"It is so much better if you die without knowing," the man said.
Finally, Shan's arms agreed to listen to her brain. She pushed herself backward, her wounded thigh leaving a slug-trail of blood across the floor. Above her, a three-foot-wide window was sandwiched between two towering shelves. And, unfortunately, barred from the outside. Shan backed into the space, keeping her eyes on the bastard in front of her. A lever. There was always a lever to release security bars. Her left hand slapped the wall behind her until she found a dented, hollow rectangle of metal wedged almost behind the left shelf. And in it, a solid rubber pedal.
Shan wailed from the pain as she shifted her position and snapped the pedal down. He bought the distraction. A faint click from outside the glass told her the bars had been released from their lock.
The man grinned wildly now. Most people stopped to gloat during a fight, given half a chance. It made them vulnerable. Shan preferred to wrap things up
before
stopping to chat. Far more practical.
"Where are your animals now?" the man said. "You Jade Circle bitches are nothing without your little statues."
He grabbed the front of Shan's crimson blouse and hauled her to her feet. Shan whimpered again, her body limp, her eyes wide with feigned fear. Blood continued to dribble down her leg. He wasn't tall enough to keep her off the ground, but she stayed light on her feet, letting him do most of the work to keep her upright.
"I think I'll take your eye first," the man said, "to replace the one your mother stole from me." His breath smelled of greasy fish. Her mother had taken his eye. Her mother would always be a better fighter.
This was not the time.
Shan let the thoughts flow away from her, like a river into the ocean, until her mind was empty--a vessel waiting to be filled. Only then did her mind and body act as one.
She planted her left foot on the floor and thrust at his knee with her right heel. He screamed. Shan grabbed his right bicep with one hand and the cloth covering his left shoulder with the other. Dropping her weight, she rolled onto her back and thrust upward with both arms and a leg, throwing him behind her.
The man soared through the window, smashing glass and wood, and slammed into the bars outside. They swung open with the deafening scrape of rusted metal on metal and crashed into the stone façade of the building. Shan protected her face from the shower of sharp rain. When she opened her eyes again, the man was gone.
Shan shook off the shards and splinters without using her hands. It was so easy to drop one's guard at the first respite from fighting, and so easy to get dangerously hurt because of it. She stood up slowly, keeping her weight off her wounded leg, and looked out the window.
Some mangled bushes two stories down stared back up at her. She scanned the quad, looking for limping martial arts bad-asses. No luck. Too bad she hadn't broken his kneecap. That would have slowed him down enough for her to finish the job.
But he'd definitely be back. Shan needed to find the statue and get herself, and the professor, out of the building before the thief did.
As if on cue, the professor groaned. Shan glared into the trees a few more seconds, then turned and shuffled over to the man. Her leg hurt, but it wasn't serious. The rest of the bruises she'd discover tomorrow or the day after.
The man was sitting up against a shelf, his face hidden in his hand. At first glance, nothing looked broken. His limbs looked straight, and he seemed to be breathing fine. Internal injuries weren't out of the question, though, given the professor's blood-stained chin.
Shan eased into a crouch in front of him, ignoring the complaint from her leg, and gently pried his arm from his face.
"Here, let me look."
The man was a lot younger than she'd expected. "Professor" always summoned images of pipe-smoking, white-bearded old men.
Probably since she'd never gone to college and had a chance to debunk the stereotype. But no, her professor looked mid-thirties, with short, unkempt brown hair matted with blood in odd places. At first she thought he'd gotten a gash along his face, but it was just his almost painfully sharp cheekbones poking out from a layer of drying blood. Shan pressed two fingers to his brow, cheek, nose, and chin, feeling for fractures. He shivered, probably from shock, and let her search.
His whole face was covered in angles and ridges. She turned it from side to side slowly, trying to get a better look. It always remained hidden at least half in shadow. Shan blamed his nose. It rose long and thin and proud, demanding her attention from every angle. Especially with the blood, the man looked like some doomed fairytale prince, European-style.
"Can you see me?" Shan asked. "Try to focus on my eyes."
He looked up at her, the full moons of his pupils ringed ever so slightly in warm brown. Eye dilation and shivers, Shan thought. Definitely shock. Definitely not good.
A police siren wailed in the distance, and then another. No doubt they were headed this way. But Shan couldn't afford to chat with the cops. Not when some poor security guard with a broken neck lay waiting down the hall.
"You're doing well," Shan lied. "Just keep trying to focus. What color are my eyes?"
His pupils retracted slightly.
"Greeb," he said.
"Good--"
"Green," the man corrected. "'N' flecks of yellow."
The man smiled and, miraculously, almost every severe angle on his face dissolved into a boyish roundness. Only the nose stubbornly kept its shape.
"Ian," he said. "And yes, I think I can walk."
