The No-Tailed Fox, Part II

[ceedeeandco]

Master Post
Part One



Sunny opened her door expecting to find her neighbor needing her own spare key again, so it took her a moment to react to the teenager standing on her doorstep with a battered backpack and her mother's necklace. "...Amy?"

"You're Sunflower -- Sunny?" the girl asked warily.

That didn't answer the question, but Sunny recognized her now. She hadn't seen her niece in person since leaving San Francisco when the kid was two, but Grandmother had sent yearly photos of the twins. More recently, Vi had occasionally condescended to include a Polaroid of Amy -- never Drew -- with her requests for money. "Yes, I'm Sunny. You'd -- is Violet with you? Is she coming?" She had better not be. One of Sunny's conditions for sending money was that Violet stay out of New England.

Amy's mouth tightened. "No. She's not. She-- There were Hunters. She's not coming."

A stab of pain, sharper than she'd expected, followed by alarm. "Hunters? Where?"

"Nebraska. They didn't know to follow me." Amy looked down. "I -- didn't know where else to go--"

Most people probably didn't keep their newly-orphaned fifteen-year-old nieces standing on the step while they grilled them, did they? She stepped back hastily. "Come in, come in, of course. Sit down. Would you like some water?"

"Yes, please."

Sunny went to the kitchen, trying to decide how to delicately phrase her next question; she would have asked Vi straight out, probably yelling, but newly orphaned fifteen-year-old. A male kitsune and a human woman could have children of either species -- for example, Violet was kitsune and Sunny was human. A kitsune woman always had kitsune children -- for example, Amy and Drew. Which meant Amy had kitsune... dietary requirements. She handed over the water and hovered next to the couch. "Amy, this is a fairly small town, so if you, uh..."

Amy shook her head quickly. "I'm all right for now. And I wouldn't kill anyone in your town."

"I appreciate that. I know Vi had, uh, a different perspective--" Sunny broke off, jumping back as Amy's eyes flashed and her claws extended, shearing through the plastic cup and spilling water on the couch. She could happily have gone another fourteen years without seeing those damn claws. A month before Sunny left her grandmother's house, toddler Drew had come an eighth of an inch short of slashing through her left eye. She still had a faint scar.

"Violet had a different perspective on a lot of things," Amy said tightly. "I'm a freak, but I'm not a monster." She looked down at the skewered cup. "Sorry. Could I maybe have a towel?"

"Uh, no problem." Sunny retreated to the kitchen, remembering someone else who'd emphasized the difference between freak and monster. Violet, at least as an adult, had never seen any point in it. Grandmother honestly didn't find being a kitsune at all freaky. But...

"My mother used to say something like that," she told Amy, handing her a dishtowel. "To my father, I mean, that he was a freak not a monster. She was a pacifist and a vegetarian, but she never left him and she never gave up trying to help him."

Amy eyed her sidelong. "My-- Violet told me they were both really, really stoned most of the time."

"I think they may have been stoned for most of the Sixties."

"I mean, she meant, when they -- when the Hunters--"

Sunny shook her head. "Mom never gave up finding something to make Dad -- and Vi, I guess -- not need the brains. She tried a lot of plants and she tried a lot of drugs, and nothing worked perfectly but she did have some success with some of the mixtures and -- stretching the timetable a little. So they had drugs around, but -- no."

Amy busied herself sopping up the spilled water. "I didn't really think-- I didn't know what to believe with her, a lot of the time."

"She was like that." Before the twins were born, Vi had once called Sunny out of nowhere and claimed to have seduced and eaten Sunny's boyfriend. She hadn't actually had a boyfriend at the time, but she'd ended up frantically checking the welfare of anyone who might have been considered a former boyfriend. She'd never found any fatalities, but Violet had never admitted to lying.

What had Grandmother been thinking, leaving Violet with kids?

Right, that she'd be able to feed them.

"Amy," Sunny started, then stopped. "Amy, I can't... I can't handle your... dietary needs." In more ways than one. "But--"

"I broke into a morgue," Amy said. "Uh. In Memphis. I can do that, I don't -- I'm old enough to scavenge."

