Daughter of Danger Page 3

  “An invisible ring that only turns itself invisible! What use is that?”

  She pursed her lips and put the ring back on her finger, this time on the ringfinger of her right hand, which had a smaller knuckle. This was to prevent it from getting stuck again.

  She turned it once more counterclockwise, not knowing what to expect. In the reflection, now the woman’s face in the intaglio was dead, her eyelid sewn shut, her lips a horrid line, her cheeks sunken and parched. The dark gray ring turned black as onyx, shining and lustrous.

  Gritting her teeth, she turned it again one full turn. Now, it grew sooty black as solid nothingness, and the face became as a skull with no flesh. The odor of blood was pungent and strong. But nothing was happening to her: she was neither invisible as a ghost nor weightless as a ghost.

  A sense of fear came over her. Once again, she felt as if hostile eyes were watching.

  She twisted the ring clockwise. Once, twice, three times, four. From uttermost, unshining black to onyx to iron to pewter to silver. She found her shadow beneath her feet. The ring was plainly visible. The sensation of eyes hungrily hunting for her ended immediately.

  She squinted at the ring. Magic or not, it had a logic of its own. The emergency room had not removed her ring because the nurses had not seen it. The ring turned the wearer invisible when the face was asleep even though, to her own eyes, the only clue that she was now ghostlike was the fact that her shadow vanished. She was not invisible to herself. However, removing the ring while the charm was active allowed the effect to continue on the ring but broke the charm on the wearer. Ex-wearer.

  Putting it back on did not revive the charm. The onyx death-head seemed to have no effect, nor did the utter black skull, no doubt because she removed the ring from her finger between twists. Apparently, one had to twist it back to the null setting, a white ring with a calm-faced figure, before twisting it forward again.

  She was not willing to do that. In fact, she was not willing to stand in this spot in case whatever had been seeking her had gotten a fix on this location.

  She started walking rapidly, her cold feet slapping on the concrete. The lower hem of the flag flapped against her hips with the energy of her rapid walk.

  But she felt calm, hidden, as if the evil watching eyes had been warded off.

  She looked at the calm woman’s face in the intaglio with a finer appreciation. “You are not a null setting, are you? Are you protecting me from whatever is looking for me? I feel like some evil mind, a soul of darkness, is seeking me. If you do not say anything, I will take that as a yes.”

  The ring did not say anything.

  She petted the woman’s face on the ring. “Next question. Where am I going to get any food or any place to sleep?”

  Again, the ring did not say anything.

  Chapter Two: Rookie Magical Detective

  1. Upper East Side

  She walked, wishing she had shoes. “Well, wait a minute! Was I wearing any shoes before I was brought to the hospital? The nurses must have put them somewhere…”

  She came abreast of a payphone on a pole. She stopped walking and stared at it, wondering. The light above the phone was on and buzzing. Three little flies were circling the flickering neon tube. The street where she stood had no streetlamps. Other than the phone kiosk, it was entirely dark.

  She had no coins, but surely she could call an emergency number. Surely she’d be safe with the police.

  She shook her head slowly. Just as safe as in a hospital room. Whoever was after her had sent agents walking casually into a crowded hospital without anyone noticing or interfering. They carried tridents and…

  She frowned. Why did that not seem odd? On the one hand, speaking six languages seemed odd. That level of linguistic skill seemed unusual for one her age. But fighting opponents armed with a gladiatorial weapon from ancient Rome?

  How odd that this did not seem odd!

  She craned her head. She could not have fallen that far from the hospital. How many blocks had she passed? There was a yellow pages in the telephone book, which, surprisingly, was still unvandalized. From the street signs, she knew she was in the Upper East Side between East 74th Street and Third Avenue. She could not have been blown more than three or four blocks. How many hospitals could there be? There was a place called the Manhattan Minimum Invasive & Bariatric Surgery Hospital, which seemed to be about the right address, and, from the suite numbers, the building might have been tall enough to be the one she fell from. But what was Bariatrics? That did not sound like a disease involving memory loss.

