statement, but I did learn that two people had been confirmed dead and at least ten injured, all in the adjacent businesses.

That pissed me off in a way that Ekaterina’s gang hadn’t. Oh, I was angry at them for trying to kill me, but they’d been very fair about it. Hell, she had outright given me warning before attacking, about as clean and honorable as assassination attempts got. Using a bomb in a semi-residential neighborhood, when there was only a passable chance I’d even be there, was…not. Honestly, for as slick and professional as the bomb design had been, the attack itself had been messy, almost sloppy in its planning.

I didn’t feel guilty about those people dying. Not as such. It was not me that planted that explosive, and I didn’t have enough of a hero complex to take on the weight of their deaths anyway. But still, it pissed me off in a different way, one I couldn’t quite explain or put into words. It was a relief when they switched the channel to a football game—the kind you play with your feet, not American football, thankfully.

I could only do so much from here, but I wasn’t idle while I waited. I started by digging up what I could about Ekaterina, a task which proved shockingly easy. Her name wasn’t that meaningful, but she’d said she was the daughter of Coronis, and that name was easy as hell to figure out. There were a number of mythical figures under that name that I could find easily, but the one that stood out to me was a maenad, a nymph who was closely aligned with Dionysus.

That fit the blood-wine-amber scent of Ekaterina’s signature very well. And it explained why they seemed so impulsive, too. Followers of the god of abandon, intoxication, madness, and bloody revelry were not all that likely to be patient, calculating people. I was pretty sure I knew what she was now, and it scared me.

Coronis was famous, one of Dionysus’s closest companions in the old myths. If someone was famous and powerful two thousand years ago, and they’re still around, it seemed best to take them very seriously. Strictly speaking Ekaterina might have been talking about some other maenad named after the one in the myths, but I highly doubted I was that lucky. No, she was one generation out from that.

Once I’d figured that lovely little tidbit out, I settled in to make plans. Clearly, there were a whole lot of skills I needed to learn, and equipment to pick up. I started making an actual list of things, now. It was a long list, and then I went back through and added notes about possible sources.

A lot of it I definitely couldn’t do anything about right now. Learning to track someone by scent, for example, had obvious value, and Raincloud’s demonstration today had done an excellent job of showing the importance of noticing scents in general. I fully intended to call Cassie and see if I could get any pointers or training, given that the old werewolf was to my knowledge the best person in the city for sent tracking by a fair margin. That would be helpful, but it seemed very unlikely that I’d be able to learn the skill quickly enough to matter to this crisis.

But if I only planned to the end of the crisis, I would just ensure that the next situation became a crisis too. If I survived the month—admittedly a much less confident prospect than it had been last week—these things would be essential. And I had a bit of time to work with right now, in which I had nothing immediately productive to do anyway.

So I sat in the diner and made plans. I had a small notebook, and over the course of the next two hours or so I filled it with notes and lists and ideas. I’d transfer it to electronic storage later, but for the moment this would work. In some ways it was easier to do on paper, anyway, with how much I was going back to revise or cross out entries.

Plus, it might be encrypted better than my phone connection could manage. I had never yet met someone who could easily read my handwriting. It was an incoherent scrawl, letters running together and none of the spacing quite lining up right, missing letters and crossed-out words, and penmanship so bad people usually had a hard time telling which sections I’d randomly lapsed into Japanese for. If someone knew my writing, and they already knew the general topic, they might be able to eventually parse out parts of it. But even then, there was almost always a fair amount of uncertainty. I’d never felt the need to work on improving it; after all, I could read my writing just fine.

The diner staff left me alone, aside from the occasional stop to give me more tea. Normally I would expect a restaurant to kick me out after this long, but this place was dead right now, so few customers that the staff was sitting and watching sports. Nobody cared that I was taking up a table. It wasn’t until well past sundown that I finally called it good and put the notebook away. I didn’t normally like to carry a bag, mostly because I knew that if I did I’d end up carrying so much random shit I couldn’t keep track of it all. But I was smart enough to bring a backpack when I was planning to be away from home for at least a few days, and I had plenty of space for a notebook.

