Yes.
“No, of course not,” I say, faking the most convincing innocent-little-girl smile I can muster. “We understand. We’ll come back later.”
“I can take the paper and give it to Miss Ammon when she gets home,” monkey-suit offers. So kind of him.
Miss who?
“Give what to me, Joe?” I whirl around at the sound of Gesina’s thick accent and it takes every scrap of self-control my mother forced into me not to tear her lungs out right there on the stoop.
“Oh, I’ll give it to you, you little bitch.” So much for self-control. I lunge at Gesina with my arms outstretched—only to restrain her, of course—but Sani and his damned reflexes stop me before I’ve taken a step. His arms encircle me like a steel band, unmovable.
“What are you doing?” I hiss between my teeth.
“Trust me?” Sani says gently, slightly loosening his grip, testing me.
A glance behind me shows the goon with his hand on his sidearm. I relax a little. I guess it wouldn’t be the best thing to cause a scene with all these cameras and armed guards around. Sani drops his arms to his side and takes a small step toward the girl.
“I’m sorry,” Gesina says softly. She crosses her arms to stop them from shaking and casts a glance at the bodyguard every half a second. What happened to all this girl’s confidence? “Do I know you?”
“Gesina Ammon?” Sani says.
She pauses halfway through her nod, like she’s not sure if she should admit it to the nice guy with the psychotic companion.
“Please excuse my friend here, she has a neurological condition and can’t control herself.” I snort, but he continues. “I’m Bulisani Mathe.”
He stretches his hand out as if to shake hers, and she reluctantly offers her own in return. I watch a wave of shock travel from her mouth, through her eyes, to end in raised eyebrows. She is surprised at the temperature of his hand, and he pulls it back quickly so he doesn’t hurt her.
“I’m sorry, there seems to be some mistake,” he says dismissively, already backing away toward the street.
“What?” I say, mind spinning in confusion. “There’s no mistake. That’s her. Different last name, but same girl.”
He grabs my arm and pulls me close so our heads are cheek-to-cheek, both of us looking at the girl. “Kitty, seriously. Calm down for a sec and look at her,” he whispers.
I take a deep breath and do as Sani asks—mainly because I can hardly deny him anything he asks of me. Especially when he’s touching me in no less than two places. Gah, focus, Kitty.
I look closely at Gesina. She looks the same. Doesn’t she?
As my temper fades, I start seeing little differences. She has a few pimples and blackheads on her face. Her eyes aren’t as bright as I remember. Her lips are uneven with the top lip being too thin for the full bottom lip. She’s still pretty, but nothing like the angel I met in the lunchroom. The confidence and self-assuredness is replaced by a marked shyness.
“Gesina?”
She jumps at her name. A trace of guilt flits through my consciousness over scaring this poor girl. I try to give her a friendly smile, but it’s not something I have a lot of practice with.
“Do you have a sister?” I ask. “A twin, maybe?”
“My sister is four and she lives in Germany,” she says. “I came here to go to university. What is this about?” Her voice raises an octave with worry.
“You’re not who we’re looking for. I apologize. Have a nice day.” Sani takes my arm and half-drags me down the sidewalk.
I toss a look over my shoulder as she turns to go inside, checking one last time for any trace of a tail. “Well, that was a dead end.”
“Maybe not.”
“Umm, were you part of the same conversation I was?” I ask.
“When I shook her hand—”
He pauses, so I interrupt. “It was human temperature. I saw the shock on her face when you touched.”
I don’t want to admit the next part, because it means we really are at a dead end. But it has to be said, to make it real. “That’s not the same girl who took Jacob.”
He sighs and nods, running a hand over his face. When his hand reaches back to rub his neck, my eyes jealously track his movements.
“So who is she?” I say. “Why does kidnapper Gesina look like the movie-star version of innocent Gesina?”
“You got your Secret Service contact to pull her school file, right?” There’s no accusation in his voice.
We cross the street to catch the bus to—well, I don’t really know where we’re going yet. “Yeah,” I say.
“She was posing as Gesina Fuchs, the German ambassador’s daughter.”
Oo-oh. “But the ambassador’s daughter is Gesina Ammon,” I say.
Sani stares into space, thinking. “It’s a strange mistake. Everything else was so professional. How could they get something so easy so wrong?”
“More importantly, how could the SS not catch that the second they pulled her file?”
“Two possible answers. Someone on the inside helped with Jacob’s abduction.” He raises his hand to rub his closely cropped hair again and I hope this isn’t true, because it would destroy the last string of faith he’s hanging from. It took him forever to trust a government again, after what happened to his parents. He still doesn’t go hook, line, and sinker on every line Director Bean dangles in front of us as it is.
“Or someone who’s able to fool the Secret Service is backing her up.”
He stops walking, probably realizing we don’t know where we’re going. The silence between us hangs heavy with doubt and regret.
“How’s your heart?” I finally ask.
A faraway look takes over his features as he looks inward, talking with his dragon-self. “It’s healing, but I can’t change yet. Soon.”
