by Danny Bell
“Yeah, same,” Olivia replied mildly. “It’s just too bad Zinc doesn’t have a chair for dry cleaning.”
With fresh eyes, we were looking at Olivia’s clothes, and she had lost more blood than I realized. Her jeans, jacket, everything had been ruined. Walking with a puncture wound might not have been the best idea in hindsight. Olivia removed the remainder of her clothes down her underwear, and slipped into the bodysuit, then slipped her shoes back on.
She looked to me for approval, showing off the attire. It was baggy and barely sat on her shoulders, even the sleeves went past her hands. “How do I look?”
“Floppy.”
“No idea why he gave me a double XL, but at least it’s clean.” Olivia shrugged. “So, are you zipping us back now or what?”
“Or what,” I answered, finishing up my inventory. Everything was still there, not that I expected any different. I sighed, knowing I had to explain it to her. “Look, we have to take the long way home. If I just click my heels three times, we’re going to land right back where we started, and it might be two seconds after we left or two weeks. The way we left was way too chaotic, I can’t guide us back with any precision. And I’d rather land on a cozy bookstore then potentially right in front of an ancient mythological horror, wouldn’t you?”
Olivia grimaced and nodded begrudgingly, and the moment was uncomfortable for us both. Here she was, taking my advice and getting out of her own head after she’d been on the verge of a freak out over Logan’s family, and now all of a sudden it was me who was in a funk. I knew that I was sucking the air out of the room, and I felt like a jerk for hitting her with that dose of truth; but I had other things on my mind, and I wasn’t feeling up to babysitting her mood. Even if that’s what she deserved from me after all of this.
Out on the shop’s floor, Zinc held none of the panache he’d had earlier and instead was a sweaty, grimy mess with a permanent look of annoyance etched in the lines of his face. He took one look at us, and as impossible as it had seemed just a second earlier, he somehow looked even more annoyed.
“Hell’s teeth, girl!” Something seemed to break behind his eyes as he dropped a tool with a loud metal clang and stood to march over to us, poking a finger into Olivia’s chest.
Or at least, that’s what it looked like at first. Before we could protest, the suit began to shrink like a snail under salt, and an instant later, the rubberish suit was form-fitting and wouldn’t have looked out of place on a comic book character.
“Oh!” Olivia almost yelped in a happy surprise. “Yes, this is much better. Thanks!”
Zinc gave her a look as if he were seeing her again for the first time and genuinely couldn’t decide if he was being messed with or not. “No, how do you not—?” The question seemed to catch in his throat, and he appeared to decide against it. Instead, he reached for her and slid a finger across the length of her forearm, and a holographic carousel of outfits lit up in front of her. “Just pick something.”
Olivia’s eyes went wide, and she began to spin through the options, and Zinc turned his attention to me. “Sleep well, I trust?”
“Like the dead,” I confirmed.
“Well, I might’ve joined you if not for your fortuitous timing. I don’t suppose there’s more breaking news I should be aware of?”
I thought hard about that, and I wanted to share what I knew at that moment so badly that it was making me nauseous. Something that shouldn’t have been medically possible given where I’d just come from, but I knew I couldn’t. Or shouldn’t.
“No, you got the full poop.” I shrugged.
Zinc’s nose twitched in disapproval at my phrasing, but his words didn’t match his expression. “I quite literally owe you my life,” he said somberly.
“Well, you fixed my wrist and even got the dirt out from under my fingernails, let’s call it even,” I replied, eager to get going.
“But we’re not even. Far from it.”
“I’m a cyberpunk!” Olivia exclaimed from behind us. The rubber bodysuit was gone, replaced by a bright neon blue leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up, a white t-shirt with a logo I didn’t recognize underneath it, shiny midnight blue pants of some unknown and heavy looking material, and somehow, her lipstick and hair matched the color of her pants. She looked like she was cosplaying as her Jeep.
