Generation V (15 page)

There was a wide poured-asphalt parking area, and a small barn that had been converted into a garage, but I couldn’t see any cars.

“You didn’t call ahead. Are you sure that your grandmother will be home?”

“Utterly certain. Look.”

I looked. One of the downstairs windows was open to let in the breeze, and a small red fox was pressed up against the screen, watching us. When it realized I was looking at it, there was a flick of a bushy tail and it was gone. As we walked closer, I could hear the sound of small, scampering feet and soft yips.

Suzume led me away from the front door, to a small
side door that led us into a tiled laundry room that also seemed to double as a mudroom. She directed me to take off my shoes while she did the same, unlacing her boots and setting them neatly against the wall. I toed off my sneakers, then looked to her for more directions.

She was standing in front of the next door that apparently led into the main house.

“Okay,” she said. “Now brace yourself.”

She opened the door fast, and three fox kits tore into the room. One was the red fox we’d seen in the window, one was gray, and the smallest one was a kind of mottled cream. They were about the size of cats, but they were fast, and determined to sniff everything. Apparently the sight of us was a little too stimulating for the gray one, who was leaving a suspicious trail of droplets.

They surrounded us in a swarm of quick paws and fluffy wagging tails. Suzume just got a courtesy sniff, but apparently I was new and exciting, because quickly all three were balanced on their hind legs for extra height while those long wet noses snuffled at my hands and pockets.

I stood there under their furry assault. “Um, what should I be doing?” I asked Suzume, who was watching with great amusement.

“Petting them would probably be a good choice.” Then her voice snapped, “
Riko
.”

The red one froze, and I realized that she had a mouthful of fabric. She opened her mouth, and released my T-shirt and one of the tails of the long-sleeved flannel shirt that I wore over it. Both now had holes forming exact imprints of her teeth. I pointed at it and looked at Suzume.

“Yeah, the kits can be a little destructive if you don’t
watch them. And if you don’t start distributing head rubs, I think your shoes are next.”

Yep, the cream kit currently had her entire long snout stuck into my sneaker. I began rubbing Riko and the gray kit behind the ears, and they immediately collapsed into puddles of contented kit. Jealous, the cream kit yanked her nose out of my shoe and came barreling back to get in on the petting. This began the unsolvable problem of two hands, three kits. I discovered that the kits were extremely willing to bodycheck and nip each other, and occasionally my hands.

Though I do have to admit, they were really silky, and it was like playing with puppies, except they understood what you were saying. Mostly. Riko really wanted to chew my shirts.

As I was rubbing, though, I did notice something. “Do foxes get the white spot on their tails when they grow up?” I asked. I’d seen wild foxes crossing streets, as well as Suzume’s cousin in fox form last night, and they’d always had white tips to their tails. But all three of the kits in front of me were solid colors, with black stocking marks on their legs and a few black streaks on their muzzles.

“No,” a new voice said from the doorway. There was a tiny Japanese woman standing there in a peach kimono with black flowers embroidered on it. Her hair was pure white, not even a touch of silver or gray, and she was obviously Suzume’s grandmother. But she wasn’t wizened or decrepit—there was a little wrinkling to her face, but she still had the remains of what must have been incredible beauty, like in pictures of Sophia Loren. Her shoulders didn’t have any stoop at all, and she stood confidently and gracefully.

Meanwhile, I was crouched on the floor covered in kits, lightly sprinkled in something that I was a little suspicious was urine. Let it never be said that I don’t know how to make a first impression.

“A natural fox has a white-tipped tail from birth,” Atsuko continued. “But a kitsune must earn her white.” Her gaze was steady while she evaluated me. Apparently done, with no indications at all what she thought, she looked over at Suzume, and her expression became exasperated. “Have you been fired already, Suzume-chan?”

Suzume looked hurt. “Grandmother, why would you think that?”

Atsuko sighed. “Because I know you, Suzume-chan.”

