by Rachel Rener
“Oh, yes. Really, really boring,” he agreed.
“But then why does that woman have to go with you?” Evelyn asked, keeping her voice low. “She was awful to you. Something about this just doesn’t feel right.”
Aspen hesitated. We obviously couldn’t tell Evelyn the truth, both for the sake of secrecy and her own safety. But Aspen was a terrible liar and her grandmother was a human lie detector.
“Savannah has extensive experience with campaigning,” I interjected. “In that sense, she really is the best person for the job. And yes, she was obviously going through a really rough patch a few years ago. But the minister has full confidence in her. She’s definitely seen the error of her ways.” …I hope, I added silently.
Aspen was giving me a funny look, though she had to have known that I was just trying to appease Evelyn.
“Well, I’m going to go have a word with her about manners before you all rush out,” Evelyn remarked, pushing her chair away from the table. “You all stay here,” she added, seeing Aspen rise from her seat. “I have a few more things I’d like to discuss with her, in private.”
I raised an eyebrow but kept my mouth shut as Evelyn shot me that infamous stink-eye of hers.
After the rest of us had cleared our plates and exchanged hugs and goodbyes with Robert, we stopped in the foyer to bundle back up. Savannah was already leaning against the door impatiently, her eyes cast downward and her cheeks flushed. I couldn’t help but wonder what words had been exchanged while the rest of us were out of earshot.
Evelyn reached forward and grasped each of us in a tight hug before gripping Aspen’s arms tightly. “You be careful, sweets, you hear? Call me every chance you get.”
“I will,” Aspen promised with a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “You don’t have to worry about a thing in the meantime.”
I could feel the familiar tightness in my chest return.
As Aspen and I followed the others out to the car, I was gripped with a heavy, pressing feeling. This was all happening so fast. I hadn’t even called my mother or Sarah to let them know I was leaving. Then again, what could I even tell them that wasn’t an overt lie or a baseless guess?
“Should we call your mother and Ted?” I asked, stopping a few yards from the front porch. “Pay them a visit before we go?”
“Eileen and I stopped there before lunch,” Aspen replied, giving Evelyn and Robert a half-hearted wave as the others made their way for the car. “Thank God they already had lunch plans because I don’t know what would have happened if they found themselves in the same room with Savannah. Ted was shot and my mother nearly died because of her.” The accusation in her voice was loud and clear.
“You’re not wrong,” I conceded.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she added in a low hiss. “Inviting that woman to my grandmother’s house – what were you thinking? It was so reckless and dangerous—”
“And the best idea I could think of in order to avoid a possible altercation,” I interrupted. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first. I was just racking my brain for an adequate solution. There’s so much bad blood between the two of you—”
“And that’s my fault?”
“Of course not. But as you know, Evelyn has this uncanny ability to bring people together and keep everyone in line. And hey, it went okay, right? No catastrophes.” My eyes flitted over to Ori, Eileen, and Savannah as they argued about seating logistics.
“Why do you keep looking at Savannah like that?”
The question caught me off guard. My gaze trailed back to Aspen, who was chewing on her lip. “I don’t understand… Looking at her? In what way?”
“You keep glancing at her – I mean, she is showing enough cleavage to be featured in a pin-up calendar, but…” her voice trailed off as she hugged her own chest, wholly concealed by her heavy down jacket.
Oh. I wrapped my arms around her tightly and kissed the top of her head. “You have nothing to worry about there, Aspen. I promise.”
She looked up at me, her eyes full of worry.
“I am not sitting in your lap, Ori!” Eileen shouted. “We’re just going to have to take two cars!”
“Do you know how much they charge for airport parking?” He was gesturing wildly. “Twenty dollars a day, per vehicle! We might be gone a month!”
“Would both of you shut up and let me in the car? It’s freezing!” Savannah snapped. “It’s bad enough I have to be sandwiched between the two of you without you yelling at each other like idiots!”
“Don’t call Ori an idiot!” Eileen scolded.
“You call me an idiot all the time!” he retorted.
“Yeah, ‘cause it’s okay when I do it!”
“Would someone please unlock the door?” Savannah demanded shrilly.
