The Nine Lives of Chloe King (40 page)

Chloe hadn’t been outside in daylight for weeks, but it felt much longer—like a lifetime. She felt a strange, removed feeling. It reminded her of the clinking of glasses as her mom cleaned up dinner, like there was some order to the world that she wasn’t quite part of. She couldn’t help feeling a little stupid. Life wasn’t like TV, and she had definitely
not
been whisked away to her Happily Ever After. No one could do that, she realized. Not even an ancient, hidden race of people with powers like lions who gathered in prides.

There were no real superheroes.

Why had she assumed that just because they had these abilities, they would automatically come to the aid of the weak, defenseless, and—most of all—
innocent?
Rationally, she understood Sergei’s reasons: there wasn’t a huge population of Mai to begin with. Like pandas. Losing even one panda was a problem, too.

But forget helping to rescue her mom just for the sake of doing good; Sergei wouldn’t do it for
her.
Didn’t he … well, if he didn’t
love
her, didn’t he care about her? Didn’t he care about saving the woman who was responsible for keeping Chloe—one of their kind—safe until she could join them? Couldn’t he do Chloe this one favor?

The moon slowly glided across the sky, inching toward midnight, and Chloe watched the intricate shadows in the grass grow and change direction.

She was still at the window hours later when Kim came padding in, carrying a sheaf of papers and clippings and photographs. She wore a long black turtleneck sweater and a black skirt that went to the floor, making her look like an ancient priestess. A cat-eared female— and, Chloe noted wryly—a pretty sexy priestess.

“I have some pictures for you. Your relatives … I mean, they might be.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Kim sighed patiently, as if she had expected this response but didn’t feel the need to apologize.

“How did you know I was here?”

Kim blinked once, then touched her nose.

“Of course.” Chloe looked back out the window. “My mom’s gone. You were right about my ’human parents’ being in danger.”

“I’m … sorry that I was right.”

“Sergei and Olga and the others … they won’t
do
anything. They won’t help me. They won’t risk the kizekh. …” She pounded her fist on the window sash. “And what can
I
do? If I try to go out, Sergei’s goons will drag me back to make sure I’m ’safe.’ If I manage to
get
out—and get anywhere near my home without an army, the Tenth Bladers will get me. …” She trailed off. “I guess I’ll call the police, like Sergei said. It’s the only thing I really can do.”

“I’ll help,” Kim said simply.

“What?” Chloe looked at her; she hadn’t really been talking
to
the other girl, just getting her thoughts out.

“I’ll help. I’m the best tracker here anyway. We will return to the scene of the crime and look for clues.” She said this in such even tones that Chloe worried she was joking. Not that Kim had a great sense of humor or anything.

“Really?” Chloe asked slowly.

Kim nodded. “I can evade the goons, too. So, do you want to see these pictures?”

It was like the conversation was over as far was Kim was concerned. She had made her choice, and that was that. Chloe stared at her a little more.

“I’m totally thrilled, but I have to ask—why are you helping me?”

“You’re my friend,” Kim said, shrugging. “And I believe that once you tell him, Alyec will come along, too. Unlike him, however, I will not be expecting physical rewards from you.”

Chloe suddenly exploded with laughter—like she hadn’t since Alyec had teased her into a good mood in the middle of the school hall. That felt like it has been ages ago. Her face relaxed into a smile. It felt good.

She held her hand out for the photos. “Let’s see these.”

“That woman in the background—and clearer, here: she is the former pride leader. The one who
might
be your mother.”

Chloe took the picture from her. It was cracked and bent and had what looked like coffee rings in a corner. The woman in it was certainly not as pretty as Chloe, but there was a definite resemblance, with the high cheekbones and cupid’s bow lips. Her eyes were also hazel but darker, or at least they seemed shadowed in the picture. Her forehead was wider. She was handsome and had thick black hair that came down over her shoulders and covered her breasts. She was laughing, and her whole body was involved: her head thrown back, her hands on her hips, her mouth wide open, exposing perfect white teeth. There were deep creases around her eyes, like she had seen more of the world than her age would seem to indicate.

