Ninja Girl: The Nine Wiles

by Steven W. White

  The thought lingered in her mind, sensuously, until Ash finally pushed it away with an exasperated sigh. "But what do we do? They have a ninja, for crying out loud! Who was that?"

  Elsbeth's expression grew dark. "I don't know. I was not expecting her."

  "Mr. Alexander called her something." Ash found the word in her memory, bright and sharp. "Quisling. Is that a name?"

  "It used to be. Now it just means traitor."

  Ash sat on the floor in the middle of the room. "Why would a ninja do that?"

  "I don't know."

  "What could he do, to make her do that?"

  "I don't know, Ash!" Elsbeth snapped.

  Ash felt her breath stop in her throat. That was anger in Elsbeth's voice. Real frustration. Elsbeth had never lost her cool before, not in Ash's presence. Elsbeth looked away, her fingertips at her mouth.

  "She's..." Ash began quietly, carefully. "She's going to be a problem. Right? I mean, we have to fight one of our own kind."

  Elsbeth sat on the floor, knee to knee with Ash. "She is no longer one of us."

  "How do we–"

  Elsbeth leaned forward and put her hands on Ash's shoulders. "You rescued me," she repeated.

  "Why do you keep saying that?"

  "Because it means that, while the other side may have a ninja... we have a new one of our own."

  "Me?" Ash didn't buy it. "Sure. Right."

  Elsbeth narrowed her eyes. Then her face became calm, blank, inscrutable in the dim morning light. She picked up the scabbard and shook Ash's mask and gloves from it. "You stole the sword."

  Ash stared. "After everything that happened, all the mistakes I made, you're going to bug me about the sword?"

  "Ash, you weren't ready for this." Elsbeth drew the sword from the scabbard and inspected it. The blade caught the light from the window and played with it, turning it silver. "You could have cut off your foot or something. As it is, you nearly incinerated yourself. I told you not to touch the sword."

  "I just borrowed it." Ash pointed at Elsbeth. "Like you're borrowing this house."

  Elsbeth nodded. "Good."

  "Good?"

  "If you don't listen to me, I can't keep you safe. But..." Elsbeth shrugged. "It was good that you took it. Any ninja would have."

  Elsbeth's words banished the anguish from Ash's mind, and occupied the new silence there. Any ninja would have. It was time, Ash realized, for her to begin to believe.

  #

  The broom closet office of the Falcon stank of ammonia as much as it ever did. Why wouldn't that smell go away, wondered Spencer. He didn't need the distraction. His article on standardized testing was almost finished... he just needed a zinger of a final paragraph...

  "You've no idea what you've done."

  Spencer's ears perked up at the sounds echoing through the grate near the ceiling. The words were compelling, but they were nothing compared to the icy tone of that voice.

  Mr. Alexander was pissed.

  "You think you were clever, making your old man look the fool."

  Ah, so young Drake was getting chewed out. Spencer leaned back and listened. Eavesdropping wouldn't produce anything newsworthy, but his concentration was already crumbling, so why not enjoy?

  "I could tell you that we could have been killed, but I don't think you care."

  "I'm sorry, sir."

  "Don't you dare speak to me like you can apologize for what you did! Nothing you can do will make this all right. I can never forgive you, son."

  Spencer grinned. He didn't want to be the type of person who relished another's misfortune... but Drake was a bastard. So there it was.

  "What about the fire?" Drake asked.

  Spencer's grin slipped away, and he felt his ears twitch. Everyone at school was talking about the plane that caught fire on a private airstrip last night. No one had been hurt, but it had been pretty spectacular. People could see it from I-5, and it had backed up morning commuter traffic for miles. Spencer had planned to write about it, if he could just finish the standardized testing article.

  "Concerned, are you? Everything was destroyed. As far as anyone knows, it was just a plane that caught fire on a runway. We're keeping the NTSB out of it. Now get out of here – I have work to do, and I can't stand the sight of you."

  "There's just one thing, sir."

  "No. Get out."