That... made things a lot easier. "If you can handle that, you can stay here. As long as you need. There's -- high school... driving lessons?" What the hell did she have to offer a kid she couldn't even feed?

But Amy was nodding, her expression something that was almost a smile, and apparently a roof and a school was enough of an offer after all.

Violet apparently wasn't a hard act to follow.

As gently as possible, Sunny asked, "Do you want to tell me what happened to Drew?"

Amy sank further down in the couch. "What do you think happened to Drew?"

Some days Sunny pretended she thought Violet had decided boys were icky and traded Drew off to some nice kitsune she met on the road for some magic beans, and that she was too embarrassed to explain this, which was why she never mentioned him or responded to any questions about him. Sometimes she pretended to wonder if Drew had turned out to be actually human, leading Violet to abandon him and pretend he'd never existed, but since she'd seen Drew's claws that was more out there than the magic beans.

"I think Violet killed him, sometime in the first three months. I don't know whether it was on purpose."

"Sometime in the first three days," Amy said distantly. "And it was on purpose."

That had pretty much been her worst-case scenario. Sunny rubbed her eyes. "Violet... wasn't the same, after our parents were killed. I think she gave up on being human. The last time we actually spoke was before you were born -- every time we talked we'd get in a screaming fight, she'd threaten to eat me, and I'd say she should have died instead of Mom and Dad, and Grandmother suggested maybe we should write letters instead."

"Were you ever afraid she would?"

"Eat me? Grandmother was always nearby, so... not really. Sometimes I thought she wanted to, though, and she could be really impulsive."

"So why keep in touch with her at all?"

Sunny shrugged. "Partly because of you and Drew, and because she wasn't sending any word to Grandmother. I knew next to nothing, but it was more than Grandmother got otherwise." Partly because she was buying her sister off not to show up on her doorstep -- or in New England -- but maybe Amy didn't need to know that. "Partly because I really, really didn't want her to do something stupid and get herself killed by Hunters. I don't like Hunters any more than she does -- did. Whatever Violet deserved, they didn't deserve to finish that job. Mom and Dad died keeping them from finishing that job." She looked at her niece carefully. "So -- I'm only going to say this once. It's okay, Amy, if she wasn't killed by Hunters."



At a little before one on Saturday morning, the party at Patrick Miller's uncle's farm was probably still going strong. Rumor had it some of the band kids were going to crash the party with a couple of trombones and a taxidermied deer head, which... yeah, she didn't want to know what they thought they were doing, except for how she really did.

As a senior, Amy had been invited to the party. (She still wasn't used to being something other than the freaky quiet new kid, but she'd slid into being a nonentity, after the first rush of rumors about why she was suddenly living with her aunt.) She told herself she didn't want to be there to see people puking Everclear into the bushes and hear Mike and Julia dry-humping in the hayloft, but given how she had to spend the evening instead, it actually sounded pretty appealing.

Every other Friday night was Feeding Time. Amy called it Feeding Time. Sunny, of course, didn't call it anything. She just got in the car and drove Amy to some larger town and dropped her off outside some funeral home, and then went to see a movie or something. Amy just had to get in, get her 'supplements', and get out. She planned and re-planned what to say if she got caught, but fortunately it hadn't come up yet. As Feeding Time approached, Amy always felt tired, irritable and incessantly hungry, all of which suggested that every two weeks was pushing it on how often a kitsune needed to eat... supplements. Amy never said anything, though, because she was pretty sure every two weeks was also pushing it -- in the other direction -- for how often Sunny could stand being reminded about supplements. (Her aunt didn't even eat cheese.)

The problem was, while 'supplements' marinated in embalming fluid retained their nutritional value, they also acquired side effects. At best, she'd feel dizzy and have a headache in the morning. The absolute worst was vomiting, which made the whole thing pointless. Usually it was somewhere in the middle, and she ended up spending most of Saturday curled around a pillow, clutching a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and watching pirated Japanese cartoons with bad amateur subtitles.

