by Smith, L. J.
“Okay,” Matt said, trying his best to seem like an all-around friendly guy.
Mrs. Saitou gestured him up the stairs and he peeped into several rooms before he found one with a large futon in the exact middle of a completely bare floor, and in it a woman who seemed so tiny and doll-like as not to be real.
Her hair was just as soft and black as the sword-woman’s downstairs. It was put up or arranged somehow so that it lay around her like a halo as she lay on the bed. But the dark lashes on the pale cheeks were shut and Matt wondered if she had fallen into one of the sudden slumbers of the elderly.
But then quite abruptly, the doll-like lady opened her eyes and smiled. “Why, it’s Masato-chan!” she said, looking at Matt.
Bad beginning. If she didn’t even recognize that a blond guy wasn’t her Japanese friend from about sixty years ago…
But then she was laughing, with her small hands in front of her mouth. “I know, I know,” she said. “You’re not Masato. He became a banker, very rich. Very thick. Especially in the head and the stomach.”
She smiled at him again. “Sit down, please. You can call me Obaasan if you want, or Orime. My daughter was named for me. But life has been hard for her, as it was for me. Being a shrine maiden—and a samurai…it takes discipline and much work. And my Orime did so well…until we came here. We were looking for a town that would be peaceful and quiet. Instead, Isobel found…Jim. And Jim was…untrue.”
Matt’s throat swelled with the desire to defend his friend, but what defense could there be? Jim had spent one night with Caroline—at Caroline’s pressing invitation. And he had become possessed and had brought that possession to his girlfriend Isobel, who had pierced her body grotesquely—among other things.
“We’ve got to get them,” Matt found himself saying earnestly. “The kitsune who started it all—who started it with Caroline. Shinichi and his sister Misao.”
“Kitsune.” Obaasan was nodding her head. “Yes, I said there would be one involved from the very beginning. Let me see; I blessed some charms and amulets for your friends….”
“And some bullets. I just sort of filled my pockets,” Matt said, embarrassed, as he spilled out a jumble of different calibers on the edge of her futon cover. “I even found some prayers on the Web about getting rid of them.”
“Yes, you’ve been very thorough. Good.” Obaasan looked at the hard copies he’d printed of the prayers. Matt squirmed, knowing that he had only been running down Meredith’s To-Do list, and that the credit really belonged to her.
“I’ll bless the bullets first and then I’ll write out more amulets,” she said. “Put the amulets wherever you need protection most. And, well, I suppose you know what to do with the bullets.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Matt fumbled in his pockets for the last few, put them into Obaasan’s outstretched hands. Then she chanted a long, elaborate prayer holding her tiny hands out over the bullets. Matt didn’t find the incantation frightening, but he knew that as a psychic he was a dud, and that Bonnie had probably seen and heard things he couldn’t.
“Should I aim for any particular part of them?” Matt asked, watching the old woman and trying to follow along on his own copy of the prayers.
“No, any part of the body or head will do. If you take out a tail, you’ll make it weaker, but you’ll enrage it, as well.” Obaasan paused and coughed, a small dry old-lady cough. Before Matt could offer to run downstairs and get her a drink, Mrs. Saitou entered the room with a tray and three cups of tea in little bowls.
“Thank you for waiting,” she said politely as she knelt fluidly to serve them. Matt found with the first sip that the steaming green tea was much better than he’d expected from his few experiences at restaurants.
And then there was silence. Mrs. Saitou sat looking at the teacup, Obaasan lay looking white and shrunken under the futon cover, and Matt felt a storm of words building up in his own throat.
Finally, even though good sense was counseling him not to speak, he burst out, “God, I’m so sorry about Isobel, Mrs. Saitou! She doesn’t deserve any of this! I just wanted you to know that I—I’m just so sorry, and I’m going to get the kitsune who’s at the bottom of it. I promise you, I’ll get him!”
“Kitsune?” Mrs. Saitou said sharply, staring at him as if he’d gone mad. Obaasan looked on in pity from her pillow. Then, without waiting to gather up the tea things, Mrs. Saitou jumped up and ran out of the room.
