Storm (18 page)

When I woke again to the early Saturday morning light, Diane was already long gone. She had to supervise Drama Club practice, followed by an English club meeting, which meant it was the perfect time to take off for Ise and not have to answer any questions.

The guilt spread through me like heat as I scribbled down a note that I was out shopping with Yuki, that I was going to sleep over until Sunday. I hated lying to Diane when she trusted me so much. There was no reason to lie to her about anything—she listened to me, and she cared. I didn’t have to sneak around—she wanted me to invite Tomo for dinner, and she trusted me even when I wasn’t sure of myself.

I bit my lip as I forced myself to write the note. A Kami war was smoldering beneath the surface of the day-to-day world. If I didn’t go to Ise, if Tomo and I didn’t follow this one lead we had, what would happen to Japan? What was Jun truly capable of? I had to go to protect Diane, to protect everyone.

I grabbed the largest purse I had, a soft pink-and-gold one I’d bought when I really was shopping with Yuki. It had lace and diamond charms dangling down from the strap, the overly frilly style that was popular with a lot of girls here. “You’ll fit right in,” Yuki had said. I glanced into the mirror in the hallway.
Yeah, right.
Maybe I should dye my hair.

I shuffled into some tan flats that matched the beige wool coat Diane had bought me and locked the door, tripping over the tips of my shoes as I ran to Shizuoka Station. Tomo was already there, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a paper bag from the station coffee shop hanging from his arm.

“Ohayo.”
He smiled, and my insides lit. I was going on a trip with Tomo, just the two of us. For a moment, I could almost forget that we were going to save his life and stop Jun. It wasn’t so much that I’d lost focus on what mattered. I just longed for the normal life we could have had. Not that Diane would ever let me go on a trip with a guy in a normal world.

“Morning,” I said, and we headed toward the bullet train platforms. “Are you okay to do this?”

“We need to,” he said. “The Magatama lit a fire in me that won’t stop burning.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye as we turned toward the wall of ticket machines. “The nightmares. Did they...did they get worse for you?”

I shuddered at the memory of the
inugami
. “Mostly they’re clearer. Amaterasu being less cryptic and all that. But...some of it isn’t so pleasant, no.”

“Clearer?” Tomo shook his head and adjusted the backpack on his shoulder.

“Aren’t yours?”

His eyes looked haunted as he hesitated, wondering if he should tell me. “They’re worse. A lot more death, for one thing.”

“Death?”

He pursed his lips, a look of disgust on his face. “I’m not the only one descended from...from him,” he said, lowering his voice as passengers milled around us. “The dreams where I see Taira and Tokugawa—the dreams where I
am
them—they’ve changed. I’m not just running from the shadows anymore. I’m leading their campaigns.”

Campaigns? Oh. My stomach twisted as I thought about what he meant. Taira no Kiyomori and Tokugawa Ieyasu led some serious military actions against the other samurai families, against other Kami. Jun had told me what happened to unwanted Kami back then.

“Tomo?” I said, not wanting to give my question a voice.

I didn’t have to. He looked down at his hands, the coffee shop bag swinging from side to side. “I can’t take much more blood on my hands.”

I shuddered. “Just dreams,” I said, but the words felt hollow on my tongue.

Tomo said nothing, but stepped toward a free ticket machine and punched in our destination. We’d take the bullet train to Nagoya first, then switch trains for a smaller line to Ise City. “Should we stop in Nagoya first, to go to Atsuta Shrine?” I said, but Tomo shook his head.

“The mirror next,” he said. “We’ll get the sword on our way back. It’s the order Amaterasu said over and over in her dream. Anyway, it’s easier that way to get back to Shizuoka if something happens to Jun after we touch all the treasures.”

I thought back to the nightmare I’d had the night before.
Find the mirror, then the sword.
Why? I wondered. I thought about it as we stepped onto the train from the white stone platform. Because the sword will cleave Tsukiyomi from Tomo, I thought. And a sword as powerful as that needs an instruction manual. The truth from the mirror...wouldn’t it give us what we needed to know?