At the moment, she was curled around a pillow, clutching a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and failing to get any sleep. Her stomach hurt. Damn formaldehyde.

Her window screen rattled. Something moved outside.

Amy frowned. They did get raccoons, but usually not on the second--

Something came through her window, without a sound from the screen. Amy lurched up and flailed for the bedside lamp with one hand, keeping the other, claws out, between her and the thing -- briefly, before she had to pull the claws in to clamp her hand over her mouth. She was still forcing back the retching when she got the light on and saw--

A fox. A fox with three tails.

"Hello, Amy," said the fox. "I am Reizei Mitsue. My brother Mitsuharu is here, too, but I told him it's rude for a gentleman to burst into a lady's room at night." The fox paused to lick a paw. "I'm a vixen, so it doesn't count."

Either the embalming fluid was having a new and different effect, or there was a three-tailed kitsune sitting in her bedroom. "What--" Manners. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"As you might imagine, your great-grandmother was very upset that leaving you with your mother turned out so badly. She was also concerned that living with your aunt would not give you the guidance or the opportunity to move forward with life as a kitsune. Mitsuharu and I have been amusing ourselves in North America for some time, but when we first came over here we were little two-tails making human faces with ten-inch noses and speaking a dialect of English older than we were, and your great-grandmother and her mother took us into their home and made sure we knew what we were about. Now that you're almost done with human basic education, we thought we'd drop in and offer to show you around, help out a bit while you get your bearings. Would you like some help?"

"I... yes, thank you--" What in the world was the proper term of respect for a tailed kitsune offering to lead you out of your purgatory of a life? "Thank you, ma'am. I can't say--" And then she literally couldn't say, because she had to cover her mouth again. The her stomach contents made it at least halfway up her esophagus, burning the whole time, until she forced them back. "Excuse me, ma'am," Amy rasped, and opened the Pepto-Bismol.

"Please, call me Mitsue," said the fox. "I'm sure we'll have lots of fun together -- tell me, little sister, what do you want to do with your future?"

Amy lowered the bottle and wiped sweat from her forehead. "All I can think of right now is becoming a mortician and getting in before the embalmment."



Mitsue introduced herself to Sunny wearing the shape of a young Japanese woman with fox-red hair, tails visible. She looked exactly like a tailed kitsune, and Sunny had no trouble accepting her as one, which was presumably the point. Sunny seemed to assume this was Mitsue's real form and Mitsue didn't correct her, but she mentioned to Amy that a tailed kitsune's only true form was quadrupedal and furry. They often had preferred human forms, but it was only a matter of preference.

Mitsuharu, it turned out, had been at Amy's high school since the beginning of the year -- as Mia Huntworthy, the new math teacher. At least this explained why the staff and two-thirds of the students thought Miss Huntworthy was an ordinary, if pretty, teacher, and the other third thought she was smoking hot and dressed to kill. At Amy's request, Mitsuharu showed her what her drooling classmates were seeing differently: bust size (larger), skirt (shorter), blouse (tighter and less buttoned), heels (higher), makeup (more obvious), and mannerisms (just... sexier). "What can I say?" he asked, smirking. "I'm a fox." Mitsue threw a pinecone at him.

The school guidance counselor was weirded out when Amy asked about mortuary science programs, but Amy vaguely implied something about a family business on her father's side, and the guidance counselor had Huntworthy-obsessed students to worry about. Amy got the information and set about trying to choose a school. It was a choice she pretty much had to make on her own. Sunny didn't know much about trade schools, and as for Mitsue and Mitsuharu--

"Hmm, you go to school to work with bodies? In my day, you just found an undertaker who needed an apprentice, and there usually wasn't much competition." Having made Sunny fumble her coffee and almost startled Amy out of her chair, Mitsuharu hopped onto the table for a closer look at the application.

"Please don't get pawprints on that. You have to get certified before most places will hire you," Amy explained, looking around for Mitsue. There she was -- also in fox form, sitting on top of the microwave.

