Akasha perked up. “Great! Which room is mine?”
6
Family Dinner
Rosamunde
Saturday evening came at last. Dad and I drove over to Kai’s house together and parked in the freshly shoveled driveway. Yesterday it had snowed, and this morning as well, and more was expected the next day.
His house was only a single story and not much bigger than our rental, but it looked much nicer. I saw little stone statues under the snow in the front yard, and a stone fountain, frozen over. We went up the walk and knocked on the front door.
A tall, blonde middle-aged woman met us at the door. “Hi! I’m Sara. Please, come on in and help yourself to some slippers.”
I stopped staring at Sara and looked down at the floor, realizing that my surprise was rude. Of course, Kai couldn’t look like both of his moms, but I hadn’t expected one of them to be so—so white. My surprise doubled when I saw the row of slippers at the edge of the tiled entryway. “What are these?”
“Our family keeps a few Japanese traditions,” Sara said, smiling as if she were used to the confusion. “We take off our shoes inside the house, and we keep spare slippers for our guests.”
I looked over and saw that Sara was wearing bright purple slippers, and Dad was already sitting down on a bench to pull off his shoes.
“Helps to keep your floors clean,” Dad said with a smile. “I’m Samuel, by the way, and this is my daughter, Rosa.” He shot me a cautionary look.
I realized that I’d forgotten to introduce myself and blushed with embarrassment. I stuck out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Sara grinned and shook my hand warmly. “It’s lovely to finally meet you, Rosa. Kai has told us so much about you.”
I sat down on the bench next to Dad and unzipped my black leather boots, feeling a little sad because I’d chosen them to match the jean skirt and blue sweater I wore. It’d taken me a long time to pick out an outfit that hit the right balance of dressy and casual for tonight’s dinner. I really wanted to make a good impression for Kai’s family, and I felt like I was already getting off on the wrong foot.
The plain tan slippers I put on did feel warm and comfy. When I stood up, Kai appeared around the corner. I looked down at his feet. He wore black slippers.
“You’re here!” He rushed forward and hugged me, then stepped back when he saw my dad. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Alda-McAddams.”
Dad gave his warmest fatherly smile. “Please, call me Samuel.”
Sara took our coats and gestured down the hall. “Kai, can you show them into the dining room? Dinner’s almost ready.”
The dining room was decorated with a mixture of Japanese and Californian styles, with traditional watercolor paintings hanging next to family photos and tie-dyed fabric. I was relieved to see that the table was the normal height, with chairs. After the slippers, I was afraid that we’d be sitting on the floor in the Japanese fashion.
There were six chairs. Kai pulled out one for me and sat on the end, to my right, so Dad sat next to me on the left.
Sara came in behind us, her slippers shuffling across the wood floor, and picked up a heavy ceramic teapot from the center of the table. “May I offer you some green tea?”
“Yes, please!” I was cold from the short walk up to the house.
While she poured steaming hot tea into squat little cups with no handles, Kai stood up and excused himself. When he opened the door to the next room, I smelled strange food cooking in the kitchen.
Kai reemerged carrying small wooden bowls of plain white rice. A tiny Japanese woman followed behind him, carrying more rice. Her face was smooth and ageless, with the same delicate, pointed features as Kai. And like her son, two red-tipped white fox ears pointed on top of her head, and I glimpsed three red-tipped white tails swishing behind her. If I remembered kitsune lore right, that meant she was over two hundred years old.
She set a bowl down each for Dad and me, then bowed at the waist. “Youkoso, welcome to our home. I am Yumi. It is very nice to meet you.” She spoke English with a faint accent, and her voice was smooth and low, but I could understand her clearly.
I bowed my head back at her, trying to imitate her polite manner. “I’m Rosamunde, and this is my father, Samuel. Thank you for having us to your lovely home.”
She smiled and sat down on the other side of the table, next to Sara. “Our pleasure. Now please, let’s eat.” She picked up her chopsticks. “Itadakimasu.”
Kai and Sara both picked up their chopsticks and repeated the same word. As if it were a signal, they all began eating.
I glanced over at Dad, who shrugged and picked up his chopsticks.
I’d eaten with chopsticks a few times before, but I was too embarrassed to try in front of Kai’s family. Fortunately, when I looked down at the table, I saw a fork and spoon at each place setting. I picked up the fork and started eating.
Sara smiled at me across the table. “So, Rosa, Kai tells me that you take pictures for the school paper?”
Here comes the awkward get-to-know-you conversation. “Yes, I’m in photography, and sometimes I give my pictures to the paper.” I glanced at Kai. “He tells me what he needs for his articles.”
Sara asked several more questions about what I did in school, from playing clarinet in the orchestra to my plans for college. Kai and Dad joined in on the conversation, and I was grateful that they took some of the focus away from me. Meanwhile, Yumi ate in silence, glancing at me from time to time.
When we finished our rice, Kai and Yumi stood up and collected the empty bowls, then left the room. I could hear them talking in the kitchen in a mixture of Japanese and English. I couldn’t follow the conversation, but I was pretty sure that they were talking about me, and I tried not to look as if I were straining to understand.
Dad looked over and smiled at me reassuringly.
