The Dragons of Heaven (18 page)

“Bananas… the wine… this ‘dream'.” I listed the events of the evening. His lips twitched as he fought to hold back a smile. I gaped. He thought duping me was
funny
?

“You have some very strange notions about how to perform a seduction. I only thought to satisfy them, now that I am free to do so.”

“You're trying to get off on a technicality?” He grinned at my unintended
double entendre
. I was not in such a smiling mood. “You… you… you son of a pig!”

I yanked the covers out from under his feet. He fell back, rolling on the floor, laughter cracking through the room like the rumbling of a storm. I circled him, covers trailing behind me.

“Stop that laughing, you overgrown lizard! I can't believe that you've been setting this up all evening… and I… I… Gah!” Tears coursed down his cheeks now. “And then tonight you just let me think I was being all self-sacrificing and martyring, and you knew this entire time that we could have been going at it like bunnies, and you just let me… stop that laughing you… you… carp with delusions of grandeur!”

I snapped my covers in his general direction, more out of frustration than with any intent to do actual harm. His hand shot out and caught them, bringing me tumbling down on top of him, covers and all. His arms wrapped around me, and his chuckles died away as he contained my struggles.

“I am sorry,” he offered when I subsided. “It was never my intention that the joke should go on this long, or that it should have gone so wrong.” His smile gentled and he loosened one arm from around me, bringing his hand up to run his fingers across my brows, my cheek, my lips. I tried to hold on to my frown, but how could I when he touched me like that? And being naked and lying on top of him didn't help.

“Yeah, well, it would serve you right if I tossed you out on your ear right now,” I said, squirming as he traced circles up my spine.

“You realize that now that you are free, you may leave whenever you wish?”

“Are you kidding me?” I buried my nose in sandalwood-scented hair. “I'm not going anywhere now.”

N
ow

“Missy?” Shimizu tapped on the edge of my bedroom doorway, then pushed the door open without waiting for a response.

I mumbled something unintelligible to make her think I was still asleep and shifted to pull the covers over my head. That made me groan in earnest. I ached all over from the fight with Lao Chan's men. That was the pain that had woken me, but it was Lao Chan's parting-shot and David Tsung's shady-dealing that kept me hiding under my covers. I just wanted the world to go away for a few more hours.

The world might obey my unspoken wish; Shimizu didn't.

“Missy? You OK?”

“I'm dying. Go away.”

“At least you're not dead. C'mon, time to get up. The world's falling apart. There's hero stuff to do.” She threw the covers back before I could tighten my grip. Her breath caught as she got her first look at me.

“Oh my god.”

I uncurled from my pillbug roll. My long T-shirt had ridden up, leaving all my bruises exposed for Shimizu to cluck at. “It's not as bad as it looks.”

“Jesus!” She set down the mug she'd been holding, going from roommate mode to doctor mode in an instant. “You were fine when you left Oakland. What happened?”

“Is that tea?” I asked, ignoring her concern for more important things. She pushed the mug out of reach and grabbed my left ankle.

“It's my tea. If you want your own, you have to prove you're functional by putting on clothes and getting it yourself.” She rotated my ankle, then moved up to my knee to test my range of mobility. I only hissed and winced a few times.

“I can get tea in my jammies,” I said, because throwing on pants seemed like too much of an effort.

“Jack's here. He wants to talk to you.” She'd moved to my other leg, bending the knee that I'd twisted. Knees weren't meant to twist. They were hinge-joints, as Shimizu was fond of reminding me. The furrow between Shimizu's brow deepened.

“Jack can talk to me in my jammies.” But the news got me moving. I was strict about keeping Missy's life separate from Mr Mystic's. If Jack had come to the co-op, it must be important.

Shimizu backed away as I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. She grabbed a pair of yoga pants from my dresser and tossed them at my face. “At least put these on. Neither of us is going to be able to pay attention if we have to look at those bruises. How many fingers?”

“Isn't it a little late to be testing for concussion?” I managed to pull on the pants with a minimum of painful bending.

“Well, if
someone
didn't insist on coming home injured and falling straight into bed…”

“You hadn't gotten home yet.”

With a tetching noise, she helped me stand up and make my way toward the door. Momentum kept me going. “Next time, leave me a note. Better yet, don't let there be a next time.”

I hobbled up the stairs to the main floor, not making any promises. There would be a next time, and I wouldn't bother her unless it was vital. I knew my limits. As much as I ached this morning, I'd be fine in a few days. They were just surface aches, giving me something to think about that wasn't the knife sitting in a bundle of silk on my dresser.

“Jesus!” Jack said as I entered the kitchen.

