Non-Stop Till Tokyo (45 page)

“He can look after himself.”

“Better than you can. I know. Tell him I’m sorry not to have said goodbye, I’ll call him soon. Thanks, Taka. I owe you.”

“I know.” He glittered at me.

“And don’t mess with Sonja or she’ll cut your balls off.”

“I know that too. Get moving or you’ll miss the express. She’ll call you about the tickets.”

“Thanks.
Sayonara
, Taka.”

He winked at me. “
Mata ne
.”

Be seeing you
.

“Hong Kong?” asked Chanko, as I clicked off my phone. The airport express train was flying through the darkness, but we were still twenty minutes from Narita. Sonja made a great travel agent.

“Yeah. There’s a flight that we can just make, and it’s a good place to vanish. If you can’t buy anything to fit, you can just get some clothes made while we sort out your visa.”

“Visa?”

“For Vietnam. You wanted to go, you said? Or if you’d prefer somewhere else, just say. I’ll sort it out.”

“No. No, Vietnam’s cool. Right.” He heaved a deep breath. “Thanks for this, Butterfly. I couldn’t… That kind of threw me.”

“Of course. You saved my life back there, you know. Again.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Okay. So, I’m going to Vietnam. What about you?”

“Um,” I said.

“Staying in Hong Kong, I guess. Look up your family?”

“I wouldn’t know how to start. I thought I’d get some work.”

“Oh yeah? What’re you looking for, another bar? They do hostessing in Hong Kong? There’s got to be plenty of salarymen who need a girl to smile at them. Or, hell, why not go to Seoul, take that job Park offered you.”

I hadn’t heard that note in his voice since the garden at Kanazawa. Then I’d thought it was aggressive. Now I knew it was pretty much the exact opposite.

“I thought I’d get interpreting work, actually.”

“Sure. Good idea.”

“Look for a one-on-one job,” I added. “Sort of a long-term position.”

“Sure.”

God, he was annoying. “Yeah, you know, find some rich, handsome guy to exploit and batten on him like a leech. That would work.”

That at least got him to turn and look at me.

“Or alternatively, I might just find someone going somewhere interesting and see if he needs a translator,” I persisted. “You know. Someone rubbish at languages who doesn’t mind me hanging around. If I can find someone like that.”

After a very long second, I saw the beginnings of a smile.

“Uh-huh. That’s one-on-one work, is it?”

“Yeah. I think it sounds like a good idea. If I can find the right position.”

“That can be tricky.”

“You need a bit of ingenuity,” I agreed. “A bit of persistence. But it can work out.”

He let out a very long sigh. “You think this is a good idea? Long term?”

“I don’t think long term,” I reminded him. “Maybe I might start if people stop trying to kill me. Or for now, we could just see how things turn out.”

“Yeah. I guess. So…somewhere interesting, huh? I don’t suppose you speak Vietnamese, do you, Butterfly?”

“Well, not as such,” I told him. “Not yet. But I’ll learn.”

Epilogue

Oguya Hiroyuki and Soseki Eiji were both transferred to a small, secure hospital unit to recover from their injuries while awaiting trial. Oguya had a broken arm, a ruptured spleen and appalling facial damage; Soseki broken ribs and some internal injuries. Still, they should both have been sufficiently mobile to escape when the unit burned to the ground, since everyone else was evacuated in plenty of time. Reports that the remains of both men were found tightly strapped into hospital beds have been officially denied.

The Korean takeover didn’t happen. With the Brothers dead, the stresses of the new management, and very hostile press and police investigation into Oguya and Soseki’s hobbies, the Mitsuyoshi-kai simply collapsed under the strain. About half of its members joined established Yamaguchi-gumi organisations. The rest have formed a new organisation, under a different name, albeit not one that’s taking on the big syndicates yet. Most of its leaders seem to be first- or second-generation Korean immigrants. None of them are called Mitsuyoshi.

No trace of Kelly Hollister, alive or dead, has been found.

Yoshi found a new job about six weeks after I left, and got promoted within a couple of months. His confidence might have been boosted because by then, at Taka’s thank-you party for his gang of freeters and fighters, he’d met Bobby Kim, the actor who does epilepsy so well. Bobby has just moved in with him. Yoshi still hasn’t told his parents he’s gay.

Sonja is running a music shop in Roppongi, or at least that’s what they tell the tax people. She decided she liked her hair short after all, though it’s still scarlet. She emailed me a photo of her and Taka, who had a buzz cut in solidarity and then dyed his remaining fuzz bleach-blond and blue. It looks like shit.

Noriko came out of her coma after three weeks. She lost some motor function initially, because of the brain damage, but she’s recovering well above expectations and she’s even talking about returning to work next year. It’s not urgent: she got a large compensation payment as a victim of crime, and a larger one from an anonymous donor in Seoul. I can’t work out if that was a graceful gesture, a threat or both.

The doctors were concerned that Noriko had suffered permanent impairment to her short-term memory, but it turns out that’s just the way she is.

Chanko and I are in Hanoi for the moment, but we’re heading for the States to see his sister. We’ve a stop-off on the way, though, because Taka’s called in a favour. Just a small thing that he wants us to do for him.

But that’s another story.

About the Author

KJ Charles is a writer and editor. She lives in London with her husband and children.

Follow KJ on
@kj_charles
or
kjcharleswriter.wordpress.com
.

Look for these titles by KJ Charles

Now Available:

A Charm of Magpies

The Magpie Lord

A Case of Possession

Coming Soon:

Think of England

A lord in danger. A magician in turmoil. A snowball in hell.

