Chapter Twenty-Two

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Saori had ditched the plastic tub of LEGOs and the ice cream machine she’d had in her car, apparently. They had been replaced by a box filled with dozens of hockey stick blades of various shapes, and a clown mask sitting on the dashboard. Which was….

I knew that it would only encourage her, and the answer would be neither informative nor reassuring. But I had to ask. “Is that mask…autographed?”

“Yup!” she said brightly.

“By whom?”

“The entirety of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.” Saori sounded smug. “The list sorted by instrument is in the glovebox.”

I closed my eyes, though for once it was less because cars were overstimulating and more just trying to banish a whole host of mental images all at once. “Why do I ask questions when I know I don’t want to know the answers?”

“The hell should I know, I’m not a shrink. So where are we going?”

I thought for a second, and then shrugged. “Back to my house, I guess. Easier to talk there.”

“Don’t you think they might try and assassinate you there again?” From anyone else, that might have been accompanied with hesitation, or at least said in a tone that implied concern. Saori just sounded excited, and the car was already moving fast enough that I really had to wonder how much aftermarket work she’d had done on it. Sedans were not supposed to have that good of a zero-to-sixty time.

“Eh, kinda doubt it. I guess it’s possible, but they have to know now that hiring a dumb kid and telling him to shank me isn’t going to work. And I think they’re a little busy right now. Plus, I need to water my plants, it’s been a while.”

“An entirely valid reason to risk disembowelment. Tell you what, since it’s urgent, I’ll get you there double-time.” From how hard she accelerated around the next corner, I wasn’t entirely sure she was joking.

“How do you not get pulled over constantly?” I asked. I was morbidly curious at this point. Saori’s disregard for traffic laws was so complete I had to sort of admire it, but I didn’t expect most traffic cops would agree with me on that.

The kitsune sniffed. “Bitch, please. The implication that a police officer could either drive fast enough to catch me or focus through the enchantments long enough to want to is just insulting.”

She put on some music at that point, loud enough that conversation was impractical. I was actually familiar with it this time. Ice Nine Kills was on the more aggressive side for me, but Saori was clearly in a somewhat bloodthirsty mood, and I had to admit that metal music describing slasher flicks in loving, gory detail was an appropriate soundtrack tonight. Having it be a remix sped up until it sounded like the singer was a little girl happily describing repeatedly stabbing people was a little less appropriate, but I’d figured out by now that expecting Saori to behave in an appropriate way was a sucker’s bet under any circumstance.

---

Saori was whistling cheerfully while we walked up to my house. I was pretty sure she had one hand on her knife, but I seemed to have been correct; nobody jumped us, competently or otherwise. I unlocked the door, unlocked the door some more, and we went inside without incident.

I really did feel almost insulted. These people could seriously only manage one assassination attempt for me, and a pitiful one at that? It was disrespectful, really.

I thought that, and then I paused and actually looked at what was running through my head. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Was I really that casual about violence, that not being attacked more seriously was almost disappointing? It wasn’t a wholly unfamiliar pattern of thought; I was quite sure that, say, eighteen years ago when I was running with a Yakuza family, this was an interpretation that I would have found perfectly reasonable. But it was slightly disturbing how easily I fell back into that pattern.

I shook my head, forced myself to focus on the present moment. It felt harder than usual, like I was more disconnected from my immediate surroundings. I wasn’t sure what to attribute that to; there were too many possibilities. Regardless, it didn’t matter right now. I locked the door again, and went inside.

Contrary to what I’d told Saori, though, I didn’t immediately start tending the plants. It was true that I needed to water them, but that wasn’t my primary reason for coming back here, nor was it just a need for the familiar environment. My first stop was a small door on the ground floor. Saori was following me, and she was clearly curious, but she didn’t say anything.

The basement here was not exactly hidden, and it wasn’t me that made it less than obvious. As far as I could tell, the house was just built like this, with the door to the basement stair small and tucked away in a corner looking like a closet. I wasn’t sure why, but it wasn’t my doing.

The door at the bottom, on the other hand, was my addition. It wasn’t, like, a vault door or anything. But it was a steel security door, and it was locked as thoroughly as the exterior door. Maybe more so; that was just two tumbler locks, perfectly normal aside from a slightly heavier deadbolt than usual. This had a similar deadbolt, but there was also a heavy combination lock on it. One lock that required an object, one that required a piece of information. Two-factor security was always a good choice for something that you actually cared about.

