by Liz Braswell
“They never said anything about a place called Abkhazia either. …”
“The issues surrounding it and the country itself are not commonly known to Western … ah… normal people.”
“Well, I’ve always wanted a sister,” Chloe said softly, hoping to cheer up the other girl.
“I have been looking for years.” Kim sighed. “Sergei has a whole department dedicated to trying to track down all of our relatives: parents, family trees, missing cousins. … We even send things out for genetic testing to establish relationships.”
“Wow. That’s impressive.” Actually it sounded a little nuts, like a more proactive version of Amy’s grandmother and her family tree obsession.
“It’s survival, Chloe,” Kim said, fixing Chloe’s eyes with her own. “There are very few of us left.”
Both of them were silent for a moment.
“Ah, Chloe!” Sergei came bounding in, arms outstretched as if he was going to hug her again. She shrank reflexively back, not from distaste but fear of being squeezed to death. “My meetings are over, and it is time for lunch.” He stopped short of actually hugging her, giving a casual, uninterested nod toward Kim. “I thought you could join me. We’ll get some nice salads or whatever you young kids eat today. And I can show you what we do here.”
“Sure, if you don’t mind. …” She turned, but Kim was already silently padding out of the room, again, like Olga, backing away, facing Sergei until the last minute before turning.
“Also, I told Valerie and Olga to scare you up some clothes. What are you, size eight?”
Chloe jumped. A brief worry that he might not be taking care of her in a strictly fatherly fashion must have flashed over her face.
Sergei chuckled. “My family were leatherworkers, Chloe. In Sokhumi. I grew up among vests and coats and saddles and knowing how to fit a customer.” Sergei put his arm around her shoulders and began to lead her out.
“Uh, can I ask one question? If it’s not rude?” she ventured.
“Anything, Chloe.”
“Why does Kim—I mean, do we all … I mean … the ears?” She made a motion with her finger.
Sergei rolled his eyes. “Kim is a very religious person. She is following a particular path to bring her closer to the Goddesses. In her beliefs, it is what we all looked like a long time ago.”
“She … wants to look that way?”
“Something like that. She’s a very intelligent and pious girl, but kind of … zealous.” The older man said it in the exact same tone Alyec had said “a freak.”
“Do you worship—?” She wanted to say “the Goddesses,” “ancient Egyptian gods,” or some such, but it was hard while they passed copy machines and short-sleeved cubicle slaves at messy, piled desks.
“It is hard for anyone who grew up in the shadow of the Communist Soviet Union to really worship anything,” he said gently. “I follow Sekhmet as best as I can. Olga was raised sort of Russian Orthodox, with some worship of Bastet, too.”
They stopped in an office of slightly calmer people with bigger desks. Chloe recognized Igor, shouting in Russian on a phone. Standing next to him was an assistant, a boy about Brian’s age, with trendy thick glasses and a look of resigned hopelessness.
“Is everyone here … Mai?” Chloe whispered.
“To the last one. I built up this little real estate empire so everyone could have a place to work with their own people if they chose.”
“Does everyone … in the pride … work here?”
Sergei shook his head. “Valerie, Igor’s fiancée, is a model. Simone is a dancer. And Kim does her own thing, as they say. But it’s difficult for us to hold down corporate jobs—people can sniff out the wolves among the sheep, or the cats among the … well, you know. We don’t fit in.”
Chloe looked at Igor. He seemed like a normal overworked human male. His tie was thrown over his shoulder and his shoes were trendy. He took notes with a pencil and played with a desk toy as he spoke. But the way he arched his back, and the way the light hit his brown eyes and made them glow for a moment, and the way he swung his head to look at Sergei and Chloe and didn’t blink—taken all together, there was indeed something very different about him.
Igor put one hand over the receiver and held out the other when he saw Chloe and Sergei standing there.
“Hello,” he said in an accent that was noticeably Russian. Or noticeably something.
