7

ELLIE’S HAIR AND UNIFORM SMELLED like the color pink. Hibiscus pink, to be precise, a sticky residue from Anastacia’s shampoo and soap, which she’d had to borrow after their morning kendo class. In front of her, strolling into the dining hall, was Jamie, waving goodbye to Haru. She noticed Haru shoot him back a breezy smile that was so soft she wanted to squish it between her fingers.

Only three days into summer school, there was one thing she was sure of: she loved kendo. The confidence it gave her, having an outlet for her worries—all the things Lottie had told her she needed . . . It would all be perfect but for one little thing. Jamie was still barely speaking to her.

“Don’t you feel like Haru’s playing favorites with Jamie? It’s weird to see them so friendly,” Ellie grumbled, pulling the door open to the salty scent of dashi, a smell that instantly made her stomach rumble.

“Sounds like sour grapes to me.” Anastacia’s hair was up, and she had no makeup on after their training, yet she still looked like a model in Takeshin’s sailor uniform as she joined Ellie in the line for food.

Ignoring her, Ellie grabbed two onigiri from the immaculate array of food, stuffing the second one in her mouth and chewing it hard in search of the sour plum in the center.

“Who’s got sour grapes?” Saskia asked, leaning forward to take the strawberries off her cheesecake and place them on her girlfriend’s plate.

The easy affection between the two always left Ellie a little bitter, and she didn’t know why, clinging to the idea that it was because she still didn’t completely trust Saskia.

“Ellie thinks Haru’s playing favorites with Jamie.”

“Hmm.” Saskia’s hand hovered over a selection of sweet canned coffees. “Maybe it’ll be good for Jamie to make a friend.” Her words left an awkward silence.

Yes, but why can’t that friend be me? Ellie thought.

They made their way to a table in the center of the room, and the moment they sat down her eyes hunted for Jamie while she absentmindedly grabbed her wolf pendant, squeezing it until the metal dug into her palms.

Her gaze found him and she watched, curious and frustrated, where he sat at a table near the back. He was with the other two boys he and Micky were rooming with. One had his face stuck in a book and the other had headphones in, while Jamie was all permanently messy hair and brown skin like a shining copper penny. It would be his birthday very soon, not that he’d ever let them celebrate it, but it always reminded her that she’d known him her whole entire life. If she looked hard, there would be a small birthmark by his nose, flecks of gold in his eyes, and a natural kink in his left eyebrow.

Yet, despite knowing every trace of his face, the boy on the other side of the dining hall was not someone she knew. He didn’t move the same way or share a smirk the same way; his eyes didn’t glint with dry humor anymore. This boy was a dark shadow of her Partizan, riddled with burden and self-blame. Blame that should have fallen on Ellie.

How can he not see? How can Lottie not see? Everything bad that happened to Jamie and Lottie was because they worked for her family, and all Ellie could do was mess up over and over again. She didn’t deserve them.

A single beam of sunlight came from the dining-hall door and caught her eye, and then in came her little pumpkin princess flanked by the twins. When Ellie had first met Lottie she seemed so small and delicate, but she was taller now, hair longer and wild, her limbs dense with muscle. Yet her face still retained some of its roundness, and always her kindness shone through, soft and vulnerable, like a baby bird held in your hands. It made Ellie want to wrap her up and protect her from the world. But Ellie had gone and ruined everything by kissing her in the chocolate factory.

The very thought made her shudder, wondering how on earth she could have thought she was good enough to kiss Lottie. They needed to think about Leviathan, and school, and fixing Jamie, and not get caught up in stupid confusing feelings that she had no right to feel in the first place.

“What’s wrong?” Saskia asked.

“Nothing, just . . . Lottie and the twins are coming.”

A knowing look passed between Anastacia and Saskia that Ellie very much wanted to punch off their faces.

Lottie took the seat next to Ellie, smiling obliviously at them, flecks of paint in her fingernails from her morning art class.

“Hey, guys, the twins and I are gonna head to the library after lunch if anyone wants to join us?”

