by Erin Johnson
“Welcome!” She bowed again and laughed when the cat slid forward and had to scramble to stay on her shoulder. She reached up a strong hand with thick knuckles to pet the cat and cooed at it. “Silly Rini.” She turned and walked back to the door, but paused and looked back at us. “Well, come inside. Don’t you want some tea and breakfast?”
Rini, who had one blue eye and one gold, meowed, and the old lady burst into giggles again before disappearing through the curtains.
I decided I liked Misaki’s grandma and her white cat—how could I not? And it was only partially due to the fact that she’d offered us food and drink. Wiley and Yann lifted up Hank again, and we all filed into the big house.
5
The Council
Misaki dispatched a few guards into town to summon the councilors. Apparently it was tradition to hold their meetings at her grandma’s guesthouse.
Jiji, the little white-haired old lady, had led us through the creaky old house into a big room with windows looking out onto the front porch and the lush garden beyond. Woven mats covered the floor and I appreciated Misaki making us take off our shoes and clean our feet—I would’ve been embarrassed to dirty the peaceful, tidy space.
We’d sat on floor cushions at a long, low wooden table. Jiji had shuffled around, with her white cat trailing behind, and magically directed bowls of rice and clear broth to land in front of us for our breakfast. Rhonda had had to hold the bowl to Francis’s mouth since his bat wings had replaced his arms.
Wiley and Yann had carried Hank upstairs to a quiet room with a mattress on the floor and left him to rest. I wanted to join him. A steady drizzle of rain fell outside, and with my stomach full of warm soup and rice, I’d struggled to keep my eyes open as the councilors trickled in, leaving their wet umbrellas and shoes on the porch.
First came a small man with glasses, then a burly guy with a shaved head. He’d come in grumbling about what could be so important to wake him up at that early hour, only to stop midsentence when he spotted us, his dark eyes growing round. A tall middle-aged woman followed, and then three older men arrived together, talking business.
Jun had helped Jiji and Misaki magically clear the table, and we’d moved across the room to sit with our backs to the windows and our eyes on the councilors who’d taken our places at the long table. They settled in on the floor, facing us, and Jiji joined the group last, slowly lowering herself to the floor at one end of the table. Her cat curled up in her lap, and the guards knelt in a row between my friends and I and the council.
Misaki rose and bowed deeply before the leaders of the town. She straightened and addressed the seven officials, including her grandmother. “Honored councilors,” Misaki began. She fidgeted with the black fabric of her pants. “Let me begin by thanking you for—”
“What were you doing in the wild?” One of the businessmen, a guy I guessed to be in his sixties, interrupted her. His thick black brows slanted upward at the outer corners, giving him a constantly angry expression.
Misaki’s grandma, Jiji, sat at the opposite end of the table and leaned forward to glare at him. Her white cat leapt onto the table in front of her and tucked its paws under its chest.
Misaki cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “I—I led this group of guards into the forest to search for Captain Kenta, who, as the honored council knows, has been missing for nearly twenty-four hours now.” Her voice held an edge.
The man who’d interrupted her folded his arms, draping his dark blue kimono sleeves across his middle. He gave Misaki a hard, unwavering look. “You requested permission to lead such a search group, and the council denied it.” His lips curled back in a cruel smile. “You mean to say you willfully disobeyed a direct command?”
Maple and I exchanged concerned looks. Was Misaki in trouble? Even from the back of the room, I could feel the tension between her and this man.
She held very still for several long moments before bowing her head. “I beg the council’s forgiveness.” She straightened and spoke louder. “But Captain Kenta is the best guard we have.” She swept an arm behind her toward her fellow ninjas. “Every one of these men and women volunteered to search for him.”
A middle-aged woman who wore her dark hair swept up in a beautiful bun gave Misaki a kind smile. “I admire your dedication, Misaki.” Her smile faded. “But you were denied permission for a reason. Unless on guard duty, no one is supposed to be out in the forest at night, you know this.” She shook her head. “While we value Captain Kenta, we value each of you as well and don’t wish to risk your lives for nothing.”
