Daughter of Danger: The Dark Avenger's Sidekick Book One (Moth & Cobweb 4)

by John C. Wright

  A tiny light like a lightning bug zipped past Ami’s nose. It twinkled and flew under the door to the lady’s room, and Elfine came out of the lady’s room a moment later. She was missing her coat.

  Ami said, “You were right. I spoke to a nurse who spoke to a doctor I did not see. I think he called the police. The coppers. Who are probably on their way here right now.”

  Elfine pushed the button to summon the elevator with her toe as before. The door opened. Two police officers were in the car. Elfine smiled and stepped aside for the officers to step into the corridor and then pulled Ami into the elevator car and pushed the button for the top floor.

  Ami said, “Where are we going?”

  Elfine said, “The security storeroom is on the top floor. I hope you found out your name?”

  “Jane Doe.”

  “That does not sound like a Japanese name!”

  “I am pretty sure that is not my real name. But I was in room Six Oh One Six. Why are we going to the security storeroom?”

  “Well, what do you think an emergency room crew would do if an unconscious woman carrying a weapon were brought into the emergency room?”

  “Why do you assume I was carrying a weapon?”

  “How else would you fight crime?”

  The elevator doors opened. This corridor was not carpeted, and there were no soothing pictures on the wall. There were a pair of vending machines to one side and a line of doors to the other. The first of the doors was metal. There was a keypad next to the door.

  Ami walked up. “Should we knock?”

  Elfine said, “There was no one inside a minute ago. Wait here.” She dwindled to a bright speck and flew up into an air vent. A moment later she opened the door from the inside. “Come in!”

  Inside was a desk with a computer on it. The room was bisected by a wall of wire mesh with a barred door in it and locked with a padlock. Beyond that was a row of upright lockers, labeled with tags. Two of them read JANE DOE rm 6016.

  “Pot at the end of the rainbow!” cried Elfine. “Or two pots.”

  Ami tugged on the barred door, frowning at the padlock. Elfine dwindled to a speck and passed between the bars, swelling in a spray of sparks back to normal size on the far side. “This isn’t a door I can open for you. But the lockers are not locked!”

  And she pulled open the first of the two doors.

  Inside the locker were a quiver of arrows and the most beautiful bow Ami could imagine. It was a Japanese bow called a daikyu, or great bow.

  This one was not made in the traditional way, of hardwood with bamboo laminations, but seemed to be made of a white substance like ivory. In shined in the dim light like a bride in a gown. It was asymmetrical, with a grip of white leather two-thirds from the top of the bow. It was wrapped with fine black rattan and gilded with thin leaves of red alloy. Black, red, and shining white the great bow stood, a single perfect curve of grace and strength.

  There was an ache in Ami hands. Ami rubbed her fingers and felt calluses between her first and second fingers. “It is hamayumi, an evil-destroying bow. Those two white arrows are haya and otoya. They are for killing hungry ghosts.”

  “And the red arrows?”

  “For killing people.”

  “Is it is yours?” asked Elfine.

  Ami said, “No. I am its.”

  Elfine opened the other locker door.

  3. Fox Mask

  On a hanger was a dark gray one-piece garment like a catsuit with a hip-length cape. Folded in the bottom of the locker were a pair of black thigh-high boots and a pair of black opera gloves and also kneepads, elbow pads, and leathers bracers designed to attach snugly to the gloves and boots.

  On a coathook to one side was a wide golden belt consisting entirely of holsters, scabbards, and pouches. Below this was a plastron, like a shaped leather breastplate, designed to protect the bosom of an archeress against her bowstring.

  On a coathook to the other side was a full-face stylized fox mask from a Noh play. The mask was dark red with black markings around the eyes, a white jaw and bib, gold eye-lenses, gold teeth, and gold earhairs shining the triangular ears. It seemed to stare at them with a sinister merriment. The back of the mask had a cowl attached, making exactly the type of snug cap Ami had been wishing for earlier.

