Chapter Twenty-Two

There was no show at the Blackbird Cabaret tonight. But I could, just barely, make out light behind the blackout curtains in back, so I was pretty sure Capinera was there.

I was still somewhat nervous as I approached the building. I could feel the power woven into it like a thin, humming spiderweb I was brushing my way through. Those wards were pretty damn strong, for me to feel them from the parking lot. When the Blackbird Cabaret closed and locked its doors for the night, you’d be well-advised to take it seriously.

I had never asked Capinera what the wards would do to someone dumb enough to try and break in. Maybe I was afraid of what the answer might be. But I was guessing that whatever the answer was, it ended with dead people in the parking lot.…

Chapter Twenty-One

The next day opened so peacefully that it was a little creepy. I woke up in the back seat of an appallingly green car with a fox curled up on my chest and a dog sprawled over my legs, both still fast asleep. The location was strange enough that I was momentarily disoriented and unsure where I was, but the company was familiar enough that there was no real anxiety in it.

We often ended up in roughly this circumstance. Of the three of us, only Raincloud could really be said to sleep well. But Saori’s issues were mostly to do with difficulty falling asleep to begin with and nightmares once she had. Duration was usually decent for her, and for me it just…wasn’t. I was almost always the first to wake up, and given that all three of us were fond of each other and tactile in how we expressed affection, I often did so like this. Saori slept in fur as often as not, and she tended to end up lying on top of me regardless of how we were arranged when she went to sleep, so when we slept together, this was how I woke up.…

Ukemi

When Kyoko talks about taking falls here, she’s referring to some specific skills. Learning to fall down or be thrown without being injured in the process is a major skill in a variety of martial arts; judo and aikido are the two where she learned it, in large part because I have the most experience with them. Though given that both are Japanese in origin, and she was studying in Tokyo at the direction of her rather traditionalist father, it also just makes sense. There are numerous differences between judo and aikido, but for the purpose of this note I’m going to be treating them as a unit, since falling is mostly the same set of skills in both; this skillset is referred to as ukemi. For terms I’m generally going to be using a mixture of English and romanized Japanese, mostly because it’s the format I learned in. If you want to follow along with the descriptions, there are numerous videos which showcase the falls in question.…

Chapter Twenty

The fire started a little before five in the morning.

I had to admire it, in a way. The timing was very precise. I was a night owl by habit, but by this point even I would normally be starting to wind down for the night and considering sleep. It was late enough that if someone were planning around the intuitive time of midnight, they would be starting to let their guard down. But sunrise came late in December, and it was still solidly dark out, so they had all the advantages associated with that.

Similarly, there was no warning. I just felt a sudden sharpening of Raincloud’s attention, and then a moment later I could smell the smoke too, and it was getting stronger rapidly. It smelled like woodsmoke, but I could smell something else under that, just a hint of something less pleasant. An accelerant, I was guessing; gasoline would be the most obvious pick, but there were plenty of hydrocarbons to pick from, and it might be something less mundane than that.…

Chapter Nineteen

The next day, once everything was arranged and it was starting to approach sunset, I went home, for the first time in a while now. It felt…strange, being there again. It was familiar, but at the same time felt somehow alien. It wasn’t just that so much of my stuff had already been moved out; that definitely played a role, but there was also an element that felt more intrinsic. I felt out of place, like I didn’t belong here anymore. I’d lived in this house for fifteen years, but tonight I had the same sort of derealization that I sometimes felt in unfamiliar places, like I was moving through a dream.

You can’t step in the same river twice. The world looks different depending on where you’re standing, and I’d gone a hell of a long way in the past week, though what direction this path led was impossible for me to guess. Regardless, the view from here was different, and my own house now looked like a strange, alien environment.…

Chapter Eighteen

Okay, I see why you hate these things.

I snorted and pulled Raincloud more fully onto my lap. She wasn’t exactly allowed to be there—pets were supposed to be in carriers unless they were service animals—but the bus driver had not been able to resist a puppy who knew very well how to exploit her intrinsic cuteness to get what she wanted. Part of it, at least. There’s a lot to hate.

On some level, I supposed I was being unfair. Public transportation was a vital resource, and from what I’d heard Pittsburgh’s bus system was actually pretty good by American standards. The fact that using it was miserable for me really wasn’t their fault. I got sensory overload easily, didn’t handle crowds well, and was prone to collapse in a convulsing heap if I wasn’t careful with those things. I also had serious emotional issues around the topic. When I was a kid, I really hadn’t been equipped to understand the details and context of my mother’s death. I just knew that she’d gotten sick because of poison on the subway and it was probably part of why she died. Hadn’t left me with great feelings on the topic.…