7: EVEN MONEY
“Why are we stopping here?” Olivia asked Tommy Chang as she gingerly climbed down out of the cab of the possibly stolen EIA cargo truck. She turned her wide-eyed innocence toward Tommy, looking all of thirteen. He wasn’t sure how old Olivia was except that she’d dodged Tinker’s question of “how old are you,” which usually meant that the person was underage. Olivia seemed to be a normal teenage girl, somewhere between thirteen and seventeen, in a modest gingham sundress and sensible shoes.
Tommy had only known Olivia for a few short hours. He didn’t have a lot of experience with teenage girls, but he’d grown sure that Olivia wasn’t a “normal” girl.
She’d turned up at Poppymeadows while Tinker was holding a war council. She’d seen Tommy’s cat ears. She overheard him talking about his father, Lord Tomtom. She realized that he was half-oni. When they collided later on the North Side, Olivia understood that the royal marines might kill Tommy on sight. They’d killed every half-oni that they found up to that point. It mattered much that Olivia protected Tommy without hesitation. She told the elves that Tommy was to be trusted—that he wasn’t to be harmed.
Nor had she done it because she was softhearted. Olivia had hunted Jonnie Be Good down, coldly shot the man in the leg, and then questioned him as he lay bleeding on the ground. She followed that up by leading the attack on Midas Shipyard. Tommy now knew that Olivia was smart, cautious, ruthless, and fiercely loyal to those she considered her friends. With the twenty royal marines in the back of the truck at her beck and call, she was a force to be reckoned with.
Tommy didn’t know, though, how much he could trust her with his entire family. He was going to point her in the direction of Oakland and send her on her way. First, though, he was going to get what he wanted off her truck. “I need Knickknack.”
He wasn’t going to go through all the effort to save the boy and then let Olivia take him away. He should have just put the kid on the back of his hoverbike. He’d grab Knickknack and then shoo Olivia away.
“Me?” Knickknack’s voice came from behind the tarp covering the bed of the big truck.
“Yes, you!” Tommy called as he walked toward the back of the military cargo truck stuffed full of royal marines, rescued prostitutes, and one Irish girl who worked for the EIA.
Tommy hoped that the rest of the circus would go away and let him deal with his family. The female prostitutes, though, spilled out after the boy. They jumped up and down, clutching each other, screaming with might have been excitement or fear. Tommy didn’t know or understand. Why were they screaming?
“No. No. Just Knickknack,” Tommy said but the royal marines were already following. They, at least, had good cause. Some of them were hurt and needed the space and light to tend to their wounds. They eyed the screaming females with the same bewilderment that Tommy felt.
“Why here?” Olivia repeated as she followed Tommy to the back.
“Red!” Peanut Butter Pie shouted. “O! M! G! You rock, girl!’
The prostitutes launched themselves at Olivia, squealing loudly. Why did human females scream like that when they were excited? The females of Tommy’s family either had it beaten out of them at a young age or never had anything to celebrate with such abandon. Tommy wasn’t sure which. At least Olivia was calm and quiet. If he just left, maybe Olivia would take the hint and go.
While the loud chaos swirled around Olivia, Tommy dragged Knickknack through the bronze front doors of the William Penn Hotel. The massive crystal chandeliers were still all lit up for their paying guests. Their light reflected off the freshly scrubbed marble floors. The odor of a lemon-scented cleaning solution hung in the air.
Tommy paused at the door to scan the hotel’s lobby.
He had been afraid that some of his family who couldn’t pass as human might be in view. He had also been worried that the area might be filled with random strangers hanging out, waiting for rooms to be cleaned. He’d expected his people guarding the doors and someone manning the desk. There was no one in the lobby.
Where did everyone go? Had the oni already hit it? Everything seemed too neat and clean and orderly.
He reached out with his mind, seeing if he could pick up someone hidden.
Yes, there was someone ducked down behind the main desk. He couldn’t tell who it was: family or foe.
“I can see you,” Tommy called.
“Tommy!” Trixie popped up from behind the desk just the royal marines spilled in behind him. She dropped back into hiding. “Tommy?”
The marines seemed to have followed him out of sheer curiosity. They gazed about the lobby, pointing and exclaiming over the fancy coffered ceiling, the big chandeliers, the fancy area rugs and the grand piano. Trixie could pass as human even buck naked; it should be safe for her to show herself.