“For nothing?” Misaki stepped closer to the kneeling council. “For nothing? Captain Kenta isn’t nothing.”
The middle-aged woman stiffened. “I didn’t say he was nothing.” She shook her head, her expression hardening. “But it is a fruitless mission, you must accept that. His own family has accepted that he’s gone.”
Misaki’s shoulders heaved. “We’re his family, too. And we can’t just give up on him.”
“You can.” The angry-looking man in the blue kimono leaned across the table. “And you will. You said yourself, he went out checking monster traps by himself, at night.” The man scoffed and threw his hands up as he looked down the line at his fellow councilors. “We all know what happened to him.”
“No. We don’t.” Misaki lifted her palms. “That’s why we went out there last night. Captain Kenta told me he was going out the night before last to check on the traps. We’ve been finding them sprung but empty lately, and we can’t figure out how the monsters are escaping. Kenta had a suspicion, though he didn’t share it with me.” She glanced down. “He wouldn’t let me come with him, either. He said if he was right, he wanted a chance to handle it himself. There’s more going on here.” She bowed deeply. “I take full responsibility for disobeying orders, but”—she swept an arm back at my friends and me—“but foreigners came to the island through a portal mirror. They’re the first since Horace and his people, and that was years ago. And we find them the night after Kenta disappears? It can’t just be coincidence.”
“You’re clawing at air here. Let me explain this to you simply—Captain Kenta was a fool and went into the forest alone at night. A monster ate him. It’s tragic, but your boyfriend is dead.”
Jun, who knelt in front of us, choked and clapped a hand to his chest.
Misaki’s shoulders heaved. “He wasn’t— We weren’t— That’s not—”
I lifted a brow. Huh. Was Misaki interested in this Kenta guy? It would explain her drive to find him. I swallowed against a lump in my throat. I’d do the same for Hank.
The older man sneered at Misaki. “Let it go, before you get yourself and your friends killed.”
She lurched toward him. “Is that a threat, Ryuu Tanaka?”
The councilors shifted uncomfortably.
“Come now, Misaki, this is uncalled for.” The middle-aged woman who sat in the center pressed her lips tightly together.
Ryuu Tanaka leaned back and glared at Jiji. “Your granddaughter has lost her sense.”
Jiji lifted her round, freckled face and gave Misaki a nod. “I like a girl who holds her footing.”
I did, too. Especially against someone like that jerk, Ryuu Tanaka. Not that I knew him or anything, but I disliked the way he was treating Misaki. I frowned. Though I wasn’t sure I loved how she was implying we had something to do with this missing captain, either.
A thin councilman with glasses and neatly parted hair looked past the guard toward my friends and me. “I do not think we can dismiss the notion of finding Captain Kenta until we’ve interrogated the strangers. Despite her brusque manner, I agree with Miss Mori that it seems likely they are somehow connected to his disappearance.”
The councilors’ and guards’ eyes all turned to us and my face flushed hot. I shifted on my cushion and attempted a friendly smile. None of the councilors returned it, not even Jiji—though that was because she was busy cooing over her cat, Rini.
“Tell us, foreigners, what have you to do with Captain Kenta?” The man in glasses looked at us expectantly.
I looked left, down the line at Yann, Annie, Sam, Wiley, and Maple. They all had bloodshot, glazed eyes. Then I glanced to my right at Rhonda beside me, and Francis, hanging upside down from the exposed wooden rafters of the ceiling. None of us seemed to be firing on all cylinders, but I knew that what we said next might determine our fate.
“Well.” Iggy cleared his throat. “If no one’s going to speak up, then I can—”
“No!” my friends and I all chorused.
The council looked taken aback and Iggy blinked up at me expectantly.
Well, here it went. I cleared my throat. “My name is Imogen Banks and I would like to start by thanking you all for your hospitality.”
Blank faces and silence met me.
I pulled my lips to the side and jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. “Sure beats monster forest out there, am I right?” I swallowed, my throat tight.
