Chapter 13

“Tsuyoshi!” Michiko marches over to her husband.

My grandfather still has his eyes glued to his binoculars, looking beyond the trees at a road. A powerful engine rumbles, and a sleek black Jaguar luxury sedan slides past. I don’t need binoculars to glimpse the shadowy man in a suit sitting the back.

He’s watching us.

The reflective window slides shut, and the Jaguar speeds away.

“Octavian.” Tsuyoshi turns to me. “That was Zenjiro Matsuzawa.”

“Who?” I say.

“A very powerful man.” He speaks with hushed awe, like Zenjiro is a celebrity.

“We shouldn’t wait outside,” Michiko says.

“Hai,” Tsuyoshi says.

She marches toward the teahouse and we all follow her. The teahouse looks gorgeous, with upswept roofs reflected in a pond beside evergreens pruned into pillowy shapes. But I don’t have more than a second to admire it before Michiko pulls and Gwen pushes me into the teahouse. We kneel on tatami mats around a low table.

“Are you certain it was Zenjiro Matsuzawa?” Michiko murmurs.

Tsuyoshi meets her eyes and nods.

“I see.” Michiko’s nostrils flare. “Then those were his dogs.”

I stare at them. “Is Zenjiro the head of the Kuro Inu?”

Tsuyoshi laughs bleakly. “The Kuro Inu? No, the inugami are mere henchmen, nothing more than hunting dogs. Zenjiro is human. The lower ranks of yakuza may include yōkai, but the yakuza bosses are all human.”

“So he’s a yakuza boss?”

“Of course. The Matsuzawa family is infamous.”

Michiko stares down at her hands. “Why was Zenjiro watching us? Did we do something wrong, something to anger him?”

“Nothing that I know,” Tsuyoshi says. “Perhaps Zenjiro was evaluating his men.”

Gwen and I share a secret glance. Was our back-alley fight with a handful of inugami really enough to catch their boss’s eye?

Then Michiko squints at me. “You are familiar with the Kuro Inu?”

Guilty as charged. But what I am going to say?

“Yes,” I say slowly. “It was—”

A waitress brings us bowls of green tea. We thank her and sip our tea. I try not to scald my mouth. The tea house is relatively empty, with only a few tourists in the corner snapping photos. I would definitely see if there were any inugami here.

Michiko lowers her voice to barely above a murmur. “How did you meet the Kuro Inu?”

I clear my throat. “I trespassed on their territory in Harajuku. They smelled that I was a kitsune, and they got aggressive about it. Gwen found me and saved me from them.”

Michiko’s eyebrows go sky-high. “By shapeshifting?”

Gwen blushes. “Yes.”

Tsuyoshi steeples his hands on the table, his face solemn, his eyes stormy. “It is very shameful for a yakuza to be defeated by a woman. Even if that woman is a foreign yōkai; maybe especially so. They will fight viciously to regain their honor. And the yakuza who are inugami hold a deep hatred of kitsune.”

“Of course,” I say.

Gwen twists her mouth. “So how will they try to regain their honor? A fight to the death?” Embers of anger smolder in her eyes, like she’d love to kick their asses.

“Possibly. They will try to humiliate you in a way that warns others away from trespassing on their territory.” The way he says humiliate implies everything leading up to and including death. “You should never fight an inugami. Not because you will always lose, but because their pride will be so wounded they will be honor-bound to fight back.”

For some bizarre reason, there’s what looks like a glimmer of pride in my grandfather’s eyes as he looks at Gwen. Does he think I’m incapable of fighting? Just because my kitsune magic is apparently out of control and might randomly kill me doesn’t make me an invalid. I could have figured out a way to fight the inugami alone.

And then I feel stupid for being jealous of Gwen.

“Understand?” Tsuyoshi says.

I nod like a puppet.

“Octavian Kimura?” the waitress says, her voice so feathery that I almost don’t hear it. She looks between our faces.

“Yes?” I say.

With a slight bow, she hands me an envelope. When I take it, a hair drifts to the table—long and black.

I open it slowly, my fingers clumsy. It’s handwritten in English.

Last time was not enough. Do not look for me. I will come for you.

It doesn’t have a signature.

“Tavian?” Michiko says. “What is it?”

I swallow, my mouth dry. “I… I don’t know.”

I hand the letter over to her. She reads its quickly, her dark eyes sharp, then gives it to Tsuyoshi.

“What does it say?” Gwen says, her voice taut with impatience.

Tsuyoshi slides it over to her.

“Who is this from?” Michiko asks.

“One of the Kuro Inu?” I furrow my brow. “But why would they need to repeat what they already said to me in person?”

Tsuyoshi shakes his head, and oddly, he looks triumphant. “No.”

“Then who?” I say.

“Shizuka. I knew she would want to speak with you again.”

