Nine Lives of Chloe King

by Liz Braswell

  “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” Richard demanded, retaining his sneer but obviously accepting the excuse.

  “Remind me to tell the others that you’re the go-to guy for spiritual support,” Brian said, rolling his eyes and walking away.

  “You can’t just leave the Order,” the other boy spat after him in a final attempt at ruffling his feathers. “Nobody just ’leaves the Order.’ It’s for life.”

  “Whatever,” Brian called back.

  “Even your father knows that, Brian. He understands the rules and lives by them. He’ll do what’s right. For all of us,” he added.

  Brian kept walking, but the smile he could hear in Richard’s voice left him feeling cold.

  Twenty-four

  “Get anything yet?” Alyec needled.

  “It would be a lot easier to ’get’ a scent if you weren’t wearing so much cheap cologne,” Kim growled.

  “It’s not cheap! It’s Eternity, by Calvin Klein!”

  Chloe winced, fingering one of her mom’s rings that lay next to the sink. The whole thing would have been funny if her mom’s life wasn’t at stake. Alyec seemed to rub all of Chloe’s female friends the wrong way, not just Amy.

  The three had escaped the mansion with little attempt at covering up their trail; with Kim’s superior hearing and smell, they’d managed to eventually evade the two kizekh who had followed them. Alyec had crowed in triumph, but Chloe wasn’t so sure it really had been just that easy; perhaps Sergei thought it was safe enough for her with Alyec and Kim.

  Closer to Chloe’s house Kim had detected two seemingly random people who, on closer inspection, were making fairly regular circuits of the area around the house. The three Mai simply waited until there was a break and dashed in.

  “This is where you live?” Kim asked. Normally the girl was immediately down to business, but she seemed genuinely interested in Chloe’s life before the Mai. She moved her head back and forth, taking in everything in the living room and kitchen, eyes wide at the coffeemaker, the little TV on the counter, the garbage cans, the books on the coffee table….

  “Yeah. Pretty sweet, huh?” Alyec threw himself down on the couch, making it clear that he had been there first and was much more familiar with the territory.

  “This is where I found the … uh, ’clue.’” Chloe opened the fridge and showed her the hummus. Kim came forward to smell it, then buried her nose in her hand.

  That had been fifteen minutes ago.

  While Alyec made the occasional derisive comment and Chloe looked around for other, obvious out-of-place things that only she would be able to notice, Kim moved around the rooms, sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours, trying to catch a scent. She spent an inordinate amount of time with her nose close to, but not touching, objects, sniffing them—and Chloe couldn’t quite watch. It was too inhuman.

  “Here,” Chloe said, slipping in between Kim and Alyec, who were glaring at each other. I’m glad I have such great, supportive, helpful friends, Chloe made herself think. But maybe I should have brought only one of them. She reached into a cabinet over the sink and pulled out a full bag of gourmet coffee beans—another sign her mother hadn’t been there in a while. Normally she would have been through a “tasting”-size bag like that in about a week. She broke open the seal and held it under Kim’s nose.

  “What’s this for?” Kim said doubtfully.

  “They have little dishes of coffee beans out in fancy perfume stores and things like that,” Chloe said, shrugging. “To clear your head of all the previous scents. I thought maybe you could use it for the same thing.”

  Kim looked at her without blinking but took a deep whiff. Then she wrinkled her nose and did the cutest little wheezy sneeze Chloe had ever seen a human—Um, almost human—do. She put her nose to the air again.

  “Huh, it works,” Kim said in wonder, and got back to work, taking the bag with her and glaring at Alyec.

  “Hey,” Chloe said, remembering something. “How come the night you were teaching me how to do all those things you reeked of gasoline, not CK?”

  “Sometimes the Tenth Bladers use dogs,” he said, making little ears on the sides of his head with his hands. “Gas covers the scent. Also to keep you from recognizing me. No one knew if you were going to freak out over everything. Like if you would suddenly start talking about all of this to your mom or the press or whatever—my name wouldn’t be part of it.”

  “Well, I guess you guys lucked out about me, huh?” Chloe said dryly.

