Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C11: Break-In)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: Hiei goes back to the psychic and finds some strange details.
A/N: Idiot Beloved takes place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. In order for certain character development to make sense, you might read those fics in order.
On the roof, a man can watch unseen.
Maya's Tale (11:Break-In)
by
Kenshin
Suspended in mid-air was a girl, her body so still one could not determine whether she was alive or dead. All around her whirled an assortment of cards, in a paper merry-go-round.
The image of the girl was blurred and hazy, like a badly-exposed movie filmed through fog.
Kurama shot bolt-upright, flinging away blankets. He was bathed in sweat, and his heart slammed painfully against his ribs. For a few moments, he did not know where he was, and then he did.
Oh. That dream. Always the same.
Dragging a sleeve across his face, he glanced at the bedside clock. Fluorescent green numbers informed him that it was 4 AM.
No point trying to get back to sleep.
He snapped on the lamp, then reached for the chemistry text on the night table. With the book balanced against his knees, Kurama leafed through page after page, neither seeing nor comprehending the words and symbols.
Chemistry. A branch of science, but also a saying, a term, for an attraction between two people. Did he and Maya have such an affinity?
Over the years, Kurama had thought of Maya now and then, but middle school was long ago and far away. He wasn't sure of much right now. He could not even be certain that the girl in his recurring dream was Maya.
He put the book down, got out of bed, and began to dress.
0-0-0-0-0
Standing side-by-side in Grandma Hirameki's studio, Hiei and Shay-san strove to warm up in meat-locker temperatures.
It was a wonder that Hiei's thoughts alone didn't scorch the floorboards and melt the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the practice barre.
Broken laptop: bad enough.
Haunted Palace by Zo, droning in the background: worse.
Grandma Hirameki glaring at my back: obnoxious.
Failure at the hands of Muktananda: no words.
As if reading his mind, Shayla Kidd murmured, "At least you're not wearing that pink prince get-up."
Grandma Hirameki's scowl twisted into a grimace, and through the blue haze of cigarette smoke that passed for air, Hiei said, "He made me."
In mid-plie, Shay-san's expression was pure bafflement. "Who what you?"
"You heard." Though he spoke English, Hiei kept his voice low. "Don't know how, but the fake psychic 'made' me." His breath misted the mirror. He never paid much attention to temperature, but Shayla Kidd was human, and felt the cold.
She was wearing not only ballet tights, but thick leg warmers, a long woolen scarf, a sweatshirt, a zippered, hooded jacket, and a woolen cap that hid her marigold-bright hair. With each step toward properly warmed muscles, she would remove another layer of clothing.
Shedding her zippered jacket and flinging it in the corner on top of her overcoat, she said, "Maybe he's not such a fake."
"Operating from that back-alley joint?"
Grandma Hirameki lit another cigarette and stuck it in her face. She watched them, arms akimbo, suspicion glittering in her pale, pouchy eyes.
"Is it just possible," whispered Shay-san, "that slapping him around might have had something to do with-"
"Except I didn't. Not that I wasn't tempted."
"He read the desires of your heart?" Coming up from another plie, she unwound the scarf and billowed it toward her growing pile of outerwear.
"I was in disguise, too."
"Oh, you poor thing."
"I don't give a rat's ass what language you're babbling in." Grandma's cigarette bobbed. "Just as long as you both shut up!"
They complied, but Hiei slid a glance at Shayla Kidd, and she wouldn't have to be psychic to know he was thinking, Damn if I lose this fight.
0-0-0-0-0
Dear Diary:
I am weary-certain that my efforts have failed.
Oh, to feel the sun on my face. But Father will not let me leave the house until after dark.
With Father so pre-occupied, I might risk opening the window and putting my head out for a breath of air, but I am so forgetful these days, and my window sticks. Father might hear it open. I am already treading on thin ice.
The time approaches when I will have to make the decision of my life. But I am too much the coward to make it.
0-0-0-0-0
There was a woman crossing the street, heading toward Muktandana's place.
Why, Hiei wondered, am I always getting dragged into other people's business? This has nothing to do with me. But if he was being candid, he knew it did have to do with him. That girl was there when I first ran into Kurama. She saw us fight. Kurama thinks she's in trouble now, and he's always had my back.
So I've got his.
It was mid-afternoon, and Hiei had escaped Grandma Hirameki for the moment. His perch on the roof gave him a good view of the street, and an excellent look at the approaching woman.
Middle-aged, slim, and quietly well-dressed, she glanced right and left, as if fearing witnesses, reached the psychic's door, and knocked.
The pitched roof posed no problems for Hiei. His camouflage, right down to thin leather gloves, matched the roof's olive-drab color. He was confident of remaining unseen.
The woman knocked again. Then a third time. Finally she left, as furtively as she'd come.
Hiei waited a few minutes before crossing the roof to the back of the house. With a series of acrobatic moves, he lowered himself to a third-story window.