"Good. I'm Shan." She stood up and held out her arm. "We can't afford to wait for the police."
Ian grabbed her hand, and Shan pulled him to his feet. His fingers were long, his palms huge compared to hers. Standing, he was at least half a foot higher. Ian grinned and looked down at their hands. Shan smiled back patiently, even as the heat rushed to her face. Good ol' half-Asian blood probably kept Ian from knowing that, though.
"Look, Ian," she began, "we need to go now. Fast. Before that man comes back. But I can't leave without the statue he was looking for. A small, jade crane. Do you know where it is?"
Ian's grin faded, replaced by a new wariness that creased his brow and turned down the edges of his mouth. "So you're a thief, too? I thought you were one of the good guys. My mistake." He took a step past Shan, but wobbled.
Shan snaked an arm under his to steady him. "I
am
one of the good guys. Get me that statue, and I'll explain everything."
"Everything?" He arched an eyebrow. "I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt because you saved my life, but I'll definitely need answers."
"Fine," Shan said. "You'll get answers." She felt the weight of him on her shoulder. His warmth soaked into her neck and arm, down her ribs and across her belly.
"Good enough for me," Ian said. "Now let's get the hell out of here."
"The statue--"
"Isn't here," he said. "It never was."
Shan looked at him. The shadows were back, hiding his eyes and the whole far side of his face. Was he just protecting the statue, or was it really someplace else? Her mother, when she'd been near the Jade Circle, had been able to discern truth from lie, to see through any ruse. Now the Circle was broken, and Shan had only her own instincts to rely on. Instincts which had proved more adept at fighting than diplomacy.
And absolutely pitiful at reading attractive men.
But regardless of Ian's intent, she'd never be able to search the room before the police arrived. Maybe this was just the break she needed. After all these years of searching, she still had only the tiger statue that she'd started with. And now she knew that someone else was looking for the Jade Circle animals, too. If Ian knew about the crane, maybe he had other information as well.
"Lead on," she said finally. "It looks like I'm going to trust you, at least for now."
"Excellent," said Ian, "because I think I'm going to pass out."
"Oh, no you don't!" Shan altered her stance to take more of his weight. "I can help you walk, but there's no way on earth I can carry you. Stay with me. Talk. Tell me about your research. Or your love life. Whichever is more interesting."
They started to hobble toward the door. Shan's wounded leg buckled once, and she silently rebuked it.
Ian laughed. The sound was low and warm, and made Shan smile. "That would be the research, I'm afraid," he said.
Shan became suddenly and intensely aware of his smell. A dusty, dark scent that reminded her of her father's study. Suddenly his head lolled forward, and Shan braced herself against the increase in weight.
"Wake up! Dammit, Ian."
His head circled around and up. "Stop screaming. I'm right here." And then, "Maybe we should sing."
Stunned, Shan could only help him walk as he started warbling something about a Scotsman and a kilt. Good voice, too. A baritone.
They made it into the hallway and stumbled the hundred or so steps to the elevator. Shan punched the button and shifted her weight again. "Okay, Sinatra," she said, "let's quiet down for a while, okay?"
"Mmm," said Ian. "Did I really say greeb?"
"Yes. I hope you're not an English teacher. It'll be hard to live that one down."
"I should get points for the wounding. And the blood. Greeb is almost eloquent considering the circumstances."
The elevator arrived, and they collapsed against the far wall. Shan hit the button for the garage and took another look at Ian. Yup, the shadows were still there, even in the omnipresent fluorescent lighting of the elevator. He tilted his head and looked down at her. A little smile appeared across his thin, almost aristocratic lips, and the shadows softened once again.
"Thanks again for that whole life-saving bit," he said. "I feel like hell, but I'm not actually
in
hell. I'm going to call that an upside."
"You're welcome," Shan said, "especially if you can get me that crane."
She regretted saying it almost immediately, and then chided herself for the regret. It was the truth. She wanted,
needed
that crane, and it was probably a good idea to remind Ian of that every chance she got.
Since he passed out as soon as she got him into her rental car, the other opportunities would have to wait.
Shan managed to wake him up long enough to get his address, and then for some directions when she got lost on the dark, curvy, snow-lined streets near the campus. Eventually, Shan shut off the headlights and coasted into the driveway of a cute two-story Tudor. She didn't want the neighbors remembering any late-night arrivals in case the cops started asking questions.
Shan maneuvered Ian down the lane carved out of the snow and to the front door. Ian was falling in and out of consciousness, sometimes in mid-sentence. She asked him for the keys, and he answered something about a pot shard. Shan propped him up in the alcove by the door and searched his pockets. The frayed seams of his ancient khakis tickled her hand and she wriggled in deeper. Shan was amazed at the warmth emanating from his leg. He seemed too skinny to be such a furnace.
