But then Yuki-Onna turned toward the shattered door, and even at this angle, Kara saw the evil of her smile return. Sakura and Miho stood there with Ren, and they had nowhere to run.
"You broke your promise, beautiful one," the witch whispered.
Ren did not even try to flee.
"Hide him!" Kara said, her voice quavering. Her whole body twitched as she began to rise.
Miho gave a cry of anguish as she stepped in front of Ren. "How?"
Kara staggered to her feet. As Yuki-Onna glided toward her friends, she edged around the witch, keeping pace. Yuki-Onna reached a hand out toward Ren, but Kara stepped in the way.
The demon froze, a troubled expression on her face. Yuki-Onna frowned and moved her head to one side, her smile returning.
"Surround him," Sakura whispered, grabbing Kara's hand.
The warmth of the contact with her friend sent pain shooting through her. Her skin was so cold, now, that any movement, any warmth, hurt her.
"Don't do this —" Ren began.
"Quiet!" Miho snapped. "Crouch down."
The three girls surrounded him as best they could. Teeth chattering, they blocked Yuki-Onna's view. No, not her view, Kara thought. Demons see the essence of someone, right? So we're hiding him behind whatever nothing she sees when she looks at us.
If only they'd had Hachiro's ward.
Hachiro. Thoughts tumbled into place inside Kara's head, making a terrible kind of sense. If killing satiated the witch's hunger, then she wouldn't be hungry right now. Even though she would want to fulfill the curse of Kyuketsuki, Yuki-Onna might not kill her right away. She might take her to wherever Hachiro was now. If Kara could keep Ren safe, he might be able to lead them all up to the mountain and save them.
Numb hands shaking, fingers little more than useless stumps, she pulled away from her friends and reached up to remove her ward. She could give it to Ren. Save him, and then he could save both her and Hachiro in return. Insane, but the only option she could see.
"Kara, no!" Sakura shouted.
Sakura batted at her hand. Kara glanced at her, saw tiny icicles hanging from the jagged cut of her hair, saw Sakura reaching up to untie the thong from her own neck.
Sakura took off Kubo's ward, eyes alight with fear and purpose. She turned, reaching out for Ren with both hands to put the thong around his neck. Miho and Ren were shouting at her, telling her to stop, to put it back on, but Kara barely heard their voices.
She felt the winter's breath on the back of her neck, and heard the perverse pleasure in Yuki-Onna's voice.
"One of the cursed, right here in front of me. Delicious," the Winter Witch said.
"No!" Ren shouted, trying to get the ward back around Sakura's neck.
Yuki-Onna contorted her fingers and the snow and wind lifted Sakura from the ground and twisted her around so that she faced the witch.
"Leave her alone!" Kara screamed.
She and Miho and Ren attacked, but they might as well have been tearing at the wind, their frozen hands useless, passing through Yuki-Onna as though the witch were a ghost made of snow, made of storm.
"My sister will be grateful when I steal your life, cursed girl," Yuki-Onna said, studying Sakura's face with her black eyes. "But my vengeance comes before hers. Tonight I take the pretty one, but I shall come for you and yours soon enough."
And with a gust of wind she hurled Sakura across the cafeteria. Sakura flailed like a broken doll, struck the wall, then fell onto a side table before rolling onto the floor and beginning to bleed into the snow.
Miho screamed.
Yuki-Onna grabbed Ren and he cried out, frost forming on his face and hair. Kara caught his wrist, trying to pull him back, but as the icy wind carried him into the air she was lifted as well. The storm embraced her. If she had thought she was cold before, that had been nothing in comparison to the pain that screamed through her now, slowing her blood and dulling her thoughts.
Her hand could not grip. Her fingers would not close.
Kara fell, slumping to the snowy floor. As her consciousness began to retreat, she saw the cafeteria windows shatter and the storm flowed out into the darkness, carrying Ren with it.
The shadows coalesced at the corners of her eyes, and then swallowed her, and her mind went dark.
Chapter Twelve
Even in her dreams, Kara couldn't get warm. Her unconscious mind was filled with the sound of shattering glass and the high, keening wail of the wind. It sounded so much like a scream of anguish.
