“I’ll go see them tomorrow. We’ll get through this like we get through everything. Together,” Kai said.
“You never finished explaining why you said I helped you,” Cassie spoke up, glancing around the room with concern clear on her face. She was sitting next to Marcus who was sipping his beer and looking ten years older than he had when they moved in. Marcus was treating Kai now like a national hero, and Cassie seemed to go back and forth between treating him like her new, very cool older brother, and flat out hero worship.
For her part in the drama, everyone in the Village heard about how she’d pried the trap off Kai’s leg and helped him finally take out that warlock that had been such a threat, and she was getting the hero treatment herself a bit.
Kai saw that she was wearing the new necklace he’d given her— his father’s charm had dissolved when they’d sent out their distress signal. To replace it Kai took one of his own teeth, and a silver bead Doc and Sarah had joined forces to weave into a protection charm and strung them together on a cord for her to wear. Nobody was going to threaten this girl again.
“I did, a little,” Kai said. “You helped me remember myself. Who I am and where I come from, you know? I was so wound up and stuck in my own head, between normal stress of life in general, and the added stress from the hunters and that damned wolf man warlock, and the poison from the wight— and then now that I look back at it I can see how Eric was digging at that wound and trying to drive me further towards all those negative traits. Despair, isolation, anger… it came damn close to working.”
“We’ve been trying to get you out of that mess for weeks! How’d Cassie snap you out of it? What did she do that we couldn’t?” Sebastian picked his head up to give Cassie a mock glare.
“Well, I guess…” Kai wasn’t sure how to phrase it so nobody felt uncomfortable. Including himself. “I guess the best way to put it is that I know you. And your feelings towards me are complex and your motivations are layered and complicated, and… And Cassie just had faith in me. She just simply knew that I wasn’t going to be pulled into the dark and that I would keep us safe. I could feel that faith all the way through me, and I remembered finally to have some faith in myself, too.”
The room fell quiet for a moment as everyone rolled that around in their minds.
“Leave it to a god to work on faith alone.” Cassie raised her eyebrow at him and grinned. Marcus’ head snapped up to gape at his daughter.
“What?” she shrugged at her own father. “You can’t tell me I’m wrong. I think you should drop the ‘demi’ part already.”
Kai blinked at her. The silence in the room beat against his ears as everyone slowly turned to look at him, with his cup of coffee in his hand and his bandaged foot propped up on the table. He swallowed and tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. Sebastian whistled slowly.
“Well that is one hell of a thing, brother,” Sebastian said. “No wonder that guy was so determined to get you in his new army. When should we start building the temple?”
“Oh! Oh! We could put it in the clubhouse!” Sarah’s eyes lit with humor. “We’re renovating anyway! How do you feel about gold leaf, Kai?”
“Oh, now he’s much more down to earth than that,” Jennifer joined in. “I’m seeing less grand palace and more local shrine. We’d have to incorporate some Japanese style, of course, for Keiko. But Kai’s father is from basically everywhere in North America. And Kai is a Bay Area boy all through. It’ll be tricky to incorporate everything.”
“Oh, come on you guys, I’m just me. I’m not a god yet, you know this stuff takes time. I’m sure I need to be at least thirty-five years old to reach god-status. That’s like seven months from now!” Kai threw a pillow at Sebastian who batted it away with a laugh. Power, clean and warm with life seeped into Kai, and he took a long breath in, listening to his friends and family tease him with plans to turn the clubhouse into the Shrine of Kai. Cassie just grinned at him and winked. Marcus stared at him, eyes wide.
Kai wasn’t a god, he knew that for a fact. It wasn’t like a promotion at work where one day you’re an assistant and the next day you’re a manager. It was a process that took decades. Sometimes centuries. Still, not every spirit walked that path, and he had to wonder as he listened to his friends talk. If he stayed here, amongst his family where he belonged, it was more than likely that someday… Kai wondered if anyone else heard the rumble of thunder overhead, or the warm whiskey laughter that rolled through the room. Maybe it was simply the gods he already knew welcoming him to their circle.
Acknowledgments
I honestly couldn’t have written this book without my father, who read Sarah’s Inheritance and loved it so much he kept pestering me about the characters in it. I’d also like to thank my Beta team, who had an awful lot to say about both Sarah’s Inheritance and later on Kai’s at the time still untitled story. I can’t do this without you guys.
I knew I had to find some way to catch that warlock since he got away at the end of Sarah’s story, but I was pretty sure that Sarah herself needed some space to sort her new life out a bit, without us all watching over her shoulder. Fortunately Kai was right there waiting to help me out. As it turned out he had quite a lot to say.
If you liked this book, I hope that you’ll leave me a review! I read every review and it makes a huge difference to me and to my work. And if you want updates or sneak peeks of my next book, any short stories, or fancy insider looks at whatever is going crazy in my life well ahead of anyone else, then sign up for my newsletter.
About the Author
Katherine Kim is a lifelong lover of fantasy. She started early, being read Tolkien as bedtime stories, which honestly explains a lot. More recently she’s been drawn to more urban fantasy stories through both books and television, and reading continues to be a passion. She lives and writes in Maryland for the moment, with her young family and her possibly demonic cat.
Books by Katherine Kim
The Demon Guardian
A Demon’s Duty
A Demon’s Sanction
A Demon Saved
The Riverton Demons
Personal Demons
Spirits of Los Gatos
Sarah’s Inheritance
A Spirit’s Kindred
A Spirit's Kindred Page 14