Chapter Thirteen

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We couldn’t really stay at my house at that point. Never mind getting more sleep, I wasn’t even going to be going home again for a while. I handed off the captive to Audgrim’s person, and followed him out the door.

Saori was quiet while we went out to her car. She’d heard the entire conversation, of course. Her hearing was, like mine, outside of human range. Finally, she said, “He’s kind of a dick, isn’t he?”

“Little bit,” I sighed. This was the first time he’d done something quite this intense, but he was always…very much a dvergr in some key ways. He was aptly named; Auðgrímr meant grim inheritance, and he’d certainly gotten his share of their infamous grim, coldly rational patterns of thought.

“You think he’s right?”

I considered this for a moment. “I think,” I said slowly, “that he’s noticed something potentially important. But I don’t trust him to tell me everything, for obvious reasons, and I think he’s making some leaps in logic that might not be warranted. There are a ton of reasons they might not send someone with magic to kill me. There are lots of ways they could have learned where to attack the dvergar, and this explanation notably does not account for why the dvergar themselves care so much.”

“Yeah, pretty much my read on it too,” Saori said. “Worth keeping in mind, but he’s got some shaky logic going on there. You think he let your address slip on purpose?”

“No, not really. That’s not his style. And if he did, he wouldn’t know whether they could figure it out themselves.” I shrugged. “I’m not that hard to find. I do think we should be vacating the area now, though. Not a huge fan of staying at the one place we know isn’t safe.”

“Right, yeah,” Saori said, starting the car. “Anywhere in mind?”

I started to say no, then paused as I remembered what I’d been meaning to do earlier. “Yeah, actually,” I said. “Do you think you can get to Lawrenceville? I’ve got something the werewolves might appreciate.”

---

Andrew responded to my text quickly enough that I was pretty sure he’d already been awake. He didn’t ask any questions beyond confirming who I was, just said that he would be at the address I gave him in half an hour.

Saori drove fast enough that half an hour would leave us a decent margin. I did not, however, want to be sitting there blind while she did, not right now. So once I’d gotten the meeting arranged, I settled in with one of my easier compromises.

Saori glanced over once, and then did a minor double take, perhaps unwisely considering she was in the process of illegally passing a bus while she did. “You have an eyepatch?” she asked, sounding a bit incredulous.

“Yup. Among other things. Like I said, I have other ways to mitigate the overstimulation.” I shrugged. “I don’t really know the rules or mechanisms. Probably no one does, like…the best guess I have is that I’ve got a cocktail of photosensitive epilepsy, exceptionally acute perception of magical energy, enough precision within that perception to pick out things like emotion and personality, and intense synesthesia.”

She laughed a little. “Yeah, good luck trying to figure out anything in that mess. I think I follow.”

I grinned. “Yeah. So I’ve kinda figured out some ways to mitigate it, but I don’t really know why they work. Having a patch over one eye makes visual stuff less overwhelming. It can still get unpleasant, but it’s more manageable. Hell if I know why.”

“Eh,” Saori said. “Why is kinda immaterial. It works. Screw reasons.”

I had to laugh at that. “Yeah, kinda where I am with it.”

This was the first time I’d seen Saori’s driving. I’d had a pretty good idea of what it was like, but I hadn’t actually seen it before. Now that I did, I could understand why that security guard had been so glad to get out of the car. It wasn’t just that she drove fast, though she did, particularly with how little traffic there was to get in her way. Nor was it just that she drove aggressively or pulled risky maneuvers, though she did those things too.

No, the things that made Saori’s driving terrifying were much more how casual she was about those risks, and how close she cut the margins. I doubted any ordinary human could have matched it; the kitsune’s reflex time was just quicker than humans had the capacity for. Her manual dexterity was pretty up there, too, and between these things, she could get away with some really stupid shit. She swerved through traffic with virtually no margin for error. She didn’t have any problem at all leaving gaps of just inches between her car and someone else’s, and I honestly had no idea how she was managing to avoid crashing. Even if she were this good, I would still expect the panic and shocked flinching from other drivers to be throwing things off enough to cause a wreck.

The fact that she had zero problem with doing this one-handed while also chugging an energy drink or flipping through music on her phone, I thought, probably had less to do with skill and more to do with a reckless disregard for the safety of herself and others. Between that and the maneuvers she was pulling, I was a bit nervous, even though I both knew that she was well outside of the range of human capacity, and had pretty limited concern for safety myself. I did not blame that man in the slightest for looking queasy after just a couple minutes in a car with Saori.

