A Storm of Blossoms

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Do you think you’re supposed to be bringing me?” Saori asked me, as we were getting close to the fae lord’s estate. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant for something to be an estate, but this definitely seemed to count. We were well outside the urban area by now, on some narrow access road in the forest. “He pretty specifically invited you.”

“Beats me,” I said cheerfully. “But you helped, and it’s not like I could drive out here myself. So I think it’s pretty reasonable.”

“On the list of adjectives I would generally apply to the Sidhe,” she said dryly, “I don’t think ‛reasonable’ even makes the top fifty. But hey, maybe we’ll get lucky.”…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Saori had ditched the plastic tub of LEGOs and the ice cream machine she’d had in her car, apparently. They had been replaced by a box filled with dozens of hockey stick blades of various shapes, and a clown mask sitting on the dashboard. Which was….

I knew that it would only encourage her, and the answer would be neither informative nor reassuring. But I had to ask. “Is that mask…autographed?”

“Yup!” she said brightly.

“By whom?”

“The entirety of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.” Saori sounded smug. “The list sorted by instrument is in the glovebox.”…

Chapter Twenty-One

Audgrim didn’t like that very much. I could tell he would rather have told me no flat out. But he couldn’t really do so. He just didn’t have the position to right now. I’d been accomplishing a great deal for this investigation, and had put myself through several rounds of seriously unpleasant exposure to do so, on top of him using me as bait for information gathering. I didn’t kid myself into thinking that meant he would feel real loyalty towards me. I wasn’t that naïve. In my experience, most people are generally only as grateful as they’re directly incentivized to be. He would pay back the debt he owed me, sure; that much I felt I could count on. But that was because reputation was everything in our circles, and a reputation as an oathbreaker who reneged on his debts would see him metaphorically and quite possibly literally crucified for it. He was smart enough to know that, to know that the long-term costs outweighed any short-term reward he stood to gain. But I wasn’t counting on him actually caring; I wasn’t even counting on him being too self-interested to discard the possible gain from my ongoing help. People self-sabotage for stupid reasons all the time.

The reason that I was confident he was going to play along had nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the broader context. There were other groups involved now. Audgrim could afford to piss me off without any repercussion, but when you have Jack Tar, the local werewolf pack, and a pretty scary Sidhe also involved? All of whom had a lot of reason to want this situation dealt with successfully, and direct awareness of both how much I’d been helping and the misery I’d put myself through in order to do so?…

Chapter Twenty

Jack Tar might have smelled slightly better today. It was hard to tell whether it was that, or I’d acclimated somewhat. He at least wasn’t smoking, which was a good start. He was sitting on the ground in the parking lot when I opened the door, and glanced back at me when I did.

“Ey, there you are. Was about to call you again.” He pushed himself to his feet, and stretched like his back hurt. “Where you want to go?”

I paused. “Wasn’t this your idea?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “But I don’t really have a destination in mind. Just want to talk, and I find that walking helps me think. It’s the movement, you know? Helps with working through ideas.”…

Chapter Nineteen

Andrew left, at that point. He was currently a very busy wolf; now that they had a clear scent sample from these mages, it was going to be much more likely that they could follow the trail, and they had a lot of sites to check. Honestly, the fact that he’d taken time to keep watch and give me a status update was kind of surprising.

I sat in the parking lot of the Blackbird Cabaret for a few minutes with Saori. We didn’t really say much, but it still felt very soothing, somehow. The air was cool enough that the partial sunlight actually felt nice, and I had a lot of stuff to absorb. So much had happened while I was unconscious. It was strange to think about the fact that I was most of the reason for that when I didn’t know anything about it.…

Chapter Eighteen

Waking up the next time was much more pleasant. I didn’t appear to have been moved, though the room was a little different. Capinera had laid a blanket on the floor in the corner, and was lying down asleep. I felt a little bad about putting her out of her bed, but she did seem to be able to sleep like that. A fox was curled up in that bed next to me, also asleep. Kitsune seemed to be unlike werewolves in this, and unlike me for that matter. Saori looked exactly like an ordinary red fox, with red-orange fur, a white tip on her tail, nothing unusual at all. She only had the one tail, too, suggesting she was young and fairly limited in her power; kitsune grew more as they aged. It was only context that told me who this was, that and the feeling of smoke-laughter-fox-spice in her aura.

More surprising to me was the person sitting in the chair. There were a lot of people whom I could have imagined that being, under the circumstances, but Andrew would have been a ways down the list. The werewolf was doing something on his phone, and he still seemed tense, but it was a different tension now, hungry and eager.…