Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (5 page)

“Yes.” He had found an orange somewhere and sat peeling it into a bowl.

I had a dizzying moment of
déjà vu
. As relieved as I was that it was over, the fruit actually made me smile. “The orange?”

“Indeed, the orange.”

Shell scowled, but she remembered Doctor Cornelius’ fruity metaphor for the structure of reality.

“Reading about your interactions with this Kitsune person,” Doctor Cornelius mused as he peeled, “and from what I saw in there just now, I would say that you have been brought to the attention of a more real portion of reality. Closer to the center of the orange.”

“Why didn’t Chakra or Ozma find anything?”

“That would be because
you
haven’t changed. Does the fact that I can see you, even call you and speak with you on your cell when you’re somewhere else, change you?”

I couldn’t help the laugh. “That depends on what you say to me.”

“Point. But nobody looking at you would see anything different forensically, even metaphysically. Ozma?”

While he’d been talking, Ozma had gotten out a small golden bowl and dumped a handful of the gathered cherry blossoms into it. Now she popped the top off a wax sealed bottle and carefully measured out crystal grains onto a fold of wax paper.

“Sands of time,” she said to everyone, capping the bottle.

Doctor Cornelius didn’t ask and I couldn’t tell what Orb was thinking, but I just couldn’t let that go. “The sands of time are
real
?”

“Real enough. To be more precise this is time squeezed from sand, like juice from a grape. You can extract time from anything, but sand is easiest.”

“
Why
?”

“For measuring doses.” She gently shook the paper over the bowl, letting the sand fall over the petals. “You cannot extract time from just a portion of an object. You could take time from a hundred pound rock, but then you would have a hundred pound piece of time. Add it to something as small and light as this, and you might get interesting results but probably not the ones you want.”

That was typical of any explanation from Ozma—I would understand every word, but all of them together would make me wonder if I’d heard her right.
 
It was like when she told me “Yellow is bright, brightness is an energy state, energy is speed, so yellow is fast.” I’d learned that when I asked about the Yellow Brick Road, and of course it was obvious. To Ozma.

The sand falling onto the pink-white petals dissolved, or faded away, or whatever its disappearing meant. The petals didn’t change, and Ozma sat back.

“Doctor Cornelius works from a different model of reality than the one I possess, but I agree with his conclusion. The petals you brought back with you originate from and remain part of a domain in which time is more eternal than sequential. They are always blooming, always falling, always waiting to fall. They are not dying.” She put away the bottle, not at all perturbed by the fact that she was looking at something that shouldn’t be here.

“But—they’re from my dream!”

“You’ve always known that your Kitsune visions were more than mere dreams, Hope. We’ve just been assuming they were less than real. Doctor? The Wizard might have been able to tell me more, but I am not familiar with many places outside this world and Oz. Do you know where these are from?”

He shrugged thoughtfully, nibbling on a piece of orange.

“Considering that a kitsune is a Japanese fox-spirit, and based on what I saw, I would have to say that the tree these fell from sits somewhere in what Shinto belief calls the High Plane of Heaven. I would call it a part of Briah, the Iconic Realm.”

“Heaven—” There was no way I’d been meeting that fox in
Heaven
.

He chuckled. “Don’t get theologically confused, Astra. The Iconic Realm incorporates all spirit realms, both afterlife realms and godhomes, all manifestations of the divine shaped by humankind. The High Plane of Heaven is the Japanese equivalent of Mount Olympus or Asgard. It’s the dwelling place of their celestial spirits.”

“Okay. I think?” That sounded a
little
better, anyway. “So what does it mean? What’s happening to me?”

“Just on a guess, I’d say it looks like a tree on the High Plane of Heaven really likes you.”

“
What
?” Shell didn’t quite screech, but Doctor Cornelius smiled.

“This is pure conjecture, understand. You already know Kitsune is more than just a shapeshifter. What if he has access to the High Plane of Heaven? Say that he wanted to pass you a message, so he went to that place you’re always seeing, the tree, and opened your sleeping awareness to it? Do you follow so far?”

