She picked them up while Heath kept an eye Marvin and Jarvis. “Marvin Spillane and Jarvis Bonetti. Pretty good fakes.”

  “They’re real,” said Marvin. “And those are our birth dates and addresses. All real. I’m telling you that because I want to make sure you know that we know what it means to give you that information, Mr. Cyr.”

  Nariko held up the I.D.s and Heath glanced at them. He nodded. “I’m listening.”

  “Now, we were told to take you out. I advised against it. As you can see, Jarvis and I live across the river in Vancouver. We’ve heard a few things about you. And what we’ve heard suggested that hitting you might not be the smartest approach here.”

  “Ask your partner how it went,” said Nariko, still holding onto the driver’s licenses.

  “I don’t have to. Mr. Cyr, my employers know who you are, and they know that you’ve been hired to retrieve a certain book. They have an interest in this book as well, and wish to remove you from the equation.”

  “Don’t see how you think threats are a better option than guns,” said Heath.

  Something was off about these two. Something Heath couldn’t quite put his finger on. Spells on their trench coats, just like Mr. Submachine Gun.

  But why would they be disguised if they were offering up their identities? Something didn’t add up.

  “You misunderstand me,” said Marvin. “I’m not offering you violence, I’m offering you money. Money has little meaning for my employers, and we can arrange a great deal of it to—”

  “Drop your trench coats,” said Heath.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Drop them on the ground and step away from them. If you’re honest about who you are—”

  “Duck!” Nariko grabbed Heath and yanked them both to the asphalt. Something whistled through the air where they’d been standing.

  “Damn it,” said Heath, pulling out a handful of salt with a few things mixed in. He flung it at Marvin and Jarvis while spitting out the phrase, “Through Your Grace my eyes are open.”

  Something relaxed inside Heath that he hadn’t known was tense. Nothing changed about the appearance of Marvin and Jarvis, except that they seemed less important. They no longer captured Heath and Nariko’s attention as they had a moment before.

  And now Heath could see a small, blurry red shape swirling through the air. Not much bigger than a stellar jay.

  Marvin and Jarvis ran for their car.

  Nariko rolled away from Heath, trying to force the red blur to split its attention.

  The red blur careened toward Heath. He dove and rolled, one hand frantically digging in his backpack. “I.D.!” he screamed at Nariko.

  The blur whistled past again, opening a cut on Heath’s cheek. He could hear Marvin and Jarvis start their car. They tried to peel out, but their sedan wasn’t quite up to the task. Though Heath could hear it give its all as his hand grasped what he needed.

  Nariko tossed the cards at Heath like shuriken, one spinning well wide but the other landing at his feet.

  The red blur spun down again. Heath slammed his body to the asphalt of the parking lot. Something bit a tiny chunk out of his neck as the blur flew past. A cold feeling spread out from the spot where the thing bit him.

  Heath smeared blood from his cheek on the I.D. It was Marvin’s. Next he spat on it. Finally he anointed it with oil ground together from adder’s tongue, master root and devil’s pod.

  “Take the blood. Take the spit. And take your curse you son of a bitch!”

  Heath flung the driver’s license at the blur as it dove for another attack. The throw went well wide, but the spell did its job. The blur curved in midair and careened away in the direction the sedan had fled.

  “Nice job,” said Nariko, dusting herself off and walking closer. “They took quite a gamble…”

  The rest of Nariko’s words grew tinny and distant as the cold wave emanating from the bite on Heath’s neck swept over him. The world vanished in a crust of blue.

  3

  As Heath found his way toward consciousness, he felt as though he were lying inside a volcano, with only a thin layer of asbestos keeping the lava from burning him to ash. Oddly, he smelled something sweet and woodsy, that for some reason reminded him of Grandma’s kitchen.

  He could hear the lava sloshing around him in the darkness. Sounded awfully thin for lava. Pictures and film clips always made it look viscous, and thick as molasses.