  She watched Kim continue to sniff around the apartment. She wished she could do the same sort of thing—she had tried, but the overwhelming familiarity of the house doused all other scents. Kim would occasionally point to an area or a section of a door or something, but all Chloe got was a strange unfamiliar smell, mammalian, but she couldn’t identify or distinguish it.

  She wished she could do something. Anything.

  From the fight at the bridge to here, back home, a few things had changed. This time it wasn’t Chloe who was in danger, but someone close to her. Last time she had been kicking a trained assassin’s ass, feeling every blow bring her closer to victory. This time she was just standing here, uselessly watching someone else do the only thing she could think of.

  Finally Kim stood up and shrugged. “There were two human males here and a woman who wasn’t your mother. There are traces of fear and a chemical smell that I don’t really recognize. …”

  “O-kay,” Chloe said. “But what does this mean?”

  “It means that your mom was probably kidnapped, but the kidnappers didn’t kill her. The chemical smell—it means they used something to make her pass out,” Alyec said, leaping up and coming over to the two girls with a big grin. “It means that everyone’s probably right about the Tenth Blade taking her to lure you out.”

  Kim nodded slow, grudging agreement.

  “Well … now what?”

  “Now we should go outside and see what else we can learn,” Kim said, looking worriedly out at the street.

  “You shouldn’t worry about the two Gerbers out there,” Alyec said, grinning. “I’ll lure them away and get back here ASAP.”

  “Don’t,” Chloe said as he went to the door, even though she knew it was the best thing he could do.

  “You think this is the first time I’ve done this?” He blew her a kiss and went out the back door, closing it silently as he went.

  “We’ll wait ten minutes and go,” Kim suggested.

  They were both quiet, watching the microwave clock.

  “I’m gonna run upstairs and get some of my own, you know, undies,” Chloe said after a moment.

  “Can I come?” Kim asked shyly. “I’d like to see your room.”

  “Sure.” Chloe shrugged. “C’mon.”

  She went upstairs, pushing her hands against the wall—something her mom hated—while Kim followed delicately behind. If this was an actual friend-coming-over scenario, there’d be snacks on the table or popcorn in the microwave, she thought dizzily. Here she was in her own house, late at night, her mom having “disappeared,” toting a cateared girl who seemed as anxious as a freshman to see how the cool kids lived.

  Chloe went to her dresser and began to look through its drawers, trying to disturb things as little as possible. Out of the comer of her eye she saw Kim looking around, eyes wide, paws spread as if she would like very much to touch something. Chloe wondered what the other girl’s room looked like: probably bare and ascetic, like its owner. Not covered in posters of Ani DiFranco and Kurt Cobain and Coldplay, not filled with IKEA furniture, not strewn about with Mardi Gras beads and scarves and other useless sparkly crap.

  Chloe had found Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday of her Paul Frank panty-a-day collection when she heard a slight hiss from her friend.

  She turned just in time to see Kim dive with a speed and movement completely unrecognizable as human.

  When the girl stood up again, she had a mouse between her t
humb and forefinger.

  “It looks like the vermin have already taken over in your absence,” she noted, holding the mouse above her head and eyeing it critically.

  “That’s Mus-mus,” Chloe said, putting out her hand, claws extended, and gently but firmly taking the terrified mouse from her. “He used to be my pet.”

  Kim let it go, fascinated.

  Chloe cupped her hand around the mouse with her claws so he couldn’t get out. He was obviously terrified. Any hope that his fear of her was temporary disappeared. When she’d developed claws and her other Mai attributes, he’d become as scared of her as he would be of any cat.

  “A cat with a mouse as a pet,” Kim said, almost sounding delighted. “Weird, but kind of ironic.”

  “I thought we were lions,” Chloe said, crouching and letting him go again under her bed. She fished in his old drawer for some more Cheerios to leave out for him. At least he had decided to stick around. She should be grateful for that much.

  “Well, then there’s that fable about the mouse who begged the lion who caught him to let him go.”