“No can do,” Saskia replied, taking a sip of her iced coffee. “We have a compulsory meditation session with one of the martial arts—”

Before she could finish, one of the Takeshin students from the ceramics course with sticky-out hair came running into the hall, hands still covered in dried clay. “PINKU ONI-CHAN! PINKU ONI-CHAN!” she shrieked.

All the other students jumped up, pulling out their phones in a frenzy as if someone had just announced that monsters were crawling out of the earth.

“Pinky . . . what now?” Lola asked.

Only three other students weren’t checking their phones—Jamie, although he looked equally confused, and his roommates. It looked like she had the perfect excuse to speak to him.

The boy with the book raised an eyebrow as they approached, while the boy with the headphones smirked, as if he had expected them. “I was wondering when you’d come to collect your lost puppy.”

“Excuse me?” Lottie asked, not realizing he was talking about Jamie. But Jamie didn’t seem to care, rolling his eyes in a way that was almost humorous, like they might even be friends.

It’s only you he doesn’t want to be friends with. Terrible, terrible you. Ellie bit down hard on her cheek to shut up the voice in her head, turning to the boy with headphones. Up close she could see that his skin was browner than most of the other students’, with dyed-red hair and piercings on the top of his left ear and both eyebrows, which were thick and black like some kind of evil caterpillar. The other boy, who still wasn’t looking up, had the sharpest cheekbones she’d ever seen and skin so pale it was almost translucent, drawing attention to his bruised crescent-moon eyes. He looked as if he never slept, only read.

“Hey, Micky.” The red-headed boy beamed over at him and pulled out a chair, gesturing for him to sit, which he did happily.

“Hi, Rio! Hi, Wei!” Micky replied, ignoring the tension.

Without a word, Rio winked at Ellie, and she felt like kicking him.

“Obviously we were hoping one of you guys could tell us what’s got everyone so excited,” Anastacia said bluntly, taking a seat next to Wei, the boy with the book.

“I like your eye makeup.” Caterpillar Eyebrow’s hand moved a lock of red hair from his eyes, looking Ellie up and down. “Very cool.”

“Rio, stop being a nuisance,” Jamie chastised, which only made Rio laugh.

But if Ellie didn’t know any better, she sensed that Jamie also wanted to know. She took a seat opposite them, spreading her legs across the bench, hoping to give off the energy of a dangerous gangster.

Thank goodness for the boys’ uniform, she thought. Something about this boy was already getting on her nerves. “Can you tell us or not?”

“It’s the Pink Demon, Pinku Oni-chan.” It wasn’t Rio who had replied, but Wei, who thrust out his phone for them all to look at, clicking “Translate.”

Everyone leaned over, even Jamie, the phone in the middle of the table while Lottie read aloud.

“‘The Pink Demon, who has been making sporadic appearances throughout Tokyo and nearby cities for the last two months, was spotted this morning in Shinjuku without her usual gang. This has now dispelled rumors that she can only be spotted at night.” She scrolled down and pressed play on the blurry video below the article.

What Ellie saw set her whole body alight.

From the video came the sound of an engine revving, a high-voltage purring in the distance getting closer and closer, until a flash of pink, so fast it could send the whole world spinning, whooshed past the camera. The video stopped just as she appeared. The Pink Demon. Dressed in a black graffiti-covered uniform and oversize pleated trousers, she roared in the wind, mounted atop her magenta sports motorbike, with all the grace of someone riding a valiant steed. On the side of the bike was a black-painted number four in a circle like a brand, and in the girl’s hand was a baseball bat, her weapon, inscribed with colorful writing and numbers. But the most shocking part of the image was the girl’s head, magenta like the bike, with two massive horns protruding from her helmet.

The Pink Demon.

Ellie didn’t know if it was the bike or the girl, but she wanted to be that powerful. She wanted to be that free.

“Whoa!” Saskia echoed Ellie’s feelings precisely.

Ellie looked up, her mind still a blur of pink and black and the number four.

A familiar voice sounded, bringing the fun to a sudden stop.

“Phones away, everyone.” Sayuri repeated the words in Japanese as well, standing with her hands on her hips in the doorway of the food hall, Miko at her side.

“The queen of the school has spoken,” Rio declared, smirking while everyone rushed to put their phones out of sight.