Saori followed me down the stairway. It was concrete, narrow and a little uneven; this house had been built before things like stair risers were standardized, and it showed. The lights were harsh fluorescents, glaring and lacking any kind of softness.

“Okay,” the kitsune said, while I was undoing the locks. “Gotta say, we’re sliding back towards the actually-a-serial-killer creepy now.”

I grinned at her over my shoulder. “Yeah, uh, about that,” I said. And then I pushed the door open, and went inside, and flicked the light on. More fluorescents down here. I didn’t love them, the light spectrum and the humming sound were both prone to grate on my senses, but I didn’t spend much time down in the basement. Much like other disused parts of my house, it was largely storage. It just stored…different things.

Saori paused at the doorway. “Holy shit,” she said, staring. “Wow. That is. A lot.” She was looking at the assortment of weapons in the basement with an expression that verged towards awe.

“There’s a reason we came here,” I said dryly, going in and looking around. I had to admit she had a point. It wasn’t a huge basement, but it was fully converted into an armory and there wasn’t a lot of free room in it. I had dozens of knives in various styles and materials, all carefully arranged and laid out on metal tables. The sheathes were on a separate shelf underneath, because keeping most knives in the sheath is actually not great for them, long-term. There were guns, as well; several pistols of varying calibre, a regular shotgun and one that had the barrel sawed off, a light rifle and a heavier one. The guns were hanging on the wall, with ammunition and various straps and other gear arranged on the table below them. The table running down the middle of the room had a handful of smaller or more niche weapons: energized silver and iron ammunition for when those were necessary, a couple flashbangs, pepper spray, and a large plastic tub filled with a thin grey powder that incorporated as many kinds of anathematic materials and properties as I could fit into one substance.

It was all in working order. I didn’t spend much time down here, but I made a point of coming down twice monthly to do maintenance and upkeep, make sure everything was where it should be and ready for use. The knives were sharp; the guns were oiled and functional. It had been years since I needed these things, and many had never seen use at all, but I was extremely meticulous about keeping them in good condition. Treating my weapons respectfully had been drilled into me pretty deeply back in the day. Old habits die hard.

“How did you even get this stuff?” Saori asked me. Her voice was touched with the same near-awe as her face, a kind of respect the kitsune hadn’t previously expressed towards me.

I shrugged. “I’m rich, remember? Just because I don’t live like a violent lunatic anymore doesn’t mean I forgot how.”

“Sure, but seriously, some of this is…you are definitely not supposed to have tear gas, and I think that shotgun is well below the legal length cutoff.”

“I am both surprised that you know those legal codes, and perplexed about what I did to suggest that I care about them,” I said dryly. “I do still have a few friends in low places, you know. And the nice thing about having most of my money held by VNC is that if I want to spend some of it on something I’m not supposed to have, all it really takes is a phone call and a slight surcharge.”

“Damn.” The kitsune was leering at this point, and I wasn’t sure whether she was more turned on by me or by the weaponry, but it was kind of flattering either way.

I wandered around the room, picking some things out. “I don’t normally carry weapons,” I said. “Don’t really need them, and they’re more headache than they’re worth. But it’s sounding like tomorrow night you get the chance to indulge your wildest pyromaniac fantasies, and it seemed like a good idea to grab some stuff.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Tomorrow night?”

“Yup!” I said, sounding somewhat alarmingly happy about it. I wasn’t sure whether it was an act. “That’s one of the things I figured out, or, I mean, mostly Jack did but it was based on my ranting so I think I get partial credit. Anyway, tomorrow night seems likely to be when these assholes are making their move on something important, so. Yeah, pretty much. Not totally sure of where, Jack’s working on that too, and still a little hazy on the details of what the plan is. Pretty sure it involves stealing something important from behind security measures that involve the dvergar, though. Also pretty sure Audgrim fucked up and left a serious vulnerability in the defenses that they’re exploiting.”

“Damn,” Saori said again. “Gotta say, next to that, my info suddenly seems a lot less sexy. All I really got was that he was definitely incentivized to recommend me for that job, specifically. I don’t know why or by whom, and I’m not actually sure he does either, but it was very much not an accident. Still don’t think Chris was actually doing anything big though.”