“No, just Missy.” I gave up walking and sank onto a chair.

Shimizu gave Jack a “you talk to her” look as she passed him on her way to the counter. I hoped it was to take pity on me and make me tea. He nodded and sat in the chair across from me.

“I hope this is one of those cases where I should see the other guy?”

“Guys,” I corrected before I could catch myself.

“Plural?”

“Nine. Wait, no. Twelve. Damn. Made that mistake last night, too.”

“You fought twelve men?” Jack's question was slow. Skeptical. Possibly I had a history of exaggerating my exploits just to shock him. Not this time, though.

“I fought nine. There were twelve. You see the problem now?”

“Lao Chan let you live?” Jack was quick, I'll give him that. That was twice now that I should have died at Lao Chan's hands, but hadn't. “Why?”

“His boss, Mr Long, wants to see me. In Shanghai.”

Shimizu's teaspoon clattered on the counter. “Mr Long? Is that your–”

“No.” I said, before she could invoke painful memories. This whole China business was hard enough without thinking about what I'd lost the last time I'd been there. Jack and Shimizu exchanged another look at my curt denial. This was the other reason I didn't let my worlds mix. They tended to gang up on me when they did.

Jack took the lead. “Does this have anything to do with whatever you were doing in Oakland last night?”

“How did you know about that?”

“It's all over YouTube. Videos of Mr Mystic disappearing at the edge of the Wall shortly before it went down. I've been fielding calls all night, but somebody turned her cell phone off.”

“She came to find me.” Shimizu handed me a mug, and I drank in the warmth. Some kind of jasmine sencha, sharp enough to jolt my brain into working, but the floral element smoothing over any rough edges. I gave her a grateful smile. Best. Roommate. Ever.

“And the wall around Oakland just happened to go down while she – excuse me, while Mr Mystic was there? How did you even get in?”

I avoided the snarky part of his question. “The Shadow Realms aren't just a copy of our own world. Geographies don't align in the same way. Whatever the New Wall is, it doesn't extend across the veil.”

“So that's how you expect to get into China to see this Mr Long?”

I wondered if Jack took classes in frowning, or if it came natural.

Shimizu curled up in a chair of her own. “Crossing over was dangerous. What if there are more of those things from last night?”

“Things?”

I ignored Jack. “It is. And there will be, or worse things. I'll just have to be faster than they are.”

“Take lots of glowsticks. I have a box.”

I laughed, then choked it back. Laughing hurt. “I have to figure out how to get there first.”

“About that.” Jack rooted through his coat pocket.

“Hm?” I sipped my tea. It was almost too hot, but the warmth provided another jolt to my synapses.

“This came by courier this morning.” Jack pulled out a tri-folded letter. Just the letter, no envelope. Jack opened all of Mr Mystic's correspondence. The dove-grey stationary rustled with the sound of high-quality paper. I caught a flash of silver foil at the upper corner. A logo in crisp, Art Deco lines.

I took the letter, opening it to confirm my suspicions. “What does Argent want with me?”

Jack's lips twisted into a grimace that might have been meant as a smile. “It's a short letter, Missy. You could read it.”

“A meeting. Sylvia Dunbarton is in town. I got that. Why does she want to see Mr Mystic?”

“Maybe she saw him skulking around Oakland on YouTube. Like the rest of the world. How should I know?”

I waved the letter at him. “You're you. You know things. What, you think I keep you around for your clean-cut good looks?”

“No. My cooking. And I know things about things I know. This is Argent, Missy. I have as much chance of figuring out their motives as you do defeating twelve Triad.”

“I managed nine,” I muttered. Didn't anybody respect that nine wasn't too shabby?

Jack crossed his arms. “I rest my case.”

“I don't see what Argent has to do with this.” Mostly because I didn't want to. It was going into the pile of things I didn't want to deal with, on top of David Tsung, Mr Long, and the past I'd left behind in China.

Shimizu took the letter from my unresisting grip, reading it for herself. “Your grandfather used to work for Argent? They have whole divisions dedicated to research. If they know about the Shadow Realms, maybe they know you can get across. Figured out you were responsible for saving Oakland?”

“They also have a better information network than the CIA, so they might know about this Mr Long's invitation,” Jack said. Between the two of them, they were making it really hard for me to keep my head in the sand. Couldn't I get a morning off and enjoy my tea and my aches in peace?

“So what if they do know,” I mumbled against the rim of my mug. “I'm not working with Argent.”

“You just said you need to get overseas somehow,” Shimizu said. “It's not like you can just hop the next trans-Pacific flight.”

