Tails You Lose by Lisa Smedman

Author:Lisa Smedman [Smedman, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780451458186
Google: QKAMAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0451458192
Publisher: RoC
Published: 2001-02-01T07:00:00+00:00

8

Great Possession

Night Owl rumbled down the street on her Electroglide, watching for the address she'd looked up on the telecom. The streets in this part of the downtown core were quiet this time of night. The antique shops, retro clothing and music stores, and thaumaturgical supply shops were closed and dark, and only a handful of people scurried along the blustery sidewalks, hunkered down under umbrellas to shelter from the incessant rain.

She spotted the address halfway down the block. The shop was a tiny one with a barred window that overlooked the street and a short flight of worn stone steps leading up to its front door. A battered electric sign hung above the doorway, its light flickering behind the name of the shop: National Coin & Stamp. The sign looked as though it had been there a century, as did the shop. Someone was moving around inside; Night Owl hoped it was the man she was looking for.

She turned her bike in the direction of Waterfront Station and parked it at the back of a Metermate lot, in the shadow of a Eurovan that had two hours plus on its meter. Using a handful of the parking tokens she'd boosted, she purchased six hours' worth of time. If the Red Lotus did spot her bike, she wanted them to think she'd be away from it for some time. With luck, they'd assume she had taken the Seabus over to the North Shore.

Night Owl hurried across the parking lot, turned right at a bronze statue of an angel carrying a soldier up to heaven, and pushed her way in through the front doors of Waterfront Station. The large, echoing building was busy day and night, a meeting point for the SkyTrain, Seabus and express trains. People streamed through it in all directions: down escalators to the subway and train tracks, along the elevated walkway that led to the Seabus dock, or up escalators to the sky-cab stops on the roof. Still more people clustered in knots at its soykaf stands for a quick jolt of caffeine or stood and watched the eleven o'clock news on the enormous Tribal Newsnet screen that filled one wall.

Night Owl slipped into a washroom and exchanged her wet jacket and jeans for a dry pair of pants and the expensive suede jacket Kageyama had given her. She blew her wind-tangled hair dry at a hand blower and combed it until it hung straight and neat. Then she squirted cream onto the Beijing Opera mask she'd painted her face with earlier and scrubbed away the diagonal slashes of black and red and blue makeup. When her face was clean, she stared at herself in the mirror, relaxing her posture and trying to keep the smirk off her face.

"Hello, 'Alma,' " she said. "Ready for your next run?"

Outside the washroom, she cached her wet clothes inside a storage locker and then pulled out the cellphone she'd boosted earlier from the apartment. She flicked past the message that

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