CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“You’re just bringing this up now?” I screeched. All the curses and foul names I could come up with seemed tame compared to how I felt. He’d unlocked a whole new level of jerkface. He couldn’t trust me with this vital information until the very last second? I clamped my mouth shut and pressed fists to my eyes, holding back another useless round of angry tears.

Ken put on the right blinker and took the next exit, Towada High School.

He pulled up to the pay machine at the deserted exit tollbooth and twisted in his seat so he could give me that perfectly calm, absolutely irritating regard that boxed me into the role of emotional wreck. His eyes captured mine in dark, fathomless pools of complicated emotion.

I couldn’t stop the jitters boiling up from the nauseous mess of my belly. “How are we doing this, then?”

Ken pulled the ticket out of the visor and fed it into the machine along with some yen notes. The gate lifted, and he wrenched the truck into gear with more force than necessary. “You will eat my dream, the life-essence of my very primal self, and when I’m near true death, Yukiko-san will freeze me.”

“That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard. Are you kidding me?”

“It’s our one chance. To break Tojo’s power. Force Kawano-san out of his outdated view of the world. To right a terrible wrong. Isn’t it worth risking the Bringer’s life for that?”

“You don’t get to make me a monster! I won’t risk being responsible for your death—even if you are a jerkface.”

Ken pulled into a big parking lot while I breathed in outraged gasps. Turning off the engine, he bowed his head, staring intensely at his open palms resting on the steering wheel. “I’m responsible for quite a few deaths.”

I’d just called him a monster. I’d shoved his guilt and anguish over what he’d done as a Bringer back into his face. That’s not what I meant.

“This is suicide.”

“Yukiko-sama will freeze me in time.” His voice was steady and underneath that calm was a terrifying acceptance.

My door opened. Yukiko stood outside the cab, undeniably imposing even though I was several feet taller due to the height of the cab.

A streak of blue plummeted down from the sky in a long, ear-splitting scream. The sound abruptly ended, and Kwaskwi stepped out from behind her with hands on his hips. Crow’s feet and smile lines created deep grooves in his tanned skin, making the trickster appear old and tired for the first time since I’d met him. The pronounced cupid’s bow of his upper lip was obvious without his characteristic grin, giving him a full-lipped pout that felt too intimate outside a bedroom.

Even Kwaskwi is worried.

“The natives are restless,” he said. “Chop-chop.”

Yukiko craned her neck to look back over her shoulder where the sprinkling of trees dipped down an embankment of cat tails and tall grasses along a slow-moving, greenish-brown mass of water. Aisaka River, I presumed.

We were well into the morning now. Sunlight warmed my face. “Are we carrying the Black Pearl all the way down there?”

“Once Yukiko unfreezes the Black Pearl, the river should draw her to it,” Ken answered.

Kwaskwi jumped backwards with arms raised and palms outward. “No way. I know where this is going.”

“But if she doesn’t head to the water,” Ken continued, “someone will have to act as bait.”

“Just had to go and get your leg injured, huh sly fox? I hate being bait. Bait always ends up crushed or dead. Why can’t Yukiko be bait this time?”

Yukiko did that odd thing where her head twisted on her neck like a snowy owl so she could tilt her head up to unleash her full icy stare at Kwaskwi. Her lips retracted in a grisly caricature of a smile, revealing pointed canines and a glistening pink tongue.

Kwaskwi lowered his hands and cleared his throat. “Okay. Not Yukiko-san, then.” He gave me a hopeful, puppy dog look and then spat on the ground. “Forget it, baby Baku. You’re no good either.”

Yukiko reached out a closed fist as if she were about to salute Black Power, and then slowly, slowly opened her hand. A sound like a carpenter sanding—no, like a dozen carpenters sanding—came from the truck and the tarp poked out in a dozen directions. The Black Pearl was waking up.

“Maybe we should—” With a pop, the tarp lifted free of its rivets and the Black Pearl burst from the truck, heading straight for us like a black, shimmering ginormous arrow. Ken jerked me out of the dragon’s path by the arm. I was mesmerized by the shifting aquamarine, teal, emerald-blue of her eyes. Double-eyelid membranes fluttered open and shut while the Black Pearl writhed coiling and uncoiling, her tail whipping back and forth wildly.

Yukiko avoided the tail by shifting instantly from place to place, not a hair out of place, but Kwaskwi had a harder time, hopping about like a mad momma-jay to keep from getting crushed.

“Now would be a good time,” Ken observed, “to run to the river.”

Kwaskwi twisted to dodge a lash of the Black Pearl’s tail, but instead of hopping away, he grabbed the tip and stomped on it with his steel-toed boot. The head stilled and then curled back on itself, regarding Kwaskwi with unblinking eyes.

Something powerful welled up inside my ribs in response to the glow of the Black Pearl’s eyes. An aching, precarious pressure, like the thrill of being upside down at the top of the Looping Thunder coaster at Oaks Amusement Park. The mysterious depths of her eyes called to me, promising hidden treasures. I stumbled forward.