I nodded, and frowned. “Still creepy, though. You think he set you up somehow?”

“Hell if I know. Might have been that, might have just been someone wanting to kick some work my way.” Saori shrugged. “I don’t really have a good explanation yet.”

I nodded. “Something to look into later, then.”

“Yeah. I don’t think I’d be able to turn anything up by tomorrow.” Saori paused, and when she continued, she sounded a little uncomfortable. “Audgrim thought there was a leak. Someone giving intelligence out about you, about things we were doing.”

I sighed. “Yeah. He did.”

“You think he was right?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, evidence suggests Audgrim isn’t as great at information security as he thinks, if he slipped up and let these people get their hands on a tool for bypassing dvergr wards. And we both agreed his logic was kinda shaky. But….”

“But they did send someone to try and kill you.”

“Yeah. They did.” I sighed again. “Almost sure that was just some random punk they hired. But they knew enough to send him the right place. And there has been some really creepy targeting going on. This group of random human mages knows everything from where werewolves live to which people have contracts with the dvergar to what song some Midnight Court guy is obsessed with. That’s uncomfortable. The fact that you apparently got connected to Chris as part of some scheme does not make me feel any better, either.”

“Agreed.” Saori was quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay, so on that note, are you any good with any of this stuff? Or just into collecting murder implements?”

I laughed. “Not great with a lot of it,” I admitted. I was reasonably good at hand-to-hand, not expert but I could hold my own. Aim, though, was…less than stellar. I grabbed a pistol and the sawed-off shotgun, but there was really no point in me bringing one of the rifles. I set the guns I did want aside, picked out several knives, and after a moment’s thought added a flashbang and two small pouches of powder.

It was a reasonably impressive pile, I thought. I didn’t think for a moment it would actually matter. While I was expecting to be in the fighting tomorrow, I was also fully expecting that the people I was with would be pretty fucking scary. If the firepower they were throwing around wasn’t enough, I kinda doubted a knife would be enough to tip the scale. But it was comforting, and it was possible it would at least help somewhat.

“Alright, think I’m good. You want anything?”

Saori looked tempted, but she shook her head. “Nah, I’ve got my own stuff. Not the best time to be learning my way around new toys, you know?”

I nodded, and gathered up my old toys, and we left. I locked the door again, and pretended that the weight of so much violence waiting to happen didn’t feel either reassuring or upsetting. I was pretty sure I failed on both counts.

---

“So it’s sounding like stuff is about to get real. Not totally sure, but I don’t see any way this ends without people dying.”

I wasn’t sure why I was talking to the plants again. Nor was I sure why I was lingering in the room full of toxic ones, except that they seemed like the right group to discuss such bloody topics with. Definitely going a little more insane, I thought. Considering my baseline, that was kind of impressive.

But it felt right, so I didn’t stop. “I don’t really know how to handle that. Emotionally, I mean. I feel like it should bother me somehow, I guess. I mean, I’m almost sure that tomorrow I’m going to be helping to kill some people. That seems like something where feeling some kind of upset would probably be healthy, but I just don’t. I’m more distressed by not knowing what they’re planning to steal than I am by the fact that we’re probably going to try to kill them before they do so.”

The plants weren’t talking back. But I could no longer pretend that it felt like a wholly one-sided interaction. First it had been feelings of congratulation from the plants next to the bedroom. Here and now, it felt darker, quieter, colder. The emotional resonance I picked up was very faint, and it felt very…primitive, I suppose, was the word. It was like the emotions I could feel in the plants were very basic, fundamental things, like they were stripped down to the most primitive and oldest sort of emotion. They lacked all nuance, and certainly didn’t have anything that would require as much forebrain as words.

But they were there. The wolfsbane felt hungry. The belladonna was darker, and it was less eager, more just a sort of acceptance. The autumn crocus had a sort of wild, frenzied laughter in it. And while it was tempting to write this all off as projection, or as feelings that had soaked into a room so deeply associated with death, I just…couldn’t. It felt like self-deception to try, like deep down I knew that this was as real as any of the rest of my atypical perceptions.

It felt like something must have changed in me. But I wasn’t sure when, and I wasn’t sure why. And I didn’t feel any different, not that I could tell. But then again, would I know? Sure, I felt like the same person. But even without magic, I knew more than enough neuroscience to recognize that people could be very blind to themselves changing. Continuity of memory was, to a large extent, a trick the brain played on itself because recognizing just how little about one’s self was stable and sacrosanct would be traumatic.

