Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel (16 page)

Keiko’s expression would’ve been appropriate for a French aristocrat standing next to the guillotine. “That was so thoughtful of you, Sis,” she said grimly, and I could see her trying to work out a way to avoid accepting the glass that Suze was holding out to her.

Before she could, however, Farid broke in, reaching over himself to take the full wineglass. “Oh, actually, Keiko is sticking to water these days.”

The last time I’d seen a facial expression like Suze’s had been during the 2012 presidential debates, when Barack Obama had uttered the fateful phrase, “Proceed, Governor.” “Really?” She leaned toward Farid. “Anything I should know about?” And I could almost hear Suze’s trap snap closed. Unable to do anything, I sank down into my chair, as if by less visibility I could separate myself from what was unfolding.

Keiko was cornered and she knew it, but she was still struggling for a way out. “Well, it’s just—”

And then Farid started talking, and it was all over. He looked at Keiko, and I cringed at the expression on his face. He was head over heels in love with her, and had no idea that he was unwittingly helping her sister put the knife in her back. “Sweetie, really, we’re way past the first trimester. I really think we can at least tell family.” The barely suppressed excitement in his voice was the worst part, and I wished that I could cover my eyes.

“Trimesters? That sure sounds specific,” Suze said brightly. Enough was enough, and I kicked her hard under the table. She winced but never looked away from her sister.

Trapped, and with no escape, Keiko gave in. “You’re right, Farid,” she said, then looked over at Suze with a very unsisterly expression in her eyes. “You’ll be an aunt in another few months.” Of course Suze had probably known before poor Farid, but Keiko did her best to sell it. “Yays,” she gritted through her teeth.

The whole table devolved into a flurry of hugs and
congratulations. The ones from Suze were distinctly insincere, and I did my best to divert Farid with a manful handshake to distract him from the fact that the future mother of his child’s hug for her sister looked a little bit like an attempted choking. After a minute we were all seated again.

Either Farid was as dense as a brick usually, or what had been apparently the first public announcement of his impending fatherhood had rendered him insensible with joy, or one of the kitsune in the room was doing some subtle smoothing of his perception, or maybe a combination of all three, but he directed a smile at Keiko that was so blissful that it was painful to see. “See, honey?” Then he looked over at me and let the floodgates open. “I’ve been dying to tell everyone, but Keiko kept saying that we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves.” He laughed suddenly, gleefully. “But it’s just killing me—I can’t wait to get the nursery all set up, and tell my parents—”

Alarm bells went off inside my head. “Your parents?” I asked weakly.

“Yeah. I’m not going to lie. They emigrated from Tehran thirty years ago, so they can still be a bit traditional, and I don’t think they’re going to be too thrilled about us not being married.” He looked right over at Suze and became extremely earnest. “But I’m just going to tell them that it’s our decision, and I definitely am not going to let them start trying to put pressure on Keiko.”

“You’ll be just like all those Hollywood starlets,” Suze said with a smile. “So glamorous.”

I felt a sudden rush of air under the table, and the wince on my friend’s face indicated that Keiko had had enough. “You always know how to phrase things, Suze,” she said. Apparently her kick had been a lot harder than mine, because I noticed Suze suppressing a grimace and reaching down to subtly rub her shin.

This conversation had more sharp edges and loaded statements than a Katharine Hepburn movie, and I for
one wanted out. I was also really hungry, and I didn’t think it was wrong of me to want a slice of the vegetarian quiche before it was stone cold. “So with that great news, let’s get eating!” I said forcefully.

Farid immediately joined me in reaching for the serving dishes. “Yeah, I hate to say it, but I really do have to leave for work soon.” As he began carving a wing off the chicken, he leaned in and kissed Keiko on the cheek.

Dinner stabilized slightly after that. It was clear that Suze’s goal had been to push the acknowledgment of Keiko’s pregnancy out into the open, and now that she’d achieved that, she and her sister were just biding their time until Farid left. What Suze’s motivation had been, I had no idea. After all, Suze had known for months. Normally I would’ve resolved to ask her about it later, but from the way she and her sister were exchanging glares, the truth was likely to come out as soon as Farid was out of hearing distance. I envied him. Being at a minimum safe distance once the sisters threw down would’ve been a blessing.

