Chloe didn’t understand half of what she was saying. “You mean I’m Turkish, not Russian?”
Kim fixed her with a cool look. “You are Mai. Not ‘Turkish’ or anything else. There are no human nationals of any sort in your background.”
Chloe had forgotten about that. She was a completely different race. Wonderful, colorful images of herself in scarves, black kohl eyeliner, and bangles, with belly-dancing music in the background—like at the restaurant her mom used to take her to—sadly faded.
“Is this my file?” she asked.
Kim shook her head. “No, it is a sort of general file with information on places we are all most recently from. I thought you would be interested. St. Petersburg, where Alyec is from.” She passed Chloe pictures of an exotic city, with spires too long and thin to be mistaken for those of American churches. Onion domes dotted the skyline. Everything seemed to be covered in gold like a fairy-tale kingdom.
“What’s this?” Chloe pointed to one of the other photographs, of a building with a wall of large white stone blocks. A woman was walking along it, a woman with long black hair. “It looks familiar. I saw it in a dream.” She suddenly felt the crowded market street again, the shady, quiet alley with the horrible smell.
Kim looked at her strangely but turned the photograph over. “It is one of the old sulfur bath complexes in Sokhumi. This part of Abkhazia was a famous retreat with spas—the natural hot springs and mineral water there were supposed to have curative powers.”
Sulfur … This is a little too weird.
“Does sulfur smell like rotten eggs?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“Almost identically.” Kim put the photograph down and looked Chloe in the eye. Her black velvety ears lay almost flat against her head, turned backward. Chloe couldn’t tell if she was upset or listening for footsteps in the hall. “You dreamt that, too?”
“Yeah. It was humid, and there were people, and … it was kind of confusing. Modern and ancient at the same time. And it stank. But I remember that wall.”
“Sokhumi is the city where our pride eventually settled after we left the Middle East for good. Only one of the Mai from that diaspora came back to Abkhazia—our previous pride leader. Her dream was to gather all of the scattered Mai in Eastern Europe and unite them somewhere, like the United States.” She carefully put the photograph away and closed the folder. “But she was killed in a skirmish between the Abkhazians and the Georgians.”
“There were other exiles, from all over, who rested and waited for her” Chloe murmured.
“What did you say?” Kim demanded, fixing her like a mouse with her eyes.
“In my dream I was the pride leader.”
“That’s … interesting,” Kim said slowly.
“Do you think I could be related to her?”
Do you think she could be my mother?
Kim opened the notebook again and looked at the picture of the bathhouse in Sokhumi again. “It’s possible…. But she had only one daughter that we know of, and she is dead….” She sounded reticent, and somehow Chloe didn’t think it had anything to do with the disappointment about the two of them not being related. There was something else….
Maybe she was jealous of Chloe possibly being the daughter of the old pride leader. Maybe it meant something, like inheritance in an aristocracy. Maybe she would take over when Sergei’s term was over. She wondered if that entailed anything besides running a real estate empire and tracking down lost and orphaned Mai.
What was it the two guards had said when they were rescuing her? Where’s our glorious Pride Leader? This wouldn’t even have cost him a life. Assuming he has more than one.
“Kim—before I went unconscious, one of the people who rescued me said something about the pride leader not risking losing ‘one of his lives.’ What did she mean by that?”
“Traditionally, in the past, the leader of the Pride is also a true military leader, first into a battle or on the hunt, last to retreat—” One of her ears flicked. A moment later Chloe heard the noise, too: footsteps echoing loudly down the corridor. It sounded like Olga; she was probably coming to check up on Chloe.
Kim leaned close in, too close for a normal human. Kind of like Amy’s cat, when he would push his nose and foul-smelling kitty mouth into Chloe’s, smelling delicately around her face before withdrawing. “Listen to me, Chloe. Do not tell anyone about your dream or what we spoke of,” she hissed. “There are leaders, and there are leaders, Chloe King.”
