Chapter Nineteen
“Okay, hold up.”
Wen blurted it as soon as Lois spun and started marching over.
She added outstretched arms, tense hands, and a narrow-eyed scrutiny she usually saved for outlaw assholes who preferred Chewbacca-style communication modes.
While the half-Japanese woman, nearly as short as her, wouldn’t make it to a Wookiee’s belly button, she still wouldn’t be surprised if the sweet-looking thing went for her throat with a Shyriiwook bark.
All the more reason for summoning her wits and words, however frantically they rushed out.
“For the record, I had no idea what the liquid in those vials would do to your boyfriend. To Herc . . . ules.” And then an apologetic grimace.
Since Apollo never used the big guy’s full name, she was used to the truncated form, as well.
After a too-long-for-anyone’s-comfort pause, Lois dipped a reluctant nod. “I don’t want to believe you, but I do.” Then rocked back, folding her arms. “Ito . . . my Oje-san. . . he forced you into joining the hunt for the string?”
“By way of searching for Reks Byrd, yes.” She pulled in a long breath, finally feeling safe about doing so. “Whom we all now know as a swindling obliviot named Rizon the demigod.”
A tiny laugh rippled Lois’s lips. “Obliviot,” she echoed. “Well, there’s a good one.” It preceded the relaxation of her own stance before she directly met Wen’s gaze. A focused query entered her intelligent bronze eyes. “Apollo said he’s been found, though? And ‘taken care of’?”
“Hmmm.” Wen traced her head on the air in a contemplative figure eight. “More like he found us, but the plot thread is tied off all the same. I’m sure the official Acropolis brief will say he’s no longer a menace to humanity or Olympus, blah blah blah . . . ”
“Okay. What actually happened?”
“Follow the bouncing inference.” She leaned against a light pole carved with swirling flames and demonic fairies. “After Natasha snuck off with the string, the guy obviously decided his eternal soul stood a safer chance with Apollo than Ito.”
“And then what? He just strolled up to Apollo’s front door with a charming grin and a Local Restaurant Deals flyer?”
“Kind of. I mean, minus the smile. And the flyer.” She canted her head to one side. “Though I would’ve appreciated the flyer. Damn, I’m still starving. How long do you think Glow Worm’s going to take with that pizza? Should I send out a sub-realms urgency alert?”
She wondered if she’d done just that, as soon as Lois shook her own head as if nothing past her first statement had hit the air. “Holy crap. I never would’ve given Reks—Rizon—credit for such kintama.”
Despite the noisy snarl of her stomach, Wen hitched up one side of her mouth. “Well, golden balls or not, he didn’t have a lot of options left about where to take them. By that point, he was definitely ready to trust the gonads more thoroughly to Apollo’s mercy.”
A shadow took over Lois’s expression. “He was probably right.”
Wen directed a deeper regard over the woman—this time, noticing more of the qualities which had caused Hercules to fall so fast for her.
The soul Lois bared in her eyes but the strength with which she took every step.
The pride, earned and not just learned, in the brace of her shoulders.
Already she sensed that their life stories might contain striking similarities.
Then again, maybe not. What situational similarities could she possibly share with a yakuza princess, other than the coincidences which had dumped them here?
The unlikeliest crossroads, in the most surreal realm of all.
That was enough to put her bewilderment over the top, inspiring her nosey blurt. “Is he really your uncle?”
“Who?” Lois returned. “Nao Ito?” As soon as Wen nodded, she grimaced. “No, thank all the gods in all the shrines in this country. We don’t share a drop of actual blood, though he was an older relative sort of figure to me before . . . ”
“What?” she prompted, bolder about asking this time despite the agonized twist of the woman’s graceful features.
There weren’t a lot of things she could interpret better than a person ready to talk about their shitty baggage.
Still, she added, “It’s okay if you don’t want to go there.
I get it. Sometimes the past has to stay the past, and all that poetic shit. ”
“But shit is a good word for it.” Lois hunched a little, wrapping hands to opposite forearms. “When my otousan learned just how dirty Ito was, he feared dangerous reprisals from the law, the clan’s rivals, or both.
But when he took his concerns to Ito and said he wanted out, the oyabun made it clear that wasn’t an option.
My dad had no choice but to sneak Okaan and myself out of the country.
While he planned to do the same and join us, it never happened. We were told he’d been killed.”
“Except that he actually wasn’t.”
Lois separated her arms, wiggled her fingers high, and muttered dryly, “Yeahhh. Surprise, Lo Lo. Dad isn’t dead. He just decided to let you keep thinking it, after the mob gave him a whole new face.”
