Page 59 of Old Secrets

Rising, my mother matched Eric’s bow, accepted the picture with both hands, and said something else in Chinese.

I made the decision to avoid looking at the body of the woman who had seen me safely to the United States before sacrificing her life for mine. However, I would ask my father for one thing he might be able to grant me: the ability to see her before her death.

He had a tray of sand with him along with small jars containing many shades of pigments.

“Can you show me what she looked like before her death?” I asked.

My father offered me a smile, and he nodded. “She was very much like you and your mother, although she favored a more scandalous hair style for the time, short and proudly tipped with white. We often would style our hair and pick our clothes to best reflect us, as our features are quite similar.”

After placing the photograph beside my father, my mother leaned back in her chair and sighed. “They somehow preserved her body for the journey.”

“Formaldehyde,” Eric replied in a grim tone. “Upon review of the photography, the culprits, and doing research, we found records of large purchases of the substance. They would have soaked her body in the chemical for transport. Did she have a strong odor?”

“Yes, she had smelled quite strange,” my mother confirmed.

“It is a strong preservative, sufficient to allow them to transport her body.”

“Their cruelties know no bounds,” she muttered.

“That is why we will destroy them and everything they value, my love.” My father pressed the fingers of his left hand to my aunt’s photograph before touching the tray with his right. The sands took the form of a woman a lot like me, and she’d worn her hair in a short bob. She’d favored bright colors, reminding me of a parrot of some sort, riotous and joyful. “We loved to call her Joy. She spread her good cheer everywhere she went. She’d wanted us to finally know the joy of having a child survive.”

My poor parents. “Well, she accomplished that in spades. Can you mark the bastards behind her death with an aura? If possible, in a color a little more distinctive than just red. Perhaps red and black?” I made a show of cracking my knuckles together. “And then you can teach me how to see these auras so I can bite the faces off any with the aura to cross my path.”

“Faces are clearly full of protein and good for the diet of a young vixen,” Jake stated, and he grinned at me. “I want to be able to see these auras, too. For a very similar reason, of course. I’ll save the faces for her and go for the throats. She can maul them however she pleases afterwards. She has a tendency to completely dismantle her prey once she gets it in her head somebody needs to die. She will do it with claws and teeth if able, but she’s not against making use of explosives.”

“Whatever gets the job done.”

Amelia, who’d occupied a corner pleasingly close to Bryce, snickered at my commentary. “There’s the Karma we know and love.”

My father allowed the sands to fall, releasing the memory of my aunt. Sliding the tray aside, he picked up the photo, and his expression darkened. “It would be my honor and pleasure. Yes, I can adjust the color of the mark to make it more distinctive. What other photos do you have for us, Eric? I’d rather do this all at once.”

“We have victims that need to be confirmed were targets of Greenwich, but we have compiled as many as we could find with similar damage to what happened in the United States—by the Normal criminals. There are some we think were made by other foxes. The marks differ.”

My mother nodded, and she bowed and held out her hands for the photographs, which Eric offered to her, also in a bow. “You have our eternal gratitude.”

“Now that we know more of what lives in our mountains, we will do our best to make certain your sanctuary is a true sanctuary, and we will restore the lost villages to serve the honorable purpose of giving you a gateway to humanity. Our government is already looking into how best to establish a rail line to make it easier to get closer to where you live. We shall make your home safe—and we shall make our home safe at the same time. We both benefit.”

I wondered how else China might try to benefit from my parents, but for the moment, I would believe their intentions.

Once I had my parents on American soil, free from surveillance, I would help make certain they didn’t fall prey to even more ambitions of modern humanity despite any feelings of debt or gratitude. While we didn’t have their ancestral mountains, we had mountains, and I’d help them make a home in the United States if I felt the Chinese overstepped their bounds.

For the moment, I would ignore the problem.

The enemy of my enemy was my friend, and I would not bite my new friends.

Working together, my mother and father sorted through the hundreds of photographs with ruthless efficiency. They made a pile for those they could confirm were involved with Greenwich, a pile for the photos they were not certain of, and a pile for those free from involvement with Greenwich.

They wouldn’t walk free; my father marked the uninvolved with Greenwich with a dark green aura so that any who crossed paths with the brutal killers could see justice done. The souls they couldn’t judge had their guilt marked in blue so they, too, could face justice for their crimes.

To streamline the process, Aiko took notes on the back of each photograph, marking them with a number and the truths my parents uncovered.

Once finished, my mother said, “This is not something we will do again, not without strong cause. It is not our way to interfere with the passions of mortals and the lives they lead. But these? These have done much damage to us—and to others. They fall. But it is up to mortals to handle mortal affairs after this. We will not be an easy way for you to shirk your responsibilities. But this is bigger than you—and in many ways, bigger than us.”

Eric nodded. “I will make certain my superiors are aware that this is the exception rather than the rule. Will you need to rest before we travel tomorrow morning?”

“We can manage as long as we can get some sleep,” my father replied. “We can rest once in China if needed.”

“Very well. Is there anything we can do to assist you?”