I leaned back into the fluffy seat as the train pulled away from Shizuoka.

Sorry, Diane
, I thought with a guilty pang.

Tomo placed the coffee shop bag on the minitable in front of us. He opened it with a lot of crinkling, pulling out a bottled of ultrasweet iced coffee and a chocolate croissant.

“Thanks,” I said, suddenly aware of how close we sat, of how our legs pressed against each other from knee to thigh.

He nodded, scrunching the bag down flat as a plate for the croissant. “Can’t fight the ink on an empty stomach,” he said. He unscrewed the iced tea as I reached for the flaky pastry.
“Oi,”
he said, and my hand stopped in midair. He narrowed his eyes. “I get half of that, okay? Half.”

I rolled my eyes and stuffed the croissant in my mouth, biting off a little more than half in one go. My mouth full, I asked, “Why didn’t you buy two?”

“You did that on purpose,” he said.

“You bet I did. Don’t buy your girlfriend half a chocolate croissant.”

He grinned, and reached into his coat pocket. Another crinkly bag—another chocolate croissant.

I raised an eyebrow. “Were you testing me?”

He laughed, taking a bite out of the new croissant. “More like teasing you. You passed, by the way.”

God, he was such a jerk. “You failed.”

He just smiled away, taking another bite of his croissant.

The cities passed by as we sped toward Nagoya. I stared at all the houses as they zipped past, each one holding a family I knew nothing about. The trip to Tokyo, and now the trip to Ise, reminded me how little I knew about Japan, how little I’d seen of the rest of the country. Were things the same here as Shizuoka? Were they different?

A flock of ravens perched on the electric wires, looming over us as we rattled past. A dark reminder of Amaterasu’s messenger bird, the Yatagarasu. This was no happy vacation I was on.

Nagoya Station reminded me of Shizuoka—the same chain coffee shops and department stores connected to the station, the same platforms, but with a lot more people. As the train had pulled in, I’d seen the two huge skyscrapers that towered over the station. Office spaces, maybe? I wasn’t sure, but they were giant. I’d hoped to see Nagoya Castle from the train, too, but a look at Tomo’s determined face reminded me how serious this trip was.

We transferred to the Kintetsu Express; like a miniature version of the bullet train, it wrapped around the edge of Ise Bay, flying through stations whose kanji I couldn’t read. I wished I had another croissant to eat; this part of the trip would take a while. I pulled out the book I was in the middle of and started reading. After a while, I noticed Tomo peering over my shoulder.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I just want to know what the Magus does when he finds out that the boy is his enemy’s son.”

I blinked. “How long have you been reading over my shoulder?”

“Look, are you going to turn the page anytime soon?”

I rolled my eyes, but flipped the page. “Shouldn’t you be studying for entrance exams or something?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, his eyes flicking across the page.
“Tsugi.”

“I’m not turning the page again,” I said. “I haven’t even read these pages yet.”

“Why not?” He shook his head, disappointment gleaming in his eyes. “You’re a really slow reader. This is English, and I’m still reading faster.”

I smacked his arm and he laughed, the warmth of it taking the fight out of me. “Are you always a jerk?”

“Pretty much.”

The stations got smaller and smaller as we curved around the bay, the water sparkling with the morning sunlight. Everything was brown and half-dead here, only another month until winter would take hold. The train tracks went from four, to two, to only a single set as we clacked along.

Finally, we pulled into the smallest station I’d ever seen, a single taxi waiting outside for visitors. I peered at it from the train window as we slowly lined up with the platform. “This is it?” I said.

Tomo pursed his lips. “Not quite the place you’d expect to have one of the treasures of Japan, hmm?”

“It’s a bit on the small side.”

Tomo leaned over me to peer out the window. The warmth of his closeness filled me with heat, the smell of him bringing memories of being in his house, cooking miso soup for breakfast. Alone, the two of us, after sleeping the night away on his couch.

