Meeting Read online

  Okay, I like that part of it, too, although it might make it harder for us to keep our own secrets. “I don’t want to do things that are wrong,” Maya said aloud.

  “I can work with that,” Columba said. “As long as you understand that protecting our family and the portals is right.”

  “I—I want to be able to say no if you ask me to do things that feel wrong.” Maya hated how Harper had been able to force her to do things. She didn’t want another Harper in her life.

  Columba reached for Maya’s hand. Columba’s hand was large and rough and warm. Her grip was comforting and strong. “Akala, you will always be able to say no. Sometimes we won’t respect your no, but I will do my best to try. We will open that portal when we come to it. Join my force. We have cake.”

  “Really?” Maya asked.

  Evren lifted a cake plate out of the refrigerator. It held half a round of brown two-layer spice cake, covered on top with creamy frosting, and smelling of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and palta. “Dr. Porta baked this morning. Want some?”

  Maya gripped Columba’s hand and released it. “Yes,” she said, to everything.

  After cake, the promise of a meeting after school on Monday, a request from Columba that Maya walk past Dreams & Bones sometime over the weekend and sketch what she saw through the window as her first security assignment, and a strange settling inside as Maya adjusted her expectations, Maya thought, Now let’s go to the woods and work on our Halloween costume.

  Yesss! Rimi low-fived, slapping an invisible hand against Maya’s.

  Maya watched for Travis as she left Janus House, but he was still in class, apparently. She headed to the park.

  People were walking their dogs along the bike path. Rimi practiced spreading calm to dogs who sensed her and started barking. She was a pro now at getting them to accept her.

  They reached the woods, checked for possible watchers, and plunged in. The hideout in the middle of the blackberry vines was undisturbed since their last visit. Maya settled on the damp ground.

  Halloween, Rimi thought. I’ve never been there, but I like everything about it already. How are you going to dress as me?

  I thought—if you can make an arm, could you make a head?

  A head! Rimi pressed invisible hands all over Maya’s head, pushing Maya’s hair flat to her skull, gliding her hands over Maya’s cheeks, nose, forehead, cupping the ears, patting the mouth. Different from an arm. Not as useful!

  Sure, sure, mock my brains, Maya thought. Anyway, you wouldn’t have to put a brain in it, just make it look like a head. Though I was thinking it would be really cool if it could function. Like, what if you could talk out loud? You could talk to Peter!

  Tempting, Rimi thought. Where would I put it?

  Maya patted her shoulder.

  No, the right confluence isn’t there. It wouldn’t connect right. I don’t think I could make it talk. At least, not like a human talks.

  “The thing about Halloween is it doesn’t matter if it works, just how it looks,” Maya said.

  You would be wobbly and off-balance if I put a head on one shoulder. Maybe if I put two heads, one on each shoulder—

  Maya got out her sketchbook and two pencils.

  Saturday morning Maya went down to the kitchen to look for her mother, who was drinking coffee and reading a novel, wearing her relaxed weekend clothes: jeans and a baggy green T-shirt with WILLAMETTE VALLEY FOLK FESTIVAL on it above a sketch of a fiddler.

  “What is it, honey?” Mom asked.

  “I know it’s really, really late, Mom, but I finally figured out my costume, and I wondered if you could help me make it.”

  “Sure! What did you come up with?”

  “I want to be a warrior. Like, an ancient Greek, with a shield and some armor.” She put her sketchbook on the table and flipped to the most recent pictures she and Rimi had worked on. They had stopped at the library before they ran into Friday afternoon curfew, and studied some pictures in books. “I thought I could make a kind of tunic thing out of sheets and then use pieces of cardboard for the armor on top of it. I need to get some silver spray paint.”

  “A warrior, Maya?” Mom sounded uneasy.

  “Not because I want to fight, Mom, just because it’s neat. I can wear my black waffle-weave shirt and jeans under the tunic chiton thing, and—”

  Mom frowned. “There’s no magic in it.”