“I’m not bothered,” I said again after a moment. “I feel almost relieved, glad that I can be done with this and move on, one way or another. And I do feel bothered by how much the actual prospect of helping to kill people doesn’t bother me. It feels like it shouldn’t be so casual, shouldn’t feel so simple.”

The skimmia agreed with me. I could tell, because it felt sad. Again, the emotion was very basic, very simple; it didn’t have enough nuance to be sorrowful, or regretful, or bitter, or melancholic. It was just sadness, lacking those more detailed elements. That made sense, I supposed, considering they were, after all, just plants. They didn’t have much mind to work with, to add that kind of nuanced meaning. Frankly, the fact that I could even feel this much from them had some very strange implications, both philosophical and scientific.

I stood there for a few more minutes, looking out the window into the night. The sun was down, now, and the lights I could see were those of the city. My home had an excellent view of the skyline; it was a large part of why I’d picked this house. I could see the office buildings downtown, towering constructions of glass and steel that burned so very brightly in the night. One of them, I always forgot which, had the spire at the top lit up in bright, vivid colors, forecasting the weather tomorrow in a code I could never quite recall. I could see traffic, rendered by distance into just a blur of light, headlights and streetlights fading together into a single mass.

So many lights out there. Humans had always wanted light, fire to push the shadows back, to keep their world separate from the dark, threatening world around them. So many, and every one of them, directly or indirectly, represented a life, a person. There were more than two million people in the greater metropolitan area of this city, two million lives, each one as rich and complex as mine, each person’s hopes and dreams, loves and hates and fears and sorrows, as important to them as mine were to me. It was overwhelming to really think about that, to think about what was actually involved in a city.

It was a strangely poignant thing, looking out at that. It was bizarre to contrast that normalcy with my own life, so far out of control right now, so chaotic and threatening. It felt melancholic, not so far from the dark, calm acceptance that I could feel in the nightshade beside me.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Definitely going further insane. Thanks for chatting, I guess.”

They didn’t answer. I was glad for that. Actual words, I thought, would be the next milestone in my ongoing mental collapse.

---

Dinner was a delivery pizza. Saori had flatly vetoed my idea of frozen food, saying she refused to accept hot pockets as a valid choice for a possible last supper. It was a little grim, but I had to admit she had a point. Like I’d told the plants, I was almost sure this was going to end with people dying. But I was very much aware it might be us rather than them.

Dinner probably would have been quiet if it were with someone else. I was guessing a lot of people would have made it awkward and somber. Saori…not so much. Her cheerful disregard for danger and her active enthusiasm about the upcoming violence were too infectious for that, and I found myself grinning along while she told an impressively obscene story about some nun in France a decade ago.

“How do you even drink that much soda?” I asked after she had finished that story. I was vaguely, morbidly curious about that. She had gone through a two liter bottle already and she didn’t seem to be slowing down.

“It’s actually pretty easy. I drink some, and then I drink some more, and then oh hey here we are.”

“Cute,” I said dryly, “but not what I mean. I get that you’re probably not susceptible to diabetes, but that much sugar is just…how?”

“Trade secret.” She smirked at me. and I found myself very aware of the curve of her lips.

“I don’t think there’s anything else I need to do to get ready for tomorrow,” I said. I felt oddly nervous again, like when I first invited her in. There was nothing obviously different about tonight than previous nights; I wouldn’t call it a first date or anything, it had none of that context about it. That would be a first time being romantic, and while it was likely inevitable if we both survived long enough, it wasn’t this. But the first time throwing ourselves headlong into danger together, I was finding, had a similar sort of butterflies and shivering in it.

“I’m always ready to set people on fire, so same.”

I laughed again. “I’m going to have to invest in fire retardant clothing at this rate.” And then, before the laughter had quite died away, I leaned forward and kissed her.

Saori’s mouth tasted sweet; Saori, on an entirely different level, tasted like fox and spice and smoke. I found that the two went well together. When she pulled away from me, just a hair, her voice was husky and golden and hungry. “We should get some sleep,” she said. “Want to be irresponsible instead?”

I just grinned, and moved closer again.
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