The girl in standing in the shop looks like she's been mugged.
That's Jonathan's first thought when he sees her, even though she's turned partially away from him as she peruses—or at least pretends to peruse—the old electronics equipment on the shelves.
She's standing too stiffly, too carefully, for someone who hasn't been injured. She's keeping all her weight on her left leg, and he's not convinced that isn't a bloodstain on her right one. Most of it is covered by her jacket, so he can't tell for sure, but if it's not a trick of the light, then her jeans are stretched tight over bandages, which makes it much less likely she simply spilled something there.
Come to that, the slight hump on her back, only partially concealed by her hair, might not be a hood caught beneath her jacket. The weather's a bit warm for that, but he's met all sorts of people. He knows the sensibility of layers as well as the next person, of course, but it's hard not to be suspicious, given everything that's happened.
What if it's a sack of weaponry and not bandages?
He's getting ahead of himself.
He doesn't even know if she's part of the Huntsclan.
"Welcome to Canal Street Electronics," he says cheerfully. "We've never had a customer, never had a sale, but you could be the one to change that! We have a great selection of products for any of your electronics needs, all with unique history and exclusive stories that you can't get with the generic products sold in other stores these days. Now, may I ask what brings you here today?"
The girl turns and offers a small smile. He's no expert on make-up, but even he can see how it is thickly caked on her face. He wonders what is hidden beneath. A mark? Bruises? Scars? He doubts it's something like acne or whatever else might be the worries of a normal teenaged girl.
After all, it's not normal for a teenager to go around with pointy objects in their hair, is it? Half her hair is piled on her head in a messy bun skewered with what could be knitting needles for all he knows; the rest hangs in haphazard waves, framing her face and covering her neck. He'd chalk up the knitting needles—or whatever they really are; might be a bit thin for that, now that he's thinking about it—to some sort of style with which he's not familiar if it weren't for, well, everything else.
Part of him thinks he's being ridiculous. He knows perfectly well that he's jumping to wild conclusions, conclusions he would have never made even three months ago. He's judging her and he's barely spoken to her. She could be another customer.
The rest of him remembers the boy he left in the back, the son he has yet to know; his wife and daughter upstairs, both preparing to set off somewhere he can't follow; his dragon of a father-in-law, ready to do whatever he must to protect his family; and the talking dog who's been silenced—however temporarily—by a magical potion.
He thinks of the potion he holds in his hands, disguised in a half-filled coffee cup. He had wanted it to be easily accessible, just in case. The remainder is still captured in the flask, hidden again in his pocket. Just in case.
He doesn't know if his family would be safer if he drank it now.
He does know that Susan would not have forgotten to lock the shop.
Lao Shi certainly would not have forgotten.
"I'm looking for a gift," the girl says quietly. The smile on her face isn't reflected in her blue eyes, but—
But she doesn't sound evil.
She doesn't sound like someone who's been raised by heartless monsters.
Maybe she hasn't been.
And, now that he looks closer— She looks a bit familiar. There's something about the shape of her face.
"Father?" he asks as he tries to place her. "Brother? Sister? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?" The girl doesn't seem inclined to answer, so he keeps talking. He doesn't know what speech Lao Shi gives to his customers, but since they've never made a sale, so Jonathan doesn't feel bad about making up a pitch on the spot. He's hardly an expert in electronics, but he's used just about every piece of equipment in here, and some of it is nearly as old as he is. He knows enough to fake it.
At least, he knows enough to keep her listening instead of stabbing.
Assuming she's someone who might be prone to stabbing.
Perhaps Lao Shi is right. Perhaps he really doesn't know enough to do this on his own.
Still, Jonathan is paying less attention to the words coming out of his mouth than he is to the shape of her face, the colour of her hair, the way she holds herself. He's trying to figure out who she looks like. Where he's seen her before. If he's seen her before. She reminds him of someone, he's convinced of that much, but he can't for the life of him remember who it is.
She doesn't volunteer much information as she wanders around the shop, and it takes him entirely too long to realize that every step has taken her closer to the back and he hasn't been moving with her to cut her off. He puts the mug on the checkout counter as he makes a hurried course correction. "If you're looking for anything in particular, I can check in the back for you."
She smiles, and this time it seems more genuine. "What do you have for camcorders?"
Jonathan has absolutely no idea what Lao Shi stocks beyond what he can see on the shelves.