  Elfine said, “All of this is too large to fit through the bars.”

  “What happens if you shrink down while holding something?”

  “Most things like staying the size they are. Green is the best color for shrinking.”

  “Does that mean yes or no?”

  Elfine pouted. “It means there are rules. I am not a Daughter of Eve. I cannot just order nature to obey me!”

  “So what is the rule?”

  “Friendly objects will shrink if I ask.”

  “Friendly?”

  “Suitable things. You know how some colors clash and some match. You can tell by looking. This?” she pointed at the black costume. “This is superheroine gear for a ninja crimefightress. It’s too dark and serious to look right on me. It’s not the right…” she rolled her eyes, groping for a word. “…not the right genre. It’s not mine.”

  Ami said, “Bring me the belt.”

  4. Utility Belt

  Elfine brought it near, but the meshes stretched between the bars of the locked door were set too thickly for her to fit more than a finger between. Ami asked Elfine to hold the belt flush to the door, and Ami reached through and touched the differently shaped holsters, pouches, and compartments.

  One by one they opened. The waist belt contained throwing stars and barbs, arrowheads, hypodermic heads, a flashlight that could also be tuned to UV or IR, ultra-small gas grenades, ultra-small flash grenades, two flares, bugging devices as small as coins, tracer devices even smaller, a first-aid kit, miniature binoculars, a wire-harpoon, or “wirepoon” gun, no larger than a derringer, that used a silent explosive to fire a grappling hook and line.

  A narrow pouch held skeleton keys and a locksmith’s pick. These were small enough to fit through the mesh.

  5. Lockpick

  Ami knelt down and began picking the padlock. Elfine squealed in delight, put the belt down, dwindled to firefly size, and skated through the bars so that she could look over Ami’s shoulder and make helpful suggestions.

  It was frustrating. It seemed to Ami that her fingers could remember what to do, but not her brain, so Ami basically had to try wiggling and feeling around inside the lock by trial and error, until some instinct made her fingers twitch correctly. She had to keep her mind clear in order to separate the true impulses from mere nervousness.

  Elfine was on her fiftieth helpful suggestion with no end in sight. The fifty-first suggestion involved asking ant colonies for help. The fifty-second suggestion was to bribe the gremlin who lived in the air conditioner with a kiss. The fifty-third was to highjack a high-speed magnetic levitation train from Japan and drive it through the door as a battering ram.

  Ami breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying to sap the power of the frustration building in her.

  Elfine was saying, “…maximum operating speed is two hundred miles an hour!”

  Ami said gently, “Perhaps you could help in some other way, Elfine. Is there something else detective-like you could think to do?”

  Elfine looked crestfallen. “Well, sure… I guess…”

  Ami closed her eyes and cleared her mind. Without anyone talking in her ears, it was easy to let her hands work. She suddenly realized the hooked implement was a tension wrench. She applied a slight pressure to the bottom of the keyhole, inserted the pick at the top of the lock, and scrubbed the pick back and forth in the keyhole. She prodded each pin, testing its tension. The most stubborn pin to push would be the first one to set… then the next…

  She lost track of time. It might have been a minute later, or ten, when the cylinder turned, and the padlock clattered open. Ami stared at the open lock in elation.

  She looked over her sho
ulder. Elfine was sitting at the desk, tapping the keys on the computer keyboard idly, and sipping a soft drink from a can. When Elfine saw the door was open, she leaped up, squealing with glee. “Now we can dress you!”

  Ami said, “Wait. What?”

  “Aren’t you going to try it on? You cannot store it here: that might compromise your secret identity. Don’t you have a fortress of solitude or some sort of a cave where you keep it? A fox den?”

  “But how do we know this is mine? Even if it is, I cannot just take it without asking!”

  Elfine looked bewildered. “Why not? They took it from you! Without asking!”

  Ami said, “We don’t know they took it without asking. What if I told them to put it here before I lost my memory?”

