Inked

mother—who had done everything in her power to keep me out of harm’s way. Taking me into a war zone would have been unthinkable to her.
    I found Jean giving me a sharp look—as though she had read my mind and wanted to defend her mother—but the moment passed, and all the fight inside her seemed to shrivel up into a cold small shell. Jean rubbed her arms. “It was difficult. I was completely alone. No other foreigners for a thousand miles, and my Chinese wasn’t good. There were so many times when I got into trouble.” She stopped for a moment, her gaze turning inward, and then, very quietly said, “Men would try to hurt me, but the boys…The boys would make my skin burn, like fire.”
    Red eyes glinted from the shadows. Jean hugged herself—and then laughed quietly, bitterly. “For a long time, all I worried about was me. Some things don’t change.”
    “You did fine,” I said quietly.
    Jean gave me an unpleasant smile. “Maybe. But I think it’s time to do better.”

    WE changed clothes. Zee and the boys delivered the wardrobe. Jean was elegant in loose slacks, with a long-sleeved silk blouse tucked in and buttoned to the neck. A touch of red lipstick and several dabs of eye shadow made her look like a movie star. I, on the other hand, wore workman trousers, patched and stained with paint; and a loose white men’s cotton shirt. No makeup. Just some dirt smeared lightly against my jaw. The boys also brought me horn-rimmed eyeglasses, the lenses nonprescriptive, but so thick the world was little more than a blur in front of me. I plaited my hair into two braids and tugged a canvas houndstooth billy cap over my head.
    Jean frowned. “Someone should lock you up in the library you escaped from.”
    “I was going for hot and sexy,” I replied dryly, “but I guess that’ll do.”
    She grunted, and passed me a blue card, a folded sheaf of papers, and a round tin pin. “Put that on and never take it off. It identifies you as a Jew. The papers are from a woman who died here a month ago, but they’ll do in case you’re stopped. The blue card is the most important, though. It’s a monthlong work pass. You’ll need it to cross the bridge into the city.”
    “And our similarities?” I pointed at my face, and then hers.
    Jean hesitated. “People see what they want. I doubt anyone will look too closely, but once we get close to the bridge, we’ll split up and enter the checkpoint separately.”
    “How will your neighbors react to my presence?”
    “Most people here are more concerned with how bad their diarrhea is going to get, or with finding food, work. Are you fluent in any languages but English?”
    “Just Spanish. I doubt that’s going to be helpful here.”
    “So don’t talk. And if the Japs ask you anything, pretend to have a German or Polish accent. Any accent. Act like you have trouble speaking English. Whatever happens, you’re no longer American, or British, or any citizen of an Allied country. You’re a stateless refugee like everyone else in this ghetto.”
    “I see some flaws in this plan.”
    “There is no plan. Just you, appearing in my life, when you shouldn’t be here at all.” Jean smoothed down her blouse, and I reached up to my shoulders where Dek and Mal were coiled, humming a Bryan Adams tune. I thought it might be “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You,” and scratched under their chins.
    Jean’s frown deepened. “They sing for you?”
    “Yours don’t?”
    She reached up to pat the little hyena heads poking free of her glossy black hair. “They mutter a lot to themselves.”
    They were still muttering—and mine were still singing—when the sun came up and their bodies dissolved into smoke. Jean and I watched each other as it happened, both of us silent, her expression as grave and uncomfortable as mine surely was. Given the peculiarities of the boys, and how they transferred themselves from mother to daughter, it stood to reason that no two Hunters of my bloodline had ever been in the same place at once, and certainly had never transitioned from night to day together. I felt naked.
    I could not see her tattoos beneath her clothes, but mine were a new weight against my skin, rippling and electric; an organic, indestructible shell. Dreaming, breathing. I no longer felt the heat, except in my lungs and on my face. The boys absorbed my sweat. I flexed my hands, still encased in soft leather. I had not shown my grandmother the armor. Something in me