Frankly, he doubts Lao Shi stocks anything beyond what he can see on the shelves.
"All our models are on display," he says, gesturing. She glances in the direction he indicates, and as he sees the back of her head again, he wonders if she has as many needles in her bun as she had before. He can't remember seeing her reach up to them, but it isn't something he'd been looking for. Maybe he's simply imagining things. Panic can do that to a person.
Of course, if she is one of these Huntsclan people—
He doesn't even know if the others have gotten away yet. He's barely bought them any time at all, and he doesn't know if it's enough.
She's looking at him expectantly. Had she asked a question? Maybe she is a legitimate customer after all. "Beg your pardon?"
"Do you have a box for this?" She's pointing at one, but he can't see the tag. Not that it would help him. He suspects the answer is no.
He also suspects that, if it comes to a fight, Ju-Jazzu won't help him as much as he might hope.
Someone who has been raised fighting will have a mite more experience than someone who's picked up some lethal ground-fighting moves but has only ever used them in morning dance exercises.
Of course, if she were raised in the Huntsclan, why would she look so familiar?
"Some of our equipment is purchased for parts and rebuilt," he says, since there's no way he can produce a box even if he pretends to go looking. "I'm not sure I have a box for that one in the back."
"Could I trouble you to look? Perhaps you'll find something in a similar size?"
Well.
It's not like he can say no to that. She might be trying to get rid of him, but he isn't sure why. He doesn't know how it would help her if she is here for his family. If nothing else, he can check to make sure they're gone while he's pretending to look before coming back and saying his regrets. "Of course."
He barely makes it two steps before she strikes. He's yanked backwards and is flat on his floor before he has a chance to register what happened, pain thudding through his head with each heartbeat from the point where his skull had cracked on the laminate, and she's sprinted past him and into the back.
There's no point in pretending once she's seen the back. The cage is hardly subtle.
Well, there's no point in pretending he's the owner of a failing but harmless electronics shop, anyway. He still intends to pretend, for all he's worth, that this shop has absolutely nothing to do with the American Dragon.
He supposes he should be thankful she didn't knock him out, but his head is pounding to the point that he's not sure if that was an unintentional oversight.
Jonathan staggers to his feet and has to lean on the front counter until the blackness retreats from his vision again. He finds himself staring at Haley's favourite pencil and realizes she must have been doing her homework here before everything happened, and now—
Now, he couldn't find her if he wanted to.
Still, that's for the best. Lao Shi will protect Haley with his life, Susan will do whatever she can to look after Jake, and from what he knows of Fu Dog, he has little reason to be worried for anyone but himself. As it is, Jonathan knows he got lucky. He's sore, but nothing's broken, and he can still think clearly. Small mercies.
He locks the door of the shop, flips the sign to closed, and then picks up his coffee mug and heads into the back. The ground floor is abandoned, so he goes upstairs. He gets to the top as she emerges from the spare bedroom.
Before, she had looked composed.
Now, she looks frantic.
She's across the room and holding a knife in her hand in seconds; he barely has time to sidestep so that his back is to a chair and not the open stairway. "Where is he?" she hisses.
Her hand is steady, but she isn't able to hide the tiny quaver in her voice.
"We're the only ones here," he says, and he hopes it is true.
Her lips press into a thin line, and he still can't shake the feeling that she looks familiar.
"Don't pretend." She extends her arm and raises the knife, letting its point almost rest at his throat.
If she had intended to kill him, she could have done it already. He's under no illusion about that. Still, it's difficult not to flinch back, and when he swallows, he imagines that he can feel the prickle of the knife against his skin. He could try fighting back, but he's not convinced that will end well for him.
Compassion is often missing from the stories the others have told him about the Huntsclan, so he's not about to assume he might be granted a similar kindness as what Huntsgirl showed Haley.
Judging by Lao Shi's wariness about their Jake—99—the others would prefer he approach every potential member of the Huntsclan under the assumption that he's dealing with someone who's trained to be an assassin from birth.
Jonathan is looking at a girl who must be about his son's age. If she's trying to keep her fear, her worry, her desperation off her face, she's failing miserably. It's bleeding through the carefully crafted mask she wore earlier. She's looking for Jake, and he would bet his career that this is more than just an assignment to her. She cares about him.
