Owl and the Japanese Circus

by Kristi Charish

  Lady Siyu was about to leave when I remembered something. “Ummm, this might sound odd, but I have a cat . . .”

  Lady Siyu turned and inclined her head, slowly. She had green, slitted eyes that reflected the light.

  Yup, definitely not human. “Umm . . . yeah . . . I just wasn’t sure whether I was allowed a pet in here—”

  “It’s not a problem,” she said with a perfect British accent. It took me aback; it was the first time I’d heard her speak. She glided over to my desk. French, Louis XIII, I’d bet on it. In fact, the room was full of antiques—I shook my head. I was not stealing from a dragon’s hotel.

  She picked up a notebook and wrote two numbers down. “You may contact room service here, and secure internet access is available with this network and password. You will have to search for it—it is very secure. Everything else you need is in the file, along with your terms of employment. If you have any questions, contact me at this number. Please do not leave the hotel or casino this evening, as Mr. Kurosawa needs to . . . ‘negotiate’ your immunity. Will there be anything else?”

  “Umm, no. That’s all I need.”

  Lady Siyu bowed—barely, I noted. With a click of the door, I was alone.

  On the corner chair someone had deposited my weekend supplies, complete with yellow bags. I pulled out one of my now warm Coronas and put the rest in the fridge. I sat on my bed and took everything in: vampires, contracts with a dragon, whatever Lady Siyu was. How the hell was I going to track down something that was stolen three thousand years ago?

  I just had to keep telling myself this was better than running from a pack of vampires.

  I cracked open my third Corona and pulled my wet hair into a ponytail. I was wearing only a casino bathrobe. After the shower, I couldn’t stand to put any of my old clothes back on. They just all seemed so dirty. I’d have to go shopping tomorrow. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the money. I was sitting on over ten million dollars. A significant downside to my run-in with the Paris boy vampires a year ago was that I hadn’t had the chance to spend any of it.

  Captain picked the middle of the bed to take a nap. I was going to have a bitch of a time getting him off, so I opened up my laptop and logged into World Quest. Time to face the music.

  There was a flurry of messages from my team telling me to eff off. Touching, close-knit group that we were. There was a series of messages from Carpe Diem asking if I was OK. I opened up a private chat window before entering the game.

  Hey, Carpe—I’m fine, I wrote.

  A moment later his reply scrolled across the screen. What happened? You disappeared.

  Emergency business, couldn’t be helped. I’m back for the weekend—beer in hand, room service on the way.

  There was a delay in Carpe’s response. Out of your realm of behavior. Had me worried.

  I’m touched.

  Wouldn’t be hard to find a decent thief. Next time get a message off.

  Had to admit, it got to me that my World Quest friend even cared—or maybe it was beer number three talking. Roger Wilco. What’s the schedule?

  Five more hours, then a seven-hour break. Halfway through a dungeon. Get your ass online and I’ll port you in.

  Room service knocked. I opened the door and could smell the steak instantly. They’d even included a bottle of red wine. I started salivating. I hadn’t had a steak in months, let alone a decent bottle of red wine.

  I slid back into the hotel chair, and Captain, smelling the steak, hopped up onto my lap. There was one more message from Carpe Diem on the screen.

  By the way, sorry about all your stuff.

  Fuck.

  I pulled up my inventory screen. It, and my bag of holding, was empty. To top it off, my character, the Byzantine Thief, was standing in all her skivvy computer-generated glory. “Motherfu-ow!” I said as Captain chirped at my sudden movement and dug his claws into my leg.

  Well, this would be interesting. I’d never entered a match with my birthday suit on before. Son of a bitch.

  Carpe Diem, resident team sorcerer that he was, ported me. A flurry of in-game comments on my character’s relative nakedness greeted me. For the next few hours the only dragons and monsters I had to worry about were the ones the rest of the world worried about—the ones in a game.

  2

  THE TROUBLE WITH VAMPIRES

  Noon-ish, the Japanese Circus

  Something rough scraped against my face, interrupting my sleep. It smelled like fish.

