“What?” Miho asked.
Kara swallowed, her throat dry. “Why do you think it’s after me, too? I didn’t do anything.”
“I thought about that while Miss Aritomo told the story,” Miho said, as they walked across the grassy field. In the dorm parking lot ahead, more students were packing their things into their parents’ cars. “You were there. You saw the cat disturb Akane’s shrine.”
“But I didn’t sacrifice it!” Kara said.
Miho shushed her. “Let’s talk about it inside.”
Now that she’d begun the conversation, it was hard for Kara to hold her tongue. But they were coming up to the dorm where there were students and parents about, and she knew Miho was right. She took a deep breath and forced herself to wait.
“Look who it is,” Miho whispered, nodding toward the parking lot.
A small SUV sat at the edge of the parking lot. A father closed the tailgate while his wife looked on. But Miho had been drawing Kara’s attention to the other two people near the vehicle. Maiko, the sleepless, frayed, brittle girl who was in Mr. Matsui’s class with them, stood near her parents’ SUV, talking quietly with Ume. The two girls’ faces were pictures of worry and regret. Maiko held Ume’s hands, nodding some kind of assurance they could not hear from that distance. Ume nodded, but more slowly, and then the girls hugged.
Maiko’s father snapped at her to get into the car. With a last look at Ume, she obeyed her father. Ume waved and turned away, hurrying back to the front steps of the dormitory. If she’d looked up, she would have seen Miho and Kara coming toward her, but her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.
They entered the dormitory twenty seconds after her, just as Maiko and her parents drove away.
“Do you think the ketsuki knows they’re leaving?” Kara whispered.
Miho looked around the foyer of the dorm to make sure they weren’t overheard. She tucked her hair behind her ears.
“If it does, it’s going to want to hurry to get as many as it can before they’re all gone.”
Kara turned the words over in her mind and found she didn’t like them at all. whatever they were going to do about this, if there was anything at all they really could do about it, had to be tonight. Otherwise there would be more blood, more death-and it might be her own. They had to find a way to stop the ketsuki, so she could finally rest. She badly wanted sleep, but the nightmares had to stop.
On the stairs between the second and third floor, they encountered Ren, who was on his way down.
“Miho, hey!” he said, smiling. “I was just looking for you.”
“Really?” Miho asked, lowering her eyes and seeming almost to shrink into her own shyness, hiding behind her glasses. “Why?”
Despite her tension, Kara smiled. Miho had such a curiosity about and fascination with boys, but talking to a boy she obviously liked made her squirm. Kara hadn’t had the heart to tell her Ren was gay.
Ren shrugged. “Just wanted to say good-bye.”
Miho’s disappointment was plain. “You’re going home, too?”
“My parents are coming this afternoon. It’s all so weird, isn’t it? And a little scary. To be honest with you, I’m kind of glad to be going, at least until they catch whoever killed Chouku.”
Miho seemed to be searching for something to say.
“Hopefully it won’t be long,” Kara said, to fill the silence.
Ren smiled. “I don’t mind missing school. Anyway, I went up to say good-bye to you and Sakura, but nobody was there. I’m glad I got to see you before I left.”
“Me too,” Miho said.
“Are you going to be okay? When are your parents coming?”
“Not for a few days. But I won’t be alone. Sakura will still be here, and Kara too. And we’re going to have some teachers with us, I think, until we’re all gone.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll see you soon,” he said, hurrying past them down the stairs.
Miho watched him go, and then the girls continued up the stairs.
“So Sakura’s still out,” Kara said as they reached the third floor and moved toward Miho’s room.
“She has to come back eventually,” Miho replied. “I hoped we both could talk to her, but I can do it myself. Hopefully she’ll listen.”
Kara shushed her. They were passing by Ume’s room and slowed to a stop. In the otherwise silent dormitory, they could hear Ume’s voice very clearly.
“You don’t understand,” came the slightly frantic voice from the other side of the door. “I’m afraid. I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. I need to come home today. You’ve got to come and get me. I’ll meet you in the city if I have to. I could leave my things here until I… No, please listen…”
Miho tapped Kara on the arm and gestured for them to continue walking. Kara was reluctant to go, but she didn’t want anyone to see her eavesdropping, so she continued down the corridor.
Though it had occurred to her that Sakura might simply not have answered Ren’s knock, Miho’s dorm room was empty. They entered and Miho locked the door behind them and turned on some music. Given how clearly they’d been able to hear Ume, this seemed a very good idea.
“She must have been talking to her parents,” Kara said.
Miho nodded, brow furrowed in contemplation. “Yes. And she seems much more frightened than the other students we’ve seen.”
“You don’t think she knows about the ketsuki?”
“I can’t imagine it. But Ume knows what really happened to Akane. She had to have been there. She knows the connection between the people having the nightmares-”
“Except for me.”
Miho nodded, leaning against her desk. “Yes. Except for you. Anyway, she knows Akane is the link between Jiro and Hana and Chouku, too. She’s afraid she’s going to be killed.”
“She’s a bitch,” Kara said, “but she’s not stupid.”
“Agreed,” Miho said. “All right, back to you. What I was saying outside is that Kyuketsuki… I mean, let’s just not bother talking about whether Kyuketsuki is real, okay? I think we have to believe right now, and if it turns out we’re crazy, at least we’ll be crazy and you and Sakura will be alive.”
“I’m with you,” Kara told her. The room felt awfully cold and she rubbed her hands together, then slid them into her pockets. The light, hooded blue sweater she wore under her jacket was not thick enough to warm her, but right now, it was possible nothing would do the job.
“If the folktales about Kyuketsuki come from something real, let’s think about the story. Maybe Kyuketsuki could be summoned in those days by sacrificing a cat, but she doesn’t just prey on the killer or abuser, she also kills the ones who summoned her. In the story, they share the blame, but maybe that’s part of the price of calling her up. Part of the sacrifice.”
“But I didn’t call her up!” Kara protested.
Even as she said the words, though, she could picture the cat slinking through the photos and flowers that comprised the shrine for Akane.
“You were there,” Miho said. “I guess that was enough.”
Kara saw it all unfold again in her mind, the red and copper fur of the cat emerging from the shadows and the flowers. She went to the window and gazed out.
“The shrine’s the key,” she said. “Think about it. Kyuketsuki gathers up the grief and anger of people who are mourning a murder victim and creates a ketsuki out of it. All of those notes and pictures and flowers, the stuffed animals, what are they except grief? Add Sakura’s grief and her rage… I mean, that’s the spot where Akane died. The shrine drew Kyuketsuki there.”
“Yes. It all makes sense,” Miho said, in a way that made it clear that she wished it didn’t.
“But what about the cat? I mean, I didn’t sacrifice it. The thing just walked across the shrine and dropped dead. Okay, maybe Kyuketsuki has the power to reach through and kill it, but the cat just happened to be nosing around the shrine while someone was standing there?”
“It could be coincidence,” Miho said. “Or maybe not. Most people don’t believe in demons anymore. Not really. Not even in Japan. They don’t even perform this Noh play anymore. Maybe Kyuketsuki has to find other ways to fulfill her purpose. Maybe she influenced the cat, drew it to her so she could create a ketsuki.”
Kara was about to argue, but then she thought of the other cats she’d seen, of the dreams she’d had in