Aspen heaved an exasperated sigh before snagging the key from my pocket and marching over to join the others.
“Have fun, everyone!” Robert called from the front porch. Evelyn had already turned to go back inside after shouting prosaisms about the dangers of traveling and making sure that we’d packed enough snacks for the plane. “Oh, and Aiden?”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps, once you get a quiet moment, you could give me a call?” He glanced behind him to make sure the front door was closed. “I suspect there’s more to this story and I’d very much like to hear about it… particularly if it has to do with the Asterian government. You know how interested I am in that subject.”
“I’ll keep you informed, Robert. I promise.”
With a satisfied nod, he followed Evelyn inside.
I trudged across the driveway to find my Jeep had been transformed into a clown car. Ori, Eileen, and Savannah had all crowded into the backseat, with the latter sandwiched between the other two in her massive fur coat. Eileen was spitting pieces of fake fur from her mouth, half of her petite body engulfed by the leopard print mass. Aspen had twisted around awkwardly in the front seat, trying to help Ori with his seatbelt.
With a heavy sigh, I slumped into the driver’s seat, slamming the door as I did. The drive to the airport was just the beginning, since we’d be traveling from Denver to Tokyo to Paris – and after that, it was anyone’s guess. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself dryly. Unbeknownst to anyone else, I’d been secretly planning to take Aspen to Paris for our future honeymoon. And now, instead of it being me and my new wife taking a romantic stroll down the Champs-Elysées hand-in-hand, it would be the five of us holed up together in the Alps working together to ensure that Ori’s ex-girlfriend, an incredibly powerful and influential Polymancer, didn’t amass a following of lawless Elementalists to her wildly bigoted and dangerous cause. And we would be doing all of this while simultaneously trying not to kill one another.
I wasn’t sure of many things at that moment, but of one thing I was certain: it was going to be a very, very long trip.
Chapter 7
could’ve been on a white sand beach in Puerto Vallarta, soaking up the rays with my gorgeous wife while sipping on a Mai-Tai with one of those fancy little paper umbrellas. With her rich and flawless brown skin, Sophia usually didn’t worry about heavy sunscreen, but I could still hear her teasing me about needing sunglasses to protect her eyes from my “Day-Glo” white epidermis. I could feel her massaging SPF 100 between my shoulder blades, her long slender fingers gliding under the narrow strap of my green string bikini. And I could practically smell the coconut-scented sunblock, the salty ocean, her yummy tangerine perfume, the distant aroma of freshly caught fish grilling over hot coals…
So why the hell was I currently shivering at the massive intersection of Shibuya Crossing, teeth chattering, slush clinging to my freshly-bleached locks while my supermodel wife was on the other side of the planet? Honestly, at that moment, I couldn’t come up with a good explanation. Something about helping Ori prevent yet another megalomaniac from acquiring an army of supernatural bigots and saving the world, yadda, yadda.
But as I stood in th
e middle of Tokyo’s overflowing version of Time’s Square, surrounded on all sides by a gaggle of Japanese girls who were emitting shrill screams and flashing peace signs while they took selfies with me and my platinum-blonde-and-electric-green hair, I was kicking my idiot self for my idiot choices. Literally kicking myself with a slushy boot while I looked around frantically, trying to find a narrow gap to escape from the throng. Any other day, I would have been thrilled to be surrounded by adorable Japanese women in their little school uniforms while they begged to take my photo – heck, I was even an inch or so taller than most of them, an absolute first for me – but Eileen plus frigid weather minus Sophia raised to the power of jetlag, further compounded by the fur-clad presence of one of my least favorite people in the entire universe, multiplied by an overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety… Well, let’s just say I was severely regretting my decision to trade coconuts and palm trees for squealing crowds and dumb politics.
Luckily, Aspen swooped in to rescue me, forcibly yanking me from my adoring fans as she hurried to chase the rest of our group across the street – not an easy feat in the middle of one of the largest and busiest intersections in the world. Behind us, I could hear the disappointed groans of all the girls who didn’t get a chance to run their fingers through my hair – again, not something I would normally be complaining about. But here we were.
