Year of the Demon

subliminal level. Mariko couldn’t say for sure. It wasn’t her alarm clock—it hadn’t gone off yet—and there was no other noise in her apartment. Mariko only knew that something wasn’t right. And that was before she saw Glorious Victory was missing.

Her sword was always the first thing she saw in the morning, right above her head as soon as she awoke. And now it was gone. An intruder had been in her apartment. He’d been standing right over her, in her bed, asleep. He could have done anything to her. And he’d stolen the most valuable thing she’d ever own.

The sight of the empty sword rack hit her like a hammer in the chest, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Someone had been in her apartment. Her only safe place wasn’t safe anymore. Someone had been in her apartment.

Her pistol was at work, locked in a desk drawer. Her Cheetah stun baton was on the little wall-mounted bookshelf above her kitchen table. Her gaze flew wildly around the room, looking for a weapon. There was nothing. The intruder might still be in her home and she was unarmed—and caught in panties and a T-shirt, no less. She’d never felt more vulnerable.

The best weapon she could find was her alarm clock—battery powered, not heavy enough to really hurt anyone, but it was the best she could do. She gripped it like a cavewoman’s brain-clubbing rock and got a sight line on her kitchen. It was clear. She traded the clock for the Cheetah, then opened a drawer with her free hand and dug around for her biggest kitchen knife. It seemed cheap, flimsy, almost toylike now that she needed to use it for self-defense. But she was as heavily armed as she could make herself, so she checked the last hiding place in her apartment: her bathroom. It was empty.

She went to relock her door, only to find it was already locked. She’d actually hoped she’d forgotten to lock it the night before, because now the truth was clear: she wasn’t safe at all. Not here. Her doors and windows were no protection. Someone had been standing over her in her bed. He could have beaten her with her own stun baton. He could have put that flimsy knife to her throat. Raped her. Killed her. Anything.

Noise erupted behind her. She whirled, her breath frozen, her heart pierced by a million icy needles. She brought her feeble weapons to bear, but only in vain. It was just her alarm clock.

It buzzed irritably on her countertop, louder than it had ever been. In truth it only seemed that way, and Mariko knew it. She was jumpy. The damn thing had taken her by surprise.

She killed it and slumped to the floor. Her back pressed against her front door, and the cold of the floor tiles seeped into her feet and her ass. She felt naked. What now? she thought. Call the cops? You are the cops. Call Mom? Saori? They wouldn’t be any help. But Mariko had to call someone. She didn’t want to deal with this on her own.

That in itself was an alien instinct. Self-reliance was one of her strong suits, maybe her strongest. But this invasion of privacy had shaken her to the core.

Dialing 110 was the right thing to do after a burglary. It was what she would have advised anyone else to do. But Mariko didn’t do it. She grabbed her phone and dialed Han. “Get to my place as quick as you can,” she said. “Bring a fingerprinting kit with you, and don’t touch my door until you dust it.”

•   •   •

“Screw the prints,” Han said, “how are you?”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Mariko said. They both knew she was lying and they both knew why, and Mariko wished Han could just leave it at that. “What did you find on my doorknob?”

“Prints all over it—most of them yours, probably, but we know your guy definitely didn’t wipe it clean. No scarring around the keyhole, so I don’t think he used a bump key. No scuffs on the frame near the jamb either, so I don’t think he worked the bolt. But I’ve got this funny suspicion that you knew all of that already. What’s going on here?”

“Weird stuff. Ninja stuff.” Mariko took the fingerprinting kit from him and started dusting her apartment, starting with the sword rack in the bedroom. “I checked with the night watchman; only four people came in or out all night, and they all live here. The security cameras tell the same story. My windows are all intact, all locked from the inside—”

“Which hardly matters, since you live on the seventeenth floor—”

“But I checked anyway, just to be thorough. And you’re going to love this: the door chain was latched too.”

“What? That’s impossible.”

“Clearly not.”

“Come on. How could he—?”

“I don’t know, Han. All I know is that when I come home I always slide the chain on the little thingy, and when I woke up this morning, the chain was on the little thingy.”

Han poked his head in her bedroom. “So your perp couldn’t have come through the door.”

“Nope.”

“And he couldn’t have come through a window.”

“Not unless he knows how to relock them from outside.”

Han scanned the room, maybe looking for additional entries and exits. “So what’d he do, pass through the wall?”

“Kind of looks that way, doesn’t it? And he walked out of here with a sword this big.” She spread her arms as wide as they would go. “Not exactly inconspicuous. I’ve had the radio on ever since I called you. No reports of a ninja creeping through the neighborhood with a giant sword.”

“To hell with the radio. You need to call Mulder and Scully. This isn’t a home invasion, it’s a damn X-Files episode.” He studied her for a second. “Shit, Mariko, I’m sorry. This has to be scary as hell for you.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled about it, no.” She looked away from him, and pressed her eyes shut and her lips together as if sheer force of will could keep her face from going red. She didn’t want to have this conversation with another cop—not even with Han, the one person she trusted more than anyone else on the force.

“Did he . . . I mean, are you okay? Like, okay okay?”

Mariko swallowed. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, no, he didn’t rape me.”

Han sighed as if she’d just lifted a parked car off his chest. His relief was so palpable that she even felt some of it herself. This was why he’d earned her trust. Any other man in the department would have pressured her to go in for a rape kit. Han took her at her word, and he did it because he treated her like an adult. Lots of the other guys respected her, but they did it the same way they’d respect a high school athlete doing something amazing, something only the pros should be able to do.

So when he felt relieved, it wasn’t fatherly or brotherly or anything else. It was plain old thank God you’re okay, and that meant the world to her. Given the morning she was having, it almost made her cry.

But that wasn’t something she was going to do, even in front of him. She busied herself with studying the crime scene so she’d have something other than her emotions to think about. Her eyes passed over Yamada- sensei’s sketch of the demon mask, in the notebook she’d left faceup and sprawled open the night before.

She winced at the thought of what damage she’d done to the spine of the notebook, leaving it sit open like that for hours. It was the most trivial concern imaginable, and yet it niggled at her, so she reached down to close the book. As she did so, the next page flopped over, and on the overleaf she saw Yamada’s handwriting running like a banner at the top of the page: What is the connection between the mask and Glorious Victory Unsought?

She sat heavily on the bed. Kamaguchi Hanzo—the man who had a contract on her life, the man whose drug den she’d raided the night before, the man whose brutality on the streets had earned him the name Bulldog —owned an ancient mask that was somehow related to her sword. A sword that was now missing. A sword that had been taken by someone standing over her bed as she slept.

“Oh, hell,” she said.

“What?” Han said.

“It was the Bulldog. I think he’s sending me a message.” Mariko handed Han the notebook, opened to the page with the mask. “Remember the shelf of antiques in his office? All medieval stuff, most of it related to the samurai. My sword would fit right in.”