They returned with ceramic bowls, each one the size of my head. When mine was set down in front of me, I saw thick noodles floating in light brown broth with some kind of wrinkled thing on top.
I tried not to make a face, but I’d never seen anything like it. “What is it?” I whispered to Kai next to me.
“Deep-fried tofu pockets,” Kai said, looking at Yumi with a mischievous grin. “The soup is a family favorite. It’s called kitsune udon.”
Yumi brought out small plates with sliced vegetables and shrimp tempura. “You may add more toppings if you like. I make it simple so everyone can customize.” She looked over at her partner. “Sara and Reiko are both vegetarians, so they don’t like the seafood.”
Reiko? Then I remembered that was the name of Kai’s older sister, away in college. When she was two years ahead of us at Crowther, she played opposite me in the string section at orchestra.
Dad picked up several of the shrimp deftly with his chopsticks and dropped them into the soup. “This looks delicious!” He turned to Yumi. “Oishii!”
Yumi lowered her eyes and gave a polite smile. “Domo arigatou.”
I stared at him. “I didn’t know you spoke Japanese.”
He shrugged. “Only a few words. I grew up in southern California, and there’s a big Asian community down there. My Spanish is better.”
Yumi nodded. “I have family who live there. It is a good place for magikin.”
Sara laughed. “Not that we see them very often. Yumi is the rebel, since she moved up to San Francisco and met me. Our relationship goes against their traditional values.”
Dad frowned. “I’m sorry that your family isn’t more tolerant. My own family had similar issues with me marrying a witch. I regret that we grew apart because of it.”
I was silent, thinking of Dad missing his mom’s funeral. I knew Mom disliked his family, but I’d never known that the feeling was mutual. My memories of my grandmother from my early childhood were distant, but I didn’t remember her ever implying that she disapproved of witchcraft. How would she have felt about me following in Mom’s footsteps?
; Dad and Yumi made easy conversation as we all ate the soup, talking about different places they’d been in southern California. I was grateful to have the talking turn away from me, because the long, thick noodles were slippery and hard to eat. I hoped I wasn’t making too much of a mess with the broth.
When we finished the dinner at last, Kai rose again to help his mother with the dishes, but Yumi waved him away.
“You may go sit in the living room,” she said in a low tone, and looked at me. “Rosa, would you help me? I’d like to have a word with you alone.”
Kai stiffened. “Onegai, kaa-san—”
She dismissed his plea with a shake of her head. “Do not worry. We will only be a few minutes.”
I dreaded what his mom might have to tell me alone, but I got to my feet and stacked three of the bowls together. “I’d be happy to.”
The kitchen had a warm, inviting feeling that reminded me of Mom. It looked like Yumi spent a lot of time preparing food for her family, and put the same care into keeping the kitchen neat and clean. But I was too nervous to appreciate that right now. I let Yumi take the dirty bowls from me and stood there awkwardly.
Yumi ran water over the bowls in the sink, then turned and gestured to the small table on one side. “Please, sit down, and do not be frightened. What I have to say is for your benefit. I only want you to understand my son’s . . . idiosyncrasies.”
I sat down stiffly on the edge of the chair. “Kai and I have been in the same class since we were twelve. I know him pretty well by now.”
She sat down across from me and folded her hands neatly in her lap. “Yes, I am aware that you’ve been acquainted for several years, and at your age this must seem like a long time to you. But I don’t think you can appreciate what that means in the scale of a kitsune’s lifetime.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her lecturing tone. She came from a completely different time and culture, and she still managed to sound just like my mom. “I know he’s going to outlive me, but that doesn’t matter right now. I’m not expecting him to swear to love only me until the end of time. And we’re the same age, so I think four years is still a long time in his mind, too.” I bit back a remark about how a woman in her third century might not remember what it was like to be sixteen.
“That is actually the problem,” Yumi said with a little shake of her head. “Kitsune do not mature at the same rate as humans. It used to be tradition that we would raise our young as foxes, and they were not permitted to transform and enter human society until they were fifty or even a hundred years old. Because I found a human partner, I chose to raise Kai this way, but now I wonder if I made the right choice.”
Her tails swished along the floor behind her in agitation. “You see, Kai may seem like a teen your age to you, but his mind is more like a child. And he will have the immaturity of a child for many decades to come.” Her ears folded back, then swiveled forward to point straight at me. “You will probably get tired of his antics before long.”
My eyes narrowed. “I think I can form my own opinion, and I’m not going to break up with him just because you call him immature—”
Yumi sighed. “I think you are misunderstanding me. I am not telling you what to think about my son.” Her head tilted to one side. “I am afraid that he is rushing into a commitment that he is not prepared to make, and you are in danger of having your heart broken. Kitsune do not usually form steady relationships until their third or fourth century, once they have calmed down. Before that, their curiosity leads them to—” She cleared her throat delicately. “I would say try many things, but in modern terms, you would call it ‘playing the field.’”
Before we started dating, Kai said that he was seeing several different girls. We’d never had a conversation about being exclusive, but I’d assumed that with how much he wanted to spend time with me, he wasn’t dating anyone else. Maybe I could find a subtle way to ask him about the state of our relationship.