“It’s okay,” Tommy said with more confidence than he felt. He dragged Knickknack to the main desk. “They’re with me. It’s a long story. Where is everyone?”
Trixie rose up to peer over the counter. “Alita said that there’s some kind of trouble. She ran through here, talking too fast for me to understand what’s wrong. You know how she is. She’s upstairs waking Mokoto and Babe.”
“Mokoto?” Knickknack echoed with surprise.
Tommy gave the boy a shake to keep him quiet. Olivia and the prostitutes spilled into the lobby behind the marines. Olivia was back to looking about thirteen, doe-eyed and lost, unsure what to do to regain control of the situation. The rescued females seemed unwilling to let Olivia out of their sight but they were still squealing and talking loudly over whatever Olivia was trying to say. Tommy was starting to think “loud” was the normal volume for the streetwalkers.
Trixie ignored the chaos to finish her report. “Housecleaning moved up to the tenth floor in case we get more guests. Eighth floor is full. Ninth floor is half filled. We have over forty guests now.”
Tommy wondered if he killed any of their “guests” at the shipyard. He decided that he probably hadn’t. All the workers at the shipyard had been lowly grunts in sweat-soaked work clothes. The dead men probably had gone the cheap and reasonable route of finding an abandoned house and squatting in it. The businessmen who had been in the lobby earlier had worn expensive silk suits and reeked of cologne so badly that he could still smell traces of it.
“Half of our guests want room service,” Trixie finished up her report. “So anyone who isn’t cleaning or babysitting is on kitchen duty.”
Tommy’s sensitive ears caught the soft ding of the elevator down the hall. The doors slid open to Babe in mid-sentence.
“…not following this at all.” Babe ducked as he stepped off the elevator. He was yawning deeply, barely awake, but armed for trouble. He had all his various weapons, from his sawed-off shotgun in his hand to the machete strapped across his back. “Who are these cell people?”
“That’s what I want to know too,” Mokoto murmured from Babe’s shadow.
All of Aunt Amy’s kids were small fierce creatures that looked cute and harmless. Mokoto leaned into his cuteness; he was wearing a cutoff jeans jacket over a white-on-white polka dot minidress with pink plaid sneakers. Despite the skimpy outfit, he was tucking away his arsenal of small, deadly weapons. He probably was only wearing the short jacket to hide his shoulder holster.
Mokoto’s little sister, Alita, wore a knee-length black hoodie to hide away all her cuteness. She absently kicked Babe with her chunky combat boots. Even with a thick three-inch sole, her foot looked tiny next to Babe’s. “Cell means a group, like roommates or band members. We’re supposed to only know the people in our cell so that the oni can’t figure out who is part of the Resistance and, more importantly, who the leaders are.”
Zippo ducked out of the elevator last, a younger, smaller version of Babe. He nodded silently to what Alita was saying. Apparently he was part of whatever Alita had gotten mixed up in. He had his ironwood staff across his back and his twin batons at his sides.
“It probably works well on most people,” Alita continued, talking at her normal breakneck speed. “If you hadn’t just spent the last five years of your life working concession stands all over Pittsburgh—the racetrack and all the little street fairs and Oktoberfest and Midsummer Eve’s Faire—you probably don’t know who hangs with who and how some of the bigger families are connected. But if you have, like me, it’s all kind of obvious—not that I’m going to go around telling anyone. I don’t really understand why they call it the Resistance. It’s some human thing that happened long ago. I’m not sure I understand it—something to do with the villains of that one Indiana Jones movie—but I always thought all of that was made up because magic doesn’t work on Earth. I can’t ask too many questions because then the others in our cell gets all ‘Are you kidding? Didn’t you learn this in school? The Second World War!’ I stopped asking but it leaves us kind of in the dark on some stuff. Which world is the second one? Earth? Then which one was the first world? Anyhoo, there’s this place called Paris that filled up with the guys who were face-melted. The Resistance did all sorts of tricksy-tricksy stuff right under their noses. It’s hush-hush James Bond kind of spy stuff.”
“Oookay.” Babe obviously was struggling to follow what Alita was spilling out in her normal hundred-miles-per-hour way.
“You two joined this spy organization?” Mokoto cut through to the heart of his little sister’s information.