  "Father–"

  "I've had enough of you. Out."

  "I have the page."

  Silence.

  What was Mr. Alexander's interest in the fire? Why would Drake ask about it? And how could the principal of Magnolia High School keep the National Transportation Safety Board out of anything? Spencer's antennae were now on high alert, and he started typing notes into his article draft.

  "You wouldn't dare," Mr. Alexander said quietly, "lie or joke about that."

  "So you believe me."

  "If you're telling the truth, you're in terrible danger. Not even I can protect you."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "You'll give me the page."

  Drake cleared his throat. "Ashley Prue. And her friend, the Jane Doe."

  "What about them?"

  "Drop the charges. Rescind the arrest warrants, whatever. Make it like they never happened. Ash comes back to school."

  "That's absurd. Impossible."

  "You can do the impossible. There's the phone."

  "You're bargaining with me?"

  "No, sir. You need to do these things before we can begin to bargain."

  A cold laugh from Mr. Alexander. "I admire your courage. And your skill. You've bested both the ninjas and us. Still... you're going to wake up at the bottom of Puget Sound, and there's nothing I can do to save you."

  "No one knows where the page is but me."

  "I see. Well, then. You are your father's son."

  Spencer's antennae quivered frantically. The mystery of Ashley Prue again! His mind roared with curiosity, burned it like fuel, and he knew no level of dedication to this would be enough – but oh, he would try. Forget the testing article, forget the airplane-fire article. He would phone in some boilerplate and abandoned drafts until he had the answers he sought. He'd go full-time on this. He would crack this case if it killed him.

  As he relished his new resolve, he reviewed his notes. Conspiracy, falsified criminal charges, the NTSB, and... a single strange word. He must have misheard what Mr. Alexander had said. And yet, everything had sounded clear enough. There the word was, on his screen, like a joke... or maybe a riddle.

  Ninjas.

  43

  For the next three days, Ash was seen by no one but Elsbeth. She slept on the carpet in the empty house, mostly during the day, and spent her nights outside.

  On rooftops. In trees. Under bridges.

  Looking for Drake.

  She wore the black pajamas more often than not. Her lingering doubts about being caught and having to explain her outfit had faded, since she had waited in the dark as so many eyes had passed over her – a bus driver, then a cop, then a security guard. She wondered if the ancient costume was more than just black-in-shadow – maybe it caused a sort of mental block that scrambled people's brains when they did happen to catch a glimpse.

  Or maybe they never caught a glimpse at all.

  She divided her time between Mr. Alexander's house, Drake's mom's place, Rachel's work, and Magnolia High. She even got out to Snoqualmie Falls again. She tried to check Richmond Park, on the beach by the train tracks, but she found that the place brought too many memories. They clouded her vision so badly she wasn't sure if she'd notice if he was actually there.

  No sign of him anywhere. Drake was gone.

  One morning before dawn, as she swung herself into the empty house through the window, she found Elsbeth waiting for her in the bedroom.

  "Something has happened," she said. And she refused to say more. They left together, Ash following, and raced roof-by-roof to the Prue residence.

  Ash watched her old place sus
piciously. She didn't want to be here without reason. It hurt too much. From the roof of the house across the street, she could see lights inside – the kitchen and Dad's room.

  "He's late for work," Ash muttered.

  "He hasn't been going to work," Elsbeth replied. "He's been looking for you."

  Ash swallowed back the annoying lump that formed in her throat. "I've been trying not to think about Dad. Why are we here?"

  "Look again," Elsbeth said.

  There was a piece of paper taped to the door, low, at Ash's height. She couldn't read it from here.

  "Dear Ash," Elsbeth quoted, "Charges dropped, all is forgiven, please come home – Dad."

  Ash felt a chill run down her spine. Could it be true? How was it possible? Her senses flooded with the sudden image of standing on that doorstep, of being inside her own house with her father, of seeing him and talking to him again. A bolt of terror followed – what if it wasn't true? – and she shook the image from her mind.