I didn’t say that out loud, of course; instead, I forced the biggest smile I could muster and extended two thumbs up in her direction that she ignored in favor of examining her new outfit in awe. At least she was happy.
“See? You also made my friend a cyberpunk. Now we’re definitely even,” I said, more impatient than I would’ve liked. “And without further ado—”
I had started to walk past Zinc to the door when he caught my arm with a hand, and the suddenness of it froze me in place. “I know what I said about you getting out of the city,” he said, locking eyes with me. “And you know where my mind was at when I said it. I’ve had a few hours to sit with the scope of what you did for us. For me. And I don’t like knowing that I owe what I can’t pay. Something tells me you know what that feels like.”
I moved my eyes down to his hand and back to his stare. He let go sheepishly and said, “I’m merely trying to say that if you or your friend find yourselves back here, I won’t forget what I owe. Perhaps you’ll have some proper gear next time.”
“I won’t come back, Zinc,” I said, walking away from him, digging my hands into my coat pockets. “So maybe just make this second chance mean something. Or pay it forward. Whatever, it’s your life, not mine.”
Olivia bounced behind me as we stepped out into the early morning streets, the sun barely peeking out into the still streets. The gentle rain had stopped, but a few scattered dark clouds remained in the pink and purple sky. “Oh hey, Elana?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah?”
“What the shit?” It was less bubbly that time.
I kept wandering down the street, though I knew what she meant. She got to play dress up, nothing was trying to immediately kill us, and she didn’t want to think about all the bad things waiting for us when this breather was done. It was the calm at the eye of the storm, and I was one big cloud of gloom and doom hanging over her head.
“Your emotions are all over the map!” Her voice rose as she pressed the point when she didn’t get an immediate answer. “You just saved that guy’s life! Can you at least pretend to be happy about it?”
I spun on my heel and pointed a finger into her chest, the suddenness of it almost made her stumble. “Yeah, I did,” I said in a huff. “I saved his life, and yours, and a bunch of amoral shitheel capitalists. And you know who I didn’t save?”
Olivia stared at me blankly, but I could see she was trying to hold something back. There were a lot of people I haven’t saved, and she probably wanted to name names.
It was my turn to press. “About two hundred club kids who probably wanted nothing more than to forget they lived in a cyber dystopia for one goddamn night, and I could’ve. I could’ve told Zinc to keep an eye on the place, maybe leak an anonymous tip, anything! But I didn’t, and I’m not going to!”
“Why not?” Olivia sounded much smaller now, and I calmed down by degrees.
“We’ve been over this. You stop Ash and his pals before they get to the cabin, or you just swipe the Necronomicon. You call the cops and say a bunch of Germans are getting ready to take over Nakatomi Plaza. Stop any big inciting incident, what happens?”
“World is never born,” Olivia nodded. “So, the club stuff?”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know! Seriously, I don’t. And it didn’t even occur to me until I woke up that it was something we could’ve stopped. Maybe we stop the drug deal, and everything is fine, or maybe an entire universe doesn’t exist when we get back. I’m not ready to gamble billions of souls, and we more than made a mark on the story when we got here, no chance of a do-over.”
Olivia looked at me thoughtfully. “So, is it the uncertainty that’s
getting to you this time?”
I’d only been awake ten minutes and already I felt so very, very tired. “It’s not even that. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to make this kind of choice; I have a bad feeling it’s not the last, either. Normally, I get a few minutes to myself to remember that, sometimes, people just die, and I can’t do anything about it. I get to tell myself that I can only do so much, I can only help where I can, and, by the time anyone knows any better, I’ve managed to take stock in those moments and move on. Maybe enjoy a bit of my own life and maybe not feel guilty for doing so. Or maybe I think about whose story I can change next to try and make up for who I couldn’t save.” I wasn’t even looking at her now. I became aware of how animated I’d become and that I was pacing and talking to the street. I stopped myself and looked at my friend and said, “It’s just kind of difficult to do that when you’re marveling at the wonders of the future, and it’s not even our future.”
