Owl and the Japanese Circus (26 page)

“Son of a bitch. Nadya, I need a piece of metal—now.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Gimme the scroll,” I said.

“What? No—”

“Do you want to fight her again?”

Nadya swore in Russian and tossed me the case. I slid the scroll out—carefully. I wasn’t sure what to do with it exactly, but I sure as hell wasn’t leaving it behind. I tossed it back to Nadya as I fixed the metal case between the door handles and tied them together with the lower half of my T-shirt for good measure.

“I can’t believe you just opened that case—”

“I’m not getting eaten so some client gets a premium product.”

I tested the door one last time; it seemed like it would hold for a little while.

“Ready to get out of here before security wanders by?” I asked. I pulled my hood over my head and did up the jacket to hide my torn, bloody shirt. Two bona fide fights in as many days.
I
was slipping. I had another problem too, as I looked down and saw Captain’s head poking out of a corner of the carrier. He was eating his way out. I let Nadya open the heavy door while I crammed Captain’s head back in and did my best to plug the hole. “Get it through your thick cat skull. We’re done here.”

We headed out. At the last minute we opted not to go through the building proper but to take the back stairwell exit. Slamming into the metal door bar, I almost caught the carrier on the fire alarm. Captain complained.

“Sorry, the hallway’s narrow.” An idea struck me.

“Hey Nadya, what were you telling me about this building and fires?”

She frowned. “What? That they forgot the floor drains? The
building floods every time the sprinklers go off—” Her eyes went wide as she caught on. “Nuroshi complained when they refitted the archives with automatic sealed doors to protect the storeroom.”

I opened the door first and pulled the alarm. The siren started, and I pulled out a lighter. Never leave home without one. I tossed it to Nadya, since she was taller than me and could reach the sprinkler. Captain mewed as water began to rain down on us.

“You attack vampires, but you cry at water? What kind of battle cat are you?”

We were out the door and found ourselves on the side of a hill. It was dark now—we’d been inside longer than I’d thought, but it worked to our advantage. I really didn’t want to explain the blood to anyone. There were still people around, but no one paid us any attention. We backtracked through a garden to the train station. Nadya didn’t say anything until we were standing on the platform.

“What the hell was she talking about?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it right now. Not while I was still processing it. There are a lot of things I’m not proud of, but there’s only one I’m ashamed of. “Nadya, I promise I’ll tell you as soon as we’re at Rynn’s.”

She gave me a hard stare before nodding. “I need a drink.”

We didn’t say much—well, anything—while we rode the train back to Shiyuba district and Gaijin Cloud.

Why the hell is it the past always comes back to haunt us in loud, inconvenient, impossible-to-ignore ways? Why can’t it ever be a telephone call so I can hang up?

I slid back onto the stool beside Nadya at the glowing red bar and shook my head.

“No sign of Rynn anywhere,” I said. I’d done a lap around Gaijin and hadn’t caught sight of him.

Nadya snorted and downed her glass of champagne in one shot. “Wonderful,” she said, and opened another bottle. “Shit. She really did a number on your face.”

I’d hidden the black eye as best I could; I’m thinking the resurgence of heavy navy-blue eyeliner has less to do with fashion and more to do with practicality.

“I’m more worried about these,” I said, and tweaked down the collar of my leather jacket to show the strangulation bruises. They’d ripened since we’d left campus.

Nadya shook her head and raised her glass. “You are a walking disaster. Never have I seen someone who attracts so much trouble.”

I took a sip of my Corona, only to find it was empty. I waved the
bottle at Nadya’s host. He nodded but didn’t smile or wave like he normally did. Come to think of it, he looked away as fast as he could. Before I could put much thought into it, Nadya pulled my attention away.

“Nuroshi was a rat and a sleazy old man, but he didn’t deserve to die.” She glanced up from her glass at me, eyes tired, but not from lack of sleep. “A lot of people are dying who don’t deserve to, Alix.”

