a hair too small for me. Ash’s feet were laughably too large for his slippers.
Then the new woman got a good look at me and led me down a hallway, talking the entire time. Clearly, she was going to sort me out. Fine with me.
She pointed to a small room, and there were some clothes, neatly folded, on a futon on the floor. She said a few more words in Japanese and then cocked her head. “Nǐ huì shuō pǔtōnghuà ma?”
I shook my head when I realized she was asking if I spoke Chinese. “No, sorry. Parla Italiano?”
She shook her head. “Govorite po-russki?”
Where was Danny and his gift for languages when I needed him? “I’m sorry, no. Sprechen sie Deutsch? Parlez-vous Francais?”
Another shake of the head, and she held up a hand, bidding me wait. She called down the hallway, and Okamura-san and Ash came back.
Eventually, by talking to Okamura-san, who communicated silently with Ash, I found out that the woman’s name was Kazumi-san and the room was mine. I should shower, dress, and there’d be a visit from a vampire to try to heal me before a late dinner if that was okay with me.
I nodded. As long as someone had a coherent plan that involved those things, I was good with it.
It took me a minute to figure out the shower knobs and the bottles I found there; I just used all the bottles of stuff on the caddy until I was clean. At the moment, I didn’t care if I was washing with moisturizer or shampooing with body wash. I looked and smelled a whole lot better than I had.
There was still no trace of the constellation of jewels that had occasionally covered my body like flexible armor. They gave me powers that usually only vampires and oracles had, like the ability to nudge someone to do something or a kind of proximity sense. The jewels also provided me with painful visions that drove me to find more artifacts; if that was gone, I sure wouldn’t miss it. The artifacts I found, ancient items that imparted Fangborn abilities, morphed into what looked like jewels and precious metals and became part of my body. While the bracelet, embedded in my wrist when I opened Pandora’s Box, had once been several inches of gleaming, flat gemstones in every hue, it was now dull, lifeless. But it showed no sign that it was going to come away from my arm, and I could still barely make out the tracery of my veins beneath the clouded translucent stones. No more jewelry and armor had to mean that I’d lost whatever crazy powers I’d once had. I wasn’t even certain still if I could Change, make the basic transformation from woman to wolf, which had become one of the principal joys in my life. I was healing, but so slowly I didn’t dare try anything until I’d at least rested and eaten.
My new powers leaving me at exactly the time I needed them most was awful, but I could live with that for now. I hadn’t mastered them, they were hugely and finally unreliable, and they still scared me silly. The emptiness I felt, however, at perhaps never being able to Change to either of my wolf forms again threatened to crush me. That ability to Change had given me answers about my history, a Family, and a sense of belonging for the first time in my life. It had also given me physical strength, and because of that, I dared to do more, be more myself. I couldn’t bear to think that loss would be permanent and kept pushing it from my mind. I’d deal with the more immediate issues, then . . . then we’d see.
With a sigh, I found a towel and dried off. The clothes that were left for me were a T-shirt and sweats, socks with a separate compartment for my big toe, and the slippers. There was also a range of underthings in different sizes. I assumed there were a lot of guests who showed up here needing clean clothes in a hurry, the life of the Fangborn in the quest to fight evil.
A knock at the door; Okamura-san came in. She led me down the hall to a small room, where I saw a shrine. Several sticks of incense burned before it, and a middle-aged man, his head bowed, stood in front of it. He rang a little bell, made two bows, clapped, and bowed