Chapter 3

I wake with a gasp, a piercing pain radiating from the scar above my heart. With every heartbeat, fresh pain makes me double over in agony. I feel like I might vomit. I stagger to my feet and lurch to the bathroom.

In the hall, I nearly crash into Tsuyoshi, who’s standing there with a glass of water.

“Tavian!” he says.

I lean against the wall and try to stand up straight. “Sorry. Excuse me.”

“What is the matter?”

I shut my eyes. The pain is making me sweat. My mouth fills with saliva, and I swallow until the urge to retch fades. “I don’t know what my parents told you, but several months ago there were murders in my hometown… somebody was killing Others like me… I got shot, and…”

Tsuyoshi points to my chest. “There?”

I nod. “Above my heart.”

“And it pains you?”

“Sometimes. I don’t know why. They took the bullet out.” Slowly, the throbbing starts to feel less raw. “It’s getting better now… I need to rest.”

Tsuyoshi frowns. “Do you need a doctor?”

Believe me, I’ve asked doctors, and put up with endless tests, but they can’t find anything wrong, physically. They told me it was predictable angina, which means I get chest pains periodically. They told me to take aspirin for it, but that hasn’t helped. Not that it’s ever been this bad before. This is pain in another league.

“I’m fine,” I say.

Which is what I’ve been telling everybody, including Gwen, so they would let me travel.

Something shifts on Tsuyoshi’s face, as if he understands me now. “I know of a temple,” he says, “where they can help you.”

I frown. I don’t know what he means.

Tsuyoshi takes off his glasses and polishes them meticulously on his shirt. “Human doctors may not know how to treat people like you.” Which I guess is a polite way of saying, treat Others. “We will need to talk to the myobu.”

Myobu, temple foxes. Servants of the rice god Inari. Also known as celestial kitsune, considered by humans to be far more sophisticated and trustworthy than the petty, devilish nogitsune—that is, field foxes like my mother. And me, of course. Somehow, I don’t think they’re going to bestow any blessings on me.

“My mother was a nogitsune,” I say flatly.

Tsuyoshi’s face creases into a frown. “That is why you must speak to the myobu.”

Why? So they can try to sell me some overpriced mumbo jumbo?

I bite the inside of my cheek. I don’t want to be disrespectful to Tsuyoshi. “All right. I will think about it. Thank you.”

He is silent for a very long time. “Sleep.”

I nod, return to my bedroom, and lie down.

His face blank, Tsuyoshi shuts the door behind me. His shadow lingers for a moment. When I’m sure he’s gone, I sneak over to Gwen’s bedroom. The blinds on the window by her bed are open, the light of Tokyo casting an amber glow on her face. One arm lies flung above her head, and her sheets twist around her legs.

“Gwen?” I whisper.

She remains peaceful, sleeping. I could leave her this way. I should leave her this way. But I need to tell her about this, or I’ll be tempted to chicken out later.

I shut the door, then lie on the bed beside her. She mumbles something unintelligible and scoots back against me, almost shoving me onto the floor.

“Hey,” I murmur in her ear.

She blinks herself awake, and frowns. “Don’t you have a bed of your own?”

“It’s not as nice as yours.”

“Scandalous. Your grandparents are going to kill you if they find out.”

I try to smile. “Gwen, I need to tell you something.”

Her frown deepens and she sits up. “What? What’s going on?”

“Remember how I was dreaming on the flight here?”

“Yeah. You never really told me what that was about, though.”

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. “The night my kitsune mother left me in the snow. In Hokkaido. More of a memory, really. Tonight I dreamed about her again, but it didn’t make any sense. We were in Hokkaido, but we were both human—in reality, we were pretty much always foxes in the winter, since it was so cold.”

Gwen arches an eyebrow. “So you’ve been dreaming about her? That’s not that weird.”

“It gets weirder, trust me. My kitsune mother was wearing a kimono, one as white as the snow, and she was calling for me to come with her. But there was a man in a suit. He pulled out a gun and shot her. Blood soaked the snow…”

“Did you recognize the man?”

“I couldn’t—he had no face.”

“No face?” Gwen sucks in her breath. “Like what you saw in the car?”

“Yes. I think so? I don’t know what else it could be.”

She stares at me, her eyes glittering. “Tavian. Do you know what the faceless man is?”

I shake my head.

“I did some research.” She flicks on the light, rummages in her bag, and lugs out a beat-up old textbook.

“So much for packing light,” I say.

Her cheeks redden. “Part of my Paranormal Studies,” she says. “Thought I might as well study Japanese Others while I was, you know, in Japan.”