Mitsuharu hmmed. "There are many excellent things about this modern day, but I cannot get behind this paperwork for everything."

"But the advantage is you can change your shape without actually changing your shape, if you change your papers," Mitsue said, and hopped from microwave to counter and counter to floor. She padded to the table, then flowed up to human-shape. "Amy Gustafson is your only active persona, isn't it?"

Amy Wilmott lived in San Francisco with her grandmother and her twin, and Amy Baudelaire had left Nebraska in a hurry and possibly a dead body behind her, if Sam's family didn't clean up. "...Yeah."

"Gustafson is her legal name," Sunny added. "It's on her birth certificate."

It was easy to forget that Sunny had actually been there -- well, in the next room -- when Amy and Drew were born. Once she'd left, she'd never come back. "No one knows what happened to my birth certificate after Violet cleared out of San Francisco," Amy pointed out. "But I don't see any reason not to be Amy Gustafson at school."

"At school, yes, but you might want to think about constructing a persona or two for after that, just in case." Mitsue held up a hand as Sunny opened her mouth. "Shield the Gustafson identity from any messes."

Amy could see how there could be messes. "Do you have something in mind?"

"The six-tailed forger can put together a complete set of documents with simulated paper trail for a thousand dollars--"

Sunny winced. "Oh, is that what Vi needed all that money for?"

"Ah, no, actually." Mitsuharu flicked his tails. "He doesn't charge tailless kitsune with children who are also kitsune. And he always knows, somehow."

Someone snarled -- Sunny snarled. "Oh, not this again. What is with this attitude that tailless kitsune are supposed to be baby factories? It's the twenty-first century!"

"Well, I can tell you why tailed kitsune see it that way," Mitsue said mildly. "Any children we have with humans are human, and any children we have with each other are fox-shaped and without a hint of magic unless and until they live to one hundred, as a small, unmagical fox. Tailless kitsune are where you get more kitsune."

"Yeah, well, some people shouldn't be encouraged to have children because they can't handle it. I don't know what Grandmother was thinking--"

She had a point, but Amy didn't need anyone picking fights when she was trying to work on her damn application. "Maybe Violet left me alive for the free paperwork," she interrupted. At the rate Violet went though identities, that would have piled up fast. "Could you help me cover the cost, Sunny? And does he always give people weird names?"

"I think he gives you whatever he can get away with..."

The next time she had Mitsue alone, Amy asked, "Is the forger behind Miss Huntworthy?"

"Sadly, no. That was all Mitsuharu."



Mitsue's knock on the apartment door was greeted by silence; when she knocked again, there was a muffled call of, "I'm sick, go away!"

When the third knock garnered no response, Mitsue stepped back and waved her hand in front of the doorknob -- once, twice, three times, and the lock snapped open.

"Are you going to make me wait in the hall again?" Mitsuharu asked. His whiny-little-boy tone was particularly incongruous coming from the mouth of a distinguished elderly man.

"As long as you look like that, you can. I keep telling you, you need to practice looking like any old human -- and your tails are showing."

Amy was in bed with the blankets over her head. When Mitsue came in, a hand appeared long enough to make a rude gesture. "Go away."

"Don't you have things to be doing, Amy? Apprenticeships to look for, bags to pack -- all the things a mortuary science student should be doing a few months after graduation?"

"Umph," said the bed. The covers moved, and Amy's face appeared. "Do you know what a mortuary science student shouldn't do a few days after graduation?"

Mitsue sat on the edge of the bed and took fox-form. "Challenge an okami to a wrestling match?"

"Go to a party, get drunk, and have sex with a newly minted EMT who runs off looking like he's about to throw up when he finds out what your degree's in."

"Ouch." Mitsue had had a few bad experiences with men overreacting to her being a kitsune, but that was really more understandable. "I hope you weren't too attached to him."

"Well, I wasn't." Amy sat up. "I was on the Pill, Mits. I never missed a dose."

'The Pill' meant... "Oh. Oh." And now that she knew what to look for... yes. "Congratulations?"

"No! I was taking birth control for a reason, and I am not happy to be in the -- whatever percent it is where it fails."