  Maya didn’t understand at first. She looked at her sketch. This was a working sketch, showing all the boring parts of the costume. Simple sheets, pinned together along the tops of the arms, belted at the waist; cut-out cardboard shapes tied on with twine—

  Oh. Every previous year, Maya and Stephanie had chosen magical costumes.

  “I’m going to draw Medusa’s head on the shield,” Maya said. Stephanie had been crazy about Greek myths. “And my friend is letting me borrow the coolest helmet ever.”

  Mom studied the sketch. “This is seriously what you want, honey?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, then. We’ve got all those moving boxes in the garage we can cut up, and I have a pair of sheets on their last legs. You want some nice white flannel sheets with red hearts on them?”

  “No,” Maya said.

  Mom laughed. “I figured. We have those dark blue ones with light blue stars. How about those?”

  In the pictures they’d studied, the Roman guys wore red tunics under their armor, and the Greek guys wore white tunics, but those were just speculations, Maya guessed, and anyway, she wasn’t going for accuracy. “Sounds great.”

  “I’ll warm up the sewing machine. There’s a couple of box cutters in the tool drawer. Let’s do this thing.”

  Later that afternoon, Maya stood against the wall outside Dreams & Bones, then leaned over to peek through the wide front window. People, a mix of kids and grown-ups, sat at tables in the café, some talking with each other, others reading or laptopping or netbooking. The pastries lined up in front of the window looked delicious, shiny glazed sugar swirls over the baked brown and gleaming jewel jelly of the Danishes, the bear claws wide and resplendent with slivered almonds and whip lines of white frosting, all kinds of doughnuts, cookies, scones, brownies, even some thick slices of heavily frosted cake.

  Maya straightened, leaning against the building’s brick wall, and lifted her sketchpad. Could you hold this for me? she thought.

  Sure. Rimi rippled down Maya’s arms and slid under the sketchbook, supporting it while Maya penciled a quick drawing of the interior. Thanks, Maya thought. She glanced both ways along the sidewalk, ready to grab the sketchbook if anybody looked her way. Cars passed in the street, but no one was paying attention to her.

  Maya leaned in for another peek. She had the foreground; now she needed the depths of the store.

  The owner was staring at her from behind the pastry display.

  “Ulp.” She ducked back. She grabbed the sketchpad from Rimi and hugged it to her chest.

  Something, Rimi thought. Something, Mayamela. Something I remember. Let’s go inside.

  He saw me!

  Yes, Rimi thought. A girl looking in a window. He has probably seen such a thing before.

  Maya hugged her sketchbook and took three deep breaths, huffing them in and out through her nose. She sighed and stepped away from the wall, stowed her sketchpad in her backpack, and headed for the store’s entrance.

  He can’t hurt you, Maya. I am with you.

  Yes, Maya thought. She pulled on the handle, a wroughtiron dragon whose twisted tail formed the grip. Bells jangled as she opened the door. Well, she’d get a better view of the place from inside, and maybe she could snag one of the tables and do her sketching without enlisting Rimi’s help.

  “What can I help you find?” said a warm, deep voice from her left. It sounded furry, and had a faint accent, though Maya wasn’t sure if it was French or Spanish or Other.

  She glanced up. It was the proprietor, and he was smiling faintly. “I don’t—” she began.
>
  I know this person! Rimi thought. It is the one who troubled my other Other. Maya! He is the one who talked to Bikos and told him to look otherwise than to the Thrixa for help when we were so sick.

  This one? Maya looked carefully at the proprietor’s face, stared into his eyes even as she felt her attention trying to shift. There was a flutter in his irises, which had looked black to her before. Now she saw silvery sparks there, surrounding pupils that were diamond-shaped.

  “Ah,” he said. He cocked his head, the movement strange, as though his neck had a few extra vertebrae.

  “I think you knew my friend Bikos,” Maya said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” he said, “and his friend who is with you now.”

  Maya backed up, her hand reaching for the door handle.

  Please, Rimi thought. Please don’t run away, Maya.