“Not really,” Alita said. “More milked it for info by pretending to join. We were double agents. Triple agents maybe.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten Zippo messed up in this.” Mokoto rapped his knuckles on his little sister’s head. “You’re supposed to keep him safe, not get him into trouble.”
“I told them Zippo’s name was Goemon and that I was Fujiko Mine. I wore my tallest stilettos with a wig and a double-d breastplate. Most of the people in our cell are just kids and they really look at the world at the surface level. They totally bought the idea that I was just doing everything as a lark and that I dragged Zippo in for fun. They kept saying we needed to take it more seriously. They have no idea. They’re just babes in the woods.”
“It was fun,” Zippo said quietly.
Babe gave his little brother a sympathetic look, as he fully understood what it was to be partnered up with to someone who could think rings around him. He was clever enough not to say anything aloud.
Knickknack noticed the group for the first time as they reached the lobby. “Mokoto!”
“See!” Babe pointed at the boy as Mokoto froze with surprise. “I told you Tommy would be able to find the Undefended.”
Mokoto wasn’t the type who cried easily. He struggled to keep all emotions off his face as he closed the distance. He caught hold of Knickknack and hugged him tightly, fingers digging into the boy’s back with the strength of his feelings.
“I’m sorry,” Knickknack said. “I should have listened to you. I’ve been stupid all summer.”
“Yes,” Mokoto growled into Knickknack’s shoulder. “You have been.”
“Where’s Bingo?” Tommy asked the room.
“He’s still out,” Trixie said simply, giving a meaningful look to Olivia, the royal marines and various others wandering about the lobby. “He’s doing what you told him to do.”
Tommy had told Bingo to find a safe place to move their family—assuming that Tommy could get them to abandon the hotel.
“Where’s Spot?” Trixie asked.
It took Tommy a moment to remember why he should know where Spot was. “Shit! I forgot. He’s still with Oilcan’s kids.”
“In Oakland? Oh, that’s not good.” Alita took out her phone and whispered a curse at what the screen said. “Very not good!”
“What is it?” Tommy asked as Trixie said, “Is that your spy network?”
“Yeah, we’re using messages boards for general updates. It’s been going insane since the scouts started to report in. There was a first wave of black willows east of Oakland but the tengu took them out. A second wave of oni warriors was spotted on Herrs Island, heading up Liberty Avenue. Tā māde niǎo! We’ve been hearing about some kind of mega genetic spell bomb that the oni were holding in reserve. Command is saying that the oni are going to pull the trigger and take out the domana.”
Tinker had just learned about the box that morning. Had the Resistance known about it before that or did the information spread like wildfire from that meeting? The tengu could have connections with the militia.
Olivia cried out. “What? The domana?”
“Oh, shit.” Alita whispered as she seemed to notice the additional people for the first time. “What the hell are they doing here?”
She meant the royal marines.
Olivia pushed forward, focused intently on Alita. “What did you say?”
If they’d been out on the street, Alita probably wouldn’t have given a straight answer, but they were “at work” and their aunts had beaten politeness into them.
“The oni have this spell bomb,” Alita said even faster than normal. “It uses dragon bits and pieces to transform large numbers of people with one cast. It’s like a magical nuke. It’s how the oni merged the tengu’s ancestors with crows, making it so the tengu lay eggs and have hollow bones and all the bird stuff. They might look like people but their insides aren’t much different from pigeons.” Alita quoted one of Lord TomTom’s favorite sayings. “Anyhoo, the oni are going to use the bomb to take out the domana. Like—right now.”
Olivia covered her mouth as if to keep in a scream. Her eyes were wide with horror. “Forest Moss? Tinker? Her cousin? The Viceroy? Will they be killed?”
Her whispered fear spread cold tendrils through Tommy’s gut. His family had been outed as monster spawn to the entire city, protected only by Windwolf and Oilcan. If the domana all died…
Would Jewel Tear die too?
Alita was shaking her head, still focused on her phone’s screen. “Texas Holdem is saying that the oni will just break the domana’s ability to call the Spell Stones. The spell won’t kill them.”
“They won’t be able to cast spells?” Olivia whispered in horror. “Forest Moss and others are fighting the oni army in the woods! They’ll be helpless.”
