Ren held up a hand. “Wait, wait, please! Just give me a minute.”
Kara smiled and grabbed his hand, now locked between the two guys. “Sorry.”
Then they were off and running, the two of them dragging Ren along despite his wheezing protests. In moments they came in sight of Miss Aritomo’s house. Veering to the right, they hid as deeply in the shadows of the buildings as they could manage.
“Sakura!” Kara called in a rough whisper.
“Why are you being quiet?” Hachiro asked, frowning. “Aritomo-sensei is not home.”
Ren hit his arm. “Think. Just because Aritomo-sensei isn’t here, that doesn’t mean the Hannya is also gone.”
Kara shivered, remembering all too clearly the sight of the evil spirit transforming and then vanishing inside Miss Aritomo’s prone body.
When she called out a second time, Sakura emerged from beside the building on their right, a darkened laundry, and beckoned them to her. Kara, Ren, and Hachiro hurried over, and Kara felt vulnerable and exposed under the glow of yet another streetlamp. She exhaled as they stepped into a darkened alley beside the laundry, where Sakura had apparently been hiding.
“Did you get everything?” Sakura asked.
“We think so,” Ren told her, patting the box in his hands. “It’s just so strange to think that any of this will make a difference. We should have guns or knives or something.”
Hachiro nodded. “A baseball bat.”
Kara looked at him.
“What? It worked before.”
“The baseball bat helped, but it wasn’t what got rid of the ketsuki, or kept Kyuketsuki from coming into the world. The rules of things like this are very peculiar, and sometimes don’t make any sense, but the secrets are all in the stories themselves. If the monks destroyed the Hannya with the sound of bells, and Aritomo-sensei purposely left them out of the play… Look, maybe this will work and maybe it won’t, but if it doesn’t, I don’t have another plan, and a baseball bat isn’t going to help.”
Ren cocked his head, looking across the street at the darkened house. “It might.”
The sound of an approaching car made them step deeper into the alley and they fell silent as they turned to watch it pass. But the car did not drive past. The engine rumbled and the vehicle slowed, and a moment later the headlights turned left, casting an ugly yellow light onto Miss Aritomo’s house as the car pulled into the drive. A moment later, the headlights went dark and the engine silent, but not before Kara saw the open trunk, and the bicycle jutting out of it.
“Oh, no,” Ren said.
“Kara, it’s your father,” Hachiro whispered.
She barely heard them. Staring, wondering how the teacher had persuaded him to drive her home, and if it had been Miss Aritomo or the Hannya doing the talking-how did that work, having a demon riding inside your mind?-Kara started out of the alley.
Sakura grabbed her shoulder. “Wait.”
Kara shook her off and took one more step before Ren lent a hand, he and Sakura preventing Kara from going any farther. Hachiro stepped in front of her, blocking Kara’s view of the house. Her pulse raced, gaze darting around. Her skin prickled with frenzied thoughts and fears, and she looked up into Hachiro’s eyes.
Car doors slammed. Her father would be taking Miss Aritomo’s bike out of the trunk now.
“Why would she bring him back here?” Kara demanded. “I thought… I don’t know if Aritomo-sensei knows the Hannya’s inside her, and my dad’s got nothing to do with the play, so I hoped he would be safe. But if she’s bringing him here, I have to stop him from going inside.”
“No,” Hachiro said firmly. “We have to stick to the plan. Just a couple of minutes and we’ll go in. He’ll be all right.”
At the sound of Miss Aritomo’s front door closing, anger flashed through Kara. “You don’t know that.”
She pulled away from her friends, stepped past Hachiro, and stared at the house. A light had come on downstairs.
And then, from higher up-from the attic, it seemed to Kara-there came a piercing scream that rose and arced and then died out, leaving horrible silence behind.
“Mai,” Sakura whispered.
Kara spun, grabbed the box from Ren’s hands, and tore it open. She looked up at her friends, who were staring at her.
“Hurry!”
14
Kara and Hachiro stood just outside Miss Aritomo’s house. She cocked her head, trying to get a glimpse of her father through a window, but despite the inside light, nothing seemed to be moving within. The sickle moon cast a dim yellow gloom over the buildings and the street. Kara glanced at Hachiro, swallowed hard, and nodded.
“That should be long enough,” she whispered.
Sakura and Ren had gone around the back of the house, following Mai’s path. However she had gotten in, they would as well. Which only left the front door.
“Ready?” Hachiro asked softly.
Kara nodded, and he reached into the cloth sack that he had taken from the art room and withdrew one of the Noh masks that Miho had made, handing it to her. Kara stared at it. The visage seemed almost genderless, a white-haired, grimly pale expression permanently fixed upon it. A villager or a monk, she thought. As she watched, Hachiro pulled a second mask from the bag, this one with a thin tangle of beard marking it as male. Surely it must be one of the monks.
Hachiro donned his mask, fitting the string behind his head. Kara took a deep breath and did the same. Ren and Sakura had taken their masks with them. There were two others in the bag-the one they’d brought for Mai to wear and another that Kara feared might have been a mistake to bring along. That fear gnawed at her, but they would know soon enough.
Kara looked at Hachiro, hating the way the mask obscured his features, but his eyes were still there, soft and kind. She nodded and pointed at the door.
“Let’s go.”
Hachiro took a deep breath. He had the sack grasped in one fist and in the other he clutched a small iron bell. Kara reached into her pocket and pulled out her own bell, two fingers inside it to keep it silent until the right moment.
This is insane, she thought. They didn’t really know if any of this would work. It was all pure conjecture. But in her time in Japan, reading folklore and Noh plays-and from their brush with Kyuketsuki-she had learned that somehow, over time, the stories themselves seemed to have rejuvenated some spirits. The supernatural beings that survived in Japan were no longer worshiped, and so drew their remaining vitality from the stories and plays about them. The stories had reshaped them, in some way.
And if the stories could shape them, then wearing the masks of the monks who destroyed the Hannya in Dojoji would give them a certain power over the creature. It would almost expect them to defeat it, and that would give them an advantage.
Or so Kara now believed.
In moments, she would discover if there was any truth to that theory.
The bells, though, were different. There were so many instances in Japanese legend of the sound of bells warding off or weakening evil, even destroying it. The masks might give them an advantage, but the bells could actually be a weapon. If they were lucky. If they were right.
Hachiro stepped up to the house and slammed his foot against the door, just beside the knob. Grimacing, he launched another powerful kick, striking the same spot. In quick succession, he struck the door twice more, and the