  But he knows about you! And he’s—he’s not human.

  Lots of people aren’t.

  “Tea,” said the man.

  “What?”

  “I have a spice tea called Dragon’s Fire. I think you’ll like it. There’s a room in the back where I practice the fortune-telling arts. We could talk in private.”

  Maya tightened her grip on the dragon door handle, a match to the one on the outside of the door. The iron was cool and hard against her fingers and palm. Rimi flowed a little across her back, waiting.

  “All right,” Maya said.

  The man turned his gaze from her. “Stuart,” he called, “could you watch the register?”

  “Sure,” said a tall, stocky guy with black-framed glasses and a pirate’s smile. He set down the manga he had been reading and moved behind the bookstore counter.

  The proprietor went behind the coffeeshop counter, poured steaming water into a teapot, assembled a tray, and carried it toward the back of the store. Maya followed him. Mindful of her security job, she looked everywhere, noting the shelves, the patrons, the goods. Kids lounged, sprawled, sat on the floor, absorbed in comics and books. At a table near the back wall, kids rolled many-sided dice and played cards with anime characters on them. People looked comfortable here.

  The door the man led her through was thick wood painted burgundy red. It had steel rivets on it in a Greek key pattern. As Maya stepped over the threshold into the room beyond, she felt an electric tingling. She stepped back into the store. It stopped.

  “Oh,” said the man. “Sorry.” He tapped the door’s edge and muttered, then nodded.

  Maya stepped over the threshold again, and this time nothing happened.

  The room had a round table in its center, covered with a dark purple velvet cloth. A crystal ball rested on a wooden stand in the middle of the table. One red, upholstered chair sat on the far side of the table, and another stood with its back to Maya. The light was dim. The walls were papered with dark patterns. There were no windows. The scent of incense lingered.

  “Close the door,” said the man. He set the tea tray next to the crystal ball and sat in the chair on the far side of the table.

  Maya turned the doorknob. It moved freely. Not locked. She pulled the door shut—all the store noise of conversation vanished—and sat in the second chair.

  “I’m Weyland,” said the man. He poured two cups of tea and held one out to her. They weren’t regular teacups, more like small earthenware mugs.

  “Thank you.” Maya accepted the cup and sniffed the tea. Mint and lime and hickory smoke. She set the cup on the velvet and looked at Weyland.

  “And you are not Bikos,” he said.

  Should she tell him her name? She hesitated, then said, “No. Sorry. I’m Maya.”

  “Peter’s sister.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Travis’s best friend.”

  “His best friend?”

  “He hasn’t said that, but I infer it. He mentioned you often before he became too busy to stop in after school. Did Bikos—”

  Maya shook her head and looked away.

  “I wish I could have helped him more. The medicine I know did not work on him.” Weyland drank tea and poured himself a second cup. “He found a way for his friend to survive without him, yes?”

  Rimi, how can I talk to him about you? I don’t know him.

  He is why we found each other.

  Does that automatically make him a good guy?

  Rimi dropped a tentacle into the teacup and sampled Dragon’s Fire tea. The smoky taste flowed across Maya’s tongue. She swallowed, then said, “What did you say to him?”

  He smiled sadly at her. Maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to look into his eyes before: not because they were alien, but because he was so sad, and Maya had been feeling enough of her own sad she hadn’t wanted anybody else’s. He said, “I had a friend once whom I wanted to save, and I gave her to the wrong people, thinking they would help her, but they hurt her instead.”

  “Why did Bikos even ever talk to you about any of this?”

  “I gave him shelter here for a few days, and I fed him, though the food didn’t do him much good. I take in strays when they let me. He had a terrible dilemma. Maya, we don’t know each other at all, but I see—” He paused. He stroked a hand over the crystal ball. Something glimmered in its center. “You have saved his friend. The people who left him here would have hurt her, even if Bikos had lived. Even now, they are trying to find her. She is wearing a little red feather that glows like a beacon telling them where she is.”