Mitsue winced. "I'm not certain, but I think human birth control might not work for tailless kitsune. Things work -- differently, and you're only fertile two months a year anyway-- You didn't know that?"

"How would I?" Amy asked wearily. "I was eight when Grandmother left, I'm sure Sunny had no idea, and the most Violet said on the subject of sex was that if I screwed anyone without tidying up loose ends, she'd do it for me."

That... really did not imply anything good about the whereabouts of Amy's unknown father. "I'm sorry, Amy. This is just the sort of thing you need to know from me, and I assumed you'd heard it from Violet." She should have known better than to assume Violet had done anything good or useful. (Killing one twin -- part of the reason Mitsue and Mitsuharu had been tagged for this was that under the circumstances, they could see the possibility of justifiable matricide, where a lot of kitsune would have trouble with it.)

Amy shrugged listlessly. "Nothing to be done about it now. I assume condoms work, since I never had any trouble before."

"I assume so."

"It's just -- we were all saying that if we saw another latex glove we were going to scream, you know? And-- Never mind."

"Do you know what you're going to do?"

"No. I'm sure Grandmother would be very happy I'm propogating. Sunny would be horrified, because she knows what's involved in feeding a little kitsune. And I -- god, I never planned to have kids." Amy rubbed her face. "What do you think?"

Mitsue decided to shift back to human-shape, this time approximating her own tailless form. "Amy, I'm from a very different time. I--"

"You think I should keep it."

"Everything I grew up with says you should keep it," Mitsue corrected. "I think you're the one living tailless in this time, you're the one with the most at stake, and I will do my best to support you whatever you choose."

"Thank you," Amy whispered.

There was a moment of silence, broken by Mitsuharu calling from the hall. "Can I come in?"

"No!" Mitsue and Amy both called back.

Amy laughed tiredly. "Does he ever drag you places and then refuse to let you come in?"

"Yes. In SeaWorld. He sneaks into the tanks to commune with the orcas, but he says I agitate them."

"I can see how an agitated orca would be a bad thing." Amy pulled her knees up. "I guess... it's not so much I don't want to be a mother as I don't want to be my mother. And I don't, I really don't want to kill people."

Mitsue nodded. "If that's really how you feel, we can help you."

"I don't want you to have to--"

Mitsue held up a hand. "It's fresh enough to sustain children if it is taken from a body on the cusp of death, and acquisition is very simple when you have the power to turn invisible and phase through solid objects." The kind of phasing required to grab something solid out from the middle of something else solid, with no other damage, was actually a bit challenging for a three-tail, but she was sure they'd manage. "Neat, quiet, and without cruelty. The worst it gets is confused coroners."

"I've heard, uh, heard a few stories about some coroners who could do with a little confusing." There -- now she was relaxing. "If you're sure--"

"I'm sure. We're sure. Mitsuharu! We're going to be godparents!"



Amy preferred cats but, all folktales aside, didn't really have a problem with dogs. They reacted to her like a human, not a fox. (She'd encountered a few experienced hunting dogs that seemed to find her endlessly confusing, but that had been more funny than anything else.)

She was really perplexed when being around her new neighbor's fluffy little teddy-bear dog made her hair stand on end. It was ridiculous. She kept feeling the urge to grab Jacob and get the hell out of town, or at least out of the building, but Sunny had helped her with the deposit for the apartment and she did not want to risk losing it.

Mitsue was entirely un-perplexed. "So, you're next door to a coyote?"

"I -- what? It's a -- bish-something."

"No, it's a skinwalker."

Amy blinked. Grandmother had mentioned skinwalkers, but-- "It's a little fluffy dog."

"Five hundred years ago skinwalkers were wolves or coyotes. These days nine-tenths of them are some kind of dog." Mitsue smirked. "Most of them are slightly larger dogs, but regardless, they feel like coyotes to us, and foxes prefer to avoid coyotes."

"How on Earth did they get from wolves and coyotes to little fluffy doggies?"