  I groaned and rolled over in the incredibly comfortable hotel bed, pulling the thick duvet over my head. Captain fell off the bed with an indignant chirp, and I sealed myself under the covers while I still had the chance.

  That bought me all of five seconds before he started to dig.

  “I’m so brushing your teeth,” I said.

  I swung the covers off and checked my watch. Noon. I rubbed my eyes and got up. Not fast enough for Captain, who had bypassed meowing and gone straight to death howls. Well, five hours was better than nothing.

  “Screw off,” I said, hopping to avoid tripping over him. Damn it, why do cats always wind around your legs in the morning before you’ve had any coffee?

  He followed me over to the stack of cans and didn’t let up until I dumped the contents into his plastic bowl. He dug in, and I shook my head.

  “I need to put you on a diet.”

  He meowed indignantly before digging right back in. I headed into the kitchenette and gave a little victory yelp as soon as I discovered the stocked espresso machine. I don’t like to do anything—bathe, get dressed, find breakfast, speak—before I’ve had a good jolt of caffeine. I loaded a capsule into the holder. While it spit out my coffee, I got a second capsule ready. I like my caffeine.

  By the time I was downing my second, I started putting together my strategy for the day. First, find out from Lady Siyu whether I was going to be dodging vampire lackeys; second, find breakfast. The second condition prevailed regardless of the outcome of the first, but if I was still being hunted, my options were going to be limited. That and I could get a few more hours’ sleep.

  I picked up the room’s phone, an off-white enamel number as ornate and expensive-looking as the other antiques in the room, and dialed the number Lady Siyu had left me.

  After two rings her crisp British accent answered, “Yes?”

  I rolled my eyes. In one word Lady Siyu managed to convey both irritation and a perceived superiority.

  “Hi, ah, just checking in to see where things were at—”

  “Mr. Kurosawa has completed the negotiation of terms,” she said, cutting me off. “You may leave the casino and make travel arrangements accordingly.”

  And with that, the line clicked dead.

  Well, that settled that.

  I showered, dressed, and went online to start getting my life back in order and test my new immunity. Digitally transferred funds and a few phone calls to the bank later, I was good to go. It felt weird, seeing my bank account balance for the first time in months, and the idea of actually spending my money—like a normal person. It had been a while since I’d felt anything close to normal. Ever since I’d become an antiquities thief. Well, if I was honest with myself, not since I’d started grad school, but it wasn’t until after I’d left grad school that things had gone to hell in a handbasket.

  The main draw to my line of work isn’t getting dirty on archaeology digs or breathing in corrosive acid fumes while restoring thousand-year-old artifacts. It also isn’t the hours of eyestrain on the computer stalking museum and university archives. If that had been it, I’d have tried a hell of a lot harder to stay in archaeology—not by much, but I’d at least have put in a token effort.

  It’s the money. A lot of money. And lower risk than being a real thief. Truth be told, most governments don’t really care what happens to their artifacts—not enough to arrest anyone . . . or shoot. Except for Egypt, that is, but with the right palms greased, it’s a moot point. After three revolutions,
the tourism industry is shot and they’re hurting for cash.

  Another perk is I actually get credit for the work I do—not screwed over by some talentless dick of a postdoc who spends more time trying to stare down my shirt than dig . . . OK, off that train of thought—I try not to have anger management issues nowadays.

  My very first paycheck I spent on a condo in Seattle, which I haven’t stepped foot in for months now due to the vampires camping outside. I had sources tell me they hadn’t torched it, just rifled through everything and broken a few Roman vases. The vases had really pissed me off; I’d had buyers lined up.

  The only money I’d been able to spend since the Paris boys started trailing me was on computer and gaming equipment online, and even then I had to use every dirty trick in the book to stay stealth.

  Speaking of online shopping . . . I picked my cargo pants and oversized surplus military jacket off the arm of the chair by the kitchen table. Both were caked in dust and had old coffee stains on them. On a hunch I held them under my nose. Funny how three weeks living in a Winnebago with a cat numbs your sense of smell. My clothes didn’t need a wash; they needed to be thrown in a landfill.

