“Baby, I gotta call you back. Something’s come up. Just wait.”
The little woman was older than she looked: thick, beautiful waist-long hair went a long way to making her look like an art student. But there was a hardness in her eyes and tiny wrinkles that formed around her lips when she pursed them.
Chloe cleared her throat, suddenly not sure where to begin.
“Why did you even come back here?” the woman demanded. “To apologize? I told you that if you didn’t show up on that Wednesday, you were gone for good. What happened, you break up with one of your two boyfriends? You get pregnant? Honey, unless someone died, I don’t even want to hear about it.”
“Well,” Chloe said slowly, “a number of people actually have died.”
Marisol’s eyes widened.
Chloe thought of the Rogue and the fight at the Presidio—one of the Tenth Bladers hadn’t gotten up when it was over. And of course if you counted her, that was two deaths right there.
“My mom was kidnapped by these weird cultists. And they … sent this crazy serial murderer after me. And then I was sort of being held captive by these people who are kind of related to me….It’s kind of a long story. You can call my mom and ask her if you want, though.”
There was a long moment while Marisol stared into her eyes.
“No,” she finally said. “I … believe you.” She didn’t look happy, though, like she didn’t want to believe it. She had to try one last test. “And no one missed you at school?”
“They were told I had mono. My mom’s law firm was told she was on vacation.”
“Are you…okay?”
“I’m alive.” Chloe shrugged.
There was another silence between them, as Marisol was obviously trying to work out what was polite to ask about and what would be prying, what was concern and what was curiosity.
This was where Chloe could tell her. This was where she could come clean, demonstrate the claws. Show Marisol just how far from the ordinary her life had been recently; as far from work and her and vintage clothes and receipts and hems and even Lania as it could get. She used to tell her boss things she never would have told her mom—it was like having a much older sister or aunt with objective, slightly less “mom” views on her life.
“How are your two boyfriends?” Marisol finally asked.
The moment was over.
“Only one now. He’s lying in a hospital bed recovering from having the shit kicked out of him trying to save me.” Chloe decided to cut the next awkward silence short by standing up again. “Well, that’s really all,” she said, shrugging. “I came by to apologize and let you know that my going AWOL wasn’t really without a reason.”
Marisol’s face softened into the look she used to have when Chloe would sometimes cry about her mom or school. “Why didn’t you at least call?”
“I … I was feeling really guilty,” Chloe admitted. But now that she thought about it, now that she was standing before the woman she was terrified of ever seeing again, it was kind of ridiculous. “You told me not to come back and all, so I figured you’d be mad at me and never want to talk to me again. You said that this was a business, not babysitting for flaky teenagers.”
“Oh, Chloe, you imbécile,” Marisol said, smiling sadly. “I didn’t know your mother was kidnapped and whatever else. I just thought you were having boyfriend problems. You could have—you should have called me. You should always feel you can do that, no matter what.”
“Thanks,” Chloe said. Remember this, she told herself. Not that Marisol was nice enough to forgive her, but that some things transcended personal guilt. She had to understand what was really important and what were her own screwed-up feelings and the difference between the two.
“I—I just hired this other girl” Marisol said hesitantly. “I can’t give you back your old hours.”
Chloe put up her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Believe me, there’s so much on my plate right now I’d flake on you again, something I’d rather avoid. And according to my biological family, I’m sort of a princess or priest or something.”
Marisol looked skeptical. “Do you get a crown?”
Chloe laughed. If only. “No, just a whole lot of shit to learn about the people I come from.”
“That doesn’t sound so good. There should at least be jewels. All right, well, if you want to work some hours, call me. Andy’s no worker like you. But she gets along okay with Lania.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. Marisol barked with laughter.
She tried to avoid both Lania and the new girl on the way out, the latter of whom was chatting merrily on her cell phone while rearranging racks that the customers had gotten out of order. She had black goth hair, but her attitude was all wrong, kind of like a flightier version of Amy. Chloe sighed and left, unable to resist throwing one smug, calm smile in Lania’s direction—the girl had obviously been trying to listen in on her and Marisol’s conversation.
