The Thief (22 page)

“
This ain’t school,” he
grinned, breath hot on her neck. “Don’t hold back on my
account.”

With a shove, Camille broke the hold and
twisted away, panting. Her blood pumped loud in her ears and the
iron bracer pinched around her left arm. What she wouldn’t give to
be rid of the uncomfortable thing.

She and Hyde paced a slow semicircle, each
gauging the other.

“
Where’s all the attitude
from kendo?” he sneered. “Need a sword to feel safe? I’ll wait
while you go fetch one. Just make sure it’s the iron one, no fakes
now. Chop chop.”

The iron one?
Something must have shown on her face, because
Hyde lit on it.

“
You do know where it is!”
he crowed.

“
No swords,” Camille
snapped. “Lots of muffins. Want a muffin?”

“
Should I call someone?”
Jul’s voice warbled from behind the counter, peering over the
edge.

“
No,” Camille said sternly,
eyes on Hyde. “He’s leaving.”

“
Soon as you fetch me,” he
snarled, “that
sword!
”

He grabbed Camille’s arm and threw her over
his shoulder. She twisted in midair, vaulting off a table. She
landed solid but stumbled over a chair just behind her. The metal
legs scraped loud against the stone floor as she found her footing.
He was on her in an instant - this time she curled, using his force
to roll him over and get some distance. She was unafraid, yet her
limbs trembled - something was wrong with her. Her vision wavered,
and she fought to maintain focus. The bracer gripped her arm like a
vise.

“
Get out...” she rasped, “of
my house.”

“
This is so disappointing,”
he said, stalking closer. “I thought I’d finally get a real fight
out of someone, but underneath your fancy moves you’re just like
everyone else.”

Her blood flushed in anger and she struck
out, lightning quick. Her fist connected with his jaw and he
reeled. Before he could recover she landed a kick to his back that
collided him against a pillar. He dropped to avoid a second and
caught her leg, swinging her against the pillar instead. Winded,
she angled back, in a defensive sideways stance.

The dizziness was overwhelming her. The
dark, spiky image of Hyde in front of her blurred. She stumbled,
and that was all the opening Hyde needed. He swept a kick that
knocked her into a table, and she slid to the floor, groaning. Pain
flared through her midsection.

Hyde approached, standing over her with a
grin. He pressed a foot down on her chest.

“
Still don’t want to tell me
where the sword is?” he asked, eyes bright.

Her breath became belabored as the bracer
pinched tighter. “Go...to hell...” she said.

Hyde’s heel ground into her sternum.
Blearily, she saw a shape rise up behind him.

Crash!
Hyde stumbled disoriented. Jul stood holding the remnants of a
broken jar. Camille curled up on her side, coughing.

Hyde cursed, shaking bits of glass and loose
tea from his hair. “That was a bad move, Graham,” he snarled, as
she backed up in terror. He tried to make a grab for her, but
Camille managed to grab his foot and pull him off balance. He fell
forward onto the stone floor, breath collapsing out of him.

The front door opened, chime ringing.

“
What fresh hell is this?”
Gabriel said. He was framed in the door with rain behind
him.

Hyde took one look at him, scrambled to his
feet and sprinted past him, out the door. Camille looked after him,
baffled. Hyde was afraid, now?

Gabriel also took note of his retreating
form, but swiftly crossed to Camille. He knelt beside her, taking
up her arm with the bracer, inspecting it, then checking her pulse.
Her skin froze while she sweat buckets. His face was grim, but he
said, “You’re fine, kiddo. Calm down, you’ll be fine.” Her eyes
focused on him, briefly. She took a deep breath, as muscles in her
limbs spasmed.

“
Calm is for
losers
,
” she
muttered, back to Japanese now that he was here. He chuckled, but
the humor didn’t reach his eyes. He cleared her hair away where it
stuck to her face.

“
Is...is she alright?” Jul’s
voice quavered. “She looks so pale...”

