A Storm of Blossoms

Chapter Thirty-Two

Somewhat to my surprise, the odd, supernatural poet actually was outside. They hadn’t simply vanished when they walked out the door, and were in fact walking at a casual pace through the snow. They weren’t dressed for this weather; just a black t-shirt and tattered black jeans, beat-up old sneakers, nothing like sufficient for a January night in Pittsburgh. They didn’t seem to care, or even notice.

I caught up to them easily enough, since they were moving at a pretty relaxed speed. I made a point of moving up beside them rather than directly behind them, giving them time to register my presence before getting close. People who had any involvement with the supernatural often ended up…jumpy.

“Hi,” I said, once I was close enough. “You want some company?”…

Chapter Thirty-One

On the walk back, I was interrupted by a booby trap.

I saw the tripwire stretched across the alley in plenty of time. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, though. It was…different than the other attempts. It had none of the blunt-object aggression of Ekaterina’s approach, but nowhere near the elegance and precision of Cormac’s side of things. And I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think it was even connected to anything. I checked as best I could, which wasn’t very, and I didn’t see anything.

I hadn’t gone close to it. It had occurred to me that it would make some sense to use an obvious trap as bait so that I would miss the actual trigger for another trap. But I wasn’t sure what to do with that fact. I could just as easily say that the actual trap was in the next alley over, and this whole thing was a decoy. Falling into that kind of option paralysis was a terrible idea, too; staying still here was just begging for an ambush to hit.

So once I’d established to the best of my ability that it wasn’t directly hazardous, I just shrugged and continued. I stepped over the tripwire with exaggerated care—I didn’t want to risk breaking it, just in case—and put my foot down on the other side.…

Chapter Thirty

I did not wake up from the nightmare in a good state of mind. That was an understatement of almost criminal proportion, really. I managed to dislodge Saori from my chest and roll out of bed before I started throwing up, but that was about it.

I spent a while like that, shaking and retching on Capinera’s floor. I thought I might be crying also, but it was a little hard to tell. It was hard to tell how long it dragged on, too; time got weird when I felt like this, in ways I’d never quite been able to define.

Saori hadn’t woken up. That spoke volumes about just how tired she’d been. She was a heavier sleeper than I was, but I was putting off a fair amount of electricity, and had just rolled her off my chest before throwing up right next to her. This…would ordinarily be more than enough to wake her up.…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was quiet on the way out of Nephele’s dungeon, and dark. If there were any other lights than the dim glow that had illuminated our cage, I couldn’t see them. I didn’t look too closely, anyway. I didn’t want to know, especially when I was already so overloaded.

Fortunately, neither Saori nor I needed much light. And we could both produce it, anyway. I had lightning crawling through my fur, which cast a dim, eerie green glow. And Saori had some sort of fire magic playing through the fingers of one hand. She’d never done that around me before. I wasn’t sure whether that was just because she’d never needed it, or because she’d wanted to keep her link to the Order of the Shadowed Flame private.

Learning about that had explained more than a couple things about her. I’d noticed on numerous occasions that in addition to the fox-and-spice smell of kitsune, there was an admixture of something else in Saori’s signature, smoke and dark incense. It wasn’t hard to guess that had come about because of her association with Shadowed Flame, and I could feel that scent of smoke particularly clearly right now.…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“What the fuck were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Seriously, bitch, you just…what kind of shit did you use to replace your brain, because I need to find whoever produced it and rip their intestines out.” Saori was pacing back and forth around the cage, in a way that reminded me of an agitated cat, and cussing me out. She’d been doing that with great enthusiasm and remarkable creativity for the past several minutes. I didn’t think she’d repeated herself yet, and I’d heard at least four languages in the mix.

“I already said I was sorry.” I sounded less agitated and more just tired. I was also sitting down and leaning back against the cage wall. I had plenty of room for it; they’d been courteous enough to put us in the same cage, a literal freestanding cage, but it was large enough that there was no crowding.

“And I already told you it was bullshit, yes,” she retorted. “I remember. Unlike some people, I still have enough cognitive functioning that I can recall basic information for ten minutes.” The kitsune sounded…not angry, precisely, but the insults felt less like an affectation than they usually would. “Look, sneaking into the VIP section and taking the table reserved for an actual VIP, I can respect that. It’s got style. But you could have at least told me that was what we were fucking doing.”…