The living room had two low, long sofas around a low coffee table, and a few wide light brown cushions pushed up against the walls. When the kits climbed onto those and promptly conked out for naps, their purpose was pretty clear.
“Grandmother has had to adapt to our Western aversion to sitting on the floor,” Suzume explained as we settled onto one sofa and Atsuko knelt on a mat beside the table.
“And I have had to mourn the poor posture of all my children and grandchildren as a result,” Atsuko said. What followed then was a forty-five-minute tea ceremony that was beautiful, ritualistic, and nearly had me screaming with frustration. If Suzume hadn’t warned me in the car about her grandmother, I probably would’ve broken in and tried to start talking about the Grann girls, but I forced myself to be patient. Ceremony had been important last night when Madeline offered Luca hospitality, and I could only assume that this was also important, so I followed Suzume’s lead.
Every move Atsuko made seemed weighed with importance. She had incredible powers of concentration too. At one point the kits woke up again, and began to play with a small squeaky tennis ball. This involved a lot of yelping, tumbling, and biting. It was pretty clear that Atsuko’s lack of knickknacks and extra furniture wasn’t just a decorating preference. For three small kits, they seemed capable of an incredible amount of destruction.
Atsuko was finally pouring the tea when the gray kit propped her head on Suzume’s knee and gave a loud whimper.
Suzume looked down. “Do you need the potty, Yui?”
The kit nodded.
“You know what to do.”
The kit whimpered and nudged Suzume with her nose.
“No, I’m not going to open the door for you. You’re a big girl now.”
The kit slumped back on her haunches and gave a loud, high crying sound. Then she looked over at me hopefully.
“No,” Suzume said sharply. “He’s not going to open the door either.”
Some more whimpering, a very betrayed look at me, and then the kit opened her mouth widely and gave a loud, hacking cough, like a cat with a hairball. Her back arched, and her tail began spasming. As I watched, her long muzzle began to retract, her fur slowly withdrew into her body, and then she was a writhing ball of something that I finally glanced away from, looking at Suzume and Atsuko. Neither of them looked remotely concerned. I glanced back, and there was a little girl, maybe three years old, and stark naked, sitting on the floor and panting. Her eyes had the same delicate tilt as the older women’s, but her facial features were much more softly rounded, and her hair was an almost shockingly bright shade of red. Apparently Atsuko’s progeny had been crossbreeding pretty heavily with the locals, because other than her eyes, Yui looked like she could’ve stepped right out of a South Boston Sunday school playgroup.
She made a very foxy squeak.
“Human words when you’re human,” Atsuko said with a firm discipline that reminded me of my third-grade teacher, who could control an entire classroom of children just by frowning.
“Not nice,” Yui said to Suzume, then pulled herself off the floor and walked out of the room, followed closely by the cream fox. Left alone, Riko claimed the tennis ball and made a few victory laps around the room.
“Is that what it looks like when you shift?” I asked Suzume.
“I’m a lot faster,” she said. “It’s kind of like tying your shoes. Little kids don’t have good motor control, so it takes a long time, but an adult can do it without even thinking about it.”
“And the business about the door?” From down the hallway there was a loud splash, a child’s shriek, then the flush of a toilet.
“They need a human hand to open the bathroom door. But when I was her age, my sister and I would wait until the other one had to go human to pee, and then we’d try to push her into the toilet and flush it.”
Atsuko gave a loud snort. A minute later Yui walked in, leaving a long trail of water. The cream kit followed, looking extremely smug.
“I guess Tomomi knows that trick too,” Suzume said blandly.
The tea ceremony continued. Yui didn’t change back into a fox, but the other two continued to play with her. No one seemed interested in suggesting that she get dressed, so I assumed that being dressed in a state of nature was normal for the kitsune children. My foster mother had kept a baby book of photos of me, and I remember that there’d been plenty of me running around naked, apparently my favorite state of dress as a toddler. Yui quickly curled up and took another nap on the cushions, which seemed to serve equally well for kit or baby, and the other two kits curled up with her.
