“Let me guess: then the letters, then removing the words and letters, and rearranging the words and letters—”
“And still nothing. I’ve got one or two more ideas, but I need to access the Moscow archives again. I want to see if any of these symbols are in there.”
“Just be careful. That’ll make twice in one week. Somehow I don’t think you want the Moscow archaeology department at your front door.”
She snorted. “They’re so understaffed I don’t think anyone bothers monitoring it anymore. All the old passwords still work. Couldn’t be bothered changing them.”
“All right, let me know how it goes. I’m at a dead end—I’m going to take a break.” There was a knock on my door, soft, but I caught it. “Call me as soon as you find anything,” I said. I closed my cell phone and checked to see who was there.
Rynn was leaning against the doorframe and looked right at me as I peered through the peephole. Damn it, he could probably see me. How the hell had I missed that he was supernatural? I swung the door open.
He raised an eyebrow. “Because swinging the door open is the smartest idea.”
I stepped back and let him in. “Somehow, I get the impression skin walkers can’t steal your skin.”
He nodded begrudgingly and scanned the room.
“What are you looking for?”
“Beer bottles,” he said.
“Nadya took them away already.”
That at least got a smile out of him, and he headed for my room. “I left my bag here. And we never got the chance to talk.”
All right, time to be a grown-up, Owl.
“I’m sorry about the beer bottle. It was uncalled for.”
He came back into the living room, his pack slung over his shoulder, and stopped an arm’s reach in front of me. “I’m not entirely surprised. You don’t think when you get scared or upset.”
I leaned against the desk table and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, and it was stupid and uncalled for and I should have more control by now.”
He watched me for a moment, then said, “I was going to come by sooner, but after healing you, I had to recoup. The bar and the nightclub downstairs is the best place to do it. Nowhere near as good as Tokyo, but,” he shrugged, “decent enough in a pinch.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
He focused on a spot on the wall behind me. “Remember in Bali? I mentioned I’d gone through Kuta.”
Yup, that one had already come back to me. I’d given him a lecture on succubi. Who looked like the genius now?
“OK, but just going to Kuta doesn’t mean you’re an incubus,” I said.
“If I’d told you right there and then, you wouldn’t have been able to get out of the jeep fast enough. I understood what you’d been going through with the vampires, then Mr. Kurosawa and Oricho, so I decided to wait until you got to know me better.”
I wanted to deny it, but he was right. It was the same damn mistake I always make—running from what scares me.
“You’re bad with people. I’m selfish,” Rynn continued. “Was it wrong to hide it? Yes. But I never lied. As soon as you confronted me, I admitted what I was. That has to count for something.”
He had a point. He’d done exactly what I do all the time. And now he was standing in front of me asking for, or maybe giving me, a second chance.
I was starting to really regret that beer bottle.
Somewhere between talking to Nadya and Rynn coming to see me, I’d stopped being angry. I wanted to fix things. That scared the hell out of me, and not just because Rynn was an incubus. Not letting people in was my best defense, the only one I had complete control over. How’s that for pop psychology?
Rynn took my silence while I mulled over my thoughts as rejection. Without one more word, he was heading out my door. And I was the idiot letting him.
“Rynn, stop.” When he closed the door and turned back to face me, I said, “How does it work . . . exactly? I mean, feeding?”
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then said, “I feed off attraction mostly, and ‘feed’ is a poor word choice, more like absorb. It works best if the attraction is directed at me, but attraction amongst others works as well. Humans release adrenaline and an onslaught of emotions and energy: I pick it up out of the air, like breathing in oxygen.”
He narrowed his eyes before dropping his pack and leaning in to smell my neck, just short of touching me. I held my breath.
“Kind of like now. It’s rising off your skin, attraction mixed with fear—but with you, I find those always go hand in hand. It’s a peculiar quality.” His eyes changed from gray to the bright blue I always noticed but never recalled until they were right in front of me. He lifted his hand and traced the outline of my face without touching my skin.
“Touch works even better, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, or don’t care, you can—”
“Kill someone?” I said as my heart raced.
He stood very still, his face a hairsbreadth away from mine. Damn it, I wasn’t going to step back. Rynn wasn’t going to hurt me. He hadn’t even touched me yet.
“I was going to say damage, but in extreme circumstances, yes, I suppose that’s possible too. If it makes you feel better, I’ve never met a succubi or incubi who would kill someone. I don’t think I could, I’ve never wanted to try. And to answer your other question, no. I’ve absorbed the energy you release naturally, I can’t help it, but I’ve never actively pulled it from you. To do that, I’d have to push your attraction to an unnatural state through suggestion, and I find it about as invasive and unpleasant as it sounds.”
I made myself let go of the breath I was holding. “What about the mind control? How did you block me from remembering that your eyes change color? And how did you heal me?” I said. Now that I was getting control of my fear, the questions were pouring out. It’s not every day a supernatural plays twenty questions.
But Rynn shook his head. “Oricho told you there were rules when dealing with humans we have to abide by. I can’t tell you everything you want to know.” He raised his hand as I started to protest. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. There are consequences I have no intention of triggering.”
