A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (18 page)

The door remained closed, but
here there was light underneath the door. Kara could practically feel the
presence of someone inside. She knocked again, harder this time.

"Ren, it's us," she
called. "Kara, and Sakura, and Miho."

"We need to talk to you,"
Sakura added.

Still nothing. Kara felt her
anger ramping up. She made fists of her hands and rocked on the balls of her
feet, needing to let out the maelstrom of emotions that were storming around
inside of her.

Miho must have seen it coming. She
put a hand on Kara's shoulder. "No. Let me," she said. And then she
stepped up to Ren's door and knocked much more softly than Kara had. "It's
Miho. I know you're hurting. Maybe you're scared or embarrassed or mad, or
maybe it's all of those things. I know you're afraid for Hachiro. But we're
your friends and we need you."

Sakura and Ren had a great
camaraderie. They were buddies, fond of giving each other a hard time. But ever
since Miho had revealed her feelings for Ren and discovered that he had no
romantic interest in girls, the two of them had developed a gentle intimacy
that had nothing to do with sex. If he would listen to anyone, it would be her.

"Ren, please?" Miho
added.

Several seconds went by. Kara
began to grow frantic. What would they do if they couldn't get Ren to talk to
them? She glanced at Sakura, then Miho, and she thought about trying to kick
the door in but knew she didn't dare. They'd have to get Mr. Yamato down here
instead.

Just as she was about to give up
and go away, Ren spoke at last.

"I don't remember anything,"
he said.

They all looked at one another. Kara
gestured for Miho to speak.

"Please, Ren," Miho
said. "We need to talk to you."

A few more seconds passed as he
contemplated that, and then at last he opened the door. Kara blinked in
surprise and felt all the anger drain out of her. Normally, Ren was strikingly
good-looking, with his long, spiky bronze hair and copper eyes and a
mischievous smile that seemed to work on nearly everyone. So often she had
thought how much he reminded her of a fox in appearance.

That Ren had vanished and been
replaced by a pale, thin, unsmiling creature. His hair was clean but hung
straight and dull, and he wore a white shirt and tan pants that gave him an
almost monastic look. Silhouetted against the early winter darkness outside his
window, he might have been Kubo's sickly grandson.

"Ren?" Miho said,
putting all of her anguish at his appearance into that single syllable. She
hurried into the room and embraced him, leaving Kara and Sakura to watch.

Ren seemed awkward with the hug,
and when Miho stepped back, neither of the other girls attempted the same
greeting. As they had agreed before paying this visit, Sakura stayed at the
door, halfway in and halfway out. They weren't supposed to close it, but they
did not want to be troubled by the kind of gossip that eavesdroppers might
inspire.

Kara leaned against Ren's desk.
"Your parents left?"

"For now," Ren said.
"They wanted me to go home with them, but I told them I would be all
right."

"Will you?" Miho asked,
perching on the end of his bed. Behind her glasses, her eyes were wide with
sympathy.

Ren sank down beside her,
seeming almost grateful not to have to stand. "I don't know."

Kara glanced at Sakura and saw
hesitation and regret in the other girl's eyes. She felt the same emotions
creeping up on her and shoved them away. Hachiro's life hung in the balance;
they couldn't afford any more hesitation.

"You know why we're here,"
Kara said.

Miho shot her an admonishing
look. "Don't be so cold."

"Ironic choice of words."
Kara kept her focus on Ren. "Listen, I know you don't want to talk about
this —"

"I would if I could
remember," Ren snapped, but he couldn't meet her gaze for more than a
second, glancing down at the floor.

Kara nodded, took a deep breath,
and forged on. "Okay, I get that you don't remember exactly what happened.
But I'm sorry, Ren. I just can't believe there isn't anything, not a single
detail, lodged in your brain that would help us. Hachiro's been up there two
nights now. This'll be the third. Unless you tell me he's dead —"

"I don't know," Ren
said, voice full of despair.

" — then I have to
believe he's alive. And that means we can find him. But you're the only person
who can help us with that and you say you don't remember anything." She
held up a hand to forestall any more arguments or denials. "There's more
going on here than you know."

