Home is Where the Heat is

There was a new car parked in the driveway, one Kira hadn’t recognized from the few snippets of her memory in which a car had ever been left there.

Guests historically hadn’t been the type to waste money on personal vehicles given their rather limited lifespans, and street parking was limited to a few shoeboxes worth of space more than comfortable walking distance downroad. An unlucky day – or a winter day like the current one – when convenient, covered spaces were at a premium, taken in the wee hours of the morn, almost guaranteed an oppressive trudge both directions commonly joked about by Western tourists and their ancestors.

Their gate was broken, too; it had always been broken, so far as she recalled, and rusted shut by years of disuse. But it could be forced if needed to allow a car onto the property.

“Could” was the operative word.

Mom must have gotten a promotion, Kira figured.

The car shone in the sun like treasure. Sleek. Modern. Susceptible. A prized white racehorse one broken bone away from swift, gruesome cascade into multiple organ failure. Giving it a wide berth, Kira kept to the opposite street before ducking into the sliver of alleyway between her home and the next. A veritable minefield of pet dishes in various states of fullness and orientation there required careful stepping around to reach her target.

The bedsheet rope still hung from her window, now soaked through with icy water and frosted over by the cold night. Thankfully, no passersby had thought to cut down the undoubtedly suspicious sight nor inform her family of possible escapees. That or her family were already aware, laying in wait inside her room in a semicircle of chairs in front of another empty one specifically for her, and this was but a trap to deliver her straight into an intervention.

Oh, daughter of ours, how could you have taken a criminal path in life? We raised you better than that!

“Mom, you hadn’t raised me at all,” she whispered to no one.

Neither had her father, spending all his time nose-deep in manuals and books of ancient wartime strategy, read by the light of magic flame ignited at the end of his thumb, but at least he’d stuck around. Although, given how much money he’d spent on cat food for the strays in their area, maybe they’d been a higher priority than his wielder child.

Maybe even mightier than his own wielder mother. She’d tried to fill the void left behind, moving in as part of the process, and achieved success by the end – Kira now tried to avoid her just as much.

Tying the sheet’s end around the case’s handle, fingers turned a shade above blue in the process, Kira pulled down her sleeve to offer them thin protection before she took the rope again in hand. One over the other, she scrambled up the side of the two-story building. A blinking lamppost illuminated the thief like a searchlight. Pipes and an air conditioning unit offered footholds on the ascent to the window, left unlocked before she and Arata had departed. Fingers wriggled into the narrow gap made by the rope, and she shoved the window aside, hurdling the sill and falling into the warmth of her room.

Quite literally – falling.

Oh, Kira thought, floor coming up to meet her. Right. We’d moved the desk to make this easier. There it is – just to the right.

And it wasn’t just the floor. Caught by the moments of syrupy time, she saw the plethora of school material gathered for this very day in short, orderly piles. Arata had mentioned laying such out before he’d bogarted her bookbag for his tools. If only she’d worn the bag over her front. These endless frozen minutes could have been better spent sweeping everything back together instead of contemplating how much her nose striking Quintessential Insects: A Guide to the Modern World and Entomology was going to hurt. A caterpillar and resultant butterfly decorated the cover. Remembering the winged beauty had a raised texture, she aimed for that.

It still hurt.

Folders slid to the floor and spilled their unbound innards. Under her legs, binders crinkled. Textbooks, colorful and unyielding, took the brunt of her impact and laughed the meager weight off. Across her walls, muslin-wrapped boards displaying pinned preserved prisoners rattled their discontent at being awoken so harshly.

At the room’s other end, far from the bed and hung high up on the wall, was a clock still ticking. Dust clung to its shape: an airheaded dog popular with children and the elderly who gifted them to the former. Its eyes drifted from side to side, looking anywhere but the disheveled form at the foot of the bed who had eyes only for the numerals on its spotted paunch.

9:45 AM.

Fifteen minutes to leave. I’ve got time, she thought. I actually have time!

Kira dabbed below her nose, finding no blood. Without wasting further seconds she rose from the supplies scattered about and began to reel in the bedsheet rope, the case at the end a prized marlin, ensuring her supplies were safely out of harm’s way as she piled sopping cold sheets by the window. Once untied it was tossed onto the bed, backpack following. Supplies came next, swept back home into the bag they’d belonged.

From under the bedframe she withdrew a similar backpack with a grunt of effort. Unlike the first, previously empty like a formal suit, this one sunk into the mattress upon landing beside. Zippers to the largest compartment were in hand when the bedroom door was thrown open not entirely without warning. The clack of driven heels against the floor growing more distinct had been pushed to the edges of notice, memories of restraint offering solace against concerns that the tenuous respect between child and estranged parent would be maintained instead of shattered like a beer bottle bottom against a table edge. Kira jumped, her head spinning to the door.

A severe-looking woman stood in the doorway, clad in all the ironed, high-strung threads of a salarywoman, a sharp contrast to her haggard daughter in clothes slept with and reeking of sweat and ash. Her hair was held brutally in place, prim and proper, while Kira’s stuck out at all angles.

Worries numerous had left their mark on the older woman’s face, deeper than one layer of makeup aligning with workplace policy could soften. She wore a frown that only exaggerated them, a sign Kira took as the touchstone for her words to come. A tie coiled around her mother’s neck like a noose, unpatterned and black.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Here,” lied Kira, badly. “Woke up later than I’d wanted to.”

“So you’re aware of the time, then.”

“Yes.”

Her mother’s hand on the door began to tap a single finger. The digital watch she wore on that wrist was dormant. Dark. “Fortunate for you I’d thought to build allowance into this day, else you’d attend this interview undressed and unwashed. Appearance of an urchin to embarrass yourself and me.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

The woman exhaled a shaking breath. “Come down at once. We have a guest.”

“Should I not dress first for this?”

“No.”

The word escaped that terse line of a mouth too quickly. Kira noticed that her mother was shaking then, and the house was too warm for chill to be the reason. “At once,” she repeated. With that warning, she turned and left, heels clacking down the hall.

Kira followed soon after, but not before pulling from a side pouch of one backpack the iron banded shattering wand, slipping it into her pocket. Not a subtle weapon, outlined against her pants as it was, but use wouldn’t result in the house burning down. She caught up to her mother as she descended the stairs.

“Who’s come by?” she asked.

Silence was her mother’s answer, as was the answer of the house. No voices drifted from below. No chatter. None of her father’s idle musings as he washed dishes and dallied about on housework. None of her grandmother’s rickety laughter. To a wielder’s home, quiet was as much a houseguest as a living body, part and parcel with their gift of eroding circuitry and therefore the need to keep the home’s veins thrumming with power. But this was a deeper silence that screamed in her ears.

“Where is father? And grandmother?”

Her mother led her past an empty kitchen, the empty bathroom, the empty dining room and its empty chairs all pushed in. Cold were the candles grouped together on the tables, the bookshelves, and mounted on the walls. Dust specks drifted through the space freely. Light bled through the paper windows as they walked, and Kira tasted the faint sweet traces of incense on the air, realizing she was being led to the tatami room.

The room was dark on arrival, devoid of any window. Even so, her youthful eyes could pick out a form sitting cross-legged at the low table, and her ears the supping of a thirsty mouth.

Flame flickered in the hands of the guest, brought into being from no discernible tool or device. It was bidden pure, and by its illumination licking at the cup of tea in their guest’s hand did Kira glimpse three taloned fingers wreathed in gold filigree.

The Don of Dragon’s eyes flashed up at the thief, and he gestured for her to sit.

“We have a great deal to discuss, Miss Ishikawa.”