  Elfine stood and advanced on her menacingly. “Here! This is liquid sugar. It will clear your head.” She pushed the can of cola into Ami’s hand. Cold drops had condensed on the outside of the red and white aluminum can. “You’re not thinking straight. This is the forensics patient department. Where they put criminals and other dangerous people who need hospital work done on them. Putting on your supersuit might remind you of something your brain forgot!”

  Ami took a sip. It tasted terrible. She decided that she was not someone used to drinking soft drinks. The bubbles tickled her nose. She put the can down. “You just like dressing and undressing people.”

  “Of course! Who doesn’t? A new outfit is magic! One never knows what new aspect of your soul will be revealed!”

  Ami reached out and stroked the black smooth fabric of the catsuit. That decided her. She had to try it on!

  Ami looked nervously at the door. “What if someone comes?”

  “If a mortal sees you naked, turn him into a deer, and have his own hounds tear him to bits!”

  Ami looked at her askance. “Can we do that?”

  “No, but our ancestors could. Our powers fade year by year as each generation growers smaller, pettier, and crueler.” Elfine said, “There is a swimming pool on the fifteenth floor. They must have a place for ladies to change in private! Americans are elf-struck, but they have not lost all vestiges of civilization yet.”

  6. Pop Quiz

  The two gathered up the suit and gear in a trice, closed the grilled door, and relocked the padlock. Elfine turned off the computer screen and grabbed her half-consumed can of cola. They walked to the elevator, with Ami walking in a normal gait and Elfine sneaking on her tiptoes, her hands held before her, wrists high and fingers pointed downward, in an exaggerated pantomime of sneaking.

  Elfine cried out a cheery hello to any one of the several people who entered the elevator at various floors, asking how their children or pets were doing, or asking their opinions of the weather or the next lunar eclipse. One or two of the men looked with curiosity at the seven-foot-tall longbow Ami was carrying, but when Elfine engaged them in talk, their eyes were riveted on her face and figure. One younger man plucked up his courage and asked Elfine for her number, and Elfine replied that it was forty-nine.

  The various women with whom she spoke complained about their ailments, except for one fat woman who took out photographs of her Welsh Corgi, which she showed to Elfine, and both were wreathed in smiles, sighing and cooing with pleasure over how cute the photos of the little dog were. Ami looked on in astonishment and decided she must not be a dog person.

  The two girls stepped off at the fifteenth floor and followed signs to the swim therapy pool.

  Ami said, “You are drawing attention to us.”

  “What?”

  “Just now, on the elevator. If there are police—coppers—here in the building looking for us–”

  Elfine shook her head. “Unless they are poets, or lucid dreamers, or Irish, they won’t remember us. Hey! Hold the door!” and she skipped down the hall to where an older gentleman with white hair was exiting the swimming room. When Elfine took the door from his hand, he said, “I think you are supposed to have a key card to get in.”

  Elfine said, “That’s okay! I don’t have one, but I am working on a case! My friend has lost her memory. She saved my life last night! In the flag! She smites evil!”

  That answer, for some reason, seemed to satisfy him because he smiled at the two pretty girls and held the door for them.

  The locker room was paved in white tile, with mirrors and sinks to one side and shower stalls and lockers to the other.

  Elfine put her soda can carefully upright into the sink to cover the drain. “Let me help you change! I can make the new outfit look pretty on you. It’s one of my talents.”

  Ami put the outfit and belt, the longbow and quiver carefully on coat hangers and drew off her shoes and stockings.

  Ami was shrugging off the business jacket Elfine had loaned her, when something rustled in the pocket. She put her hand in and pulled out a scrap of paper, on which were written some names and phone numbers and items one might buy at a convenience store.

  In other words, it was the type of list no one with a photographic memory would ever have need of.

  Ami looked from the list to the smiling Elfine. Elfine’s face fell. “Is something wrong?”