She wandered over to where she was supposed to meet Sergei, correctly expecting him to be a few minutes late. Everything else about Firebird Properties ran like clockwork, but some of the older Eastern European employees, even Sergei himself, seemed to have trouble getting anywhere on time.
The theater was disappointing: there wasn’t even a cool marquee or anything like that left outside, just empty frames where posters had once hung. With the ticket booth all smashed in and graffiti on its brick walls, the building looked a little beyond abandoned and well on its way to condemned.
If I ran Firebird, I would do something cool with this, Chloe thought. The possibilities were endless—really great apartments, an awesome bar, maybe even a theater again. For repertory movies and local theater, or maybe her own version of the coffeehouse in Smallville. Hey, Lana was like sixteen and she ran it—Chloe was sixteen, leader of her people and a cat person besides. She should have no trouble with just managing a coffee shop.
“Chloe.”
She jumped; even without actively paying attention with her improved Mai hearing, Chloe should have been able to hear him walking up. Sergei was fairly square and … heavy and tended to wear shoes that clicked when he walked. But there he was, barely two feet away, a light smile on his face, hands behind his back.
He was dressed more casually than usual, and Chloe had to admit that it immediately made him a lot more likable. Even in just his polo shirt and khakis he looked less imposing, more human.
“I can’t believe I startled you,” he said, chuckling. “You’ve been living with humans for too long.”
“Yeah, funny,” Chloe said, instantly on the defensive again.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the older man said, instantly sighing and putting his hand to his face. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not funny. I just meant it as a joke, to lighten the tension.”
Chloe relaxed a little. “I’m kind of sensitive about my mom these days.”
“Completely understandable. Here, shall we go inside as we talk?” Sergei gestured for her to go first, getting a big ring of keys out of his pocket. “The fool owner couldn’t meet us here; he had another prospective client for a penthouse restaurant, and this is small potatoes compared.”
“That’s kind of rude.” Chloe was dying to know what Sergei found out about where her dad was or what he was up to, but she reminded herself to remain patient.
Sergei shrugged. “It’s business. You have to learn, Chloe, that often nothing is personal. You can’t take it to heart. You’ll get ulcers. Ah, here.” He found a big oldfashioned key and put it first to the locked metal bar that went through all of the metal door handles in the front. Then he took a smaller, bronze key out and opened the farthest door to the left.
“It’s like a video game,” Chloe ventured.
“You know, I’ve never played one—here, let me go first in case there’s anyone in here squatting or something,” he said, as if people like that were rats. He pushed his way in and shouted, “Hellloooooo” then waited to hear if there was any moveme
nt or scuttling. He nodded. “Just a whole lot of roaches. It’s safe.”
Chloe realized with distaste that she could hear the bugs, too, dozens of them, little feet making little noises as they rushed away from the light. She noticed with amusement that Sergei didn’t do the thing they did in the movies, or on TV, or in real life: he didn’t take out a flashlight and wave it around in the darkness, swinging its pale yellow beam over walls and doors and floors. He just walked in, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to almost complete darkness. If he were facing her, Chloe knew she would have seen his eyes become slits and then wide, like a cat’s eyes in the dark, barely any iris showing.
The lobby didn’t look all that derelict; once her own eyes adjusted, Chloe saw that the red carpet was only dusty and worn, not ripped up and moldering away. The concession counters had their glass smashed in a couple of places, and the popcorn machines were gone. A pity—she always wanted one. It would have been a fun thing to take home. There was still one napkin dispenser with napkins in it and a fake crystal chandelier that was missing some of its glass festoons and garlands.
“What are you going to do with this place?” Chloe asked, already redecorating it in her mind.
