The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 125: A Rioting Mob, Just Like Old Times

My own mess? What did Anthea mean by "my own mess"? Was she blaming me for everything that had happened in Serica both before and after the day I'd died?

Because if that were the case, did I have news for her! Not even Heavenly bureaucrats continued to track your influence after your death. (At least, not for the purposes of your karma total, and who cared about anything else?)

Except I couldn't fling that back in her face, because I wasn't telling her about the karma system.

I'd have given anything to smile my old, poisonous smile, the one that always drove her to stamp her feet and start shrilling at me while I stared back imperiously – but beaks just didn't curl the right way.

Well, no matter. After I finished setting up the Temple to the Kitchen God, the Heavenly Accountants would have to award me so much positive karma that it would catapult me past all the other types of birds right into the middle of Black Tier where all the cute mammals (i.e. foxes) were! After that, once I reincarnated as a fox, all I had to do was stay alive for a hundred years, and I'd be a fox spirit again! And after that, I just had to make sure that I stayed alive for another nine hundred years, to accumulate all my tails....

"Hello? Piri? Why in the names of all the gods are you attempting to trill? You're not a songbird! It doesn't sound good. And if that's supposed to be happy humming, stop!"

Anthea's rude voice yanked me back to the present.

Even if I could no longer manage poisonous smiles, I was more than capable of filling my tone with saccharine malice. But little one, I'm just so happy that you've sought me out for advice. It's just like old times, isn't it? Doesn't it bring back all those delightful memories?

From the way her half-human, half-racoon dog face contorted, it did.

In my magnanimity, I left it at that. I didn't push further, to find her breaking point, as I might once have done. Would once have done.

And anyway, I'd just been thinking that I needed someone who was familiar with the political currents at court. That most patently was not Anthea, but maybe I could extract some intelligence from that addlebrained head of hers anyway.

So – you've come here to implore me for help because you're in over your head in court politics again, are you? Do elaborate on the circumstances.

Anthea clenched her fists – not well, because her claws got in the way of really balling up her hands – and gnashed her teeth, and then breathed in and out several times until most of the fur had sunk back into her skin. It was a gruesome sight.

Good thing Lodia wasn't around to see it. The girl might have fainted, or abandoned all her pretty fantasies about her employer.

Once Anthea was mostly human shaped again, apart from the dirty-grey ears and bushy striped tail, she grated out, "Piri – "

Will you stop calling me that! I've already told you that it's not safe for either of us if you do that.

"Who's here to hear?" she asked, looking pointedly around the empty room. "And don't worry, nobody's eavesdropping at the doors either. I'd hear their breathing if they were."

Wow, just rub it in that I'm no longer a spirit, why don't you? But I didn't give any outward signs that I was seething. Instead, I cocked my head back and stared upwards.