What could I say? She was right. “On the bright side, we didn’t get shot at.”

“
Yet
.”

I didn’t have an argument, so I checked my phone. Still no reply from Rynn to my earlier text telling him we were here and to come find us. I’d added exclamation marks to get the emergency component across. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was more than a little worried. Doing business with me was becoming hazardous to people’s health. Besides, Marie had said she was going to start taking potshots at people close to me. I hoped Rynn hadn’t been first on her list.

I just about dropped my phone as a Corona bottle rattled the glass bar under my nose. The host smiled at Nadya but again gave me a nervous once-over. OK, it wasn’t my imagination. He wasn’t exactly friendly with me, but he’d never been outright rude before.

I turned to Nadya and nodded at her retreating host. “What the hell was that?”

She shrugged. “Maybe Rynn said something to the other hosts.”

“Like what?”

She shrugged again. “Like ‘Stay away. She’s a train wreck and hazardous to your health’?”

I snorted. Figured. I noticed the bartender removing an empty vodka bottle. “Hey, Yukio, right? Pass that over here.”

He avoided looking at me and glanced at Nadya instead, as if pleading for her to make me stop.

Just what the hell had Rynn said to them?

“Just give her the bottle,” Nadya said. “She won’t shut up otherwise.” He obliged with the same guarded fear, for lack of a better word.

I measured the opening with my finger. Yup, just the right size. “Hey, do you still keep desiccant on you?”

Nadya pulled out the tiny packets from her purse and slid them over. Yukio’s eyes widened.

“That’s not what you think it is,” I said. He didn’t look like he believed me. I rolled my eyes and emptied the packets into the bottle, shaking them around so they coated the glass. Powdered desiccants, the universal enemy of parchment-rotting dampness everywhere. Even a thin coating would keep any moisture at bay. “Now gimme the scroll.” Nadya glared over her champagne glass, studying my bottle. It must have passed scrutiny, because she reached inside her jacket and forked it over. I rubbed the remaining packet of desiccant over my gloves and rerolled the scroll before sliding it into my makeshift scroll chamber.

“See? Ancient scroll in a bottle,” I said, holding it up. “If you have a buyer, tell them it’s added value. They can actually see the scroll. Just don’t stick it in direct sunlight.”

Nadya took it and rolled it over in her hands before handing it back. “Not bad,” she said. “If you don’t mind clients thinking you live in a trailer.”

I would have said something, but I caught sight of Rynn on the other side of the bar near the entrance. He was facing away and hadn’t seen me yet. I slid off my barstool. Thank God he wasn’t dead, or maimed, or—I froze.

Shit.

Rynn was with someone. A blond Japanese woman I’d seen hanging around on numerous visits here. Marie wasn’t torturing him; he was with a client. That’s why he wasn’t answering his phone.

I slid back into my chair and stared down at the glowing bar as fast as I could. Partly because I didn’t want to watch, but mostly because my face was turning bright red and I didn’t want Rynn to see that I’d
seen him. OK, so maybe I was a little jealous. Rynn didn’t need to know that. It’d definitely give him the wrong idea.

When I glanced back up though, Rynn was watching me. He nodded and held up two fingers. Well, so much for subtlety.

“Found Rynn. He’ll be over in two minutes,” I said to Nadya.

“About fucking time,” she said. She twisted in her seat to scan the floor and started waving as soon as she spotted him.

I grabbed her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like? Speeding him up,” she said.

“Quit that, he’s with a client.”

Nadya twisted again to stare and reassess Rynn and the blond woman. An evil smile spread across her face. “Maybe we should go say hi. Evaluate your competition.”

“Stop it.”

She shrugged. “I’m just saying, I bet he’d like talking to you more. There? See, he’s coming over!” And sure enough, Rynn was heading our way, and the blonde he’d left behind was glaring daggers at me. Well, good for her. She could get in line with everyone else who wanted me to drop off the face of the planet.