Finally all the tea was drunk and the cups were neatly stacked up on the tray again.
There was a long moment while Atsuko arranged the long sleeves of her kimono just so, and then she gave a small nod. “Now why don’t you explain why a son of the vampire has sought me out?”
So I told her everything, starting with when I met Luca and ending with my last visit to the mansion. She didn’t say anything, just listened to what I said and watched me closely. Finally I finished. There was a long silence, and my stomach clenched. If Atsuko didn’t help me, then my last chance to help those girls was gone.
Atsuko closed her eyes and sat. We waited. At one point I thought that she’d fallen asleep, and I glanced over at Suzume, who shook her head. So we waited. Finally she opened her eyes again.
“A troubling situation,” she said. “Made more troubling by Madeline’s promise of hospitality. By the terms of our alliance, I do not interfere when she or your siblings hunt humans. To become involved overtly could threaten this alliance, and so I cannot become directly involved. But”—she spoke over my blurted protest—“Madeline herself requested that I assign you a protector. To keep my granddaughter fully informed about these matters is a reasonable action. If she passes this information on to you, she is not responsible for what you choose to do with it.” Atsuko nodded, her decision made. “Suzume-chan, use the phone in the kitchen and call Commissioner Phelps. Vampires rarely exert themselves much, particularly if they aren’t planning to stay long in an area. If you get the addresses of the attacked family and where the girl’s body was found, that should be an area for you to start looking.”
Suzume nodded and went into the kitchen.
“Thank you,” I said to Atsuko. “I really appreciate this.”
“Do not thank me too quickly,” she said with a thin smile. “We have not yet discussed what you will give me in return for assisting.”
“But you said you were just giving information—”
“That is my justification if this turns out poorly, which it almost certainly will. You are too weak to even hope to reclaim these girls by force, and I highly doubt that Luca will hand them over if you ask him to.”
“Suzume—”
Atsuko cut me off, her voice hard. “My granddaughter has been paid to guard you, but she is not one to risk her life for another’s. If the situation becomes dire, she will abandon you to your death and refund your mother’s money.”
“How can you say that about your own granddaughter?” I asked.
“Because it is the truth. She is the offspring of my most beloved child, and her sister is my chosen heir. She is clever, and she is strong, but she is a trickster, a nogitsune, and if you choose to trust her when the situation is no longer amusing, but is threatening, you will rue the outcome.”
I didn’t say anything. Atsuko tilted her head in a way that looked more like a fox than a woman, and considered me.
“But you have no choice but to trust my granddaughter, do you?” the old woman said shrewdly. “She is your only chance to save the girls. Who you seem very intent on rescuing. How curious.”
“You know, today everyone seems to find the desire to get two small girls away from a murdering molester weird,” I said. “It seems to me that maybe this is opposite-day, because I would think that everyone would be just a bit more worried about their own lack of empathy.”
&n
bsp; Atsuko gave a dry, almost coughing laugh. “You seem to misunderstand. I have spent sixty-five years in the shadow of vampires, and it is the fact that you have empathy that is so surprising. This is unusual behavior from a species whose actions tend to be predictably narcissistic.”
“I’m not fully a vampire yet,” I said.
Those bright dark eyes saw a lot, and Atsuko laughed again, a full belly laugh this time. “And you think that is the reason why you feel this way? Then you are a very foolish creature, vampire-child, like the tadpole crying that he does not want to become a frog because he does not wish to lose his tail.”
“But tadpoles do lose their tails,” I said, confused.
“Of course they don’t.” Atsuko smiled. “They are still there, just on the inside.”
“Grandmother, if we’ve gotten to the riddle section of the visit, then it’s time to go.” Suzume came back in, carrying a Providence city map. She leaned down and kissed Atsuko’s forehead. “I offered the police commissioner one free hour and he was more than happy to give me the addresses. We’ve got to run.”
