by D. R. Perry
My teeth squeaked as I ground them together. The smoke I’d been making softened her features and the gory sight of my dead stepfather like a silk filter on a camera from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I picked up the Pharaoh’s Rat by its tail and put my other arm around Kimiko’s waist.
“When she leaves, I’m going with her and not coming back.”
“You can’t.” Mother’s tone brooked no argument, but I wouldn’t let her order me around like that. Not after all of this.
“I will.” I turned my back on Mother, but Kimiko didn’t come along with me like an obedient little Tanuki fiancée. She wasn’t one, thank Tiamat.
“You won’t leave forever.” I glanced back to see my betrothed shaking her head. “I’ll send you back, at least for a little while.” She reached out and took my hand. “You need to mourn the man who helped kind of raise you. I’ll be your plus one if you need that, too.”
I almost argued with Kimiko but saw Mother’s face blanch. The red of her lipstick stood out even more than the blood that soaked her right hand. She’d stayed composed all through mercy-killing her husband and making her little devil’s deal with us. What could have her in a full-on freak-out mode now? I told myself I didn’t care.
“Okay. We’ll examine this, but I’m not heading to the PD. I’m calling them in. This is an Extrahuman crime scene, and they need to investigate it, not just take a statement from one witness.” I held up the deadly rodent and shook it. “After that, we leave. I’ll upload my report to the hoard database at my convenience. We’ll be back in time for the Mourning Day. Even if Newport’s Finest decide to lock you up, I’ll be here, keeping up appearances and observing tradition.”
This time, when I turned my back and paced away, Kimiko walked beside me.
Chapter Fourteen
Kimiko
When the detectives showed up, Klein stayed outside with us while Detective Weaver went to question Mrs. Harcourt. Blaine seemed relieved about that. The vampire detective grinned, hiding his fangs as he ran a hand through his mullet to fluff it. I held the cage we had the Pharaoh’s Rat in, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and the flannel I’d worn up to my room from the vault. I had my handbag and Ismail’s lamp with me, too. Blaine stood with his back to most of the lawn along the cliff walk. He glared at the creature that had almost killed a whelp in its egg. When Blaine shifted, his eyes went red and slitted first.
“Watching this kind of thing never gets old.” Detective Klein jerked his chin at Blaine’s clawed feet, his lengthening snout, the wings unfurling like mainsails.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight of his orange scales glittering under the light from the mansion. I was struck by the fact of his physical presence, not in a romantic way. Looking at Blaine in dragon form was like watching a bonfire or a thunderstorm. He was a thing of natural beauty, powerful and barely constrained. I felt utterly defenseless, faced with the fact that I was expected to marry and produce heirs for two families with a creature like him. I wasn’t anywhere near worthy. And then, he was inside my mind.
“Great Egg of Tiamat.” The version of his voice in my head was softer than I could have registered it with even my Tanuki ears. “That’s how you see me?” He shouldn’t have known that.
But he did. Blaine was everywhere in my mind, able to see or hear or sense all my thoughts and feelings. I’d done nothing to shield my psyche, hide my secrets. I closed my eyes and thought of descending curtains, closing doors, the storm barrier shutting during Hurricane Sandy.
“Sorry.” I imagined saying the word to him in the interrogation room I’d spent seven hours in the night before Dad decided to send me to The Academy. “Never done this before.”
“Huh. Interesting choice. Never been in one of these.” I felt his smirk instead of imagining it. “Anyway, this is good. It’s a place where Klein can’t hear us. Just be careful not to answer stuff I say in here out loud, okay?”
“Wow. Unfair advantage much?”
“There’s a reason dragons are almost at the top of the Extrahuman food chain. Open your eyes. Klein’s looking at you funny.”
“Sorry, Detective.” I opened my eyes, giving the vampire the same gracious smile my mom used to give Dad’s clients. “Never had the dragon mind-meld before.”
“Heavy, huh?” Klein nodded gravely, an ironic contrast with his slang. The moon had set already, a fact that had Klein shifting his weight from one foot to the other and glancing past Blaine’s bulk toward the east. “Anyway, let’s talk about what we all see here.”