Awkward atmosphere or not, I was hungry, and I concentrated primarily on eating as much as possible and keeping my eyes off the roasted chicken, which did smell incredible. When Farid pulled on his coat, grabbed a brownie for the road, and waved a jaunty good-bye, I did have to strongly suppress the urge to yell,
Take me with you!
just to escape the sisterly fight that I knew was coming.

Sure enough, it started the moment the door closed behind Farid.

Suzume dropped her bright facade immediately, and even I was taken aback by the level of anger on her face when she rounded on her sister. “You fucking told him,” she said dangerously.

“I think I’ll clear the dishes,” I said quickly, hopping to my feet and grabbing what remained of the sides.

“Yes, I told him,” Keiko snapped back, getting right into her twin’s face. “You didn’t need your brilliant plan of interrogation either, Suze. You could’ve just asked me.”

“Oh yeah, ever since you swore that you’d dumped him, I’ve completely trusted your honesty. No, not only have you
moved in with
the human, which I have already been completely covering up for you, but now you decided it would be
fun
to break one of Grandmother’s biggest rules? If this is your version of teen rebellion, Keiko, it sucks a big one!”

The kitchen was small, and I honestly wasn’t sure that there was anywhere in the tiny town house where I could escape from this fight. “I think I’ll wait in the car,” I suggested.

“She’ll just tell you anyway.” Keiko said to me, looking annoyed. “Besides,
you
of all people should be on my side. I hear that you practice catch and release on problem humans—I’m not doing anything like
that
.”

Apparently the story of my saving Matt McMahon from my sister had been making the rounds. I definitely did not appreciate Keiko’s particular choice of phrasing, but I looked at Suze, whose eyes had a lot more in common with a fox’s than a human’s right now, and realized that I couldn’t just run back to the car and let her rip her sister apart. I hadn’t ever seen the twins together at a time when they weren’t fighting, but I did know that Suze loved her older sister, and while she wasn’t one to express a lot of regret about her actions, I had a feeling that if I left the house, this conversation would go even further downhill.

I really wished that I could go hide in the car.

Instead, I forced myself to walk slowly back to the table and sit down in my chair. I snagged the bottle of wine, refilled Suze’s glass right to the top, and nudged it toward her. Maybe that would help the situation, or at least distract her for a moment. Then I turned my
attention to Keiko. Forcing my voice low, and in as reasonable a tone as I could muster, I said, “All right, Keiko. So you’ve told Farid that he’s going to be a father. You’re not insane.” I cut Suze off before she could even open her mouth. “No, Suze, don’t even start. Keiko, you’re not crazy, so you have to have some kind of plan here.”

Whether it was my words or my voice, Keiko calmed down a little. “Thank you,” she acknowledged, then reached over and snagged the bottle herself.

Instincts garnered from a lifetime of American films and TV kicked in. “Wait. You’re—”

Keiko cut me off, rolling her eyes. “Half a glass with dinner, Fort. This is not going to result in fetal alcohol poisoning.” She poured about two inches into Farid’s empty glass, then took a slow sip. “Oh, this
is
good.”

“See? You and Australian wines,” Suze muttered.

Another sip, and then Keiko started talking to me again, sounding a lot calmer, but carefully ignoring her sister. “Grandmother’s rule is that we can’t have long-term relationships with humans, and when we choose one to be the father of a litter, we have to make sure we never see him again after we become pregnant. These are the rules for secrecy, and they are the same rules that Grandmother’s family observed back in Japan.”

“Rules that have worked very well for us, Keiko.”

Keiko didn’t even react to Suze’s voice, continuing to speak only to me. “But our grandmother broke those rules. To get to America, she seduced an American GI and convinced him to marry her. He brought her back to Rhode Island, and they had four daughters, each a year apart.”

“Oh, Keiko.” All the anger was drained from Suze’s voice, replaced by a mixture of exhaustion and deep, deep sadness. “Yes, that happened. But think about how it ended—” She looked over at me as well, and filled me in. “Grandfather Hollis returned home early from a business trip. Grandmother was doing the laundry in the back of the house with her older daughters, and she didn’t hear
him come in. He went upstairs to the nursery, and found a fox kit in the bassinet. That was our aunt, Kanon. She was just a baby. She recognized her father, and without Grandmother there to guide her behavior, she just shifted to human form to greet him.”