Once I stowed it again, I took out a small pouch of business cards. I was in the habit of keeping phone numbers written down, because I fried phones often enough to make maintaining contact lists a little awkward. But this set of numbers, in particular, was one that I had no intention of adding to any contact lists. It was a single, small stack of cards, each with just a number and a small note to suggest who it was for. No other information. They were the kind of numbers where if you needed to ask who would pick up, you didn’t need to know. I sifted out one in particular, checked the time again, and then dialed.

The girl who answered sounded young, Japanese, and cheerful. The first of those was plausible, and the second guaranteed; this was not a conversation where English would be used. The third was almost certainly a lie, but she sold it well. Receptionists tend to be good at that, no matter who they worked for. She answered with a very simple “Hello?”, unusually simple for that culture.

“Good morning. I’m calling for Mr. Saito.”

I’d been half-expecting her to play at not knowing who I meant. But this was apparently a restricted enough number that she didn’t feel the need. “Mr. Saito is unavailable currently, unfortunately.”

“That’s fine, I can wait. If you could tell him Sugiyama Kyoko called, that would be appreciated.” I didn’t like using the family name, but it really wasn’t optional. It would be too culturally inappropriate to use just a personal name for myself, or use his at all. Japanese just didn’t work that way.

“Of course, with my apologies. One moment, please.”

I had been expecting for him to call me back later. All else aside, the time zone difference was large enough that it was still appallingly early in the morning there. Saito was a morning person, among his other poor lifestyle choices, but this was early even for him. But apparently Saito was in the office especially early today, because I was on hold for less than fifteen minutes, and when the call reconnected he was on the line himself.

“Sugiyama! Are you well? It has been too long since we spoke.” The old gangster sounded exactly the same as I remembered. His voice was higher than most guys, but rough, a little hoarse, the product of a long-ago injury to his throat that had never fully healed.

Despite myself, I found myself relaxing a little at the sound. Saito Ryosuke had been…well, it was a lot like what I’d observed about Saori earlier today. Saito was, by almost any standard, a bad person. He was a major, long-standing figure in an organized crime family, and you don’t hold a position like that without doing some terrible things. He might be less predatory than most of the Yakuza, but I knew perfectly well he had still done terrible things. Hell, I’d been there for some of them.

But he had been good to me, at a time when I’d desperately needed someone to be. Sure as hell a better mentor than my father ever managed to be. And even after all these years, his voice still made me feel safer somehow, a feeling I welcomed even though I knew it was a lie. “Only a few years,” I said, and suddenly realized it was close to ten now. I’d barely spoken with him at all since I left, in fact. “But yes, too long. And I’ve been well enough. How about you, are you doing well?”

“Oh, I try. Honestly, Sugiyama, the young blood has been driving me insane. I wish these kids had half the skills you did.”

I laughed. “You flatter me, sir. I’m guessing you aren’t complaining that they don’t attract half as much trouble, though.” The respectful mode of address came surprisingly naturally to me. I couldn’t easily think of the last time I’d used honorifics with anyone, in any language. But it had been habitual, when I was essentially working for him, and it was like as soon as I heard his voice I fell back into that habit.

“You always did have a gift for that,” Saito agreed. “Is that why you’re calling me, then?”

“It’s not the only reason, but I am in some significant trouble, yes. And I am finding myself in need of certain tools for resolving it.”

“Tools for our kind of work, then, no? Hm. I will warn you that my connections there are limited.”

“That’s fine,” I said. I’d been expecting that, really. Saito’s family might have international interests, but the Yakuza was ultimately a firmly Japanese institution, and I was on the other side of the planet, now. “Anything you can turn up would be helpful. Mostly, I need to talk to an arms dealer, preferably one who carries unusual weaponry.” It was probably stupid to say that so openly, but I really wasn’t concerned. The diner was very empty, and the chance anyone present could both hear me and understand Japanese was virtually nil. And besides, the vibe in here was…well. I doubted I was the first person to sit at one of these tables calling up friends in low places. The staff knew better than to be too interested in such things.

Saito was interested, though. He was very interested. I could hear it in his voice. “Unusual in what way?”

“Several. I’m trying to find a source for C-4, first off. And armor would be good, preferably something that works for swords.”