"I'm sure I don't know." Mitsue shrugged. "Strange things happen, sometimes. I'm half-expecting some of you American-bred tailless to turn out gray foxes, there just -- hasn't been time for the transition, yet."

"Huh. So why is the skinwalker posing as--" As a little fluffy doggy doted upon by its adoring human, spoiled and pampered and never having to do anything remotely resembling work? "Never mind. Can it tell about -- about me and Jacob?"

"I don't know for sure, but I would expect he can tell there's something unusual but doesn't recognize it."

Amy was careful, but she never had any coyote problems with Mr. Fluffernutter.

Then some maniac with a gun shot at Fran and Mr. Fluffernutter when they were on a walk, killed Mr. Fluffernutter -- with a silver bullet, what was wrong with people? Amy split town as soon as she could. She told everyone she didn't feel safe in the neighborhood anymore, and she wasn't lying even a little bit.

Amy and Jacob March had lived next door to Mr. Fluffernutter. When Amy called for new papers, the forger suggested Madison, but sharing a name with a fictional witch would probably give Sunny anxiety attacks, so Amy nixed it. Then he tried Rose, which she might have fallen for were it not for some gamer friends at school. (She'd put up with March, but a pink hedgehog was crossing the damned line.) Finally, he offered Pond -- it didn't sound like a really common surname, but a quick internet search uncovered no embarrassing namesakes, so she went with it.

Amy and Jacob Pond moved to Bozeman, MT.

("Look at it this way," Mitsue offered a few years later. "If anyone's looking for you online, they'll never find you by name.")



Mitsuharu appeared in their living room as a mid-thirties Japanese man with three very bushy fox tails -- never a good sign -- and carrying a bulky duffel bag. Jacob immediately lost interest in his peas. "Haru's here!" he announced, delighted.

Amy rose hastily to her feet. "Mitsuharu, we weren't expecting you. Come -- never mind. Is Mitsue here?"

"She'll be here soon, she's scouting around the neighborhood." Mitsuharu set down the duffel, which thumped. He looked... spooked, but smiled at Jacob. "You being good for your mother, Jacob?"

"Uh-huh! Present?"

Mitsuharu winced. "Tell you what, I'll bring two next time."

Jacob looked outraged.

"We're just finishing dinner," Amy said hastily. "Help yourself if you want any, we'll be done in a minute. Jacob--"

"No present no peas," Jacob replied.

This was going to be fun.

Despite Amy's best efforts, she had to put Jacob to bed early and clean up a shredded pillow, not to mention the peas in Jacob's hair. She didn't know how Grandmother had managed her and Drew at once. After she got him to sleep and put on a clean shirt, she came back to find Mitsuharu and Mitsue sitting in the kitchen, sharing the bottle of sake they'd given her for Christmas. "Uh, hi."

"We got you a glass," Mitsue said. "Sit down, Amy, this is going to be... a long story."

The story started with "Demons are real" and stayed there for quite a while, with a tangent on Mitsuharu's negative opinion of various long-dead missionaries. It moved on to "There's a thing called a Devil's Gate, and it just opened for a while and let a lot of demons out". The story did not stay there very long, as Mitsue and Mitsuharu had heard it from a six-tail who hadn't given any details beyond the involvement of a powerful demon even before the gate opened. It finished up with "There's probably going to be a lot of demonic activity in middle America, and we'd feel better if you knew some ways to protect yourself".

"This is crazy," Amy said. Mitsue took her fox-form. "Oh, stop that, I didn't say I didn't believe you. What do you want to tell me?"

The main thing was salt -- which was what was in Mitsuharu's duffel, twenty pounds of rock salt. There was also a Hindu exorcism, and because it was more commonly used, a Catholic exorcism. ("I think she heard you the first time, Mitsuharu, you don't like missionaries.") And--

"You might want to consider setting up a kamidana -- a household altar," Mitsue said finally, sounding reluctant. "Holy ground sometimes puts them off. You shouldn't if it doesn't feel right, though."

"I'll... have to think about that one," Amy said. "But thank you. This is-- Demons?"