From time to time her eyes would flutter blearily open and she would see the hospital room around her — the white curtain, the metal piping on the guardrail of the bed, the dark silhouette of someone passing by in the brightly lit corridor — and then she would surrender to the cold dreams again. Voices reached her, even unconscious, but the words were impossible to decipher. She recognized them as Japanese, but her brain was too tired to translate.
Sometime during the night she woke more fully, aware of a terrible weight on her, and she looked down to see the heavy blanket over her. She still felt cold, but her skin was clammy and it panicked her a little to be constricted like that. Still, she moved the parts of her body slowly, testing out her feet and ankles, her hands and wrists, her neck and even her spine. She ached all over and there were apparently stitches in her arm where flying glass had cut her, but otherwise she seemed all right, certainly well enough to move.
As she sat up, turning the blanket down, a slender figure blocked much of the light from the hallway.
"Oh," the nurse said in a small voice. She hurried into the room, which was lit with a gloomy yellow that Kara understood was some kind of hospital nightlight. In the semi-dark, Kara could barely make out a stream of blue in the woman's shoulder-length hair, and still half-asleep she let out a small laugh.
"You are awake and laughing?" the nurse said. "The doctor will be very happy."
Kara couldn't say anything. If she did, she feared she would blurt out the source of her amusement, which was the streak of blue in the attractive young woman's hair. It had made her think of Nurse Joy on all of the old Pokemon episodes she and her friends had watched when they were little. Or was it Officer Jenny with the blue hair? Not that it mattered.
"I'm cold," she told the nurse.
Immediately the woman nodded and tried to pull the blanket back up, but Kara shook her head.
"Not that, please? I'm cold inside more than out. Is there any way I could have some tea?"
The nurse looked doubtful. She glanced at the clock and only now did Kara see that it was almost two o'clock in the morning.
"Maybe something from the nurses' station?" Kara asked. "Anything hot, really."
The blue-streaked nurse picked up her chart from the end of the bed and cocked it so that she could read it in the light coming in from the hall. Apparently satisfied, she set it back down.
"I will see if there is anything that the doctor would not object to."
Kara gave a nod of her head, a tiny bow, and the nurse retreated from the room. Only after she left did Kara remember the hundred questions she should have asked upon waking. Where were her father and her friends? Were they all okay? How many people had died at the school? She needed to see someone, talk to someone who could tell her what had happened.
But with the nurse gone, she lay on her side and brought her knees up beneath her, trying to warm herself. Bits and pieces of memory began to surface. The image seared across her mind was of those shark teeth plunged into her father's throat, but others warred for space in her mind. Yuki-Onna's bottomless black eclipse eyes. Sakura hitting the wall, then slamming down on top of a cafeteria table. Ren being sucked out the shattered caf windows.
Kara shuddered, alone in the dark. She had to know they were all right. If she'd had some kind of telepathic powers she could have reached out for them, found them with her thoughts and her worries.
Be all right, Dad. Be all right, Sakura, she thought. And then, Hachiro, are you
out there?
But of course she received no answer. She was no telepath, just an ordinary girl dragged through a hell of extraordinary circumstances. Still she kept reaching out for them with her thoughts, and it occurred to her that she was praying.
By the time the nurse returned, she had slipped back into dreams.
. . . Wake up . . .
Something jostled her. Kara came awake slowly, her eyes not quite open but still aware of activity in the room around her. Daylight filtered through her slitted eyelids and she heard familiar voices.
" . . . would want to be woken," Miho was saying. "The doctor said she'd be okay."
"But he did not say we should wake her," Miss Aritomo replied. "We have all been through a terrible ordeal. We are fortunate to be alive. You and I might be just fine, but the doctor said that Kara needs her rest."
"Aritomo-sensei, please listen," Miho said, her patience obviously wearing thin. "Kara is one of my best friends. I know her. Decisions are going to be made this morning that concern her, and she would not want to sleep through them. She would want a voice."
