Liquid Fire (6 page)

And then the other dancer, who all this time had been working on that same spat on Jewel’s ankle, finally undid the clasp. “
There,
” the boy said, carefully pulling it free, “see? Just took a little concentration to get it untangled. No need to rip it off and have it redone—”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks, finally, I’m
freezing,
” Jewel said, hopping up, pulling off the rest of her silk pants with a quick motion and wadding them up into a ball. She threw them into a red bag, then squatted down and dug in her duffel.

I half-covered my face with one hand—she’d unintentionally given me a
great
view of her curvy rump wrapped in that interesting hemp-rope bikini bottom—but then I noticed her legs and back were covered in an interesting flame design, not a tattoo but something I didn’t recognize.

But before I could ask, Jewel pulled a pair of jeans out of her bag, which she immediately began worming on, not even bothering to change into normal underwear. When the hem of the jeans passed the rope on her hips, she glanced back at me, half grinning, half embarrassed.

“Sorry,” she said, buttoning her jeans, jerking a dark top off the counter behind her, and slipping it on. “It’s just we’ve got a lot of cleanup to do and I’ve been stuck here like a useless lump while Henri was getting that off.”

Jewel turned, pulling on a lumberjack shirt over the top—but I could see she’d sewn flames and beads into the threads of her jeans, and sequins into the shirt. It was a nice blend of femme and flannel. I stood there, staring, as she buttoned up and smiled at me.

“You should say something,” Jewel said, grin growing broader.

“Yeah, Mom,” Cinnamon said, poking me. “Stop drooling.”

I felt my cheeks burn. “I’m—sorry,” I said. “Was I staring?”

“I’ve been thoroughly ogled,” Jewel said, looking like she enjoyed it. “Hey, Dakota, thanks for coming backstage, but now we gotta start breaking things down, and I don’t want you handling equipment without a waiver. Meet you out back?”

Cinnamon and I returned to our circuit around the interior of the building, wandering through thinning crowds as exhibitors closed up shop. Then we ducked outside, through the thousand hanging wheels and frames of a community bike repair shop, and onto a back loading ramp where, we were assured, the performers would exit.

The air from the bay had turned chilly, and from the back of the big warehouse, Oakland looked dirtier, less inviting. But just beyond the docks and the train tracks, there were the same nice row houses, and the cool air was clean and pleasant.

“So far,” I said, “Oakland is not living up to its reputation.”

“Yeah,” Cinnamon said, bouncing back and forth on the loading ramp. Abruptly, she bent down, tail flicking through the air as she examined a piece of twisted metal, perhaps a discarded bit of sculpture. “No fightin’, not borin’!”

“Come here,” I said, extending my arms, and she hopped up and fell backward into my arms. I tousled her hair, then straightened her headscarf. “I love you, Cinnamon.”

“I loves you too, Mom,” she replied, refixing her headscarf the way she apparently wanted it, with one catlike ear popping up askew. “Thank you for letting me come with you tonight. For letting me come out here at all. For giving me a
life.
”

“You aren’t going to be left out anymore,” I said, wrapping my arms around her upper chest and squeezing as hard as I could; she let me, but I could feel the wiry werekin muscles underneath. “I’ll be here, right behind you, at least until you hit college—
Jeez.
”

“Jeez?” she said, staring off into the distance, her tail thwacking my legs.

“We’re going to have to find you a college,” I said. “Sooner than we think—”

“So long as they knows Goldbach from Goldfrapp, it’ll be fine,” Cinnamon said.

“I’m not sure
I
know Goldbach from Goldfrapp,” I responded. “Both musicians, right?”

Cinnamon snorted. “For the love—”

The door squealed open, and a short, spiky-haired man in a rumpled shirt backed out, ripped arms laden with two milk crates, one precariously stacked atop the other, both filled to the brim with firespinning gear. He was laughing or coughing, backing straight into us, oblivious. Cinnamon sprang out of the way at once, but my coat caught on the railing and I stumbled.

“Watch out,” I said, as he kept backing up straight into me. “Hey, hey,
hey—
”

But it was too late. We collided. He lost his balance
and
the crates, and both of us were knocked down the ramp in a tumbled heap of tangled limbs and gear.

“Ow,” I said, holding my arm, which I’d dinged on a rail on the way down. Spiky-hair jerked to his feet, and underneath the rumpled shirt I glimpsed a muscle tee packing a
lot
of muscle. Familiar—ah, the other firesword dancer. “What are you, deaf or something?”