Jonathan moves slowly as he places the mug on the nearest flat surface. He is uncomfortably aware that his next words might have her slitting his throat if he's wrong—or if she decides he's not useful to her. "I'm not pretending." Then, because he's still breathing, he decides to take another risk and ask, "You're Huntsgirl, aren't you?"
"Where is he?"
He shouldn't be surprised that she's ignoring his question, but he lets it go for now. "He's not here."
"That's not what I asked. You had him. Where is he now?"
"I don't know."
She edges forward, and this time he doesn't imagine the sting at his throat. He flinches back, but she moves with him when he tries to get away. "I suggest you remember."
"I can't remember what I never knew."
She fights to keep her expression steady, but her arm trembles and drops. He starts to breathe a sigh of relief, only to lose everything as she punches him in the gut and trips him before he can recover. She has her left knee on his chest, leaning what feels like all her weight onto his sternum and making breathing more of a chore than it should be, and places the knife back at his throat. "I'm not interested in playing games."
Playing games.
The phrase makes a connection he can't entirely explain. "Take your child to work day." That's how he knows her. Haley had stayed with Susan last year with the promise of coming with him this year, but he remembers trying to make other people's children laugh. Marnie Lockjelly, for instance. And the daughter of clients he had met that afternoon.
The daughter who had immediately hit it off with Marnie and spent time in the copy room with her, coming up with party plans and games and whatever else while he talked financial strategies and business growth with her parents.
He's sure it's the same girl.
She can't hide the flash of confusion that crosses her face. "Try that again."
"I remember you," he says, since there's no point in pretending he's the owner of this shop any longer. "Your parents hired me to go over their finances. You—" Telling a member of the Huntsclan something she obviously doesn't want to hear, maybe doesn't even want to be known, is clearly not helping his cause, but he has to try. "You were there."
"You're stalling."
"I'm not!"
"Then you're mistaken."
She hasn't cut his throat despite her conviction, which he takes as a good sign; if she weren't so willing—or perhaps the word is desperate—to hear him out, he'd be in much stickier spot. "You really don't remember?" He tries to recall something from that day that isn't related to Spreadsheet Beard. "You were cutting out those posters? Making plans for spin the bottle and whatever else? I remember all the laughter, and—"
"I'm not here for stories."
It's not a story, though he's realizing he won't have much luck convincing her of that. If she wants to pretend that wasn't her, nothing he says will change her mind. Rather than pushing the point, he says, "I don't know where your friend is."
"Then tell me who took him."
"I don't think anyone took him." Susan had said she was going with him, not that he was going with her.
"Oh, yes, because a cage as large as the one you've downstairs is so hard to spot," she says, sarcasm dripping from every word. "He was here, and you moved him!"
"He went on his own."
The girl's breath hitches, and she finally pulls the knife away.
He can feel her trembling.
It's not until she starts to get up, using the chair as support rather than putting weight on her right leg, that he finds himself asking, "Are you okay?"
She doesn't bother answering, but she lets him move rather than putting a foot on his chest to keep him down, so he props himself up on his elbows. She walks towards the stairs, and he sees the limp she'd covered earlier. He really hadn't imagined her injuries earlier. "You're not okay."
This time, she stops and looks back at him. "My best friend is missing. Why would I be okay?"
He rolls and starts to climb to his feet, which thankfully also isn't enough to elicit knives or needles or anything else coming in his direction. He's not willing to push his luck, though, so he stays by the chair instead of approaching her. "You're hurt. Let me help you."
She starts down the stairs without acknowledging him, and he can see now how heavily she's leaning on the railing.
Surely the Huntsclan wouldn't send out agents who are so obviously injured.
Either she came on her own or Jake isn't the only one with reason to run.
"I know the American Dragon," he says, and he can hear her stop partway down the steps.
The words are a risk and utterly against his earlier plans, vague though they were. He knows that.
He also knows she's looking for his son, once showed kindness to his daughter instead of stealing her away forever, and is currently hurt in more ways than one, however she might want to hide it.
"You didn't have to let her go that night," he continues as he walks to the top of the stairs. He picks up the coffee cup just in case, but he doesn't bring it to his lips. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. "But you gave her back to us in exchange for your friend, and now your friend is running, but he's not running from you, is he? He's running from everyone else."
She's shifted so that she's looking up at him, leaning with her back to the railing, but she doesn't say anything.
"You might not be the girl I was thinking of," he says, even though it's hard to imagine that she's not now that he's finally placed her, "but one good turn deserves another, doesn't it? Let me help you. Please."