If all of Alita’s information was right, Oakland was about to be royally screwed. Forge and Jewel Tear had been left behind to protect it. If they were as helpless as the domana on the front line, then there would be no power hitters protecting the enclaves.
“Who is Texas Holdem?” Tommy asked. “And how do they know what the oni are going to do?”
Alita shrugged. “The message board is the least secure forum that the Resistance uses, so it requires you to use a code name. Texas Holdem could be anyone in the city. I don’t know if they really know anything for sure or if they’re talking out of their butt.”
“What is the little one saying?” one of the marines asked the Irish girl in Elvish as the conversation had been in English up to this point. They looked concerned at the dismay and fear on Olivia’s face.
The Irish girl started to fumble through a very condensed version of the discussion, focusing only on the important parts. Olivia stared inwardly as she whispered, “What should I do? What can I do?”
Tommy couldn’t answer the questions because he wasn’t sure either. Kajo was dancing around the elves the same way he had danced around Lord Tomtom.
The glittering crystal chandeliers went dark.
Tommy pointed up at the lights. “Did someone just turn those off or did the power go out?”
Alita hissed another Chinese curse. “I lost signal. I was at full bars.”
Mokoto pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. “Shit. The oni must have cut the phones as well as the power.”
Tommy growled with frustration. His family was scattered throughout the hotel with all of the toddlers and infants way up on the seventeenth floor. There was no way to communicate with the babysitters other than to run the stairs. Nor would he know what message to send upstairs—he had no idea where to move everyone so that they would be safe. He didn’t even know in which direction the oni were attacking.
“Mokoto, get everyone off the lower floors until Bingo comes back,” Tommy ordered. “Be sure to hit the kitchen, the laundry room, and the swimming pool. Also check that no one was on the elevators when they stopped working.”
“There might be a backup generator,” Knickknack said. “On Earth, most hotels are required to have one.”
“We’ll get the generator running, Tommy, if there’s one.” Mokoto caught Knickknack’s arm and dragged him off toward the hotel’s kitchen.
Tommy turned to his other cousins. “Trixie, go tell housekeeping to go back to their bedrooms.”
That would get all of his family on the highest floor. Hopefully, Mokoto was right that the oni wouldn’t climb seventeen floors to regain control over his family.
“What about our guests?” Trixie said. “They might be roaming the halls, pissed off that the power is out.”
“So they’ll be pissed!” Tommy snapped. “Tell the idiots to get back to their rooms or pack up and leave. They’re welcome to find someplace else while the oni are attacking!”
Still, idiots would be idiots. They might take advantage of the chaos to do whatever they wanted, including raping any girl that they stumbled across in the dark. Trixie was armed and dangerous but she didn’t look like it. She was another one of Aunt Amy’s cute, small, and deadly kids. Dealing with idiots might slow Trixie down. “Babe, go with her.”
Even an idiot wouldn’t pick a fight with Babe and his six foot three inches of pure muscle.
“What does this mean for us?” Zippo asked Tommy quietly. “What with Oilcan being domana? Are we going to be okay if he can’t do shit?”
How the hell would Tommy know?
Lord Tomtom had told him more than once that the oni’s end goal was to kill or capture all the elves in Pittsburgh. His father had been impatient with Kajo’s lack of action. The oni had the numbers and magic to take down the enclaves. Kajo refused to act because the domana would easily win back any ground that the oni won. Even if they took out Windwolf, there would be royal forces like Prince True Flame and the Harbingers within a week’s travel. Pittsburgh was just the first step in a global conquest. Kajo was willing to be patient.
With the domana rendered powerless, it would be a simple thing to storm the enclaves. If the oni wiped out the elves, life in Pittsburgh would become impossible for his family. They were safe only because Windwolf, Tinker, and Oilcan were willing to go to bat for them. There was a full continent of elves a couple thousand miles away and when they reached the city, the gloves would be off. No matter who won the ultimate battle, it would be bad news for the half-oni.
“Command was issuing walkie-talkies to some cell leaders.” Alita took a headset out of her pocket. “They didn’t have enough to go around as they were rare as hen’s teeth even before Tinker yanked the gate out of orbit. I figured that Team Providence might have left gear out at the racecourse after you banned them, so I went and pillaged their lockers.”