I nodded slowly, not at all sure I really did but hoping it would make sense.

“Shinto is an animistic religion—Shintoists believe that all things in the world have spirits, kami. The only real difference between the kami in a rock, a person, and even a god, is its degree of power and awareness. Objects in which kami are more than normally aware are considered sacred and made the center of shrines. Trees certainly have their own kami, even here, and in the High Plane of Heaven they are almost certainly as or more aware than we are.”

“So when you said I’d ‘come to the attention’—”

“Yep. You said you haven’t seen Kitsune there since whatever happened that you can’t tell me about, but the tree is always there. I think it likes your company, so it’s talking to you. When you sleep, your awareness of the physical plane fades and it’s able to get your attention.”

“So Hope’s being haunted by a
tree
?”

Big bad Grendel and been-there-killed-that Riptide looked almost as freaked as Shell; how were they supposed to protect me from an otherworldly
tree
? Despite everything I had to laugh. “Don’t worry Shell, you’ve got dibs. So, does that mean that I’ll just keep dreaming about it? That’s not so bad.”

He put the orange down. “Maybe. Orb, what did you see?”

She’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten she was there; now she gave me a look which of course I couldn’t read under the mask of her hair.

“You went away, Astra. Physically. For less than a second, a hundredth of a second, when the cherry blossoms appeared. You brought them back with you.”

“Unless you’re stopping a supervillain In-the-Commission-Of you need papers and a judge to hunt down and bring in the Bad Guy. Work without it and you’re just a super-vigilante and part of the problem. Not glamorous, I know, but nobody remotely sane would have it any other way.”

Astra,
Hillwood Graduation Guest Speech.

“When did my life become a fairytale? Because you know, I really should have noticed.”

I’d waited to whine until we got ourselves settled at Restormel. The Hollywood Knights were filming their next movie in Hawaii, but Rook had offered the hospitality of their headquarters while we were in LA. Since Ozma had decided to stay at Lunettes and consult with Doctor Cornelius, I had flown the rest of us and the lift pod to the tower.

“Fairytale?” Riptide opened the fridge in the en suite entertainment and conference area and whistled. Plopping down into the biggest lounge chair, I refused to be cheered by the stocked bar or the beautiful view from the tower’s bay windows.

“A fairytale. I’ve got to go find a friendly fox, and ask him to go talk to a magic tree!”

“Are there trees in fairytales?” He opened a beer and offered it to me. Yeah, right.

I covered my eyes, rubbed them. “There was in the original Cinderella. The blood-soaked version with the sisters mutilating their feet and the stepmom getting her eyes pecked out? She sang to it.”

“The stepmother?” Grendel asked.

“Cinderella. I think.”

“I like your mother. She’s not in any danger, is she?”

I opened my eyes, but Grendel wasn’t smiling. At all. “Do I
look
like Cinderella?”

“Well she was a blonde,” Shell quipped. Pure reflex; she didn’t look happy at all. “At least according to Disney. And the talking animal really should have been a clue.” Riptide and Grendel both laughed. They couldn’t see her, but they were perfectly used to hearing her through their earbugs. What they also didn’t see was
Shelly
—she “sat” beside her twin. Once Restormel’s Willis had left us alone, Shell had started relaying her so both of them could be here virtually.

Seeing them side by side was deeply weird. Shell wore virtual cutoffs and an athletic shirt, looking maybe twenty and wearing her now-black hair in a short bob.
Shelly
looked her seventeen biological years and sported her original long red hair. She also wore the tailored office suit she was almost certainly wearing in her office at the Institute, a continent and a gulf away.

I sighed, let myself wilt. “Nobody’s taking me seriously.”

