Foxfire, Esq.

Book 2 | Chapter Seventeen

I didn’t sleep well after yesterday’s little illegal escapade. It was one thing to know that I’d committed a crime, and that my career lived or died depending on how lazy the next person who checked that filing cabinet happened to be. It was something else entirely to know that the documents I’d stolen from a government facility were in the next room. And yes, I knew that the odds were hilariously unlikely that somebody would both notice that those documents were missing and assume Foxfire, the ex-superhero whose grudge against Lady Liberty was one of the NMR gossip grapevine’s worst-kept secrets, had taken it.

But sometimes, it doesn’t matter what the head is trying to say. The heart will feel what it wants.

And last night, my heart was troubled enough that I needed an overdose of fur therapy from Gorou just to fall asleep.

The next morning saw me tired, miserable, and desperately going for the biggest infusion of caffeine I could get my hands on: matcha. Okay, yes, technically a cup of coffee had more caffeine in it, but I’d found that matcha was better at giving me a long-lasting bump in energy, as opposed to coffee’s sharp spike and equally rapid falloff.

So I found my matcha, grabbed the bamboo whisk, frothed up two cups’ worth of matcha, and prepped two glasses with oat milk, maple sugar, and a tiiiiiny bit of vanilla extract for matcha lattes.

Gorou delicately lapped at his in between crunching down on four raw eggs, shell and all. I eyed him with envy; if we’d been in Japan right now, I’d have been having raw eggs on rice myself right now, but American egg quality just was not at that level. And while Gorou’s whole “having a body is optional” schtick meant that he didn’t have to worry about salmonella, I, on the other hand, did.

I’d managed to avoid ever having salmonella in this body, and I wasn’t about to risk changing that.

Once that was done, I shot off a message to Casey, letting them know I might be busy into the afternoon, and to start reviewing the footage Rachael Cruz’s husband provided as his alibi once they got into the office, starting with the stuff that was publicly posted on the alibi-giving friend’s social media. What had been put in was as important as what had been cut, so I wanted at least one of us to have a baseline. Plus, loath as I was to admit it, Casey was far more computer-literate than I was, particularly where social media was concerned. If something was to be found there, they’d find it, but I probably wouldn’t.

Also, while I did have an email from Julio, and the subject line suggested it was a lead from his friends in the public defender’s office, I just didn’t have the time or mental bandwidth for that right now. I shot him a quick reply that I’d follow up with him later this afternoon, but that I’d be out of contact until then.

With that out of the way, it was time to get going for the day. I got my riding outfit on, found my helmet, and headed out to the street so Gorou could bring the motorcycle to me — with the sidecar attached, because he was coming along this time, at Mariem’s request. When I’d called her last night to figure out when the best time to come over would be, she mentioned her daughter Hounaida being down in the doldrums. Gorou overheard that, remembered I’d mentioned the girl being a big fan of foxes, and offered to come.

I wasn’t exactly able to say no at that point, so... I suppose I had a vulpine passenger.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Gorou asked as I started up the motorcycle’s engine.

“I’m putting the helmet on right now,” I grumbled, shooting him the stink-eye. “And the last time someone tried to put a helmet on you, you bit them.”

“Not that,” he said, pointedly ignoring my jab at him. “Whatever it was your junior wanted autographed.”

I blinked, thought about it for a moment... then my ears fell low as I realized that oh, shit, I had forgotten that! Gorou snickered as I set the helmet back down on the motorcycle’s handlebars, raced back inside, and grabbed the framed magazine Fatima wanted autographed. I got back outside and tucked that into the storage space beneath the seat, then finally got my helmet on—

“You forgot to lock the front door back up.”

“Fuck!”

“Language,” Gorou chided, poking me in the cheek with a tail.

I let out a deep, frustrated sigh, even as Gorou kept nudging me with his tail. But I went and locked the front door, then got my helmet on and pulled out onto the road.

The trip up to Lady Liberty’s home was a little less smooth this time around. While I wasn’t the type of motorcyclist who weaved between cars, any lawyer who’d handled even one motorcycle-related lawsuit knew better than that, the sidecar meant I was still less maneuverable than I was used to being. That, and Gorou drew a bit of attention, particularly when he went up on his hind legs and sniffed at the open rear window of a sedan with kids in the backseat, and extorted ear scritchies from the eager tykes. This also caused a bit of a traffic slowdown as everybody nearby got their phones out to get video of the “pet fox in a sidecar”.