Iggy leaned out of his lantern and gave me two thumbs up. He mouthed, “You’re doing great.”
I rolled my eyes at him and he snickered.
“We, um.” I looked left and Annie gave me an encouraging nod. “We don’t know anything about this Captain Kenta guy. Honestly. We crashed through that portal mirror and arrived here moments before Misaki and the other guards found us.” I shook my head, willing them to believe us. “We honestly didn’t even know there were people on the island, aside from the Badlands Army, of course.”
The councilwoman in the center frowned. “The Badlands Army?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Horace’s group?”
She folded her hands together. “You’re not part of it?”
“No.” I held up my hands and shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Then why are you here?” Ryuu Tanaka fixed his intense gaze on me.
I looked at my friends. Should I tell the truth? At this point, we might have an interkingdom bounty on our heads for breaking into Carclaustra and defying Hank’s dad.
Rhonda spoke up. “Would you believe us if we said for a vacation?” She winked. The council shot her hard looks. “Ur.” She pulled her lips wide. “Tough crowd.”
“Uh!”
A gasp from the doorway drew all eyes. A skinny girl who looked about thirteen years old stood with her mouth agape, staring straight at me. She gasped again as her eyes flitted to Rhonda, then to Francis, hanging upside down from his black-socked feet.
“Get out of here, Fumi,” Misaki growled.
The girl made a face at her. “This is my house, too.”
My lips quirked to the side—this must be Misaki’s little sister.
Fumi stepped into the big room. The peaked ceiling showed exposed rafters, and the worn old floors creaked below her socked feet. She edged closer to her grandma. “What are they doing here?”
Ryuu Tanaka gritted his teeth. “This is official business, Jiji, no place for little girls. Send her off to her chores.”
Fumi scanned the line of my friends and me, and when her gaze landed on Wiley her cheeks flushed pink and she smoothed down her sleep-tousled black hair. She leaned close to her grandma. “You didn’t tell me we had guests.”
Jiji crinkled her eyes and chuckled. “It was a surprise to me, too. Seems we have some newcomers on the island.”
Fumi bent over and stroked the white cat. It rolled over on the low table and batted at her hand with its tiny paws.
The center councilwoman cleared her throat. “Yes. And they were just telling us who they are and what they’re doing here.”
“Wait.” The little girl straightened, her brows high up her forehead. “You don’t know who they are?”
The room went quiet.
She pointed at me. “That’s Imogen!”
I lifted my brows, shocked to my core to be recognized. Maple leaned forward and gaped at me.
“She’s dating Prince Harry from Bijou Mer.” She turned. “And that’s Rhonda the Seer next to her.”
Rhonda bowed, grinning.
“Black sands! That’s Francis—the world’s last vampire!”
My upside down friend blinked. “Nearly the last.”
Misaki shook her head slightly at her little sister. “How do you know who they are?”
Fumi looked at her feet.
“Fumi?” Misaki’s tone held a warning. “Have you been seeing Horace again?”
My brows hiked up with surprise.
Fumi balled her hands into fists at her sides and stomped her foot. “Not for a while. And whatever, I can do what I want.”
“No,” Misaki growled. “You can’t.”
“Yes, I can.” Fumi crossed her arms. “He’s nice. I just activated a mirror for him, and he brought me some newspapers. Big deal.”
I frowned, utterly confused. My brother was recruiting little girls to activate mirrors for him? Why didn’t he just make someone from his army do it? Unless he was trying to recruit Fumi to the BA….
“Can you get these papers for us, Fumi?” The center councilwoman asked. She folded her hands together on the table. “I’d like very much to see them.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched on as Fumi’s footsteps faded away up a staircase in the next room, then returned a minute later. She burst into the room with some tabloid papers in her hand. She held one up, and I saw an unflattering photograph of Hank and me on the front cover, taken at some luncheon with a duke of the Earth Kingdom. The headline read, “A Bun in the Oven for Prince Hank’s Beloved Baker?”