I've had it with this cloak and dagger stuff. Give me a nice street brawl any day.
The slider window opened readily enough, but was blocked on the inside with those same heavy curtains, well-faded by the sun.
Face it, though. You're good at it. You found Mr. Groovy, even if no one else knows you did.
Once inside, Hiei listened through the curtains. He heard nothing, no snoring, no radio, no footsteps.
The scent of sandalwood and patchouli was a mere hint beneath the smell of dust. Apart from a faint whiff of curry, there was another smell in the background.
He parted the curtains, planning to leave the way he'd entered, and stripped off his leather gloves. Under those, Hiei wore a second pair: latex surgical gloves, thin, flexible, and print-proof.
The bedroom, not surprisingly, had dark and dingy brown floral wallpaper. The bed was unmade. It looked as if that was its natural state.
Hiei opened the closet. On the top shelf was an old hard-sided suitcase of brown leather. There were shirts and pants hanging from racks. A couple of neckties, a tan sports jacket.
If Muktananda had a family, they didn't live here.
Out of the bedroom, across the hall. Two doors. The first was open. A bathroom that was just a bathroom. No bodies in the tub. No room for a vanity. On the sink was a toothbrush and a shaving mug and a safety razor.
On to the second door. Hiei opened it. This was an office, containing a file cabinet, bookshelves, and a desk. Client records? Might be something there about that girl, but-when tossing the house of a phony psychic in broad daylight, be quick.
He checked the file cabinet and desk. Locked.
Given time, Hiei might defeat the locks. But any tampering could lead back to him, gloves or not.
Biting back his frustration, Hiei moved on.
Nothing much had been spent on creature comforts, apart from those heavy faded curtains on every window. Must have been Bargain Day at the Rose Velvet Curtain Emporium.
A stairwell hugged the right-hand side of the house. The second floor contained a nearly-empty storage room. There were only a couple of worn wicker chairs. The curry-smelling kitchen was on this floor, too.
Dishes in the sink, rinsed but not washed. Nothing to see here, move along. Hiei descended to the first floor.
Here, too, there were only two doors in the hall. One was at the back of the house, and probably gave onto a yard. The other was a narrow sliding door on the left, and when Hiei opened it, he found himself in a tiny room no larger than a closet.
He spotted a familiar archway on the opposite wall, blocked off by more curtains.
This claustrophobic space was illuminated by a single bare bulb in the ceiling, and was paneled in thick soundproofing tiles, like the ones they had in recording studios, or expensive restaurants.
It also contained a chair in front of a rack filled with electronic equipment. No doubt this was used for generating 'voices from beyond' to trick customers into believing they were speaking with a dear departed, or maybe just a departed.
Crossing to the archway, Hiei eased the curtains aside.
The parlor was a room that would always be dark, and now with no candles burning, it was even dimmer than before. Hiei almost had to rely on memory to see the paisley-printed wallpaper, the sideboard, and the table with its crystal ball.
That was when the background scent rose, and he could no longer put it out of his mind.
Hiei was all too familiar with it: the metallic smell of blood. Yet there were no visible bloodstains. You could search the busy carpet for a year and not find any.
That girl had surely been in this room. But when? And where was she now?
His first fleeting thought was that the psychic had slaughtered Maya, then fled in panic. But then his intellect took over. Why kill a regular, paying customer?
There was no sign of a struggle. Or if there had been a fight, someone had taken the time to set everything right again. That was not the act of a panicked accidental killer, but of someone with pre-meditated motives.
Who? And whose blood was in the air?
Maybe Muktananda had cut himself shaving. But people shave in the bathroom, not the parlor. Maybe he had cut himself in the kitchen. It happened. However, the smell of blood had not emanated from the kitchen, but from here.
Hiei couldn't discern if the blood-smell was human. Maybe the fake sacrificed goats. Maybe some of his clients liked that sort of thing.
Hiei returned to the alcove to have another look at its electronic equipment.
He recognized some of it from his days as a member of Romantic Soldier. A black box about the size of an attache case, with both sliding and dial-type controls: an analog audio mixer. There was also a Moog synthesizer, a sort of electronic keyboard that could be used to generate sounds.
And a microphone, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Maybe Muktananda was in the habit of recording client sessions. Hiei looked quickly for tapes and found none. No; if Muktananda made any, they'd be locked away, up in the office.
With the irritating thought that he knew less now than he had before, Hiei entered the parlor again. Slipping a hand inside the curtains that cloaked the front door, he reached for the sign in the window.
He got it out and turned it over. It was a different sign.
No crude drawing of a half-lidded eye, nor of a crystal ball. No black block letters on a white card reading Muktananda: By appointment only, but an elegant cursive writing on pale yellow stock.
The new sign read: On vacation. Back shortly.
Right. The mystic was going on vacation. Forgetting a well-dressed client who probably had a standing appointment. With his clothes and suitcase still in the closet.
-30-
(To be continued: the trap has been set, and someone is about to walk in.)