Matt was left speechless. “I—I—”
Obaasan spoke from her pillow. “Don’t be too distressed, young man. My daughter, although a priestess, is very modern in her outlook. She would probably tell you that kitsune don’t even exist.”
“Even after—I mean how does she think Isobel—?”
“She thinks that there are evil influences in this town, but of the ‘ordinary, human’ kind. She thinks Isobel did what she did because of the stress she was under, trying to be a good student, a good priestess, a good samurai.”
“You mean, like, Mrs. Saitou feels guilty?”
“She blames Isobel’s father for much of it. He is a ‘salaryman’ back in Japan.” Obaasan paused. “I don’t know why I have told you all this.”
“I’m sorry,” Matt said hastily. “I wasn’t trying to snoop.”
“No, but you care about other people. I wish Isobel had had a boy like you instead of her daughter.”
Matt thought of the pitiful figure he’d seen at the hospital. Most of Isobel’s scars would end up invisible under her clothes—presuming she learned to speak again. Bravely, he said, “Well, I’m still up for grabs.”
Obaasan smiled faintly at him, then put her head back down on the pillow—no, it was a wooden headrest, Matt realized. It didn’t look very comfortable. “It’s a great pity when there has to be strife between a human family and the kitsune,” she said. “Because there are rumors that one of our ancestors took a kitsune wife.”
“Say what?”
Obaasan laughed, again behind concealing fists. “Mukashi-mukashi, or as you say, long ago in the times of legend, a great Shogun became angy at all the kitsune on his estate for the mischief they made. For many long years they were up to all sorts of pranks, but when he suspected them of ruining the crops in the fields, that was it. He roused every man and woman in his household, and told them to take sticks and arrows and rocks and hoes and brooms and flush out all the foxes that had dens on his estate, even the ones between the attic and the roof. He was going to have every single fox killed without mercy. But the night before he did this, he had a dream in which a beautiful woman came and said she was responsible for all the foxes on the estate. ‘And,’ she said, ‘while it is true that we make mischief, we repay you by eating the rats and mice and insects that really spoil the crops. Won’t you agree to take your anger out just on me and execute me alone instead of all the foxes? I will come at dawn to hear your answer.’
“And she kept her word, this most beautiful of kitsune, arriving at dawn with twelve beautiful maidens as attendants, but she outshone all of them just as the moon outshines a star. The Shogun could not bring himself to kill her, and in fact asked for her hand in marriage, and married her twelve attendants to his twelve most loyal retainers as well. And it is said that she was always a faithful wife, and bore him many children as fierce as Amaterasu the sun goddess, and as beautiful as the moon, and that this continued until one day the Shogun was on a journey and he happened to accidentally kill a fox. He hurried home to explain to his wife that it hadn’t been intentional, but when he arrived he found his household in mourning, for his wife had already left him, with all his sons and daughters.”
“Oh, too bad,” Matt muttered, trying to be polite, when his brain elbowed him in the ribs. “Wait. But if they all left…”
“I see you’re an attentive young man,” the delicate old woman laughed. “All his sons and daughters were gone…except the youngest, a girl of peerless beauty, although she was just a child. She said, ‘I love you too much to leav
e you, dear father, even if I must wear a human shape all my life.’ And that is how we are said to be descended from a kitsune.”
“Well, these kitsune aren’t just causing mischief or ruining crops,” Matt said. “They’re out to kill. And we have to fight back.”
“Of course, of course. I didn’t mean to upset you with my little story,” Obaasan said. “I’ll write out those amulets for you now.”
It was as Matt was leaving that Mrs. Saitou appeared at the door. She put something into his hand. He glanced down at it and saw the same calligraphy that Obaasan had given him. Except that it was much smaller and written on…
“A Post-it note?” Matt asked, bewildered.
Mrs. Saitou nodded. “Very useful for slapping on the faces of demons or the limbs of trees or such.” And, as he stared at her in complete amazement, “My mother doesn’t know all there is to know about everything.”
She also handed him a sturdy dagger, smaller than the sword she was still carrying, but very serviceable—Matt immediately cut himself on it.