He glanced at Jul. “Ah. Yes, Camille will be
fine. Excuse me a moment, I’ll be right back.” He picked up Camille
gingerly and carried her up the stairs. This feeling of weakness
was driving her insane.

“
Hyde,” Camille said, as he
laid her on her bed. “He wanted a sword, said he wouldn’t leave
without it.” She could still smell him, that acid tobacco stench
that hung in the air. Iron, he’d said.
The
iron one.
Her left hand flexed. “Just like
Tailor...”

Gabriel shushed her. “You need to rest,
right now. Don’t think about that. Remember your lessons. Think
about the ocean. Think about that nasty fish smell you like so much
and how sand gets in literally everything.”

She coughed, certain her ribs would be black
and blue tomorrow. “You mean the crisp ocean breeze and the calm
waves.”

“
Or that.” He checked her
pulse one more time, and seemed satisfied. “I’ll check on you
later, I need to go take care of your friend.”

Her friend. She had a friend. That had never
mattered before. Suddenly it mattered a lot. Jul had smashed a guy
over the head for her.

“
Hey, Gabriel,” she asked,
“do we really not have a sword?”

“
I don’t,” he said. “Try to
sleep,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

She couldn’t help but note his choice of
pronoun. Tailor’s warning bobbed up in her mind, and she pushed it
back down. Anything Gabriel did, he did for a reason. Still...

Instead of sleeping, she kept her ears open,
hoping to catch the conversation downstairs, but she couldn’t hear
a thing. It was just like when Tailor and Charlotte had come over -
like someone had thrown a blanket over her senses. What was wrong
with her?

Jul

I’d found a broom behind the counter and I
was sweeping up the broken glass and tea leaves. I felt obligated -
I’d broken it, after all. It still felt a bit unreal. Had I just
participated in a fight?

The man I assumed was Camille’s guardian
came back down the stairs. I don’t know what I’d expected, but he
wasn’t it. He looked far too young to be her guardian. He couldn’t
be more than thirty. He had a friendly, open expression and
distinctly Asian features, reminding me distantly of Kei. I hoped
he wasn’t actually anything like Kei. He tucked his chin-length
ebony hair behind his ear and I noticed unusual scars at the base
of his neck, peeking up from the collar of his shirt. They were
puckered and shiny like old burns.

He saw me sweeping and gave a half-smile.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said.

“
I didn’t want anyone to
step in the glass,” I said. Rhys could have just melted it away. I
shook my head.
No, not here,
I remembered.
This isn’t
In Between.
“I’m, um, sorry about the
jar.”

“
Don’t be, it went to a
worthy cause,” he said. “Ah, my apologies, we haven’t met. I’m
Gabriel Katsura, Camille’s guardian. You’re Juliet, of course.
Please, have a seat. Can I get you something? Water, tea, hot
chocolate? You look pale.”

I laughed shakily. I probably did. “Hot
chocolate would be nice, thank you.”

He went behind the counter to make the drink
and I gazed unfocused at my hands. What in the world had just
happened? Hyde wanted a sword from this man? He’d assumed, because
of my name, that I’d know something about it. Clearly, at least
some of the things Rhys had told me were true. I wasn’t sure how
much of it I could live up to, but...

I’d helped Camille. I hadn’t run away, and
maybe it was the adrenaline that hadn’t left my system yet, but
that felt good.

He brought back two mugs and set a steaming
mug of cocoa in front of me. He leaned back in the booth with a cup
of tea. I took a sip; the sweet taste of chocolate and cream
further bolstered my spirits.

“
Mr. Katsura...”

“
Gabriel,
please.”

“
Gabriel. This
doesn’t...um...” I laughed nervously, “this doesn’t happen to you
often, does it?”

“
A teenage redneck attacking
my ward in a cafe? I can safely say that has never happened
before,” he said with a smile. “Granted I’ve only had the cafe a
couple of months, so it’s hard to form a pattern that quickly. But
I’ve cleaned up my share of broken jars over the years.” He gazed
calmly over the chairs the fight had put in disarray. “Someone put
him up to this...that boy isn’t clever enough to hatch a plan on
his own. Are you familiar with him?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Probably for the best,” he
said. “He was never going to have a simple life. But then, never
was Camille.”