  "Elsbeth..." Her throat was so tight it was hard to speak. "What does it mean?"

  "We'll soon see," Elsbeth said.

  They didn't dare come any closer to the Prue house that morning. Instead, they checked for other signs. Elsbeth found personal ads in the Seattle Times and the Weekly, and two more on Craigslist. They matched the note on the door, word for word.

  At midnight, Ash went to the Magnolia High campus and picked up a discarded Falcon. There too, among the love notes of the personals, was Henry Prue's message.

  "If it's a trap," Elsbeth mused in the dark of their house later that night, "it's a strange one."

  "Dad would never go along with it," Ash whispered, "if it wasn't true." She nodded, staring at the floor. "It must be true. It must be true."

  Elsbeth set a gentle hand on Ash's shoulder. "It's time to find out."

  It rained the next morning. Just as the sky turned a bright enough gray for the streetlights to turn off, Ash stepped out the front door of their foreclosed house and made her way to her own front porch. Elsbeth had never snatched an umbrella or one of Ash's jackets, so by the time Ash reached the door, she was dripping and shivering, hugging herself against the cold.

  The note, curled and faded, was in her dad's blocky handwriting.

  Ash no longer had a house key, so she stood there, freezing. Then she knocked.

  She folded her arms and tried to squeeze away the cold. Sudden guilt overpowered her. She had run away from her father, she had destroyed her cell phone, she had caused Dad so much trouble and pain.

  What if he was angry with her?

  She closed her eyes and tried to turn her mind off, until she heard the door open.

  She opened her eyes. Dad stood there, looking at her as if she might be a ghost. He didn't speak. He wore his work slacks, a shirt and tie. She caught the scent of his aftershave, the same she had smelled for so many years that to her, it smelled like morning. He looked almost normal.

  But his eyes were not normal. They were dark, red and shining, they held trouble and pain, and they were fixed on her.

  "Hi, Dad." Her voice came out quiet and trembling.

  Dad let out a long sigh. "My... baby girl."

  He had never called her that before, not exactly those words. Not long ago, Ash wouldn't have liked the expression. Now, it didn't seem to matter.

  She reached out to him, and he swept her up in his arms.

  #

  Henry Prue made Ash return to school.

  She should have expected it. He didn't know about anything that had happened to her, or anything that she had done. Returning to school seemed beyond dangerous to Ash – Mr. Alexander would be right there, watching, within easy reach.

  Elsbeth said that was exactly why Ash had to go back. To keep the enemy close.

  And to keep up appearances. A girl of sixteen should be in school. And she couldn't exactly cite ninja training or the mission of guarding the Silent Book as an excuse.

  So Ash found herself on campus. She was a focus of attention again, even more than when she was "the girl who got attacked." Now she was "the girl who got accused," or "the girl who got busted," and sometimes "the girl who probably did it, whatever it was," and people asked her about it endlessly. What was it like? Where did you hide? Did you really do it?

  She tried to be invisible – or, given her new appreciation for that word, she tried to keep a low profile, staying out of the pages of the Falcon. She turned down a lot of interviews requested by their staff, except that annoying but strangely compassionate almost-friend, Spencer Marsh, who for some reason left her completely alone.

  The first time she saw Mule since he had been asleep on his couch, he was hunched over his copy of Huckleberry Finn at their table in the library. It was their scheduled tutoring time, but he still straightened when he saw her, his face lighting up. “Hey, it’s the fugitive.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t think so.”

  “Aw, come on.” He shrugged. “You don’t write, you don’t call. What’s the latest on your aunt?”

  She pulled out a chair and eased into it thoughtfully. “She’s… she’s out.”

  Mule raised his eyebrows. “They cut her loose? What, did she make bail?” He lowered his voice and leaned back. “Or was it more like a cloak-and-dagger thing?”

  Ash drummed her fingers on the table and pulled Huckleberry Finn away from him, peering at the cover. “You’re still reading this?”