Wen kept her expression neutral. “That’s a lot to take in.”
“You think?”
“But at least your dad is still alive,” she countered. “And for the time being, seems to be copasetic about the demigod boyfriend and such.”
“And such,” Lois echoed with a wry laugh. “You mean our collective wormhole jump into the Underworld, followed by your boyfriend’s glowing lyre string crotch?”
“Not my boyfriend. And technically, it was just the front of his thigh,” Wen corrected. Sure. Because that was what you focused on too, yeah? “But maybe it distracted the guy enough not to notice Herc’s tongue down your throat,” she supplemented as fast as possible.
Lois chuckled. “Ohhh, sweetie, he’s Japanese. An entire army of drooling yokai wouldn’t distract him from any male daring to touch his daughter.” Her laughter mellowed into a sheepish grin. “But as potential paramours go, there’s not a lot for ‘Tousan to grumble about.”
Wen nodded again. “A most valid point.”
“Not as valid as the one you’ve got.” How the woman was ready with that not-so-small zinger, as well as the knowing head tip she tacked onto it?
“And what do you mean, not your boyfriend? Have you consulted Apollo on that one? Don’t throw down with that side-eye, chica.
You hunt people down, and I write stories about them.
Behavioral study isn’t just a hobby for us.
And my not-a-hobby instinct says that guy wants to get back to LA, put on a new fancy suit, and properly meet Papa Steed. ”
Before she finished, Wen knew what spine of steel really felt like. The stiffness separated her from the pole and brought her back to standing, where she sucked down a rough breath while facing Lois like a doomed Kamen Rider.
“Let’s go ahead and tuck that into the never-going-to-happen file.”
Lois flew a hand over her lips. “Well, shit.” Just as fast, she let it fall to her thigh. “I’m so sorry. Here I was, considering myself the only kid in LA who grew up without a dad.”
“Oh, I had one,” Wen specified. “Well, probably still do have one. I mean, somewhere . . . ”
This time, Lois cocked her head the other way. “And you just misplaced him and don’t remember where?”
Color rushed her face, another involuntary reaction. She veered away, pacing toward the shadowed side road Apollo had taken to fetch the pizza.
“More like he set me away,” she confessed to the nooks and crannies between the buildings. Tiny spaces that somehow felt . . . alive. With someone there, ready to listen . . . “Well, us,” she clarified. “Genny and me.”
“Genny,” the woman behind her echoed. “That’s your sister, right? Whom you’re looking to grab back from Ito?”
She gave a narrow nod. “Our mom died a few months after she was born. She never left the hospital after the birth. Dad said it was because she was ‘sad’, but I hardly believed it then, and I don’t now.
I was really young, but old enough to remember my mother as a strong, brave woman who’d do her best to fight postpartum depression, had she gotten proper support from the backwoods place she was in. ”
“Wow.” Lois took a turn to haul in a long breath. “Where were you?”
“That part, I don’t remember,” she confessed.
“We started in Detroit, where Dad bounced between jobs he never talked about, and Mom worked nights at a motel front desk, but we were on our way to settle in with my grandmother in Los Angeles when the car broke down. Mom’s water broke in the middle of nowhere.
Apparently, it was a tough delivery. Genny finally made it, but the stress took its toll.
The one and only time Dad took me to see her, I remember she couldn’t stop crying.
She begged me to take her home. She was so distraught.
I—” Her breath snagged as her voice caught.
“I wanted to help her so badly, but I had no idea where home even was.”
“Shit,” Lois rasped. “How old were you?”
“Almost four,” she supplied. “We got on a video call with my grandma, and she promised a cake topped with the trendiest princess of the time.” After a heavy shrug and a stinging swallow, she whispered to the attentive shadows, “I don’t even remember which one it was.
She had a purple dress, I think? Maybe blue?
Didn’t matter. By the time we made it to LA after a few weeks, they didn’t have any more of her figurines at the grocery store.
Dad had to spend the money on my school uniforms instead. ”
“So you didn’t get a cake at all?”
She turned back around, plastering on a smile, since the poor woman gasped it as if learning her name was actually Matilda and she’d been forced to live a day in a spike-lined closet.
“It’s all right, girl. Obviously, I survived. Genny and I both did.”
Unnerved by the odd mix of emotions on Lois’s face, she debated between backing up to her trusty light pole or surrendering a few more inches of herself to the dimmer light. Option two finally won the coin toss.