“But you can control my thoughts? No offense, but that scares the hell out of me, more than anything else.”
He shook his head again. “I can suggest things, like ignoring details or directing a choice, but that only goes so far. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, like walk over burning coals. The other night I had a hell of a time convincing you your arm wasn’t broken because it was and you’re very stubborn when you want to be. I can’t wipe or alter your memory.”
I nodded. No real mind control, just manipulation. No more than what a good con artist could do . . .
What was I doing here? An hour ago, two hours ago, there was no way I’d have lasted this long without backing into a corner. Maybe it was the amount of time I’d spent dealing with supernaturals over the past year, but I was almost OK with this. I started to ask another question, but Rynn broke our stalemate and touched my face, running his fingers along my cheek. A shiver went down my spine. “You’re not using suggestion on me now, are you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not for something like this. I’d never be able to enjoy getting you that way.” With his free arm he reached around my waist and stopped just short of pulling me in. “Owl, you need to make up your mind. Can you deal with what I am or not?”
I closed my eyes. I wanted this, but there was one more question I needed answered to put my mind at ease. “Why me?”
He lifted my chin with a finger and searched my face. “Why what?”
“I’m stubborn, I rarely listen, I have trust issues, you’ve seen my intimacy issues, and even though you’ll never hear me admit this again, I’m a thief . . . You could have just about any girl in Tokyo. So why me?”
Rynn glanced down with a thoughtful expression. “You’re very broken, more so than most people, but you’ve
never relinquished your potential. You blind yourself to it and pretend it isn’t there, but you refuse to let go. You wear your damage and heart on your sleeve, though you pretend not to. I think it’s very beautiful. The thieving I can overlook. Did I mention I like a challenge?”
He was so close I felt his breath on my skin. It was now or never. I leaned in and twined my fingers around the back of his neck. He tilted his head towards me, but this time I kissed him. One thing about incubi is they don’t need much encouragement. Before I knew what was happening, I was back on the desk where we’d left off before the skin walker had attacked me.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Rynn said. “I put down my bag and bail on my meeting with Oricho, and you close your laptop and forget we’re here for the rest of the evening.”
I nodded. I could deal with tonight. One small step at a time.
The corner of Rynn’s mouth turned up. “Train wreck,” he said.
“Whore.”
He picked me up off the desk and headed for my bedroom. I didn’t even bother putting up a fight. Sometimes there are things more important than finding scrolls and digging stuff up.
20
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET
8:00 a.m., my room at the Japanese Circus
I woke up by myself, with a vague memory of Rynn getting up while I was too groggy to say or do anything except roll over and bury myself under the covers. As much fun as I’d had with him last night, I needed sleep. Badly. Four days running on empty had caught up, and I’d needed the rest, both physically and mentally. I was still adjusting to the idea of having Rynn around, let alone the incubus factor . . . I pulled the duvet over my head. Dear God, what the hell was I doing?
I reached over to the nightstand and checked my cell. No messages from Nadya, Rynn, or anyone else wanting to yell at me. I stretched out with every intention of sleeping for another hour or two when I heard the first scratch on the door—light . . . probing. I closed my eyes and buried my face in the pillow, but Captain’s scratching kept coming. Damn it, he’d heard me pick up my cell phone from the other room.
I pushed the covers off and swung out of bed. I had no intention of seeing what kind of damage bill Lady Siyu was gonna give me if Captain scratched the paint.
I opened the door just as he started a second run of scratching. “It’s amazing how much noise you make when you want something,” I said. He slid through to complain in person. Instead of mewing, he stood on his hind legs, begging for food.
I headed into the kitchen, Captain hard on my heels. Was I caving? Yeah, but trust me, it was better this way.
On the living room table, beside my laptop, stood a folded piece of white paper. It was from Rynn.
Meeting with Oricho. Text me if you do anything stupid.
Yeah, right. Like I’d have the chance to text him first.
As soon as I got close to the kitchenette, the aroma of warm coffee hit me. I made a beeline straight for the coffeepot, ignoring Captain’s protests as I breezed by his empty food bowl.
I poured a cup and had a sip—still warm, dark but not burned . . . OK, maybe I could get used to having Rynn around some mornings.
I deposited Captain’s wet food in his bowl—so that he’d shut up, not that he actually deserved it—and headed back into the living room. Coffee in hand, I slid into the desk chair, opening my laptop and a text window to Nadya.
Just got up. Taking another crack at the codex. Please say you’re doing better than I am.
A few seconds later Nadya rang me. I answered but didn’t even get the chance to say hello.
“I hope you have a backup plan. One that involves running.” You’d think if anyone would have a backup plan that hinged on running, it’d be me. “Uhh, yeah. Don’t count on it,” I said. Nadya swore. “Look, let’s meet here in five hours and compare notes again. These symbols are the codex—I’m sure of it. We just have to figure out how to read it.”
“Fantastic. The American woman tells me all we have to do is decode a three-thousand-year-old encryption, then translate it.”
