by Jasmine Walt
“Sorry about your shirt,” I muttered, swiping at the big wet stain on the front of it.
Raiden shrugged. “Shirts are replaceable,” he said, slipping a hand beneath my chin. He tilted my face up to meet his. “You’re not, Aika, and it’s obvious that someone thinks you’re valuable enough to kidnap. We need to find out who, and why.”
“My mom specifically mentioned Kai,” I said as I wiped at my face with my sleeve.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Raiden raked a hand through his long hair, inadvertently yanking it from its ponytail. It swung free around his angular face, lending an edge of wildness to his otherwise stoic appearance. “Kai has been sealed away for thousands of years. The only way he could have come back is if…”
“If what?” I asked. My stomach sank as an expression of dawning horror crept over Raiden’s face. “Raiden, what is it?”
“That archaeology excavation we heard on the radio…” Raiden swallowed. “I think they might have been digging where Kai’s tomb was located.”
“Shit.” It was my turn to rake my hand through my hair. “Just who is Kai, anyway? If he was buried in some kind of tomb, how is he still alive? Was it recent?”
“Recent?” Raiden laughed hollowly. “The last time Kai was seen alive was nearly two thousand years ago. He was imprisoned for using dark magic to kill the son of his clan’s leader and the woman he was engaged to marry.”
“Two thousand years ago?” I squeaked, my mind struggling to process that. “That doesn’t make sense. How can he still be alive in that tomb two thousand years later?”
Raiden reached for the kitchen towel hanging from the refrigerator door and handed it to me. “It’s a long story, but he’d been joined with a powerful evil spirit when he was sealed away, so that spirit might have kept him alive all this time,” he said as I mopped my face. “Powerful spells were placed on that tomb so that humans would never find it. I don’t understand how these archaeologists managed to dig it up.”
“Maybe Kai figured out a way to weaken the spell,” I suggested. I couldn’t even believe I was saying these things, thinking in these terms. But as they said, when in Rome…
“We need to go and talk to my parents,” Raiden said firmly. “There’s no point in standing around here speculating. My entire family are shamans, and they know more about the legend of Kai than I do.”
I nodded. “Let me grab some stuff first.” There was no point in fighting Raiden on this any longer—his parents were the only people who could tell me who Kai was and help me find my mother.
“Okay. But hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I dashed up the stairs to my room, then exchanged my backpack for a cross-body purse and stuffed my wallet, keys, a small canister of pepper spray, and lipstick inside. I didn’t know if pepper spray was going to have any effect on yokai or ghosts, but it was the only weapon I owned, and I damn well wasn’t going to leave without it.
The lipstick wasn’t going to do anything either, but my mom had taught me to never leave the house without makeup. You never know when you might need it, she’d always cautioned me. What if you run into Mr. Right? Or your dream employer?
Tears stung at my eyes at the thought of my mother. I’d pray to any god I had to if it meant getting her back safe and sound. Sniffing back the tears, I shrugged on a denim hoodie, then ran down the stairs to meet Raiden.
“I got us another cab. It’s outside,” Raiden said, standing by the front door. He looked me up and down, and whatever he saw must have reached past his tough exterior, because his gaze softened a little. “Are you ready?”
I pulled in a long breath. “Yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”
I locked up the house and got into the cab with Raiden. As I was putting my seatbelt on, Raiden leaned forward to talk to the driver. “Takaoka Investigations, please.”
My eyes nearly bugged out. “Wait a minute,” I said as the car rolled into traffic. “Your family owns that huge building in the Financial District?”
“Yeah, for three generations now. Our particular set of…talents lends us well to the private investigations industry.”
“Huh.” I chewed on that for a moment—I could see how being able to talk to ghosts could help someone track down missing people or belongings, or even find a murderer. How different would my life be if I’d known I had the ability to see ghosts from the beginning? Would I have chosen a different career path that complemented this particular skill set? “Guess you guys do pretty well.”