“What did your grandmother do?” I asked. Atsuko Hollis had only four daughters, so I had a bad feeling that I knew what she’d done.

“She heard him shouting, and she ran upstairs.” The corner of Suze’s mouth twitched. “We can set illusions, we can fool the eye, but we can’t change a memory. And Grandfather Hollis was stone cold sober, and he knew what he’d seen.” A pause, a long sip of wine, and then Suze said, flatly, “So Grandmother killed him, and faked an accident.”

Keiko rushed back into the conversation. “Yes, and she always tells that story to convince us that the old way is better, but her way worked for
four years
, and would’ve kept working if she’d known that his travel plans had changed.” She started sounding excited. “I’ve got Farid completely trained—he texts me to tell me if he goes to a different sandwich shop for lunch, even if he thinks I’m in a completely different state!”

I stared at her for a second as it slowly dawned on me what she was heading toward. “So you’re—oh, oh man.” Suzume didn’t say a word, instead just staring at her sister in mute horror.

Keiko was rolling now, speaking so quickly that her words almost ran together as she outlined her plan. “No, you’re not really thinking about it, but I have, and I know that I can make this work. Farid is an ER resident. He works eighty hours a week. I barely see the poor guy as it is. And I haven’t gone fox
once
since I started trying to get pregnant—not
once
. That’s how my grandmother handled it when she was married, and she had single births each time. I can handle keeping one kit a secret from him.”

I tried to cut in. “Keiko, this isn’t the fifties anymore. Farid is going to expect to spend some time actually, you know,
holding
the baby.”

“Of course he will—when he’s away from work, he can hold her all he wants. But I’ll be there. And when kitsune kits are little, they always mimic their mother. When I’m human, she’ll be human.”

“And what about when you’re not around?” I reasoned. “Farid strikes me as the kind of guy to pop the baby in a sling and walk around the corner for coffee every now and then for a little daddy-baby bonding time.”

“Attachment parenting,” Keiko said triumphantly. “I can keep my daughter with me all the time, and it won’t even be seen as weird.” She paused, considering. “Well, not too weird.”

I couldn’t help it; I was starting to think that she’d actually thought through a potentially workable plan. I scrabbled for another argument, and then asked, “What if it’s a boy?”

This prompted a very loud and derisive snort. “So Suze has been telling you bedtime stories? Fort, my grandmother spent just about every minute of her pregnancies human, and all she had were girls. Kitsune breed true, and that means daughters. All those stories about kitsune having human sons are nothing more than another way to scare us away from forming long-term relationships. There is no biological impact of my love for Farid on our daughter.”

Suze had buried her head in her hands, but now she looked up and said, quietly and pointedly, “Keiko, I notice that you have not filled Grandmother in on your marvelous little plan.”

“I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission. And once she sees that everything is working out, there will be no reason for her to intervene.” There was a stubborn line in Keiko’s jaw that I was very familiar with.

“Don’t mistake a wish for a truth,” Suze warned.
“Grandmother is going to be pretty unspeakably pissed about this.”

“But you’re not going to tell her.” Keiko’s voice was wobbling somewhere between an order and a plea.

Looking at Suze’s face as she listened to her twin, I wasn’t sure what she would say next. I had a feeling that Suze didn’t know either, but I broke in reluctantly. “Suze, I hate taking Keiko’s side, but I don’t see how telling your grandmother right now would help anything. Farid already knows, so it’s already really complicated. If your grandmother somehow was able to make Keiko dump Farid right now, the first thing he’d do is get a lawyer and start a custody battle, which is good for exactly no one. Right now Keiko at least has things under control. I’m not sure destabilizing things is a great idea at the moment.”

There was a silence that stretched a long minute; then Suzume gave a sharp nod. “Fine, I won’t say anything.” Then she leaned in very close to her sister, and her voice made it clear that this was a deal breaker. “But I don’t give a shit where you are when you go into labor. You ditch Farid and get back to my place.”