  She set out north. New York City is impossible to get lost in because it is laid out on a clear grid, with everything numbered in sequence. She was surprised at how dark it was, however, and how empty. Her mental picture was of a city that never slept. In the distance, she could hear the growl of crawling traffic, but not here. She wondered where she had gotten her mental picture from. Did that mean she was not a native New Yorker?

  A wolf limped across an alley in the distance, momentarily visible when it passed in front of a lit window. He was dragging his left hind leg.

  Common sense told her to flee. She ignored it and followed the beast.

  He went into an alley. Now, she stopped. Her instincts told her it would be too easy to be flanked or surrounded if she went into the dark alley. She twisted the ring on her finger from silver to pewter, and her hair stood on end and swayed. She kicked off the ground and soared smoothly up and up toward the upper corner of the nearest building. She fumbled, banged painfully into the cornice, flipped end over end, and came to rest hanging in midair, with her flag beginning to unwind from her body.

  She angrily tugged and tucked the flag more tightly around herself and, by quickly twisting the ring clockwise and counterclockwise, managed to give herself enough weight to start a downward motion, and then turned weightless again before she hit the ground. She estimated wrong and hit the ground hard, but an instinct surprised her by turning it into an acrobatic roll. She slapped the ground with her hands and came to her feet unharmed and in a fighting crouch, her hands before her, fingers curled. Nekoashi. She knew it, just as she knew it was called a cat stance.

  And she also knew she was just where she should not be: an unlit alley where an attacker could come at her from any direction. She could see the silhouette of a fire escape above her to her right and the planks of a wooden fence across the throat of the alley ahead of her, blocking the way.

  Another twist of the ring banished her weight again. Her long hair, floating freely, tickled her eyes and nose. First on her mental list of things to buy was a hair ribbon, or perhaps a bathing cap. Second was some sort of line and grapnel so she could catch herself and hook herself back down if she floated out of reach of an anchor. Third were elbow and knee pads.

  This time, instead of leaping the fence, she pushed her feet against the ground in a skating, sliding motion so that she skipped like an astronaut on the moon in low, flat arcs toward the fence. She swarmed over it and down the other side, keeping her silhouette minimal.

  Clinging to the boards of the fence head-downward like a lizard, she looked quickly to either side. Below her, she saw a shorter side-alley going left toward a dark truck bay feeding into the back of several establishments. The main alley ran at right angles to this and met a larger, brighter main avenue. She decided to go toward the lights first. She kicked and made a long leap to the top of a utility pole standing right at the corner of the alley and the main avenue. The streetlamp on the pole was below her: she was in the cone of the shadow cast by the lamp’s cap.

  About a story below her were a jeweler’s, a dress shop, and a tailor’s, all locked up. Then came an awning she remembered seeing from much higher up: the light sign said COBBLER’S CLUB. The line of patrons was gone, but the two bouncers were still manning the door, which was still open, and pouring the sound of pounding music out into the street. She doubted a wounded wolf would have come this way. On the other side were a Frenc
h restaurant, a china shop, an antique shop, and three empty stores with bars of scaffolding covering over their fronts. Perhaps it was merely the contrast with the colored light and raucous music from the club, but the sight of empty stores selling luxuries seemed desolate.

  The building on the corner holding the jeweler’s and clothier’s was only two stories, unlike its taller neighbors. She made it in one graceful leap and then astronaut-skipped across the flat gravel roof to look back at the truck bay up the other alley.

  Now she heard the noise of a struggle. A shrill and panicked scream for help, a woman’s voice, rose over the rooftops.

  She dashed forward but misstepped and overdid it. She tried to hook her foot on the coping of the roof to arrest her forward momentum, and sure enough, she did slow down to the speed of a toy balloon drifting, but she also tumbled over the side of the roof and into mid-air.

  2. Killer Instinct

  She spread her arms and legs to slow her tumble. Cursing inwardly, she saw the dark side-alley drifting past her gaze unhurriedly below her. Square blocks of concrete faced large metal grates where cargo could be loaded or unloaded from delivery trucks. Two trucks were in the bays now.