Mitsue sipped her sake, and Matsuharu muttered a rude comment about Abrahamic religions in general.



Several years passed without Amy actually seeing a demon, or any really terrible omens around Bozeman. While it was tempting to try blame them for all the crazy, terrible things which happened around the world, it just wasn't plausible. Mitsue and Mitsuharu were left twitching their tails on the sidelines while their elders observed... whatever was happening... and Amy and the rest of the tailless were much more sidelined than that. When whatever it was stopped, they were all relieved.



Jacob was trying to lure Smokey back inside when a dark shape shot out of the bushes and crashed into his legs. For a second he thought it was the cat, but--

"Jacob," it croaked.

"Haru? You're--" Hurt. Staggering. Missing two tails. "I'll get Mom."

He picked up Mitsuharu as carefully as he could, but the kitsune still yipped in pain when Jacob shifted him to get the door open. He carefully closed the door. "Mom!"

"I'm doing laundry, Jacob--"

"Mom, it's Haru! He's hurt!"

Mom appeared in the doorway, and her eyes widened. "Fuck! Mitsuharu? Haru? Can you hear me?"

"Amy," he managed. "Demons. Pur-- Mitsue." He shuddered and went limp, and Jacob could see his panic reflected in his mother's face before they both saw Mitsuharu was still breathing.

"Okay," Mom said. "Okay. Jacob, take him to my-- No, the couch in the basement, I'll be right there."

Trembling, Jacob obeyed. The basement was cool despite the summer heat outside, and the tile floor was cold, so he tucked his feet under him on the couch and cradled his godfather in his arms. Haru's tails weren't just gone, they were stubs, ragged and raw and oozing blood. Had demons done this? But wasn't the big demon thing supposed to be done with?

Tigger disappeared behind a bookshelf. Tigger was better at being an indoor cat than Smokey, but was terrified of foxes.

It felt like forever until Mom ran down the stairs, but it couldn't have been very long. She handed him several blankets and two bottles of water. "We have to keep him warm, and give him some water if you can," she said. Mom opened the salt bag she'd had under her arm and poured a thick circle on the floor, all the way around the couch. When she was done, she set the bag on the floor inside the circle and pulled out her phone. She frowned, moved to the bottom of the stairs, and checked the phone again.

"No reception?" Jacob asked anxiously. Let her not go upstairs!

"No, I should have enough here--" She beeped through the menus; whatever number she picked had an awful lot of digits.

"Are you calling--"

Mom held up a hand. "I'm Amy Gustafson -- do you speak--? Oh thank god. Reizei Mitsuharu just came to my house in Bozeman, Montana. He's been -- mutilated, and he said it was demons and I think they're holding Mitsue. He's unconscious now. I didn't know where else to-- All right. All right, thank you. Thank you." She carefully set the phone down on the fifth step up -- so it would get reception if they called back, Jacob guessed. Then, after a pause, she grabbed the salt and went to put a salt line at the top of the stairs. That done, she came to sit with them on the couch. She slid an arm behind him, and Jacob leaned into her.

"They're sending someone," Mom said. "They said to sit tight and stay safe."

"I'm scared," Jacob whispered.

Mom hugged him. "Me too. We just need to stay behind the salt. It will be okay."

Jacob wondered how they were supposed to go to the bathroom from behind the salt. Before it became necessary to ask Mom, ten people with fox tails appeared in their little basement. One of them (six tails) knocked over the TV, and another (nine tails) had to catch it.

A woman with eight dancing tails said something in rapid Japanese, then, "I'm a healer. Let me see him?"

It was harder to let go than Jacob expected, but he let the eight-tail lift Mitsuharu to the coffee table. Mom hugged him tighter, and he buried his face in her t-shirt, watching with one eye as the eight-tail checked Mitsuharu's eyes and then blew in his nose. Mitsuharu jerked awake and struggled to get away, but another kitsune -- definitely more than six tails, seven? -- bent down and stilled him with just a hand on the head.

