41

REQUIEM

Sig was in the middle of weapons practice while Jerry Kichida was shooting at Akihiko. When the oni ran outside and everyone started gravitating toward the front of the warehouse, she took the chance that she’d been waiting for. There were faint letters and sigils etched into the smooth concrete walls all around the warehouse, ten feet above the ground and hard to see unless you had phenomenal eyesight. Sig took the tip of her spear, wedged it against the edge of one of those letters, and shoved the metal tip hard enough to form an additional groove into the concrete.

Not much of a change at all. Like changing one word or adding a random comma. But magical inscriptions are the most unforgiving legal contracts there are.

The harionago burst into the warehouse, braided strands of her hair waving about threateningly as she screamed at people to flatten against the wall. Then guards came through the entrance and ushered Akihiko through the practice area. Sig took the end of her spear and prodded the unconscious form of a were-something that was bleeding out on the floor. “Wake up.” It didn’t respond, but she didn’t really expect it to. What Sig really wanted to do was get a good bit of its blood on the wooden spear butt that had been sharpened for vampire impaling.

There were three long white scrolls or banners hanging from the walls, red words trailing across them in symbols that Sig couldn’t read. The words were written in dried blood. Sig took the bloody end of her spear, and as she moved among the crowd of supernatural beings milling against the wall, she made three small smears. Very strategically placed small smears.

It was time to let the ghosts in.

Only one person noticed what Sig was up to. Shenay, who had gone looking for “Britte” when she realized that her friend wasn’t by her side. Sig looked up from the last banner and found Shenay staring at her.

“I…” Sig started to say, and Shenay quickly held up a hand and shook her head.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Shenay said, a sentiment that none of the beings with enhanced hearing around her could disagree with. “And I don’t want to know. As soon as they let us out, I’m gone, and I’m not coming back.”

And she was. And she didn’t.

Akihiko and his entourage had already disappeared when the ghosts began to appear in the warehouse. The supernatural beings in the room sensed the spirits, but they didn’t know precisely what they were sensing, and the tension ratcheted up another notch. Several beings began to unsheathe their claws and fangs and horns and tentacles. The guards weren’t going to be able to constrain them much longer without outright violence breaking out.

Sig didn’t pay attention to any of that, though. She was staring at the ghosts. They were Chinese and had died traumatically. Most of them couldn’t speak, and those that could didn’t speak English, but they began to communicate with her through… I’m not sure how they communicated with Sig, to be honest. Gestures, perhaps, or brief contact or psychic flashes or emotional surges or all of those or more. Sig is never very specific about such things.

Whatever the mode of communication, Sig gradually came to understand that there was a reason Akihiko had set up operations near a waterfront. He was taking advantage of human smuggling operations that brought illegal Chinese aliens into the country in shipping containers. Akihiko didn’t have to hunt for victims whose skeletons and tortured spirits could be used to make his bone golems—they came to him looking for jobs and shelter and hope. The illegal aliens had no legal record of their existence, no rights, no papers, no power, no authority, and Akihiko paid for them, took them prisoner, and starved them to death.

If Sig had any reservations about killing the onmyouji, they evaporated. It was possibly the worst moment for the harionago to appear and tell Sig that Akihiko wanted to see her.

Cahill was in or around the Clayton Inn in Tatum when Jerry Kichida died. He was there because he’d figured out who Akihiko’s man on the ground in Tatum was. After all, somebody had found out about Max Selwyn and his relationship to Kevin, then scouted out where Max lived. Somebody was still poking around, trying to find out who had foiled the attempts on Kevin’s life. And Cahill had tracked someone who was asking very specific questions under the guise of being a news blogger to the Clayton Inn.

And maybe it was racial profiling, but when Cahill looked at the guest register, he saw a Japanese name, just one, and it turned out that the man was paying in cash. It also turned out that he was a hard-looking man, compact and solid-looking, with a flat stare and a large burn scar on his cheek.

Cahill watched the man eat at the hotel restaurant, but he didn’t follow him when the man left. There was time for that later. Cahill just waited for his moment, stood up, and took the glass the man had been drinking from.

Akihiko was proving a hard nut to crack. Cahill had learned his lesson about trying to mentally dominate people who might be psychic or warded, and it wasn’t something he was going to try lightly. But maybe running the prints of a man who worked for Akihiko would provide some useful information.

Kevin Kichida was screaming and holding his face. He knew. He knew the second his father was wounded. He yelled at Molly to stop the van, and when Sarah reminded him that leaving the wards she’d made for him might tell Akihiko where they were, Kevin screamed that he didn’t care, that he wanted the fucker to find him. Molly touched his arm then, and Kevin shook her hand off and demanded to know why they had let Jerry go, what the hell they were doing just driving around while his father was dying.

I’m glad I wasn’t there. I would ten times rather fight for my life in the Crucible.