Paul might be complacent and all best buddies with Alyec, but Amy wasn’t going to stand for it. If it were up to her stupid boyfriend, they would just sit back and do nothing until the world fell down. Which was exactly why she was skipping out of school early.
She’d given a half-assed excuse to her teacher about feeling sick and hadn’t even bothered going to the nurse. Her brother’s car was parked in the area of the lot reserved for seniors, and it had cost her an arm and a leg to borrow it: a guaranteed okay on any future favor of his choice. It’s not like he even needs it at Berkeley. It was an ancient, all-black Chevy Malibu station wagon that he called the Batmobile. The Malibu was a pretty small car for its V6 though, so when she floored it, the car tore out of the school parking lot like a bat out of hell.
Amy zoomed through the streets and parked several blocks away from Chloe’s house. She locked the car and went up to the front door, trying not to look around suspiciously, trying to make it look like she had every right to be there, pulling out Chloe’s spare key and entering the house in the middle of the day when they both should have been in school.
Mrs. King usually came home around seven, and Amy had every intention of being out of there in an hour. Maybe she’d even go back to school….
On second thought, who did she think she was kidding?
She had been planning this for several days and wore an appropriate outfit for breaking and entering (even if it was with a key): tight black jeans and a black tee, along with a black Emily sweatshirt whose hoodie had cat ears and sleeves that ended in gloves with claws. Perfect for a cat burglar. She had admired herself in the mirror for a while that morning. It was such a completely different look for her—all sleek and black. None of the crazy, bouncy, fringy, fluffy stuff she designed and wore. Her breasts stuck out a little bit; they almost looked as big as Chloe’s in this outfit. What she really needed was a pair of long black leather boots à la Emma Peel and maybe to dye her hair black, but Paul didn’t like it when she changed her hair color—he’d always liked the original shade.
She carefully closed the door behind her and listened for a minute. If anyone was staking out the place, there was no sign: everything looked fairly normal in the King household. No furniture was overturned, nor was there any other sign of violence. Just to be safe, however, Amy pushed herself up against the wall and slid toward the stairs, ducking when she got in front of windows, doing a crouching run up the staircase.
Which resulted in a very non-cat-burglar trip on the top step and a flying fall that nearly smashed her chin against the bathroom door. Most of Amy’s life was spent trying to get noticed and stand out; this sneaking thing was entirely new to her. She pulled herself up into what she hoped looked like a shadow and tiptoed into Chloe’s room.
Once again everything seemed normal, maybe a little dustier than usual but not noticeably changed. Chloe’s computer was properly shut down. Amy turned it on, using the special black gloves so she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. She admired them while it booted up, then went online and logged onto Chloe’s e-mail—her friend had had the same password for years: adopTED.
Aha.
Chloe religiously purged her trash to keep her mailbox from going over its size limit, downloading and saving all of the particularly juicy letters in case her mother ever found her way on. She did not, however, empty her sent mail folder as often as she should—and was far too painstaking about adding names to her address book. After just a couple minutes of poking around, Amy foun
d [email protected] and, searching Chloe’s “locked” Word documents, confirmed that it was the Brian that Chloe had been interested in.
Amy then signed off and switched Hotmail over to one of her own alias accounts—one that she used when she didn’t want to be found, for contests and spam and mailing lists and stuff—and sent Brian an e-mail. Early on, Amy had decided to handle everything Chloe from foreign computers, not her own, in case someone was capturing her IP address.
Brian: This is from one of Chloe’s friends. Where is she? Can you help us? Alyec seems to know something but won’t tell. E-mail me ASAP.
Then she made sure it sent properly, deleted it out of the sent mail, and purged the trash. She checked it again to make sure it was really gone, cleared Explorer’s cache for temporary files, and started to even defrag the hard drive—to really make sure all the information was gone—but looked at her watch and realized it would take twenty minutes. So Amy shut down, mission accomplished, and prepared to sneak back out.