The Magpie Lord

© 2013 KJ Charles

A Charm of Magpies, Book 1

Exiled to China for twenty years, Lucien Vaudrey never planned to return to England. But with the mysterious deaths of his father and brother, it seems the new Lord Crane has inherited an earldom. He’s also inherited his family’s enemies. He needs magical assistance, fast. He doesn’t expect it to turn up angry.

Magician Stephen Day has good reason to hate Crane’s family. Unfortunately, it’s his job to deal with supernatural threats. Besides, the earl is unlike any aristocrat he’s ever met, with the tattoos, the attitude…and the way Crane seems determined to get him into bed. That’s
definitely
unusual.

Soon Stephen is falling hard for the worst possible man, at the worst possible time. But Crane’s dangerous appeal isn’t the only thing rendering Stephen powerless. Evil pervades the house, a web of plots is closing round Crane, and if Stephen can’t find a way through it—they’re both going to die.

Warning: Contains hot m/m sex between a deeply inappropriate earl and a very confused magician, dark plots in a magical version of Victorian England, family values (not the good kind), and a lot of swearing.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Magpie Lord:

The grey awful misery tangled round his heart and throat, choking him, sickening him with the vileness of his own nature. The shame and self-loathing too deep for repentance, too deep for words. Too deep for anything but the knife and the red flow and the longed-for emptiness of the end…

The voice seemed to come from a long distance away. “My lord? My lord! Oh, Jesus. My lord! You stupid sod!”

A slap, hard, round his face. He registered it through the haze of grey misery, then felt strong hands dragging him onto his feet and out of the room. His wrist hurt. He needed to finish the job.

He lunged clumsily back towards the knife, only to find his arm twisted up behind his back and a hard tug pulling him off balance.

“Out. This way.” He was marched forward, pushed, dragged, the litany of doom pounding in his mind. All he could think of was ending it, making the unbearable guilt and shame stop, removing the foul stain of his soul from the world…

He vaguely noticed the hard grip on the back of his head, just before his face was plunged into icy, greasy water and held there, ruthlessly hard, as he inhaled a lungful of dirty dishwater, and something around his mind snapped.

Lord Crane jerked his head out of the suddenly relaxed grip, came up spluttering but entirely alert, gasped for air, and kicked backwards viciously, aiming to cripple his attacker with a rake of his foot across the kneecap. The grizzled man in black had already jumped out of the way, though, and was standing back, holding up his hands in a gesture of nonaggression that Crane had no intention of testing.

Crane held himself ready to fight for a second, registered that he had just been half-drowned in the butler’s sink by his manservant, let out a long breath and dropped his shoulders.

“It happened again,” he said.

“Yes.”

“
Tsaena
.” He shook his head, sending grey water flying from his hair, and blinked the liquid out of his eyes.

Merrick threw him a dishtowel. He caught it in his left hand, sucked in a hiss at the pain as his wrist moved, and mopped his face. He spat in the sink to get the taste of foul water and bitter leaves out of his mouth. “Son of a bitch. It happened again.”

“Yes,” said Merrick, with some restraint. “I
know
. I found you sawing at your wrist with a fucking table knife, my lord, which was what gave me the clue.”

“Yes, alright.” Crane pulled over a chair with a screech of wood on tile. “Can you…?” He gestured at his left wrist. The shirt cuff was unfastened and rolled back. He didn’t remember doing that. He didn’t remember the other times.

Merrick was already setting out lint and a roll of bandages, as well as a bottle of volatile-smelling spirit.

“I’ll have some if you’re pouring.
Ow
.”

“I reckon that’s enough killing yourself for one evening.” Merrick dabbed the raw wound with the raw alcohol. “Jesus, this is deep, you’d have done yourself for sure with anything sharper. My lord—”

“
I don’t know
. I was reading a book, thinking about getting dressed. I didn’t…” He waved his right hand vaguely, and slapped it down on the worn tabletop. “God damn it.”

There was silence in the kitchen. Merrick wound bandage carefully round the bloody wrist. Crane leaned his right elbow on the table and propped his head on his hand.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Merrick gave him a steady look from under his thin brows, and returned to his work.

“I don’t know,” Crane repeated. “I can’t—I don’t think I can do this any more. I can’t…”
I can’t bear it.
He’d never said the words in thirty-seven years, not even in the times of hunger and degradation. He wanted to say them now.

Merrick frowned. “Got to fight it, my lord.”

“Fight
what
? Give me something to fight, and I’ll fight it—but how the hell do I fight my own mind?”

“It ain’t your mind,” said Merrick levelly. “You ain’t mad.”

“Right. I can see how you reached that conclusion.” Crane made a sound that was a little, though not very much, like a laugh. “After all these years, after he’s bloody dead, it looks like the old bastard is finally getting rid of me.”

Merrick began rolling up the lint and bandages with care. “You’re thinking about that word again.”

“
Hereditary
,” enunciated Crane, staring at his narrow-fingered hands. “Hereditary insanity. We might as well put the name to it, no?”

“No,” said Merrick. “Cos, I’ll tell you what word I’m thinking of.”

Crane’s brows drew together. “What?”

Merrick’s hazel eyes met Crane’s and held them. He put the bottle of spirits back down on the table with a deliberate clink. “Shaman.”

There was a silence.

“We’re not in Shanghai now,” said Crane eventually.

“No, we ain’t. But if we was there, and you started going mad all on a sudden and off again, you wouldn’t be sat there whining, would you? You’d be right out—”

“To see Yu Len.”

Merrick cocked his head in agreement.