Aside from that, though, the traffic wasn’t terrible. Could’ve been way worse.

That recent twinge in my back chose to bother me again the moment I dismounted from my bike, and a groan of discomfort slipped out before I could stifle it, sending Gorou’s ears swiveling my way. I pulled off my helmet and stretched briefly, rubbing my back with the heel of my hand in case it was a tight muscle. Then I noticed Gorou was giving me a bit of a Look, which had me scowling and lowering my ears. He turned away and hopped out of the sidecar, but I could still feel his attention on me. And yeah, sure, fine, I liked that he was concerned. But at the same time, I wasn’t made of spun glass or anything. I was fine.

Gorou tilted his ear towards me one last time before trotting off to the front door. I locked my helmet to the bike, got my briefcase and Fatima’s to-be-autographed picture frame, and joined him at the door before ringing the doorbell.

There wasn’t as much audible movement behind the door this time, and some part of me was actually dismayed to not hear Mariem’s daughter Hounaida almost chirping in excitement again. I’d been a decently popular superhero during the two years I spent in Chicago, yeah, and I was still rather well-loved throughout Japan, but... how do I put this...

Maybe that the interest and adoration of a child was far more precious to me than any other would-be fan’s attention? I guess?

Regardless, by the time the door opened to reveal a thankful and relieved Mariem, Gorou had hopped up onto my shoulders and anchored himself in place by winding his tails about my arm. And when I saw that Mariem didn’t have her hijab on, my ears perked up in surprise, then lowered in question — and only then did I remember that Mariem probably wasn’t as clued in on vulpine body language as her daughter. Which meant... “You’re not wearing a hijab?” I asked aloud, nudging my head against Gorou’s flank. “I’m sorry if that was out of line, just curious is all, given this guy is, well...”

“Our thanks for welcoming us into your home,” Gorou added, taking the opportunity to introduce himself after my awkward little trail-off there. “You may call me Gorou.”

“M-my pleasure,” Mariem stuttered, her eyes blinking and almost unfocused as she met Gorou’s gaze. Huh, I wonder what her sensory power was seeing there? “Oh, come inside, please!”

She stepped out of the doorway and let me in, then closed the door behind me while I was taking off my shoes, being careful not to clip my tail on the door. Gorou hopped off my shoulder while I unzipped my riding jacket, and while I hung that on a coat hanger just off to the side, he trotted around the entryway, sniffing away at the Mouthlaki family home almost... excitedly? Ah, but his ears were low and off to the side, so also some worry?

“There is a scent of fox here,” he hummed, letting out a soft rumble from deep in his chest. “Not hurt or scared. Not sick either, yet still unwell.”

“Ah. That would be Zara.”

Mariem walked over to a combo shoe cabinet and storage table that they had by the door, and pulled one of many framed photographs off of it. Huh, I guess I’d been dragged inside by Hounaida too quickly to notice that last time.

“There’re foxes in the forested areas around here,” she explained, and showed us the photograph of her daughter holding an adorably fluffy baby fox with a purple cast on its right front leg. “And when we moved in, a skulk was living in the woods just behind the house. But not long after we got settled in, we were woken up well past midnight by a fox screaming, and when we checked, the mother fox that woke us led us to one of her kits, who was hurt and trapped in some netting. We took the kit to the vet, who set her broken leg and told us she’d need to be kept safe for a few months. My daughter named her Zara and begged to let us keep her with us, and the two bonded during that time. Even after we released her, she came back every few days to see us, even bringing her mate and kits two years ago. But a few nights back...”

“Is Zara okay?” I asked, ears low in worry and concern, but Mariem just looked askance.

“She is, but her mate... he got hit by a car, and by the time we got him to the vet, it was too late.”

“The vixen’s sorrow stains the air,” Gorou murmured. “So that’s what it is. Hmm...” he hummed, eyes closed and ears twitching. I felt a slight hesitation coming across the connection between our souls, but it faded away only moments later, replaced by Gorou’s overflowing compassion. “I assume she is with your daughter. Where are they?”

“Ah... upstairs, second door on the right. Is there something you can do?” Mariem asked, tone and expression warring between worry and relief.

“Perhaps. I must see her to know more.” Gorou turned to Mariem and lowered himself into a bow, head dipping in respect. “My thanks again for your hospitality.”

His piece said and formalities observed, Gorou trotted up the stairs and out of sight.

