CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

BEFORE I COULD MOVE, dodge, or even roll overboard to what had to be a nicer fate than what I looked at, Joanna wrenched herself from her father and grabbed Evelyn. She bared her teeth at me, her foxy self shining through again.

“Do not move.”

I didn’t want to surrender. The thought of it rose in my throat like bitter bile and I spat it out. The katana curved across my vision, shining silvery keen except where smeared with Remy’s blood.

“Let her go!” My throat went raw with vehemence.

Hironori looked to his daughter.

“No, Father! Not yet. I have not failed you yet.”

“No,” he answered softly. “Not yet. But we may make a bargain and still gain what we want.” He looked back to me, considering.

“I want the flash drive back. My father exonerated. And my friend safe.”

“That might be difficult. His proclivities were well known. He could not stay away from a gamble. A sad story, his, following in his aunt’s footsteps. She was the first to owe me much, much money. He came in to make good on her losses, and he did. He saved her paltry pension and properties, and she swore off her favorite vice, but by then, we had him hooked. He’d forgotten that the house always wins.” Hironori smiled thinly. “Gambling is like an opiate to many people, as sure an addiction, and generally legal. I cannot bargain the drive with you. You mean our downfall. The only thing I can offer is her life and yours.” A moonlight from beyond the fog glittered on the upheld blade.

Did he mean Aunt April? My great-aunt with the rigid spine? Like the moon filtering through, some sense of my father’s actions came to me. I looked up at Hironori. “Businesses can be moved.”

“As can stones.”

His eyes, dark and shadowed, gave away nothing more. If I relinquished the maelstrom to him, he didn’t have to keep to any deal we’d make. I knew that but pretended to be considering his offer, weighing my options.

Joanna held none of the patience her father did. “Don’t treat her like an equal! She has no options, and I have my souls!” Joanna shook Evelyn like a limp doll. Evelyn responded by vomiting on the two of them even as Joanna raised her fist and a second shadow, watery and blurred, twinned the first. Insubstantial. Barely visible, but there. So much for falling overboard, I thought sadly. The Hashimotos skipped back a step or two from the spew.

I had only slowed them down. I hadn’t stopped them. I didn’t know if I could.

But then . . . I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.

Evelyn wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and gave me a sideways smile. She knew me from the field hockey fields as well as the classroom. Her gaze slanted across the deck behind me, and she arched an eyebrow.

I hazarded a quick look and saw, lying in the shadows of the rim between deck and railing, a rusted golf club. A three-iron, if I wasn’t mistaken, forgotten by golfer and crew and left to the elements, tucked almost out of sight. But it took a long time for a good golf club, even abused, to go bad. I rolled to my right, grabbed the club, and came up swinging at Joanna. Hironori moved as one with me, and the edge of his sword caught the shaft of the golf club. We hooked, and metal against metal sang in a high-pitched squeal as my club slid off the katana.

Joanna ducked away, and as she did, Evelyn disappeared into thin air. Off-balance, Joanna staggered to the rail and stared, wide-eyed and openmouthed at the hole in reality. Evelyn was just . . . gone.

I shouted, “It’s about time!” I spun about to free my golf club and got ready for another hit. I heard a soft chuckle behind me and made a note not to back up. Hironori closed in with a soft hiss, his lips thinning in concentration, his wrists flexing slightly as he waved his sword in intimidation. He didn’t intend to be parried off the club this time; I could see his focus on my hands. My wrists, one of which he intended to slice through, freeing the maelstrom stone. I had an ace up that sleeve, though, and kept the club head down, ready to swing up with all the driving power I could manage. I wasn’t feared on the field hockey team for nothing. Settling my feet on the deck, I could feel the vibrations of the boat as the seen and the unseen moved upon it.