We relocated to the living room. Atsuko had a very minimalist decorating style. The hardwood floors in all of the rooms were polished and gleaming, with as little furniture as possible. There were a few decorations on the wall—a few painted fans, a few framed photographs. It looked a little weird in an old sprawling farmhouse, but after the overgilded clutter of my mother’s mansion, this was soothing. There was a wide fireplace on one side of the room, the old kind that used to function both for warmth and cooking. Its oak mantel was massive, and completely bare except for one small sculpture, made of bone white china. It was a man in long, old-fashioned Japanese robes, standing on the backs of two foxes.

The living room had two low, long sofas around a low coffee table, and a few wide light brown cushions pushed up against the walls. When the kits climbed onto those and promptly conked out for naps, their purpose was pretty clear.

“Grandmother has had to adapt to our Western aversion
to sitting on the floor,” Suzume explained as we settled onto one sofa and Atsuko knelt on a mat beside the table.

“And I have had to mourn the poor posture of all my children and grandchildren as a result,” Atsuko said. What followed then was a forty-five-minute tea ceremony that was beautiful, ritualistic, and nearly had me screaming with frustration. If Suzume hadn’t warned me in the car about her grandmother, I probably would’ve broken in and tried to start talking about the Grann girls, but I forced myself to be patient. Ceremony had been important last night when Madeline offered Luca hospitality, and I could only assume that this was also important, so I followed Suzume’s lead.

Every move Atsuko made seemed weighed with importance. She had incredible powers of concentration too. At one point the kits woke up again, and began to play with a small squeaky tennis ball. This involved a lot of yelping, tumbling, and biting. It was pretty clear that Atsuko’s lack of knickknacks and extra furniture wasn’t just a decorating preference. For three small kits, they seemed capable of an incredible amount of destruction.

Atsuko was finally pouring the tea when the gray kit propped her head on Suzume’s knee and gave a loud whimper.

Suzume looked down. “Do you need the potty, Yui?”

The kit nodded.

“You know what to do.”

The kit whimpered and nudged Suzume with her nose.

“No, I’m not going to open the door for you. You’re a big girl now.”

The kit slumped back on her haunches and gave a loud, high crying sound. Then she looked over at me hopefully.

“No,” Suzume said sharply. “He’s not going to open the door either.”

Some more whimpering, a very betrayed look at me, and then the kit opened her mouth widely and gave a loud, hacking cough, like a cat with a hairball. Her back arched, and her tail began spasming. As I watched, her long muzzle began to retract, her fur slowly withdrew into her body, and then she was a writhing ball of something that I finally glanced away from, looking at Suzume and Atsuko. Neither of them looked remotely concerned. I glanced back, and there was a little girl, maybe three years old, and stark naked, sitting on the floor and panting. Her eyes had the same delicate tilt as the older women’s, but her facial features were much more softly rounded, and her hair was an almost shockingly bright shade of red. Apparently Atsuko’s progeny had been crossbreeding pretty heavily with the locals, because other than her eyes, Yui looked like she could’ve stepped right out of a South Boston Sunday school playgroup.

She made a very foxy squeak.

“Human words when you’re human,” Atsuko said with a firm discipline that reminded me of my third-grade teacher, who could control an entire classroom of children just by frowning.

“Not nice,” Yui said to Suzume, then pulled herself off the floor and walked out of the room, followed closely by the cream fox. Left alone, Riko claimed the tennis ball and made a few victory laps around the room.

“Is that what it looks like when you shift?” I asked Suzume.

“I’m a lot faster,” she said. “It’s kind of like tying your shoes. Little kids don’t have good motor control, so it takes a long time, but an adult can do it without even thinking about it.”

“And the business about the door?” From down the hallway there was a loud splash, a child’s shriek, then the flush of a toilet.

“They need a human hand to open the bathroom door. But when I was her age, my sister and I would wait until the other one had to go human to pee, and then we’d try to push her into the toilet and flush it.”

Atsuko gave a loud snort. A minute later Yui walked in, leaving a long trail of water. The cream kit followed, looking extremely smug.

“I guess Tomomi knows that trick too,” Suzume said blandly.