  There was no shortage of shops on the Vegas strip, but a scene from Pretty Woman came to mind—the one where they refuse to serve the hooker in a designer store. Switch out hooker for homeless woman and that would be me. Nuts to that.

  I ordered breakfast from room service and pulled up the online stores for Chanel, Versace, and Ralph Lauren, which all had locations in Vegas. My best friend, Nadya, who could pass for a fashion model on a bad day, gave me a piece of advice after I showed up at her club in Tokyo wearing a number I’d picked out myself: next time, shop out of a catalogue. Apparently fashion sense isn’t one of my talents.

  I checked out Versace first. Time to get my Visa out and test this truce.

  I dialed the Vegas number.

  “Hi there,” I said, “do you guys by any chance have the snakeskin leather jacket and matching leather boots in a small and a size seven and a half? You do? Great, I’m going to need that and a few other things brought over to the concierge at the Japanese Circus—” I flipped to the next page on the screen and checked my watch. 12:30. Six and a half hours until I was scheduled to meet Carpe back online. Plenty of time to get dressed, get food, and do some research on Mr. Kurosawa’s egg.

  I ordered a bagel and my third coffee of the day at the hotel casino’s garden cafe before grabbing a seat poolside. I’d spent an hour and a half researching leads for Mr. Kurosawa’s egg and missing scroll while I’d waited for my new clothes to arrive. I wasn’t any further ahead than if I’d spent the time playing World Quest. Every mention I’d found of puzzle boxes and scrolls found in the emperor’s tomb, or from the same period, had been dead ends; not one shared characteristics with the puzzle egg or the strange inscriptions.

  Sitting by the pool and fresh out of any leads, I decided to hack into the University of Tokyo’s archaeology server. I remembered a talk a few years back by a Japanese postdoc—Yoshi? He’d spent a few years in the Bali catacombs, and I vaguely recalled him mentioning foreign tablet inscriptions, found in two of the antechambers, that had been untranslatable. On the off chance there were similarities with the inscriptions on Mr. Kurosawa’s egg, I dug up the Bali thesis. There’s a lot of porn on the university server to sift through, in case you were wondering what Japanese profs and students store in their personal accounts.

  The only mention of the tablets and inscriptions was a small footnote, with no picture. I sat back and weighed the possibilities. I knew the postdoc had shown photographs of the tablet in his talk, so the only reason they’d have been omitted from the thesis proper was if there’d been a supernatural link discovered after the fact. The International Archaeology Association would have insisted the Japanese bury it; first and foremost, they had to keep those pesky bits of supernatural proof out of the public’s delicate hands. Heaven forbid anyone actually knew there were vampires, dragons, and other assorted monsters out there, just waiting to eat them. . . .

  Without an actual image of the tablet in front of me though, I couldn’t be sure . . . And there’d been no mention of scrolls anywhere in the thesis . . . but then again, it was supernatural, so maybe the university had buried that too.

  I rubbed my eyes. Between the vampires and Mr. Kurosawa . . . How did I get myself into these messes . . .

  However long a shot, the tablet and inscriptions from Bali were the only leads I had.

  I had to go to Japan and talk to Nadya’s contact in the university. If my hunch was right, the egg and missing scroll weren’t Chinese artifacts at all but much older pieces.

  I pulled up flights to Japan. There was one that left at 11:00 p.m. I checked the time. 2:15 p.m. I’d still make World Quest and be able to sleep on the plane. I emailed Nadya and let her know I was coming for a visit and needed to crash at her place. Code that I needed her to get her contact ready for me . . . and that I’d be crashing at her place.

  With five hours to spare, I pulled my new Versace sunglasses down and leaned back to enjoy the poolside sun and people-watching.

  Not ten minutes passed before I realized I was being cased. If I hadn’t been watching the boys from down under hanging out across the pool, I’d never have caught the greasy rock star wannabe lurking a few tables away.