“I’m Chloe.” She felt something strange poke her on her skin as she shook his hand— and realized that his claws had come out and were gently pricking her. A secret greeting, she realized, trying to do it back. She pressed too hard, though, underestimating her strength. Igor pulled back his hand, grinning ruefully, and sucked on the pad of his palm where she had drawn blood.
“I’ve never done that before,” Chloe said, blushing. “The handshake thing.”
Sergei thought it was hysterical.
“That’s my girl. A man-eater!” He slapped her so hard on the back, she almost pitched into Igor’s lap. But he was already shouting back into the phone.
“Igor is my right-hand man. I’d be helpless without him,” Sergei confided. Somehow, Chloe didn’t believe that. “Right now he’s working on an old, uh, massage parlor near Union Square. We plan to put franchises in it, like Starbucks. Maybe a Quiznos.”
“That’s terrible,” Chloe said before she could stop herself. “I mean, that must be very profitable.” She paused. “But I mean, it might have a bad history, but at least the place has, you know, an interesting one. Not a strip-mall-y one.”
“Ah, you’re one of those.” Sergei sighed. “If it’s any consolation, we just worked with the city to turn the space next to a vacant lot into a city-subsidized childcare center for low-income women and the lot into a community garden for them.”
“Hell of a tax break,” Igor whispered, holding his hand over the receiver again.
Sergei frowned at him, and the boy went meekly back to work.
“At least consider a bookstore,” Chloe pleaded. “Even a Barnes & Noble.”
“Look at this, I have my own little spiritual adviser.” Sergei fluffed the hair on her head. “Maybe we’ll put you to work while you’re not in school—like an intern. Then you can make your voice heard. Heh. Come, let’s order lunch.” He whirled his arm around Chloe’s shoulders, and dragged her with him.
Five
“The emergency meeting of the Order will now come to session.”
It was a lot less formal than most of the meetings Brian was forced to attend: in daylight, no less, and in normal street clothes. Well, street clothes for me. Suits for all of these old—
“Purpose?” his father asked ritually, for the stenographer to take down. Brian watched in disgust as his dad, Whitney Rezza, flexed his fingers, admiring the ancient gold ring and his own manicured fingernails. Metrosexuals had nothing on his dad. He’d practically invented the style.
“To determine once and for all what to do about Chloe King,” said The Nonce. The Nonce was Edna Hilshire in real life and a dead ringer for Dame Judith Anderson. Her age, short hair, dry wit, and sharp, piggy little brown eyes all made her seem as powerful as she was—so were most of the inner circle of the Order. Rich, white, and mostly middle-aged. Brian’s grandfather, the venerable Elder of this Conclave, was ancient. He at least seemed to understand Brian’s hesitation to go along with the group about Chloe, if not forgive it. Or permit it, more importantly, thought Brian.
“Directly or indirectly, she is responsible for the Rogue’s death.” This was said by weaselly Richard, the little yes-man Brian’s dad loved to keep around. Richard—Dick—might be Whit Rezza’s favorite, but almost everyone else referred to him as Dickless. He was doing all he could to become leader someday. It was a position that Brian had once hoped for and had almost been guaranteed, due to his lineage, but then things had changed. Everything had changed when he met Chloe.
Brian had never chosen to be part of this world of Tenth Bladers, unl
ike Richard, who chose to join of his own free will. There was something about secrecy, rituals, devotion, and danger that seemed to draw people in at every age, Brian reflected bitterly.
Brian never would have chosen this life for himself. If he’d ever had any choice, that is. That was how he’d somehow wound up at a committee meeting determining the fate of the only girl he’d ever felt strongly about. Maybe even loved.
“She is not directly—or even indirectly responsible for his death,” Brian repeated tiredly for the thousandth time since that night, when he had returned home from the fight on the bridge. He ran his hand through his dark brown hair, normally full, now lank with exhaustion and sweat. “Alexander Smith came to kill her, and she defended herself. What’s more, when he slipped off the bridge by his own actions, she put out a hand to save him.”