  Sometime later Heath realized he’d passed out again. That smell was still there, and now he heard the gentle plucking of a stringed instrument. Not a guitar though. And the lava felt less like lava. Cooler. Except on his face and neck. Hot hot hot in those places.

  No. Wait. Only a line on his left cheek. And a spot at the back of his neck.

  His eyes were gummy, but trying over and over proved he could blink them open.

  Heath was naked, in a bathtub. He could tell that much through the bright, blurry world around him. Salmon and sand colored shapes that must have been tiles on walls and a floor. He rubbed his fingers together in the … water? Apparently he’d been in the tub a long time. Long enough to go from grape to raisin.

  “Awake. But not yet present.”

  A woman’s voice. Familiar. Not Nariko, though her inflection reminded him of Nariko. This woman sounded … more experienced. Not so much that she sounded older. More like the woman speaking had more depth to her soft voice.

  “W-w-w-where…” Heath’s jaw chattered too much to get any more of the sentence out, but the woman understood.

  “Insensible. As I thought. And still so far out of balance.” A single clucking sound. “More incense.”

  Those last two words weren’t directed at Heath. He could tell that much. And there was something familiar about the pattern of tiles, but the connection felt elusive in his head. Every time he almost grasped it, some note of the music distracted him, or some undercurrent of the floral smell reminded him of vanilla, or his stomach rumbled.

  All hope of comprehension was lost when the woman began speaking Japanese to someone else.

  A second voice answered, also in Japanese. Nariko. Heath was sure of it. He’d know her voice anywhere, even when the world was blurry and hot and cold and…

  Everything clicked. The tiles around this bathtub. Heath had seen them before. And that woman Nariko was talking to. She had the same inflection style because she taught Nariko to speak.

  Heath tried in vain to cover himself with his hands.

  “I’m-m-m-m s-s-s-s-orry to-to-to in-t-t-trude, Miss-s-s-sus—”

  “Oh, stop,” said Nariko’s mother. “Bad enough you drag my daughter into your troubles. Don’t make me listen to you try to talk in your current condition.”

  “Mother!”

  “If you had left him to die, you would be free of him. Didn’t you once tell me that was what you wanted more than—”

  “Out! I can handle it from here.”

  “This is delicate work.” Real reluctance in her tone. “Don’t let him soil my bathroom because you are impatient.”

  “Go. Please.”

  “All right, but if you stocked your apartment properly you wouldn’t need my bathroom in the first place…”

  Mercifully, Nariko’s mother switched to Japanese as she left the room, sparing Heath from understanding what further complaints she lodged.

  Nariko knelt beside the tub and drew a pattern in front of Heath’s face with the smoke of three incense sticks. Sandalwood and vanilla smoke. She moved on to other patterns over his body while whispering in Japanese. Prayers to her ancestors maybe.

  The smoke swirled and shifted so hard the tub started spinning. Or maybe it was the room. Or maybe it was Heath. He wasn’t quite sure, because the only thing he knew for certain was that he blinked and Nariko wasn’t there.

  The water was cooler now. Tepid. And the room didn’t smell like sandalwood and vanilla. More like cherry and dragon’s blood.

  Had he passed out again?

  Heath blinked and rubbed his eyes. The bathroom around him sharpened into view. The tile work. The black line art image of a bird in flight against a white mountain background. A photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Tachibana, smiling, standing at the peak of Mount Sobo in runner’s gear.

  Next to the bathtub a toilet and bidet. Fluffy, sage-colored towels and hand towels and washcloths hanging on the wall between the tub and a shower stall. Pedestal sink, currently ringed with a half-dozen white pillar candles, all lit and all half burned away.

  No sign of the incense sticks. What Heath smelled must simply have been lingering in the air.

  No sign of Heath’s clothes, either. Though his backpack rested against the bottom of the sink’s pedestal.