As she started onto a bridge, I glanced out the window. Dawn was beginning to start in earnest, and I could see the sunrise reflected in the water. I could see the way that the light played over the standing waves, the almost-patterns of the river. I could see the lights of the city, not yet turned off for the daytime, and how they were reflected in the river as well. The Monongahela was a respectable river, wide enough that the bridge was over a thousand feet long trying to cross it, a huge span of water all gleaming with stolen light and as we kept moving the parallax kept shifting the reflections and the river just kept going and—

I blinked, forced myself to look away. The problem, always, was that it was beautiful. There was a very strong temptation to just keep watching, and lose myself in the intricacy and intensity of what I was seeing. It was much the same temptation as when I wanted to abandon my perceptual filters and let the world flood in, let that perception of magic that got me high in the space of a few moments just keep going. And, much like that impulse, it would feel great if I did, right up until I started seizing.

“You’re pretty relaxed for someone who just had an assassination attempt on her,” Saori said, taking the exit ramp from the bridge at a speed that probably represented more of a danger to my life than said assassin had.

I wasn’t sure entirely whether she was trying to distract me from what I was seeing, but it was appreciated either way. “You’re not exactly freaking out about it either,” I pointed out.

“Well, sure, but I’m a violent lunatic,” she said reasonably. “I’m excused.”

I had to laugh a bit at that. “I wasn’t always a hermit, you know. Just because it’s been a while since I’ve been in a fight doesn’t mean I forgot how.”

“What were you before, then?”

I was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer that. Eventually, I sighed and shrugged. “I dunno. A dumb kid with something to prove and a grudge against the whole world, I guess. I didn’t know that I wasn’t quite human yet, didn’t know about any of this. My mother died when I was quite young, and my father was…uninformed at best. It went poorly.”

Most people, when they heard this story, responded with some formulaic expression of sympathy. It was more irritating than anything; sympathetic platitudes got old very quickly, I had found. It had been worse when I was a kid, for a number of reasons, but it was still…tiring. I’d heard them all so many times.

“Do you want me to immolate him for you?” was not a response I had heard before, and I was honestly grateful to Saori for that.

“That’s kinda just your thing, isn’t it?”

She grinned. “Look, I’m just saying, as the size of a fire increases, the number of social problems it can’t solve limits onto zero.”

“That is a strange maxim, and it troubles me that I can’t readily find an exception,” I said after a brief pause. “Anyway, no, not really. He was…I don’t know whether he was a better person before she died, or I was just too young to recognize certain things about him. But either way, I’m not bitter enough for that anymore. And it wasn’t entirely his fault, either. Treating my visions as a mixture of epilepsy, hallucinations, and post-traumatic stress was not wholly unreasonable for someone who didn’t know anything about the supernatural. He was a dick about it, but not malicious, I think.”

“Does it matter?” she asked. “Still a shit way to treat someone. Still hurts.”

“And you’ll notice I don’t talk to him anymore,” I said wryly. “He’s not part of my life. I’d rather not make him one again, even for long enough to set that part on fire. Anyway, yeah, it went badly. Everyone was walking on eggshells around me, I was living in a different world than they were, nothing made sense. I was…unsurprisingly upset at life, at society, really at the world as a whole.”

“I am, in fact, unsurprised.” She was also driving with one hand while taking a corner at unsafe speed, and had her other out the window flipping someone off for getting in the way. I had to respect her on some level, and not just because I was utterly incapable of driving myself. The kitsune might be a violent lunatic, but she was undeniably a violent lunatic with both style and skills.

“Yeah, somewhat inevitable. So I fell in with a group of people who…well, at the time they seemed like dangerous people to know, and I was the kind of teenager who found that appealing. In hindsight they were mostly just dumbass kids who got used by the actual Yakuza members as disposable tools, but even if I’d known that I don’t think I’d have cared.”

“Why would you?” Saori said. “You weren’t there because you thought they were smart.”

I smiled a little. “Yeah. Pretty standard rebellious phase. Only real difference was that I was stronger than a human and one of the things my father did trying to fix me was have me study martial arts, thought I’d learn discipline or something. So when I started to participate, and I got sent to beat the crap out of people, I did it very well. That got me more respect than usual; I still spent time with the dumbasses who get used as tools, but also with the people who were using them.”

“Respected, good potential for advancement. Why’d you quit, then?” She was starting to slow down now. We were almost there, I realized. The drive had passed more quickly than I expected.

“It wasn’t fun anymore. I felt empty, like my life was hollow. Things were escalating, and badly. And then at the end there was…a particularly extreme incident, when I first learned about the raiju stuff, that convinced me I should stop and think about things.” I shrugged. “After I had, I decided I didn’t want to go back to go back to that lifestyle. Still not sure if I made the right call.

“Heh. Yeah, I can understand that.” Saori parked behind an extremely Italian restaurant. We had a solid ten minutes to kill before Andrew’s estimated time of arrival. “So what are we doing here, anyway?”

“Waiting for him to get here. I don’t like explaining things twice.” I was only mildly shaky as I got out and stretched. All things considered I thought that was pretty good.