Just like out of the movies, she was halfway down the stairs when the phone rang. Amy froze, flattening herself against the wall so hard that static electricity lifted her frizzy red ends straight up against the wallpaper and her shoulder almost dislodged a picture. She waited, frozen, knowing intellectually that it was okay to move but unable to make herself. She scanned the room until voice mail picked up, counting the seconds.
She noticed something that she wouldn’t have if she had just snuck immediately back out. Nothing in the house looks moved. Like for a while. There was a stillness to it, and though there were no layers of dust, there was a palpably stale feeling about the place. It even smelled a little old, like the garbage had been sitting there for just a day or two too long; there was no tang of cleaners or soap or perfume or anything that connoted movement or life in a house of two women.
Shaken by this realization, Amy left the house less carefully than she’d entered—after all, she was only human, which was exactly what the people watching her exit the house wanted to be sure of.
A new loving family, a secret race of people like her, no more school ever again, and all Chloe could think about was how bored she was. Her “internship” at Firebird mainly involved stuffing envelopes, making copies, collating large stacks of contracts, and taking orders from the obnoxious Mai receptionist.
While she was waiting for a stack of … something, she wasn’t sure what, from Igor, Chloe thought about her and Amy’s dream of setting up a shop somewhere. Amy would design the clothes and Chloe would run the business. Assuming the two didn’t kill each other, it would be a match made in heaven.
Igor must have seen the look on her face.
“You should become a full-time paralegal,” he said, smiling.
“Wow. This for a living,” Chloe said deadpan, tapping the stack he was adding to. “That would be just great. For my entire life.”
“Remember, it is hard for people like us to integrate completely,” Igor said seriously. “That’s why it was so good for Sergei to set this up here.” He was wearing khakis, a button-down with a fashionable tie, and suede shoes. The way he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his back made him look like any young professional: a little bit arrogant, but bright eyed and smart.
Pity about the name. Maybe assimilation would have been easier if the Mai hadn’t named their kids after horror film characters. With just a slight tilt of her nose to the air Chloe could tell he was Mai. It wasn’t a smell, exactly, but a feeling.
“Is this why he’s pride leader?” she asked, waving her hand around the office.
“He is pride leader because when the previous one was killed, he bravely took up her mission of trying to reunite the Eastern European Pride.” Chloe wanted to jump in and prove her knowledge to the older boy by saying yeah, yeah, the Abkhazian Diaspora, etc., but decided maybe it would be a good idea to pretend to know less than she did for once.
“He organized everyone after the Georgian violence, and when he immigrated, he began the process of bringing us all over. Sometimes legally, sometimes not so legally.” His dark eyes were shining with admiration. “And he built all this—an empire of city real estate—from nothing, an immigrant! And a Mai. So in a way, yes, it’s about all this but more, too.”
“Seems pretty nice,” Chloe said, meaning it. “So why does Alyec bitch about him not helping his family out?”
Igor chuckled. “Alyec is a whiner. Perhaps there is some prejudice—but the ones in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and even Kiev were better off than the Abkhazians. Sergei wanted to help out the most desperate first.”
“Oh.” She looked around for something to do now that their conversation was over. Her foot tapped spastically.
“I know what you need!” Igor said, suddenly popping up out of his chair and pointing at her. “You are all itchy and nervous and bored. You need a—” He suddenly looked around and trailed off. “A hike,” he finished lamely.
“Oh. Boy. That will fix everything,” Chloe answered with as much sarcasm as she could muster. Currently she was wearing a pair of expensive jeans—probably picked out by Olga or Valerie—that were a size too small around her crotch, so she had to leave them unbuttoned and wear a big, stupid, trendy wide leather belt around her waist. The sweater was light pink cashmere. She still had her Sauconys, but everything else wasn’t hers and didn’t feel like hers. Like her room, like her new family, like this crappy new part-time job—which didn’t involve clothes or a cash register.