But whether or not we officially decided to be exclusive was our own private business, and not something that I wanted to talk to his mother about. “I guess I’ll wait and see how things work out between us. Kai’s a great guy, and he may surprise you.” I pushed back my chair with a loud creak and stood up. “Is that all?”
She stood up and looked at me sadly. “Yes. I just hope that your expectations for him are not too high.” She held open the door and gestured for me to go in front of her.
When Kai’s mom and I rejoined the others in the living room, Dad stood up and stretched. “Thank you for a lovely dinner, but I think we’d better be heading home.” He looked at me. “Do you have a lot of homework left?”
I caught the subtle hint that he meant for me to go home with him instead of hanging out with Kai. I was tired from the strain of the dinner and my conversation with Yumi, so I decided it was easier not to fight it. I shrugged. “I just have some reading for English, but I’ll finish that so I can hang out at Ashleigh’s tomorrow,” I said, reminding him that I had plans to see all of my friends the next day.
He nodded. “Great. I’ll go warm up the car.” He said his good-byes and went to the front door.
With Dad putting on his shoes in the front hall and Kai’s moms disappearing back into the kitchen, the two of us finally had a few minutes alone.
Kai wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, and we shared a long kiss.
When we finally came up for air, he smiled and shook his head. “I’m sorry that tonight was so awkward, but it meant a lot that you came.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a shrug. “Your parents are nice. I hope they like me.”
He looked at me closely. “What did you and my mom talk about?”
I looked away from him, suddenly uncomfortable. “Oh, that. Well, she’s afraid that for a kitsune, you’re a little young to be in a serious relationship.” I peeked at him sidelong. “Are we in a serious relationship?”
His arms tightened around my waist. “You know I love you, Rosa. I wouldn’t give you up for anything in the world.” His face fell. “Why would you be worried? You’re the one who usually pulls away when we get close.”
I reflexively tightened my own embrace, too. “I’m not trying to pull away, I just have a lot going on right now. You understand.”
“Yeah.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “You’re going to swoop in like the knight in shining armor and save your damsel sister in a dress.”
“That’s ‘in distress.’” I frowned. I didn’t mean to be a knight—that was Glen’s job. But my family was important.
“You could be my hero, too,” he said in a hurt tone. “Or better yet, you could just relax and have some fun with me. You need to take it easy on yourself.”
“Okay, okay.” I took a deep breath and kissed him back. “I promise to make more time for you.”
He kissed me for several minutes, a passionate embrace that took my breath away. Then we reluctantly said good night.
7
Ghost Town
Rosamunde
I met with my friends at Ashleigh’s house on Sunday morning. Ashleigh and Glen both looked groggy—I couldn’t remember seeing faeriekin with bags under their eyes before, even after some of the late-night parties I’d been to at Doe’s Rest Castle.
I grinned and nudged my friend in the ribs. “Late night, Ash?”
She blinked at me. “Huh? Oh, yeah.” She covered a yawn with her hand. “Sorry. It was Twelfth Night, so we were out wassailing the apple trees until pretty late.”
My grin faded. “There was a party? How come I wasn’t invited?”
She shared a look with Glen. “Well, it’s sort of a faeriekin-only thing. Other people aren’t invited.”
I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. I folded my arms and pouted. “I didn’t think Fae even celebrated Christmas, let alone twelve days of it.”
Ashleigh shrugged noncommittally. “You got to come to the Midwinter Solstice party. Didn’t you have fun then?”
The reminder of that strange night made everyone suddenly look at their shoes or anywhere else but at each other. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that even Glen was looking at the wall.
“Um, yeah, that was totally fun.” I coughed and put my hand on the front door. “So, shall we get going?”
From Ashleigh’s we drove to Byrnes Camp—the ghost town, away in the woods up an old dirt fire road. We had to put snow chains on both cars. Kai hooked a snowplow up to the front of his truck to clear the way, and Glen drove behind in his dad’s sedan. The road hadn’t been touched since the beginning of winter, and we had to get out and shovel heavy drifts of snow in more than one place.
We were unlikely to encounter any ghosts during the daytime, or at least so we hoped. I wanted a chance to look around again without having spirits getting in the way—especially the sheriff.
The ghost town looked completely different in the daylight. Freshly fallen snow lay in a thick white blanket over the old buildings. Sunlight filtered through puffy white clouds in the sky. And when we crossed over the border into the town, no ghosts came out to challenge us.
Still, I shivered when we got closer, and not just from the cold. I glanced over at Heather and saw that she was uncomfortable, too. We shared a nervous look: we both remembered that night we’d been here. After we’d found the Unseelie symbol, the ghosts tried to drain Heather’s life right out of her, and I’d been unable to stop them. If my patron Fae hadn’t shown up to drive the ghosts away, I didn’t know what would have happened.
Ashleigh pulled out a polished crystal on the end of a silver chain and let it hang freely from her hand. She would use it to scry for spells in the area. Glen gripped something inside his pocket and walked the perimeter of the town, but he didn’t say what he was looking for. And Kai used his fox ears and nose to search for signs of intruders.
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 31