Richard forged a path for them, hanging on to Cass’s hand. They had barely exited the building, though, before Cass was spotted by fans and a throng of people gathered asking for autographs. A magic marker was pressed into Cass’s hand and, before she knew it, she was signing all kinds of things: tournament programs, popcorn boxes, t-shirts, super-pale vampire biceps, leather thongs, etc. Once they got to the thongs, Richard decided it really was time to move on again. He grabbed Cass’s hand, tossed the marker in the opposite direction like it was a decoy, and blazed a path for them.
A stiffer breeze began to blow and the temperature dropped. Cass didn’t have the faintest idea how something like “weather” worked in the Underside. She’d have to ask about that.
Clusters of people trailed them for several blocks. At one point, Cass thought she might have spotted Maya on the edges of the crowd. But when she looked again, she couldn’t find her. She must have been mistaken.
A handful of hangers-on followed them all the way to the apartment building but, as soon as they were back in the secure lobby, she and Richard were alone again.
The quiet was a welcome relief.
“Holy shit,” Cass exhaled, “that was wild.”
Richard nodded, double-checking that the door had indeed locked behind them.
“And thanks for getting me out of there,” Cass added.
“You’re certainly welcome.”
“And you can let go of my hand now.”
“Oh . . . of course. So sorry,” Richard mumbled. Was he embarrassed? Richard?
But despite his uncharacteristic fluster, it still seemed to Cass that he was reluctant to let go of her.
In the apartment, they found the lights off and the shades down. Cass came through the door laughing at a comment Richard had made and flicked on the kitchen light.
Zach was sitting in a chair in the living room, facing the door, with the bag of gear from the aborted heist on the coffee table. His eyes, still bloodshot, looked cold and fierce. A tablet dangled from his hand.
Cass, at first, didn’t recognize him and almost let out a little yelp of surprise. Then, once the pieces clicked into place, she felt guilty that she hadn’t recognized him immediately.
“Zach?” Cass asked.
“We need to talk,” Zach said, his voice soft. He shot Richard a look. “All three of us.”
Cass glanced at Richard. He had taken stock of the bag on the table and the tablet in Zach’s hand. He, evidently, knew what was going on and looked like he was already bracing himself for whatever came next.
Cass took a seat on the sofa next to Zach’s chair. She stayed on the edge of her seat. Richard descended the pair of stairs into the living room, but remained standing, his hands in his pockets.
Zach directed his attention to Cass.
“Richard and I stopped a heist yesterday. We prevented the tournament prize—the relic you came to win—from being stolen. The thieves got away, but not cleanly. They left this bag behind.”
Cass looked from Zach to the bag, open on the table. It contained a variety of tools and some women’s clothing. She looked back to Zach.
“It also contained this,” he said quietly, holding up the tablet, his voice tired and disappointed. He turned the tablet over and handed it to Cass.
Cass read the corporate tag on the back: PROPERTY OF YORK ENTERPRISES.
“The woman leading the heist yesterday, the one who personally oversaw the operation—and our beating, by the way—was Maya Krishnamurti.”
Zach paused and let that sink in. Cass’s eyes grew wide. She dropped the tablet on the coffee table like she’d just realized it was burning hot.
“Did you know?” Zach asked Richard. “Did you know that it was Maya?”
Richard hesitated and looked at Cass.
Cass read his eyes: at the very least, he had suspected.
“That’s what I thought,” Zach concluded, his voice dropping even lower. He stood up and grabbed his own backpack from the floor next to his chair. He slung it over his shoulder and turned to Cass.
“I don’t trust him, Cass,” Zach said. “He’s not being straight with us. He’s playing both sides. I can’t stay here any longer. I’m not … things are different for me, Cass.”
Cass felt a flutter of panic.
No, no, no, she thought. We need each other.
Zach saw the look of panic and indecision in her eyes as she glanced at him and then at Richard.
“Zach—” Cass started again.
“It’s okay, Cass,” Zach said. He leaned forward, gripped both her shoulders, and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “Finish what you need to finish here. You know how to find me.”
Then, in four quick steps, he was out the door.
Cass looked at Richard, her eyes pleading for some explanation.
Richard, though, wasn’t in a place to help her.
“God damn you, Maya,” Richard swore, his gaze fixed on the floor, his voice trembling with anger, his hands balling into fists. Without meeting Cass’s eyes, he offered an apology. “I’m so sorry, Cass. This isn’t what I intended.” Then his voice hit an ice cold register that Cass had never heard before. “But I do intend to fix it.”
And with that, Richard was also out the door.
And Cass was alone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cass felt like a stranger alone in someone else’s home. Nothing here was hers.
The apartment felt smaller than it ever had before, as if the walls were slowly closing in.
What was she doing here? What had just happened? How had she gone from throngs of cheering fans to confusion and betrayal in a span of five minutes? Was she to blame? What had she done wrong?
Why was she alone?
Cass fought back her rising sense of claustrophobia and stripped off all her clothes. She turned on the shower and, waiting for the water to warm, took a hard look at herself in the full length mirror. There was nowhere to hide. Her cloudy eye stared back at her. Her slender build seemed far too slight a thing to bear the weight that had been placed on her shoulders.
