Ink

destroy the creatures. It contains them somehow, stops them from coming off the page. But they still move around.”

It was too much for me. My head filled with a fog of confusion. It ached to wade through this new, unwanted knowledge. I tried to focus on concrete things I knew were real.

The wagtails chirped and the breeze blew, first the scents of thatched wood and flowers, then the smell of Tomohiro’s hair gel and his skin. The smell of funeral incense clinging to his clothes. The fact that I was technically holding his hand. The heat of his skin where it touched mine.

The warmth rushed up my neck and into my cheeks. I dropped his hand, but I realized how close I was sitting to him, the way his loosened tie flapped in the wind. The little buttons undone at his throat. The soft tan skin of his collarbone.

“Yuu,” I said.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said. “Please.” He reached out for my hand with his. His fingers were softer than I’d thought, slender and gentle as they wrapped around mine.

My voice was barely a whisper. “I am afraid.”

“I know. But I would never hurt you, Katie. I would never let it hurt you.” He pulled me close to him, so that my face pressed against the fragrance of incense caught in his white shirt. The warmth of his neck and chin pressed against my hair, and I could feel his heartbeat pulsing against my shoulder. And the way his strong arms shook as they held me, I knew he was afraid, too. “I’ll fight it.”

I wanted to press myself closer to him, and at the same time I wanted to step away.

“Fight it?”

He leaned back and shook his head. “I’m marked, Katie.

That’s what the nightmares keep telling me, that there’s only suffering ahead. You saw the wagtail attack the other birds, right? There’s something darker than ink that seeps into the sketches. I don’t know if it’s the Kami bloodline or…or something in me. Maybe my true self is evil and it’s fighting its way to the surface.”

“You don’t believe that!” I said, but fear gripped my spine.

“I don’t know why it’s trying to get you. But I won’t let it.”

The power itself was as scary as hell, but the idea that it was something awful, that Tomohiro was something worthy of lurking in the shadows…

And that, whether it was him or something else, it was after me, too…

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

The corners of his mouth lifted, but the smile was brief.

“I hope so,” he said.

He pulled me close again and we stayed like that for a long time, the pages of the sketchbook flipping in the wind.

Chapter 8

It was almost dark by the time I made it home. I considered sending a text to Diane from the bus, but she was out with her coworkers, so she wouldn’t have noticed me missing anyway.

I flicked on the lights in the empty mansion, wishing for once that she was there with her corny welcome. Anything but this silence that flooded the house and left me alone with the fog in my head.

I trudged to the fridge, my feet as heavy as lead. I poured myself a glass of cold oolong tea and took the leftover curry to zap in the microwave. I sat at the kitchen table, the bowl of steaming curry in front of me. I said itadakimasu to nobody at all, and ate.

In my mind I kept seeing the scars on Tomohiro’s wrist, the wagtail snapping backward in midair and dropping to the ground with a cloud of sparkling ink dust.

I shoveled more rice and chicken into my mouth, willing the spices to overpower my thoughts.

It didn’t work.

The drawings moved. They looked at me.

Worse. They saw me.

And Tomohiro said they were after me, that he lost control sometimes when he was around me. But I didn’t have any special powers. Why did they want me? Because I knew about them?

Or because with me they could overtake Tomohiro, make him lose control—and then what?

And what if it was Tomohiro after me, subconsciously or not?

When my keitai chimed, I grabbed for it gratefully.

“Moshi mosh,” I said, holding my forehead up with my hand and twirling my spoon into my rice.

“Katie-chan? You okay?” It was Tanaka. I straightened up like he could see me.

“Tan-kun,” I said. “I’m okay. Just an intense kendo practice.”

“I had a busy day, too,” he said. “I just got out of cram school. We’re going for karaoke. Come on!”

I hated the sound of my own singing, not because it was awful but because it sounded just like Mom’s. I wished she could be here now, to brush my hair and hold me, to tell me everything would be okay.

“I can’t really sing,” I said. I heard some other voices on the end of the phone, the sounds of Tanaka walking the streets of Shizuoka.

“You can’t say that every time!” he said. “You’ve been so busy with the kendo tournament coming up, we’ve hardly seen you. Yuki is coming, too.”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I was close to caving. It was that or being alone with my thoughts.

“Look,” Tanaka said, his voice changing. It sounded like he’d clamped his hand around the phone. “People are going to talk if you spend any more time with Tomo-kun.”

Heat spread through my body; I could almost feel the crisp white shirt against my cheek.

“How did you know?” I stammered, but Tanaka laughed.

“It’s obvious,” he said. “So you need to take a break and come be with your friends before everyone else figures it out.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez, I never pegged you for blackmail.”

He laughed. “I’m not above it. See you in ten.”

I met Tanaka and his cram-school friends halfway to Shizuoka Station, and once Yuki arrived, we went for karaoke in a winding wing of shops attached to the platforms. We ordered a round of melon sodas and cold iced teas, and Tanaka sang first, bursting out off-key but with lots of gusto. I thought Yuki would be shy around Tanaka’s cram-school friends, but when her voice rang out, it was beautiful and clear. We performed a duet together, since I was too embarrassed to sing by myself.

The waiter brought the drinks in, and my heart froze when I saw him.

Ishikawa.

He stood there in his white apron, lowering the tray of drinks slowly onto our table.

“Oi, Tomo-kun’s friend, right?” Tanaka waved. “He’s from our school,” he told his cram-school buddies. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.…”

“Ishikawa-senpai,” Yuki supplied. “From the kendo team.”

Trust her to know everyone at school.

Ishikawa bowed swiftly, avoiding my gaze, and hurried back out the door, clicking our room shut.

The sight of him sent my thoughts racing again, back to the kendo match, the poison words that had soaked into me. What sort of things lurked in Tomohiro’s dark destiny?

Tanaka’s boisterous voice blurred into background noise while my thoughts swelled in my head. I couldn’t block them out.

“Katie?” Yuki said. I couldn’t breathe.

“I just need a sec,” I said and bolted past Tanaka into the hallway. In the bathroom I took out my keitai and dialed. I lifted it to my ear, listening to the tinny ring. It rang once, and I breathed. Again. It was only after a click and the recorded voice that I started to feel embarrassed, not even that I was running to him, but the reason why. Ishikawa hadn’t even said anything, and I was already running to