"You can't help me."
"I can try."
"If you truly know the American Dragon," she says, her voice tight, "then you shouldn't want to help me even if you could."
He can't tell her about Haley, not more directly than he already has, but he doesn't want to just let her go, either. He doesn't want her chasing after Susan and Jake, at least not until he's sure that she's not about to hurt Susan to get to Jake. This isn't exactly what he'd told Lao Shi he'd do, and it might very well be the opposite of what Lao Shi would tell him to do if he were to offer his advice, but Jonathan doesn't think his father-in-law is right about everything.
Lao Shi was wrong about Jonathan, after all. He might be wrong about Jake and about Huntsgirl. Not that Jonathan had ever asked for Lao Shi's opinion on that front, but he hardly needed to. Lao Shi is more inclined to look for enmity than humanity. Once bitten, twice shy, no doubt, but Jonathan hasn't lost his faith in humanity, and he refuses to let these circumstances take it from him.
He takes a step down the stairs and stops as Huntsgirl tenses and adjusts her position.
She's anxious, worried, and no doubt scrambling to figure out her next move as the game keeps changing on her with every new shred of information, but so is he.
"You're Huntsgirl," he says again, since he's sure even though she hasn't confirmed it, "and you're friends with my son. I want to help his friends."
He takes another step down as she snorts. "Didn't you just admit that I'm not the girl you're thinking of?"
"I don't know if that girl is his friend, but Huntsgirl is."
He watches confusion cross her face before it settles into suspicion.
"You would know him as 99." He takes a third step. She still hasn't moved beyond shifting her stance, one hand settled by her pocket, and he's uncomfortably aware that waiting until he's within striking distance might very well be her tactic of choice. "I haven't had the chance to get to know my own son, but until—"
She throws something at him, and his reactive flinch does nothing to help him avoid the shower of hair that hits his face.
He sneezes, but when he looks in her direction again, she's still there, watching him with calculating eyes.
"You're lying," she says. Her voice is hard, but she almost sounds—relieved? There's something there, some other emotion—
He brushes the coarse brown strands from the front of his suit with his free hand but only spares a glance at the potion to confirm that it looks unaffected. (Whether it is or not, well, that's something he might be forced to find out in the future, but if any hair made it into the cup, he can't see it, and the potion had no obvious reaction to it.) Still, he doesn't need to look up to know that she's still watching him. He wonders what she was expecting to happen—or what she might still be expecting to happen. How common is it for magic to have a delayed reaction?
He can't worry about that now.
"I'm not lying about your friend. He's my son, and until he tells me what name he wants to be known by, I'm going to think of him as Jake."
Something about his words catch her off her guard this time. Her eyes widen, and she closes her mouth without speaking.
"I'm not going to ask you to tell me about him right now, but you're his friend, and you're hurt. Helping you is something I can do for him. Please, let me."
She swallows and blinks, and he realizes that she's fighting off tears.
He closes the distance between them, joining her on the same step, and stretches out his hand.
An eternity passes before she takes it.
He should be expecting it when she jerks him forward, but he is not.
The potion nearly splashes out of the mug.
"Why would you call him that?" she hisses as she wrenches his hand back to the point that he lets out an involuntary gasp of pain.
"It's the name my wife and I chose for him." It comes out as a whimper. It's not his proudest moment, but she's still here with him, and he's still conscious and hasn't been pushed down the remaining steps, so that's something.
She releases him. "Fine."
The throbbing pain in his wrist hardly makes this seem fine, but he opens his mouth like a fool anyway. "That's it?"
"No, but it means we can talk." She glances upstairs. "Just not here."
If he refuses, chances are good she'll leave him. She must think others are coming or she wouldn't be so keen to leave. There's no guarantee he'll have better luck slowing any of them down, but if he leaves, he'll miss his chance entirely. Of course, they might not pull their punches; they might just leave him a groaning mess on the floor and give the shop a much more thorough searching than Huntsgirl did.
Of course, he doesn't really have a choice.
He does want to help her, and it's not an unreasonable request.
"Come with me," he says as he descends, and she follows him on silent feet.
He has enough to worry about without borrowing trouble; if he regrets this later, well, it's a risk he's willing to take.
Frankly, it's also a risk he'd rather take, between this and that potion.
He just hopes it's the right decision.
