Foxfire (An Other Novel) (11 page)

Two women in the water trade know about Yukimi, but they won’t tell me anything. Were they protecting her? Did they think I was a spy sent by the inugami?

People eddy around me as I stand in the middle of the street. A motorbike honks at me, and I jump onto the sidewalk. I glance at my watch: 12:39 a.m. I walk back toward the glowing arch. I brush elbows with red-faced drunks, women wearing too much makeup and too little clothes, and men with expensive suits and trendy chestnut hair flirting with anything that moves.

I let the fox out a little, to sharpen my nose.

Perfume barely masking old sweat … urine-soaked snow … cigarette smoke on the wind … alcohol on the breath. The stench makes me want to retch. Over it all, there’s a greasy, starchy smell, kind of like carnival food. Stir-fried noodles.

Yakisoba.

My heartbeat thudding, I zigzag through the crowd. A yakisoba stand, both brightly lit and dingy, stands near a street-corner FamilyMart convenience store—ironic, considering why I’m here. Inside the stand, a sweaty-faced woman tosses noodles, broccoli, and beef in a wok, then dumps the finished product onto paper plates. Nearby, there’s an empty stool.

I hesitate. Am I supposed to sit? But that means I have to buy some of that questionable yakisoba, and besides, I don’t have any cash on me. I don’t see Yukimi anywhere. I grit my teeth and walk up to the yakisoba stand.

The woman tugs her hairnet straight. “Ready to order?”

I shake my head. “I’m waiting for my mother.”

“Your mother?” She squints at me. “Aren’t you too young to be out here so late?”

“I’m seventeen.”

I don’t know why I’m telling her this. Maybe it’s because she has this sort of all-purpose, industrial-strength motherly aura around her. There’s real worry in her eyes.

“You hungry?” says the yakisoba woman. “You look skinny.”

I shrug, but take a seat on the stool.

“Eat.” The yakisoba woman pushes a paper plate toward me.

“I don’t have any money,” I say. “Sorry.”

I’m taking up space where a real customer would sit. I should at least eat what’s on the plate. But that yakisoba looks greasy and suspicious—even though the woman is nice—

“We have to go.” A voice in my ear.

I almost fall off my stool. She’s standing right next to me, in sunglasses and a leather coat, her hair twisted back.

“Yukimi!”

The yakisoba woman watches us, squinting.

“I have a motorcycle.” Yukimi grabs my wrist, her hand hot. “We can outrun them.”

“Who?”

Her lip curls. “The inugami.”

eleven

W
e’re not going to wait for those dogs.” Yukimi looks over her sunglasses at me, her eyes glowing amber. “Can’t you smell them coming?”

I can’t, actually, not over the incredible stink of Kabukicho.

Her hand tightens on my wrist, and she bolts. I run to keep up, half-dragged through the crowd. A muscular black-and-red motorcycle idles by a lamppost. Yukimi climbs on and revs the engine; it rumbles like a warning growl.

“Get on,” she says.

I hesitate. Over the hubbub, I hear barking.

The fox half of me takes over and I jump onto the motorcycle behind Yukimi. She guns the engine, and I hold onto her waist to keep myself from falling. We cut through the crowd, people shrinking back from us. Behind us, the barking grows louder, followed by startled shouts. I twist back to look.

A pack of dogs pounds down the street, bellowing and baying, their breath steaming the air, their noses trained on our scent. In the lead, a black dog—Katashi.

Yukimi takes a hard left, slush spraying behind the motorcycle’s tires. I tighten the muscles in my torso and thighs, straining against the force of the turn. The wind stings my eyes as we race beneath the electric glow of signs and lights. A drag queen in feathers and towering heels strays into our path, then leaps aside with a screamed insult.

“Hold on!” Yukimi shouts.

She swerves into a U-turn, dragging her heel along the pavement, clipping the edge of a booth. Kinky knickknacks tumble to the ground and roll onto the street.

We drive straight down the street toward the pack of inugami. Yukimi raises her right hand into the air, steering with her left. A white light leaks from her clenched fist. Foxfire. A thrill sweeps down my spine.

The dogs charge toward us, barking ferociously—but Katashi skids to a halt and stares at us, one paw raised. We hurtle close enough to see the whites of his eyes. Katashi flattens his ears against his skull and woofs.

Yukimi tosses the ball of foxfire. It arcs high above the inugami, like a meteor streaking across the sky, and the dogs turn their heads to follow its parabola above them. The foxfire trails white-hot sparks in its wake, sizzling through the air. It splatters in the middle of the pack and the dogs burst into flame.

The street erupts into screams and yelping.

Yukimi drives straight into the inferno as burning inugami stagger and flee around us. Heat lashes against my skin. I hold my breath, not wanting to singe my lungs or inhale the smell of burning fur and flesh. The flames whip over us, scorching hot, then close behind us as we break free.