The tea ceremony continued. Yui didn’t change back into a fox, but the other two continued to play with her. No one seemed interested in suggesting that she get dressed, so I assumed that being dressed in a state of nature was normal for the kitsune children. My foster mother had kept a baby book of photos of me, and I remember that there’d been plenty of me running around naked, apparently my favorite state of dress as a toddler. Yui quickly curled up and took another nap on the cushions, which seemed to serve equally well for kit or baby, and the other two kits curled up with her.

Finally all the tea was drunk and the cups were neatly stacked up on the tray again.

There was a long moment while Atsuko arranged the long sleeves of her kimono just so, and then she gave a
small nod. “Now why don’t you explain why a son of the vampire has sought me out?”

So I told her everything, starting with when I met Luca and ending with my last visit to the mansion. She didn’t say anything, just listened to what I said and watched me closely. Finally I finished. There was a long silence, and my stomach clenched. If Atsuko didn’t help me, then my last chance to help those girls was gone.

Atsuko closed her eyes and sat. We waited. At one point I thought that she’d fallen asleep, and I glanced over at Suzume, who shook her head. So we waited. Finally she opened her eyes again.

“A troubling situation,” she said. “Made more troubling by Madeline’s promise of hospitality. By the terms of our alliance, I do not interfere when she or your siblings hunt humans. To become involved overtly could threaten this alliance, and so I cannot become directly involved. But”—she spoke over my blurted protest—“Madeline herself requested that I assign you a protector. To keep my granddaughter fully informed about these matters is a reasonable action. If she passes this information on to you, she is not responsible for what you choose to do with it.” Atsuko nodded, her decision made. “Suzume-chan, use the phone in the kitchen and call Commissioner Phelps. Vampires rarely exert themselves much, particularly if they aren’t planning to stay long in an area. If you get the addresses of the attacked family and where the girl’s body was found, that should be an area for you to start looking.”

Suzume nodded and went into the kitchen.

“Thank you,” I said to Atsuko. “I really appreciate this.”

“Do not thank me too quickly,” she said with a thin
smile. “We have not yet discussed what you will give me in return for assisting.”

“But you said you were just giving information—”

“That is my justification if this turns out poorly, which it almost certainly will. You are too weak to even hope to reclaim these girls by force, and I highly doubt that Luca will hand them over if you ask him to.”

“Suzume—”

Atsuko cut me off, her voice hard. “My granddaughter has been paid to guard you, but she is not one to risk her life for another’s. If the situation becomes dire, she will abandon you to your death and refund your mother’s money.”

“How can you say that about your own granddaughter?” I asked.

“Because it is the truth. She is the offspring of my most beloved child, and her sister is my chosen heir. She is clever, and she is strong, but she is a trickster, a
nogitsune
, and if you choose to trust her when the situation is no longer amusing, but is threatening, you will rue the outcome.”

I didn’t say anything. Atsuko tilted her head in a way that looked more like a fox than a woman, and considered me.

“But you have no choice but to trust my granddaughter, do you?” the old woman said shrewdly. “She is your only chance to save the girls. Who you seem very intent on rescuing. How curious.”

“You know, today everyone seems to find the desire to get two small girls away from a murdering molester
weird
,” I said. “It seems to me that maybe this is opposite-day, because I would think that everyone would be just a
bit
more worried about their own lack of empathy.”

Atsuko gave a dry, almost coughing laugh. “You seem to misunderstand. I have spent sixty-five years in the shadow of vampires, and it is the fact that
you
have empathy that is so surprising. This is unusual behavior from a species whose actions tend to be predictably narcissistic.”

“I’m not fully a vampire yet,” I said.

Those bright dark eyes saw a lot, and Atsuko laughed again, a full belly laugh this time. “And you think that is the reason why you feel this way? Then you are a very foolish creature, vampire-child, like the tadpole crying that he does not want to become a frog because he does not wish to lose his tail.”

“But tadpoles do lose their tails,” I said, confused.

“Of course they don’t.” Atsuko smiled. “They are still there, just on the inside.”

“Grandmother, if we’ve gotten to the riddle section of the visit, then it’s time to go.” Suzume came back in, carrying a Providence city map. She leaned down and kissed Atsuko’s forehead. “I offered the police commissioner one free hour and he was more than happy to give me the addresses. We’ve got to run.”