Ellie couldn’t help scowling at Sayuri as she floated across the hall to a table where she pulled out her own beautifully handmade lunch. How could anyone be that perfect?

Takeshin Gakuin’s secret treasure has long been a mystery to historians around the world, a rumor grown from one of Kou Fujiwara’s poems that hints at a priceless artifact hidden “in her heart.” To this day no one has been able to solve the mystery and it is widely considered to be a myth.

Beside the text was an ukiyo-e painting of Kou, depicting her with black hair flowing down to her knees, turning to the spectator with a long deadly sword in her hand. Although there was a tranquility to the image, there was no denying it—the painting reminded Lottie of the first time she’d seen a picture of Liliana last year in a textbook. The ferocity, the sword, the edge of authority that you could taste. Lottie was getting serious déjà vu. It was far too similar to the curiosities at Rosewood, curiosities that she’d learned not to overlook.

“Secret treasure and pink demons!” Lola whispered in the near-silent library. “I think I love this school.”

Micky was spread out quietly opposite them on a cushion, reading over his notes from class while pushing long chocolate-covered biscuits into his mouth.

Staring down at the image, Lottie couldn’t help thinking of Ellie’s dad. Had King Alexander known about the treasure? Had he looked for it? Had he met Sayuri’s parents?

A buzzing came from her pocket and she peeped at her phone to see a message from Ollie, her oldest friend from home. Without reading it she typed back: Can’t talk. Busy.

It was the fifth message he’d sent her since she’d arrived in Japan, and she didn’t know how she could make it more clear to him that she had important things to worry about and couldn’t be messaging him all the time to tell him about Japan. She had too much on her plate right now.

The library was small compared to Rosewood’s—three wooden rooms that smelled of dusty paper, separated by decorated screens, all filled to the brim with books. Nonfiction, ancient stories, poems, their aging spines created ladders into whole new worlds.

“Do you think it’s real?” Lola asked, eyes glittering.

“Maybe,” said Lottie.

“What’s real?”

Feather-soft words settled on Lottie’s ears, almost making her shiver. Haru leaned over the desk, his face so close to Lottie’s that she could detect a faint scent of soap, but she didn’t even start at his abrupt appearance; something about him was oddly calming.

Lola grinned up at him, clearly charmed by his smile. “We’re just reading up on the mystery of Takeshin’s hidden treasure.”

“Have you found anything interesting?” he asked.

His brown eyes came to rest on Lottie. She couldn’t help thinking that maybe Haru would be good for Jamie.

“Not really,” she admitted. “Do you know anything more about it?”

The Partizan smiled so wide it made him look like a grinning fox. “I am afraid I do not know much more than you. Though I have heard some people think the treasure is Kou Fujiwara’s lost sword.”

With his long index finger, Haru pointed to the sword in the painting, and once more Lottie thought of Liliana and the painting, which depicted her with a sword just as fierce. “Others think it’s a secret passed down through each generation.”

“Haru, there you are!” As if summoned by his words, Sayuri appeared behind them, between bookshelves filled with Japanese history. “We need some help with filing in my grandfather’s office.” She looked around. “What’s going on here?”

“We’re looking up the school’s secret treasure,” Lottie said happily, but her enthusiasm didn’t seem to reach the queen of the school, and all eyes in the library turned on them like she’d just uttered a curse.

The smallest frown creased Sayuri’s brow. “I’m a little confused. Could you enlighten me?” She edged toward them, her eyes fluttering in a strangely menacing show of sweetness. “I’m not sure how things are done at Rosewood. Are you given special treatment simply because you are a princess?”

Lottie nearly choked. “Um, no.”

“Good. Then I’m sure you understand that you should be using your free periods to work toward your final project, not entertaining a silly myth.” Sayuri’s smile was so tranquil it was almost impossible to believe such words had just come from her lips. Then she added, “We wouldn’t want you to leave here without the grades you need, would we?”

With a quick flick of her hand, Sayuri shut the book with a loud thud, before turning swiftly, leaving Lottie completely speechless.

Shrugging an apology, Haru followed her. As Lottie watched them leave, she couldn’t help wondering how such a sharp girl could have such a gentle Partizan. It looked like their research was over.