  Heath gingerly ran his fingers over the cut on his cheek. Some kind of paste was smeared on it. Slightly tacky, but not enough to come away on his fingers at so light a touch. That spot on the back of his neck was covered with a bandage. Not a simple Band-Aid either. A small pad taped into place, and when he pressed on it Heath could feel a sharp warning that pressing on it was a bad idea. He could also feel that herbs and perhaps another paste had been applied under the bandage.

  He stood, water dripping off his waterlogged frame. His knees felt shaky, and he steadied himself with a hand on the wall to help himself out of the tub. A tremor shook his stomach hard enough to suggest he hadn’t eaten in days. But more important than that was stepping to the toilet to relieve himself.

  When he washed up, he got his first good look in the mirror. His skin looked downright pale. Girlfriends always liked to describe his skin tone as light milk chocolate. But the way he looked right now, someone had gone heavy on the milk and light on the cocoa beans.

  His eyes looked good though. He’d expected them to be bloodshot.

  Heath sat cross-legged on the cold, wet tile floor and dug into his backpack. First he pulled out the bedpan, his mini saucepan incense censer. Next the symbol and sigil covered three-inch-by-three-inch cherry wood box that housed travel packs of his own incenses. From there, he dug out another dozen herbs and not quite half as many oils.

  Whatever that red blur had done to Heath, either the bite or the cure had stripped him of all his casual protection magics. And there was no way he was leaving this bathroom without getting every one of them back in place.

  And since it looked as though some pretty serious players were coming after him, maybe it was time to add a few extras.

  The first time Heath had seen Nariko’s bedroom in her parents’ house, she’d had soccer and J-pop posters on the walls, clothes on the floor, and makeup and books scattered everywhere. Half a grilled cheese sandwich had awaited her attention on top of her nightstand alarm clock with its giant red numbers. The whole room had smelled like jasmine and sandalwood. Her father had said she’d “exploded” home from college for spring break.

  That was five years ago, when neither Heath nor Nariko was old enough to drink.

  The room around Heath right now fit in better with the décor of the rest of the house. Cream-colored carpet with precision vacuum lines. Professional paint job on the walls in a light canary yellow. Delicate golden curtains framing the second-story view of Douglas firs instead of Nariko’s old blackout drapes banishing it. And a brand new queen mattress with a teak frame, dead center of the room instead of shoved along one wall where she used to keep the old one.

  Each of the three interior walls now had a single line art painting of a Japanese countryside, as though depicting the view in three directions from the peak of a mountain. The only sound Heath could hear was the tinkling of a wooden wind chime outside the window.

  Nariko perched on the edge of the bed, watching Heath take it all in. She was still wearing the shirt and slacks combo from Tsarina’s, so it must have been the same day. Made Heath feel better that he was still wearing the same black jeans and blue-and-white striped shirt.

  “No bookshelves,” he said finally. “No nightstands. Not even a chest of drawers.”

  “I’m welcome to sleep here anytime I like. But Mom wouldn’t want me thinking I could move back in.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nariko looked away, fiddled with the duvet. “I told you. You’re too pretty to be a corpse.”

  Heath thought about saying more. About her mother, about how much he understood or thought he understood about what Nariko had brought on herself by bringing him here. But the moment was ruined when his stomach rumbled hard enough to shake his knees.

  “Reminds me,” said Nariko. “Your pirozhkis are in the fridge. Inga had them sent here.”

  Heath let that sink in for a moment. Inga had said she’d send the food to his place, but instead it found Heath down here in a suburb along the southwest border of town. Heath had never picked up any magic at Tsarina’s, either, which made the food delivery even spookier. But thinking about that that made Heath realize something.

  “Did you get me all the way here on the back of your bike?”

  “Like I had another option? You’re heavier than you look, by the way. I’d for—Made for an awkward ride, let me tell you.”

  “It’s a comical image,” Heath said, fighting a smile. “From downtown to Lake Oswego…”

  “Would be if you weren’t dying at the time.” All business in her eyes again. “Any idea what that red thing was?”

  “Didn’t get a good look, but I’m betting it was a snapper.”