  Stringy dark hair, black eyeliner, leather pants, open white shirt—without the build to pull it off, I might add—and a pair of dark boho sunglasses. How the hell did heroin ever become chic?

  I usually suck spotting supernaturals in a crowd, but even I know a vampire’s lackey when I see one, and this one was low end. Think slumming it, for vampires.

  As soon as he realized I’d spotted him—my look of pure contempt and disgust probably gave it away—he stopped the pretense and creeped around the other tables and suntanners towards me.

  I took another sip of my coffee and waited. If I was going to run into one of Alexander’s thralls sooner or later, I might as well deal with him now. In the back of my mind I couldn’t help worrying Mr. Kurosawa had double-crossed me. But that would be a lot of trouble to go to when he could have just eaten me last night. Out of reflex I cased the rest of the pool for more vampire lackeys. Apparently this guy was solo, though I did catch Oricho and two tattooed guards standing off to the side.

  Interesting.

  Vampire lackey strode right up, crossed his arms, and smirked down at me. “Well? Have anything to say for yourself, Owl?”

  I crinkled my nose—cheap cologne was dripping off him. From how far gone he was, I’d wager it was to cover residual rotting lily of the valley from his vampire master. Damn, where did vampires find these guys? I glanced once more at Oricho, who stood like a statue by the door. Well, time to see what this truce was worth.

  “Yeah. Fuck the hell off before I call security.”

  That caught him off guard. He placed both hands on my table and leaned in, the smirk twisting into a sneer that showed heavily stained teeth.

  I leaned back—not out of fear but in disgust. “The least the vampires could do is offer you lapdogs decent dental. Bad teeth ruin the ominous dark messenger effect. So does the cheap perfume. I could still smell you across the pool.” That pissed him off.

  “There’s a bounty on your head. One I plan on collecting.” His white shirt slipped to the side, exposing a hidden handgun.

  I hate guns. You’d think with all my running away from vampires I’d have a gun or two lying around, or a stake at the very least. My experience is that as soon as you start keeping a gun in your glove compartment, the bad guys manage to beat you to it. A gun is predictable—you point and shoot. Not having a gun means I have to think outside the box, and I’ve escaped more tight situations that way than I can count. Same thing goes for stakes. I do keep garlic water hidden in a perfume bottle though, for up close emergencies.

  I glanced back towards the garden cafe door. Oricho was nowhere to be seen.

 
I frowned. So much for dragon protection. I guessed human vampire lackeys didn’t rate interference.

  “You realize there’s a truce? I’m not on any hit list,” I said.

  He smiled, showing me those stained teeth again. “Not officially, but I bring you in, I get made.”

  “You break a truce your bosses bartered with the dragon running Vegas, and you figure Alexander is going to reward you publicly and make you a vampire? You’re dumber than you look,” I said.

  His smile wavered. Trusting your vampire bosses only goes so far—even for the stupidly devout. But this guy was a fanatic. He shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that to me. The others might have caved to the dragon, but she still wants you dead.”

  It took every ounce of control to keep myself from smiling. Now we were getting somewhere. Not having a gun means people subconsciously keep talking—even when they start telling you stuff they shouldn’t. My guess is their subconscious figures you’ll be dead anyways, so why bother with the filter? It’s not like these guys have a lot of brainpower to spare. She told me a lot. For one, it said that against all odds, Alexander and the Paris boys were playing ball. None of them were female. Which meant this was either someone they’d hired or another, unknown female vampire I’d pissed off.

  “Don’t be stupid. The only reward you’ll be getting is a pine box—the kind you don’t crawl back out of,” I said, hoping to talk some reason into him—not completely selfishly either. His vampire boss would kill him to cover her tracks.

  I could see in his eyes though that the blind devotion was back, and I heard, more than saw, the safety click off. Amazing the things you start to hear when someone’s about to kill you. I did another visual check: not only were Mr. Kurosawa’s big muscles nowhere to be seen but the regular guards had disappeared as well. Along with any guests who had been in earshot.