“
What happened to her?” I
asked. “She started off so strong, but then it all drained away so
quickly.”

He gave me an evaluating look, seemingly
satisfied by my concern.

“
Camille has a condition,”
he said. “She has amazing strength, agility, and endurance - but
she has a limit, and a temper that drives her to it. If she crosses
that line...” he shook his head. “I don’t know what will happen to
her. I can’t be with her all the time. Can I ask you to watch over
her while you’re at school? Help her stay calm, and avoid
confrontations. It would ease my mind.”

“
Um, sure,” I said. “It’s
just...” I trailed off.

“
What is it?”

“
Well, we have a lot of
annoying people at school,” I said, thinking it sounded
silly.

He smiled. “I expected as much. That’s
normal.” He glanced at the broken jar of tea. “Granted, this sort
of behavior isn’t.”

“
Do you have any idea what
that guy wanted?” I asked.

He sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. And I’m not
in any position to improve the situation. Several people are
convinced I have this particular weapon, and the simple fact is, I
do not. It used to belong to the Tailor family. It’s an old
heirloom of theirs. It went missing several years ago and somehow
the blame fell on me.”

“
So you don’t have any idea
where it is?”

“
I have several,” he said
lightly, “none of which have satisfied your English teacher. I
hadn’t expected others to come looking for it, though...just one
more twist to the puzzle, I suppose. Would you like a ride home?
I’d hate to think of you walking in this mess.”

I looked out at the rain, falling heavier
now. “Thank you,” I said, embarrassed I didn’t have my own
transportation.

“
Just let me go check on
Camille and we’ll get you ferried home.”

In the car, rain pattered against the
windshield as we left the cafe parking lot.

“
Now that we’re out of her
earshot, I have to tell you something,” Gabriel said. “You should
stop looking for your father.”
For
Dad?
I hadn’t thought about him in days.
The brief guilt I felt was pushed aside by the fear that always
accompanied thoughts of him.

I went very still. The sound of the car’s
wipers was overloud. “What do you know about him?” I almost
whispered.

“
Oh, goodness, I began that
badly. What I meant to say was, I’m very certain that he’s in no
danger. The one you should worry about is you.”

“
I’m...I don’t understand,”
I said.

He sighed unhappily. “Simon is not a good
man. You have probably gathered this. Others will have been too
polite to tell you directly. And perhaps you’ll write off my words
as untrustworthy, not knowing me, but I don’t know if I’ll get a
chance to speak with you again, and you deserve to know the truth.”
His eyes were on the road ahead as he spoke. “The day after your
father left New York, I saw him in Tokyo.”

“
What?” I gasped. What could
he have been doing there?

“
There was a certain
artifact I possessed,” he said grimly, “that protected Camille from
being found by someone very dangerous. I spotted Simon in the
subway, but he was too far away to reach. When I got home, the item
was gone. I’m not accustomed to being stolen from.”

“
It could have been a
coincidence,” I said. “Maybe someone else took it.”

“
I can’t help but notice you
took the premise of a protective artifact very easily,” he said.
“May I be more candid?”

I nodded, though unsure what he meant.

“
It was a mirror. Not just
any mirror, mind you, a magic mirror.” He glanced at me, gauging my
reaction, and continued. “Different mirrors do different things.
This one was small, a mere hand mirror, by appearance of no
consequence. But it projected a protective barrier wide enough to
cover our neighborhood and run interference on those who would
locate one as powerful as Camille. With the barrier gone, we had to
move, and quickly. There was only one other place in the world I
knew of with a similar barrier - a larger one, practically built
in.” His mouth twisted. “Practically. So, we moved to
Havenwood.”

I suddenly remembered the book I’d seen in
the apartment, with the illustration of a silver-handled mirror
with a vinelike design. All his research - had he been looking for
a magic mirror the whole time? I fought to keep my expression even.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.