In the photo that Knickknack had given Mokoto, the house number of 1225 was clearly painted over his head. It took Tommy only a few minutes on a hoverbike to find the right building.
There was a dusty boot print by the doorknob of the red painted door. The century-old jam had splintered under the force.
Tommy glanced about as he dismounted his hoverbike.
The North Side used to be one of the more heavily populated neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. It was nicknamed Chinatown because of the number of “Chinese” who lived in the area. Most of the population, though, hadn’t been human. The gutters had run with blood as the elves had gone door to door, killing any nonhuman that they found. Tommy had managed to get most of the half-oni to safety, but the true bloods disguised as humans had been wiped out.
It meant that the area had been nearly deserted for weeks. It was unlikely that anyone had seen or heard the front door of Number 1225 being kicked in.
The foyer had been painted white. Someone had been hit hard enough to spray the wall with small droplets of blood. Stairs led up to a second floor. A bloody handprint marked the wall at the top of the steps, as if someone going up had steadied themselves.
Tommy shook his head. Why run up the stairs? That would trap you in the building with whoever kicked down the front door. Someone had gotten wise — the back door was hanging open at the end of the long hallway.
He pulled the bandana off his ears. They twitched back and forth as he listened closely. The house seemed empty. He could only pick up the distant rumble of traffic. He pulled his knife and cautiously went through the front door.
Tommy had never been in the home of a pure human. He hadn’t been sure what to expect.
Not this.
The room to the left of the foyer had been painted brilliant red. “Toad Hall” had been spelled out on the far wall in big mismatched letters stolen from store signs, mostly from closed McDonalds. The archway into the room was half blocked off with wood from shipping pallets, and the entire space had been filled with colorful three-inch-diameter plastic balls. The connecting windowless room had been painted with a big gleaming mural of a starscape of planets, stars, and rimfire done in ultraviolet paint on black. Every inch of floor was covered with couches or mattresses, like a big sleeping pit, except there were no real sheets or blankets. Tommy couldn’t think of any reason for the dark bed-like area except for sex, but it seemed too public.
He paused in the foyer, listening, as he puzzled over all the scents washing over him. Did human houses always stink this bad? The smell of garbage was the strongest, coming from the kitchen. From where he was standing, he could see that every counter was covered with unwashed dishes and several big overflowing black trash bags sat on the floor. This was nearly as bad as a whelping pen. Did true humans actually live this way? His aunts would beat these people with a wooden spoon for not keeping the kitchen clean.
Under the stench of standing dishwater and garbage, he could pick out the smell of death. It wasn’t strong enough for a full dead body to be rotting in the heat, but definitely something had died in the building. Then there was another, faintly sweet flowery smell that he couldn’t place.
The stairs were as old as the house and would probably creak and groan as he climbed them. Was anyone hiding upstairs? All his senses said no. He climbed the steps as quietly as he could but they still seemed dangerously loud to his sensitive ears.
At some point in the past, the second floor had been made into one big room. He couldn’t imagine why. The space had been divided down into “rooms” via clotheslines strung above eyelevel and draped with old blankets, American flags, and sheets. It seemed as if the girls had claimed this area. Each fabric-defined cubby was stuffed to the brim with the most unlikely items. A massive stuffed giraffe. Photo collages. A sex blowup doll. A stunning number of shoes. Frilly clothing. A small shrine to something called “Lemon-Lime” with posters proclaiming “Blast it all” and “Prince Yardstick Rules” and bobble-head elves. Mismatched chairs. Road signs. Street signs. Stop signs. It seemed as if the girls would loot anything that they could carry away, even if they had to pry it up.
In the corner farthest from the stairs, there was an oddly placed door. Someone had run to the doorway but had been killed before they reached it. The body was missing but the blood spray on the wall beside the door indicated that an artery had been hit. The person had collapsed onto a mattress and bled out. The stench of death was coming from the blood soaked into the bedding.
Where were they running to?
Tommy opened the door. Someone had knocked a hole into the neighboring townhouse via the shared wall. The connecting building had been gutted and set up as a giant three-story trampoline pit. The front door and first-floor windows were boarded over so that the door between the houses was the only way in and out. It was unlikely that the work had been done this summer, not with the war going into full swing. Toad had expanded into the second building long ago, before Knickknack and the other Undefended moved in with him.
More and more Toad seemed like a giant child instead of an adult male.
The flowery scent was even stronger in the second building, despite all the second- and third-story windows being wide open. Tommy followed the smell down to the basement door. There were respirators hanging by the door.
What in the world did Toad have in the basement?
Tommy fitted one of the respirators over his face and opened the door.
The basement was filled with glowing plants in long raised wooden planters. Tommy recognized the gleaming gold flowers from running medical supplies for his father. Saijin was used by both the elves and the oni as an anesthetic.
How the hell did Toad figure out how to grow saijin?
The oni had long complained that the drug needed to be smuggled in from Onihida as they hadn’t been able to get it to grow in Pittsburgh. They had tried everything. What had Toad done differently? Tommy went down the steps to investigate closer.
Big industrial-sized grow lights, like the ones marijuana farmers used, hung from the rafters. The oni had tried those and failed. There were containers of various fertilizers set under planters, but the oni had used those too. There was a homemade computer-controlled watering system, but it seemed only to turn the faucet on and off with a timer. The water flowed through plastic tubing with tiny holes drilled in the bottom.
The only thing different from the failed farms that Tommy had seen in the past was that Toad had affixed ceramic tiles onto the wooden planters. The tiles were etched with a spell that gleamed faintly as a sign that the magic was active.
Tommy had seen something like the tile before. Lord Tomtom had dozens of oni true bloods disguised as humans working on Tinker’s gate. Most of them were carpenters who knew how to work ironwood, but a few had learned the rudiments of electrical wiring. After Tinker melted down Turtle Creek, some had come to Chang’s restaurant in Oakland, carrying what they could quickly salvage before the entire valley turned into a weird, cold blue soup. One had a box of ceramic tiles printed with a spell. Aunt Flo had chased them out, saying that the elves would track them to the restaurant. The tiles had been left behind. At some point the little ones got into them and were playing with them in the backrooms.
Then Malice had leveled the restaurant. His family had taken what survived — clothing, pots and pans, and dishes — and fled. Again, the tiles were left behind in the chaos.
Knickknack was a college student. A smart boy. Had he gone to the restaurant looking for Mokoto and found the tiles instead?