  She passed over the first truck. Now she saw the scene: Between the trucks were three figures struggling. One was smaller and slighter. A girlish scream rang out again. The call for help was not as loud as the echo of the noise of the club pouring out into the air one street over. The chance that anyone had heard was nil.

  Nothing was within reach. The scene was only twenty feet below her, and she was about to drift past the second truck. There was no way to move!

  She spat her hair out of her mouth. Of course there was a way to move. Down.

  She twisted the ring sharply clockwise, not once, but twice. Weight returned, and gravity hurled her like a missile toward the ground. But light, diamond-bright, harsh, celestial, darted in a bright ray from her finger. She uttered her kiai, a screaming cry like a falcon stooping. The man immediately below her looked up, blinded and blinking.

  He was a scruffy dark-skinned man in a dark coat and a red cap. She landed with her knees in position to strike both his collarbones with all her weight and use his body to break her fall. She rolled as he fell and came to her knees.

  Before the man could move or rise, she grabbed the hair on his head and yanked it backward. With her other hand, she used her palm to break his nose upward. She then, while his throat was exposed, struck him in the Adam’s apple with her knuckles. The diamond-bright light on her finger bobbed and swayed wildly with her swift hand motion. He went limp and lay motionless.

  The other man was even rougher and more unshaven-looking than the first, and his eyes did not point in the same directions. Perhaps he was intoxicated, perhaps merely panicked. He was shivering, mouth open but making noise with no words, one hand before his face, blinking at the dazzle. Before she could roll to her feet, he turned and fled down the alley.

  “Cooin lhaim!” the other girl cried out. “My sailt!”

  3. Flight and Flight

  The white light darting from the ring she had been playing over the fallen body, looking for something, a knife or bootstrap or belt buckle she could use to slit his throat. But now she turned the beam toward the other girl. “What did you say?”

  “Help me! Please!”

  The other girl was blonde, rather young and rather shapely. She was perhaps seventeen. Her hair was bobbed just below the ears and curled upward at the bangs, giving her a tousled look. She was wearing a trenchcoat that had been half-pulled down her arms. Beneath, she wore what looked like a dancer’s costume: a green bodice with a plunging neckline, a green miniskirt with a handkerchief hem, and pointed-toed green slippers with fuzzy white pom-poms large as golf balls.

  “You must save me!”

  There was no blood, no sign of wounds. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m caught!”

  The barefoot oriental girl stood, tucked her impromptu garb in place, tossed her black hair impatiently back, and shined the ray from her ring carefully across the blonde. She saw no rope or chain binding the blonde. She saw nothing trapping her. “Can you stand?”

  The blonde smiled prettily and bounced to her feet. Her posture was a little strange: she stood with her feet together, arms by her side, and palms forward, and she tilted her chin up.

  “You meant stand on my feet, right? Not my head?” asked the blonde.

  It seemed an odd question. “I’m sorry…?”

  “Can you get it off? They put it around my neck!”

  “I don’t see what– wait. Is this what you mean?”

  Around the blonde’s neck was a necklace of loose red thread. The pendant was an iron nail—an old-fashioned square-topped nail, smaller than a pinky finger. The nail hung down, resting lightly at her décolletage. But the red thread was not tight, not knotted around her neck, not fixed in place in any way.

  “It is iron, cold iron, that is master of us all!” The smile vanished. Her large eyes were damp. Her lip trembled. “Get it off me!”

  A loud voice in the distance cried out. It was a man calling. With the drumming reverberations from the music one street over, it was hard to tell distances from sound alone, but the voice seemed near. A second voice answered him. The ravenhaired oriental girl twisted her ring and shut off the light.

  “They are coming back! We’ve got to run!”

  “I cannot!” cried the blonde. “I’m caught!”

  The ravenhaired girl pulled the loop of thread over the blonde’s head. She had no pockets and no immediate use for a nail on a thread, so she threw it clinking to the pavement. “Down the alley and over the fence! Try to keep up!”