“There’s something you can find that we won’t?” Blaine snorted along with the snide telepathic question. His “voice” had an echo, like the reverberation on a microphone prone to feedback squeaks. I wasn’t sure why but decided it was probably because both the detective and I could hear him.
“Ayup.” The detective put his hands in his pockets. “There’s a reason Newport PD hired me even after that bastard turned me back in ‘96. I was top of the heap at State PD as a regular mortal. And there’s all the stuff that comes with the vampire senses, too.”
“’Kay.” Blaine puffed out a smoke ring Gandalf the Gray would have envied. “I’m going to come right out and talk about the elephant in the room. This rat’s got some magic on her that shouldn’t be there. Faerie. Seelie. Djinn.”
I wrapped my arms tightly around my chest, shivering, but not with cold. I took a deep breath, reinforcing my mind’s eye view of the interrogation room I’d locked Blaine in. He couldn’t know I’d had a Djinn’s lamp in my bag all along. I let the breath out. He didn’t. Ismail was Unseelie. So, the Extramagus had one of his or her own. I wondered how many wishes they had left.
“You have something to share, Miss Ichiro.” Klein’s statement came complete with an extra-large helping of suspicion.
“Yeah.” I decided to share something besides the ace up my sleeve, though. “It’s also got way too much Luck energy on it, still. Like, coincidental levels.”
“What do you mean by ‘still,’ Miss Ichiro?”
“I mean, back in the vault, it had coincidental levels of Luck magic on it, all going deosil in the good Luck direction. I turned its Luck widdershins to defeat it back there like we told you already. But all the Luck should have dissipated by now.”
“It smells all wrong.” Klein’s nostrils flared. “Open the cage.”
“No way!” I stepped between him and the Pharaoh’s Rat. “If it gets loose, it’ll kill him.”
“It won’t.” Klein bared his fangs. “It can’t, not anymore.”
“Do as he says.” The Blaine inside the interrogation room nodded, grinning and relaxed. The big dragon in front of me played at twitching his wings nervously.
“Then you open it.” I stepped aside, deciding I wouldn’t take orders from either of them. Klein was only slightly less infuriating than Blaine, mostly because I wouldn’t have to deal with him for much longer.
The latch made a tiny squeak. When Klein moved his hand away, the creature looked up at him by rolling its eyes. It toppled to one side, wriggling the spikes on its back weakly. I watched its Luck energy swirl faster, like the sparse suds of tepid bathwater spiraling down a drain.
“It’s poisoned.” Klein tapped his ear. “I can hear its blood getting silty.”
“Mother.” The Blaine in my head paced along the two-way mirror, seething with anger. On the glass beside him, the image of Hertha Harcourt caressing the egg played like a movie. "She could have scratched it when she kicked it."
“I get it.” I imagined myself leaning my elbows on the table in the middle of the room. “She’s a poison dragon, so that plus the Seelie energy makes you think she really did mean to kill your stepfather. Don’t say anything to Klein yet, though. I have another theory.”
“Hold on. All this might add up to something.” I pulled my phone from my handbag, tapped it, and opened LORA. I added “poison,” “Pharaoh’s Rat,” and its taxonomic name, “Herpestidae ichneumon” to the existing data and para
meters. Then I chuckled, which sounded like rain hitting a headstone. I zoomed in on the items it’d be safe to let Klein see, locked the screen, and held the phone out to him. “Check it out.”
“This isn’t the software we use.” Klein tapped the tip of one of his fangs with his tongue. “Huh. Trolls found a whole nest of these critters poisoned under the Pell Bridge last year, Tiverton side.”
“And check out the registered Precog prediction.” I pointed. “Show it to Blaine, too.”
Klein’s eyes went wide. He shook his head, turned the phone around. Blaine peered at it, lashing his tail.
“Who’s Joyce?” Blaine’s voice reverberated.
“Joyce Watkins.” Klein sighed. “She died during the Reveal. Her husband disappeared, and no one knows why.
“There’s a Professor Watkins at my school,” Blaine commented.
“Yeah, Joyce’s brother-in-law.” He shrugged. “For whatever reason, the husband’s full name is escaping me.”
