Since Anastasia didn’t seem to be paying any attention to us, I introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Kitty. These are my friends, Ben and Cormac.” Ben smiled thinly; Cormac didn’t seem to be paying attention, studying his surroundings instead.
“Grace,” she said. “What’s your deal?”
I glanced at Anastasia. “I’m not sure I exactly know.”
“Kitty, you and the others can keep a lookout,” Anastasia said.
“I guess we’re the hired muscle,” I said, donning a wry grin. “I’d actually rather stay and watch. Five hundred years old you said?”
Anastasia set her jaw and refused to be baited, but Grace seemed intrigued, as if annoying the vampire gave me a point in my favor. Grace offered me the scroll.
It didn’t seem like five-hundred-year-old paper. It should have been dusty, crumbling at the least touch, but it had been very well preserved and felt smooth and strong. Which meant, if it really was that old, it had to be magic. A column of Chinese characters was inked on it. Cormac stepped over, and I offered it to him. He ran a finger over the surface, then shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, handing it back to Grace.
“What would you expect to know about this?” Anastasia said.
He hitched his thumbs on the pockets of his jacket and looked away, smiling wryly. I knew what people saw when they looked at Cormac: tough guy, man of few words, maybe not too bright. He cultivated the image.
Anastasia said to Grace, “You have the Dragon’s Pearl, yes?”
“If you get the Dragon’s Pearl, what are you going to do with it?” Grace answered.
“If I get it? Does that promise mean nothing to you?”
“I have to ask, it’s part of the deal,” she said.
Combat sound effects echoed from the TV at the front of the store.
“I don’t want it for myself,” Anastasia said. “I want to protect it. A very dark power is looking for it.”
“I thought I was protecting it.”
“This is bigger than you are.”
Grace laughed. “That’s what you say to someone you want to help you?”
I stepped in. “It’s a vampire thing. They have this innate sense of superiority. Just ignore it.”
“Vampire?” Grace said, skeptical. “You don’t look dead.”
“I’m not jiang shi,” Anastasia said with forced patience. “I’m much more than an animated corpse.”
I had to admire Grace for seeming confused rather than frightened. As if five-hundred-year-old messages showed up on her doorstep all the time. “So we’re talking Dracula here?”
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Anastasia said. “But yes. And I’ll get what I came for.”
Looking tough with her punk hair and punk glasses, Grace stood with her arms crossed. She was solid as a wall, and not afraid of the vampire.
“Anastasia,” I said. “You need to stop acting like everyone’s a bad guy. We’re all on the same side here.”
“I thought hired muscle wasn’t supposed to talk much,” Grace said.
“They aren’t,” Anastasia said stiffly.
“Hey, you knew what you were getting when you asked me for help,” I said. Love me, love my big fat mouth.
Anastasia took a settling breath. “Grace Chen, I need to know that the pearl is safe. I need your help.”
She gave a curt nod. “The pearl’s not here. I’ll have to take you to it. Wait here while I close up the store.”
Anastasia’s lips pressed together as if she held back a retort. But all she said was, “Thank you.”
Grace went to the front. I followed, after glancing at Ben and catching his eye. Nodding, he stayed behind, pacing a couple of steps back and forth.
I could have browsed in the store for an hour, picking through the crowded bargain CD bin, ogling DVD packages stacked two deep along the wall. My gaze skimmed the posters and signs—it was sensory overload, especially not being able to read the language that three quarters of everything was written in. Grace was at the front door, locking up. I was about to say something friendly and ice-breaking, but she beat me to it.
Glancing at me over her shoulder, she said, “Your friend there, the quiet one.” She nodded toward the back room. “You know he’s got two spirits?”
“Really?” I blinked, not entirely surprised but fascinated all the same. “What does that even look like?”
“It’s weird. Everybody’s got their energy and it usually tells me something about the person. Like you and him”—she pointed at Ben—“are wild, lots of animal in you. So you’re what, werewolves? Her—she’s dark. Stuck, in a way. She’s got energy, but it’s frozen. Strange to look at. But him—he’s like yin and yang, but there’s no harmony to it.”
“Yin and yang, that’s like male and female, right?”
“There’s a lot more to it than that. You know what’s going on with him?”
“It’s not really my story to tell,” I said.
“I’m not sure I have the nerve to ask him myself,” she said, moving to the counter where she locked the drawer on an old-fashioned cash register. There was a safe under the counter, and she locked that, too.
“He has that effect on people,” I said. “What’s your story?”
“What’s there to tell? One of my ancestors made that chick a promise and I have to make good on it.”
“But you’re, what: Magician? Psychic?”
“I don’t even know what you’d call it. But yeah, something like that. So what about you? You really working for her? Is that how it usually happens, werewolves working for vampires?”
“I don’t know how it normally works,” I said. “I thought I was doing her a favor, but she doesn’t much act like that’s how it’s working. I think you threw her off her stride as well. She’s used