Michiko purses her lips. “Rather impolite for a temple maiden…”

But Tsuyoshi is still smiling. “Finally, some good news.” He toasts with his bowl of tea, then takes a swig.

Gwen glances sideways at me, her eyes questioning.

I look at the long black hair that fell from the letter, pinch it between two fingers, and lift it to my face.

Would it be stupid to hope it came from my kitsune mother?

~

Dinner feels like a ritual of normalcy, where everyone takes their prearranged places and swallows their anxieties before starting to eat the feast Michiko has cooked. I can almost taste my grandmother’s concern simmered in her soup, mingled with her hope that everything will be all right.

I crunch a rice cracker seasoned with sea salt and sugar. “These are delicious.”

“Arigatō,” Michiko says, and she’s very good at almost making her smile touch her eyes.

Later in the evening, Michiko and Tsuyoshi wind down, their movements slower and stiffer. I can see their masks slipping, revealing their true age. I sneak into the kitchen on the pretense of snatching another rice cracker, but really I’m hoping I’ll be caught by Michiko so she can scold me and I can crack some bad joke to see her smile, this time for real.

But the kitchen remains empty and bare beneath the flat fluorescent lights, and the cracker tastes like sawdust in my mouth. With a sigh, I head to the living room, where the TV plays with the sound muted. Tsuyoshi snores, slumped low in a leather easy chair, his chin propped on his chest. I slip the remote from his hand before it can clatter onto the floor and wake him.

His snoring stops and I wince, hoping I’m not being too loud.

Tsuyoshi turns toward me, his eyes still shut. “Tavian,” he says, without stirring. His voice sounds hollow and sleep-roughened. “You have spoken to her.”

The hairs on my arms prickle. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I warned you,” he says, “that she would come.”

He rubs his eyes with a clumsy hand, and his face smudges, revealing the blank skin underneath.

The return of the noppera-bō.

“I thought you went on vacation,” I mutter, trying to barricade my fear behind humor.

The fake Tsuyoshi lies in his chair, blank-faced, his chest moving as if he’s breathing through his nonexistent mouth and nose. Thoroughly creeped out, I back away and hurry to the guest bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Wait. Should I have talked to the ghost? Interrogated it?

The doorknob turns behind me, and I leap away from the door.

Gwen enters the room, finished with her shower, wrapped in a towel. She’s carrying another towel, but she’s not using it to dry her hair, which drips all over the carpet.

“Gwen,” I say, shutting the door behind her.

She stands by the window and stares out at the brooding clouds, their underbellies glowing orange by the light of Tokyo. Her hair keeps dripping.

“The noppera-bō is here,” I whisper. “Pretending to be Tsuyoshi.”

She turns toward me, her eyes distant. “I need to talk to you.” Her voice sounds hollow.

And I know it’s the noppera-bō.

This time, I say, “Then talk.”

The noppera-bō lets Gwen’s hands go limp. The towel slips from her body, leaving her pale and naked against the black night outside the window.

“We do not have much time,” she says, her mouth barely moving. “She is keeping me out.”

“Who?”

“Her name must not be spoken.”

“Is she Yukimi?”

The noppera-bō shushes me with a hiss like wind racing through grass. “She is watching you.”

I advance on this ghost-as-Gwen. “Who are you?” I take another step. “Tell me the truth.”

“You will know when you find my face.”

I frown. “Why can’t you show it to me?”

“I am dead.” Gwen’s head lists to the left and stays at an unnatural tilt. “You must learn my name.”

I clench my hands into fists and step even closer. “Have you forgotten it?”

She shakes her head, then opens her mouth to speak again.

There’s a whisper in my head. Do not speak to him.

Yukimi’s voice.

My thoughts feel sludgy, like they’re swimming in muck. The muscles in my legs twitch as if activated by electricity, and they move by themselves. I walk stiffly toward the ghost masquerading as Gwen.

Fear flickers, briefly, in the noppera-bō’s borrowed eyes. “Wait.”

I back Gwen against the window, my arms drifting upward, my hands pressing on the icy glass on either side of her head. I’m trapping her, but I don’t want to.

“Let me speak,” Gwen says.

No, Yukimi says in my head.

My hands move to unlatch the window and fling it wide open, to grab Gwen by the shoulders and push her out into the frigid air. But she fights against me, clinging to my arms, clawing at my skin, snowflakes sticking to her wet hair.

She cries, “Tavian!”

I know that the noppera-bō might not be imitating her—it might be possessing her body, and I could throw the real Gwen out the window to plummet to the pavement below. But I am possessed, by Yukimi, who has crawled into my brain and is making my muscles move.

I strain against the force puppeting me from within, but Yukimi’s grip upon my mind is ironclad.

I lunge and shove Gwen through the window.

To fall thirty-eight stories down.