But where did that leave Daisuke?
In his agony, frightened at how hard it was to breathe, he began to cry, wondering how long it would be before his parents became worried and came to look for him. He imagined his mother in the kitchen, or sitting at the table, waiting, and the tears flowed more freely. He sobbed once, and a fresh wave of pain enveloped him, nearly forcing him again into unconsciousness.
And then he heard it-a rustle against the pavement, a scrape and hiss.
Daisuke froze. “Hello?” he managed, although even that was difficult. Maybe the person had not run away after all. Maybe they had called, and help was on the way. “Are you there?”
No reply. He tried to turn, but it hurt too much.
“Hello?” he tried again.
He heard another rustle, and a low shush, as if someone stood just behind him, breathing, watching. His pain and hope began to be replaced by fear.
Then a new sound reached him, a soft hiss, that started a few feet behind him, but swiftly came nearer, until it had become an almost intimate whisper, inches from his ear.
Kara sat at her computer, scanning through some of the photos she had taken in and around Miyazu City over the past few months. She loved taking pictures, and since Sakura often used photographic reference to inspire her art for their manga, Kara had visited some of the prettier sites in the area with her camera. Ancient prayer shrines and mountain villages always gave her a quiet sense of peace and made her feel the weight of history.
Often, her friends would come along on these jaunts. Sometimes Miho and Sakura would join her, and on others, Hachiro had been her companion. The term break had consisted mostly of exploring the area with them at her side. When classes were in session, she spent so much time at school that it had been wonderful to discover beautiful, out-of-the-way spots she would otherwise never have encountered.
She came upon a cute photo of Hachiro. They’d climbed to the top of Takigami Mountain to visit the observatory. Afterward, Hachiro had climbed onto a large, jagged rock and Kara had knelt on the ground. When he’d thrust out his arms as if they were wings, she had snapped the picture, and with the blue sky and white clouds behind him, Hachiro appeared to be flying. No Photoshop, no tweaking.
The picture made her smile.
On a whim, inspired by a burst of affection, she clicked to make the photo her computer’s desktop background. As she sat back to admire the result, a wave of fatigue swept over her, and she yawned, stretching in her chair. When Miho had first asked her and Sakura to help with the Noh club’s endeavor, the idea had intrigued her, but it certainly made her days seem longer. The clock on her computer screen told her that ten thirty had come and gone.
She had eaten dinner quickly and then hit the books, finishing her homework about forty-five minutes ago. Normally she read a little before bed, or played her guitar for a while, but tonight she had wanted to catch up on e-mail, check in with a few friends from home, and upload new pictures to her Facebook page. She had lost herself in the photos, and now all she wanted was to go to sleep. Facebook would have to wait until tomorrow night, or even the weekend.
With another glance at the photo of “flying” Hachiro, she got up from her chair. The room-like the house-was small, but somehow she had learned to keep it fairly neat. She cleared her books off her bed and made an orderly stack of them on the bureau. With a sigh, she glanced at her guitar on its stand in the corner, tempted to play just a little, but her bed called to her as well, and she found her pillow far more tempting than the strings of her guitar. Shaking the urge to play from her fingers, she went out into the hall.
The door to her father’s room stood open, so she peeked in to find him stretched out on his bed in New England Patriots pajama pants and a plain white T-shirt. He’d propped his head on pillows and a book rested on his chest, barely held open by faltering hands. His eyes were closed, though he did not seem entirely asleep. Rob Harper had a habit of drifting off while reading, and then muttering offhandedly the next morning about having lost his place in the book.
Kara stepped quietly into the room and deftly extracted the book from his hands, freezing a moment to make sure she hadn’t disturbed him. When her father’s only reply was a soft exhalation that made his lower lip tremble, she gave a quiet chuckle, marked the page in his book, and set it down on the nightstand.
Stepping back, she regarded her father a moment. In those pajama pants, he looked entirely out of place in the room, with its traditional Japanese decoration and the tatami mats on the floor. She felt a strong kinship with him then that had nothing to do with being his daughter. No matter how well they spoke the language, or learned the customs, they would always be outsiders here. But the flip side of that coin was that, whenever they wished, they would always have a home to go to. It really was the best of both worlds.
Kara shut off his light and went down the short hall to the bathroom. With the door closed, she brushed her teeth, but even over the sound of the running water, she heard the hard knock upon their front door. A deep frown creased her forehead. Whoever might be coming to their door at a quarter to eleven probably didn’t care very much about courtesy, but they were going to wake her father. Not that she could do much about it with her mouth full of toothpaste foam.
She finished quickly, rinsed out her mouth, and wiped a trace of toothpaste from her lips with a facecloth. Washing her face would have to wait. Kara pulled open the bathroom door and hurried into the living room to find her very sleepy-looking father talking to an anxious Miss Aritomo. The art teacher appeared distraught, and both of them glanced up as Kara entered.
“Dad?” she ventured, a knot of dread in her gut. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Yuuka… I mean, Aritomo-sensei…,” he began.
“I had some upsetting news,” the woman said, picking up where her father faltered. “I went out for a walk, thinking it might ease my mind, and when I found myself passing your house, I realized that your father would want to know, and that it would be nice to have someone to talk to.”
Despite her reservations about the burgeoning relationship between her father and her art teacher, Kara truly liked Miss Aritomo. Seeing her so obviously troubled, it only reminded Kara how kind the woman had been to her from the very first time they met, and she felt badly about the distance she had begun to put between them.
“Are you all right?” Kara asked, going to her, even as her father closed the front door. “What news?”
The two adults exchanged glances, a silent communication, both hesitating to tell her what had transpired. Hideous thoughts filled her head as she thought of the monstrous ketsuki, the demonic thing that had killed several students earlier in the year.
Kara started to shake her head. “Please tell me nobody’s dead,” she said in a tiny voice.
Miss Aritomo blinked at this, then began to shake her head as well. “No, no. It isn’t that. At least, I pray that it isn’t.”
Kara’s father put a hand on her shoulder. “One of Aritomo-sensei’s Noh club students, a boy who lives on the other side of the city, hasn’t come home tonight. His mother called the school. She’s very upset, of course. But it’s much too early to assume anything has happened to him.”
He seemed to be speaking to Miss Aritomo as much as he was to Kara now, comforting them both.
“The boy might have fallen off his bike and been hurt, or he could simply be at a party. Or, worse, perhaps he’s run away. But don’t jump to conclusions. There’s no reason to think horrible thoughts.”
Kara knew her father was probably right, but she had to force herself to smile. No, no reason at all. Unless you’ve been cursed.
4
T here were no bad dreams that night, but Kara slept even worse than she had the night before. Wednesday morning found her tired and frayed, wiping the grit of fitful sleep from her eyes, her head aching just enough to annoy her, but not enough for her to justify staying home from school. Especially not today.
The skies were a wan gray and the air thick with humidity as she walked from her house down the street toward the campus. Off to her left, a narrow, dead-end road led partway down along the bay shore, a place for people to stop and admire Ama-no-Hashidate, or to walk down to the water and take a quick swim or skip stones. Beyond the road’s end, a broad swath of the school grounds touched the shore, and then there were trees in the