  Chloe vaguely remembered the story but not the details. She tried to concentrate on it so she wouldn’t cry again over Mus-mus.

  “The lion let him go, and later, when he had a thorn in his paw, the mouse pulled it out. They became friends after that.”

  “What’s the moral?”

  “Do kindness to even the least significant creatures—it may wind up helping you far more than you imagine sometime down the line.”

  “Sounds a little self-serving,” Chloe said, finally turning around and jamming the undies into her pockets.

  “Perhaps.” Kim cocked her head at her. “Who knows what thorn of yours Mus-mus may pull out?”

  “I think we can probably go now,” Chloe said, suddenly uncomfortable. Kim nodded and waited politely for Chloe to exit first, following her silently downstairs, through the house, and out the back door.

  Once outside, Kim crouched down in what would have looked like an impossible position to balance in if Chloe hadn’t known herself what it was like to be a Mai. The other girl tracked the sky and then the ground like a werewolf out of a very, very bad movie. Black against the dim light of the street she was skinny and beautiful, and for a moment Chloe felt a pang of envy.

  The Kings’ and their neighbors’ tiny patches of “yard” were separated by a fence and dwarf privet trees that grew out of brown, unhealthy-looking dirt.

  Chloe’s mom did not exactly have a green thumb with outdoor plants. Whenever she came across a pretty landscape in a magazine that might work with their minimal space, she would hold it out to Chloe, who would look at it and grunt. Sometimes there would be a trip to Home Depot or a nursery, things brought back, and diggings begun, but then Anna would take on an especially heavy caseload and would recede from the project, muttering something about hiring someone to do it.

  Chloe suddenly grew depressed when she saw a bottle cap and some gum wrappers stuck to the ground under the trees. Her house was empty; without its two occupants—its soul—it was nothing more than a monument to crappy urban living. She had to resist the urge to bolt.

  Kim had come crawling back to her, looking irritated and confused.

  “Well, it was definitely cased before they came in—I got a perfect scent trail of the two male humans.”

  “And?”

  Kim carefully cleaned off her claws, polishing them with the edge of her jeans. As prim and feline as it looked, it was as obvious as if a human were doing it that she was trying to delay an answer.

  “And?”

  “There were Mai. Two of them. Slightly younger trail. After the humans, but not by much.”

  “Oh.” Chloe thought about this. “I guess Sergei sent them to guard my mom, without telling me, to keep me from getting upset.”

  “If Sergei had sent two Mai to guard your mom and three humans showed up, your mother would still be okay, safe in her house, even now. The humans would be dead or incapacitated,” Kim said. It was obvious she had already come to her own conclusion, and its implications darkened her brow.

  “What are you saying?” Chloe grabbed the girl’s shoulders, wanting to shake her out of her neat little world of logic and puzzles. “That they were sent to kill her?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. …” Kim trailed off.

  Chloe fell back on her heels. “No!”

  “There is no real evidence, but—”

  “Why haven’t you told me this before?” Chloe demanded.

  “Because everything is watched at the house and everyone listens!” Kim hissed. “I have tried to tell you that a thousand times!”

  “Does everyone hate humans that much?” Chloe asked dully as her universe shifted.

  “It is not about hating humans—it’s about control and keeping the Pride together. The Path of Bastet involves doing it with connection, love, nurturing, and purity. The Path of Sekhmet means doing it through war and violence, by any means possible.”

  “And the current leader is a follower of Sekhmet,” Chloe realized, thinking about what Sergei had told her.

  “Once your mother is gone, you have no more connections to the outside world.”

  Chloe smiled weakly. “That’s what Brian said.”

  “Who’s Brian?”

  “He’s my—“Chloe stopped, unsure of how much to reveal. “He’s a friend of mine in the Tenth Blade who saved me, sort of, when I was fighting the Rogue and then when Alyec and I ran away. …”

  It was Kim’s turn to stare in incredulousness.

  “Your life,” she observed finally, “is very complicated. And extraordinarily dangerous.”

  “Tell me about it.” Chloe looked at the blank eyes of the house, its dead windows. “So—you think my mom is dead?”