“I find that highly unlikely,” Richard said primly.
“Shut up,” Brian snapped at him. “You weren’t even there.”
“Easy, Novitiate,” Edna said. “You are almost out of line.” But she said it with a faint smile. “While I, too, find it hard to believe that anyone, Mai or human, would try to help someone who just tried to kill her, the only witness we have at present is Brian.”
“Whose views are obviously prejudiced,” his father stated in the rich, stirring tones of a leader. “Let it be noted that I will not allow love for my own son to interfere with the facts of the proceedings.”
Like it’s ever interfered before, thought Brian.
“There is no proof of the Rogue’s death,” Ramone, the minute-taker, offered. He was a tall, gaunt young man, every inch the Librarian he was supposed to be—except for his healthy skin tone and fairly radiant brown eyes. He wasn’t much older than Brian but already sounded ancient. “I have gone through police and hospital records. No bodies have washed ashore, or been trawled, or—”
“That means nothing,” Brian’s father said again. “He fell. Defending himself.”
“From a girl who was defending herselfl” Brian protested.
“Strike that last statement,” Mr. Rezza ordered Ramone. “It is of no consequence and out of order.”
“You know, it was you people who first put me onto her case,” Brian said angrily.
“Yes, and we expected you to follow, befriend, and observe the Mai in question. We did not ask you to become her advocate!”
“Let us turn to the mother,” Edna interrupted politely, clasping her hands on the table. She too wore a ring of the Order, but it was smaller, in an orange gold that was different than that of Brian’s dad’s. “Is she safe?”
“For now.” Brian didn’t miss the look his dad gave Edna: We’ll discuss it later, it said.
“Well, that is one thing we can be grateful for.” The old woman leaned forward, spreading her hands. “Let us continue tracking Chloe, much more closely this time, using someone, ah …” She glanced in apology to Brian. “Not directly involved with her heretofore. As long as we know where she is, we can make our decision at any time, and meanwhile, we can watch to see if she does anything else violent.”
“That seems reasonable,” Ramone said.
“All right,” Brian’s dad said. “Agreed. Brian, you are off the case. Really. If you are caught anywhere near Chloe King again—there will be consequences.”
Like what? You’ll dock my allowance? You’ll ground me? You’ll somehow let Mom get killed again? Brian’s dark brown eyes burned with a rusty fire deep within. His father had punished him enough already for an entire lifetime. He couldn’t possibly do any more.
“Where was she last seen?”
“Running away from the bridge. The National Guard was alerted to the Rogue’s presence by her friends,” Brian mumbled.
“Her human friends,” Edna said. Brian nodded.
“She wound up on the Marin Headlands, but I lost her there.”
“Was anyone else with her?”
His father looked him straight in the eye. His were a rheumy old blue like a dark sky with clouds; Brian had gotten most of his looks from his mom.
Brian thought about Alyec, the dropdead gorgeous “other” boyfriend of Chloe’s, the highschool student, another Mai. One who could touch and kiss Chloe and not die from doing it, unlike Brian.
His nemesis.
“No,” he said slowly. “She was completely alone.”
Six
Take these over to Misha,” the feral receptionist flatly ordered Chloe, dropping a stack of contracts into her arms.
Chloe sighed and began the task of trying to find yet another hidden office in the archaic complex that was Firebird. It was strange to go from a halogen-lit bright copy room with faxes, computers, copiers, and phones, for instance, to a tiny bathroom with a pull-chain toilet and a steam radiator that took up half the room.
Sergei had followed up his own suggestion that she intern a bit around the office to alleviate boredom and was paying her a fairly decent ten bucks an hour. Fine, she couldn’t actually go out and spend anywhere, but the thought was nice. And she was learning a lot about the business of real estate, most importantly that this was one thing she definitely did not want to do when she grew up.
She knocked on a door she thought was Misha’s, one of the in-house paralegals, but instead walked in on Igor and his gorgeous blond fiancée, Valerie, staring at each other starry-eyed on a couch.