Did I have a right to my attitude?
Yes
. Because it wasn’t just a problem of nocturnal wandering anymore. Ozma agreed with Doctor Cornelius’ diagnosis; my recent visit to an extrareality pocket (Littleton, which I could neither confirm nor deny for him) had weakened my “tether” on reality.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem—and
wasn’t
for anyone else—but Kitsune happened to have previously introduced me to a powerful if vegetable kami on the Plane of Heaven. Apparently it wanted to deepen our acquaintance, and judging from the cherry blossoms, there was a very real possibility that some night soon—based on the rate of increase in dream-regularity and something Dr. Cornelius called
resonance
, probably less than a month but likely no sooner than two weeks—I was going to go to sleep and fall into an unknown extrareality realm.

“I am
not
going to disappear down some cosmic rabbit hole and leave Dad and Mom wondering whatever happened to me.”

Riptide shrugged. Taking
 
a sip of his beer, he checked the label.

“That’s some fancy stuff. No worries,
chica
. Our
bruja
and
brujo
will find some way to fix you up. Or we’ll find Kitsune, get him to do it.”

“What he said,” Grendel seconded. I scowled, sighed again. Shell and Shelly shared a look.

“We’ve got a solution for now—”

“—at least we think so.”

“We’re working on it and you’ll know when you go to sleep tonight.”

“But we’ve been looking for Kitsune since you told us about getting more dreams—”

“—and he’s not on anyone’s radar—”

“—even with the DSA, CIA, Interpol, pretty much
everyone
looking for him—”

“—we’re not going to find him that way,” Shell finished.

Their worry was pushing them into quantum-linked gestalt and making me dizzy; Riptide and Grendel didn’t even notice them swapping lines but I sat up, closed my mouth.
Great pity-party, Hope—way to scare your friends.

“If I’m good for now…could you let Blackstone know what’s going on, Shell?”

“Already done.”

Riptide finished his beer. “Well I don’t know about you guys, but all this luxury is making me itch. I’m going to head down to the barrio, get some real food, see how it all looks on the ground.”

“Are you sure—” I shook my head.

We knew it wouldn’t look good. A year and a half after the Big One, you almost couldn’t see the scars the quake had left in the city’s downtown. The holes in LA’s skyline were almost filled (even if most of the new buildings were shorter) and most of the broken-up roads and wrecked utilities were fixed up or at least patched and workable. But flying in, I’d seen the empty and bulldozed spaces where older apartments and homes had been shaken down and gas-line fires had spread to burn out whole neighborhoods.

Real recovery depended on local economics but a lot of companies were leaving California, taking the jobs and the taxes needed to rebuild with them. Southern California was actually still losing population as residents looked for opportunities elsewhere, and Riptide’s old surf-and-biker gang territory had been one of the worst hit. To make the “quake-blight” worse, parts of LA were blowing up into open street warfare. The local gangs, cartel-members, and refugees from Mexico’s civil war were killing each other over the territory that was left.

“I feel like some real Mexican food,” Grendel spoke up. He hadn’t said much all day, just loomed like he was the Army of Oz. Which he was, half of it anyway. “Or Tex-Mex, or whatever you call it.” They both looked at me.

“I think I’ll stay in, guys. Besides—” I couldn’t help smiling. “You’ll have more fun without me. Just—don’t start the fun. Okay?”

“Do you think anything will happen to them?” Shell asked when the door closed behind the two.

I headed for the fridge. “Nope, I think they’re going to happen to someone else.” The fridge held
two
brands of sparkling water along with the fancy micro-brewery beer Riptide had found; I was pretty sure the multi-bedroom suites the Hollywood Knights had given to us had been designed specifically for visiting teams.

Sitting back down, I considered calling Julie; staying in LA meant missing the shopping expedition the Bees had planned for tonight—nine high-end boutiques along and off Miracle Mile in one evening to update our wardrobes. (And take lots of notes; the Bees were still dedicated to their post-graduation assault on the fashion world, and the first step was their own boutique.)

Lowering my bottle, I found two sets of green eyes staring at me. “What?”