No keys. He must have left them in some other room of the building they'd been in. She should have thought to grab them before they left. If the police found them, their time at Ian's would be short lived.
Shan checked his pockets again, just to be sure.
In the end, she had to climb a tree and hop onto the roof near an open window on the second floor. Shan felt the tear in her leg reopen, and the warmth of fresh blood soak into her jeans. Irritating, but not dangerous.
The first window she checked was locked. Just as well, as it looked like Ian's bedroom. True to his earlier statement about his relationships, the bed was empty and mussed. A bachelor's bed. Shan shimmied on to the next window.
Bingo. The window sat halfway open, and not even a screen barred her entrance. Shan wiggled her way in, afraid to risk the noise of opening it further, and tumbled to the floor. She tucked her head in and rolled into a low crouch.
A big desk squatted in the middle of the room atop a thread-bare rug. Dark shelves lined the walls, covered in books and knickknacks of every shape and size. Her father would have been in heaven. His study in China had looked just like this, but with only a handful of books. It had been hard for him to find the editions he wanted under the Communist regime. And, after they moved to the United States, all their money had gone back to China, to the search for Shan's mother. The three of them had lived together for all those years: Shan, her father, and her mother's ghost.
A pair of cool orange eyes regarded Shan from the desk. The eyes were attached to a remarkably fluffy cat, gray in the darkness of the room. Shan smiled. So Ian was a cat person? Interesting. She walked toward the desk, her palm extended.
"Hello, little prince." Shan stopped in her tracks and looked around the room again. Familiar. Everything was suddenly familiar.
She pulled out the
Archaeology Today
magazine clipping from her back pocket and unfolded it carefully. A man she didn't recognize sat behind a desk, but the caption named him as Dr. Daniel Buckley of Risley University. The article itself talked about the man's recent field study in Thailand. It didn't matter. All that mattered was the small jade crane nestled between two stacks of books on the shelf in the background.
The desk was Ian's. The shelves were Ian's.
Shan raised her eyes from the photo slowly, almost too terrified to look at the shelves beyond.
And there it was.
Shan squeezed her eyes shut. Her pulse thudded in her throat. Every ache, every shred of fatigue, fled from her body. She stepped around the desk and walked to the crane.
It stood there in the shadow of the shelf, dull green and perfectly still. Just five inches high, it had simply-carved wings that stretched out and up on both sides. Shan ran a finger over the tip of its left wing, along the slender groove where her tiger would slide into place. The missing leopard statue would slip onto the right wing, and the circular dragon would sit in the center, attached to the crane's head and the cats' tails. The sinuous snake would slide along the top. Together, the five animals would form the Jade Circle.
Shan lifted the crane from its dusty home and cleaned it with her shirtsleeve. In her hands, the crane radiated power. Unlike her tiger, stashed safely back in Los Angeles, the crane's power granted grace and balance, something sorely lacking in Shan's life. How different would she be if her mother had entrusted her with this statue instead of the tiger for all these years? Perhaps she'd be someone's lover, able to balance a man and a career and even college. Instead, she'd gone from
dojo
to
dojang
to
kwoon
since high school--studying with the best masters during the day and scouring the news and the Internet at night in search of the missing animals. The disparity made her want to laugh.
Ian
!
He was downstairs on the porch, waiting for Shan to let him in. She stared at the statue in her hands, so heavy and warm, so full of energy. She could just leave now, back out the window and to her car. Ian didn't know her last name and would have no way of finding her. He'd tell the police about her, yes, and they'd find her blood at the university building. But it wasn't enough to track her. Even if she had to lay low for a while, the crane would be hers.
But Ian had a concussion. Ian had stabbed her enemy. Ian had sung and made jokes and trusted her to take care of him. He could have stayed at the school, waited for an ambulance, and kept his life simple. Instead, he'd taken a chance.
Shan took a deep breath and carefully placed the statue back on the shelf. She knew where it was now. She could always come back up here and get it, regardless of what happened with Ian. No way, no how, was she leaving this house without it.
Something thunked against her calf. Shan looked down, and the fluffy cat looked back up at her, eyes bright and whiskers wide.
"Come on,
mao
, let's go rescue your master."
She held the office door open, and the cat trotted out. Shan looked at the statue one last time, then closed the door behind her.
Ian had fallen asleep on the front stoop. Angles still dominated his face, but much of the boyishness was there, too. He looked...cute. Shan couldn't help but smile.
"Come on, sleepyhead," she said, and touched his shoulder.
"Mmm. Rachel?"
"Nope. Care to try again?"
Ian opened his eyes. "Shan. Sorry." He shifted his weight and started to stand. "Did I mention I have a head wound?"