“I’m glad,” Atsuko said. She gave Suzume a sharp look, then asked, “And did you also call Keiko? Your sister has been looking for you today, and has been most insistent that it is simply personal, and has nothing to do with the business.”
Suzume grinned. “Oh, you’re very clever, Grandmother. Yes, I called her, and yes, Keiko screwed up. But look at it this way—if she called me to take care of it, and I will, then does it really matter if you aren’t supposed to know about it? And won’t you probably be happier in the long run if you didn’t?”
Atsuko frowned. “When I was a girl, a fox like you would’ve been beaten and left out for demons to eat.”
Suzume’s smile widened. “But I’m too useful to serve as demon chum. Also, too pretty.”
Atsuko muttered something in Japanese, then focused on me again.
“What will I owe you for the information?” I asked her. I was hoping that she would settle for free coffee at Busy Beans.
Atsuko was thoughtful; then a look crossed her face that was very sly, very foxy, and not very nice at all.
“A favor,” she said. “A big one, to be owed to me and mine from you, to be redeemed at a time and place of our choosing.”
Oh, that sounded bad. But when I considered Jessica and Amy Grann, who were depending on me, it sounded worth it.
I agreed; then Suzume and I hit the road, driving back to Providence.
Chapter 6
“Can’t this errand of yours wait until after we track down Luca?” I asked. We were back in Providence, after a brief fast food pit stop to make sure that neither of us passed out from low blood sugar, and Suzume was driving. Apparently she’d never been to this destination before, so I’d been crouched over the map trying to give her directions as we slowly prowled through a series of extremely affluent residential neighborhoods. I made a mental note that if I ever got money out of Larry, the first thing I would buy was a GPS.
“Nope. Business trumps philanthropy. I’m pretty sure Andrew Carnegie said that.”
“No, I think Scrooge McDuck said that. And what kind of business is this anyway? Real estate? Ponzi schemes?”
“You can say that we’re in the service industry.”
“The what? Like waiters?” A woman with one of those insane triple-long baby carriages was crossing the street in front of us, and Suzume was able to turn completely away from the street and give both me a suggestive eyebrow waggle and a very salacious leer.
“No,” I said in horror. “No, no. Not—”
“Oh yes.” Suzume was thrilled by my reaction, and pulled a business card out of her pocket to hand to me. It was a Rolls-Royce of business cards—the glossy cardstock was the kind usually reserved for wedding invitations, it was engraved, not printed, and in beautiful scrolling font, so restrained and elegant that it screamed old money, it read Green Willow Escorts. A phone number was listed at the bottom. And that was it.
“I thought your family got out of the geisha thing,” I said, feeling a little stunned. I didn’t doubt that Suzume could con men out of their pants, but somehow I just hadn’t pictured that she would be doing it so literally.
She laughed. “You look so appalled. I wish I could take a photo of this and make it your new profile picture. And why should we have gotten out of the business? Grandmother already knew how much money and power you could accrue. What kind of free hour do you think I traded to the police commissioner for the information you needed?”
“But you…” I struggled to find the words, and failed.
Suzume executed the kind of perfect parallel parking job that I could only dream about (parallel parking tended to be a forty-point sweaty endeavor for me), and then leaned into me, invading my personal space and sending my core body temperature skyrocketing.
“What?” she asked, and my head began to spin as I inhaled the smell of her skin. She traced my jaw with one long finger, leaving a trail of fire. “Don’t you think I’d be good at it?”
I took a deep breath and tried to marshal my thoughts, refusing to acknowledge the frantic signals being sent from my lower body, all along the lines of “now, dude, now!” I saw that glitter in her eyes that only seemed to appear when she was particularly fucking with my head, and I was beginning to catch on that this didn’t have anything to do with sex.
“You’re not a hooker, are you?” I said.