The short dancer dusted himself off, then extended a hand with a grin, saying nothing—and I immediately realized my mistake—he
was
deaf. “Oh, I’ve stepped in it, haven’t I?”

“Not yet,” Jewel said, standing at the open door, arms folded—with her devilish smile. “Molokii really
can’t
hear you. But don’t worry, I can translate—”

“You don’t have to,” I said, as she tapped his shoulder and began signing, a little too fast for rusty old me to follow—I quit signing when Mom died, and had only picked it up again since Nyissa lost her voice—but I got that she told him
exactly
what I said. “Oh, you didn’t have to.”

Molokii laughed, a rough, odd sound that was almost a cough, and grinned at me. Again, he reached down to help me up, and I took the hand gratefully. He patted my shoulder, smiled again, then flicked his hands at Jewel. Before I could say anything, she translated.

“He says don’t worry about it, you didn’t know,” she said. He flicked his fingers again, and she continued, “And he is sorry, it
is
really inconvenient at times.”

“We do use our hearing to draw our attention,” I said, my mind churning. But I knew just what I’d done wrong, or at least why I felt guilty. “But I didn’t know that, and just because you bumped into me
isn’t
a reason for me to mock the disability of a whole group. I’m sorry.”

Jewel’s eyes lit up at me. “Tell you what,” she said, moving her hands in those delicate gestures again. “Help us gather this up and carry it to his car, and all will be forgiven.”

And so I got an education on a firespinner’s gear.
This
was the bottle of fuel, the white gasoline Jewel favored;
that
was a red snuffing towel, never to be confused with a white safety towel—the former put out the poi, the latter put out the performers, and “never the twain shall meet lest you and your dousee become twin tiki torches.” The poi were swords and wands and fans and meteors and monkey’s fists and Jewel’s specialty, “morningstars,” those long wands, tipped with wicks on chains, that had provided such a spectacular finish to her performance.

When we were done, I took one crate, and Molokii took the other, Jewel took his keys, and we lugged all of it to the scraggly alley where he’d parked his car—a battered Mad Max-looking clunker that turned out to be a Toyota Avalon tricked out on the
inside
.

“
Nice
car,” I said. “I bet that was a steal—”

“Five hundred bucks, no joke,” Jewel said, waving as Molokii drove off, speakers thumping. “Back when we were at Berkeley, Molokii saw it in a junkyard, fell in love, and paid for it washing dishes one summer. Of course, it was totaled—one side scraped off—but he’s good with fire. He welded spare parts on to patchwork together a decent outer shell.”

“Why does he need the sound system?” I asked, as we walked Jewel to her car, following a line of trees that seemed to divide the houses and warehouses.

“Maybe he likes the vibration,” Cinnamon said, bopping herself in the head with one of Jewel’s poi. “He used the bass to keep time. Or, I dunno, if he rides friends in the car.”

“That’s . . . those are both about right,” Jewel said, glancing at Cinnamon, shifting her duffel. “He does like the feel of the bass, and he sold it to some friends in Sunol, who let him drive it when he’s in town. You’re a smart little girl.”

“Yes she is,” I said, reaching out and lifting the duffel off Jewel’s shoulder so she could get at the cute little sling backpack/purse trapped beneath it. “Need a hand?”

“Thanks,” Jewel said, reaching behind herself to ferret for her keys in her sling backpack. She gave me that wry smile again. “You sure are handy to have around. If the car won’t start, would you pop the hood for me, look at the engine?”

“Sure thing,” I said, trying to suppress a grin. I know I wear leather and ride a motorcycle—OK, OK, a scooter—but I never intentionally try to be butch. But Jewel seemed to like that, so I played it up a bit. “I’d hate for you to get those pretty little hands dirty.”

Jewel rolled her eyes, and Cinnamon snorted again.

Then Cinnamon’s nostrils flared. Her head jerked to the side. “Fuck, I means,
fuck!
” she barked, voice rising a register, so I knew even before she dropped into a crouch that this wasn’t my little street cat struggling with Tourette’s; this was real danger. “I smells a lizard!”

I glimpsed movement. My head whipped around, but I missed whatever it was. I dropped Jewel’s duffel and whirled to put Cinnamon at my back, and
now
saw a man in a bulky jacket striding toward us on the sidewalk—and another man casually walking on the opposite side of the street suddenly veered toward us. I looked around for an escape route, but saw two more men stepping from the bushes around either side of Jewel’s car.