Hironori twitched as he began his drive toward me. I tightened my grip. Two little marbles rolled past me and thumped into his samurai-sandaled feet, exploding with all the smoke and fury of a great flash-bang. He pirouetted, missing me entirely, and I grabbed his hand, deflecting the blade toward Joanna. It swooped downward, burying itself in wood and splinters and severing that spiky shadow entirely from her. One-handed, I clubbed it a number of times, ending up with a nice slice to knock it overboard into the fog and sizzling river waters surrounding us. I didn’t know if it would surface yet again, reattached to her, but I didn’t have time to worry as the smoke cleared and Hironori homed in on me once more.

This time I swung first, a backhanded slash to the knees. I connected but he didn’t buckle like I’d planned. With a swish of his samurai robes, Hironori sidestepped the brunt of my hit, grinned, and came back swinging, the edge of the blade so close as I ducked that I could count two new notches in its silvery steel. He drove me back to the deck, on one knee again.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was toying with me or the instinct that said Joanna would attack at my blind spot at any moment. My unseen ally had his hands full of shielding Evelyn so I couldn’t hope that we could double-team them, plus we had the disadvantage of Remy’s fallen body in the middle of the action. For a flicker of a moment, I thought I saw Remy flinch but knew that couldn’t be possible. Hashimoto felt my hesitation, I think, and leaped at me, sword lowered for an upward swing, and I put my hand up to stop him.

And then I realized that I had very obligingly given him a clean shot at cleaving my hand from my wrist, freeing the stone.

My palm flared in scorching pulses and I let out a cry. Joanna let out a low, derisive laugh and vaulted Remy’s body to close on me, to finish off whatever her father left in his wake. Like a mirage, searing waves flowed out of my hand, rippling across the front of me, and my father’s image rose in the midst of the torch. I don’t know how he got there but he had. He brought his hands up, a shield spreading out, halting the Hashimotos in their tracks. I let out a startled gasp and heard a muffled one behind me as well.

“Call the name,” he said, and added in warning, “I can’t hold them long, Tessa.”

And I knew he couldn’t because although he used whatever ghostly power he could summon, the stone itself drew from me, and I could feel what little strength I had left rapidly draining away. Its heat and light pulsed in time with my heartbeat. But what name did he want me to call? Brian? Hiram? Steptoe was already here, and hiding with Evelyn under that suit coat of his. To bring him forth would put Evelyn out in the open as a pawn again, and about all Simon could do was lob more flash-bangs. Carter? It was the only other name I knew I might be able to count upon.

He must mean Carter Phillips, and if he came as a member of the Society, he could bring some heavyweight backup. I drew a quavering breath to name him.

The broken hulk that was Remy moved in her puddle of crimson. In a valiant, death-dying move, she arched upward, straightening. Her lips fell open. With breath she should no longer have held, she cried, “Malender! Malender! Malender!”

Oh holy, no.

That was so not the name I would have summoned.

The fog that had been roiling about the boat grew darker and dense, and then black as a starless and moonless sky. It crawled over the railings onto the boat, carrying a weight with it that made the boat shiver and dance on the river. In fact, I think the whole world shuddered. I scrambled to my feet, keeping the shield deployed, and backed up until I heard Steptoe grunt softly in warning and thought I could feel the heat of their two bodies against my bare feet. I wanted to take our leave, but the now oily cloud settling about us looked about as easy to get through as a brick wall. I would be stuck here until Malender was through with all of us.

Hironori Hashimoto dropped with a thud to one knee, released his sword, and pushed one fist into his open hand in salute, dropping his chin in obedience. Joanna froze next to him until her father hissed and she quickly copied him. Too late, if I were a judge, because Malender had already materialized, although his now-human form appeared out of the nothing, and he stood as handsome as ever, taking his time to sweep his gaze over me, the deck behind me, and all corners of the party barge until it at last fell upon Hironori and Joanna. I couldn’t see much of his face from my angle, but it looked to me as though his eyes had narrowed and his mouth tightened and his teeth ground before he spoke.

“Hashimoto.”

“Saikōshidō-sha.”