“You could say that.” Raiden smirked a little, and my face flamed as I became all too aware of the disparity between us. He was a rich kid from a hugely successful company, while I was a struggling college student trying to manage my mother’s business. We couldn’t be more different.
My heart clenched unexpectedly at the realization. There was no way I had any kind of connection, déjà vu or not, with a guy like Raiden. I must have been reading into something that wasn’t there.
I wanted to ask Raiden more questions about what had happened, but the cab driver was Japanese, and I didn’t want him overhearing us. Instead, I gazed out the window, curious to see if I could spot any ghosts from the car. At first, I didn’t see anything odd—just the usual foot traffic crowding the sidewalks, heading to and from work, or disappearing into bars and restaurants to wind down after a long day.
But as we slowed down outside a hotel, I caught sight of a bellhop loading up a luggage cart. He was a short, round man with male pattern baldness, but he managed to handle the large suitcases without issue. Our eyes locked, and his form flickered, revealing marbled blue skin, stringy hair, and a ring of stubble around his mouth. His yellowish-red eyes widened, and I choked back a scream when he hissed at me, exposing a set of curved fangs. For a moment I thought he was going to jump at me, but the car lurched forward, and we rolled out of range.
“Another yokai,” Raiden murmured from behind me, his voice pitched too low for the driver to hear. I turned away from the window to meet his intense gaze. “We’re seeing more and more of them.”
“What does it mean?” I asked, and I hated the way my voice trembled. I’d been shaken more by that brief encounter than I wanted to admit. “Why am I suddenly seeing these things everywhere?”
Raiden shook his head. “Later,” he said, glancing toward the cabbie.
I lapsed into a resentful silence for the rest of the cab ride. I hated that I was so completely out of my element. My life was organized around a very strict routine of studying, working, and caring for my mother. It kept me sane, allowing me to focus on the important things while not leaving me room to worry about the future.
Now, my entire routine had been shattered, and all the worries were crawling back into my brain, threatening to eat me alive. I needed to know more about this situation, so I could figure my way out of it, but so far Raiden hadn’t been very forthcoming.
He isn’t the only one who isn’t telling you things, I thought as I glanced down at my charm bracelet. The tiny silk and cotton monkey was still there, and a shiver went down my spine as I remembered what the furi had said. He’d served my father before being passed down to me. What did that mean? That my father had been a shaman? Did my mother know about this?
She had to have known. How can you marry someone and not know about such a huge part of them?
But if she did know, why hadn’t she told me? My mom had always believed in the Old Gods, or kami, as they were called, and we had a small shrine in our living room she used for prayer. She’d told me plenty of stories about the kami when I was little, but as I’d grown up and become more interested in science, I’d forgotten them. And she’d never pushed me.
Maybe she just wanted you to live a normal life. One free of ghosts and monsters.
Well, so much for that, I thought as we pulled up to a black, twelve-story building just a few blocks from the Transamerica building. I didn’t know what had happened today that had changed my life, but I knew on
e thing: there was no going back. I could see the ghosts and monsters now, and until my mother was safe and sound, I wasn’t going to stick my head in the sand and pretend they didn’t exist.
6
Raiden paid the cabbie, then led me toward the huge black skyscraper his family owned. As we walked toward the glass doors, a tingling feeling spread over me from head to toe. It was as if I’d passed through some kind of electrical field. Shivering, I rubbed my arms—they were covered, but I could feel the hairs on them prickling.
“Sorry,” Raiden said, noticing my discomfort. “We’ve got wards around the perimeter to keep yurei out,” he explained, using the Japanese term for “ghost.”
“Do they keep out yokai too?” I asked, glancing back toward the street. After what I’d seen today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more yokai and yurei watching us from outside. But there were only humans walking around, which was perfectly normal. After all, they couldn’t all be monsters, right?
“Yeah, though we haven’t gotten many of those,” Raiden said, reaching for the keychain on his belt loop. “We really don’t get a lot of yokai out here. They don’t usually wander very far from Japan.”