“I... I’m sorry for asking another favor of you on top of everything else,” Mariem sighed, turning away from the stairs with an apologetic expression, halfway between an awkward smile and a shameful grimace. “Hounaida was with us at the vet when Zara’s mate passed. The fox has hardly left her side, and she’s had to hand-feed the poor thing. Plus, well...” Mariem trailed off, her eyes flicking to my ears and tail.

“You don’t have to worry about my feelings,” I grumbled, ears rolling back in sympathetic embarrassment. “Foxes generally don’t smell like sunshine and roses. Believe me when I say I’m well aware that Gorou and I are exceptions.”

“Oh, thank you for not making that awkward,” she gasped out, tension leaving her shoulders as she deflated. She placed the picture frame back atop the shoe cabinet, and turned to face me properly. “Anyways, I know we have our own grim task to be about, but first — I just picked up some baklava this morning. Would you like some?”

I didn’t even have the opportunity to voice a response. My ears and tail did it for me, much to the amusement of a now-giggling Mariem Mouthlaki.

A few minutes later, I was seated at the same low table around which we’d had our discussion during my first visit, a plate of baklava and a bottle of sparkling water set in front of me. Mariem had spotted the frame carrying Fatima’s preferred autograph target and liberated me of it on the way to the kitchen. When she returned it to me a minute or two later, it now bore a decent bit of Arabic writing in silver sharpie along the front, almost shining on the page when seen at the right angle.

“Where do we begin?” she asked, setting the great big pile of mailings down on the table, after which she reached over and snatched a piece of baklava from the plate in front of me.

“Making a separate ‘before moving’ pile and an ‘after’ one should come first,” I suggested, nudging the plate of baklava over so it sat roughly between the two of us. “Also, um... should I not have asked about the hijab thing? Was that, like... taboo to ask?”

“What? Oh, no, nothing like that, I promise!” She let out a nervous little chuckle before sighing, and busied her hands by pulling the pile of mailings apart into more easily manageable stacks of threes and fours. “It is... I wear a hijab as a personal religious choice, yes? It’s not a requirement or a command. But at the same time, it hides me. Conceals. And with how the fox is doing me a favor... I worried that the hijab might be seen as disrespectful.”

“That...” My ears pulled low, and I worried at my lip for lack of anything else to say right then. The bottle of sparkling water practically glimmered out of the corner of my eye, and I softly cleared my throat before grabbing my beverage to buy myself a few precious seconds.

Rude as it might’ve come across, I needed that moment to think about how best to respond to Mariem, because, well, her answer caught me a bit flat-footed. Admittedly, the only Muslims I interacted with in a purely social manner with any regularity were my friend/mentor/occasional-adversary Amir, his kids, and their families. And every time I dug Gorou out of his den and brought him along to see them, the women wore their hijabs, because Gorou was male. Quadruped, yes, but still male, which meant the hijab went on.

The part of me that respected those women’s decisions saw Mariem’s choice to go without her hijab here, and felt... I don’t know. Ashamed? Disappointed? Embarrassed? No, none of those quite fit... ugh. Lack of accurate descriptor aside, it didn’t feel good.

I pulled the bottle away from my lips and briefly covered my mouth, then set it down and gave her my response.

“Please don’t feel the need to compromise your comfort for me,” I said, fingers drumming on the table to burn off a bit of nervous energy. “I appreciate it, really. But if it’d make you more comfortable to wear the hijab, please do.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I—” Mariem cut herself off, pressing her lips together in a tight line. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll work on sorting these,” I waved her off, deliberately not remarking on the way she floated off to the other room instead of walking, the way she had earlier. Sure, regular people might not see it the same way, but Mariem’s absent-minded use of her powers really humanized her for me. Brought her down to earth.

Which was ironic, considering her powers let her escape the Earth, but that just made it a bit funny.

Mariem was only gone for a minute or two, but by the time she got back, I’d already eaten another three pieces of baklava and sorted most of the rest of the pile according to whether their mailing addresses were on the east or west side of the country. It helped that the more visibly old and worn documents were all west coast mailings... and thanks to the way they were all in their original envelopes, I saw a little something that would help.

“Wow, that was quick.” My ear swiveled to track Mariem’s voice and footsteps as she returned to the table. “Do I need to get more baklava?”

“Eh,” I waved her off with a flick of my tail. “No need. I probably don’t need more empty calories anyway.”