“Supreme leader, eh? Yet somehow I do not feel as though you concede my supremacy. Or my leadership. This—” and he spread his hands about him, “feels like a ritual. One intended for elevation. Perhaps one even meant to surpass my own station. You have a sacrifice. You’ve taken down one of my best lieutenants.” Malender paused, looking both sadly and fondly at Remy before waving a hand, and a bloody stain was all that remained of her. “You’ve even cast covetous eyes on a valuable relic.” He looked directly at me, and the maelstrom stone crackled, its power driving my father into an unsteady reel. He disappeared as Malender beckoned at him, but the stone’s shield stayed, although thinner and lighter than before. “What am I to think?”

I froze as I lost my father again, but then felt a swirl of warmth about me that told me he still existed and had only been sent back to his shelter. I managed a breath as I felt that touch.

Hironori grasped at words to satisfy Malender. “I would have you think that, as allies, we strive to be more powerful and thus more worthy to serve you.” Hironori did not look up as he lied through his teeth. Joanna’s two remaining foxtails swished twice in agitation.

“Commendable if true. I don’t feel truth in the night air, however.” He looked again to me. “Do you?”

I opened my mouth and the first sound out didn’t quite make it. I cleared my throat. “Far from it.”

He pointed at my palm. “Did you intend to relinquish that to them? Or to me?”

“No. Not if I can help it.”

“Was it you who summoned Remy?”

My mouth had dried again but I managed a “Yes.”

“Why?”

“She told me she could, and would, help me.”

“Ahhh.” He leaned over, touched a fingertip to the blood, and lifted it to his lips where he tasted it. “Ah, Remy. I think we must have words.”

“She’s dead now, or must be.”

Malender shrugged at me. “Perhaps. Perhaps not entirely. I am disappointed in her actions even as I am intrigued by yours.” He returned his attention to the Hashimotos, and I found myself grateful. Handsome yes, and brilliant against his darker self, and altogether the scariest thing I’d ever hoped to see, because I had the impression that even though he looked human, he couldn’t be farther from it. I felt sincerely sorry for Remy’s sacrifice and prayed that she had slipped away from his grasp.

The three of them began to argue in Japanese, fast and loud. I wet my lips and managed a whisper, three times. I had no way of knowing if it could even be heard, let alone answered, through Malender’s looming presence.

I felt a hand on my ankle. Steptoe whispered, “Sorry, ducks, we’re all full under here.”

“It’s okay.” I thought. “Did you manage to grab up any of my things Joanna took off me?”

“Just your evening purse. Pardon me, but that thing feels like you’ve a cannonball in it.”

I grinned. “Not quite. Shove it out, will you?” The purse bowled up against my ankle and I stooped to recover it. Then, as quietly as I could, I opened it and let its contents seep out in a circle around us, white crystals shining in a thick line that not even the evening wind off the river could disturb.

Joanna snarled. Or maybe that was a foxy snap. Hard to tell, I still wasn’t quite versed in speaking Kitsune. She leveled a hand at me and loosed a few scornful words in Japanese.

The two men swung about on me.

Malender tilted his head. “Tessa, Tessa, what am I to do with you?”

I shrugged. “Salt,” I told him.

“I can tell.” The handsome creature took a deep breath. “I am not finished with you two,” he said. He clapped his hands and the Hashimotos disappeared, the boat rocking with the force of their exit.

I blinked. “How long will they be gone?”

“If I let them return, it will be quite a while from now.”

I had a feeling his timeline stretched very differently from mine. “Long enough that I don’t have to worry about them?”

Malender’s eyes smiled though his expression did not. He had very small laugh wrinkles at the corners of his lids as if that had been different, once. “It can be if you wish to give me the stone.”

“Mmmm . . . no. It seems to want to stay with me.”

“For now. It has a history, if you didn’t know, of picking its owners. Perhaps I will appeal to it in the future.”

“Que sera, sera.”

“Indeed.” Malender threw his head up, like a stag sniffing the air and discovering a pack of hounds approaching. “You continue to surprise me. You have friends approaching.”

“And I’ll bet they’re your enemies.”

“There are many who have yet to see the wisdom of following me or even what I am. I’ve been gone for too many decades. Rumors arise. Truth twists. I can see I’ve much work waiting.” He arched an eyebrow. “Tell me, Tessa of the Salt. Would you listen if I return to speak with you?”

