Chapter Eleven

“You stole this.” I sounded incredulous, probably because I was.

Saori grinned at me lazily. “I prefer the term ‘liberated,’ actually,” she told me. She sounded smug, probably because she was.

“Sure,” I said. “But out of all the cars you could have picked, you liberated this?”

Saori looked at the car. It remained the same. The overall structure was ordinary enough, a sedan with pretensions of being a sports car. But I wasn’t sure how she’d even found a car painted quite this eye-searingly neon green.

“Yes? Are you surprised?” the kitsune asked me.…

Chapter Ten

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.…

Chapter Nine

Explosions are intrinsically loud.

This was not exactly a startling, original observation. It was also an understatement of comical proportion. Even the relatively small explosions involved in gunfire are spectacularly loud, far more so than most people would imagine. Something smaller like a twenty-two gauge rifle or nine millimeter pistol round might be in line with their imagination. Those are still noisy, but they’re not incredibly so. Larger firearms, though, are loud enough that the shotgun blast earlier had been physically painful and left my ears ringing.

I discovered now that this did not in any way prepare me for the experience of a car bomb. The noise alone was miserably painful, and between that and the pressure wave, I lost track of my surroundings for a few moments. The world went white, and I was falling. Or maybe flying through the air; I couldn’t tell which way was up, so it was kinda hard to tell. Everything hurt and I had no idea what was going on. I might have outright lost consciousness. It was hard to tell.…

Chapter Eight

I’d seen Saori use one of these grenades before. I hadn’t gotten a very clear look at it then, and I wasn’t watching at all right now, but I could make a pretty good guess at what was going on behind me. There would be an immediate blast of flame, and then waves of choking, disorienting black smoke. The flame wasn’t normal fire, though I wasn’t sure what the difference was, chemical or magical or both. Whatever the means, the result was terrifying, fire that clung to flesh, that refused to go out, accompanied by smoke that scrambled vision in a way smoke usually didn’t.

Within a second, I could hear screaming behind me. I could smell charring flesh, noxious and disgusting, and that spoke volumes about just how intense the fire was. Normally, flesh took time to burn, and in the process it smelled like roasting meat, appetizing regardless of my feelings on the source. This skipped cooked and went straight to charred, and it smelled vile.…

Dice and Card Games

So characters play games in this story a lot. It’s a character trait that comes up a lot, particularly with Saori and Raincloud. What games they play, when, and how is something that I put a fair amount of thought into.

Dice games are the most commonly referenced. The reason for this is pretty simple, and it’s one that will show up in actual life a lot. Dice games are easy to play. You don’t need much for it. You can play a game of liar’s dice with nothing more than a flat surface, a bag of dice, and some cups or screens. It’s simple, easy, and portable. You can pack up quickly and with little fuss. You can play anywhere that there’s a reasonably flat surface. Dice are durable, and if you lose one, you can use any other die of the same type to replace it.…

Chapter Seven

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.…