by Zoe Marriott
“Maybe you’re right,” I whispered. “But this thing didn’t come with a handy how-to guide, and based on my track record so far, whatever I try is only going to make things ten times worse.” My breath hitched in my chest and I realized with horror that I was on the verge of tears. Again. Jack would disown me if I kept this up.
“You need instruction.”
I risked a glance up, hoping my eyes hadn’t already gone red and watery. The king was still staring at me, unblinking.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“There are locations in the human world where the energies of other realms strain against the veil more strongly for some reason, where the veil itself seems thinner and more permeable. In those places even normal humans, who lack the ability to see yokai and spirits or to sense magic, as you can, feel the difference. Humans call them fairy mounds, cursed woods … haunted houses, if any mortal was so unwise as to attempt to build there. We call such a place a nexus. There is a very powerful nexus in London. We believe that several realms – not only the mortal and spirit realm – are present in that place. This nexus is occupied by someone who calls himself a man. He has the appearance of a man, dresses and lives and eats just as a man might, so that he draws no attention to himself. But he is not a man.”
“Then what is he?”
“Old. Very old. The nature of this being is hard to ascertain. It is cloaked by the overwhelming energy of the nexus, which may be why he chooses to live there. But the savour of his power is something close to that of your sword – close to the very eldest of my kind that I have met. I think he is powerful. And, to live as he does, drawing so little attention, wise too. He has dwelled in that place since long before I brought my people across the sea from our homeland. He never leaves.”
“You think he might know how to control the sword’s power? How to use it to banish the Foul Women?” I said.
She nodded.
“But why would he want to help us, even if he could? If he’s that powerful, he probably isn’t scared of the Shikome or their taint.”
“He may refuse to venture outside of his den, but we have observed him nonetheless. He is known to have a fond feeling for young ones. When homeless children shelter from the weather in the doorway of his home, they always leave healthy and healed, and often experience sudden, inexplicable turns of good fortune. Once, he was visited – purely by chance – by a family which included a small child who had been undergoing treatment for a human malaise called leukaemia. The child was very ill. Within two days of that visit, she had miraculously recovered. She lives to this day.”
“So you think he’s … good?”
“It is a mistake to label any being of power in such a way. Let us say that he may be willing to take an interest in your plea and is unlikely to attempt to harm you,” she said wryly. “That is as definite as I care to be. But if you want his aid, you must go to him.”
“To this nexus place?”
“It is situated beneath an occult bookshop called The Avalon. The being runs this business and lives in an apartment above it. The shop is on Museum Street.”
I’d never heard of the shop, but the address was unexpected. “Museum Street? That’s maybe a mile from my house, if that.”
“An intriguing coincidence.” The king paused. “If that is what it is.”
“It has to be, doesn’t it?” I said, not really protesting but struggling to make sense of it. “My family only came to Britain from Japan a few decades ago. You said the – being – had been here for centuries before that.”
The king flicked more crumbs into the water. Instantly the entwined dragons wrenched apart and turned on each other, snarling. The water of the pool thrashed and turned silver with bubbles as the monsters fought. “But your family carried the sword with them when they came,” she said softly. “And a meitou as powerful as yours can often have a strange way of … influencing those who wield it. Your sword may have its own agenda. That is a fact, Mio-dono, that you would do well to bear in mind.”
I took in a slow, steadying breath and nodded to show that I had heard and understood. “There’s … there’s one more thing, Your Majesty. It’s about Rachel. Jack’s sister. She is the one your Kitsune helped us rescue from Battersea. While the Nekomata had her, it – it fed from her. And now she’s—”
“Changing,” the king finished. Her profile was mournful as she stared at the water. “You are beset by sorrows, are you not?”
I swallowed past the tightness that clutched at my bruised throat. “You already knew something was wrong with her, didn’t you? That’s what you meant when you warned me to keep my eye on her.”