From the look on her face, you might’ve thought I’d just slapped her. Just as quickly, her face became neutral again, and if there was any anger to be found in her voice, she’d hid it too well for me to find. “So, how do we get home?”
“We take the long way, like I said,” I answered. Technically, Olivia didn’t need me to get herself home, it was just that my way was a whole hell of a lot safer. I had a flashback to the time I made Bres’s goons chase me from book to book before I knew what they’d have to go through to chase me down, and it made me shiver. Those that survived the gauntlet didn’t look well, and that included Bres himself. Now that I know what’s out there, I was a little horrified by my actions, but given what was at stake, I don’t know that I’d change a thing.
“What are we waiting for?” my friend asked somewhat impatiently.
“I need time to focus, someplace quiet,” I said, considering where we were. “I can’t guarantee I can get us back when I’d like, but if I can concentrate, I can get the location pretty close.”
Our walk led us to the outskirts of the city. With no money and, given how densely populated the area was, finding someplace quiet proved to be a challenge, but we eventually found something that looked just condemned enough for me to set up shop. We didn’t need to move in; we just needed a good hour or so. Clearing a path would be easy enough.
The building seemed like it might’ve been an office space at one point. There were no lights, and it felt like every inch of the place that could’ve been repurposed or sold for scrap had long since been stripped away. It might’ve felt spooky if the rest of my life recently hadn’t already been far more terrifying.
We found a set of stairs that looked stable enough to climb, and Olivia agreed with me that the second floor would be best; on the off chance that someone decided to interrupt us, we might at least hear them coming.
I took off my coat and folded it into a makeshift mat to sit on, and sitting down, I closed my eyes and began to meditate. Meditate might be the wrong word. I closed my eyes and daydreamed about home, reaching across the universe for any sort of anchor to which I could latch onto with hooks made of memory and familiarity. I thought about what it was, and what it had been, and what it might be now. The loft where I slept and the invading cats that nuzzled me awake. My friend who owned the building and the trust she had in me and the friends who were waiting for me to come home. I couldn’t force the connection to give us a clear path between here and there, it would need to reveal itself, and for as much as I liked to believe that I’d gotten better at finding the way home, what I’d mostly gotten better about was being patient. Ignoring the outside world, the time it took, just feeling the—
“Are you hearing this?” Olivia shook me out of my headspace, and a sense of anger nearly gripped me in the brief moment that I became aware of my surroundings.
Angry men were shouting. The telltale sounds of violence, the unnecessary crashing of lightweight items being thrown into walls. But the worst sound of all, the sound that stirred something in me, was the sound of frightened, crying children.
My mind raced with the possibilities of what was happening here, my mind putting pieces of the puzzle together as words echoed off the walls and up toward us. Runaways, from the sounds of it. No, orphans. And homeless. They weren’t welcomed here, they’d been warned, but they had nowhere to go. And now they were going to pay.
Olivia spoke with an edge to her voice that I didn’t hear often. “Do we still have time to change things when children are involved?”
“We always get involved for the sake of children.”
“Then give me the rod,” Olivia demanded.
I didn’t argue.
* * *
Olivia and I didn’t talk much on the way back. I told her it was because I needed to concentrate, but that wasn’t it. Not entirely. It wasn’t the path that I was focused on. I had an idea of what I might need to do to win, but I wasn’t looking forward to it like I always thought I would. I had no idea what I was going to do next, maybe I’ll get home and a solution will just fall into my lap, but I doubted it. That’s not how life works, because sometimes real life leads you to work for an immortal goddess who makes you fight an ancient snake monster.
Our path home was an utter disaster. So far, we had walked across a lake frozen not by the cold but in time, a literal cartoon desert, a haunted forest, and now, we were walking through a traffic jam with seemingly endless driverless cars all honking at each other. When I finally found an oak door that would send us home, oddly attached to the back of a cargo van, I almost ripped it off its hinges trying to get through.