  “She is?” Oh, no! Is this the red thorn?

  Ask him how we can remove it.

  “How can we get rid of it?” Maya asked.

  “I don’t think my medicine will work on that, either, but—” He opened a drawer in the table and rummaged, then held up a little silver pendant shaped like a lifted hand, fingers up and palm facing out. “Here.” He held it out to her.

  Rimi. Maya opened her hand.

  Rimi reached ahead of her, lifting the pendant. It floated above Weyland’s hand. I fenshu it. It tastes—

  Maya tasted warm, buttered bread. And then a sliver of ice.

  I love this! Inside is one thing, and outside, another! Rimi thought.

  “If you wear it, it will dim the red feather.” He rummaged in the drawer again and came up with a silver chain. He held it up, and Rimi took it from him and threaded it through the pendant’s loop. Weyland didn’t seem to find anything strange about a pendant floating in the air, or a chain snaking through the air to join it.

  Rimi brought the pendant to Maya, who caught it in her hand and studied it. The silver hand was detailed and beautiful, and it had six fingers. Is it safe? she wondered.

  Yes, Rimi thought. Yes, please, yes. I will put it on you.

  Maya blew out a breath and lifted her hair away from her neck. Rimi fastened the chain. The pendant slid inside Maya’s shirt collar to lie at the top of her sternum.

  Weyland nodded once. “Yes. The glow subsides.”

  “Thank you,” Maya said. “Do I—do you want—I didn’t get my allowance yet this week—”

  “No payment, Maya, except perhaps you help someone else.” He rose. “You are a girl of many secrets. Will you keep mine?”

  “I—” Columba had sent her here to learn about Weyland and the store. What was she going to tell her new mentor?

  Her first chance to say no, she guessed. “I’ll do my best.”

  He held out his hand, and she clasped it. His grip was warm, strong, and gentle. Rimi wrapped around his hand, too, and he smiled.

  “Can I show them sketches of the store?” she asked when he released her.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “They can’t see in, you know,” she said, and then she wondered if he knew she was talking about the Janus House people.

  He seemed to. He smiled even wider. “I wanted to delay their knowledge of me as long as I could, but they’re alert now, and I’ll have to find another way to hide what’s truly important from them. Maya. If you need to talk to someone outside the system—” He moved past her and open
ed the door, and the room filled with the noise of other people again. “I’ll be here.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. She pressed her hand over the new pendant, which was warm against her skin. “Thank you.”

  Music Night the night before Halloween started out differently. Maya was unfolding chairs and setting them around the living room when Great-uncle Harper came up the porch steps, flanked by Sarutha and Noona. Mom and Dad met them at the door, then looked beyond for the usual crowd. Maya paused, too, and looked. No one followed the Elders.

  “Mrs. Andersen, Mr. Andersen, we need to talk,” Great-uncle Harper said. “It’s getting too cold to sit outside.”

  “I’d been thinking that myself,” said Dad. “We’ve been trying to heat the whole outdoors, but it hasn’t worked. We don’t want people getting sick just to sing.”

  “Nor do we,” said Great-uncle Harper. “We were thinking we might come in more manageable numbers until it gets warm again. We’ll take turns joining you.”

  “I’m sure we’ll miss those who can’t make it,” Mom said, “but it might work better that way. Unless you folks have a big room somewhere in Janus House we could all fit in.”

  “We have some large rooms, but none large enough for that,” said Harper.

  Maya thought of two rooms big enough without even trying: the portal room and the central courtyard where the Janus House people had held an interportal council with lots of aliens right after Maya had first acquired Rimi. Couldn’t let the family see either of those places, she guessed.

  “Are you the only ones coming tonight?” Mom asked Harper.

  Sarutha said, “No. We are the delegation to check with you to see whether you are all right with the change of plans.”

  “Sure,” said Mom.

  “I will go back and fetch tonight’s contingent,” said Noona, peeling off.

  Mom and Dad stood back. “Please come in,” Dad said to Harper and Sarutha.