Sasharia En Garde (2 page)

“Over there? Magic. But here?” She shrugged. “We’ve got tech
on our side.”

“Tech wins only if there’s an ebb in the magic. Or a cold
spot, or whatever they’d call it. Anyway, they did find us. And even if we run
again, those guys are smart enough to find their way to tech if they want us
bad enough.”

She pushed our cups aside and gripped my hands. Tears
slipped down her cheeks as she studied my palms. “You’ve got strong hands. That
was about all I could give you, when your father disappeared.” She met my eyes.
“But I am afraid. For us both. They can’t be tracking us for anything good. If
it was good news, your father would come himself. I would rather have you with
me.”

“Mom, I’d like to stay with you, too. Nothing better. Heck,
I even like Roger, even if he does tend to bore on about the stock market.”

She smiled faintly, looking young and old at the same time.
Vulnerable—though I loathe that word. Kittens are vulnerable. Orchids are
vulnerable. When something wants to hurt me, I want to kick its butt from here
to Mars.

“Mom, I’m going to stay. I don’t see any difference between
New York and L.A. for hiding in. Except I can hide better here since I know
L.A. But really, I just don’t want to run anymore.”

“We ran in fear fifteen years ago,” Mom said. “Sasha, we’re
not running from shadows. They are
here
.”

“Oh, I’ll move. I’ll go back to using Gramma’s last name,
but that’s it. I have at least a semblance of a life for the first time. I like
my studies, I like my sport. I think I might maybe even learn how to make
friends. So I’m staying. If they try to come after me, I know this ground. I’m
going to stand and fight.”

She held my hands so hard that I had to flex them so her
grip wouldn’t hurt. Despite her tears, and her elegant, poised appearance, it
was obvious she’d stayed in shape too.

She sighed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her expensive
jacket. “Okay. Like you say, you’re good at taking care of yourself. Better
than I ever was. There is half your father in you—” Her voice suspended again.
We didn’t have to say it. We were both thinking,
But he disappeared.

I zapped her with my index finger, a gesture I’d learned from
her. “Time to go back and pack. I hated that apartment anyway.”

Two weeks later, there I was asleep again, after another
night shift. Same time, same weather, same bed—but this time I did not live
alone, I had roommates. The apartment was located in Venice instead of West
L.A. Fewer palm trees, more sea breeze, otherwise the same close-packed strings
of cars out front, same rows of buildings with the ever-present TVs flickering
in windows.

The rap at the front door made me bury my head into my
pillow. I was sliding back into my dream involving guns, squealing tires, and
tomato sauce with oregano, when a knock at my bedroom door startled me.

I jerked upright. “What?”

Leslie, my coworker and new roommate, opened the door and
popped her head in. “Sorry, Sasha. Some suit asking for you.”

“Suit?”

She shrugged, her beaded dreads swinging and clicking as she
glanced over her shoulder, and back at me. “Suit. Tie. Briefcase. Something
about legal papers.”

A lawyer? Asking for me? This did not sound good.
Take-out delivery lawyer service has to cost
a C-note a minute
, I thought. But out loud I thanked her for the heads-up.

Once again I surged up from the water bed and yanked my
summer duvet around me. Not the beautiful one. That was now packed at the bottom
of my closet in my old karate-gear carryall. This duvet was a gen-yoo-wine
cheapo in five garish colors, one hundred percent synthetic Earthwear.

I hadn’t unbraided my hair from my work shift, so my braids
fell around my shoulders, all six of them, with curly wisps trying to escape;
the effect, to my eyes, looked like I’d stuck my fingers in a light socket. Oh
well. This was not any visit I’d asked for.

When I entered the living room, the mixed smell of simmering
spaghetti sauce and stale marijuana toxins slugged me in my empty gut. The
pounding I’d thought was in my head resolved into the boom-crash-screech of an
action movie on the TV. So that explained the dream.

The sauce smell drifted in from the kitchen, pungent with
fresh oregano. The toxins were from Dougie, a long, lanky guy in a filthy
T-shirt and jeans. He lay in the middle of the living room, looking at some
book called
How to Make a Million off the
Internet
as he smoked his doob. The TV blared unwatched across the room.