Steam curled out of the shower, fogging the mirror, smudging the clean edges that defined her, rendering her image indistinct.
She was glad for it.
She stayed in the shower for a long time. She stayed until her whole world was reduced to the raw sensation of hot water.
In her bedroom, wrapped in just a towel, she searched her bag for something to wear. The wind outside was picking up, howling as it gusted, rattling the windows in their frames. Cass settled on the warmest clothes she could find: an old pair of jeans, wool socks, and a Rice University hoodie that she’d had since her undergrad days.
Despite the wailing wind, Cass couldn’t bear the thought of staying in the apartment by herself. She might as well do something useful and attend the other semifinal match. She could, at least, scout her opponents. She would be facing off with one of them soon enough. She pulled on her running shoes, stuffed her apartment key in her pocket, and headed for the lobby.
Given the wind and the impending match, the streets were less crowded than unusual. Cass pulled her hair back into a ponytail, tucked her chin into the collar of her sweatshirt, and headed in the direction of the arena, hers eyes fixed on the ground in front of her.
She hadn’t gone very far, though, when she had the impression once again that she was being followed. She watched for a block or two more, but didn’t spot anyone. She did, though, occasionally catch people pointing in her direction and whispering to the person next to them.
Cass flipped up her hood and pushed forward, the wind at her back. She quickly jaywalked to cut through the park and mask her face in shadows.
As she walked, one specific thought emerged from the noise in her head and pressed for her attention. She heard Kumiko’s voice, as if on a looped track, telling her again and again that Seers weren’t meant to be alone, that they weren’t supposed to have to do it on their own. The longer this voice
looped in her head, though, the less it sounded like Kumiko’s and the more it started to sound like her mother’s.
Seers aren’t meant to be alone.
A strong gust of wind bent the trees in the park, gathering up leaves and propelling them down the street, battering them against Cass’s back.
But Cass’s own mother had done this to her. Her mom had intentionally locked away her emotions and short-circuited her powers. And then she’d left her alone.
Why had she done that?
Cass shoved her hands deeper into her pockets, rolling her shoulders high against the wind, pulling her face deeper into her hood.
Cass had many happy memories of her mom. She’d never been afraid of her. She’d never had any reason not to trust her. They’d loved each other. Cass was sure of that. But, it was also true that, if Cass was honest with herself, her whole childhood was being cast in a different light now that she knew more of the context.
Kumiko was right.
Something had happened.
Something had gone terribly wrong around the time of Cass’s birth, something that her mother and father never openly acknowledged but that followed them everywhere they went. There was a kind of persistent, subterranean sadness that contrasted sharply with the moments of joy and laughter that Cass remembered most clearly and turned to so often.
What had happened to her mother? What had happened to their family? What had happened to Cass?
Cass turned a corner and, largely shielded now from the wind, was surprised by the sudden silence. She was back at the arena already.
She left her hood up, snuck in a side door to avoid the crowds, and slipped into Richard’s private box. She left the lights off and watched from the shadows.
The second semifinal match was about to begin.
Chapter Thirty
Cass sank down into her box seat and pulled her knees to her chest, not wanting to be seen. She stretched the front of her hoodie over her knees, cocooning herself. In the dark of the box, she felt small and almost safe.
She watched just over the lip of the box, so that the foreshortening of perspective made it look like she was watching two tiny fighters duking it out right in front of her, on that very lip. Cass liked the effect; it made the whole thing seem manageable. If both of her potential opponents were only two inches tall, then she could handle either one.
This match pitched the demon in the kabuki mask against an enormous woman with a shrunken head. Cass sat up in her box to get a better look and make sure that the perspective wasn’t just playing tricks on her. Nope. The woman’s head was definitely not proportional to her body. Cass sank back into her seat and resumed watching her mini-match.
The woman with the shrunken head was built like a sumo wrestler and dressed in tight, white spandex with neon pink leg warmers. Her hair was in a ponytail with a matching pink hairband. She looked like she’d only recently escaped from an 80’s aerobics video. Cass wasn’t sure if the overall effect was terrifying or laughable but, either way, decided it gave an advantage.
As for the demon, unless Cass was mistaken, the kabuki mask was itself now actively changing expression—the brow furrowing, the eyes widening, the nostrils flaring, the lips curling, the teeth gnashing.
The bell rang and the demon came out strong, uncorking a flurry of vicious punches as its mask grimaced fearsomely. The punches, though, had no effect. The woman just stood there, unfazed, fists on hips, like she ought to have a cape. The demon tried again, but this time, her hand was sucked into a roll of fat at the woman’s waist and, for a moment, the look on the mask registered fear as the demon struggled to free her hand.
The woman glanced down, a vague look of pity on her face, and helped the demon out of her bind with a backhand that wrenched the trapped arm free, then batted her across the mat.
The woman laughed a tiny, shrunken-headed laugh, as if she’d just inhaled helium, while the demon got back to her feet and, with an audible pop, socketed her dislocated shoulder back into place.
The crowd “Oooo’d.”