“Few humans survive a Nekomata’s bite, sword-bearer. Very few. The ones that do … sometimes live long and happy lives. Lives where they might, perhaps, be known for their unusual speed or strength, or even simply for their excellent night vision. Sometimes. But sometimes they are not so lucky. Sometimes they succumb to the venom that flows in their veins. They mutate. They lose control. And then…”
“They die?” I whispered.
She gave me a sharp, sidelong look. “People like you must kill them.”
CHAPTER 10
AND THEN THERE WERE TWO
The thick curtain of flowers fell shut behind me, hiding the king and the pool cavern from view. Hikaru and Shinobu were waiting where I’d left them. Rachel had paced off a little way to the side, but came hastily back as I emerged. Shinobu moved towards me, his fingers reaching out to run lightly down my arm. As I met his eyes his brows creased, and he stepped into me, slipping his arm around my shoulder as if he thought I needed support. Maybe I did. I let myself lean against him, taking comfort from his steady presence.
“What?” Hikaru said uneasily. “Hey, it’s rude to have silent conversations, you know.”
A similar thought was clearly going through Rachel’s mind. She lifted her eyebrows at me expectantly. I rubbed my free hand over my eyes, blocking out her face. It was a struggle to get my thoughts in order. The first thing that popped into my head – no, not the first thing, but the first thing I could safely say – was “You could have warned me the king was a woman.”
Hikaru blinked at me. “Huh? Why?”
Now it was my turn to blink.
“Who cares? Focus!” Rachel said. “What did she say about Jack?”
How much am I allowed to say? How much can I bear to say?
“Short answer,” I said finally. “They’re in a tough situation and they can’t really help us right now.”
“What?” Rachel’s voice escaped as a squeak. She stared at me in disappointment and disbelief.
Hikaru groaned. “Damn. I thought for sure when we went to all that trouble to get you here that Her Majesty had something up her sleeve. I’m sorry.”
I fought off the urge to bend down and stroke him comfortingly. He wasn’t a family pet. Anyway, it would have been more for my comfort than for his. Oh God, how could I explain everything to Rachel? How could I even look her in the eye when I knew that all I could do for her was wait and see? It just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.
“Mio, what are we going to do? Tell us everything the king said. There must be something!” Rachel demanded impatiently.
“I – um, apparently, there’s someone else who might be able to help us, or at least give us more information,” I said, and gave them a bare bones explanation, finishing with, “Any humans who are infected should get better, if we can just banish the Shikome before…” Before they all die. Somehow that didn’t exactly seem like good news.
I was startled to see Shinobu’s face light with dawning excitement. The drifting grey clouds in his dark eyes seemed almost silver in the strange light of the flower tunnel. “If Her Majesty is right, this could be an extraordinary opportunity for us,” he said. “This being could answer so many questions. He may even be able to tell us—” He broke off abruptly, but his arms tightened around me, almost painfully. What had broken through Shinobu’s calm li
ke this?
Knowledge, I realized. This might be our chance to find out how Shinobu’s spirit had been bound to the blade – and why – and whether I was right about the Harbinger’s involvement. Shinobu could finally learn why this terrible thing had happened to him. Make sense of it all.
A terrifying feeling swamped me. A feeling I’d experienced once before, when Jack and Shinobu and I stood in Battersea Power Station in the pitch-black, waiting for the Nekomata to find us. It’s all changing. Everything’s changing. I can feel it.
For a dizzying instant I was the epicentre of a massive quake, but the thing that shifted wasn’t the earth under my feet. It was reality itself. Vast, unseen powers whirled around me, ripping the universe apart and reordering it. When the sensation faded, as abruptly as it had come, I was sure that the world had changed in some way, great or small.
I just didn’t know how.
“So there might be a way to help Jack after all? Help all of us?” Hikaru was asking.
I tried to arrange my expression into something blank, something normal. Or at least not bat-shit crazy, which was how I felt. “Yeah,” I managed to say. “We’ve got a chance, I think.”