“Both my moms spent their lives helping people,” Chloe murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“My mother—my human mother—is a lawyer in a private firm, but she does a lot of work for legal aid. Mainly for a women’s domestic abuse shelter in the Mission District.”

“She sounds like a good person.”

“She is.” Chloe smiled weakly. “Thanks for not saying ’was.’”

Kim just blinked at her. Chloe wondered how much of the girl’s slow transformation to something more cat than human had affected her mind.

“How did you know my mom might be in danger?” Chloe asked aloud.

Once again Kim looked uncomfortable. “It only stands to reason,” she said slowly. “For one thing, she makes perfect bait for the Tenth Bladers to lure you out.”

“And …?”

“And if you are still asking the question, you are already familiar with the other possible answer.” She bit the sentence off as she finished it. Chloe knew she wouldn’t get more out of her about it. She continued flipping through the pictures.

“My friend Amy suggested that it might not have anything to do with the Mai or the Order of the Tenth Blade,” she added casually. “My dad left when I was really young— my mom’s story is that he went gradually psycho or something. It wasn’t exactly an amicable breakup.”

“I … don’t think he’s a likely suspect. Occam’s Razor— the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” Chloe said, sighing. “But it was kind of exciting thinking about him for a little while again, you know? I wonder what he’s doing now. …” She shook her head. “I didn’t know him very well. As a kid I thought he was a superhero, the best dad ever … and then an asshole for walking out on us. Of course, for a long time I blamed my mom for that.” Chloe frowned, thinking about the fight they’d had the night she discovered her claws. “Then it turns out that one of the reasons they split up was because
of me….
They had very different ideas on child raising. Apparently he was this super-strict jerk, all about not letting me go out or date or—“She stopped and looked away from the photos to Kim.
“Not letting me go—he
made my mom promise before he took off. To not let me date.”

Kim came to the same conclusion she had. “Did your parents know what you are?”

“My mom doesn’t,” Chloe said, pretty sure of the fact. Things like claws and litter boxes had not been brought up during the tampons and Advil discussion. “But what if my father knew?”

“Then your mother’s disappearance becomes even more complex. Aside from the Tenth Blade, I think I can say with some certainty that almost no humans know about us.”

“It would be on the news instantly,” Chloe agreed.

“Perhaps he was Mai,” Kim wondered.

“Um, no? The whole sex thing? She’d be all, like, dead and stuff?”

“Oh. Of course,” Kim said, blushing. She turned back to the manila envelope in her hand. “So you had no father growing up …,” the girl said, playing with the idea. “I can see why you would get attached to Sergei so quickly.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Chloe snapped.

“Nothing more than that he is a charismatic, charming, and powerful leader. A perfect father figure. A role he enjoys, I might add. There have been other … orphans he has attached himself to.”

Was Kim trying to make her jealous? But that didn’t make sense unless—
she
was one of those other orphans, who’d maybe gotten dumped when Chloe or someone else came along. Like Igor. He certainly looked to Sergei as a male role model. Maybe it was a warning?

“Did he take
you
under his wing?”

“Yes,” Kim said hesitantly, “when I first came.”

“What happened? You don’t seem to like him very much.”

“That was it. I never have.” Kim shrugged. “There is very little room for personal choice among the Mai, especially if you’re an orphan, being welcomed in by the only people who will—who
can
—take you. But something about him … I didn’t like him from the beginning. So I was raised by everyone and no one.”

Chloe thought about this, drumming her fingers on the photos. There was a lot of information in what the other girl had just told her, but she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it yet. So Sergei liked to take the lonely under his wing—what was wrong with that? It was
nice,
in a sort of den-mother-at-the-orphanage kind of way. And Kim
was
kind of a freak—maybe she just resented authority figures. Maybe this was nothing more than a slight personality clash of two very different people. …

But she didn’t rule out that it might be something more.