Jin Wong had executed all of Team Providence so it wasn’t surprising that their gear was left behind. The racing teams were the only ones who had voice-activated headsets. Police, paramedics, and others used handheld sets.
“Command says Tinker domi is heading to Oakland,” Alita reported as she continued to scroll through messages saved on her phone. “Forge and Jewel Tear are out of commission—whatever that means. Cào!”
“What? Is Oilcan okay?” Tommy asked as Alita continued to curse in Chinese.
Alita shook her head. “There’s no word on Oilcan but the last message posted on the boards was from Texas Holdem. They said that the oni has doped out Storm One’s location and is sending a goon squad that way.”
“Who is Storm One?” Tommy asked.
“Duff Kryskill.” Alita tapped her headset. “He’s running the radio communication for the Resistance. With the phones down, radio is the only way we’re able to coordinate. Texas Holdem posted seconds before the power went out, so the people checking the board at that exact second—like me—are the only ones who saw it. Command ordered all cells to Oakland and Duff is over on Mount Washington or Mount Oliver—someplace. I’m not sure exactly where. I don’t know if anyone else was checking the boards for new posts—everyone else is in the middle of a combat zone.”
“Mount Oliver?” Olivia echoed. “Duff is running the Resistance out of the bakery?”
“Say what?” Alita said.
“I worked at the Jenny Lee Bakery for a while,” Olivia said. “End of July and the beginning of August. I started at four in the morning, dividing and shaping bread. Duff was my shift manager. He’s related somehow to the people who own the bakery. He’s been working there for years, usually in the morning before he went to high school. He’s got a little cubbyhole office way in the back by itself. The bakery has all sorts of backup power systems so it can keep operating through a blackout. It would be a good base for a communication center.”
“But does Texas Holdem actually know what they’re talking about?” Tommy asked.
Alita spread her hands to indicate that she had no idea. “They did seem to know that Forge and Jewel Tear would be out of the fight an hour before the fighting kicked off.”
“Aoife,” Olivia said. “I know the Director told you to stay with me, but it would be safer for you to stay here with Tommy’s people. I’m going to the bakery. I’m not sure what I’m going to do—I’m not even sure I know how to get there from here—but I need to do something.”
“Mauryah!” the Irish girl cried in surprise. “I’m coming with you. I’m not going to miss out because someone thinks I’m some wee colleen that needs protecting.”
Alita kicked at Tommy’s foot. “Can I go with them? I can get them up to Mount Oliver. I don’t want to sit here waiting to see if we’re going back to the way it used to be. I’d rather die fighting.”
Zippo nodded, silently indicating that he wanted to go with Alita for the same reason.
“Fine, you can go.” Tommy pointed at Alita’s three-inch soles. “Can you run in those?”
Alita rolled her eyes but jogged slowly in place to demonstrate that she could.
“Fast enough to outrun lesser blood oni?” Tommy pressed.
Alita blew out her breath and kicked off the clunky shoes. She pulled flats out of her hoodie’s pocket and put them on.
Tommy turned to Zippo. “You’ve got a gun?”
Lord Tomtom never provided the half-oni with any weapons. He probably suspected that the half-oni would use them against his warriors. Over the years, Tommy had gathered what he could. Hunting rifles. Shotguns. Compound bows and carbon arrows. Machetes. Modified broom handles. Butcher knives. Bingo and his brothers kept to weapons that played to their brute strength like the machetes and staffs. The pistols were in short supply and usually went to their smaller cousins.
“I’ve got a twenty-two,” Zippo said unhappily, lifting his shirt to show off a kidney holster. It was a small-caliber pistol with not much stopping power but it was better than nothing.
“Good enough.” Tommy knew that Alita had a Glock pistol hidden somewhere on her. Mokoto and his cute but fierce younger siblings had gotten first dibs on the smaller weapons. They could be trusted to know when to use lethal force.
Tommy turned to Olivia. “This is Alita and Zippo. They’re my cousins. Let them ride shotgun with you. They’ll give you directions to Mount Oliver from here.”
The back of the truck—packed with royal marines—might be dangerous for Zippo. He didn’t completely pass as human, up-close and personal. The boy was shy, though, and might not ride in the front without Alita.
“What are you going to do?” Alita asked.
“I’m going to run out to Oakland,” Tommy said. “I’m going to try to find out what’s going on with Oilcan, and fetch Spot.”