  Nariko fluttered her lashes in that way that clearly meant, “and that is…”

  “When some of the old world witches came to the United States from Spain and Italy, their magic changed to accommodate the new world. They started finding new spirits to work with, new combinations—”

  “Should I be taking notes?”

  “Fine. Between logging and gold mining, the mass migration west in the nineteenth century drove two breeds of woodpeckers to extinction. The snapper is a bird spirit who’s pissed about that and out for revenge. Bind one and you can give it targets.”

  Nariko stared at Heath, one eyebrow slowly ascending to an arch. When it reached its apex she said, “Are you telling me you were almost killed by a dead, homicidal woodpecker?”

  “Who the Hell would admit that if it weren’t true?”

  “Fair point.” Nariko shrugged. “What’s it got to do with Spain and Italy?”

  “Nothing, except that those were the immigrant witches who first discovered and bound snappers. And the I.D.s had Italian last names despite the decidedly un-Italian first names. Figured it was a statement.”

  “Reminds me.” Nariko snapped her fingers. “Guy with the submachine gun. He was a distraction, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Heath scratched around the edges of the tape on the back of his neck. “Had some kind of look-at-me spell on his trench coat, same as the two from the parking lot.”

  “Marvin and Jarvis. And don’t pick at that.”

  Heath lowered his hands. “Point is, they they got us out of the building and someplace open where the snapper could strike while all our attention was on the guys in trench coats. It’s a theory, anyway.”

  “So now what?”

  Heath shook his head. “I knew getting this book was going to be tricky, but I didn’t think anyone would be actively trying to kill me for it. I won’t hold it against you if you want out.”

  Nariko sighed. “You heard that little dig from my mom, didn’t you?”

  Heath sucked in his lips to keep from answering.

  “I don’t want you dead.” She wouldn’t look at him. She was watching the dark clouds rolling through the skies out the window. “I never did. Not really. I just wanted…”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  She looked at him then, too much feeling in her green eyes for Heath to interpret it all.

  “I’m not going to let you get killed because no one corporeal is watching your back.”

  “If anyone’s going to kill me it’ll be you?”

  That got a smirk out of her. “You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you?”

  “I still can’t decide if you meant it as a sideways compliment or a sideways insult.”

  “Both.” She stood and folded her arms. “And you never answered my question. Now what?”

  “I need answers. Some idea what I’m dealing with. Back at my place I can—”

  “I know you’re good at not being followed when you put your mind to it, but if you think your place isn’t being watched – or maybe even actively under assault – then you’re too stupid to live and I withdraw my protection.”

  Not even a hint of humor in her posture.

  “Fine. No choice then. I need to see the Sybil.”

  “I wouldn’t call her reliable.”

  “I’ve got three trapped spirits back at my place that could get me the answers I need in an hour. But if you think going there’s a bad idea, I don’t see what my options are.”

  “Your cards can’t help here?” She pointed to Heath’s backpack. “You can’t tell me you don’t have a deck tucked away somewhere inside that beast.”

  “I do, but they’d be no more use than cowrie shells. Not for this.”

  “Ouija board maybe?”

  “Nariko.”

  “Fine, but I’m waiting by the bike and keeping watch for this one.”

  The pirozhkis full of eggs, potatoes and bacon helped settle Heath’s stomach, and Nariko’s mother insisted to Nariko that he also have a cup of oolong tea and two cold, hard boiled eggs, unsalted.

  By the time Heath finished eating, he had to admit he felt better. More aware of his surroundings when he followed Nariko out through the garage to where her BMW was parked on the cobblestone driveway in front of an emerald green Lexus SUV. She swung her leg over the bike, but before he got on behind her he stopped and looked up and down the street.

  Or at least what he could see of it. Her parents lived near the top of a hill, so the road curved sharply away one direction and sharply down in the other. The borders between their house and their neighbors’ were demarcated with eight-foot-tall arborvitae shrubs, hemming his view still further. Elms and Douglas firs lined the other side of the street, protecting those who lived below from feeling looked-down upon.