“I’ll have to box some up for you to take back to the office, then,” she said, kneeling over the table to check the piles. I looked up and saw that Mariem had on a plain beige hijab, and her face was more relaxed now. I hadn’t noticed any tension in her expression earlier, but now that it wasn’t there, it was unmistakable.

“God, you’re as bad as my sister,” I grumbled, though it was good-natured. “She never let me leave for the airport without a meal for the trip home.”

“That’s nice of her, to — ah, wait,” she paused, seemingly stumbling over her own thoughts. “I thought you’d said that your family...?”

“It’s a bit complicated,” I admitted, coming to the rescue so Mariem didn’t have to try and ask her question without stepping on a social landmine. “We’re cousins by blood, but after my family disowned me in the wake of the foxening...” Mariem let out a surprised giggle at the way I put it, and I smiled as the discomfort faded from her posture with it. “Well, her parents adopted me, so in the eyes of the law, we’re sisters.”

“Ah,” Mariem nodded. “That makes much more sense. She seems like a wonderful woman, then.”

“She is,” I agreed. “And her daughter is a bit younger than Hounaida, so maybe I should let you know when next they’re in the States visiting me?”

Mariem seemed taken aback at the offer. I smiled at her, letting my ears droop to the sides a little. The offer was genuine, truly; I still hadn’t seen much of the real Lady Liberty, I’d admit that, but at the same time, what I had seen was telling. The horrid, wrathful attacker from fifteen, almost sixteen years ago was almost a different person compared to the woman who sat before me now.

Age, maturity, family, motherhood. They’d changed Mariem Mouthlaki, giving her room to grow beyond the sharp sixteen-by-nine corners of Lady Liberty’s public image. And I was willing to accept that.

“A-anyway!” Mariem stuttered, hands lightly slapping the table as she clearly tried to move onto a different topic. “What do we have here so far?”

“That’s the west coast pile handled,” I said, flicking an ear and nodding my head in its general direction. “The east coast ones have some differences that’ll let me handle further sorting myself, but if you could try and get them sorted by location and in chronological order, oldest on top and newest on bottom, I’d appreciate it.”

“Of course!” Mariem pulled the mailings over to her side of the table and started going through them, handling the particular tedium that I’d normally have a paralegal get through without complaint. “What makes the east coast mailings different, if I may ask?”

“Hmm? Oh, well, you see the envelopes?” I held one up for Mariem to see

“Yes? What about them?”

“Postage,” I told her. “The west coast mailings all have stamps on them, and the addresses were printed out with an inkjet printer; you can see it from slight variations between each line of text. But these ones,” I waved the piece of mail in my hand, addressed to the NMR PO Box in Rochester, which also served Syracuse and Buffalo, “are prepaid envelopes. They’re the kind you’d purchase from the post office, and either you’d hand-write the address, or someone would print it onto it. But these ones were done with a laser printer, as opposed to hand-written, which suggests someone was using workplace supplies for these. And one more thing.”

“What?”

“The bar code.” I tapped at the evenly rectangular bar code atop the mailing, separate from an uneven bar code along the side. “Your stalker made sure every mailing arrived on the second Monday of the month, every time, and while that was doable with regular snail mail even as recently as two years ago, but after the anthrax scare leading into the Republican primaries last year?” I shook my head. “Extra screening means unpredictable timing. Unless, of course, you pay more. Which I can track.”

“What — really?” Mariem asked, staring at the envelope with slight incredulity. “But, but if that’s all you need, why even bother with these?” she spat, gesturing sharply at the pile she was sorting.

“Because this only solves half the problem,” I explained patiently. “Yes, it lets me find who this person is and stop them from going further. But it doesn’t answer for us how he’s been tracking you in the first place. And if we fail to answer that question...”

I let the implication hang in the air. Mariem got it immediately, going by the way her expression shifted from anger, to fear, to crestfallen acceptance.

“I don’t even know where to begin on that,” Mariem admitted, her fingers tightening on the loose cloth of her hijab. It was the same nervous tic I’d observed the last time I was here. From the way she’d seemed almost unsure what to do with her hands back then, I’d wager that her hijab was as much a religious preference as it was a safety blanket and her preferred anxiety outlet.

“I... have a thought,” I began, hesitation making every word drag, “but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

My ears pinned low and back, worry tightening them against my skull. I was beginning to see a pattern in which locations got eliminated over time, but while I wanted to confirm that hunch, I needed to be delicate with how I explained my reasoning, or else it would come off as victim blaming. And I was not about to fracture the fragile camaraderie I’d managed to build with Mariem by doing that.