Marcie, whose name was on the lease, had to rent out the
extra bedrooms in order to scrape together enough cash to support this
slob—nobody at the restaurant could figure out why. As they say, love is blind.
In this case, blind, deaf and dumb.
Especially
dumb.

Dougie spewed another cloud before greeting me. “Hiya,
Sasha.” The greeting was accompanied by a leer down my body. I clutched the
duvet tighter.

“Dougie.” I left off the “hi” or “good morning” or any other
word that he could possibly interpret as an invitation to hit on me. Not that
that would stop him—as long as Marcie wasn’t around.

Leslie jerked her thumb at the visitor and then vanished
into the kitchen, firmly shutting the door on Dougie’s personal smog bank.

I turned to the front door. There stood a young guy in a suit,
carrying a legal briefcase. He looked ordinary enough: pleasant face, wavy
brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, dark brown eyes, brown skin. Obviously
startled by my height. I don’t hold that against anyone—I
am
tall. Not a surprise when you come from two tall parents of
spectacular make and model.

“Sasha . . . Muller?” He looked doubtfully
down at his paper and up at me again. We were eye to eye.

His using my Gramma’s last name was reassuring. “My mother
sent you?”

An explosion whacked our ears as Dougie decided it was time
to play some trash metal for the entire West Coast of North America.

“Just to sign some papers,” the guy said—or I thought he
said, not being very practiced at lip-reading.

“Why didn’t Mom call me?”

He looked puzzled, cupping his hand to his ear.

Now what to do? Take him somewhere else, obviously, but not
while I was practically naked. I couldn’t just leave him. Dougie was quite
capable of grilling him with nosy questions, and I didn’t want this suit
thinking Dougie had any right to the answers.

So I jerked my thumb toward the inside door and led the way
over Dougie’s legs back down the hall to Leslie’s room. I hoped she wouldn’t
mind for five minutes.

I stayed long enough to see him perch carefully on the
single chair, and dashed to my own room. I picked up my cell, speed-dialed
Mom—to get her answering machine. So I thrashed into some clothes, choosing my
most comfortable jeans and my
Got Books?
T-shirt. I braided my six braids into one big one, shoved my feet into my
sandals, tried Mom again and got the machine. I waited for the beep. “Mom, call
me? You sent some lawyer, or was that Roger?”

There. That took care of it. Right? I frowned at the
doorknob as if it had become the Great Doorknob of Power, but two hours of
sleep prevented me from getting any vibes about what I’d forgotten.

So I turned around, surveying my room. About the only
furniture I owned was my water bed, my one indulgence, because it reminded me
of my hammock when I was a kid on board a ship with Dad and Mom. But in Los
Angeles, hammocks caused too many questions, and I had learned to compromise
with things that raised no questions. Water beds raised no questions.

Everything else was garage-sale rejects, or survival stuff
like clothing. I had gotten into the habit of always choosing things for
practicality and invisibility.

There was another equally strong habit, being ready to
jettison everything and run. I set my cell on my bed and reached into my closet
for the gear bag I’d mentioned before, which contained my few important items.
It went with me to work every day. Figuring a lawyer might need to look at my
legal stuff, I hitched the bag over my shoulder, then eased the door open.

The walls reverberated with Dougie’s thrash noise, jarring
my teeth and bones. I whizzed across to Leslie’s room and threw open the door,
braced for action . . . to find the lawyer guy sitting where I’d
left him, his briefcase on his knees, his brown eyes tilted up toward me in
question.

“Okay.” I shut the door. “What’ve ya got?” The screeching
noise diminished to the mindless thud, thud, thud of elementary percussives.

The young man opened the briefcase and sorted through his
papers.

“Several items of import,” he murmured, the thump of the
distant synthesizer drums and the hiss and rattle of his papers muffling his
voice.

Import
. Did he
have an accent? Hispanic, maybe?

“Here.”

He held out a sheaf in one hand and a pen in his other, his
manner earnest—maybe nervous. Like he wanted to get this done and get out. Who
could blame him, with that noise pounding our brains?

“Can you give me a quick overview on what this stuff is?” I
was thirsty, hungry and functioning on under two hours of sleep.