“Put your faith in friends and your instincts,” she said.
Slightly dazed, but feeling encouraged, Matt drove to Dr. Alpert’s house.
31
“I’m feeling much better,” Elena told Dr. Meggar. “I’d like to take a walk around the estate.” She tried not to bounce up and down on the bed. “I’ve been eating steak and drinking milk and I even took that vile cod liver oil you sent. Also I have a very firm grasp of reality: I’m here to rescue Stefan and the little boy inside Damon is a metaphor for his unconscious, which the blood we shared allowed me to ‘see.’” She bounced once, but covered it by reaching for a glass of water. “I feel like a happy puppy pulling at the leash.” She exhibited her newly designed slave bracelets: silver with lapis lazuli inserts in fluid designs. “If I die suddenly, I am prepared.”
Dr. Meggar’s eyebrows worked up and down. “Well, I can’t find anything wrong with your pulse or your breathing. I don’t see how a nice afternoon walk can hurt you. Damon’s certainly up and walking. But don’t you go giving Lady Ulma any ideas. She still needs months of bed rest.”
“She has a nice little desk made from a breakfast tray,” Bonnie explained, gesturing to show size and width. “She designs clothes on that.” Bonnie leaned forward, wide-eyed. “And you know what? Her dresses are magic.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” grunted Dr. Meggar.
But the next moment Elena remembered something unpleasant. “Even when we get the keys,” she said, “we have to plot the actual jailbreak.”
“What’s a jailbreak?” Lakshmi asked excitedly.
“It’s like this—we’ve got the keys to Stefan’s cell, but we still need to figure out how we’re going to get into the prison, and how we’re going to smuggle him out.”
Lakshmi frowned. “Why not just go in with the line and take him out the gate?”
“Because,” Elena said, trying for patience, “they won’t let us just walk in and get him.” She narrowed her eyes as Lakshmi put her head in her hands. “What’re you thinking, Lakshmi?”
“Well, first you say that you’re going to have the key in your hand when you go to the prison, then you act like they’re not going to let him out of the prison.”
Meredith shook her head, bewildered. Bonnie put a hand to her forehead as if it ached. But Elena slowly leaned forward.
“Lakshmi,” she said, very quietly, “are you saying that if we have a key to Stefan’s cell it’s basically a pass in and out of prison?”
Lakshmi brightened up. “Of course!” she said. “Otherwise, what would a key be good for? They could just lock him in another cell.”
Elena could hardly believe the wonder of what she had just heard, so she immediately began trying to poke holes in it. “That would mean we could go straight from Bloddeuwedd’s party to the prison and just take Stefan out,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could inject into her voice. “We could just show our key and they’d let us take him away.”
Lakshmi nodded eagerly. “Yes!” she said joyfully, the sarcasm having gone right over her head. “And, don’t be mad, okay? But I wondered why you never went to visit him.”
“We can visit him?”
“Sure, if you make an appointment.”
By now Meredith and Bonnie had come to life and were supporting Elena on either side. “How soon can we send someone to make an appointment?” Elena said through her teeth, because it was taking all her effort to speak—her entire weight was resting on her two friends. “Who can we send to make an appointment?” she whispered.
“I’ll go,” Damon said from the crimson darkness behind them. “I’ll go tonight—give me five minutes.”
Matt could feel that he had on his most cross and stubborn expression.
“C’mon,” Tyrone said, looking amused. They were both gearing up for a trip into the thicket. This meant putting on two of the mothball-clove-recipe coats each and then using duct tape to fasten the gloves to the coats. Matt was sweating already.
But Tyrone was a good guy, he thought. Here Matt had come out of nowhere and said, “Hey, you know that bizarre thing you saw with poor Jim Bryce last week? Well, it’s all connected to something even more bizarre—all about fox spirits and the Old Wood, and Mrs. Flowers says that if we don’t figure out what’s going on, we’re going to be in real trouble. And Mrs. Flowers isn’t just a batty old lady at the boardinghouse, even though everybody says so.”