I nod and Sani looks to me, ready to follow my lead. I don’t want to tell him I have no idea where to go. He needs a safe place to heal, and I need to figure out our next move, but all my usual safe places are compromised, and I’m not sure who I can trust. The idea flashes through my mind like a lightning bolt. There may be one person left who can help me.
“You know, my father claims tea can cure anything.” I allow myself a smile as a thread of hope returns to my thoughts. “And I know where to find the best.”
Sani raises his eyebrow like he knows there’s more to what I’m saying, but doesn’t object. “Bus?” He motions to the bus stop half a block down the street.
My skin itches with the idea of being trapped in one of those metal cases again. My dragon rears her head in my chest, yearning to be set free. Poor Sani. Not being able to change, even temporarily, must be torture. Even when I’m stuck in human form for a long time, just knowing my dragon is waiting there under the surface brings me peace.
I look around the neighborhood until I spot an empty, obviously foreclosed house with an overgrown backyard, shielded even more by the long shadows cast by the setting sun.
“No.” I nearly grin now. “Let’s fly.”
Chapter Six
We’re flying half a mile above Chinatown, Sani on my back, invisible to the people below, when I spot the familiar tea shop. Warm light floods out onto the street through the smeared and dusty windows. My dragon body is curved into an S shape to help make Sani’s ride more comfortable. I manipulate the magnetic fields around me and control our descent into the back alley, where I fly into the truck-sized delivery door and hit the button to close the garage door with a flick of my tail. Curled as I am, I fit easily inside the space. As soon as the last sliver of street and moon light is snuffed out by the door, Sani slides off my back and I snap back to human form.
The few humans who know about us always ask me how I manage to shift back with all the clothes and personal belongings I started with. I give the same answer every time: magic. But I’m dragon enough to admit my answer’s a defense mechanism to cover the fact I have absolutely no freaking clue. Like I don’t know how
we break this “conservation of mass” principle the scientists are always going on about. We’re dragons. Simon and some of his egghead friends have a theory that involves quantum mechanics. He thinks we don’t change our bodies so much as store the one we’re not using—and all the stuff it’s holding—in a parallel plane of existence. He claims our bodies, running hot and with two hearts, are something like a quantum generator. It makes sense when he explains it, but it’s not exactly something that’s easy to prove.
“You seem like you know your way around this place. Where are we?” Sani asks. He looks around the storage room, but there’s only the light shining between the door cracks, and even our excellent dragon sight can only make out long, dark shadows.
“Well, you’ve met the great Commander Lung.” I move to the door that leads into the shop.
His eyes grow to the size of plums as he realizes what I mean. “I’m going to meet your father?” He immediately starts straightening out his shirt, which is totally ridiculous considering the permanent creases from being stuffed in the basketball team’s storage bin. He runs his hands over his hair, as if he has enough to be out of place to start with. It’s pretty adorable, if I’m being honest with myself.
He fidgets awkwardly. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him lose his signature cool, and I laugh. And immediately feel guilty when I remember all the dragons imprisoned at DIC and Jacob who-knows-where. I have no right to be having fun while they’re locked up for something I did. Sani notices my rapid shift in mood and it affects his own, so I tilt my head down and look up at him with false mockery in my eyes.
“You’re not nervous, are you?” I say with a wicked grin.
“Chen Lung is a legend,” he says. “Somalia, Korea, Afghanistan, Taiwan—even the Cairo job. Kitty, we study almost every job he ever did in Strategy. The U.S. would be a disaster today if it weren’t for his genius.”
“Yeah. Genius? Legend?” I can’t stop the sadness from entering my eyes and it’s worse because I know Sani will notice. He always notices. “Either way, he’s just a cripple now. An old man peddling tea cures to white tourists who think he’s a mystic.”
My father was injured on the Cairo job in 1997, before I even learned to walk. Sure, he and my mom somehow managed to successfully complete the mission, but the cost was too high. All of his other admittedly horrendous injuries paled in comparison to his heart—ripped out and destroyed by a rogue dragon paid off by some terrorist sect.
Is a weredragon still a dragon if he can’t change anymore? The question was too much for my father, who left DIC, saying he would be better off if the traitor had just killed him instead of cursing him to live out the rest of his life as a mere human. I think he forgets she would have killed him, if it hadn’t been for Mom.
Sani doesn’t seem to know how to respond, so we walk into the shop in silence.
A Chinese man who looks older than he is with a missing eye and deeply scarred face is behind the counter, staring at the back entrance, waiting for me to walk in. “Katherine?”
The world’s oldest cash register still in operation partially hides him from view. Apothecary cabinets made of every kind of wood ever grown cover the fifteen-feet-high walls of the long, narrow shop, and the unmistakable scent of tea and herbs seeps into my skin. A few tiny tiled tables with wrought iron chairs are scattered near the entrance. The shop is about to close so there’s no one else here.