“Then we should go,” Shinobu said decisively. “You can tell us more when we get back to the house.”
Rachel nodded in agreement, and Hikaru got up. “I’ll take you to the rupture site.”
The singing behind the flowers was louder and more mournful now; the bells sounded like something from a funeral dirge, and underneath there was a sound like quiet weeping. It sent shivers down my spine.
“What is it with the sound effects?” I asked Hikaru irritably, unable to ignore it any longer.
Hikaru looked back over his shoulder. “What sound effects?”
Shinobu raised his eyebrows at me. He was just as clueless as the Kitsune. Rachel kept walking, too absorbed in her own thoughts to respond.
“Right,” I mumbled. “Never mind.”
Hikaru came to a halt in a part of the tunnel that looked the same as all the rest to me, and sat down in the grass.
I looked around. “Is this it?”
Hikaru nodded, his front paws kneading uneasily at the grass. “Look, before you go, I just… Is she…? How did it happen? To Jack?”
Rachel stiffened. I sighed. My head was aching and full of uncertainties and questions with no answers. There were so many complicated feelings that needed to be dodged around here – including mine, even. The last thing I wanted was to talk about that awful moment in the garden when Jack had turned from my anchor in the storm to the weight on my back. I didn’t even want to think about it.
But we owed Hikaru. All of us. He had listened to Jack when she asked for his help, and gone out on a limb to get us an audience with the king. He’d helped us navigate the spirit realm and the political intricacies of the Kitsune Court. He’d stuck up for us against his own family and risked the king’s anger – and much as the king clearly liked his youngest descendant, he did not play favourites. Without Hikaru, we would never have got Rachel back, and the Nekomata would still be rampaging through London.
Rachel turned away as I began, “It was this morning – yesterday morning now, I suppose. She’d gone out into the back garden of our house—”
“Alone?” Hikaru interrupted, tail lashing. “She knew it wasn’t safe out there! I told you both that our protections only covered the house.”
“We didn’t know about the Shikome then,” I said, the familiar stab of guilt making my tone sharper than I’d intended. “The Nekomata was dead and I’d told Jack that I thought something was wrong with you guys. She wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Hikaru went very still. I waited to see if he was going to say anything, but he just stared at me, his eyes unnervingly like his grandmother’s.
I went on, “I don’t think she got the chance to call you. We – we heard her yell and went running out. By the time we got to her she was already down and it was—”
“Too late,” Hikaru finished in a whisper.
Rachel whirled around like a tiny, curly-haired hurricane and stabbed her finger through the air towards Hikaru. “Do not say that. Do not say too late. Jack would kick your ass for that attitude. She’s alive, she’s fighting, and she’s got us, all of us, looking out for her. It isn’t too late for anything.”
I took a deep breath, then nodded firmly in support. “Damn right.”
Rachel gave me a grateful look. There was no sign of the Nekomata on her face, just protective big-sister fury. I patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Sorry,” Hikaru said, a little shaken. “Really. I didn’t – I really didn’t mean it like that.”
“Just don’t go giving up on her that easily, all right?” I said.
He flashed me a tiny, foxy grin. “I never give up.”
Something boomed through the tunnel, making us all jump. I leapt away from Rachel and half-drew the katana before I realized what I was doing and hastily shoved it back in its saya.
“Hikaru, do not delay our allies any longer,” the king’s voice said sternly, echoing among the flowers. Petals drifted down onto the grass around us. “They have much to accomplish, and much of what they must do is vital for Kitsune as well as mortal.”
Hikaru looked chastened. “Sorry, Grandmother.”