“Someone has been trying to cut you with a sword?” Saito’s voice was sharper now, concerned. It was touching, in a way. He’d always been very protective towards his kids, as he called the younger Yakuza affiliates he managed. And while I was well into adulthood now, I expected he would always see me as one of his kids on some level, still remember me as the angry, broken teenager who had been working for him a lifetime ago.

“Someone has been succeeding,” I said dryly. “But so far I’ve given better than I got. The explosives were much more dangerous.”

“Armor is not enough. You need to be able to protect yourself.”

“Yes, sir, I know. But I’m mostly already prepared for that. And blades are….” I glanced over at Thorn, quietly resting in its sheath next to me. “I have sufficient blades,” I finished after a moment, and managed not to laugh hysterically at the understatement. “And I’d ask for guns, but my aim has not improved.”

Saito laughed. My terrible aim was a longstanding joke between us. Saito used to say that if I could shoot as well as I brawled, I’d be the best soldier in his employ; but unfortunately, if it weren’t for gravity I couldn’t hit the ground. “I’ll see what I can do. Is there anything else? Unfortunately I have to go, I have…another engagement this morning. But I’ll look into it, and we can talk later, perhaps?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, sir.”

“It’s nothing,” Saito said dismissively. “Until later then.”

He disconnected. I returned that card to the pouch, and took out another, staring at it. Like Saito’s, it was very simple. Just a phone number, and the name Fleischmann—a traditional German surname, meaning butcher. Unlike the previous, though, I’d never called this number, not once. I’d never been desperate enough.

I tried to talk myself out of it for a moment, and then sighed and called. I was more than a little spooked, a feeling which did not improve when someone picked up and said absolutely nothing. I waited a moment, and then said, “Um. Hello? I’m looking for Silas Fleischmann.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” The person who answered sounded very little like the last in every way but one. His voice was masculine, lower, less cheerful, and speaking English with no discernible accent. But the artificial, practiced calm was the same. Receptionists really did have some things in common the world over. He had a good voice for it.

He was also giving me the runaround. I was fully expecting that, given that from what I knew vampires were even more secretive and paranoid than gangsters. But I had very little patience at the moment. “Tell you what,” I said. “If you happen to remember such a person, tell him Kyoko Sugiyama called from this number. I promise he’ll want to know.” I left the implicit threat of what Silas might do to this guy otherwise unstated. He would know better than I did, anyway.

“I’ll keep that advice in mind.”

“Good. Have a nice evening.” I hung up and glowered at nothing in particular. Honestly, part of me was glad that I had to leave a message there. It meant I didn’t have to talk to Silas yet. I’d met the vampire exactly once before, and found it a deeply uncomfortable experience. Sure, he might owe me, and he’d seemed to like me. But the fact remained that he had spent centuries as a powerful predator who ate people that looked a lot like me. It was hard not to be aware of that.

But he was powerful. And I needed a different kind of local connection. I had friends in this city. I did not have any particularly powerful allies, no connections or informants. All my really powerful allies, or sort-of allies, were elsewhere. I was hoping the latter group could provide the former.

I was pretty sure it would work, too. Saito could downplay his ability all he wanted. And to be fair, he wasn’t lying; his connections would definitely be thin here. But I knew quite well how resourceful he could be. And Silas might not live here, but Albany wasn’t that far away, and he was too old and canny not to have any greater reach than just the city he controlled. It seemed very unlikely to me that there was nothing he could do. I’d been saving this favor for a rainy day, and I’d have liked to keep saving it, but it wouldn’t do me any good if I were dead. A good card you can’t bring yourself to play is no better than a bad one.

Saori had texted me a few minutes ago, which was good timing on her part, though admittedly she had known the schedule I was working on. Regardless, it was good timing, and even better, I’d decided on the next thing I needed to do, now. From that list of skills and resources I needed to develop, two stood out particularly clearly.

One was a better place to stay. Clearly, Derek was no longer an option. If the people after me were willing to use tactics like a car bomb in a residential area, relying upon relative obscurity and public attention to keep myself intact was a bad idea. The other was a crash course on the topic of highly skilled assassins. The rest all mattered, but those two were the things that I needed now.

And fortunately, I knew somewhere I could find both.

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