He rolls his wheelchair out from behind the counter and moves slowly toward us, appraising Sani with a critical eye. The air in the shop is cool with the night air so a woven blanket covers his legs, disguising the fact they’re missing from the knees down.
Though I seek my father’s advice often, we don’t exactly have an emotional relationship, so I have no idea why the gravity of the situation decides to drown me at that moment.
“Oh Dad!” I fall to my knees in front of his wheelchair and wrap my arms around his thin, formerly powerful shoulders. I feel the stinging in my eyes that makes me wish for tears. I’ve now cried more in the past two days than I have since I was potty trained. When I finally get a hold of myself and pull away, he holds up one finger, indicating I should wait to speak. He knows something’s wrong.
“African,” he addresses Sani. I’ve almost forgotten he’s here and when I turn around to introduce him, I realize his mouth is hanging slightly open. I motion for him to shut it. He shakes off the surprise of meeting his decrepit hero and offers my father a small smile.
“Bulisani Mathe,” he says. “It’s a true honor to meet you, Commander Lung.”
“Chen, please. I haven’t commanded anything for a long time.” My father shrugs a little as he puts water on the heater to boil. “Do me a favor, son, and lock up the front.”
Sani instantly obeys and my father adds lavender, chamomile, wood betony, and lemon balm—calming ingredients—to his signature tea mixture. I close my eyes and inhale like my life depends on it.
“Sani’s heart is injured,” I say.
My father nods and mixes up a smaller batch of lychee and plum tea.
As he prepares the tea, we tell him about the events of the last twenty-four hours. He listens silently, never interrupting with a question or comment. We finish and he sits there, his eye closed, teacup in his hand, thinking. Planning. It’s what he’s known for, after all.
“Your mother’s at the D.I.C.?” It doesn’t surprise me that this is the first question he asks. Leaving DIC was a complicated decision for him; my mother and I had been pretty much the only things keeping him there. In the end, it wasn’t enough.
I nod. He allows this to soak in for a moment, and I let him.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” my dad says. “If they’re looking for you, it won’t be long before they find out about this place.”
My mouth opens to defend myself, but I hold back whatever knee-jerk response was about to spill out. He’s right, of course.
I hang my head and stare into my lap. “I wasn’t thinking.” Really, I was thinking, but only about how comforting it would be to go somewhere familiar in all this chaos. I wanted my dad, the most effective military strategist of all time, to tell me what I should do. The tea shop has been a safe place for as long as I can remember. Why didn’t it occur to me that was no longer the case? I glance at Sani and find my feelings mirrored in his face. I shake my head at myself as I realize that confronting Gesina at her house had been the same kind of stupid, too. I need to be smarter if I’m going to make it through this mess and keep all of us alive. I need to live up to my family legacy. I need to think like a Lung.
“He’s right, Kitty,” Sani says softly. “We should go.”
I know I’ve put us all in danger by coming here, but I still have questions that need to be answered. For a second, I want to ask my dad to come with us, but I know that’s another stupid, emotional decision. He wouldn’t go, anyway. He’d slow us down, and we all know it.
I try to sound as little like a scared child as possible and more like a commander asking her team for input. “We will. But since we’re here, I’d like my dad’s assessment of the situation.”
My father nods. “You said this girl had a long, white, furry tail?” Though I expect it, there’s not a touch of mockery or doubt in the question.
“That’s what I think I saw.”
“Did you see it?” my father asks Sani. The poor boy hasn’t spoken much since we got here, star struck by my father’s presence.
“No, sir,” he says.
“Lose the ‘sir,’ boy,” my father says. “I have no rank anymore.”
“Yes si… um, okay.” Sani swallows like it’s as hard as bench-pressing his max. “I was shot. Unconscious when Gesina got away.” He lowers his eyes to the swirling herbs in his tea and fiddles with his cup.
“There’s no shame in taking a bullet for the mission, understand?”
“Two,” I say.
“I’m sorry?” my dad asks.
“He took two bullet
s.”
My father’s gruff voice softens as he addresses Sani. “First mission failure?”
“Yes.”
“It gets easier.”
Those few words seem to have filled the hole inside Sani that his dragon-fast healing left behind. Satisfied, my father moves the conversation back to this afternoon’s events.
“This girl. She was pretty?” he asks.
“Gorgeous,” Sani says. Though I agree with him and I have no real right to feel this way, the word feels like a betrayal.
I feel acid burning my throat as I say, “Prettiest I’ve ever seen.”
“Jacob seemed entranced by her? More than usual?”
A pang of guilt stabs through my gut as I remember him begging me to go with him this afternoon, to make her more comfortable. If I had gone with him, would things have turned out differently?
“I guess so,” I say. “He’s pretty girl-crazy, though, so it’d be hard to tell.”
“And you were confused when she touched you?” he asks.
I cross my arms and narrow my eyes at him. “That’s what I said. What’s going on? You know something, don’t you? Tell me.”
“Kitsune,” he says. The word lingers in the air, ominous and slightly terrifying. Like I’m supposed to know what that means.
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