I opened my mouth to ask him to elaborate, but before I could, a guard rushed forward to open the door before Raiden could use his key.
“Good evening, Mr. Takaoka,” he said, holding the door wide. “And to you, Miss.”
“Are my parents in, Goro?” Raiden asked as we stepped into the lobby. It was a huge space, with green and white marble tile and huge clay pots with bamboo shoots for decoration. There were two groupings of furniture on opposite sides of the room where visitors could sit and talk, and in the center was a vacant reception desk. The lights were all down low, since the building was closed for the evening.
“I’m afraid not,” the guard said, locking the door behind us. “They left for Japan not too long ago.”
“What?” Raiden’s eyes crackled with annoyance. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I didn’t get any phone calls.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and swiped at the screen. “Not even a text message.”
Goro cleared his throat. “You should ask Mamoru,” he said, sounding decidedly uncomfortable. I just work here, his body language screamed. “I wasn’t given the details.”
“Fine. Thanks.” Glowering, Raiden stalked toward the bank of elevators on the opposite side of the room. I smiled hastily at the guard in thanks, then hurried after Raiden before he left me in the dust.
“Who’s Mamoru?” I asked as Raiden pressed the button for the eleventh floor.
“He’s a cranky old man,” Raiden said crossly. “And also our oldest shaman—although officially we’re called ‘investigators.’” He scoffed. “Americans wouldn’t hire us if they knew we relied on spirits to help solve our cases.”
“No, I guess not.” I wouldn’t have, not before today.
The elevator doors swished open, and we stepped out into a huge room that was something like a cross between a Buddhist temple and a library. Tatami mats covered the floor, and the walls were lined with lacquered oak bookshelves. More bookshelves filled half the space in rows, while the other half was filled with low wooden tables and seat cushions. Half of these had reading lamps on them, like study desks in a library, while the other half had computers.
Sitting at one of these desks was a wizened man with a bald head and a thin mustache. He wore a pair of linen pants and a red silk shirt, and a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles perched on his long, thin nose. I wondered if he’d ever considered transplanting the tufts of hair sprouting from his ears onto the top of his head, then pushed away the mean-spirited thought. It wasn’t his fault he suffered from male pattern baldness.
“Raiden,” the old man said in a quavering voice, turning to meet us. “Where have you been? I have been waiting for you to return.”
“Hunting yurei,” Raiden said. “Aika, this is Date Mamoru.” He pronounced the old man’s surname dah-tay, introducing him last name first, as was traditional. “Mamoru, this is my friend, Fujiwara Aika. She’s a shaman, although she doesn’t seem to realize it.” He shot me a look as if to say I was the crazy one for not believing.
Mamoru’s eyes narrowed, and he slowly got to his feet. There was a slight hunch in his back, but even so, he only stood a few inches shorter than Raiden. “Is that so?” he asked, padding toward me on bare feet. My face flamed as I suddenly realized I was still wearing my converses, and I quickly toed them off, shoving them toward the space next to the door. “The Fujiwara name is very old, but I have not met a shaman from that line. Who was your father?”
“Fujiwara Hidetada,” I blurted, without thinking. If my father had been a shaman, wouldn’t one this old have recognized my family name?
Mamoru shook his head. “Never heard of him. But you have the Sight,” he went on, studying me with sharp eyes. “That much I can tell just by looking at you. Do you know anything about how to use your powers?”
“I didn’t know anything about this until tonight.” I glanced sideways at Raiden, who’d also taken a second to remove his shoes. His expression was blank as he watched us, and I wished I knew what he was thinking. “I was walking home when I saw Raiden talking to the Kuchisake-onna in an alleyway, and I thought I’d lost my mind.”
“The Kuchisake-onna?” Mamoru’s bushy eyebrows flew up his bare forehead as he turned to Raiden. “Did you capture her?”
Raiden shook his head. “Aika screamed when she saw her, and the Kuchisake-onna attacked. I had to choose between the ghost and the girl.” A faint smile curved his lips, and I relaxed a little as I realized he wasn’t angry about it anymore.