“Uh, sorry,” Chloe muttered, hastily closing the door. She was looking up and down the hallway again, trying to figure out where she was, when her cell phone rang. She had accidentally left it on after checking her voice mail, listening to more messages from Amy. Well, at least she’s properly worried. Teaches her for ditching me for so long, Chloe couldn’t help thinking.
She looked at the caller ID and sucked in her breath.
“Hello?” she asked quietly. No one had said anything explicitly against her using the cell phone, but somehow she suspected they wouldn’t be particularly thrilled about the idea, either.
“Chloe? It’s Brian.”
From his voice it was obvious he didn’t know what to expect; he sounded hesitant but urgent. The scene at the Marin Headlands flashed through her mind again: running with Alyec, Alyec falling, a throwing star sticking out of his leg. Above the two of them Brian, with another throwing star in his hand.
“What do you want?”
There was a long pause; she heard him swallowing, could picture his brooding, handsome face as he tried to come up with the right thing to say. She could practically see him frowning a little, his brow knitting over his dark, bottomless eyes.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked.
“I’m fine. I’m with some people who are protecting me.”
“You … found the Pride, then.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised by his deduction; who else would it be? The police? The federal witness protection program, as Sergei had told her mom?
“Yes,” she answered evenly. “And they’re going to try to find out who my parents are, too. What happened to my biological family.” Why am I telling him this stuff? Why do I still want him to know about my life? About me?
“Oh.” There was another pause. Chloe was a little disappointed, but after all, he couldn’t really say, “That’s nice,” or “Good for you,” when the people involved were outright enemies of his organization. Whatever his personal beliefs were, the group he belonged to had only one intention: to wipe out the Mai or keep them under control. It was still hard for Chloe to understand.
“Chloe, I really was trying to help you on the bridge.”
“Really? By almost cutting Alyec’s hamstring in half?”
“I told you,” he said impatiently. “If you two had kept running that way, you would have wound up right in the middle of an outpost. And believe me, there may not be many members as psychotic as the Rogue, but there are more than enough members of the Tenth Blade who wouldn’t think twice about taking down a pair of Mai. Especially one that was somehow involved in the death
of the Rogue.”
“I didn’t …” But she trailed off when she realized what he’d actually said. He hadn’t said that she had killed him. He hadn’t even said that she was responsible for his death. “Well, you had no trouble targeting Alyec. Why weren’t you able to get the Rogue in the throat?”
“Chloe,” he said a little pleadingly, a little sadly. “Do you think it’s easy to just kill another person? Even if they’re doing something awful? Especially if he’s a … friend of the family?”
Chloe didn’t want to listen to this. He should have just wanted to save her and not given a thought to anything else. That was what she wanted—or at least that was what she wanted to hear.
“Even you weren’t ready to let him die,” he said quietly. “I saw you give him your hand.”
He had a good point. Why had she tried to help save her own assassin? Because it seemed like the right thing to do. So why did she blame Brian for not automatically coming to her aid and killing for her?
“I have never killed anyone,” he added. “Not human, not Mai, not anyone. And I don’t want to start.”
“You could have done something,” Chloe muttered, feeling childish and not knowing why.
“It looked like you were doing a pretty good job yourself.”
She could hear the smile in his voice, beyond the sadness. For just an instant, she wished she could see him. She could just imagine him reaching over and stroking her cheek at that point or touching her hand. …
And suddenly she realized something.
“I know why you didn’t want to kiss me,” she said slowly, not caring that it had nothing to do with what they were just talking about. She remembered her conversation with Sergei that morning and with Alyec, days ago, when he’d first seen her with Brian.
“You haven’t done anything with him.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yeah? How would you know?”
“He’s still alive.” Alyec grinned at her. “You would tear a boy like that up and spit him back out when you were done.”
He had been deadly serious, not speaking metaphorically at all. She thought about what had happened to Xavier and the time Brian had almost thrown her away from him when she was trying to steal a kiss.