Unharmed. I stare at Yukimi’s hair and clothes.

“Was that an illusion?” I shout over the noise.

“Yes,” Yukimi says, “but they feel the pain.”

I glance back and see Katashi rolling in the snow, trying and failing to extinguish imaginary flames. The rest of his pack doesn’t seem to be interested in following us. Yukimi accelerates smoothly away from the scene. We leave the inugami behind, and hear the sound of sirens.

“Won’t they send firefighters?” I say.

“The illusion will vanish soon. Which is why we have to hurry.”

Yukimi gives the motorcycle some more gas and we race deeper into the heart of Kabukicho. The giant smiles of girls on billboards flash by. Yukimi threads between the tangle of people and vehicles with an expertise that can come only from years of high-speed driving. We pass through another glitzy archway, leaving Kabukicho, the Sleepless City, behind.

I relax a little and lean against Yukimi.

I can’t believe I’m touching her, that my kitsune mother is real and
here
. And she’s taking me with her. I shut my eyes and inhale deeply. Now that we’ve left the stink of Kabukicho behind for the plain exhaust-and-asphalt smell of the rest of Tokyo, I can actually catch a whiff of Yukimi’s own scent.

A sweetness that vanishes quickly, like the perfume of a peach, over the stronger smells of leather, smoke, and fox. Nothing like the delicate scent of Shizuka.

Nothing like the scent I remembered.

But I was a kit-fox then, back when I thought of my mother as a warm, furry creature that would curl around me and play with me and lick my nose when I whimpered. Not this woman with sinewy muscles running beneath her jacket, leaning forward on a motorcycle, plunging deeper into the city.

Words pile up inside my throat, choking me. I don’t know how to say what I have to say. The whooshing of speed is too loud for me to speak, anyway. We curve along a long road, the lights of Tokyo blurring in my wind-stung eyes.

“Almost there,” she says, at an intersection.

“Where?”

“Home.”

A wind picks up, shaking rain from the sky. Yukimi maneuvers her motorcycle down smaller and smaller alleys until we approach a dead end, nothing more than a cracked concrete wall with a vertical garden of weeds. She doesn’t slow down, just drives straight at it, her head down like she’s going to ram the wall.

At the last second, I squeeze my eyes shut.

A slippery, slick feeling passes over my face and arms, like wet leaves dragging along my skin. It coats my eyelids and nose and mouth with a thin film, and I accidentally inhale some of it—and it tastes like yōkai magic. Coughing, I open my eyes. We’re past the wall, and in an overgrown courtyard. The cracked concrete was nothing more than an illusion.

I laugh. “Like Diagon Alley.”

“Diagon Alley?” Yukimi sounds confused.

“
Harry Potter
.” I laugh again, lightheaded. This feels unreal.

Yukimi makes a neutral noise in the back of her throat. “Time for you to get off.” She parks the motorcycle beneath an overhanging roof. “If you can manage.”

I swing one leg over the motorcycle and stagger off, my muscles stiff. Yukimi kills the motorcycle’s engine, and the headlight goes off, plunging us into gloom.

I blink to help my night vision come quicker. “This is it?”

“The Lair,” Yukimi says.

She strides to a red-painted door and knocks.

After a long pause, there’s a scuffling inside. “Who is that with you?” A woman’s muffled voice.

Yukimi clears her throat. “A guest.”

Ah. I was half-expecting her to say, “My son.” Stupid of me?

Still the door doesn’t open.

Yukimi growl-sighs. “Let us in. I’m exhausted. I had an encounter with Katashi’s runts.”

At last, the door opens.

Standing inside is Aoi. I recognize her from Yukimi’s dream, though her hair has grown to her chin now and has obviously been dyed a reddish-brown color. She’s wearing a flimsy silk nightgown printed all over with butterflies.

“How old is he?” Aoi looks me up and down. “Yukimi, I’m not okay with you bringing minors in here. He looks like he’s never had a drink. Or a girlfriend.”

My face flushes, but I fake a smile. “Looks can be deceiving.”

Aoi laughs. “He can speak? But that accent … ” She grimaces.

Wordlessly, Yukimi slips past Aoi, leaving me standing in the doorway. I try to follow her, but Aoi leans her arm against the wall, her silk sleeve flapping in my face.

“You have a name?” she says.

“I did think Yukimi was going to introduce us,” I mutter.

Aoi snorts. “He has a sense of humor, at least!” She yells this backward, like an announcement.

From inside, Yukimi yells back, “Let him in already!”

I catch Aoi’s eye. “My name is Tavian.”

She arches an eyebrow. “I’m Aoi.”

“I already knew.”

“Oh, really?” Aoi steps aside to let me pass.

I’m in a cluttered, dimly lit house, which looks like it’s been abandoned and halfway renovated at least once or twice. From the hallway, I can see a kitchen with dishes in the sink, a dark bedroom, and a living room lit by the kaleidoscope lights of a TV. I step into the living room.