“Yes.” He stood and obligingly turned so that the papers
were not upside down. “Here.” He held them under my nose.

I bent to peer at the print. Just as I registered what
appeared to be an old rental agreement, five fingers closed hard on my arm. My
muscles tightened to whip off a forearm block, light flashed—

—and my body turned inside out, my bones snapped like rubber
bands, my head exploded—

Then it all reversed.

Though it had been many years since I’d been wrenched
between worlds, I knew instantly what had happened: I’d been thrust through a
World Gate.

I dropped with a splat onto a tiled floor, gasping for breath.
The lawyer plopped next to me, the briefcase spilling papers all over. He
groaned as he struggled to sit up. As I tried to recover my wind-scattered
wits, I stared at the papers. They were flyers for local sales, a couple of
rental signs and—

“You’re a fake.” I glared at the guy, who ran a shaky hand
through his hair, which had jarred loose from the ponytail. Then, as a few more
wits moseyed back, “Of course you’re a fake. What could be more unmagical than
a lawyer?” Hadn’t Mom said a young man had come to her?
About your age
. “Well, this is
totally
craptastic. I can’t believe I fell for that.”

The guy grimaced, rubbing his temples. He looked confused
and upset, and a lot younger than I’d first thought. He probably wasn’t much
more than twenty. “I feel sick.”

“Good,” I snarled. “I’m so glad your rotten spell gave you
the world’s worst smackdown.”

“Gate . . . very edge of its reach.”

I sighed, disgusted with myself. I’d been braced for the old
guys, or if not them, some sinister geezer like Saruman—one glance and I would
have slammed the door in his face. But a young, cute guy with puppy-dog brown
eyes wearing a tie and a L.A. liberal ponytail, toting a briefcase and talking
about legal papers had completely suckered me.

Stupid! I wanted to stomp and yell, but I didn’t have enough
energy for that, so I settled for a snarky question. “I take it you’re one of
Canary Merindar’s goons?”

We were still speaking English, though his translation spell
would probably wear off soon. He winced again, frowned, mouthed the word
goon
, and flushed. “I am not!”

“Only Merindar,” I said with false cordiality, “would be
slimy and disgusting enough to force me against my will, without my permission,
without warning, through that blasted World Gate.”

He gulped in air and scrambled to his feet, leaving the
briefcase lying on the magic-transfer Destination tiles. “Emergency. They were
right behind us.” He pointed at the tiles. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

“Home.” I sat where I was. “Now.”

The ex-lawyer tugged impatiently at the tie. “How can men
wear these things in your world? I feel like I am strangling. No, you are not
understanding. If I take you back, Canardan Merindar’s mages
will
get you. They had a tracer out, and
after we performed the ten-year spell your father asked us—”

“So why are you any better? Anyway, I don’t believe that
about my father. Those two old guys brought up his name, too. Going for the ol’
sentimentality, pretend you’re from my dad? No chance, Lance.”

“Lance?” He looked around, as if weapons had sprouted somewhere
in the little chamber. The English spell seemed to be fading.

“The point is, I don’t recall anyone asking my permission to
bring me here.” I hugged my bag to me.

By now my other senses were waking up, and the smell of the
air coming in the high windows, the sight of stone walls, even the rich
colors—so much more vivid than those in L.A.—all made my throat hurt and my
eyes sting.

I don’t do sorrow well. It makes me surly.

“I—” He flapped a hand, shook his head, and opened the
single door. “I believe I had better let you talk to Elva.” He was now speaking
in Khani, the language of my childhood, which I had not used for years.

And, like I said before, I had not forgotten a word.

He lurched dizzily through the door, throwing the tie in one
direction and the suit jacket in another, leaving me staring through the
doorway at a young woman about my age pacing impatiently. As the guy launched
clothes right and left, the female stopped, gaping from him to me.

“You
found
her?”
she asked in Khani. “Oh, well done, Devli.” Another fast, puzzled glance. “Ah,
which one is she?”

“The daughter. Grown up.” The kid—Devli—vanished behind a
folding screen painted with a highly stylized series of raptors in flight
against a starry sky. Grunts and rips from behind the screen indicated he was
getting rid of the last of his Earth clothes as fast as he could.