“They’re going to
happen
to someone—” Shell repeated incredulously.

“—and you don’t
care
?” Shelly finished.

Didn’t I? I poked the spot in my head that usually exploded into panic at the thought of “negative public events,” and realized that I really didn’t. Grendel was level-headed when he wasn’t in full berserker mode, and after all of our training together he knew how to avoid it. And Riptide enjoyed his bad-boy street villain posing, but he knew just what he could and couldn’t do; he’d step right up to the line and sneer over it, but whatever happened he wouldn’t start it or escalate it. He’d just finish it.

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Green eyes narrowed and Shelly opened her mouth to protest. “Hope,” Shell interrupted. “There’s a call for you. It’s
Veritas
.”

“
I’m glad you could talk to me
,” Veritas said five minutes later. Taking one of the bedrooms, I had asked Shell to do a complete signals check to ensure we couldn’t be monitored and then route Veritas’ call through our quantum-link. I was talking to him inside the 21
^st
Century equivalent of the Cone of Silence, and anyone managing to overhear anyway would only get my side of the conversation.

Paranoid? Just because the man who played
Second Spook to the Spookmaster
(Shell’s words) wanted to speak to me?

Keep it light.
“What can I do for you? Should I complain? You never call, you never write…”

“
I’ll send a Christmas card. I understand you’re looking for someone?
”

“Yes sir, I am.” Someone? So he didn’t trust his own secured line, or he was just that paranoid too. Should I be worried I was starting to act like him?

“
Blackstone’s friends won’t find him, because his friend’s friends don’t want him found. They will tell him they’ll do their best, and they will. But nothing will happen
.”

My heart sank, even as I tried to figure that out. “Why?”

He didn’t answer, and it was only my super-duper hearing that told me the line remained open. He was even calling from somewhere shielded for sound and I couldn’t hear anything but his breathing and his calm and steady heartbeat as I waited, feeling cold.

“
Damn it,
” he finally said. “
Hope, how much do you know about what’s going on with Japan?
”

“Japan’s our ally?”

“
Wrong. Lesson one, there’s no such thing as
Japan
, outside of a geographic and cultural distinction. An island can’t be someone’s ally
.”

“Um, okay?”

He blew out a breath. “
The same goes for us. The
United States
isn’t anyone’s ally. A country isn’t a person;
people
are allies or enemies. At best, a friendly country is one whose people don’t dislike us on principle and whose leaders consider cooperation beneficial. Our leaders have signed treaties with Japan’s leaders, committing our countries to alliance in the League of Democratic States. But Japan’s leaders are responsible first for doing what is best for the
people of
Japan
. Do you follow me?
”

“I think so?” Beside me, virtual Shelly mouthed
What the hell?
I mimed slapping my hand over my mouth and glared at her.

“
Kitsune infiltrated Littleton and the Institute to gain access to certain files that you are aware of. Files that might give a nation’s leaders guidance in making certain near-term decisions. Hope?
”

“I’m here,” I breathed, feeling dizzy.
Now
I was beginning to follow.

“
Because of the Villains Inc. business, we assumed that Kitsune was just a high-end thief. He has left his calling card behind at other jobs. After Littleton, the likelihood that he works for someone in the Japanese government approaches certainty. The files copied were historical, detailing potential events for Asia based on past probable futures
.”

“But you said that allied heads of state had access to the files!” He had, right? I tried to remember our conversation back in Littleton.

“
No, I said they knew
about
the files. The team you met down there prepares and disseminates position papers for the leaders of the League based on their analysis of them
.”

Shelly nodded confirmation, but I couldn’t believe it. “But that would mean that the prime minister of Japan…”

“
Yes. And now you know why they aren’t going to help us get Kitsune. He’s their asset. If they know where he is, they won’t tell us. If they have him, they won’t turn him over
.”

I dropped to sit on the bed.

“
And if you go and look for him yourself
…”