“Koi!” Ken tugged at my arm again. I tried to escape his grip so I could get closer to those beautiful eyes. “What is it with you and ancient ones?” He slapped a palm over my face, breaking the spell.

“What?” I wrenched his pinky finger back to force him to release his hand.

“Don’t look at her eyes.” Ken’s hand dropped away.

Kwaskwi was waving his hands and yelling. “Come on, you overgrown, snake-headed monster. Over here! That girl is not the bait you’re looking for—all tendons and bones. I’m very meaty.” He jogged a short distance toward the river. The Black Pearl wavered, bobbing back and forth as if she was reluctant to tear away from our mutual stare-fest. Finally her eye membranes fluttered as if she were drowsy. Her neck drooped and her snout swung around to track Kwaskwi.

“How much did you take when you ate her dream?” Ken’s eyebrows knit together like worried caterpillars.

Released from the Black Pearl’s spell, I shivered, pins and needles running up and down my limbs as if they’d fallen asleep and only now reawakened. I scoffed. “Hell if I know. Dad hasn’t had a chance to cover dream eating measuring cups with me yet.”

“This part of the Aisaka is shallow. There used to be a fishing weir here for Ayu sweetfish. We have to get the Black Pearl into the river to release her, but we don’t want her to drown.”

“Release her in the river?”

“The river is her element. If there’s any chance of the Black Pearl returning to herself…” Ken trailed off, his attention caught by the fact that the Black Pearl’s initial frenzy had completely dissipated. Her head lowered to the ground, opaque eyelids closing.

Kwaskwi quit waving and stood with his hands on his hips. “She’s seriously lost steam, dude.”

Yukiko glided over next to Kwaskwi, pointedly looking at me and then the Black Pearl’s massive head in turn.

I remembered the sleek leather of her scales, and the moldy sock smell, and the gorgeous depths of her eyes. Her song had been so, so sad. She couldn’t give up now. The thought of the Black Pearl locked away again inside the cave made my chest hurt. I moved carefully over to her whiskered snout where it lay crushing dandelions on the lush grass. Ken sucked air through his teeth. “Be careful.”

“Unnecessary warning.” I pushed back the long windbreaker sleeve. Recently eating her dreams meant I could probably touch her without getting overwhelmed by her dream. There was really no other choice, though, I had to try. I rested the back of my hand on the tip of the Black Pearl’s snout. Movies and European fairy tales taught me that dragons gave off ambient heat, but the Black Pearl’s shimmering scales, streaked with purple and crimson at the snout, were cold. On the heels of that thought came a quiver of the whalesong from before.

“Wake up,” I said softly, prodding stiff fingers into the hollow underneath her ear wells. “Go to the river.” The whalesong vibrated more strongly up through my fingers, into my lungs and down to my belly, a current of sound flowing in stuttering ripples and eddies. I placed both palms along the scales underneath the Black Pearl’s right eye and took a deep breath. “Time to go home.”

The world began tilt-a-whirl spinning, but just as trees, river, Black Pearl began to blur together into dream colors, fear spiked through me and I jerked my hands back to clasp them at my chest. Not yet. We’re not ready for the full monty. Just a little prod to get you going.

The Black Pearl opened an eye, nostrils flaring in and out with silt-dank breath. Or maybe that was actually the Aisaka River, I couldn’t tell. Just an instant, long enough for a stray thought, and already I was leaning closer to the mesmerizing, shifting blue. Straining like I was carving a line through butter instead of air with my eyes, I turned away. Yukiko was frowning. Clearly unhappy. What was I supposed to do? Let myself be drawn in?

This is what Ullikemi had done to Hayk, what Thunderbird tried to do to me back in Portland. At first a seduction, a promise of beautiful connection, but then it would turn to control. I remembered Hayk’s glowing green eyes and the rasp of his voice when Ullikemi rode him. Morbanoid Koi spoke up. How different is that from dreaming the Black Pearl’s most intimate dreams?

“Touch her again,” said Ken, coming closer.

“I will drown if she lunges for the river with me attached.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

Kwaskwi gave an impatient huff. “Oh, here we go. Come on kiddles, can we skip the part where the Kitsune attempts to make you trust him again despite his secret motivations for bringing you to Japan?”

I stabbed a finger in his direction. “You are not helping.”

Kwaskwi shrugged. “This isn’t about me, Koi. Or Ken. Choose. Either you’re in or you’re out.”

He was right. The hurt part of me was holding on to these doubts because I wanted to lash back at Ken. He should feel the same precarious feeling I had in Japan, so far out of my comfort zone I might as well be moon-walking. But Kwaskwi was right. This wasn’t about me putting all my trust eggs in the wrong basket. It was about the Black Pearl, and on a deeper level, about whether I could live with myself if it was my fear that made us fail. I had to go deeper into her dreams as Baku.

Face carefully averted from the mesmerizing eyes, I put my palms on her scales again. Ken gave a surprised cry just as the world blurred, spinning on its axis. Underneath my hands the Black Pearl shifted, trembles rippling up and down her scales as I took from her the waking dream.