CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I jumped out of my skin. “Koi-chan,” said Midori, tugging me over the tatami to a zabuton cushion. “Here, sit.”

“It’s Kwaskwi,” said Ben.

“Mine, too,” said Pon-suma and Murase simultaneously. Limping footsteps entered the room behind me. Ken. I wished I could see what was going on in the room as the phones were silenced, but it was a relief not to know what expression was in the dark eyes haunting me.

“Ms. Pierce,” said Kawano, “you are a wanted woman.” He was still here? And he wasn’t calling me Herai-san anymore, a concession? It was disconcerting not knowing who was in the room.

Midori touched the back of my hand. “Let me have your phone.” It was still ringing inside my pocket. I pressed my thumbprint over the home button and handed it over. Midori clucked her tongue.

“What’s going on?”

“Kwaskwi’s been trying to get a hold of you,” she said. “There are twenty messages and calls from him, and about a hundred from Marlin.”

Midori sucked in a startled breath. Ben swore.

“What? What is it?”

No one answered. The tense silence was probably full of meaningful looks and gestures I couldn’t see. It drove me crazy. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”

I expected Midori, but it was Pon-suma who spoke up, laying out devastating facts in his sparse way. “Kwaskwi needs you on a plane to Portland. The attacks on Kind in Portland escalated. Dzunukwa was murdered. Some blame your public altercation with Ullikemi. Attention turns to your sister.”

Marlin. In danger. I blindly reached for my phone, pulling it from Midori’s limp hand. “Siri, call Marlin.” The phone rang and rang. No answer.

“It’s probably four a.m. in Portland,” said Midori.

“Siri, redial,” I shook my head. “She always answers on the second round of ringing. She’s an insanely light sleeper.”

“Kwaskwi is calling in a favor owed,” said Ben. “This must be serious.”

“Take me to the airport.”

“Breathe, Koi-chan,” said Murase. “We will get you home, but we need to buy tickets and arrange for your father’s travel. No airline will accept him in a coma without a doctor’s permission.”

“We can buy tickets at the airport.” I missed Kwaskwi fiercely. He would have gotten things moving.

“At least have some katsu curry and let me make some calls,” said Midori, tugging on my hand again.

“There is nothing in this world more precious to me than my sister. How far is it to Narita from here? Let’s get driving.”

“We can get a connecting flight from Iwate-Hanamaki airport in the morning,” said Pon-suma.

“We?”

“I’m coming,” said Pon-suma, and I imagined the epic kiss Kwaskwi must have laid on the shrine boy and wondered if Horkew Kamuy blushed.

“So there’s time for dinner,” Midori said. I let her pull me onto a zabuton, my knees weak and watery. Dad made katsu curry for Marlin’s birthday every year, the thin, layered pork cutlets drenched in hot-sweet curry her favorite meal. My eyes felt hot. Not Marlin, not my bossy, artsy sister. I couldn’t bear anything happening to her.

I sat numbly, taking small bites of curry and rice from a bowl I held up close to my mouth so I wouldn’t spill as much. Midori, Murase, and Pon-suma made calls and talked.

The curry coated my stomach in an uneasy layer of grease. After a few bites, I set the spoon down on the table with a click. Sitting seiza was giving me an arthritic ache in my knees. I shifted my hips side-saddle. Midori closed my fingers around a glass and I drank it dutifully, not even tasting the toasted-earth mugi tea. After an eternity, Pon-suma came and knelt next to me. “There’s a six a.m. flight from Iwate-Hanamaki to Haneda airport. We can take the first flight to Portland that morning. I will buy three tickets?”

“Thank you, yes.” I tried a small smile, but the corners of my mouth felt oddly frozen.

“Four tickets, please,” said Ken. He was keeping so quiet, like he wanted me to forget he was there, lurking.

“No,” I said.

“You need a Kitsune to get your father on the plane without medical permission.”

“Tomoe can put on her stewardess disguise again,” I said.

“Gozen-san and Tojo-san have already left on Council business back to Tokyo,” said Kawano.

“Murase? Ben?” It was a lot to ask when they were obviously needed here to help with The Eight Span Mirror and the fallout from the Black Pearl’s release. I was desperate. Ego on my side and arrogance on Ken’s had built this wall, brick by brick, between us. Now it separated me from trusting him completely. His image evoked a prickly numbness like an unused limb falling asleep.

There was another tense silence.

“The Bringer’s presence in Portland again so soon may be taken by some as an aggressive Council act,” Murase observed.

“I’m not the Bringer,” said Ken harshly. “That life is over.”

“Yes,” agreed Kawano archly, “you are released from fealty to the Council.”

“And Tojo-san? Will he allow my retirement?”

“Yes,” said Kawano, quick and firm. “The new reality of the Council is being explained to him right now.” I wondered if that explaining was with words or fists. Kawano had accepted defeat in a seamless way that helped me see how he might have weathered centuries of life and survived the atomic devastation of World War II to craft the Council into a position of international power. Tojo was not, I suspected, as able to roll with the punches.

“Buy four tickets, Pon-suma,” said Ken.

“Look, Portland is my home. You have made it clear that your priorities lie with your family here. You can’t just leap right back into—”

“Koi! I don’t want to stay in Japan,” Ken said in English, emotion thickening his voice. “All reasons for being the Bringer are gone. There’s nothing here as precious to me as—” He swallowed audibly. “Look, I messed up in many ways. Please don’t make me stay away from Portland. Kwaskwi’s my friend, too, and this might be a chance.” Midori made a hum of distress. “A chance to make my life into something else.”

The master manipulator, experienced Kitsune image I’d imposed over Ken since we landed in Narita airport crumbled into pieces, sending cracks shooting through the brick wall between us.

This pleading was of someone as lost, as unsure as I. Someone whose place in the world had been completely upended. If Portland could give me the space to figure out how to be Baku and human Koi at the same time, who was I to keep Ken from having the same chance to figure himself out? He was broken, yes, but his brokenness only made him more real, more true to me.

It was so clear to me now, the joy of running in a shadowed, green primeval forest—honest, true, pure—that was Ken’s primal self. It wasn’t a sham or Kitsune illusion. I needed to trust my instincts. Even Morbanoid Koi urged me to believe his sincerity, to give into what drew me to him when I first met him on the street in front of Marlin’s apartment, the sense that here was a person who saw me, who wanted to see me, and wasn’t afraid of the Baku inside.

Survivalist Koi pointed out having him in Portland might ultimately help Marlin.

“Okay, Pon-suma. Four tickets.”

I retreated into myself as Midori helped me finish off the curry, cutting the katsu into bite size pieces. The others kept up a conversation on logistics of our trip, and Murase and Kawano got into a heated debate about how the Council should spin the news of the Black Pearl’s release.

Midori fussed with my arm splint bandage, rewrapping it too tightly, and insisted on brushing the worst snarls out of my hair. She pulled it back into a low ponytail, and her cool, dry palms on my hair made me think of Mom and how Marlin had done the same for her so many times in the hospital because I’d been terrified of accidentally touching her. My eyes were cried out though, the dryness extending down my throat and into my lungs.

Then, Midori was helping me stand. She led me to one corner of the room and heaped up more zabuton into a semblance of a pallet. “Your father is here beside you,” she said. “No change. His pulse is steady, his color good, but still unconscious.”

I felt for his arm with hesitant fingers. Dad lay on his side. I felt for my phone, cradling it between my cheek and the zabuton. “Siri, text Marlin. I’m coming. I’m coming as fast as I can. Send.” Dad’s rhythmic breathing swept me into an exhausted, restless sleep.