Seeker (44 page)

“How tall were these buildings?”

“Tall.”

“As tall as—” She broke off. The athame was still concealed in the sheath running down her left leg, and now it was tickling her. She grabbed it through her jeans and found that the stone was vibrating, very slightly. As she touched it, the vibration steadily increased, sending a tremor through her bones, all the way up to her teeth.

“What?” he asked her.

“The athame’s shaking.”

He reached over and slid his hand up along her leg, trying to feel it. Quin found herself taking a step back, surprised by his sudden closeness.

“It—it stopped,” she said. “That was strange. Something set it off.”

“There’s a subway line nearby,” Shinobu suggested as he went back to fiddling with the skydiving rig. “Maybe it’s picking up the vibration? I sometimes feel the subway in my feet when I’m down here. Except, when I’ve done Shiva sticks, it feels like everything is shaking, so it’s kind of hard to tell. But you haven’t done Shiva, so maybe that’s it.”

He was now pulling old rocket cartridges off the harness and setting them aside. When he was finished, he carried the rig to the front end of the basement and placed it by the door.

“Now clothes,” he told her. “Luckily, my mother already did that planning for us, ages ago.”

He threw open the wardrobe next to Quin, revealing an extensive assortment of body armor, some of it ancient and fit for a samurai, and some of it completely modern.

“My great-great-great—I forget how many greats—grandfather’s,” he said, nodding to the samurai armor. It had intricate pieces of lacquered wood held together with fine braids of silk.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It still works—against swords and things like that.”

“And the other stuff—why?” She was looking at several sets of high-tech body armor.

“When my mother first came here, she thought Alistair might be following soon, and maybe Briac would be coming after him. She thought there might be, you know, a huge battle. She shopped
accordingly. She thinks ahead like that. And she’s the sort who buys three when one will do, probably because she has piles of money.”

He flipped through the items and quickly pulled out several that looked to be Quin’s size.

“This is sort of like chain mail,” he explained, studying a full suit of something thin and shiny as he held it against her body. He pushed it into her hands. “And maybe these?” he asked, handing over a matching set of gloves. Then he retrieved a bulletproof vest, which he tossed to her.

“Go ahead,” he told Quin as he began to assemble a similar pile for himself. “Put them on.”

She hesitated. The space between the walls was small. Quin couldn’t bring herself to take her clothes off in front of him, especially after she’d just seen how impressive his own body was.

“I just … I guess I’m shy,” she said awkwardly.

“Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. Of course I’d love to see you naked. I’ve been dreaming about what you look like since we were thirteen. Maybe earlier. Whenever I started being interested in naked girls. Maybe twelve. I got to undress a couple of girls down in the village, but you—” He broke off suddenly, blushing to the tips of his ears. He stared at her a moment in shock. Then he pushed the door of the wardrobe out, creating a kind of screen around her and hiding himself from view. There was a long silence. At last, from the other side of the door, he said, “I’m sorry. It’s the tea.” And then more quietly, she heard him mutter, “Unbelievable.”

Quin smiled. She couldn’t shake from her mind the image of him, unclothed and at her door. The idea that he’d thought about her filled her stomach with butterflies.

She began to undress, and she could hear Shinobu on the other side of the door, doing the same. She managed to get the shiny suit up over her legs and to her waist, but the upper half of the garment
separated into several pieces that were supposed to attach to each other in ways that weren’t immediately obvious.

“Quin? Are you all right?” he asked after a while.

“I’m trying to figure this thing out,” she said, attempting, for the third time, to fasten the strips of the top together.

“Here, I can help.”

He put his hand on the edge of the door, preparing to move it aside, and Quin scrambled to cover herself. When he came out from behind the door, he was wearing the same thin armor, which, like Quin’s, wasn’t completely attached and so left half of his chest bare. Obviously still embarrassed, Shinobu kept his eyes away from her face as he studied her suit critically.

“Uh, that part comes up and attaches to the front,” he said, gesturing to one of the flaps hanging to her side. “Can you reach—”

She tried and nearly dropped the piece over her chest.

“Not quite,” she said, attempting to look unembarrassed as she struggled to stay covered. “It slips—”

“Here—” He slid his hands around her back, and she felt him connecting two segments of her garment. Then he eased the suit up her back. It slipped once, and his chest accidentally brushed against hers as he grabbed for it.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s okay.”

She found herself staring firmly at the floor as he smoothed the back piece up over her shoulders to attach it to the front. It was hard not to notice the warmth of his hands. And he was strong, she thought, strong enough to lift her if he wanted to, into his arms …

She stopped that thought. She kept her eyes turned away from him as she slipped her arms into the hanging sleeves, which he velcroed together into a snug fit. The suit was like thin, close-fitting long underwear with a metallic sheen.

“These connections give you a full range of motion in your arms, even if it’s tight,” he told her as she stepped back to put some space between them. “I’ve tried it out a couple of times when I’ve had to, you know, fight someone.”

Quin made a couple of practice swings of her arms and found that the armor was surprisingly flexible.

“Will you help with mine?” he asked, still keeping his eyes away from her.

She figured out how to attach the front and neck of his shirt properly. Then she velcroed the bottom of the shirt to his waistband. This required putting her arms around him for a few moments, and her heart ignored her orders and began to beat faster.

“It’s good for deflecting things like knives,” he was explaining. “If someone stabs at you full force, though, it won’t hold up. A straight hit will pierce it. But it’ll keep you from getting burned. Unless it’s really,
really
hot.”

