07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

At a quarter to eleven Meredith came to Matt, who was cleaning the scratches of a
yellow-haired eight-year-old. “Okay,” she said quietly, “I’m going to take my car and get the new
amulets Mrs. Saitou said she’d have done by now. Do you mind if I take Saber?”
Matt shook his head. “No, I’ll do it. I know the Saitous better, anyway.”
Meredith gave what, in a less refined person, might have been called a snort. “I know
them well enough to say, excuse me, Inari-Obaasan; excuse me, Orime-san; we’re the troublemakers
who keep asking for huge amounts of anti-evil amulets, but you don’t mind that, do you?”
Matt smiled faintly, let the eight-year-old go, and said, “Well, they might mind it less if
you got their names straight. ‘Obaasan’ means ‘grandma,’ right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And ‘san’ is just a thingy you put at the end of a name to be polite.”
Meredith nodded, adding, “And ‘a thingy at the end’ is called an ‘honorific suffix.’”
“Yeah, yeah, but for all your big words you’ve got their names wrong. It’s Orimegrandma
and Orime-Isobel’s-mother. So Orime-Obaasan and Orime-san, too.”
Meredith sighed. “Look, Matt, Bonnie and I met them first. Grandma introduced herself
as Inari. Now I know she’s a little wacky, but she would certainly know her own name, right?”
“And she introduced herself to me and said not just that she was named Orime, but that
her daughter was named after her. Talk your way out of that one.”
“Matt, shall I get my notebook? It’s in the boardinghouse den—”
Matt gave a short sharp laugh—almost a sob. He looked to make sure Mrs. Flowers
wasn’t around and then hissed, “It’s somewhere down at the center of the earth, maybe. There is no
den anymore.”
For a moment Meredith looked simply shocked, but then she frowned. Matt glared
darkly. It didn’t help to think that they were the two most unlikely of their group to quarrel. Here they
were, and Matt could practically see the sparks flying. “All right,” Meredith said finally, “I’ll just go
over there and ask for Orime-Obaasan, and then tell them it was all your fault when they laugh.”
Matt shook his head. “Nobody’s going to laugh, because you’re going to get it right that
way.”
“Look, Matt,” Meredith said, “I’ve been reading so much on the Internet that I even know
the name Inari. I’ve come across it somewhere. And I’m sure I would have made…made the
connection…” Her voice trailed off. When Matt turned his eyes down from the ceiling, he started.
Meredith’s face was white and she was breathing quickly.
“Inari…” she whispered. “I do know that name, but…” Suddenly she grabbed Matt’s
wrist so hard that it hurt. “Matt, is your computer absolutely dead?”
“It went when the electricity went. By now even the generator is gone.”
“But you have a mobile that connects to the Internet, right?”
The urgency in her voice made Matt, in turn, take her seriously. “Sure,” he said. “But the
battery’s been kaput for at least a day. Without electricity I can’t recharge it. And my mom took hers.
She can’t live without it. Stefan and Elena must’ve left their stuff at the boardinghouse—” He shook
his head at Meredith’s hopeful expression and whispered, “Or, should I say, where the boardinghouse
used to be.”
“But we have to find a mobile or computer that works! We have to! I need it to work for
just a minute!” Meredith said frantically, breaking away from him and beginning to pace as if trying to
beat some world record.
Matt was staring at her in bewilderment. “But why?”