“Harrumph!” Mamoru folded his arms. “And you say this is the first time you’ve seen a yurei?” he prodded, giving me the stink eye.
I opened my mouth to say yes, then remembered what had happened in the café. “Actually, I might have seen one a bit earlier. A guy wearing old-timey Japanese clothes was sitting in my café, and when I approached him to ask what he wanted, he seemed surprised that I could see him.”
I told them about the strange encounter, right down to him disappearing when he was hit by that bus. “And when I looked at the piece of paper he’d been drawing on, I saw that it was a picture of me, dressed in a really fancy kimono. Like an ancient Japanese princess.”
“Fascinating!” Mamoru’s eyes gleamed. “You very well may have been visited by a kami,” he said, his voice brimming with excitement. “It sounds like he opened your Sight.”
“It sure does.” I sighed, resisting the urge to scrub a hand through my hair. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to close it?”
Mamoru scowled. “And why would you want to do that, child? Your Sight is a gift from the gods, not something to be shunned!”
I bit back the snarky retort that sprang to my lips and bowed my head. My mother would bend me over her knee if she heard me speaking rudely to an elder.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I said quietly. “I just want my mother back.” My hands trembled, and I clenched them into fists, trying to steady myself. I’d already broken down once, in front of a stranger, no less—I wasn’t going to let it happen again.
“Your mother?” Mamoru’s voice changed, and when I looked up, his expression had softened into sympathy. “What happened to her?” He seemed to realize that I’d been through an ordeal, and gestured to the seat cushions. “Come sit, and tell me your story.”
Biting back a sigh, I did as he asked, sitting Japanese-style on the red silk cushions. Raiden joined me, and though his expression was still blank, I could sense his impatience. He probably wanted to ask about his parents but was polite enough to address my needs before his.
The tips of my ears turned hot, and I turned back to Mamoru, who was pouring tea from a clay pot that had already been sitting on the table. He handed us two round clay cups with no handles, and I cradled mine carefully between my palms, blowing across the top to cool the liquid before I took a sip.
/>
“After Raiden and I got away from the Kuchisake-onna, he took me back to my apartment,” I said. “When we arrived, we found an ogama on the second floor and had to fight it. My mother had been affected by its smoke, but when we revived her, she told us that the ogama had come here looking for me, and that it had been sent by a man named Kai.”
“Kai!” Mamoru’s eyes widened. “Are you certain?”
“Yes,” Raiden affirmed. “She definitely said Kai. We meant to question the ogama about it, but it took Aika’s mother and disappeared before we got the chance.” A frustrated look crossed his face. “We don’t know where he took her, or what he wants.”
Mamoru scowled. “If he was sent on Kai’s orders to kidnap Aika-san, the ogama might have decided to take her mother as a hostage instead.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Your parents were called back to Japan, along with most of our high-level shamans, to deal with that archaeological disaster, Raiden. We suspect those foolish people found the shrine Kai was sealed away in, and in their ignorance, they may have released him.”
Raiden paled, and my chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. “So…are you saying that a centuries-old evil shaman is after me, and that he’s kidnapped my mother in an effort to get to me?” I choked out.
“It does appear that way,” Mamoru said ruefully, “though I cannot fathom why Kai would want an inexperienced shaman like you.” His gaze grew thoughtful. “Are you sure you have never used your powers?”
“She healed herself when the ogama stabbed her,” Raiden said suddenly, his eyes glittering with suspicion. “I meant to ask about it, but there was too much going on. One moment she had a knife sticking out of her chest, and the next thing she was fine. How did you do that?” he demanded.
I swallowed as both men stared intently at me, my skin crawling with nerves. “I…a yokai saved me.” Slowly, I lifted my wrist, showing them the charm hanging from my bracelet. “A furi took me to this bamboo forest and told me he was a gift from my father. He was assigned to protect me.”