She nodded. It was difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. She hadn’t really
seen
Shinobu, not since they were children. She’d been distracted by John. But she could see him now.

She made her hands drop to her sides. She had to stop this line of thought. He was probably right about the herbs making him say what he’d said. And anyway, they were cousins—of some sort. Was it third cousins? How related were third cousins? And hadn’t one of their distant great-grandparents remarried? She remembered learning that, which meant they really shared only half the expected amount of common blood, didn’t it? Their connection suddenly seemed distant—but Shinobu had always called her “cousin.”

“Now we cover it,” he said, turning around to face her.

They helped each other into ordinary shirts over the armor, still avoiding each other’s eyes. Quin imagined reversing all of this—taking
off the shirts, taking off the armor, taking off the years that she had spent with John. Shinobu could carry her upstairs …

She turned away so he couldn’t see her face, and pulled on a pair of trousers. Shinobu slipped woolen long underwear over his thin layer of armor. And all of it, she assumed, would go under some more elaborate outer armor in a moment.

Now he was pulling the bulletproof vest around her and cinching it tight.

“How does that feel?” he asked.

“It’s good.”

His face was inches in front of hers as he adjusted her vest. She could see the roots of his hair, which were growing out in that deep red she remembered. He had removed the piercings from his face, leaving his clean, perfect features unblemished. Without asking for permission, her hands moved to his chest and stayed there, feeling his heartbeat.

“You’re warm,” she whispered.

He looked down at her, his dark eyes close to hers. His hands were at her waist. Was she imagining it, or were they pulling her gently toward him?

Quin could not stop herself. She leaned forward, and her lips brushed his—

An unbelievably loud clanging sound erupted a few yards away, beyond the basement door, and they sprang apart.

The door was thrown open to reveal Brian Kwon, standing at the bottom of the stone steps leading up to the yard outside. One of Brian’s hands clutched the handle of a large rolling pallet, which teetered at the top of the steps. This pallet was piled with several dozen metal canisters, many bundles of objects that looked suspiciously like fireworks, and a quantity of welding equipment that appeared
to have spent a long time underwater. The noise had been caused by a very large and heavy canister rolling off the pallet, bouncing down the steps, and colliding with the metal basement door.

“Raided the salvage yard, Barracuda,” he said, groaning as he lifted the canister back into place. “I hope you’re not planning to ask for your job back. Also made a few other stops.”

Shinobu smiled and clapped Brian on the shoulders as he moved past him, up the stairs, and began inspecting the items. Quin followed, feeling herself flush as Brian looked at her quizzically.

When Shinobu was satisfied with Brian’s haul, the three of them packed all of the gear carefully into backpacks. Then they finished dressing, with Quin putting on Shinobu’s old cloak so she could conceal the athame and lightning rod in its pockets.

When they were ready, she and Brian stood outside as Shinobu disappeared into the house. Quin’s thoughts returned to the leather book she’d dug out of the trunk in her mother’s bedroom.

“Brian, do you have a phone?” she asked.

Sometime later, Shinobu appeared through a nearby window. He stood in the hallway of his mother’s home, his ancestor’s samurai armor over his bulletproof vest and motorcycle boots. As she watched, his mother and little brother, Akio, bowed deeply and formally to him, and Shinobu bowed back.

“How is he?” John asked, looking at the image of his grandfather on the security monitor. Gavin was in bed, doubled over with a coughing fit, the burns on his chest and arm still bandaged.

“Better than yesterday, not as well as he will be tomorrow,” Maggie answered.

Maggie, somewhere near ninety years old now, with long gray hair and a posture that was still upright, held Gavin’s life in her hands. John had brought her back to
Traveler
the day he’d left for the estate. She had immediately begun administering Gavin’s antidote at the highest possible doses, but it was taking a long time for Gavin’s body to respond. He was old, and skipping the antidote for weeks had brought him close to death.

With his grandfather confined to his bedroom, John now had control of
Traveler
. It was true that Gavin’s relatives were fighting in court for authority over the family’s holdings, but Gavin had exaggerated the immediate danger they posed. The poison had made him see enemies at every turn.
As if we don’t have enough real adversaries
, John thought.

“May I get you something to drink, Mrs. Kincaid?” Maggie asked.

Fiona was seated at a table in the corner, her hand cuffed to a chain, the other end of which was attached to the wall. It left her plenty of room to move about, but there was no question that she was a captive on the ship.

“No, thank you,” Fiona said without turning her head from the window, through which she was watching London pass by.

The sight of the shackle around her wrist made John incredibly sad.
Somehow I have to make this happen without hurting her or Quin again
. The same words had gone through his mind a hundred times in the last two days, but he worried about his ability to keep Quin and Fiona safe when neither of them would do anything to help him.

He flipped through security channels on the monitor, catching short glimpses through
Traveler
’s exterior cameras, then watching images from the streets of London below. He had men prowling through the city, following
Traveler
’s path, waiting for Quin to arrive. She would come for her mother, of course she would.

“Can I make you comfortable in some other way?” he asked Fiona when Maggie had left the room.

“You could remove the handcuff and release me,” Fiona suggested. “That would make me much more comfortable.”

“That’s the one thing I can’t do just yet,” John told her gently. He turned the monitor off and took a seat near her. “We’re just waiting now. I don’t want you to be frightened or ill at ease. Are you hungry?”

“For a kidnapper, you’re terribly polite.”

“I’m trying to remember my manners,” he said, hoping she would smile, but she didn’t.

“Unlike that evening on the estate?” she asked him, her voice cold.