  She twisted her ring from silver to pewter and soared down the side-alley in two or three long, loping bounds. The wooden fence was speeding past her. A second twist restored her weight, but now she was traveling too quickly. Again, an unexpected instinct came to her aid: she turned her too-rapid stumble into a flying kick, caught one of the vertical posts of the fence with her bare foot, bounced up and backward, struck the opposite post with another kick, and propelled herself over the fence in a smooth leap. She turned a somersault in midair and landed on her feet.

  In the dim light, she saw, to her shock, ahead of her, on this side of the fence, the blonde in the green costume seated on a trashcan, legs crossed at the knee. She was smiled gaily and clapped her hands when the ravenhaired girl flipped over the fence and landed so neatly. “That was wonderful! Are you Miss America? Do you fight crime?”

  The ravenhaired girl took the blonde’s wrist and yanked her into motion. Down the alley they ran, bare feet and slippered feet making little noise.

  There! A fire escape was visible above and to the left. The ravenhaired girl said, “I am going to lower the fire escape ladder. Get to the top as fast as you can, and I will pull it up after. Get it?”

  The blonde nodded eagerly, grinning, her smile bright in the gloom. “Got it!”

  “Good!” said the ravenhaired girl and twisted the ring from white to pewter. “And… uh… Don’t worry if what I do looks odd!” Now her hair and body grew weightless, and she soared upward with a kick. She neatly hooked the railing of the lowest balcony of the fire escape as she flew, which yanked her about in a quick semicircle, and landed her in a crouch near the crank of the ladder. It had a quick-release lever which she pulled. The ladder slid downward. At the last minute, she caught the upper rungs as they slid past, hoping to prevent the ladder from clanging loudly as it struck bottom. Instead, she eased it down silently the last foot or so.

  She peered downward. There was not much light here. She made a hissing whistle through her teeth and called softly, “Sss! Sss! Are you there?”

  A voice from behind her and above said, “No, I ’m here!”

  The ravenhaired girl turned. The blonde was seated with her rump on the railing of the fire escape balcony the next story up, hands on the railing to either side, idly kickin
g her legs in the air.

  The blonde pouted. “You have a weird look on your face. You said as fast as I could, didn’t you? I didn’t break another stupid rule, did I?”

  There was no time for talk. She could hear men, several of them, all cursing filthy curses, climbing over the wooden fence. If she used the wheel to raise the ladder, it would make a racket. Nimbly, she leaped to the balcony rail, took the lower lip in her fingers, and vaulted upward, doing a backflip and landing next to the blonde.

  The ravenhaired girl pointed at a tall building across the street and down a bit. She said, “I am going to jump to the roof of that bank.”

  “Bank of what? You mean like a riverbank?”

  “That building there. Thirty stories tall! Can you make it there before me?”

  The blonde’s eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands for joy. “A race! Ooh! I love races!”

  The ravenhaired girl nodded, looking the blonde carefully in the eye. Yes, a race. But we are outracing our pursuit. They must be left behind and not see us. You understand?

  The blonde tossed her head so that her tousled curls bobbed. Of course! I am a private investigator! We are shaking our tails! She wiggled her hips energetically as if to illustrate.

  And with that, the blonde girl glowed with a thousand multicolored pinpoints of sparkling lights. Out from her naked shoulder blades sprung gossamer wing-shaped shimmers, polychromatic as the rainbows that dance on the surface of a soap bubble. The girl shrank down to a dragonfly-winged figure the size of a finger and darted away through the air in the posture of a speed skater, with two little trails of sparks winking in the wake of her slippers.

  The ravenhaired girl stared in shock, wondering whether the world was insane, or she was. Maybe both. But the sound of coming pursuit did not give her time to contemplate the question.

  She twisted her ring to weightlessness, flung herself in a long leap to the roof of the building above, then to a telephone pole, then to the top of the pole, and then across the street to the roof of a second building, and hand over hand up the wall of the bank building.