Tommy realized that the edges of his vision were going white. He stumbled upstairs and slammed the door shut. No wonder Toad had set the farm up in a separate house. One flower was safe but not a basement full of them.
Tommy backtracked to the door on the second floor of the first house, taking deep breaths to clear his mind.
Who had attacked Toad Hall?
It didn’t feel like an oni attack. The oni would want the women unharmed and the men rendered harmless fast. They wouldn’t have wounded a woman and a man wouldn’t have left the foyer alive. The time of day was odd too. The oni would have would attacked late with the cover of night, long after even the night owls had gone to sleep. Based on what lights were on in the house, it would have been easy to see that at least one of the Undefended had been on the first floor, awake. Also the oni wouldn’t have ignored the door to the second building, even after capturing the humans. The oni would have searched, found and taken the saijin. It wasn’t hidden and it was worth its weight in gold.
The elves had searched the North Side earlier in the summer, killing any disguised oni that they found. The sidewalks had been stacked with dead. More than one half-oni had been caught up in the search and executed. Tommy hadn’t heard of any new searches. The elves wouldn’t have left the second building unsearched, and they too would have taken the saijin. Ditto for the tengu.
That left a city full of humans as possible attackers.
The streetwalkers had little of value beyond the saijin. Secondhand mattresses. Worn linens. Thrift-store clothes. Theirs was a plastic and cardboard existence.
Tommy climbed the narrow, creaking stairs to the third floor in search of answers. The top floor had three proper bedrooms. By the musky male scent that lingered in all of the rooms, this was where the boys had been sleeping. Unlike the girls, the boys had actual furniture. Dressers. Desks. Beds with headboards and frames to lift the mattresses off the floor. Like the girls, the boys had posters, photographs, and stolen signs covering the walls.
One of the rooms had shelves built out of cinder blocks and wooden boards. Whatever had sat on the shelves was gone. A cork board had been hung over the desk. Push tacks still held down torn corners of paper, evidence that someone had ripped down everything pinned onto the board. The desk was cleared but the dresser still had some clothing.
Tommy knelt down beside the bed. His family hid things under their pillows and mattresses and in among their blankets, as their beds were the only private space in the warren. He was guessing in a houseful of streetwalkers, the lack of privacy would be much the same. A quick search of the bed uncovered a phone and a familiar T-shirt. It was one of Mokoto’s favorite shirts. It had been tucked under the pillow and still held his scent.
This had been Knickknack’s bedroom.
Tommy scanned the room. Everything that a person would need while in hiding hadn’t been taken: the clothes, the bedding, the phone. Someone else had stripped Knickknack’s room. What did a streetwalker have that was so valuable? Why had they taken everything pinned to the bulletin board?
He thought of Tinker’s war room at Poppymeadows. She had lists, maps, and pictures taped to the walls of the dining room. Oilcan had something similar at his enclave, tracking the work on their nightclub. Was that how crazy smart people tracked what they knew?
Someone walked onto the back porch of the house and into the kitchen.
Tommy froze. Knickknack’s bedroom was on the third floor with only one way down to street level. A single person was easy prey for Tommy’s mind-clouding abilities. If he had to deal with more than one attacker while trapped on the third floor, things could get hairy.
He tucked away Knickknack’s cell phone and listened closely.
The person in the kitchen opened the refrigerator and clinked together glass bottles. Tommy’s keen ears caught the unmistakable hiss of a beer being opened. The cap fell to the kitchen floor with a quiet jingle. There were no other footsteps to indicate there was more than one person.
Tommy reached out with his mind. The person was attempting a fearless swagger while filled with nervous fear. Tommy pulled his bandana back on just in case “one” became “many.” Feeding the illusion of the peaceful silence of an empty house into the mind of the person in the kitchen, Tommy started down the creaky stairs.
Toad was standing in the back doorway, drinking a cold beer while eyeing the dim hallway to the foyer. He was an ugly guy even to Tommy’s half-oni standards, his face too wide and his eyes bulging slightly. He wore loose cut-off jeans shorts, a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt, and red flip-flops. Watching Toad trying to psych himself up to go deeper into the house, though, it was easy to see that his “appeal” was his personality.
“I am one with the force and the force is with me. I am one with the force and the force is with me. Deep breath. Ghost in. Ghost out. Ninja style.” He made some karate-like motions with his hand, nearly dropping his beer. Despite his brave words, he continued to hover in the doorway. “Oh, Joyboy, if you got yourself killed being a drama queen, please don’t haunt me for this. I told you to run, not stand and be a mega bitch.”
Toad tried to press his hands together into a prayer but the attempt was ruined by his beer. He muttered a couple of curse words as he tried to decide what to do with the half-full bottle. In the end, he chugged the contents and then put the glass bottle on the floor with a loud clink. He pressed his hands together, whispered a prayer, and bowed. He wobbled while bowing; apparently it hadn’t been his first beer of the day.
Tommy wanted Toad away from a quick exit before he braced the man. He was guessing that Toad had come back because of the saijin-filled basement. It meant that the man probably would head upstairs to the connecting door on the second floor.
It took several minutes for Toad to gather his courage; he mostly jogged in place while huffing and puffing. His flip-flops squeaked loudly with each step. Tommy shook his head; it was a crime scene, not a prizefight.
Toad eyed the refrigerator as if considering another beer to boost his courage and then — finally — slowly headed upstairs. Tommy erased himself from the other man’s awareness even as Toad passed inches away from him. Tommy followed Toad up the steps. The man headed straight for the saijin but staggered to a stop at the pool of blood.
Tommy dropped his illusion and grabbed Toad. He slammed the smaller man against the wall.
“Tommy!” Toad cried in surprise and slight relief. “Shit! Where the hell did you come from? What are you doing here?”
Tommy ignored the questions and asked his own. “What happened here?”
Toad worked his mouth while his eyes flicked right and left, trying to come up with a reasonable lie. “I–I-I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”
Tommy bounced Toad off the wall. “Yes, you were! You ran! You told the others to run! What happened?”
“S-s-s-some guys broke the door,” Toad stuttered. “I don’t know who they were. Jonnie sold me out. That’s all I know.”
“Jonnie?”
“Jonnie Be Good. He’s an ambulance driver. If he knows that you’re cool, he’ll sell you drugs on the side.”
Tommy knew the slimewad in question. The man was local born and raised. His real name was Jurek Beiger. He was slightly older than Tommy. When he was younger, people called him Jerk Booger. Jurek remade himself after going off-world for college and washing out. He came back with his ears surgically pointed and enough medical training to be an EMT. He grew his hair long, dressed in elf hand-me-downs, and told people that his name was Jonnie Be Good. Since most of the kids Jonnie’s age had left Pittsburgh, the new generation took him at his word. Elves didn’t lie, after all.