to wonder if that had been done on purpose.
Within, a voice answered in a language I didn’t speak, but the sound of “coming!” is pretty universal. Within moments, an elderly Asian woman opened the door, smiling when she saw us. Her head barely reached my bicep, even petite Gretchen towering over her. Her graying hair was nearly white, pulled back into its tight bun, and her clothes were some kind of traditional garb, a small jacket and long skirt in simple fabrics. Not Japanese, I knew that much, but it didn’t look like Chinese either.
“Um…hi. Ivan Zelenko sent us?” The old woman gave no indication that she recognized his name, or that she even spoke English. The deep wrinkles around her eyes only served to make them glitter merrily as she gestured us inside, and babbled something at us in her native language. I don’t think she cared that we couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Or, maybe she wanted it that way. For all I knew, she could be saying “Come inside, we’ll feed you to the monster in the back room.”
Inside the small shop—at least, I assumed it was a shop; either that, or a junk heap—we picked our way gingerly through the narrow aisles, trying not to knock things off overburdened shelves that seemed to take up every spare inch of space. I saw greasy car parts on those shelves, mingled in with half-woven baskets, ancient, cloudy bottles of indeterminate contents, and several old rotary telephones. There were busted-up video games from years gone by thrown in with old canned foods that bulged ominously. The shelves were stacked to the ceiling, and I eyed several precariously balanced fans on the top as we made our way through. That’d be a helluva booby trap, for the unwary.
Tai, as broad-shouldered as he was, was reduced to edging his way along sideways, and even I was having problems. The path had obviously been designed for someone much shorter than either of us. Glancing back over my shoulder, I told him, “If anyone offers to sell you a mogwai in this place, don’t buy it.” He laughed.
Unfortunately, Gretchen’s smaller stature wasn’t holding her up as much, and as she got farther ahead of us, I cursed myself for not putting her between us where we could keep an eye on her. “Hey, slow down…. Listen, we’re trying to find Cindy Lee—”
Either she didn’t hear me, or Gretchen just wasn’t listening to me, because she kept right on following the tiny Asian woman until they both disappeared through a beaded bamboo curtain up ahead. “Dammit…” I quickened my pace as much as I dared, finally bursting out of the clutter into an open room with a rattle of peeved bamboo.
The three women in the room turned to look at the ruckus, each of them throwing an identical look of disappointment at me. Gretchen, at least, I could stare down in return, and once Tai stumbled through the narrow doorway behind me, the heat was directed elsewhere.
The third woman in the room stood out in the strange surroundings just by means of her normalcy. She was tiny, just like the other woman, but young, Gretchen’s age maybe, her silky black hair drawn back in a plain ponytail. Her sneakers were worn, her blue jeans were dirty, like she’d been sorting through the clutter in the other room, and her T-shirt was from UCLA. In fact, I could easily believe that she’d just come from campus, if I hadn’t known that most schools were still out for the winter holidays.
Smiling, she patted the old woman on the back, speaking to her in the same musical language, and the elderly woman shuffled off through yet another beaded curtain. “Hi, I’m Cindy. You must be Ivan’s friends?”
“He sent us, yes.” She didn’t look like she wanted to shake hands, and I didn’t offer. Though she looked petite and delicate, something just told me not to. For no apparent reason, the thought of touching her hand filled me with a cold dread. “I’m Jesse. This is Tai and Gretchen.” She nodded to my companions as I introduced them, then turned her gaze back on me.
“Have a seat, all of you, while we discuss our business. Would you like tea? Soda? Something stronger?”
“Some water, maybe?” Gretchen asked as she found a seat on a low futon-type sofa. Tai sat with her, and I kept my standing position near the door. Always cover your way out.
“Of course.” Our hostess crossed to the other beaded curtain, calling out to the elderly woman I presume. While her back was turned, I shook my head subtly at Gretchen. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I didn’t want her eating or drinking anything that came from this strange woman’s hands.
As Cindy turned back, she gave me a faint smirk, and I got the idea that somehow she’d seen my signal to Gretchen. She didn’t remark on it, though, and I wasn’t going to bring it up if she didn’t.
She took a seat on the opposite side of the low table in the room, the creaking of her wicker chair sounding almost like the furniture was complaining at being put to work. “Now. Ivan told me little of what you are needing. Perhaps you could explain?”
“Before we get to that…I have a request, and it’s kinda strange.” I had no idea who this woman was. But before we went any further, I needed to make sure who she wasn’t.
She raised a dark brow at me curiously when I showed her the safety pin. “Do you always stab women you’ve just met?”
“You’d be surprised.” I gave her half a grin. “Would you prefer I get to know you a bit more? Cindy, that’s not a Chinese name, right?”
“I’m Korean, actually. And no, it’s not. It’s short for Cinderella.”
“Your name is Cinderella.”
“At the moment.” She held her hand out to me. “I think we’ve become good friends now, yes?”
Despite my inexplicable aversion to touching her, I held my hand out, and allowed her to place hers in mine.
I don’t know what I expected to happen, but nothing did. Her hands were soft, unmarred, obviously not into heavy manual labor. There was a faint tingle up the hairs on my arm, the telltale traces of magic on her skin, but nothing like Tai could produce. Hell, I’d felt stronger signs from my wife. I couldn’t even tell if this strange woman was a practitioner, or had just brushed up against something recently. And still, everything in me screamed to let her go, to put distance between me and this tiny, harmless-looking little girl.
I pricked the offered finger, releasing her as soon as the blood welled up, and she wrapped it in a tissue. “You’ll understand if I ask you to leave the pin, of course.”
“Sure, whatever you want.” I snapped it shut and tossed it her way. Practitioner, definitely. A layman would have let the safety pin go, and then I’d have had a trace of her blood if I needed it later. She knew what she was doing.