“But–”

Jack gripped my forearm before I could hide behind my tea mug. “Missy, I know how you feel about Argent.” Jack should. He'd heard me rant about it often enough. “But the world isn't black and white. This New Wall, all the other affected Chinatowns, don't you get the scope of this crisis? Every corner of the world is affected. They've only just started compiling lists of tourists and expats who were in China when the Wall went up. The numbers already put every other hostage crisis to shame.”

“And not that I'm a die-hard capitalist, but how long can they keep the markets closed?” Shimizu snorted. “Hell, Patrick listed his new iPad on Ebay this morning, and the bidding is already enough to let him take a semester off teaching.”

I splurted tea. “What? What does that have to do with this?”

Shimizu wiped the table. “Not like Apple is going to be able to get their parts from Foxcorp anymore. If this goes on, you're talking the collapse of the tech industry. And all the jobs that go with it. This isn't the fourteenth century. China can't just declare
Hai Jin
and cut itself off from the world.”

Jack took over the badger-express. “It's only going to get worse the longer it goes on. Sometimes doing something for the greater good requires compromise – a little bit of sleeping with the enemy.”

I covered my head as they battered at me from both sides. Jack pulled my hands away, forcing me to face him. “You're the one who wanted to be a hero. Now's the time to step up. Shimizu has a point. If you tried to go through official channels, you'd probably get a one-way ticket to Gitmo. Argent can get you to Shanghai. And fast. You don't have another option. Am I wrong?”

He was wrong, on almost every count. The ends didn't justify the means. The how and the why of doing a thing mattered. Sleeping with the enemy was just asking for karmic STDs, and Argent was as crooked as Lombard Street. Everything about this situation screamed “It's a Trap!” in Admiral Ackbar tones.

But someone had to go to China and take down this wall, and I seemed to be the best person for the job. Mitchell Masters had extensive resources, but they didn't pack the kind of economic or political punch to get me to China. Argent did.

I opened the letter again. Reread the tiny block of text. Did anyone ever come clean out of a deal with the devil?

I crumpled the paper into a ball. Didn't matter. That New Wall needed to go down.

“Fine. Mr Mystic will go to Argent.”

T
he Argent Corporation
tapped into the nostalgia of another age, and, as CEO, Sylvia Dunbarton had nurtured that into a cult of personality. She epitomized studio-era Hollywood glamour coupled with old-money British aristocracy. She knew the power of her image, and she used it. But that was just surface. Everything she did had at least five purposes.

Which was why I didn't trust her motives for leaving me cooling my heels in the lobby of the Fairmont.

I'd been waiting long enough to attract several second glances and a few surreptitious phone pictures when the Grande Dame of Argent appeared, flanked by two men in identical dark suits.

She wore a smart, tailored jacket and pencil skirt in charcoal herringbone, her silver hair cut in a sleek bob and her oxford heels clicking crisply on the marble flooring. Grey fox lined her gloves and collar, but there was something about her air that would have given pause to the most ardent PETA activist. She looked like a character from a Wodehouse novel, but I knew her – or knew of her – and she was far more canny and unsettling.

“Lady Basingstoke. A pleasure, as always.” I rose, sketching a small bow. The wait had sparked a simmering irritation, but appearances must be maintained.

“Titles, Mitchell?” She took my hands, kissing the air above each cheek. “It has been a long time, but I thought we were better friends than that.”

“I did not wish to presume,” I murmured, pulling away. “As you say, it has been a long time, and I couldn't be sure you'd forgiven me.”

“For not saying word one since your return? For turning your nose up at Argent and going it on your own? No, I shan't forgive you for that, but I'm certain you have your reasons.” She rapped me on the arm. The gesture needed a fan, but she somehow made it work without one.

“Reprimand accepted. Why did you wish to see me?”

There it was, the flash of steel in her pewter-grey eyes. She smiled, but it didn't quite reach them. “Right down to business?”

“I am a busy man, and as you might be aware, my city is in something of a pother.”

“The world is in a pother. But then, you always were a bit myopic about such things. Come, let's not trade barbs unless there's tea to soothe the wounds. They make a passable cuppa here. Join me.”

The last was a command rather than a question, and the way she took my arm and led me off, the both of us flanked by her guards, brooked no refusal.

Without a doubt, Sylvia Dunbarton, Lady Basingstoke, Grande Dame of the Argent Aces, was even more recognizable than Mr Mystic, even in my home city. As we made our way through the lobby to the hotel dining room, Sylvia's purpose for not meeting me in her suite became clear. Heads turned. Phones snapped pictures and took video. Tweets flew. Within moments, half the city knew. Mitchell Masters was reconciling with Argent, news at eleven. How do you know? The internets say it is so.