“Who’s this?” Chloe asked, suddenly coming across a much more modern picture. In it a girl was grinning, standing with her arm around another girl, at the top of what was probably the Empire State Building. Old-fashioned quarter-operated binoculars, the kind that looked like giant silver robot heads, were blurry in the background, and there was something distinctly urban and gritty about the landscape beyond.

Kim leaned over, saw the picture, and cleared her throat.

“That’s the girl who would have been your sister. If we are correct about your parentage.”

“My
sister?”
Chloe held the picture closer. The girl was darker than Chloe and older; the date on the back indicated that it had been taken a few years ago, and she already looked like she was sixteen or seventeen. Her hair was the same as Chloe’s, and there was a shape to her eyes that was similar; her nose was smaller, too. She had two fingers up in a V behind her friend’s head.

Kim’s exact words suddenly sank into her mind.

“What do you mean, ’would have been’?”

“She was the one I told you about who was killed by the Tenth Blade. The pride leader’s daughter. That would make you her sister,” Kim said patiently, making Chloe feel like more of an idiot. “It happened several months ago. We think it was the Rogue.”

“My
sister?”
Chloe said again, feeling it on her tongue. Again she felt nothing in particular when she looked at the photo, but the word brought a swirl of emotions.

“Why …?” she began. Tears sprang up in her eyes. It wasn’t
fair.
She’d wanted a brother or sister
all her life
and it turned out that she’d had one
all along
and she’d been taken from Chloe, scant months before they would have found each other. It was so wretchedly, horrifically unfair.

“I understand she was a lot like you, actually. Or you if you had been raised Mai,” Kim added thoughtfully. “I heard that she went out a lot by herself, doing a lot of things strictly among humans, and after her mother was killed, she was sent to live with her relatives, who were members of the New England Pride.”

“There’s a pride in New England?” Chloe asked. She remembered Kim mentioning the Pride of New Orleans, but colonial houses, white Christmases, and freaky cat people roaming quaint cobblestoned streets struck Chloe as strange.
I guess that’s all relative these days, though,
she thought.

Kim just nodded, without explaining further. “I didn’t know her very well. She was killed by herself, far away from her home, at night.”

“Picked off because she was by herself,” Chloe said grimly. But something seemed familiar about what Kim had said—almost déjà vu. A dream she’d had, maybe: something about a girl running, panicked, in dark city streets. Being caught and having her throat slit.

“Yes … although the fact that it might have been the Rogue lends an interesting spin to the whole thing,” Kim said, looking at the picture again. “To send someone like that out after her means they were pretty serious about
getting
her, which means they somehow knew she was the daughter of a previous pride leader.”

“Do you think they know about me?” Chloe asked in a small voice.

“We still have no actual proof you are who we think you are,” Kim said carefully. “So I would assume they have even less of an idea.”

She imagined the man who’d attacked her running after this other girl, in probably the same fashion, running her down—without an Alyec or Brian to help save her. Maybe without so much of a fighting instinct. Killed by whirring throwing stars and tiny silver daggers.

“Why are they called the Tenth Blade, anyway?” Chloe asked.

“Because a pride leader has nine lives,” Kim answered. “It takes nine blades to kill the One. The
tenth
is for the Tenth Blader if he fails.”

Twenty-two

After She and
Kim had made some preliminary plans for searching her house the next night, Chloe finally crawled off to bed, a thousand different thoughts and ideas crowding themselves into her brain. She had just drifted off, the pictures of her possible mother and sister laid out on the quilt in front of her, when Alyec showed up.

“Pssst! Chloe?” He knocked lightly on the door as he opened it.

Chloe blinked awake, then immediately sat up.
“Where were you?”

“What?” Alyec asked, the eagerness on his face changing to dismay.

“I’ve been trying to call you. I tried calling you at home—”

“I was at a party,” he mumbled, a little shamefaced about having fun while she was stuck here.

“Why don’t you have a cell phone?” Chloe snapped.

“I do. Have one.
Had
one. Too many people started calling, so I don’t use it much anymore,” Alyec said defensively.