A flicker of a smile touched Kara's lips as she finally shed the groggy remnants of sleep. Both Yuuka and Miho were so concerned about her, she could not help but appreciate their concern. But Miho's pleas had her worried.
Miss Aritomo was not surrendering. "Miho, Kara's father has made his wishes clear. She needs sleep."
Kara tried to speak but her voice came out in a rasp. As she cleared her throat, they both turned to look at her, first in surprise and then delight.
"You're awake!" Miho said hopefully.
Miss Aritomo shot her a frustrated look, obviously blaming Miho for waking Kara, but then her expression changed. Yuuka shifted from art teacher to her father's girlfriend, just happy to see Kara awake and apparently well.
"I think I've slept enough," Kara said, sitting up and reaching for a pitcher of water on the tray table beside the bed. She fumbled a moment before realizing that the fingers of her right hand were bandaged.
"I'll get that," Miho said, hurrying around the bed to pour her a glass of water.
They both studied her curiously, even eagerly, as she drank. When she had put the glass down and cleared her throat again, she threw back the covers and looked down at her body.
"I'm all in one piece, right?" she asked.
Miss Aritomo nodded. "You have —" and she said a word Kara didn't know.
"What's that?" Kara interrupted.
Miho and Miss Aritomo looked at one another.
"When your skin or the flesh is frozen and dies?" Miho ventured.
Kara shivered, a wave of nausea passing through her. "Frostbite?" she said in English. Then she repeated the word Miss Aritomo had used for it in Japanese. "Frostbite. I have frostbite?"
"Just in your right hand," Miho said quickly. "And the doctor says it isn't bad. They got the blood moving again. You're going to be all right."
A darkness closed around Kara's heart as she flexed the fingers of her right hand and remembered holding on to Ren's wrist, trying to keep Yuki-Onna from taking him away. She could still see the fear in his eyes as the witch flew out into the snowy night, carrying him along in the embrace of the storm.
"But Ren's gone," Kara said.
"Yes," Miss Aritomo agreed. "Ren's gone."
"And without him we can't find Hachiro, or break the curse, and . . . poor Ren."
"You don't know any of that for certain," Miho said.
Kara frowned. "Don't I?" She shook her head and then, remembering the melee in the dormitory, looked up at Miss Aritomo. "What about everyone else? Is my father all right? And Sakura? Are they all right?"
Ever since she had woken in the middle of the night, a grim suspicion had weighed upon her but she had barely recognized its presence. The tone in Miss Aritomo's and Miho's voices during their conversation had been full of dreadful acceptance, the tone of people who had already suffered tragedy and simply did not want any more of it. All of this occurred to her only now, as they both hesitated to answer the question.
"Tell me," Kara said, crossing her hands over her chest and laying her head back on the pillow. "Don't do this to me, Miho. Yuuka. Don't do this. Just tell me. Is my father dead?"
The shock and alarm in Miss Aritomo's eyes made Kara sigh in relief even before the woman spoke.
"No, no, Kara. Your father is here as well. His room is at the other end of this corridor. The doctor intended to move you into his room today, once you were awake and feeling a little better."
"And he's all right?"
Yuuka brushed a lock of hair away from her delicate, pretty face. "He had frostbite as well. Worse than yours. The doctors had to remove two of his toes and the little finger of his left hand. He has several broken ribs. Otherwise he is going to be all right. He's been asking for you, but the doctor won't let him get out of bed. He's on pain medication and his ribs are much too tender."
Kara nodded slowly, taking that in. Awful, but her father would survive. They would be all right.
"What about Sakura?"
Miss Aritomo glanced at Miho, who wore a thin smile, her face partially veiled by her long hair. Miho took off her glasses and opened her mouth to speak, and then her smile shattered. Her lower lip quivered and she began to cry.
"Oh, no," Kara said. "Miho, come on. Don't . . ." She looked at Miss Aritomo. "What's wrong with Sakura?"
Miss Aritomo put her arm around Miho for a moment, then broke away and came to sit on the edge of Kara's bed. She took Kara's undamaged hand in her own.