Yukimi slumps on a couch, her boots on a coffee table, her head tilted back. With a groan, she rubs her forehead. She takes a medicine bottle from the table, screws it open, and pops a white pill into her mouth. She follows that with a swig of water from a wine glass.

“Yukimi?” I say.

Her eyes flash in my direction. “You’re safe now. Go to bed.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I mutter. “You can’t abduct somebody and then tell them good night.” My stomach twists as I remember something. “I’ve got to make a call.”

She sits up straighter. “Why?”

I ignore her and slide my phone from my pocket. I didn’t leave a note for Gwen, mostly because I didn’t have the time to think of anything coherent, and because I stupidly assumed I would be back to my bed before dawn. Very stupidly.

Yukimi narrows her eyes. “Who are you calling?”

“Gwen. My girlfriend.” I lift the phone to my ear.

In a flash of movement, Yukimi lunges from the couch and rips my phone from my hand.

“Give it back!” I say.

“Don’t call anyone from this location,” Yukimi says. “Ever.”

I meet her eyes. “Oh, so I’m supposed to let everyone think that I’m dead? Because I randomly vanished?”

Something flickers in her eyes.

“Give it back,” I say.

Yukimi drops my cellphone on the floor and stomps on it, grinding it beneath her heel.

Who the hell does she think she is? My
mother
?

“You know what?” I say, my voice level. “That’s great. Because once they find out that I’m missing, they’re going to come looking for me. Because they actually care whether I’m safe or lying dead on the side of the road somewhere.”

Yukimi’s face is an iron mask. “They won’t find you.”

“But you did,” I say, my voice sounding calmer and calmer. “You cared so much that you came all this way to pick me up and bring me home. What I don’t understand, though, is why you took
eleven years
to do it. Was it that fucking hard?”

She says nothing, but her pupils narrow to slits.

“I only wanted to find you again,” I say, “because I need your true name, and your blood. Give those to me, and then I can leave. And I’ll never have to look at your face again.”

Yukimi exhales, a short hissing sound, and looks away. “Go.”

“Go where?” I say. “Back to Akasaka?”

“No,” she says. “Go away and grow up a little. I’m not in the mood for the yipping of a kit-fox.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” I say, “I grew up without you.”

I leave the room before my rage boils over.

“Hey.” Aoi catches my arm in the hallway. “How do you know Yukimi, anyway?”

I clench and unclench my jaw, and resist the urge to punch the wall. Should I tell Aoi the truth? Or would Yukimi like it better if I remained her shameful secret?

I meet her eyes. “I knew her a long time ago.”

Aoi scrunches her eyebrows with a wry smile. “Excuse me for saying so, but you don’t look old enough to have known Yukimi a long time ago. And why would she have anything to do with a boy like you?” She coughs. “No offense.”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “She gave birth to me?”

Aoi laughs. “You’re a sarcastic little kit, aren’t you?”

I lean against the wall and slide to the floor. I’m finally feeling that it’s after midnight, all the exhaustion of the day piling on me like snow on a roof ready to collapse.

Aoi’s laughter dies. “You aren’t joking, are you? You’re Yukimi’s son?”

“Yes.”

She crouches next to me, her fingers splayed on the floor. Her eyes look dark and huge in the shadows. “You rode here on Yukimi’s motorcycle. That’s why you smell like her.”

I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Sure.”

Aoi backs away from me, still crouching like a wary animal. She mutters something to herself, but I climb to my feet.

Yukimi won’t let me waltz out of here. Not while she’s trying to keep me “safe” by essentially abducting me. But I’m not going to cower in a den while the inugami hunt my grandparents and Gwen. When I close my eyes, I can still picture the naked, bruised, and bound woman in Yukimi’s dream. I’d rather kill those dogs myself than let them hurt Gwen like that.

I climb to my feet and stride back down the hall to the door.

“Where are you going?” Aoi says, behind me.

“Outside.” I pause. “For some air.”

I shut the door a little harder than necessary, my muscles still tight with unspent energy. I grip the doorknob in my hand, watching my fingernails darken to black claws. Anger is one of the fastest ways to bring out the fox in me.

I peel my fingers from the doorknob and turn to the darkness of the courtyard. Out here, alone, I can hear the muffled rumble of traffic, the distant whoop of a police siren, and the wails of an insomniac baby in one of the nearby buildings.

I glance at my watch: 2:10 a.m.

Gwen must still be sleeping. If I can find a way out, then all I need to do next is get Yukimi’s true name and some of her blood.

All I need to do. That’s an understatement.

I spread my fingers on the secret doorway in the cracked concrete wall. Rough, unyielding concrete. I grit my teeth and shove, my shoulders straining. I brace myself on the slick ground and throw my entire weight on the wall. My left foot slips out from under me and I bang my knee on the ground.