“Holy cow,” Aspen huffed as we caught up to the others on the sidewalk. “That was insane – one second you were right behind me, and the next all I can see is the top of your head drowning in a sea of dark ponytails and plaid skirts. Speaking of drowning—” She surreptitiously twirled her fingers and extracted the melting slush from my hair, even going so far as providing me with a little Hydro-shield above my head to keep me more or less protected from the snow.
“Thank you!” I practically wept as I clutched her arm. “I packed so fast in the twenty-minute window I had between my house and yours that I forgot to bring a jacket with a hood.” Ugh. How was the weather in Tokyo even colder than Denver? It just wasn’t fair.
“Here,” she replied, handing me her own knit hat, which was perfectly dry. Damn Hydromancers. “We’re almost there, according to Ori. And I don’t need this nearly as much as you do.”
“You’re my hero.” I let out a happy sigh as I yanked the wool over my frost-nipped ears.
Her eyes trailed to the gaggle of pouting girls stranded on the other side of the crosswalk. “Wow – and we thought your hair garnered a lot of attention in Mumbai.”
“Yeah, and I also thought it was just a five-minute walk from the subway station,” I complained loudly enough for Ori to hear. “Why aren’t we there yet?”
“It would have gone a lot faster if you didn’t stop every two seconds to talk to strangers,” he groused over his shoulder.
Ugh! As if it were my fault! I was pleased to see that his teeth were also chattering from the cold. “You’re just jealous that they were accosting me and not you!”
“Is this the building?” Aiden interrupted from Aspen’s other arm, pointing toward the sleek twenty-story building looming thirty yards to our right. It was one of the many skyscrapers surrounding Shibuya Crossing, though unlike the others, this one wasn’t adorned in neon lights, bright Japanese symbols on scrolling tickers, or massive digital screens with flashing advertisements and cute little anime characters. In fact, its black mirrored windows were relatively nondescript compared to everything else in the square.
“This is it,” Savannah confirmed, wrapping her ugly “faux” fur jacket tightly across her ample bosom. I wasn’t convinced that it was actually fake but I wasn’t about to cause an earthquake in the middle of the square by going head-to-head with another Terramancer. Particularly since overt Elemental displays were one of the reasons we were there to begin with.
I was so ecstatic that our freezing trek from the subway station was finally over, I shot ahead of the others and practically flung myself through the silver revolving doors. A blast of hot dry air greeted me. “Thank God,” I sighed, positioning myself just below an air vent. I pretended that the warm breeze was the same one rustling the palm fronds at our beach resort just the other day.
“This way, tiny one,” Ori said, tugging me and my soaking wet Converse sneakers away from my blissful patch of heaven.
Doing my best to stifle a loud whine, I allowed myself to be led by the elbow through the tiny lobby. Apart from the two elevator doors directly in front of us, there were a handful of unmarked mahogany doors on the adjacent walls that presumably led to office suites. As far as lobbies go, it was nondescript and unremarkable – odd for an Asterian Chapter.
The five of us crammed into an elevator where a white-gloved doorman was waiting beside the elevator call buttons. He gave a small bow as we entered. “Omataseitashimashita. Ue ni maerimasu. Goriyou wa nankai deshouka?”
“Um, top, please?” Ori replied, pointing to the ceiling.
“Saijōkai onegaishimasu,” I interjected, giving the doorman a polite smile.
“Kashikomarimashita,” he replied with an even wider smile.
As the elevator whooshed upwards, it took me a moment to realize that the rest of the group was gawking at me. I gave a half-shrug and grinned. “What? I used to be an anime freak. Not to mention there was this really cute foreign exchange student from Japan studying at my high school. Had to woo her somehow!”
“TMI, but convenient,” Savannah muttered.
When the elevator doors opened, two more gentlemen in white gloves greeted us. They were standing on either side of a tall set of mahogany doors.
“Ohayōgozaimasu. Apointomento wa gozaimasu-deshouka?” one of them asked.
“He’s asking if we have an appointment,” I supplied.
“Tell them we’re here to see Mei,” Savannah ordered.
I heaved both an internal and external sigh – and here I’d thought I’d never have to take an order from that insufferable woman ever again – and translated, “Saitō-sama to oyakusoku ga arimasu.”
