CHAPTER TWO

“Black Pearl? Dad. What are you talking about?”

Dad’s eyelids fluttered shut. The urgency dissipated. He relaxed. At peace. No wonder this touch hadn’t given me a fragment, Ken’s syringe knocked him out.

Great. My life was turning into a thriller movie complete with a cryptic warning.

“What was in that syringe?”

“It’s for the best.”

“Did your plan include getting him off the plane in this state?” There was no way I could lug Dad off a plane even with the guys’ help.

“Yes.”

What? That was all the explanation I got? Guess Mr. Kitsune was cranky ‘cause I questioned his syringe decision.

Passengers filed past us, towing roller-suitcases. Kwaskwi exchanged some kind of intense, guy-challenge look with Ken, but exited out the far aisle with only a wink my direction. Once the back of the plane had cleared, a stewardess made her way toward us.

“Ready to deplane?”

Ken shook out his arms, cracking knuckles in his left hand. “I’m ready.”

The stewardess backed up a few paces, reaching for an overhead bin just in front of the bathroom marked with a red cross. She pulled down a folded dolly and pushed it back to our row. Ken scooped up Dad and wrestled him to a sitting position on the dolly.

“You are not bungee cording my father to that dolly.”

“She going to make trouble?” asked the stewardess in Japanese at the same time as Ken said in English, “Trust me.”

My Dad. People needed to start listening to me.

I reached for the stewardess as she wrapped the bungee around Dad’s chest. She flinched just as my fingers circled her uniformed wrist, and my pinkie brushed bare skin. “Hey, what do you think you are—”

Heat shimmered down my body from crown to toes, then back up my legs to my belly. A cramp bent me double. Gray static clouded my vision. I gasped for breath. Chest heaving, I straightened up with a feeling like I’d just spent the past few hours on a boat battered by waves, landlubber wobbles and all.

The static slowly cleared to the very edges of my eyes, leaving behind the old-hay smell of tatami mats and dim light of a room with closed windows. I knelt in seiza, robe folded neatly under my knees, in a room with gorgeously-painted door panels. A tiger with vivid green eyes, a pair of emerald-feathered pheasants, and a dragon, long and sinuous like a snake coiled in black-scaled rings, stared down from the walls.

Heavy layers of robe weighed down my shoulders. Sweat gathered on my upper lip. I used a bit of power to make the sheen seem to disappear. But that bit of power drew the attention of the Council Lord. Frowning down at me from his seat of honor on the platform, I could almost read his thoughts. Halfbreeds used power for such lowly purposes. A dark storm cloud of disapproval practically hovered over his head. I would be still, and not flaunt my power here. I didn’t want the Lord to make trouble. I needed to appear docile.

Something stung my cheek. My stomach clenched, static spreading thickly again, and the weird sensation of falling backwards while standing still. The room, the robes, and the dragon’s black coils all dissolved into tattered wisps of illusion and streamed away like smoke from a blown-out match. Ken’s face, eyebrows knit together into a furry caterpillar of worry, filled my field of vision. Over his shoulder the stewardess rubbed her arm. “What was that?”

“A dream,” I said, voice gravelly as if I’d been silent for a month. “Your dream.” Just my luck the stewardess was Kind. I’d learned to handle regular dreams in the past week, a surreal experience no longer having to fear casual touch, but Kind dream fragments were super-charged.

“You’re Baku, too,” she said in an irritated tone.

Ken told her in Japanese that I was untrained, a neophyte, and half human as well. I was still reeling from the tatami room and the fearsome lord in her dream. Since when were fragments so vivid and first person? It felt so much like a memory. I mean, Kind dreams were always strong, but this was like Technicolor, Dolby surround sound. The vivid dreams I’d gotten from other Kind before were memory dreams. This was just like a memory dream. But how could samurai and painted castle walls be her memory?

“What are you?”

Ken gave me a pointed look. “We don’t usually ask that, but she’s like me.”

I bit my tongue against the urge to point out she’d asked me first. A Kitsune. I should have guessed from that small bit of illusion she’d used in the dream fragment. Ken rubbed his hands together and smoothed them down Dad’s shoulders and arms, ending with a little flounce. Suddenly, it wasn’t Dad strapped to the dolly anymore, but two large oxygen tanks.

The stewardess smirked at my dumbfounded expression. I have a feeling we’re not about to become besties.

We fell in line behind the dolly-pushing stewardess, filing past the smiling pilot and up through a chilly, overly air-conditioned walkway. A teeming mass of humanity swirled around us as soon as we exited. I shivered. So. Many. People.

The narrow corridor curving around the outside of the departure lobby barely contained all of us with our rolling luggage. Someone stepped on the back of my shoe. A lady, somehow magically unrumpled and hair picture-perfect, knocked my rollerbag over with her own Gucci monstrosity. I hurried to keep close to Ken as everyone else in the corridor tried to reach immigration first in the passenger melee. Down another two escalators, through another narrow hallway, and then I was cut off by a posse of blonde kids. By the time I caught up with Ken, the stewardess was waiting with the dolly and a pursed expression in front of a bank of elevators.

“Ato de,” said the stewardess. How much later did she mean she’d see us? The surging migration of other passengers broke around us, ignoring us three completely.

“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing with…the oxygen tanks?”

Ken shook his head.

All of sudden, I realized the last passengers had crammed themselves onto a long down-escalator. We were alone. The skin on my neck and shoulders felt oddly tight and warm, as if the other passengers had pushed all the air conditioning in front of them. The elevator door just behind the stewardess dinged. Startled, we all turned. The doors slid open.

Three young, wiry guys with the same angular chin and muscled swimmer physique as Ken stepped out of the elevator. They were dressed all in black, including leather gloves, except for one wearing a red, button-down shirt. Ignoring the stewardess’ startled protest, the tallest one grabbed the Dad-dolly and the other two planted themselves like a living wall in front of me and Ken. I lunged around Red Shirt, but he casually blocked me with a swift kick.

Ow. I grabbed my leg.

Ken tore off a guttural string of curses dripping with rolled r’s like a yakuza boss in one of Dad’s TVJapan movies but the living wall stood implacable. The elevator dinged again. The tall guy yanked the dolly with him into the elevator.

Dad! They were taking Dad, and I was standing here, useless and frozen. Ken dropped his roller bag to grapple with the third guy, while the stewardess scuttled backwards like a scared crab. Red Shirt held me off with one outstretched arm. If I could touch bare skin, draw his power along with a fragment like I had the ice hag Dzunukwa back in Portland, then maybe I could—

Red Shirt dodged my questing fingers. His buddy, caught in some kind of complicated headlock by Ken yelled in warning. “Baku ni ki wo tsukete. Sawarareru yo!”

“Hai,” muttered Red Shirt. He backed up a couple steps, elbows cocked in front.

That’s right. Don’t let the dangerous Baku touch your skin.

They were Kind. They knew I was Baku. As I stood there gaping, a small, dark blue shape came hurtling past my left shoulder and crashed into the back wall of the elevator.

The doors slid shut on the dolly and the startled face of the tall attacker.