"I believe it's come up a few times, yes." Shan helped him to his feet. "Doesn't sound like your love life is that boring, after all."
"What?"
"Rachel." They stumbled inside. Shan kicked the door closed with her foot.
"Ancient history," Ian said. "Almost literally. We met on a dig."
"Please don't say, 'And you really dug each other.' I'll have to kill myself." Shan deposited Ian on the couch and pulled out the magazine article again. "Not that I don't want to hear about your past loves, which I don't," she grinned, "but I need you to look at this." She handed him the article. All she really wanted was the crane, but if this man was sitting in Ian's office, he was probably a friend. A friend who was in for a world of pain if they didn't find him before her enemies did.
Ian took the wrinkled paper, damp from her sweat, and a huge smile erupted on his face.
"Buckley's interview! The ol' boy looks good; I have to admit it."
Shan pulled the edge of the paper down and pointed to the faint image of the jade crane.
"This is how we found the university. Me and the goon from the fight. We got the name of the school, and of your friend. Your pal Buckley is in a lot of danger."
Ian's eyes darted upstairs, an unconscious look toward the crane, she was sure. He brought them back to the article right away, but his face had paled, his smile gone hiding in the shadows. "Bring me the phone," Ian said quietly. "Please."
She did, and he dialed a number. "No answer at his house. That's good, right?"
"Or very bad."
Ian frowned. "Right. I'll try his mobile." He dialed another number, and they both waited in silence as it rang. And rang. And rang.
"Bucks?...Yeah, Ian...Where are you?...Nadine? I thought you two ended it...Oh, right. I see." Ian looked at Shan, his left eyebrow raised. She mouthed "not here," and Ian nodded. "Look, Bucks, there's a problem. Can you meet us--meet me--at the Marmoset?...Ten minutes...Yeah, sorry about that. And Daniel," Ian paused, pursed his lips. "It's
important
."
Ian hung up. "He'll meet us."
"Good," Shan said. "Now all we need is the crane..." A little test. She'd been more than accommodating so far. She could have just taken it.
Ian stared at her, his deep-set eyes glowing like a cat's in the darkness. "Give me a minute," he said finally. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled up the stairs.
Shan watched him go, irritated at the pang of concern in her gut and her almost irrepressible urge to help him. She forced herself to pull her eyes away. The magazine article. It lay on the table by the phone. Shan smoothed out the page against the dark, waxed-wood surface, folded it, and slid it back into her pocket.
This whole thing was getting too complicated. It was supposed to be a quick trip to grab the artifact and fly back to Los Angeles. Now she had the police to deal with, a rogue martial arts master, and not one but two professors to worry about. Her mother would never have gotten herself into this situation. And if she had, she'd know the best way out of it. Shan could only ride the wind for now, and look for the right opportunities.
Ian hobbled back down the stairs looking more determined than wounded. Adrenaline, probably. Or maybe loyalty to his friend. Whatever it was, Shan appreciated the effect it had on his features--the angles seemed more majestic. Ian seemed to have as many facets in his personality as he carried on his face.
Shan, on the other hand, considered herself a one-note personality.
Driven
. The tiger spirit and her parent's legacy made sure of that.
Ian met her by the sofa. "I've got it," he said quietly, patting the worn leather messenger bag draped around his neck to hang at his side. "We can go."
Shan raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "I'll need directions. You up for that?"
"What, you think you're driving?" Ian grinned.
"Hm," said Shan. "Concussion. History of passing out and hallucinating about past loves. Car and keys several miles away." She nodded. "You should definitely drive."
"I knew you'd see it my way."
They walked out to Shan's rental car in silence. Shan unlocked the passenger door and held it open for Ian. He grinned and folded his tall frame into her sub-compact. She took another look at his messenger bag, another look at his head wound, then closed the door firmly behind him.
She drove five miles above the speed limit, just like a normal person. Ian stayed awake this time, gave her coherent directions. Shan turned onto a street lined with bars and markets and coffee shops, many of which were still open at two thirty in the morning.
"Nice cat," Shan said.
"Hm? Oh, you mean Tybalt. He's not mine," Ian said. "I can't have a cat with my schedule. I'm gone too many months out of the year. But Tybalt keeps me company when I'm here. I leave one of the windows cracked for him, and he comes and goes as he pleases."
"No commitment."
"None."
"Sounds perfect," Shan said, and she meant it. "I could use a cat like that back at my place."
"Well, don't get any ideas about stealing Tybalt," Ian said. "I'll be watching you."
Shan drove in silence, her stomach knotting and unknotting. Finally, she said, "I'm not a thief."
Ian looked at her. She saw his head turn out of the corner of her eye. But she didn't want to turn and stare back at him. She needed to keep her eyes on the road, and on the Jade Circle. Most definitely not on Ian.