  “Yeah, apparently there are seven hundred chapters. And it’s cool, you don’t have to give on your aunt. It’s just that, you know. You went off the other night, all alone, to track down, um, what’s his name…”

  “Drake?”

  “Yeah, I forget.”

  She smiled.

  “And I waited up all night by my new phone, on the off chance you would call. Just in case you needed me.”

  Ash frowned at him. You played video games until you fell asleep, you goof. She sighed.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He had to be wondering about Drake, even if he wouldn’t come out and ask. And wondering about the principal, and wondering about her involvement with the CIA, or whatever his best guess was today.

  But she would get no interrogation from him. That just wouldn’t be Mule – he was too laid back to pepper her with questions no matter how curious he was.

  No.

  He respected her. That was it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For being there for me.”

  Mule grinned and shrugged again. She remembered standing in the darkness of his bedroom. She had sworn to herself that she would tell him everything. Mule, I’m a ninja.

  She looked at him for a long moment, her breath caught, her mouth slightly open, the words ready to come out.

  He watched her, waiting. “What?”

  She couldn’t keep lying to him. Their friendship was too important. She owed him the truth. She just had to say it.

  She swallowed, and slid the book over to him. “So, what chapter are you on?”

  #

  Ash was pondering her new existence as she walked to third period math class, her new blue backpack over her shoulder, passing through the camera-blind space beside the math building, next to the tree that some students used to sneak up to the roof. She brushed a worn spot on the trunk, and thought fondly of Bond and James Bond.

  And almost bumped into Drake Alexander.

  He looked like he always did, his blond hair carelessly styled, his leather jacket beaded with mist, his scowl more thoughtful than angry.

  Ash's shoe squeaked on the concrete as she hit the brakes. "You!" her voice was hollow with surprise.

  Drake took in her presence with a slow inhale, his eyes narrowed. "Yeah."

  "You're going to class?" Ash said, stunned. It seemed absurd. If he had the page and his father didn't, his life had to be in as much danger as hers.

  "You too." He shrugged. "Hard to believe. But here we are. Unable to escape the need for a high school dipl
oma."

  The bell rang, and the flow of students around them thinned until they stood alone, watching each other, beside the tree with its worn spots. Pigeons fluttered and cooed on the picnic tables in the quad.

  Ash wanted to talk to him, but wasn't sure what to say. "Thank you," is what came out. "For what you did on the plane."

  Drake looked away. "My father doesn't know how to hold one of those."

  "You never gave him the page."

  His eyes locked on to her. He didn't say anything.

  "Where is it now?" Ash wished she could have phrased it better, or used some of Elsbeth's persuasion. It would have been great to charm the information out of him, instead of asking straight out like a dope. She needed more Wiles.

  Drake didn't react to the question. "I hear the charges against you were dropped. A big misunderstanding." The slightest grin touched his lips. "That's great to hear."

  Ash's mind whirled until it locked on: he had traded the page.

  Traded it for her. "You..." she gasped. "You didn't!"

  He took a step closer to her. "You're safe now." He arced an eyebrow. "Well, safer. That's all I wanted."

  A chill welled up from Ash's heart, making her feel sick. "You're one of them. I thought maybe there was a chance that we could... but no. You're the enemy. Drake, how could you?"

  "I had no choice. Ash, if you knew..." His scowl melted away. He took a step closer to her and drew his hands from his pockets, as if he might embrace her. His hands hovered, imploring. "I'm sorry. But you and me... we can't be together. It's not in the cards, and how we feel about it doesn't count for shit. So if I can keep you alive, then that's what I'll do."

  The sickness spread through Ash until her entire body felt hollow. Drake's words had emptied her out – there was nothing left of her.

  She shook her head sadly. "No, Drake. You betrayed the both of us. And now I have to let you go."

  Drake's chin lifted and his mouth opened, about to protest – but he didn't. "That," he said, and his voice sounded as if he were under some great strain, "would be for the best."

  Ash couldn't take any more. She turned and walked away, and kept walking.