“What makes you think that I’m not?” That sassy grin, that beautiful face, the body that right now seemed to be making a million promises. I felt even more certain.
“Because,” I said, forcing myself to relax instead of tensing up. Okay, that wasn’t even close to happening in my pants, but I could try to lie with my upper body. “You’d be a terrible hooker.” Her eyebrows shot up, and I continued. “You always have to let me know that I’ve been had. You have to see me actually realize and acknowledge how awesome you are. You would never get a single repeat customer, unless he was a masochist.”
Suzume slid back into her seat in a sinuous maneuver that made her look like her bones were made of jelly, dropping all the seduction. She gnawed her lower lip and tilted her head thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t discount the masochists. They’re willing to pay pretty well for discretion. And our employees are a bit more refined than your average streetwalker, so we like to call them escorts instead. But you are right, my temperament wouldn’t exactly be a good fit. Besides.” She shrugged. “Even high-level escort work here in America is a pretty far cry to what the geisha were in Japan. Atsuko moved from labor to management, and the nice thing about a family-owned business is that no one expects you to work your way up from the bottom.” She gave a little Beevis and Butthead–style snicker, and I couldn’t help smiling a little. Humor that immature was hard not to delight in.
“Yeah, about that.” I held up the business card. “Shouldn’t this be a little more, you know…explicit? I mean, aren’t you trying to entice people into buying sex?”
Suzume gave me a look that was equal parts pity and condescension. Apparently I’d just wiped out all the respect I’d just gained. “Fort, anything that advertises itself as either VIP or exclusive just isn’t. If all you want is a blow job, you can get that for the cost of dinner and a movie. The people who can afford our services are buying a lot more than that.”
“They’re buying sex, right? Because I’m with Bill Clinton—sex is more than a blow job.”
“Okay, let’s try a new example. There’s a restaurant in New York City where dessert costs a hundred dollars.”
“What, really?” I tried to imagine spending a hundred dollars on dessert, but couldn’t. “Is it like that eight-person bucket of ice cream that you can get at some ice cream parlors, where if you can actually finish it it’s free?”
“No. This is a two-scoop sundae.”
“Is it made out of gold?”
“Okay, kind of. It has gold leaf in it.”
“The
n after you finish it you can go panning for gold in your stool and recoup some of the cost.”
Suzume slanted a suspicious look at me, but I kept my face as innocent as possible. Of course, as a product of a liberal arts college, I’d spent whole classes discussing the idea of perceived value, but I wanted to see when Suzume would lose patience with me.
We made it through sunglasses, purses, jeans, and high school cheerleaders before I finally realized that we’d been sitting in the car for almost thirty minutes.
“You did this deliberately,” I accused Suzume.
“Or we were having a pleasant conversation about market economics,” she said.
I glared at her.
“Okay, I did this deliberately,” she admitted. “But if I hadn’t, then you would’ve spent the entire thirty minutes bitching about how much time we were wasting. Instead now you only have to wait another ten minutes.”
“What?”
She pointed across the street at a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and one of those perfectly angled jaws that are rarely seen outside DC comics or network news anchors. His suit could’ve paid my rent for two months. He’d just gotten out of a chauffeured black Lincoln and was walking up to one of the restored brownstones that lined the streets. When the door closed behind him, the idling car started up and left.
“Okay, so some guy we’ve apparently been waiting for has gone into his house. Why do we have to wait ten minutes?”
“If we knock on his door now, then he definitely knows that we’ve been watching for him to come home and he’ll get suspicious. If we wait more than ten minutes, we run the risk that he might’ve just been getting ready to go out again, and we might miss our window. Ten minutes is just enough time for him to pee and get out another set of clothes.”
Suzume leaned into the backseat and began riffling through her duffel bag, which she’d thrown into the car before we drove down to Newport. Dragging my eyes away from the curve of her rear, which was a medal-worthy achievement in itself, I considered what she’d told me.
Generation V Page 12