  “Elfine, where did you get the soft drink from?”

  She said, “From the vending machine. If you get small, you can go up inside and push this little metal thing aside, so the can falls into the hopper. The gremlin told me. Should I not have listened to him? He seemed so helpful. It’s called pop! The drink, not the gremlin. His name is Tom Knock Niss.”

  Ami said, “The apartment we stayed in last night…”

  Elfine smiled again. “Wasn’t it lovely! You must admit I picked a good one!”

  Ami said, “…who owns it?”

  Elfine cocked her head to one side. “Owns?”

  “To whom does that apartment belong? Who pays the rent?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “How did you find that apartment?”

  “A house-hob I let free out of the whiskey bottle of a fat magician told me how to find it. His name was Sly Jack Crookshank. The hob, I mean. The magician was named Willy.”

  “Who slept in that room last night before you and I came there?”

  “Oh. Um. I didn’t know there was going to be a quiz! Don’t tell me! I can figure this one out!” She screwed up her eyes. “Her name is Sharon. It was written in her diary. She is worried about her fiancée, whom she thinks is in love with her best friend Ruthie because they both act weird around her. She is going to marry him in October. Unless she breaks it off with him, but that will break her mother’s heart, who thinks she is too old to get married. So: Sharon! Did I get the right answer?” Elfine crossed both her fingers, raised both eyebrows, and looked hopeful.

  Ami blushed with anger. “Then all this is stolen! You made me a thief!”

  Elfine look at her with wide and innocent eyes, utterly empty of guile. “The servants gave them to me. The servants told me it would be charged to the room if I signed a bit of paper they gave me, so I did.”

  “That is fraud! The woman who owned the apartment is going to be charged hundreds of dollars, or thousands, for these clothes!”

  Elfine’s lower lip trembled. “But– but you told me to find you a hot bath and warm meal! And I did that! You could not sleep where I do, in a swallow’s nest in Central Park, because you are too big! After you saved my life, I could not refuse to grant your wish.” Now Elfine’s expression changed, becoming cross. “You should have worded your wish more carefully! Now you are all mad at me, and I don’t like that one bit!”

  Ami scowled, her lips compressed.

  Ami said, “And this costume, whatever it is…”

  “Your supersuit!”

  “…whatever it is, we cannot take it without permission!”

  Elfine sniffed a bit, and looked over her shoulder at Ami. “If we give those clothes back to Sharon, you have to take them off. She can’t wear them if you are wearing them! And then if you put your supersuit back to t
he security room, you’ll be naked. And if you do that, you cannot go play in the fountain in the park! I know because a copper told me!”

  Ami said, “Don’t you know the difference between good and bad?”

  Elfine said, “I know the difference between fun and glum. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “If you are a detective, you have to know what breaking the law means!”

  “I told you I was a rogue! A loveable rogue! You don’t listen!”

  Elfine was on the verge of tears, which meant that what she had told her about being immune to melancholy might not have been true.

  Ami was angry, but did not want to see the younger girl cry. She also did not want to argue with the only friend and helper she had. The elfin girl had, after all, saved her from sleeping half-naked in the gutter. Maybe fairyland was different, and they did not understand about private property.

  Ami breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. She knelt down on the tile, eyes focused on nothing, simply breathing, clearing her mind, and waiting for all anger and dark emotion to depart from her. So she knelt for several minutes while Elfine looked on, puzzled, peering at her now from the left and now from the right.

  Ami stood and spoke in a serene voice. “We must make right whom we have wronged, including Sharon, and anyone else on whom we have trespassed. Did you keep the receipts?”

  “There were bits of paper in the packages with numbers on them. I can recite the numbers if you like. Why were you sitting so still just now? Are you all right?”

  Ami said, “Pour the rest of that soda pop away. You can’t drink it because it is stolen. Once we find a quarter, we can put it in the machine.”

  “Six quarters,” said Elfine. “So! Now what? Are you going to try on the suit?”