“Aww. People waiting to hear something while you’re smug about already knowing is only fun when I’m in on it.” Saori was good at pouting; her puppy dog eyes were much better than Derek’s, pleading rather than just hapless.

I snickered. “It’s just a few minutes. You’ll live.”

---

Andrew was running early. Not by a lot, but a bit, and we’d been a little slow walking over to the address I gave him. Saori, it turned out, had a distinct preference for walking in alleys and side streets rather than anything like a major thoroughfare. I didn’t quite understand this, but it was easy enough to humor her.

In any case, he walked up just a few minutes after we did. The werewolf looked somehow even more tense than before. I didn’t like that. You could only put so much tension on someone before they snap, and I didn’t particularly want to see what happened when the person in question was a werewolf. One the others looked up to, I was pretty sure. Werewolves did not naturally form pack structures and hierarchies any more than actual wolves did; the whole notion of an alpha wolf only really happens in captivity, not in nature.

But they were still organized to a degree. Lone wolves, literal or otherwise, tended not to do great in this world; if you didn’t have a group backing you, you’d generally get killed or run off by someone who did. So they formed packs, and like any close-knit group, there were some wolves whose voices carried more weight than others. The social structure varied widely, but there would always be some people who were respected more than others. Older, stronger, smarter, whatever the reason, when they talked, people listened. I got the impression Andrew had that kind of authority, that other werewolves listened when he was talking.

I did not want to see someone who got that kind of respect snap. He was probably pretty scary as an individual, and he had a good chance of bringing other wolves over the edge with him, too.

So when he walked up with a nod and a terse, “Kyoko,” I did not respond with a sarcastic comment about saying good morning. I had some self-preservation instinct.

“Andrew. More bad news, but also a possible lead.”

“Start with the news.”

I nodded. “Alright. Current suspicion is that Mike is dead, some kind of ritual sacrifice to power a spell. It was a very strong binding spell, and it’s not clear why they used it to bind some minor tree spirit to serve them.”

He didn’t look terribly surprised. I didn’t really blame him. It was pretty obvious by now that these people did not hesitate to escalate to murder. If someone was missing and in their hands for well over a day, they were probably not coming back in one piece.

“Understood. And the lead?” His voice had a blank, professional tone to it that I didn’t like. It reminded me too much of both myself when I was truly angry, and some of the actual Yakuza members when things were about to get violent.

“They used a ton of supplies to set up the ritual,” I said. “Lots of metal, lots of gemstones. By coincidence, I happen to know that about a week ago, a jewelry supplier in this area made a very, very strange sale. Someone who seemed wrong, creepy somehow, walked in and bought literally their entire stock of a lot of supplies and tools. Notably, metal, engraving tools, and semiprecious stones.”

“Nobody buys that volume without a reason,” Andrew said. “You think they were getting ready for this?”

I shrugged. “Hell of a coincidence if not. I don’t entirely know, but there’s someone creepy buying tons of supplies and tools for making jewelry, and someone made a really creepy ritual focus using the same kinds of materials and tools, so….”

Andrew nodded. “Yeah, I follow. This was a week ago?”

I nodded. “Give or take. And, I mean, it’s kinda…there’s no obvious link here. I only know about this because a friend of mine buys supplies here, thought it was weird that she couldn’t get any, and told me because she thought I’d find it an interesting story. I highly doubt they would have bothered to cover their trail here.”

“A week is a pretty old trail,” he said. “But worth a shot.”

“Pretty much what I figured, yeah.” I shrugged. “I can look too, but after a week of people walking through here I can more or less guarantee that anything of that nature is gone.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Andrew said. “Save yourself for something that matters. I’ll get a few of our people out here to look at it, and we’ll go from there.”

---

“Werewolves are kinda cute, huh?”

I looked over at Saori. I looked at the werewolves currently spilling out of a van. They were larger than any dog I’d ever seen, and there was something distinctly carnivorous in the way they carried themselves. They looked as intelligent and dangerous relative to wolves as a wolf did to a dachshund. I looked back at her. “Cute?”

“Definitely,” the kitsune said. “How do you think they feel about ear scritches?”

“How are you still alive?” I asked.

“Trade secret. You think this will work?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. Got a chance, though. They’re really good at this. It’s kinda fun to watch.”

“Let’s,” Saori said, downing the last of the energy drinks I’d grabbed from a gas station while the wolves were getting set up. I was definitely going to have to step up my current purchasing pattern for those with her around. She went through as much caffeine as I did, and that was saying things.

Outside, the wolves were getting started. There were three of them in fur, and then Andrew and the girl who drove the van in skin. This was generally how they operated. A few stayed in skin so they could do any necessary talking, and so they could pretend the others were their dogs. I wasn’t sure how anyone fell for that, but I guess people will see what they want to see.