As she told him what they
thought they knew about Yuki-Onna, his eyes grew wide. She could see fear in
them, but also hope, and she knew he wanted to talk to her.

"What aren't you telling
us, Ren?"

Even Miho looked at him
differently. She reached for his hand but he edged away from her on the bed.

"Does that make you
remember something? Did you see her?" Miho asked.

Ren pressed his lips together
like a child and shook his head. Kara truly cared for him — he was her
friend — but she couldn't take it anymore.

"Damn it, Ren!" she
shouted in English.

"Sssshhhh!" Sakura
said from the door, frowning.

Kara took a calming breath but
it only succeeded in quieting her anger. Her eyes began to fill but she refused
to cry, wiping the moisture away.

"He's going to die!"
she said, biting off each word as she returned to Japanese. "I love him. He's
your friend. And he's going to die. You say you don't remember, well I think you're
lying. I don't know why, but you are. And I'll tell you something else. Other
people are going to die, too."

Kara fingered the round stone
that hung on a leather thong around her neck and noticed Miho doing the same. She
rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger.

"We're protected for now,
but Yuki-Onna is looking for us. Sora's dead. And she'll keep killing until the
winter snows are gone, all because you won't tell us where Hachiro is. If he's
dead, that's on you. And everyone else who dies . . . well, you'll have their
blood on your hands, too."

"Kara, that's not —"
Miho began.

"Stop it!" Ren
shouted. "I can't!"

"Can't what?" Kara
demanded.

Ren buried his face in his
hands.

"We can stop it, Ren, but
we need Hachiro to do that. We need everyone who was there when Kyuketsuki put
the curse on us. Mr. Yamato is getting Ume here, but all of it's for nothing if
we can't find Hachiro, alive, and get him down off of that mountain."

He looked up through spread
fingers. "How? How can you stop it?"

Miho spoke up, telling him about
Kubo, the cloud wanderer, and the promises the monk had made to them.

Ren looked sick. He shook his
head.

"Maybe he really doesn't
know," Sakura said, though she didn't sound convinced.

Kara stared at Ren. "He
knows."

As handsome — beautiful,
really — as Ren was, at that moment he looked like a broken angel,
tarnished with misery. He seemed about to speak and she saw the truth in his
eyes, but it never made the journey to his lips. Slowly, he shook his head.

"I'm sorry."

The tragedy in his voice did her
in. Kara raised a shaking hand to cover her mouth to stop her from screaming at
him. Her eyes filled with tears that began to slide down her cheeks and she
turned away, headed for the door, trying to find some way to accept the fact
that Hachiro would die if he hadn't already, and that the curse on her and her
friends would never be lifted.

Sakura stopped her at the door,
pulled Kara into her arms, and all Kara could do was try not to make any noise
while she cried. A moment later Miho joined them without another word to Ren. They
started to file out into the corridor.

Over the internal roar of her
own despair, Kara barely heard Ren's voice.

"She let me go," he
said.

Miho grabbed Kara's wrist and
stopped her. It was a moment before it all registered, and Kara turned back
into the room to face him. Ren sat on the bed, seeming to have shrunk in size. He
wiped away tears.

"She?" Kara said.

"You mean Yuki-Onna?"
Sakura asked in a hushed whisper of disbelief.

When Ren nodded and stared,
shamefaced, at the floor, Sakura reached out and closed the door. Miho opened
her mouth to protest but Kara shook her head and the girl said nothing. This
wasn't a time for rules.

"Tell us, please,"
Kara said, swiping at her own tears with the back of her hand.

Ren shuddered. "If I do,
she'll . . ." He paused, and then a determined look came into his eyes and
he looked up, meeting Kara's gaze fully for the first time. "The stories
do not do her justice. She is awful. The cold isn't just in your skin or your
bones, it's down inside you, in your thoughts.

"She killed Sora right
away. Hachiro and I saw it. But we had looked into her eyes and we couldn't
move. Frozen, but not . . . not the way she froze Sora. Then she took us away
in the storm, in the wind, tossed us in the air like we were puppets, and for a
time I don't think we were anywhere except in the storm. It felt as if the
storm wasn't even a part of this world."