“It can only be Edgar.” I kept that back from Klein, telling it to the Blaine in the interrogation room. “Your mom and the Headmistress were talking about needing him, remember?”
“Tiamat’s Scales!” The words filled the little room. So did more of Blaine’s ideas, half-formed and nonverbal alike. His excitement felt like static electricity crackling through the air.
I couldn’t handle it. The flood of thoughts and feelings coming from him stormed my lame attempt at a mental fortress like a breaker might topple a sandcastle. I put my hands over my face, then pulled them away wet. I looked down to find tears and blood. Blaine withdrew from my mind, leaving behind a balm of regret and apology.
“Jeez, not blood. Not after the night I’ve had.” Klein’s hands shook. He took two steps backward, dropping my phone on the lawn. Then he took another step back toward me. He closed his eyes. “No.”
“Good evening, Detective Klein. Miss Ichiro. Young Master Harcourt.” A man with terra-cotta-tone skin, jet hair streaked with silver, and nearly black eyes stepped between the hungry vampire and me. “I am Taki Waban, a friend of the family. Forgive the intrusion. We’re looking for Mistress Harcourt.” One corner of his mouth turned up, and he glanced to his right.
“Hi, I’m Tony.” I hadn’t noticed the other guy at first. He held out his arm, and I was about to shake his hand until I realized he was handing me a handkerchief. Try saying that five times fast.
“Thanks,” I managed. I dabbed my nose and pinched it to stop the bleeding. Klein got a grip on himself and pulled a bag of blood from inside his vest.
“Mother’s inside, being questioned by Detective Weaver, sir.” This time, there wasn’t any reverb when Blaine communicated to us. “You’re welcome to wait inside. Gomer will direct you to whatever room she’s designated.”
“That’s just the thing, Young Master.” Mr. Waban shook his head. “Gomer is nowhere to be found. I had my suspicions, but…”
“I should have turned that Brownie into a torch when I had the chance.”
“You mean the Brownie in my debt since the night Professor Brodsky was apprehended? The one I sent to keep an eye on the two of you?”
Blaine blinked. Tony gasped. I chuckled. Detective Klein scowled.
“It makes sense.” I grinned at Mr. Waban. “Gomer’s a Seelie Goblin. They’re so unusual, the Queen wouldn’t want them in her inner circle. No wonder he’s a servant in a dragon shifter’s house.”
“So you think Gomer’s been passing information to some flagrantly idiotic person who thinks it’s a good idea to mess with the Harcourts?” Tony directed the question at me but pointed his crossed fingers at Blaine from behind his back.
“Yeah.” I picked up a lock of my hair, twirling it. “There had to be an informant. It explains the timing of both attacks. The shooters knew exactly where we’d be walking. But they didn’t know we’d have a bear shifter to help us. And they expected Mrs. Harcourt to be guarding the egg instead of her husband. Wilfred filled in for her at the last minute.”
“I see.” Detective Klein wiped his mouth, then gestured at me with the bag of blood. “So, Wilfred Harcourt wasn’t a target, but collateral damage. It was Hertha, Blaine, and the egg they wanted. But why bother poisoning the Pharaoh’s Rat?”
“Because that way, it’d look like Hertha was trying to bump off someone in the Harcourt family and it went wrong.” I told Detective Klein all about Wilfred’s attempt to change Blaine’s inheritance. Blaine agreed that was the kind of thing his mother might mention to Gomer. “Big tragic mistake. Whoever did this has a mind like a million steel traps.”
“And you’re at PPC for Extrahuman Crime Investigation, Miss Ichiro?” Klein put his hands on his hips.
“Um, no.” I felt my face flush, embarrassed about my actual academic circumstances.
“You should be.” Klein tapped my phone and handed it back to me. “And where did you get this app? It’s gorgeous.”
“She programmed it.” Blaine’s telepathic words came with three smoke rings. The reverb was back. A nervously pacing human form Blaine appeared along with the interrogation room in my mind’s eye. “Your interpretation is nice and all, but it’s not the only one. I have a bad feeling about how Weaver might have taken everything, plus the fact that Mother wanted me to go to the PD initially. Do you trust me?” I nodded out on the lawn to him and everyone else. “Good. Stay close and try not to freak out.”