“Shiiiit,” Cass whispered to herself, her stomach tightening, surprised to find that she had, at least implicitly, been rooting for the kabuki demon. She wasn’t sure what that was about. She sat up in her chair, leaned forward, and rested her chin on the lip of the box. The fighters suddenly looked full-sized.
She was invested now.
Recognizing the futility of her initial approach, the demon switched tactics and, abandoning body blows, focused on connecting with the woman’s head. The woman, though, was surprisingly agile and her head was a very small target. The demon expended a lot of energy, but never landed any blows.
Cass found that she was chewing on a fingernail and pulled her hands back inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
The giant with the neon pink leg warmers went on the offensive, maneuvering the demon from one spot to another, corralling her at the edge of the ring with her bulk. The demon didn’t have anywhere to go. Her opponent looked like she might just swallow her whole, scary mask and all.
When the woman lunged, though, the demon turned savvy, ducked between those colossal legs sheathed in white spandex, and donkey-kicked the woman from behind, sending her stumbling outside the circle of the ring.
The woman’s tiny face turned red and angry.
Cass wondered if maybe the head only looked so small because the body was so enormous. Maybe that was just a regular-sized head on a huge body? But when she caught a green glint in the woman’s eye, Cass was inclined to think that the woman had used some kind of alchemical magic to swap head size for body bulk.
Life is a series of trade-offs.
Angry now, the woman turned and lumbered after the demon, picking up speed. The demon dodged one blow but got caught by a second that smashed into her face and broke her kabuki mask in half, right down the center. A spray of blood from the demon’s broken nose spattered the mat.
Half of the mask lay frozen on the mat. The other half—the half positioned toward Cass—registered a fierce snarl.
The woman with the shrunken head came in for a bear hug, hoping to bring the fight to a swift conclusion by squeezing what was left of the demon into raspberry paste.
Instead, the demon avoided the grab, jumped, and snagged the woman in a twisting headlock that Cass feared might pop the little head right off. The demon’s momentum swung her around the head, twisting the tiny neck and bringing the giant body to its knees. Then, teeth snarling, the demon twisted the woman’s head another quarter turn. The woman’s face turned red, then purple, and then edged into black as the demon squeezed harder. Her eyes rolled back into her head, white and unseeing, and her body went limp.
The entire arena was deathly quiet. The reverberating “thump” of the woman’s bulk slumping to the mat echoed as the demon stood over her body, her chest heaving, blood still dripping from her chin.
Then the crowd erupted.
And Cass, too, was on her feet, frightened and elated all at once.
With the tournament prize on the line, Cass would face this demon in the final round.
Could she win?
The woman in the kabuki mask raised a hand to the audience, acknowledging their praise. She turned in a slow circle, addressing the whole arena, until the half of her face that was no longer masked was finally turned toward Cass.
As soon as she saw the face, Cass realized what part of her had known all along—the demon was Miranda.
Chapter Thirty-One
The demon both was and wasn’t Miranda.
She was recognizable, but changed. She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t alive either.
Cass felt like she was looking at someone who, rather than being her aunt, happened to bear an uncanny resemblance to her aunt. A doppelgänger. A clone. A shell.
This was the first good look at Miranda that Cass had had since her transformation. The hints of ferality in Miranda’s face, edging in from the margins, drove an icy spike through Cass’s heart.
She wasn’t prepared for this.
She wasn’t ready to see it. And she certainly wasn’t ready to be pitched against it, head to head, tomorrow night.
No wonder she’d kept the truth hidden from herself.
The expression on Miranda’s face, her height, her teeth, her pale skin, her posture—they all repeated one refrain over and over to Cass: You failed me. I trusted you and look what has become of me. I’m a blood-hungry fragment of a human being.
A wave of black guilt crashed into Cass and she stumbled backward in the box, tripping over her chair. She went down hard, bruising her hip.
It was all her fault.
Cass bolted from the box, looking for an exterior door, desperate for some fresh air. Her hands were shaking and her face was hot. Hoping to avoid being seen, she pulled up her hood and shrunk inside of it, hands jammed deep into her pockets. She burst out a side door and into an alley behind the arena. She leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath. The wind was even stronger now and, channeled by the narrow alley, it howled and battered against her. The icy gusts cut right through her cotton sweatshirt. Cass shivered, every inch of skin on her body puckering into gooseflesh.
She bumped her way down the alley, brushing against the brick walls. The street at the end was unfamiliar.
She wasn’t sure where she wanted to go—mostly just “away”—and so she let the wind decide. Instead of fighting it, she put the wind at her back. She couldn’t imagine returning to the apartment and sitting there alone, waiting for someone to show up. Awash in guilt about Miranda, Cass had no particular desire to be seen by anyone.
She just wanted someplace to hide.
Cass had only gone two blocks when she was greeted by a flashing neon sign for a bar. It had clearly once spelled BOOBS, but now with one “O” darkened, it just spelled BO-B’s. The sign mirrored the bar where Cass and Zach had met Amare and traded a relic for information about Miranda.
There seemed to be some poetic justice in Cass’s coming here again, this time alone.
Blameless: A Vision of Vampires 3 Page 12