A Storm of Blossoms

Chapter Twenty-One

Audgrim didn’t like that very much. I could tell he would rather have told me no flat out. But he couldn’t really do so. He just didn’t have the position to right now. I’d been accomplishing a great deal for this investigation, and had put myself through several rounds of seriously unpleasant exposure to do so, on top of him using me as bait for information gathering. I didn’t kid myself into thinking that meant he would feel real loyalty towards me. I wasn’t that naïve. In my experience, most people are generally only as grateful as they’re directly incentivized to be. He would pay back the debt he owed me, sure; that much I felt I could count on. But that was because reputation was everything in our circles, and a reputation as an oathbreaker who reneged on his debts would see him metaphorically and quite possibly literally crucified for it. He was smart enough to know that, to know that the long-term costs outweighed any short-term reward he stood to gain. But I wasn’t counting on him actually caring; I wasn’t even counting on him being too self-interested to discard the possible gain from my ongoing help. People self-sabotage for stupid reasons all the time.

The reason that I was confident he was going to play along had nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the broader context. There were other groups involved now. Audgrim could afford to piss me off without any repercussion, but when you have Jack Tar, the local werewolf pack, and a pretty scary Sidhe also involved? All of whom had a lot of reason to want this situation dealt with successfully, and direct awareness of both how much I’d been helping and the misery I’d put myself through in order to do so?…

Chapter Twenty

Jack Tar might have smelled slightly better today. It was hard to tell whether it was that, or I’d acclimated somewhat. He at least wasn’t smoking, which was a good start. He was sitting on the ground in the parking lot when I opened the door, and glanced back at me when I did.

“Ey, there you are. Was about to call you again.” He pushed himself to his feet, and stretched like his back hurt. “Where you want to go?”

I paused. “Wasn’t this your idea?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “But I don’t really have a destination in mind. Just want to talk, and I find that walking helps me think. It’s the movement, you know? Helps with working through ideas.”…

Chapter Nineteen

Andrew left, at that point. He was currently a very busy wolf; now that they had a clear scent sample from these mages, it was going to be much more likely that they could follow the trail, and they had a lot of sites to check. Honestly, the fact that he’d taken time to keep watch and give me a status update was kind of surprising.

I sat in the parking lot of the Blackbird Cabaret for a few minutes with Saori. We didn’t really say much, but it still felt very soothing, somehow. The air was cool enough that the partial sunlight actually felt nice, and I had a lot of stuff to absorb. So much had happened while I was unconscious. It was strange to think about the fact that I was most of the reason for that when I didn’t know anything about it.…

Chapter Eighteen

Waking up the next time was much more pleasant. I didn’t appear to have been moved, though the room was a little different. Capinera had laid a blanket on the floor in the corner, and was lying down asleep. I felt a little bad about putting her out of her bed, but she did seem to be able to sleep like that. A fox was curled up in that bed next to me, also asleep. Kitsune seemed to be unlike werewolves in this, and unlike me for that matter. Saori looked exactly like an ordinary red fox, with red-orange fur, a white tip on her tail, nothing unusual at all. She only had the one tail, too, suggesting she was young and fairly limited in her power; kitsune grew more as they aged. It was only context that told me who this was, that and the feeling of smoke-laughter-fox-spice in her aura.

More surprising to me was the person sitting in the chair. There were a lot of people whom I could have imagined that being, under the circumstances, but Andrew would have been a ways down the list. The werewolf was doing something on his phone, and he still seemed tense, but it was a different tension now, hungry and eager.…

Chapter Seventeen

Waking up was slow. It was hard. Normally I woke up quickly, and neither a deep sleep nor a nightmare was enough to change that. This…was like trying to force my way through a thick fluid. It was hard, it was somehow painful. When I did snap back to awareness, I still felt dazed, my thoughts blunted by a thick fog.

I was in a bed, I thought. It was soft. The sheets felt like satin. I could smell something sweet and floral. It took a little bit to work my way up to opening my eyes, but when I did I found the lighting was soft as well, and there were some rugs breaking up the monotony of the concrete floor. I was in a twin-size bed, and the room also had a simple wooden chair, a small refrigerator, and a camp stove; not a lot else.

Capinera was sitting on the chair, across the room from me. Not a large room, but it meant there was enough space to not feel threatening. She was quietly reading a book. I wasn’t entirely sure how I recognized her immediately, given that I’d only seen her once, for a few seconds. Maybe just because those seconds had been so intensely burned into my brain. She looked calm, peaceful even, though there was a sheathed rapier leaning against the wall next to her.…