The new kitsune -- a nine-tail? -- spoke in Japanese, and Mitsuharu replied in the same language. He sounded so hurt! The new kitsune spoke reassuringly, then seemed to send Mitsuharu to sleep with another touch. The -- eight, nine, ten tails? -- kitsune spoke a few words to the healer woman, who bowed, picked Mitsuharu up, and disappeared.

The new kitsune, who had at least fifteen tails and Jacob was sure they were only supposed to have nine at most, turned to Mom and Jacob. "You've done well, little sister, little brother," said the many-tailed fox. "Mitsuharu will recover given time. We'll go now and save Mitsue."

"I thought -- I thought demons usually didn't bother with tailed kitsune?" Mom said. "It's not -- not because--"

"The demons wanted information, little sister -- nothing to do with you. I hope even they have the wisdom to realize that what three-tails don't know, tailless don't know, but you should be careful all the same. Be safe." He touched Mom briefly on the forehead--

And then all the tailed kitsune were gone, and they were alone in the basement with a lot of salt.

"Who was he?" Jacob whispered.

"I don't know -- don't know if it was male, even, they say you can hide that once you're an eight-tail, and he... I couldn't count how many tails he had."

Jacob nodded into her shoulder. "When he said Mitsuharu and Mitsue would be all right, I believed him, even though -- even though--"

"I know what you mean," Mom said. "I believe him too." She picked up the bloodied blanket from the coffee table. "Was Tigger down here?"

"I think he's behind the bookshelf."

"Of course he is."

They never saw any demons. It was actually a couple of months before it really occurred to Jacob that with Mitsue and Mitsuharu unavailable, they were without a source of fresh supplements. He didn't say anything, because it was pretty clear his mom already knew. She tried weirder and weirder things to get supplements as close to fresh as possible, but it was just -- not fresh enough.

And more time passed, and Jacob got sick.



The Fox and the Hound was one of Amy's least favorite movies, almost entirely because she over-identified with the damn fox. Drew had loved it because he over-identified with the fox, and watched it a million times until Amy had bad dreams and actually asked Grandmother whether they'd have to go live in a game preserve when they grew up. Grandmother hadn't laughed at her, even though seven was kind of old to be entertaining the possibility, and had made Drew cut back a little, and watch Disney's Robin Hood instead; that had foxes too.

Drew liked The Fox and the Hound because Tod was heroic and saved the day and found True Love and lived happily ever after. Amy hated it because Tod had to leave his foster mom and the home he'd grown up in to go live in the woods, and his best friend -- Copper the hound -- turned on him even if he did save his life in the end, and he almost got killed just after saving the day, just because of how he was born. Being Robin Hood would be cool. Being Tod would suck.

She never showed the movie to Jacob, of course, and she hadn't thought of it in years when she realized she'd picked up a Copper to her Tod.

"Sam?"

In fairness to Sam, she had killed people, and deliberately, if unhappily. Sam was much more open-minded than Copper. It still sucked to be Tod.

Leaving town wasn't the same as having to go live in a game preserve, she tried to convince herself; they could build a new life pretty much like the old one. It wasn't like the movie.

Then again, in the movie, the hunter didn't sneak back when the hound's back was turned and kill the fox.



At the last, Amy was angry at Sam's brother, because couldn't he understand she was trying, and angry at Sam, because had it been necessary to tell the brother, but mostly she was angry at herself -- for not changing the plates, yes, but also for getting noticed in the first place. She'd remembered what Grandmother said about choosing targets; why hadn't she disguised the kills? Fire a gun into the puncture site and no one will be able to tell anything's missing. She didn't have a gun, but she should have done something. She should have known they couldn't manage without Mitsue and Mitsuharu and begged that many-tailed kitsune to take them to Japan.

She hoped Jacob got away. She hoped he remembered how to call Sunny collect, and that she took the call, and that she got him to his kin fast, because dropping Jacob off outside a funeral home wouldn't work.

She hoped seeing his mother killed by a Hunter wouldn't do to Jacob what it had done to Violet.

She wished she'd had a chance to get that first tail.



Continued...