He held his hands up as if in
surrender and gave a strained laugh.

"I know how that sounds."
His smile was something awful. "But it's true. She said Sora's life —
his death, I mean — made her strong. It was as if somehow she had
satisfied some hunger through killing him. But with us . . . it was like we
were pets or . . . or toys. She said she would take us, too, eventually if she
grew hungry enough or bored enough."

His voice cracked on those last
words and he took a deep breath, looking as though he might be sick.

"I shouldn't be doing this,"
he said. "Shouldn't be talking about it."

Confused, Kara went and knelt in
front of him, taking his hands in her own.

"You got away, Ren,"
she said, searching his eyes. "Was Hachiro still alive when you escaped?"

"Yes. But you are not
listening. I'm trying to tell you that I did not escape. Yuki-Onna let me go."

Kara sat back on her haunches,
staring at him.

"She what?" Sakura
said.

"Why would she do that?"
Miho asked.

Ren stared at his hands as if he
were so ashamed he could not even lift his eyes. "She said I was too
beautiful to kill," he said bitterly. "That eventually she would be
too tempted and she would devour my spirit, and I would be dead and she would
regret that. So she let me go."

"But she kept Hachiro,"
Kara whispered.

Ren nodded. "She made me
promise not to speak of her, or to tell anyone what happened on Takigami
Mountain."

A chill raced up Kara's spine
and along her arms.

"But you just told us,"
Sakura said.

"Did she say what would
happen if you did tell?" Miho asked.

Ren looked up. "She said
she would come for me again and I would be in the storm forever."

The chill in the room was not
Kara's imagination. Gooseflesh formed on her arms and as she exhaled, her
breath fogged the air.

A rush of alarm swept through
Kara as she glanced at the window. She saw ice spreading on the glass, and she
stood up, staggering back from Ren. He had broken his promise and now Yuki-Onna
had come for him.

"No," she said. "We
can't let this happen."

Sakura shoved past her, grabbed
Ren by the hand and hauled him to his feet. Miho yanked the door open and the
four of them raced into the corridor together. Doors were opening up and down
the hall, boys poking their heads out, shivering in spite of their sweaters and
sweatshirts. Some of the rooms would be empty — a lot of students were
probably in the common areas or heading down to the cafeteria for dinner —
but there were enough of them to get in the way.

"Why is it so cold?"
one of them asked. "Is the heat broken?"

"Ren?" another
ventured. "What's wrong? Why are you —"

"Out of the way!"
Sakura shouted, shoving the boy outside.

Kara led the way, racing down
the corridor to the central stairs. Her thoughts were awhirl, her heart
slamming in her chest. Sakura and Ren came right behind her, with Miho bringing
up the rear.

"Anything behind us?"
Kara shouted.

"Not yet!" Miho
replied.

"Where are we going?"
Sakura snapped. "How are you going to outrun her?"

"I'm working on it!"
Kara replied.

They reached the central
staircase. The temperature had dropped so low that ice had begun to form on the
inside walls. Her eyelashes stuck together when she blinked. Ice crystals
floated like tiny snowflakes in the air.

"My God," Kara
whispered in English.

"No," Miho said.
"Not your God."

Think, girl, think!
The
windows in the stairwell rattled as storm winds gusted against them. Snow and
sleet pelted the glass. With another gust, a crack appeared, and then another.
Windows
.

"Kara, look!" Ren
called.

They all turned. Down the hall,
back the way they'd come, a pair of ghosts stood in the corridor staring at
them. Sora looked just as he had the last time they had seen him, except that
his presence seemed little more substantial than Kara's pluming breath in the
cold air. The other spirit was female and it took Kara a moment to place her —
Chouku, one of the victims of the Ketsuki.

Before any of them could react,
a blast of winter air filled the hall. Back along the corridor, the door to Ren's
room froze over and then shattered, blown outward in a splintering of ice and
timber.

Kara grabbed Miho's hand. "Go!"

They hit the stairwell and she
nearly fell. The steps were slippery but the metal railing was so cold that it
stung to touch. She hurried down as quickly as she could without falling, aware
of the cracks that lengthened and spread in the stairwell windows above her
head.