I didn’t know. I really, really didn’t. He scared the bejeebers out of me, but was that only because of his strangeness? His total impossibility? Or did I know evil when I felt it, a greater evil than I’d ever thought I could encounter? I settled for a shrug. “Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, I guess.”

“Good enough.” Malender began to wind his wrists about each other, his black cloud coming to him and collecting about his hands. “Next time,” he added, “Salt will not likely hold me back.”

“What will?”

That brought a crooked grin to his handsome face. “That’s for you to discover. As for your father . . .” He stood very still. Then he nodded. “Recover the laptop and you should have some idea of how to restore him. If not, we can always make a deal.” He winked and then he disappeared in a puff of white, clean smoke, as aromatic as a virgin spring day. The oily stuff slinked after.

Carter stumbled as he hit the deck in the emptiness left behind. “Tessa! What’s going on?” He straightened and spun about to ascertain his bearings. Four others hit the deck as well, three guys and a really badass looking woman. The Society, I’d guess.

“Ummm . . . attempted human sacrifice by the Hashimotos and Malender was here but now he’s not and, oh, there’s a laptop in the spa that the FBI will want, but I need to get a flash drive and copy some files first, and Steptoe, come out from under there, and see if you can keep Evelyn calm.”

He did, and she did, although she cried a lot first.

Carter did one of his Jedi mind-wipes, though, and Evelyn collected herself like a trooper as we returned to the spa. I helped get her into her gown and repair her makeup. Then I changed into my party clothes, and we escorted Evelyn over to be the star of the auction. With so many bidders, I thought an old-fashioned brawl would break out. Oddly, her father turned out to be the highest bidder. Carter, standing by me at the back of the room, agreed with me that he’d probably done it strictly out of fear of some of the prospective dates. A few words were said about the missing host and hostess, but the party went on, staffed by the charity, and nothing else seemed to go amiss.

Nobody noticed us much, and I thought maybe it was because I stood in the aura of his radiance and we weren’t supposed to be noticed. I had on my sea-glass gown and stood barefoot, my hair down about my shoulders, and felt like I sported a good-sized shiner. Carter had let me slide my fingers into his hand because I’d told him I still felt a bit wobbly. When everyone else surged like an incoming tide to the buffet and gambling tables, we turned and left.

A police cruiser is not a car for a romantic drive home. It smells. Faintly, because I’m sure someone cleans it diligently every day, but a lot of stuff, not the least of which can be an aromatic police dog, happens in the back seat. I didn’t mind it much though, my thoughts drifting to the flash drive in my possession and what Malender had said about it, and about the guy driving the cruiser.

Although we’d left the auction early, night had fallen truly and thoroughly, and the only things lighting the neighborhood as we glided through were the streetlights and an occasional porch light here and there. How nice, I thought, to have a welcome waiting for you whenever you were ready to come home. Had my father looked for that at first? Before becoming trapped in limbo? Had my mother kept the lights on for him at first? I didn’t remember. Maybe I would put a small light in the basement and turn it on, for when the shadows fell down there. Just to let him know we remembered and waited.

Carter led me to the front steps, my garment bag over one arm and the other still keeping me steady. He looked down at me. “It’s a shame not many saw you in that dress.”

“It is, huh.” I looked down at myself. “That just means I can wear it again someday.”

“True.” He handed me my bag and then slowly slid his hand away from mine. The moment he let go, I could feel his warmth retreat and I leaned into it, not wanting to relinquish it.

Carter moved his hand up and cupped the side of my face, gently, and his thumb smoothed over the tender spots. “Those should heal quickly.”

I looked into his eyes. He leaned down a smidgen more and my heart leaped because I knew what was going to happen. My whole body trembled with a kind of “Yes! Finally!” tingle.

His lips brushed my forehead softly.

“Night, Tessa.”

And then he was gone.

I stood, wavering, for just a second before my mother pulled the door open, and the cruiser drove off.

“Tessa?”

I just stayed there, grinning, until she pulled me inside our home.