“Of course she isn’t,” Dr. Alpert’s brusque voice had said from the doorway. She put down her black bag—still a country doctor, even when the town was in crisis—and addressed her son. “Theophilia Flowers and I have known each other a long time—and Mrs. Saitou, too. They were both always helping people. That’s their nature.”
“Well—” Matt had seen an opportunity and jumped at it. “Mrs. Flowers is the one who needs help now. Really, really needs help.”
“Then what’re you sitting there for, Tyrone? Hurry up and go help Mrs. Flowers.” Dr. Alpert had ruffled her own iron-gray hair with her fingers, then ruffled her son’s black hair fondly.
“I was, Mom. We were just leaving when you came in.”
Tyrone, seeing Matt’s grim horror-story of a car, had politely offered to drive them to Mrs. Flowers’s house in his Camry. Matt, afraid of a terminal blowout at some crucial moment, was only too happy to accept.
He was glad that Tyrone would be the lynchpin of the Robert E. Lee High football team in the coming year. Ty was the kind of guy you could count on—as witness his immediate offer of help today. He was a good sport, and absolutely straight and clean. Matt couldn’t help but see how drugs and drinking had ruined not only the actual games, but the sportsmanship of the other teams on campus.
Tyrone was also a guy who could keep his mouth shut. He hadn’t even peppered Matt with questions as they drove back to the boardinghouse, but he did give a wolf whistle, not at Mrs. Flowers, but at the bright yellow Model T she was driving into the old stables.
“Whoa!” he said, jumping out to help her with a grocery bag, while his eyes drank in the Model T from fender to fender. “That’s a Model T Fordor Sedan! This could be one beautiful car if—” He stopped abruptly and his brown skin burned with a sunset glow.
“Oh, my, don’t be embarrassed about the Yellow Carriage!” Mrs. Flowers said, allowing Matt to take another bag of groceries back through the kitchen garden and into the kitchen of the house. “She’s served this family for nearly a hundred years, and she’s accumulated some rust and damage. But she goes almost thirty miles an hour on paved roads!” Mrs. Flowers added, speaking not only proudly, but with the somewhat awed respect owed to high-speed travel.
Matt’s eyes met Tyrone’s and Matt knew there was only one shared thought hanging in the air between them.
To restore to perfection the dilapidated, worn, but still beautiful car that spent most of its time in a converted stable.
“We could do it,” Matt s
aid, feeling that, as Mrs. Flowers’s representative, he should make the offer first.
“We sure could,” Tyrone said dreamily. “She’s already in a double garage—no problems about room.”
“We wouldn’t have to strip her down to the frame…she really rides like a dream.”
“You’re kidding! We could clean the engine, though: have a look at the plugs and belts and hoses and stuff. And”—dark eyes gleaming suddenly—“my dad has a power sander. We could strip the paint and repaint it the exact same yellow!”
Mrs. Flowers suddenly beamed. “That was what dear Mama was waiting for you to say, young man,” she said, and Matt remembered his manners long enough to introduce Tyrone.
“Now, if you had said, ‘We’ll paint her burgundy’ or ‘blue’ or any other color, I’m sure she would have objected,” Mrs. Flowers said as she began to make ham sandwiches, potato salad, and a large kettle of baked beans. Matt watched Tyrone’s reaction to the mention of “Mama” and was pleased: there was an instant of surprise, followed by an expression like calm water. His mother had said Mrs. Flowers wasn’t a batty old lady: therefore she wasn’t a batty old lady. A huge weight seemed to roll off Matt’s shoulders. He wasn’t alone with a fragile elderly woman to protect. He had a friend who was actually a little bigger than he was to rely on.
“Now both of you, have a ham sandwich, and I’ll make the potato salad while you’re eating. I know that young men”—Mrs. Flowers always spoke of men as if they were a special kind of flower—“need lots of good hearty meat before going into battle, but there’s no reason to be formal. Let’s just dig right in as things are done.”
They had happily obeyed. Now they were preparing for battle, feeling ready to fight tigers, since Mrs. Flowers’s idea of dessert was a pecan pie split between the boys, along with huge cups of coffee that cleared the brain like a power sander.