“Wow.” I arch my eyebrows. “I’m impressed by your insanity.”

She brushes my comment away. “If I’m majoring in this, I’d better know my shit.”

“Gwen, you’re half-pooka. One of the rarest Others in America. An extreme minority. Plus, you’re smart. Every college in existence is going to be fighting to admit you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Your flattery will get you nothing.”

“Not even a kiss?” I say, and I prove my point.

Gwen makes an impatient noise, but she kisses me back. “Anyway.” She scoots sideways on the bed, so I can’t keep distracting her, and flips open her book. “I read up on yōkai.” Spirit, demon, monster. One of my names, at the orphanage. “And,” she says, “I found an entry on noppera-bō. Faceless ghosts.”

Faceless ghosts. Ice water trickles through my blood.

“Apparently,” Gwen says, “the noppera-bō can mimic any human face, which it does before it wipes its features away. The book says they’re harmless spirits fond of frightening humans.”

“Harmless.” I furrow my brow. “He shot my mother.”

“Well, your biological mother isn’t human.”

I rake my fingers through my hair. “Then why, if I saw a noppera-bō, didn’t it have a face? Why was it already faceless?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does the book say anything else?” I say. “Like where it comes from?”

Gwen shakes her head. “There isn’t anything in here about them entering dreams, either.” She tilts her head sideways and fiddles with one of her curls. “Do you think your kitsune mother was actually entering your dreams? I mean, I remember when you entered my mind, back when—you know.” She presses her lips together.

And I do know. I’m never going to forget. It’s how I got the scar above my heart, from the hunting rifle of the serial killer who missed his mark. In the hospital, I lay drifting in a white bed, my mind numbed by drugs, and I saw Gwen when I closed my eyes. When I slipped into her sleep, I could feel her pain—something was horribly wrong.

Gwen. You have to wake up.

Are you okay?

Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself.

“Tavian?” Gwen clutches my hand. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head to fling the memory away. “Yeah.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No worries.”

She squeezes my hand, then lets go. “When it happened,” she says, “I could only hear your voice. Is that how it’s supposed to work? Is that what your mother did?”

“She’s full kitsune,” I say. “Much more powerful than me.”

“If she’s so powerful, then why hasn’t she entered your dreams before? She’s had more than a decade to do it.” Gwen twists her mouth. “Or she could have picked up a phone.”

“We’re in Japan now.”

“So she waited for you to come to her? Why didn’t she come to America?”

My jaw tightens and I climb to my feet. “I don’t know why she left me. I don’t know why she wants me to come with her now.”

“Do you trust her?”

“Why are you so pissed about this?” I realize I’m talking way too loud, so I lower my voice to a whisper. “If your pooka father visited you, wouldn’t you be excited?”

She scoffs. “I’m not pissed.”

“Really? Because you definitely don’t seem happy about it.”

“Tavian.” Gwen wraps her arms around my waist and leans against me. “It’s just… something seems off. Be careful. Okay?”

“Of course.”

My heart twinges, a shadow of the pain I felt before, but enough to make my stomach squirm. I breathe in deeply through my nose. Should I tell Gwen? I’ve been letting her believe I haven’t been hurting anymore.

“I am kind of jealous,” she mutters.

“Oh?”

“I have a feeling my pooka dad is too busy gallivanting around Wales to actually discover he has a daughter.” Then Gwen laughs. “Not that I could afford a ticket to Wales to find out.”

“Hey,” I say. “Since you came with me to Japan, I’ll come with you to Wales. As soon as we’re rich and famous.”

“Tavian, you’re so sweet.” She yawns. “Now go back to bed. You look like a zombie.”

I wonder if I’m pale, if my circulation is poor somehow. “Right.”

She stretches her arms over her head, baring the skin of her belly, then yanks her T-shirt back down and groans. “Bollocks. I have got to shapeshift. Soon. Before I go crazy. It’s been this constant craving ever since the flight here, but that really wasn’t the time or the place.”

I arch my eyebrows. “You shapeshifted before we left. Spent a good three hours running around in the forest as a horse. That wasn’t enough?”

“Apparently not,” she says dryly. “Wish I could tell my pooka half to shut up, but no such luck. Maybe we could shapeshift tomorrow?”

“In the city?”

She smirks. “We can get creative.”

“Sounds like a date.”

We kiss goodnight, a genuine kiss on the lips this time. As I pad toward the door, Gwen mumbles something, her face smushed against her pillow.

“What was that?” I say.

“Tomorrow,” she says, “we explore Tokyo.”

“Definitely.”

If only so I can find answers to my dreams.