“Woah, cool.” Klein’s smile was like the flash on a camera, blinding and then gone an instant later. “Detective Weaver, hi.”
I’d heard footsteps but had been too distracted to check whose they were. But Blaine had known, of course. The spider shifter Detective stepped right up to Blaine’s snout, somehow looking down her nose at him even though he was enormous. She flashed her badge.
“Stop getting all buddy-buddy with the dragon, Cal.” She narrowed her eyes.
“Wait, what?” Klein blinked at his partner. “I don’t get it.”
“The house is full of Hertha Harcourt’s poison apples. This whelp’s never been close to his stepfather, even though he married the mother before Blaine hatched. A sibling means he’ll have to split everything if not lose it all. And, according to a note from the Goblin butler, he has connections to the Gitanos and has been entertaining this Tanuki. She’s got a record of Grand Theft, you know.
“Blaine Harcourt, you’re under arrest for the murder of Wilfred Harcourt, and the attempted murder of your younger sibling. You’ll shift back down to human form now and come along peacefully.”
But he did no such thing.
Chapter Fifteen
Blaine
I scooped Kimiko up in my left talon and took off. I didn’t worry about Weaver or Klein shooting at us, because the backdraft from my wings knocked them both flat, Taki Waban, too. What I could hardly believe was that Tony Gitano was the last man standing down there. He pumped his fist in the air twice. Before I got out of telepathy range with him, he promised to clear things up. I had my doubts about his ability to do that until I remembered him on the Vespa after the shooting.
He knew things I didn’t, especially about any fake Gitano Gang contacts Gomer could have cooked up. I let my wings continue the ascent. Once I was at apex over the Pell Bridge, I’d tilt them and head back down to land at India Point Park, where I had some clothes stashed.
“Blaine?” Kimiko’s thoughts gave me double vision, pulling part of my focus back to the interrogation room her imagination had cooked up. “Blaine, why are you running from the police?”
“Because we have to get the Lucky cufflinks to your dad. It sounded like they wanted to bring you in for questioning, too. If I let Weaver and company hold us, he could die before we get out.”
She didn’t give me anything like a verbal answer. Instead, the drab cinderblock walls in that little made-up room melted away. I was with her in a woodland clearing, sunlit with early morning light. The trees had blossoms, pink and white. The grass was still short and speckled wi
th star-shaped white flowers. A brass lamp sat on a tree stump in the middle, but I didn’t care enough about it to examine it more closely. Her arms went around my neck, her body pressed against mine. The warmth of her embrace in my mind was nothing like the mocking playfulness she’d shown when we almost got caught listening in. It was leaps and bounds beyond the brief lip-lock that had spurred the hidden betrothal memories.
Kimiko wasn’t just showing me a telepathic display of affection. She was giving me her trust. This sanctuary of her heart and mind opened to my presence, welcoming me in a way I never thought another person would. I’d always been kept at arm’s length before.
I lowered some of my own barriers, giving as good as I got. Tiger-lilies sprang up at the tree line, orange like my scales. Fluffy little clouds made dragon shapes in the previously clear sky. The trees sprouted leaves and fruit alongside the blossoms. Our imagination collaboration amalgamated spring and summer, dawn and midday. I wondered whether we’d break into a musical number.
The clearing filled with her laughter, my eyes filled with tears. This place was perfect. She was perfect. Mother had gone and betrothed me to my destined mate after insisting my entire life that I’d be married to make an alliance and would have to pass on anything coincidence might present.
Whether this was some kind of colossal mistake on her part, the Ichiro family Luck, or deliberate misleading from the Precog who’d been standing with the man in the Greek fisherman’s hat, I had no idea. All I knew was, Kimiko Ichiro was my destiny, and not some ill fate like I’d imagined earlier that same day. I’d do anything for her now.
“Back at you.” Her words were everywhere, not just in my ears. It’s hard to explain, but telepathy is like that. It’s not just communicating but communion. Her words sang in the breeze, rustled in the branches. They were close enough to be mine, my feelings also hers, our actions like a mirror without glass between the images. I would have kissed her, worried it’d be weird to have our first real one be imaginary.