I wasn’t sure if I knew any of the ones who were in fur. I was okay at recognizing wolves, but I hadn’t spent enough time around the locals to be confident in it. They all smelled very strongly of wolf and flowers, though, and it was slightly overpowering. Not bad, but…strong.

They started at the door of the jewelry shop. It wasn’t open yet, and it was still early enough that the streets weren’t too busy; that was part of why I’d wanted to do this now. Humans are gullible on the whole, but it was best not to be stupid.

From there, they spread out. It really was kind of fascinating to watch. The three wolves were so fast at it, that was always what I noticed. There was no fumbling, no false starts, nothing. Just three wolves who were eerily well-coordinated, and two people that looked human unless you looked very closely, following behind them.

I expected that they’d found something, because almost immediately all of them were going the same direction. Saori and I followed at a slight distance, and kept watching. They were moving faster than a human jogger would find comfortable, even while tracking, and they made it look effortless. On the rare occasion one lost the trail, the others quickly brought them back onto it.

I wasn’t sure how werewolves were able to communicate with each other silently like this. It was apparently not telepathy, not quite. It was emotions and sensory impressions being transmitted rather than words. Something about lupine instinctive social cues and communication, elevated to a supernatural level. In any case, they were able to do it, and to make it look easy, even at that speed, even after a week for the trail to go cold.

“You’re right, this is kinda fun,” Saori said. “Definitely cute, though. Bet they’re great cuddlers.”

I rolled my eyes. We kept going, following the apparent trail down the street, turning twice, looping back in the direction we’d come from, then another sharp corner into an alleyway. I wasn’t sure if the person who left this trail had been taking such a strange route because they wanted to hide, maybe making sure no one was tailing them, or they just moved like this. In any case, it led into an alleyway, and then they stopped, letting us catch up to them.

“What’d you get?” I said to Andrew once we were in easy range for conversation.

“Quite a bit, actually,” he replied. He still sounded detached and professional, but there was a distinct thread of satisfaction in it, and he had a lot more calm, forest-green relaxation to my senses now. That was a bit of a relief. “Definitely not human. Not even very close to human, probably shaped like one but they do not smell like a human at all. Slightly musky, jasmine, and vanilla, of all things. Cassie thinks it might be familiar from where the mage got murdered, but she’s not sure. Anyway, they left the store, walked on this weird route, then walked up to this wall and vanished.”

“Otherside portal, pretty sure,” Saori said.

“They just crossed to an Otherside domain here?” I asked.

“Yeah, almost certain of it. Don’t know which, it’s functionally impossible to follow someone through a portal.” She shrugged.

“Why’d they come here to do it?” Andrew asked. “Couldn’t they have saved themselves the trip?”

“Yeessss but also no,” Saori said. “It’s…ugh, don’t know how to phrase it that would make sense to you. It’s…a place has a certain resonance, any given location does. It’s much easier to open a portal to somewhere that is close to where you are in your current domain.”

“What’s the resonance based on?” I asked, more out of curiosity than anything. I’d heard of Otherside portals, but only in a very vague way, and I’d certainly never used one.

“Anything? Everything?” Saori shrugged again. “It varies based on any number of factors, everything from generalized energy fields and atmosphere to historic events to the way the person making it feels emotionally about a place. It’s not something I could quantify.”

“Not traceable then?” Andrew asked, staring at the wall as though it had done something to personally offend him.

“No, not at all,” Saori said. “And even if I could, I couldn’t take you there. You have to know somewhere very well to reach it with a portal. The chance that I happen to know the same destination point they used is essentially nil.”

I nodded. I’d only heard of these things in vague terms, but one of the things I did know was that if a portal failed, it was very, very bad for anyone who was trying to use it at the time. “Dead end, then.”

“Yeah, but useful,” Andrew said. “Not human at all, like I said. That’s not consistent with what you’ve been picking up. Guessing it’s the whatsit, the sponsor you’ve mentioned.”

I nodded again. “That makes sense, yeah. Would you know it if you smelled it again?”

“Absolutely,” he replied, with total confidence. “Any of us would. It’s very distinctive.”

“That might come in handy, at least. Now we just need to find them.” I was grinning, and to my surprise I found it was sincere. It wasn’t just that my hunch seemed to have been correct, and it wasn’t just that we were making progress. There was something else, some other satisfaction that I didn’t understand and couldn’t clearly define.

Andrew was smiling, too, or at least showing teeth. “Yeah. Still working on that part. I’ll keep you in the loop.” He turned and left without another word.

One of the wolves in fur stopped next to me and leaned against my legs for a moment before leaving. Someone I knew, presumably, though I didn’t know who. It was comforting all the same. Saori took the opportunity to give them ear scritches, and was rewarded with happy wolf sounds before they walked away.

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