“You are forgiven,” the king boomed, from wherever she was. Magical intercom? “Sword-bearer, before you leave – I have been remiss. Despite our present situation, it is still our intention to fulfil our promise to you. It grieves me to turn you away with so little aid today. If you are able to free London of this taint which has fallen upon it, the Kingdom of the Kitsune will owe you another debt. One which can never be repaid. Banish the Shikome, and you will become an adopted daughter of the foxes. Banish the Shikome, and the London Kitsune will honour you and your descendants always. Banish the Shikome, sword-bearer.”
“I’m going to try,” I said. I’ll die trying if I have to.
A sizzling ring of blue-white lightning sprang up on the grass a step away from me and Shinobu. Hikaru danced back quickly, just avoiding getting his paws scorched. The long tendrils of lightning twined and pulsed, growing until the ring was big enough for a person to pass through. The grass within the lightning ring disappeared, leaving a dark hole. We stepped forward to stand on the edge.
“Geronimo?” Shinobu murmured.
I nodded. Rachel stepped off the edge and disappeared. Shinobu and I jumped into the darkness together.
“Good luck!” Hikaru shouted after us. “And remember – don’t die!”
My first instinct on walking through the kitchen door was to keep going straight out the front one, and then on until we found this mysterious bookshop and its owner. But common sense – and a strong need to pee – got in the way. A glance at the clock over the sink in the kitchen showed that it wasn’t eight o’clock in the morning yet. Would the being open his doors this early? Would he even be awake?
I ran to the loo and tidied myself up a bit, then found the katana’s harness in the living room where I’d left it last night. I fitted the sword into place and buckled up. When I came back, Shinobu was waiting for me in the kitchen, alone. I turned to him questioningly. My face must have given away my anxiety.
“Rachel is using the bathroom upstairs,” he assured me quickly, stepping forward to take me in his arms. “She seemed normal. Calm.”
I let out a long sigh, leaning my head against him and feeling myself relax, just a tiny bit. “Good. That’s … good.”
“What did the king tell you?” Shinobu asked very quietly. I knew he wasn’t asking for more details about the bookshop owner this time.
“Nothing useful,” I admitted. “She – she basically said we had to wait and see. God. If I—”
I heard light footsteps on the stairs and shut my mouth hurriedly as Shinobu and I broke apart. Rachel popped in a second later with a casual greeting. She’d washed her face, changed her T-shirt, and pulled
her hair back into a neat French plait. She looked tidy, healthy, and totally herself. There was no reason for the sight of her to send that quick chill down my spine.
I don’t know what I’m becoming… she had said.
I opened my mouth with no idea what I was going to say, but before I could speak, a tinny, annoying tune suddenly filled the air. “Wind Beneath My Wings”? It took me a blink to realize that it was my phone. At some point Jack must have reprogrammed my ringtone again. I fumbled it out of my pocket. Euw, don’t let it be my dad…
“Hello?”
“Hey, She-Ra.” The voice was low and bruised-sounding, but there was no mistaking my best friend.
“Jack!” Shinobu and Rachel both hurried to my side as I went on. “How are you doing? Are you OK?”
There was a muffled cough. “Great. Perfect. Place is like…” She stopped, sounding as if she was trying to catch her breath. “You know, a spa. What are you up to?”
Rachel prodded my arm. “Let me talk to her.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Sorry, Jack, just Rachel being bossy. We just got back from the spirit realm. We talked to the king.”
“Sounds like … fun,” she said raspily. “How did that work out? No – wait – turn video call on?”
I obeyed, beckoning Rachel and Shinobu to stand behind me so that when I turned the phone sideways and held it up, Jack could see all of us.
My phone showed Jack lying back in her hospital bed, hair standing up in uncombed tufts around her face. Her skin had a funny, chalky quality. It made her look almost grey, especially next to the livid purple rash on her face. There were deep shadows around her eyes and under her cheekbones, which stood out painfully sharply. It had been less than a day since I’d seen her last – how was it possible that she had lost so much weight?
“Hi, guys. How’s it going?”
I bit my lip, trying to get my reaction to Jack’s appearance under control.