"Sakura is still unconscious," the art teacher said. Her smile was kind, but Kara barely registered it. "Miho tells us that Sakura was thrown into a wall. Her head must have hit the wall. There is damage to her skull and she had a number of internal injuries. The doctors have not . . . they are not willing to make predictions about Sakura's condition for at least another twenty-four hours, unless she wakes up before then."
Kara held Miss Aritomo's hand, but she threw her legs over the side of the bed and forced herself to stand.
"Wait, Kara. You cannot —" the teacher said, holding her arm.
"Yuuka," Kara said, more sharply than she'd intended. "I need to see her. I want to see my father, talk to him. And then . . . Sakura."
Just the thought that her friend might never wake up sapped the strength from her, but Kara refused to sit back down.
"I'll take you," Miho said.
"We should summon a nurse," Miss Aritomo warned.
"I'm fine," Kara told her.
She pulled on the hospital robe and followed Miho out into the hall. Her feet were bare and the tiles were very cold underfoot. The loose hospital clothes flapped around her, but she ignored it all. Miss Aritomo followed, only pausing to explain their destination as they passed the nurses' station. A grumbling nurse pursued them but seemed more interested in keeping an eye on Kara than on forcing her back to bed.
"It is this way," Miss Aritomo said, guiding them along a corridor that branched off to the left.
When they reached Kara's father's room, Miss Aritomo stood back to let her pass, and Kara preceded her through the door with Miho following close behind. There were two beds in the room, one of them empty and awaiting Kara's arrival, except that the old monk, Kubo, sat perched on the edge of the bed with the air of a little boy waiting patiently until he could depart.
Kara glanced in surprise at the monk and then turned to her father, barely noticing the presence of the third man in the room, Mr. Yamato, who stood near the window, looking out at the gray skies — perhaps watching for any sign of snow.
"Honey, what are you doing walking around?" her father asked, frowning. He glanced at Miss Aritomo.
"Don't blame Yuuka," Kara said quickly. "She tried to get me to rest. But you know me better than that, Dad. I'm all right. And time is running out. It's . . . it may already have run out."
Her voice cracked and she clenched her jaws together a moment, refusing to cry.
"Last night was Hachiro's third night on Takigami Mountain. And she's got Ren again. Sakura is pretty bad off, I'm told. We've got to put a stop to this."
Kubo perked up, eyebrows arching as though he had something to say, but he glanced at Mr. Yamato and then at Kara's father, awaiting some signal of approval that did not seem to be forthcoming. The old monk cocked his head to one side and continued his patient vigil.
"Kara . . ." her father began again.
She stared at him a moment, taking in the bandaged left hand, knowing when the bandages were removed he would have one less finger. She couldn't see his feet, and perhaps that was for the best.
He tried to sit up, and she went to him.
"No, Dad. Your ribs," she said, touching him gently on the shoulder, keeping him down.
"With respect, Harper-san," Mr. Yamato said, "Kara is right. It might be better if she rested, but you are under strict instructions. Your ribs will not heal properly if you do not obey them."
Kara saw the frustration in her father's eyes and she understood it. He was furious at being so powerless. But she also saw his eyelids droop with exhaustion and wondered how tired the painkillers might be making him.
"Are you all right?" she asked, unable to erase the little girl she'd once been from her voice.
"I will be," her father replied, gaze fixed upon her eyes. "As long as you are."
"I'm not," Kara said quickly, turning to Mr. Yamato and Kubo. She gestured to Miho. "None of us are until this curse is over. It's killed so many people already. How many died last night?"
"Kara —" Miss Aritomo chided her.
"Four," Mr. Yamato replied grimly. "Seventeen were injured, some of them badly. Your friend Wakana fell on the stairs. She broke her arm and suffered a concussion."
"I did not know that," Miho said.
Miss Aritomo gave her a sympathetic look. "You've been with Kara and Sakura all night."
Kara took a deep breath, glanced around the room, and then looked at the old monk. "Ren was supposed to lead us to Yuki-Onna. Now she has him again. Is there any other way to find them? To find her?"
A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) Page 15