“Please lift your sleeves,” the second man replied in perfect English.
Ori grinned at me as he displayed his yellow Electromancer tattoo to the two gentlemen. “Sorry, I just enjoyed watching you speak Japanese. It sounds funny coming from your mouth.”
“It was really impressive,” Aspen chimed in, lifting her own jacket sleeve.
The man gave an audible gasp upon seeing the five-pointed star embedded in her arm, swooping into one of the lowest bows I’d ever seen. “Forgive us, Pentamansā-sama. We did not know you would honor us today. Please, come in.”
The two of them hurriedly pushed the heavy wooden doors open, taking our jackets and providing the five of us with indoor slippers as they did. Savannah looked like she was practically melting into bliss as she yanked off her thigh-high stiletto boots and slipped her perfectly manicured toes into the plush fabric. I myself was happy to finally have something dry on my feet.
Ori made his way to the tea station in the corner while the rest of us gawked at the massive lobby. Here was the typical gaudy Asterian style I’d been expecting, though the Japanese adaptation was admittedly very cool. The sweeping room had a twelve-foot ceiling that was an intricate design of dark crisscrossing beams and elegantly carved wooden columns inside each corner of the room. Their polished espresso finish was a nice contrast against the stark-white exterior walls. Several sliding screen doors – or shoji – with delicately inked cherry blossoms divided the room from the adjoining offices. The coolest part: the waiting area itself consisted of low sectional couches that surrounded a bubbling fountain of koi fish and lilies. Carefully pruned bonsai trees had been placed around the edges of the square pool. Apart from the two men who greeted us and a blue-haired woman in a modern kimono-style dress, we were the only ones there.
The woman, a Level-three Hydromancer according to her blue tattoo and matching garb – Badass, I thought to myself – came to greet us with warm towels that she’d heated herself. It was t
hen that I noticed the katana strapped to a belt around her waist. My eyes widened. Even more badass! After we wiped our hands and faces, she dried out our wet clothes, sending the water she’d drawn from them to the koi pond. I watched with a touch of envy; Terramancy is the best and most interesting Element to control by far (in my not-necessarily-unbiased opinion). But the other Elements certainly had their everyday conveniences; for example, I’d rather be able to keep my own feet dry in the snow than identify the trace amounts of pyrite in the massive marble pots that housed the bonsai trees.
Then again, I could make diamonds from graphite and they couldn’t so nyah.
While we waited for Mei, I avoided the temptation to plop down on the couch since I knew I’d slip into a coma the moment my skinny ass hit that velvet cushion. God, was I sleep-deprived – I guess flying from Mexico to Denver to Los Angeles to Tokyo in the span of a day and a half will do that to you. Holding back a massive yawn, I stretched my arms over my head, feeling the vertebrae in my back pop like bubble wrap. A few feet away, Aspen and Aiden were huddled together on the couch speaking in low tones while Ori stood at the edge of the fountain, hands clasped behind his back as he watched the massive koi glide beneath the lily pads. He was standing with his back ultra-straight and feet shoulder-width apart – one of the few cues that he was once a big honcho in the IDF, not that he ever went into details. And Savannah was – where was Savannah?
I looked around the room, trying to find the massive blob of fur. That’s when I realized that one of the screens was cracked open, exposing a sliver of fire-engine red – the same color as her sweater dress. Just as I was about to call her name, the screen slid open and she stepped out with the prime minister right behind her. Great. We’d been there less than three minutes and Savannah was already making brazen power plays. I shook my head but decided to keep my mouth shut – at least in front of the minister.
Small and diminutive and pushing eighty years old, Mei somehow managed to exude an air of power and confidence. She had deep crow’s feet on the outside of her eyes that were offset by beautiful skin and high cheekbones. The wispy gray bun atop her head, held in place by a traditional hair stick, stood out against the pastel pantsuit she wore. And though she looked much frailer than she did in her official portrait, there was no mistaking her power and authority. One of the few confirmed Polymancers in existence, she was also one of the only Prelates to have escaped the Inner Circle with her life. And yet, instead of retiring like any sane seventy-something-year-old would have done, she went on to take Barish’s place and help rebuild the Order from the ground up.