Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

teenager, but she’d been glad
     tomorrow’s birthday was twelve, not thirteen. She wasn’t ready for thirteen, but that
     was okay because she had a whole year of being twelve ahead of her. That gave her
     lots of time.
    But that was all she remembered. She didn’t remember waking up or eating breakfast
     or lunch or supper. Was it suppertime? Had they come here instead of going to the
     roller rink like they were supposed to?
    Had she somehow missed her whole birthday?
    A burst of indignation burned through some of the fear. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t
     fair at all, and she didn’t understand, but here she was in some kind of restaurant.
     The air was thick with good smells—ginger and onions and fryer fat—and she could see
     a smidge of the room the hall led to. A man sat at a small, cloth-draped table, leaning
     forward and stabbing his finger at the air the way men did when they thought they
     were important and people should listen. The woman with him looked bored. They were
     both Caucasian, but this was a Chinese restaurant. She could tell from the smells
     and the crimson walls. Out of sight from her vantage point, someone was laughing a
     quick, barking sort of laugh: HA ! HA ! HA ! Which made her think of Uncle Wu, who laughed in syllables like that, only quieter,
     huffing it out: Ha. Ha. Ha.
    She was breathing really fast. Huffing like Uncle Wu. She clenched her fists and tried
     to make herself breathe normal. She needed something to be normal.
    She felt tired. Tired and kind of heavy, the way she did when she had a cold. She
     sniffed experimentally. She wasn’t stuffed up or anything. Had she been sick? Maybe
     she’d had a real high fever. A brain fever. Could brain fevers make you forget stuff?
     Maybe she’d had a terrible brain fever and got over it, but just now she’d had a relapse—that’s
     why she’d been so dizzy—and—
    “Excuse us, please,” someone said behind her.
    She whirled.
    Two women had come out of the restroom. They werekind of old—maybe thirty—and they were dressed funny. Both wore jeans, which was weird.
     Who wore jeans to a nice restaurant? One had on a big, sloppy sweater, but the other
     one wore a tight, stretchy shirt that showed
everything
, like she was a hooker or something. That woman had great big earrings and super-short
     hair like Mia Farrow and…good grief. She had a little gem in her nose, like it was
     pierced there.
    Her mother wouldn’t let her pierce her ears, and this woman had pierced her nose!
    The two women were looking at her funny. She flushed. She was standing around like
     an idiot, blocking the hall. She stepped aside. As she did, her foot bumped something.
     She glanced down.
    Someone had left her purse right there in the hall. It was a nice purse, too—black
     leather, the kind that’s so soft you want to pet it. She should tell someone.
    She’d taken one uncertain step when someone else came into the hall. A man. He was
     tall and probably as old as the two women, and he was gorgeous. He looked like a movie
     star—kind of like Clint Eastwood, in fact, who was still her favorite, and she hated
     that
Rawhide
had gone off the air. Only this man’s hair was all dark and shaggy and he had really
     dramatic eyebrows that weren’t like Clint’s at all.
    The man looked right at her and tipped his head like he was puzzled. She felt a little
     flutter in her stomach. Then he spoke to her.
    “Julia? Are you okay?”
    L ILY pushed the remains of her Kung Pao chicken around on her plate and tried to look
     like she was paying attention to her cousin Freddie, who was excited about implied
     rates and parity and agio. What the hell was agio? Was that even a word?
    She didn’t ask. He’d tell her, and God knew how long that would take. It was some
     kind of broker-speak, though. Probably currency trading, which was his specialty.
     Thatwas a large part of what he did for Rule these days. Rule’s second clan wasn’t affluent
     the way Nokolai was.
    “…not convinced the baht is on the rise, but…” Freddie broke off and chuckled. “Your
     eyes have glazed over.”
    “Sorry.” She and Freddie got along better now that he’d stopped asking her to marry
     him. She’d even forgiven him for doing so repeatedly without mentioning that he was
     gay. Turned out he’d been in major denial about that and had only come out of the
     closet with himself in the past year. He still wasn’t ready for the family to