Maple squinted to read it, then turned to me and gasped, her mouth round.
“I’m not pregnant,” I scoffed, annoyed. “It was the dress, okay? It poofed out in the front.”
Fumi handed the papers to her grandma, who passed them down the table. The councilors looked them over, little creases between their brows. The guy with the glasses looked from the paper to me, then back to the paper again.
Misaki’s grandma looked up at me, her eyes round. “Are you the oven with a bun in it?” Her cat crawled over her back to rest on top of her head. It blinked its mismatched eyes at me.
I looked at Maple, who shrugged, then at Rhonda, who nodded. It seemed smart to just tell the truth at this point. I nodded at Jiji. “Yes.” I shook my head. “I mean, no bun, but I’m the oven. I mean yes, we’re the people from the paper.”
The burly guy with a bald head and tanned skin folded his thick arms across his chest. He reminded me of a buff Buddha. “What are you doing here?” His eyes narrowed and he growled. “Is the prince here to set more monsters on us, like his father?”
The councilors grew still and the guards whipped their heads round to look at us.
I staggered to my feet with a grunt. “No.” I licked my lips. “In fact, just the opposite. You see, well, it’s complicated, but my brother”—I gestured at Fumi, the little sister—“Horace, he sort of forced us to help him break some prisoners out of Carclaustra Prison, and Hank’s dad, King Roch, found out about it and sentenced us to prison. But then Horace and one of the prisoners revealed the truth about the king dumping all the monsters here after he used them to attack other kingdoms. See, none of us knew about that, or that there were people living here besides Horace’s army.”
I swallowed. “And all chaos broke out and the king ordered his guard to kill us and Hank, his own son.” My chest grew tight as I relived the horrible moment. “And we barely escaped here through Horace’s portal mirror.” I clasped my scratched and scraped-up hands together. “So please believe me, we are definitely not here on behalf of the king.”
“So, you’re criminals.” Ryuu Tanaka narrowed his eyes.
Jiji clicked her tongue and leaned forward, the cat shifting to stay balanced on her head. “Did you not hear the girl? They’re here seeking asylum. They’d have been killed if they’d stayed in their home kingdom.” She sniffed. “Even the stone must be softer than your heart.”
Ryuu Tanaka scof
fed. “What does this have to do with heart? I care greatly for our people, to whom these wanted criminals are a threat.”
The center councilwoman frowned. “How so?”
He frowned too, and gestured at us. “They have admitted to breaking criminals out of prison for Horace—how do we know they aren’t spies, sent by him to infiltrate our town?”
Jiji scoffed. “Then they’d make pretty terrible spies. One’s half dead, the vampire can barely walk, and they have almost no survival skills or instincts.”
I nodded, grateful, but also a bit ruffled. Were we that pathetic?
“Unless that’s what they want us to think.” The burly bald guy stroked his chin as he glared at us.
“What do you propose then, Ryuu Tanaka?” The center councilwoman lifted her palms. “You know we can’t send them back. We have no portal mirrors, and we ourselves are trapped on our island by the monster-infested waters.”
The stern man flicked a hand. “Of course not. Even if we could, I’d say the less we have to do with the outside world, the better.” He leveled a hard look at me. “Send them back into the forest where we found them.”
My breath caught.
Misaki cast me a disconcerted look. I could practically see the wheels turning behind her dark eyes. She rubbed her fingers together at her sides, then turned back to the council. “Not before we get some answers about Captain Kenta.”
Jun straightened his tall back. “I say not at all. If we leave them outside the village, they’ll die. If the monsters don’t get them, the Badlands Army will, or the elements, or their lack of food.”
I nodded. What he said.
“Who cares?” Ryuu Tanaka lifted his palms, his wide sleeves sliding up to his elbows. “They suddenly show up on our island and we’re supposed to be responsible for them? We have our own concerns here, plenty without adding these foreigners to them.” He squared his shoulders. “We keep to ourselves and we take care of our own.” He sniffed. “They need to take care of themselves.”