I ignored her tone. “If anyone can translate it, it’s you. In the meantime, don’t open the door for anyone, and call if you get anywhere. And let me worry about cracking it.”
“Vice versa. See you in five hours. And Alix?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell Rynn to have his clothes on,” she said.
“Oh come on—” But she’d already hung up. I shook my head and hunched back over my laptop.
The one thing I was sure of was that the symbols, not the actual written words, were meant to be read off the scroll. The words themselves, illegible to both humans and supernaturals, were only there to hide the symbols like a very sophisticated mask. How did I know? I’d run into it before in ancient texts out of Russia, though they’d been much less sophisticated. No 3-D rotations, only pictures hidden in the paper. This was on another level entirely. The symbols could only be seen in a 3-D rendering of the text.
I just wish I had a hint as to what the symbols meant. I wasn’t delivering an incomplete spell scroll and entering into round two with the dragon.
I am capable of learning from some mistakes.
I ran a few translation programs from the International University archives on pairs and groups of symbols, and then again on each of the individual symbols against all the known supernatural languages on file. Zip, nada, all roads lead to a dead-end nothing.
“Maybe I should just package it up in a zip file, send it to Mr. Kurosawa, and run before he can open it,” I said to Captain after my translation program finished comparing images from a Peruvian university. It’d been a long shot, but you never know—in their heyday, those South American civilizations got around a lot more than you might have thought. Apparently it pays to worship a demigod.
About 12:00 p.m. the lock to my room jostled and the door caught on the chain. I’d set it and the dead bolt. I had a sneaking suspicion the next supernatural goon Marie sent wouldn’t bother trying to trick me into letting them in.
Rynn’s face scowled at me from the small crack. “Do you mind?” he said and pointed at the chain.
“You told me to be more careful,” I said as I unlocked the door.
“That isn’t safe, it’s annoying. Do you have any idea how easy it is to break one of those chains?” he said.
“Well, what would you suggest? Since you’re the professional on all things supernatural and mercenary,” I said.
Rynn removed two bottles of bleach and a water gun from a plastic bag. “These, for starters. Bleach burns skin walkers, accelerates their chemical preservatives to dangerous levels, and stops them in their tracks.”
The mention of skin walkers, I figure, drained the color right out of my face. “Please say there aren’t any more running around the casino.”
“We found two more in the casino kitchens. Came looking for the rest of their pack. I’m fairly certain it’s the last of them.”
“Then what’s the bleach for?” I said.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Precaution. Skin walkers are bottom feeders, but they get hired for this kind of work a lot.”
I took a deep breath and suppressed the urge to go and hide under my comforter. I pulled up the scroll again and tried rearranging the symbols for the fifth time that afternoon.
I felt Rynn come up behind me and lean on the back of my chair to look over my shoulder.
“Making any progress?” he said.
I shrugged and zoomed in on the symbols. Maybe Rynn would recognize them. “Yes and no. Nadya and I found these symbols hidden in the scroll and the inscriptions. It’s slick—three-dimensional encryption without a computer. Whatever supernatural wrote this knew what they were doing. Ever seen them before?”
He narrowed his eyes at the screen. “Seen what?” he said.
“These,” I said, and highlighted the sword symbol with my cursor, drawing a circle around it. “The one that jumps off the page like a picture. It was hidden
underneath the writing. You just have to take the writing off and rotate it,” I said, and set my program running again. The writing lifted off the page and rotated at 180 degrees, uncovering the symbols.
“Alix, there’s nothing there except for the writing.”
There was no way. “Have you ever watched a 3-D movie?”
He shook his head. “Tried once. I didn’t like all the colors. I’m not entirely sure what the appeal is, no offense.”
“Holy shit,” I said, and reached for my phone. There was no way, it could not be this easy—how the hell had no one picked up on this before? I called Oricho.
“Hey,” I said as soon as he picked up. “You study humans—ever seen a 3-D movie?”
There was a pause before Oricho said, “I fail to see why you would call to ask my opinion on human entertain—”
“It’s important—just answer the stupid human’s question.”
Like always, Oricho paused, then said carefully, “I’ve seen one before but did not like the blurred motion and colors. I fail to see the appeal.”
“I’ll bet you do,” I said, imagining what Oricho and Rynn must have seen. “Look, I need to run one more test. Don’t go too far from your phone. I might have just figured out how to read the scroll,” I said, and hung up.
Rynn was looking at me as if I’d gone nuts. I bit my lip and tried to figure out the best way to explain it. I pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and started to draw a cube. “What do you see on the paper?” I asked him.
He looked down at it, then back at me. “Poorly drawn squares and triangles,” he said.
I nodded. No wonder supernaturals thought we were so stupid. “OK, technically you’re right. On the piece of paper I’ve drawn a bunch of uneven lines. But to humans that looks like a cube. Our brains take in the angles and translate them into a familiar three-dimensional shape.” I wondered what film and pictures looked like to Rynn. I pointed to a painting across the room of a group of ballet dancers. A Degas reprint, or, knowing Mr. Kurosawa, an original. “What do you see in the painting?”
Owl and the Japanese Circus Page 35