“Haven’t decided yet,” Sergei said, shrugging. “I know this may disappoint you, but unless the structure is really intact and we can find something to do with it, we may just raze the whole thing. The plot of land it’s on is worth more for apartments. Or a parking garage—that’s where the real money is.”
Chloe sighed. Weren’t Russians—okay, he was Abkhazian—supposed to be better educated and more artistic and intellectual than Americans? How could he miss all the decaying grandeur, the shabby beauty of this place?
“So how are you and Kim getting along with learning Mai?” he asked sort of casually, peeking over one of the counters to peer at what remained of the slushy machines.
“Uh, we haven’t really started yet,” Chloe admitted. “But I’ve just finished all my makeup work and I’m a pretty fast learner.” Well, okay, that wasn’t really true about languages—but she was pretty sure it was just going to be memorization. She didn’t have time to learn all the conjugations or whatever ancient Egyptian she’d have to know for tomorrow.
“Just remember your audience,” Sergei said, suggesting more than chastising. Chloe wished her mom was a little more like that sometimes. “You’re kind of like a second coming to them—so you’d better not disappoint.”
Chloe sighed again. Here it came. The second unavoidable conversation of the day. She leapt up onto the ticket taker’s podium and sat there balancing on its four-inch-wide top, an impossible position for any human except maybe Jackie Chan or Jet Li.
“Sergei, I never wanted this,” she admitted with all of her heart behind it. “I think I wanted to finish high school, go to college, and maybe start my own retail clothing empire. Nothing I ever wished for involved claws, paws, or leading the Mai.”
“But you are who you are,” Sergei said, pausing in his inspections to fix her with his slit eyes. He cocked his head like a cat. “You cannot change anything.”
“What I meant was”—Chloe took a deep breath—“I don’t want to take the Pride from you.” Unless of course it turns out that you really did send people to kill my mom. But then Chloe would have chosen anyone else to lead besides her. Igor or Olga or someone.
“Chloe, that’s very sweet,” Sergei said, meaning it. “But you’re not really taking it from me. You are the One, anyway—that is your right.”
“Isn’t it,” Chloe said hesitantly, “isn’t it a little weird in this day and age to have inherited leaders? I mean, just because I was born with certain abilities, does that really make me fit to rule?”
“It is archaic, I agree—even if no one else does. It’s not exactly a merit-based position. I built Firebird from the ground up and love running it, but that counts for nothing. Our previous Pride Leader, everything else aside, really tried to do something. Her goal was to unite all of the scattered Mai in Eastern Europe, and she worked very hard to accomplish that.”
Everything else aside? What did that mean?
“But Eastern Europe was—still is—a very dangerous place to be and our time there was over. Too many wars, too much prejudice, too much random violence. It was always my goal to get us out of there. To go west. Run ahead of ourselves, start over in new land. Maybe escape the old curse,” he said, a little sadly. “I worked very hard to bring them here, to build Firebird, to make a safe place for all of us to live. Don’t you think that makes me a leader?”
“Sure,” Chloe said, not sure what else to say.
Sergei sighed. “Too bad no one else agrees with you. I wonder if there’s anything actually left in the main theater—usually they tear out all the seats and sell them in auctions. After you.” He opened the door for her and gave a little bow as she went in.
The darkness inside was absolute, but Chloe could feel the vastness of space around her. A good place to be scared in. She felt all floaty, like she was going to start drifting into the air.
“Hey, where are the lights?” Chloe asked.
“I’m sorry we don’t have our little discussions anymore,” Sergei said, his voice suddenly coming a dozen feet from her, completely unplaceable in the shadows. “And our chess games, too.”
“Me too,’ Chloe also admitted. “Is the power out or something?” She put her hands out to find the closest Wall suddenly nervous.
“I’m going to miss having lunch with you.”
“They don’t have to stop just because I’m not living there anymore.” Was she just being a wimp in the dark, or was there something ominous about the way he said that?