“What? What is it?” There was a touch of concern in her eyes, but for the most part, Mariem’s posture radiated fear. She was afraid of what I might be about to tell her — but at the same time, she was determined to know.

Admirable.

“First, a very un-fun fact: if you wanted to try and find any one person, and that person has a paper trail, all you would need is six pieces of demographic information about them. It doesn’t matter how anonymous it is or isn’t. Six. Now, if I were to try and find information on Lady Liberty, there’s already some publicly available information out there: nationality, religion, a rough estimate of your age, and physique. That’s arguably four of six, but realistically, it’s just three: age, sex, population group. And it’s clear that your stalker both knows this, and has identified location as a prerequisite to going further, which he’s trying to tease out.”

“I... think I understand, but I’m sorry, I don’t see your hunch.” While Mariem kept her tone level and expression neutral, her body language was telling me everything — she’d practically shrunk in on herself, shoulders hunched, legs tight and close to her body, upper arms pressed in against her torso.

This was making her anxious. And while I didn’t like that my explanation was having such an effect on her, it at least told me that she was paying attention.

I grabbed the rest of the envelopes addressed to an NMR PO Box in the state of New York, and fanned them. “This person is actively pruning locations from his list, but in order for him to do that in the first place, then there must be something he’s looking at in the months between each mailing, some feedback he’s receiving. And it must also be something that’s publicly available, or at least something that it’d be inconspicuous to look at.”

“Like what?” she pressed, eyes locked onto the envelopes.

“Any changes in your typical behavior in the week or so following one of his mailings arriving.” I pulled out the single piece of mail sent to Maine, and slid it across the table towards her. “He didn’t send any more to Maine after the first one. I know it was a year and a half ago now, but do you remember where you spent the most time after these all came in, or if there’s somewhere you went that was different from your norm?”

Mariem didn’t respond. I don’t think she even knew, really — hell, I doubted I’d be able to tell if I’d been doing something outside of my usual in January of last year, and that was essentially what I’d asked her to try and recall. Days had a way of blurring together, and something remarkable from the outside often went completely unremarked on the inside, especially when it had to do with the regular tedium of a day job.

“It’s okay,” I said, retrieving my notebook from my bag and flipping it open to the bookmark I’d left in it. “I actually have the answer to that. You spent a fair bit of time helping lobster fishermen in choppy waters off the coast of Maine in the week after that first mailing showed up — three times, compared to the one time you’d been in Maine in the four years before that.” I tapped the spine of my notebook against the envelope that’d arrived in Maine. “And this pattern repeats. After the very first spread-out mailing, back in 2012, you spent almost a full week doing avalanche rescue in Colorado and Utah. Three months later, you spent three days the week after it arrived focusing on the greater Seattle area, and there were no subsequent mailings to Washington State following that.

“Now I am not saying this is your fault!” I held up a hand to both prevent any interruption and keep Mariem from thinking herself into a self-recriminating doom spiral. “You were handling this like a hostage situation, because it is, and you and I were given the same training as any other Moonshot who's hard to meaningfully hurt: draw attention to yourself and move it away from the hostages. But that training means all of us act the same in any similar kind of situation. This one is no different.”“But — but what do I do now?” Mariem asked, sounding defeated, despairing almost. “This person already knows I’m in DC, Maryland, or Virginia!”

“You don’t do anything here,” I said, flicking an ear almost dismissively. “I, on the other hand, can take this bar code here and work backwards from there. I have some friends and contacts who owe me favors, plus a few tricks up my sleeve for good measure. A few shakes of my tail, and this barcode gives me a location, which hopefully gives surveillance footage, but if not, it still gives me an electronic transaction. That transaction leads me to a payment processor, which leads me to a card issuer, which then leads me to a credit card number. And from there... I’ve got a name.” I flashed Mariem a somewhat vicious grin, my enlarged canines on full display. “That tidbit about six pieces of demographic information cuts both ways. And as a lawyer, I have a few extra tools at my disposal.”

“... oh.” Mariem gave me a slightly owlish look of surprise, then glanced at the pile she’d been sorting through. “Then why have me go through these in the first place?”

“Because I could still be wrong about how this bastard’s been narrowing down your position,” I told her. “And I also want to go through them all later, see if there’s a pattern in the content itself as opposed to the mailing addresses.”

“I suppose,” she murmured, the tension in her shoulders loosening. “I’ll get back to sorting, then?”