“Good,” Igor said, taking her at face value.
Chloe wasn’t sure if it was being Mai or Eastern European that prevented everyone there from getting sarcasm.
She had dinner that night with Sergei. It had become their little ritual on days that he worked late: she would come to his office and he would clear his desk. They would order Chinese, pizza, whatever they were in the mood for, and play a game of chess. Chloe never thought she would be good at it, but she was slowly learning. She treasured these evenings no matter how much she hated losing.
She wondered if her real father—her adoptive father—played chess. She couldn’t even imagine thinking about her real, real father….
“Igor told me I should go on a ‘hike’; what does that mean?” she asked after moving a pawn.
“A hike? I haven’t the slightest idea.” Sergei blinked at her with surprisingly innocent eyes. In his emotions and movements, he seemed very childlike sometimes—maybe that came from being in his forties without a wife and children. “Oh! He means a hunt. Ah, that Igor, he is a smart one. I think they are organizing one for this Saturday. Do you know anything about raising wildcats—bobcats, cheetahs? For pets?”
Chloe had no idea what this had to do with anything, so she shook her head. Sergei got up and came around to her side of the desk and sat on its edge, looking at her seriously, like he was giving her a very important father-daughter lecture. Chloe prepared to be bored, but it was sort of a nice new feeling.
“People up in Oregon and other places raise wild cats to sell. Some make great pets, like bobcats and lynxes, if they have been bred and raised properly by a loving family. But no matter how gentle, well behaved, and obedient a cat is, no matter how much regular cat food he can stomach—once a month the good breeders throw a live chicken into the pens and let what happens happen.”
Chloe felt nausea rise as she imagined feathers and blood and screams.
“They have to do this, Chloe,” he said gently, “because you cannot completely breed out a cat’s basic nature. They need to hunt, they need to play with their prey, and they need to kill. We are no different. We have always been hunters. Nomads. We never grew our food; we went after it in the wild.
“If you feel anxious and trapped—if you have the urge to run at night and chase and follow—you need to give in to it once in a while. We cannot run free like we used to before the world grew civilized and the land was fenced off, but we must still obey the ancient instinct.”
Chloe sudden
ly understood part of the Tenth Blade’s credo. A Mai gone mad with hunt lust in a city or town probably was a dangerous thing. She decided to keep that thought to herself, however; somehow she suspected Sergei wouldn’t share that conclusion.
“So we do this every month? Go hunting?”
Sergei laughed. “Not every month, Chloe. It has nothing to do with the moon, or your feminine things, or clockwork. Sometimes it’s just … time to go.”
Time to go.
Chloe thought about this while she waited by the Ford Explorer. It was dusk and they were on top of a hill somewhere near Muir Woods. It was a sharp hill, new and ridged, not like the older storybook rolling hills on the way there. A bright star shone in the south, although how Chloe knew the direction was south, she couldn’t have said. Below, the land ran steeply down to a bowl of forest and scrub with smaller hills within it, like the bottom of a scenic snow globe. But instead of plastic flakes, darkness gathered at the bottom.
About a half-dozen Mai were there, speaking in low voices. They were all women. Olga and Valerie were there along with three she didn’t recognize, one of whom she knew was Simone, the dancer who also lived at the mansion. Chloe never saw her in its halls.
Most of the women seemed to be in their thirties. They were all beautiful. They all had high cheekbones and thick, shiny hair; even with the different eye and hair color and body shape, it was easy to see a racial similarity once Chloe began to look for it.
One of the things they all had in common was how inhumanly they walked: standing mainly on their toes and moving with a careless precision that could have only been carefully choreographed by a human ballerina.
A dark-eyed woman Chloe didn’t know began the evening with a chant, a strange hymn in a foreign tongue that went from low whispers to beseeching cries. Her voice was good but alone and sometimes lost in the breeze—which made it even creepier. Chloe caught the name Sekhmet once or twice, but that was about it.
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