We stepped into The Book’s End with a little popping sound as the door vanished behind us. Sun shone in through the windows of the shop, blinding me momentarily, and I squinted in response. I heard Ann before I saw her. Something close to a squeal escaped from her throat as she shouted at us.
“You’re back!” Words finally replaced unintelligible sounds as she rushed to hug me. Almost as quickly as she’d done it, I felt her shift. She wasn’t a big hugger, but this was a special occasion it would seem.
“Yeah, it’s good to see you, too. How long were we gone?” I asked, looking around the room. Jason looked elated to see us, Teague looked as if she’d been crying, and Kaida, the young woman from the hotel, sat with her by the windows and looked as if she’d been comforting her. Claire, however, had a more stoic look about her and hadn’t risen to meet us. She gave me a nod, and I returned it.
“A day?” Ann ventured.
“Elana, the sun!” Olivia nearly shouted.
“Yeah, it’s the big yellow one in the center of the—” I began.
“It stopped raining!” Olivia cut me off, and I did a double take. She was right! We weren’t being flooded, and that meant good things for, like, the whole city.
Ann looked at Olivia in amazement. “Forget us, how long were you gone that you dyed your hair?”
“Biting my style?” Claire asked wryly, absently running her fingers through her own dyed hair. It almost slipped my mind that Olivia had switched up her whole dang look on the fly.
“I really like it,” Jason added somehow more awkwardly than I had thought he was capable of. “It’s blue.”
Big help, buddy.
“Hey, uh, y’all?” Teague called out to us. “You were after an old ass plate or something, right?”
“Maybe a plate, maybe a mirror,” I mused. “Why?”
Teague kept her incredulous expression as she stared out the window, and Kaida looked on with a look of shock and disbelief. “It can’t be!”
I finally made my way over and saw what they were all staring out. Just outside the shop, sitting and wagging its tail, was a happy looking and healthy fox, looking right at me. And in its mouth, gently clasped between its teeth, was a familiar-looking and ancient plate. Or maybe it was a mirror.
Whatever its function, it was Yata no Kagami. The answer to all our problems.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I couldn’t help but think t
hat animal saliva on one of Japan’s most celebrated treasures felt at least mildly disrespectful, but then again, I had tried to steal it, so I didn’t have room to say shit.
“What do you suppose the little guy wants?” Jason asked.
“The little…?” Kaida began incredulously. “A fox appears out of thin air with a sacred treasure in its teeth the second Elana returns, can you seriously not see what’s happening here?”
“My guess is he wants inside, but I suspect we couldn’t deny him even if we wanted to,” I said, and as I finished, the fox was gone in a split second, replaced by the fox masked man who ambushed me at the docks. Only now instead of the skintight catsuit, he wore a smart, navy blue suit. He was mere inches away from us, nearly touching the glass. Everyone else jumped or flinched in surprise; Ann shouted a crude expletive. I didn’t so much as blink, however. I expected as much.
“You’re right, of course,” the fox-masked figured said. “But it would be nice to be invited inside all the same.”
“In a minute,” I said dismissively, turning toward my friends. “You just let the new person hang out while we were gone?”
“She was pretty insistent,” Ann offered as an explanation.
“And you didn’t seem all that freaked out when we just materialized out of the blue,” I said somewhat accusingly to Kaida.
“And it’s not the first time I’ve seen someone do that,” Kaida replied, reminding me about the incident in the garage. “Not to mention that my father is possessed by a snake spirit and now a real-life Kitsune is outside of your shop. Not much is going to surprise me at this point.”
“Do you want to let me in, or should I take Yata no Kogami and go home?” the masked man asked impatiently.
“Yeah, let’s get this over with.” I sighed, pushing open the door. “Get in here.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Claire shouted, moving toward the door. “Who is this?”
“He’s a Kitsune,” Kaida breathed. “I’d heard about them as a little girl, but they’re not supposed to be real.”