“Please and thank you,” I nodded, then took a piece of baklava. Pulling Mariem back to normal after that brief panic had worked up a bit of an appetite.

Mariem nodded back, then glanced at the baklava plate, which had one piece left.

“I’m gonna get more.”

“Oh, before that!”

I swiped the last piece of baklava from the plate, smiling serenely as I playfully wiggled my ears. Mariem rolled her eyes, mumbling something under her breath in Arabic. Maybe it was a remark on how annoying I could be, but I didn’t care.

I had baklava, and it was good enough that I didn’t even care about how my tail was wagging.

It took a couple hours, a few sessions of anxious pacing and floating on Mariem’s part, and most of the second plate of baklava before we finished going through everything. That said, we had finished up, and I now had the entire pile of mailings sorted by location, and sub-sorted in chronological order. This would make it so much easier to determine if there was a pattern to the content itself, maybe an afternoon instead of a frustrating several-day endeavor.

Mariem disappeared into the kitchen while I got everything packed back up, and returned with a tupperware container full of baklava — not an expensive one, just one from a takeout order that she’d washed for later use.

“Thank you again for your help,” she said, for the fourth time in the last few hours.

“And again, it’s okay, you don’t need to keep thanking me,” I brushed her off, though it’d happened enough times that I was feeling a bit uncomfortable with it. “Anyway, I need to collect a fox. Gorou!”

My yell prompted some movement upstairs, and while it was normally hard to catch movement on carpeted floors, I definitely heard something this time. Scratch that, I mentally revised as I tilted my ears to catch a few more sounds, many somethings. Which would mean Gorou, Hounaida, and...

Sure enough, a sleek body covered in red-orange fur appeared at the top of the stairs before clambering down them and sitting down quite daintily at my feet. I looked down and met Zara the fox’s amber eyes, watching as the adorable critter sniffed at my leg, then leaned around me to get a whiff of my tail.

“... that is the calmest I’ve ever seen her in the house,” Mariem said, somewhat faintly. “What did your fox do?”

“I have no idea,” I replied with a shrug, casting a glance back up to the top of the stairs, where Hounaida had appeared with Gorou oh so happily bundled up in her arms, his tails wrapped around her waist to not trail on the floor. “Gorou? Mind explaining?”

“Nothing of import,” he replied, showing absolutely no shame at being carried down the stairs in a young girl’s arms. Which, well, given that he let Satsuki’s daughter carry him around as much as she pleased, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Gorou unraveled his tails from Hounaida’s body and wiggled slightly, which left her giggling, but was apparently signal enough to set him down on the floor, where he gently nudged Zara away from me. I was expecting some kind of territorial yipping from the red fox, maybe even a full-blown scream, but she just... calmly walked over to sit by Hounaida’s feet? “Pay it no mind.”

“I’ll... take your word for it,” I hedged, turning towards Mariem as her daughter leaned down to pet the fox. “Again, thank you for letting us into your home. With any luck, I should have everything all set by the beginning of next week.”

“I hope so,” she said with a nod and a smile. “Hounaida? Can you say ‘thank you’ to the nice foxes?”

“Thank you for helping Zara!” she exclaimed, a big smile on her face. And much to my surprise, Zara the fox yipped, as if to punctuate Hounaida’s statement.

I blinked, ears rocking back in surprise, and looked down at Gorou in mild suspicion. He gave away nothing, as expected.

We offered a few more perfunctory farewells before leaving the Mouthlaki family home, and once after putting everything away in the storage compartment, I fixed Gorou with a stern glare.

“That wasn’t normal red fox behavior,” I stated, implying a question with my observation.

“It was truly a matter of little import,” Gorou said again, flicking an ear dismissively. “I did for the kit what my mother did for me. Nothing more.”

“Oh, well that’s—”

Wait. Gorou’s mother, my greatest-grandmother, is a goddess. I stared at him, ears perked straight up in shock.

“Gorou? Gorou, did you just seed a new population of kitsune in the United States?”

The only reply I got was a high-pitched giggle and ears rolled back in amusement. I wanted to sit there and harangue my greatest-grandpa until he gave me an actual response because holy shit this was a BIG DEAL, but I didn’t have the time for that. It was, after all, still a workday.

So instead, I just put my helmet back on, started up my bike, pulled out onto the road, and tried to keep my mind off of how Gorou might have just introduced a mystically invasive species to a new country.