We were staying overnight here, too. We didn’t know what might happen as we looked for Amaterasu’s mirror. We weren’t planning to make the four-hour trek back until the morning. I swallowed nervously as he leaned over me, as I thought about where we’d stay tonight. He wouldn’t ask me to do anything with him, would he? I mean, we were here for the mirror, not for a romantic getaway.

But the sunlight sparkled on the bay, and the autumn wind rustled what was left of the leaves on the trees, and whether I wanted to admit it or not, it
was
a romantic trip. We were here alone, just the two of us. Anything could happen. Everything could happen.

My throat felt dry, my wool coat itchy and too hot as we got up from our seats and shuffled toward the platform. Was he thinking about tonight, too? Had he assumed we would go that far? Yuki had insisted things were different in Japan, that there weren’t so many cultural hang-ups about it, but I wasn’t sure. Look what had happened to Shiori. She’d been abandoned at school—worse, relentlessly bullied for getting pregnant. If the consequences were such a big deal, then sex must be, too.

Oh god. I hadn’t even thought to pack cute pajamas. I’d just brought my comfy ones, fuzzy pants and a T-shirt. The shirt was even fraying along the hem.

I was lobster red now, I was sure of it. Tomo could take one look at me and know what I was thinking. I walked a step behind him, hoping he wouldn’t look back.

We slipped our train tickets into the platform gate and climbed down the stairs to where the single taxi waited. A lone bench had been propped against the station wall, I guess in case two people needed a taxi at the same time.

A man on the bench stood up, and stepped toward us, a black news cap pulled tightly over his head.

He stopped in front of us and lifted one hand up as if he was going to push Tomo. I tensed—was he going to mug us? In front of the taxi driver?

Then his other hand reached to pull the cap from his head. His white hair flopped down around his ears.

“Welcome to Ise, Yuuto.” Ishikawa grinned, making a peace sign with his free hand.

Tomo choked on his next breath. I mean, he actually choked. “Sato? What the hell are you doing here?”

Ishikawa grinned. “Keeping an eye on you lovebirds.”

Tomo’s face flushed a deep crimson. “But...how...?”

Ishikawa sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I convinced Greene to bring you here, and then you texted me you were coming, remember? So I just took the earlier train.”

“Why?” was all I could manage. “Why?”

“Speechless, huh? Because I thought you might need help, that’s all. There are only two of you, you know. Jun’s got a whole army of Kami.”

“You’re not a Kami, Sato,” Tomo said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, but at least I’m in on the secret. And that’s one more person on your side.”

“Jun’s army isn’t that impressive, anyway,” I said. “He’s got, what, fifteen kids whose drawings flicker on the page? And Ikeda. I mean, she’s the most dangerous of all of them, and she’s not that tough.”

But Ishikawa shook his head. “See, this is why you two need me. You don’t even know.”

An unspoken fear unfurled in my stomach. “Know what?”

“Jun’s amassing followers who’ve read the secret signs he’s placed in his attacks on the Yakuza,” Ishikawa said. “‘Kami Arise,’ sound familiar? And they’ve arisen.”

Panic fluttered its barbed wings against my ribs. “No.”

“The police think it’s a gang war,” Tomo said. “Some new gang called ‘Kami’ fighting with the Yakuza over turf.”

“You knew about this, too?” I said, exasperated.

He nodded. “Ishikawa told me last night.”

“They’re trying to keep it out of the news to avoid panic,” Ishikawa said. “Lucky for you guys I have connections. Now are we going to walk to the hotel or take that poor guy’s taxi?” The driver stood politely ignoring us, his white-gloved hands crisply at his sides.

“Fine,” Tomo said, and we filed into the taxi, a white lace doily draped over the backseat.

Wait. Was Ishikawa going to stay with us now? So I didn’t have to worry anymore about being alone with Tomo? I sighed, the relief washing over me—or was it total irritation? No wonder I was so conflicted. I was a total mess of emotions.

No one spoke in the car. Everything had to be secret these days, even from our taxi driver. He had silver hair and wrinkles worn into his face. What if he knew about the Kami? No, now I was just being paranoid. I took a deep breath and watched the bay sparkle outside the window.