“Shit.”

“What’s the matter? You like him, he likes you—”

“The problem is I almost got him killed twice this week. I don’t need to be fucking up his work too.”

“Hmmmm, I could think of worse things for you to fu—”

“Nadya!” I would have added more, but Rynn had reached us and stepped behind the bar. My ears burned, which meant they were as bright red as my face.

“You can thank me later,” Nadya whispered.

Rynn leaned across the bar towards me; his face guarded, he picked up my makeshift scroll bottle-case and held it up by the top to inspect it. “Please tell me you aren’t fencing stolen goods at my bar.”

“OK. I’m not fencing stolen goods at your bar,” I said.

He lifted an eyebrow and glanced at the vase resting beside my beer. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t believe me either.

“Relax, I’m not selling it. Here. And I didn’t actually steal it this time. Nuroshi did.”

“And somewhere, somehow, deep in the workings of your mind, that makes it OK?” he said.

“If I find something someone else stole, it isn’t stealing. It’s finding.” I took the bottle from Rynn and slid it into my bag. “And why the hell aren’t you giving Nadya a hard time? It’s her scroll.”

“Yet you’re the one holding it.”

I closed my eyes. “OK, let’s can the philosophical discussion of my day job—we’ve got more important things to worry about,” I said, and gave him the abbreviated version of our run-in with Marie. I hoped Rynn would be impressed with all the new information.

“You said you wouldn’t be getting into any trouble,” he said, glaring, and not bothering one bit to hide he was pissed at me.

“I said I didn’t plan on getting into any trouble. Marie shouldn’t have been there at all.”

One side of Rynn’s mouth twitched up. He grabbed my jacket collar and turned it down faster than I could block. Nadya winced at the sight of the bruises, and I scrambled to pull the collar back up. “Not cool,” I said.

Rynn didn’t say anything, just inclined his head in a disapproving manner. I think that was worse. We’d have to have a discussion about boundaries.

Nadya came to my defense. “Rynn, none of it made any sense. Alix says Marie hasn’t been a vampire more than a year, but I could have sworn she was older than three hundred.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way she’s three hundred.” I took a swig of my Corona; it was now or never. “I knew her when she was alive.”

I only caught the looks Rynn and Nadya gave me out of the corner of my eye. Any other situation and it would have been priceless.

Nadya set her face. “No, you’re mistaken—it’s not possible she could be that strong and that young—”

“Let’s pretend you’re right and I’m mistaken—which, for the
record, I’m not. For one, she’s nowhere near sensitive enough to light. If she was as old as she is strong, she should have gone up in flames as soon as the flashlight hit her. She didn’t.”

Nadya pursed her lips. She wasn’t giving up that easily. “But she was a hell of a lot more damaged than she should have been for a year-old vampire.”

I nodded. “You’re right. The whole thing makes no sense, and I don’t know enough about vampires to know why.”

“Do you know anyone who would know?” Rynn asked.

I frowned. “Nuroshi probably did, but anyone else?” I shook my head and placed my almost empty Corona on the bar.

Rynn grabbed it and pulled it out of my reach before I could have the last sip. “I find that hard to believe,” he said.

I glared. Damn it, he wasn’t even trying to play the charming host.

“Well, let’s put it this way. No one I’m on speaking terms with. You piss a few people off in the archaeological world and all of a sudden you’re persona non grata on just about everyone’s list, including the people already on the fringe. Unless one of you knows a vampire willing to chat with me—” I stopped talking and pulled Charles the vampire’s cell phone out of my bag. It was still active.

Alexander picked up on the fifth ring, and I transferred it to speakerphone.

“What do you want?” came his clipped voice. I got the distinct impression he’d been holding the phone for the last five rings deciding whether or not to answer.

“Hi there, nice to hear your friendly voice again. I’m doing OK. How’s that tunnel in Bali treating you?”