  Kim shook her head. “If she was killed by the Mai, there would be signs. We aren’t perfectly neat killers. Ironically, it may be a good thing that the Order of the Tenth Blade—or whoever—got to her first.”

  “Hey, guys, stop with the chatting!” Alyec poked his head into the bushes where they sat. “We have about five minutes before they figure out I led them on a wild-goose chase.”

  He put out his hands and helped the two girls up. Chloe was surprised that Kim didn’t object, but the girl still seemed a little stunned by the evidence and their discussion. As they walked back, just three normal-seeming teenagers, Kim filled Alyec in on what she had found.

  “So we think she’s been kidnapped by the bastards?” Alyec asked excitedly.

  “She’s probably still being held somewhere by them, yes. Assuming it is the Tenth Blade and not someone else, for some different reason,” Kim said. “If it is them, your little diversion with their guards tonight may have bought us some time—it proves to them that Chloe is interested, or someone is interested, in coming back to this house. Which means they have a reason to keep her mom alive.”

  “Excellent,” Alyec said, rubbing his hands together. “We can have a real raid! I’ll bet Sergei knows where their HQ is. … This is going to be great! There hasn’t been any real action in years!”

  “I hardly think the leader is going to sacrifice a troupe of us and the kizekh to attack the home base of the Order of the Tenth Blade to save a woman it looks like he was meaning to have killed.”

  “Maybe we can embarrass him into it,” Alyec posited.

  “Pride leaders don’t embarrass that easily, Alyec,” Kim objected, with the faintest gleam in her eye. “I think we should look to volunteers. There are enough who think we’ve been too intimidated by the Order for years and are just itching for some payback.”

  “I wonder how many we can get.”

  “I wonder how we can avoid too much death and injury.”

  As her two friends animatedly discussed and formed plans, Chloe remained silent. In the streetlights, their three shadows climbed the empty street before them, doubled, and then receded into the light of the next to be reborn slowly again beh
ind them. They could have been Amy, Paul, and Chloe for all the detail their gross shades gave them. Just turned away from a party or something, planning great revenge, or discussing their dreams, filled with the sort of energy only walking on the streets at night can give you.

  Instead of making war counsel.

  “Hey, are you all right?” Alyec asked when they got back. Chloe still hadn’t said a word.

  “Yeah. I’m just a little … tired.” She couldn’t even smile weakly at him. “It’s a lot to think about, you know? I thought Sergei was like—”

  “Your dad?” Kim prompted quietly.

  “And now it looks like he was just going to kill—”

  “All the fun, if he catches the three of us skulking around,” Kim interrupted what Chloe was about to say, looking obviously around with her eyes. Chloe understood immediately. No more talking. Not here.

  “I should get home, anyway.” Alyec kissed her sweetly on the lips. “I’ll come back tomorrow after school and we’ll talk about this more, okay? What to do about your mom, I mean,” he added pointedly. While Alyec had seemed a little aghast at what Kim had accused Sergei of, he, too, didn’t seem particularly surprised. Between the family enmity and his desire to maybe take over someday, the boy was all gung ho about disobeying the leader—and possibly punishing the older man somehow.

  Chloe waved good night to him and Kim and went upstairs.

  Hours later she was still awake. The photos were once again spread over her quilt as she sat huddled against the headboard, knees drawn up to her chin. Sometimes Chloe would pick up a picture, like the one of her sister, and hold it in front of her face for a long time, staring at it like she was trying to see the 3-D image in one of those trick posters. She tried to feel the other girl through her face, tried to pick up some sort of impression or thought across the void. Then she would put the picture carefully back down in the exact same place it had been.

  Her photo quilt was missing quite a few panes: there should have been pictures of her mom, Amy and Paul, Marisol from the shop. All the people she hadn’t really been related to but who felt like family had been slowly replaced with people whom she was probably related to but knew little about. Kim and Olga. Igor and Valerie. Even Sergei. And what about Brian and Alyec? If things continued the way they seemed to be going, Brian and Alyec might be literally facing off in a few days.