They were like the United Nations of muggers—white, black, Latino, and a fourth man of an Asian race I couldn’t identify, all bearing down on us with purposeful intent. Each one was different—tall, short, wide, ripped; each one was the same, in comfortable khakis and baggy black jackets from which they pulled businesslike automatics I guessed were Glocks.

The four men surrounded us with guns raised.

“Aw, hell,” I said. “
Now
Oakland is living up to its reputation.”

———

The lead man snarled, “You should never have come to Oakland, Jewel!”

5. The Streets of Oakland

“Wait, what?” I said. I should have been terrified, but I felt a giddy exhilaration as I realized the four men were all focused on Jewel. “This isn’t about me?”

“No,” the man snapped, “and keep your yap shut, ‘DJ Irene.’ ”

“What?” I said, laughing openly now. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“Dakota, please,
be quiet,
” Jewel said, raising her hands. “Daniel, let them go. This doesn’t have anything to do with them—”

“This your new squeeze, Jewel?” Daniel asked, flicking the gun at me. I still couldn’t nail his race. Not Korean or Chinese . . . maybe . . . I dunno, Eskimo? Polynesian? “Or your
accomplice?
Maybe we should beat the shit out of her and make you watch—”

“Oh, good fucking luck,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets, squeezing my fists tight to build up mana in the yin-yangs in my palms. “Why don’t you try it?”

“
What
did you say?” Daniel said, pointing the gun at me.

“It translates to, scram while you can, pups,” Cinnamon said. “But you aren’t getting it.”

Daniel swung his gun toward her. I jerked my hand out, murmuring
shield
—Cinnamon was vulnerable to silver bullets, but with enough concentration, my tattoo magic was a barrier to almost anything—but in Daniel’s lapse of concentration, Jewel
moved
.

A dazzling flare of flash powder blinded me, I caught a glimpse of shimmering fingers flickering through an intricate pattern, and then a shield blossomed, a patterned bubble of flame as elaborate as any of my tribal designs. And in the brief moment as the shield expanded, driving our assailants back, Jewel reached over her back into her sling purse—and pulled out two wands.

These were not springy and delicate like the ones she had used inside; they were metal, telescoping like combat batons, with flinty nuggets at the end of each chain. She whipped them down, striking the pavement, throwing sparks—and flint became meteors of rainbow fire.

I pushed Cinnamon back behind me, spreading my hands, shielding her from the fiery battle. It was fluid and spectacular, like the performance earlier—but a thousand times faster. Arcs of light whipped out around Jewel and struck two assailants in the chest. Trails of flame crossed and deflected a bullet fired by Daniel. But her wands were generating more than just fire; my eyes widened as I saw,
definitely
this time, magical symbols in the curves of fire. Jewel whirled the batons faster and faster, creating an elaborate loop of magic around her, and for a brief moment, I flashed on a great big ball of string woven from spells written in fire.

I tensed to move—but as soon as the fight started, it was over. The fourth assailant, behind Jewel, drew two long sticks, with crossbars like police tonfas. He struck them against the pavement as she had, and they lit up too, transforming into swords of flame—which he thrust into her ball of magic.

One of her chains looped around it, disrupting the spell she was building. Jewel saw it, spun, and jerked downward, ramming the handle of her other rod into his chin. Her assailant staggered back, and Jewel whipped her poi free, but while she turned, Daniel had drawn two fire swords—and the other two opponents had drawn fire poi as well.

“All right, we wanted to keep magic under wraps,” Daniel snarled, catching her poi with his flaming sword as she flailed it behind her to try to re-establish her shield. “But since you don’t have sense to keep our secrets from outsiders, neither will we!”

And they fell on her. In moments, they’d caught her poi-staffs in a hopeless tangle and the fourth assailant recovered enough to clock her on the noggin with the butt of his sword. Jewel fell to the street in a little heap, poi falling from her hands as she clutched her head.

“You should have stuck to the shadows like the rest of us,” Daniel said, glaring at her. “You were warned repeatedly not to share our secrets with outsiders, and here we see you giving a public performance built around the most sacred spins and fuels of our art!”

“Fire is too beautiful to hide in the shadows. And a summoning
must
be public—”

“Must be in the
open
,” Daniel corrected. “Not
public
. I think the Council is crazy to let you go ahead with this plan, but you still have to follow the rules of the Order. You may be the Princess of Fire—but you have
no
right to out all of us. Hold out her hand.”

I raised my eyebrow.
Like hell.
I’d seen this movie before. The fire sword was oh-so-close to that delicate, struggling hand being held by two of the other firespinners. I had to talk fast, to distract them before they could burn her—without giving away that I was preparing to strike.