“Fm afraid that won’t be possible,” the older man said with regret. “Not because you’re the One or anything …”
Suddenly all the houselights came on, full power. The theater was flooded with bright yellow light and Chloe was blinded, throwing her arms over her face a second too late.
“… but because you’ll be dead.”
Chloe forced her eyes open, blinking painfully as the muscles in them contracted her pupil faster and smaller than they ever had.
Before her stood the Rogue.
Twelve
The first thing she thought was, Oh my God, he’s alive.
Alexander Smith, aka the Rogue, the psycho assassin of the Order of the Tenth Blade, should have been dead.
When Chloe fought him on the Golden Gate Bridge, she had seen him plummet to his death, or so she had thought. When the Tenth Blade found out, they sent an army of assassins to scour the city, looking for her to avenge his death. And the truth of the matter was, at the last minute she had extended her hand—to help save him, for reasons she could never really put into words more than “it seemed like the right thing to do.”
He was tall, muscled, maybe a little thinner than the last time she saw him,, with the same dumb white-blond ponytail over his shoulder, the same crazy eyes, the same neoprene-ish black suit that no doubt held the same innumerable daggers, blades, shuriken, and other assorted traditional weapons of the Tenth Blade.
“Chloe King,” the Rogue said, with a bit of a smile.
“You’re looking well,’ Chloe said before she could stop herself. Now was not the time to be funny. And it’s not like the Rogue really has a sense of humor. “What’s going on?” she demanded, swinging around to face Sergei.
“I’m … afraid … your time with us is over. Honored One,” Sergei said with a little mock bow. “Sorry you’ll miss the meeting tomorrow.”
“Why are you doing this?” Chloe asked, knowing the answer anyway.
“Weren’t you listening to anything I was saying?” Sergei said, exasperated. “The Pride is just going to toss me aside now that you’re here. Thirty years of hard work—of my life—gone, just like that. I am hardly going to let a teenage upstart who was brought up with humans take everything away from me, whatever her lineage may be.”
“Lineage …
?” Chloe asked, confused.
“Your mother was our previous Pride Leader.” As Sergei spoke, the Rogue remained as still as a statue, only smiling occasionally at certain points. “Your sister could have been the next leader—she was older than you, you know, and required all nine blades. Had she lived, we would have had two ‘the Ones.’” He chuckled. “That hasn’t happened in a very long time.”
Chloe felt something in the pit of her stomach. Imagine—a sister who could also die and come back, who could take some of this burden from her, who had been actually raised Mai and could show her the way. Wait—two “the Ones“? What about the third, the brother Kim had suggested there might be? Sergei didn’t seem to know about him…. Chloe shoved that thought to the back of her head.
“This gentleman here”—Sergei twirled his hand at the Rogue—“took care of her. Poor girl, she shouldn’t have gone wandering city streets at night by herself….”
Chloe had a flash of her recurring dream—the one about her sister’s death. She shuddered but refocused her attention on the present. Chloe still didn’t understand. She looked back and forth between the two of them. The Rogue was devoted to wiping out the Mai—it was his whole life. And he and Sergei, the head of this Pride, were working together?
“We had tried tracking you down for a while,” Sergei said, turning back to Chloe. “Finally we assumed you died in the violence between the Georgians and the Abkhazians. Imagine my surprise when you turned up here, right under my nose!”
“You two are working together to kill everyone who might be a real Pride Leader?”
“I really don’t like that phrase,” Sergei said with a pinched look. The Rogue just smiled. “But yes. For this one thing our purposes crossed paths—the Tenth Blade doesn’t want any mystic, powerful leaders of the Mai who could unite them and lead them to victory—or whatever it is they think you’re going to do—and I rather enjoy my current position.”
“You’re working with a man who wants to wipe us out,’ Chloe said, the thing in her stomach becoming rage as her confusion dissipated. “With someone who has killed Mai! If you really love them so much, how can you murder them—us? You’ve told me how few there are left!” Chloe said desperately, trying to understand.
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