A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (24 page)

The higher they climbed, the colder
the air. But there was more to it than that. If Miho looked carefully, she
could see that in some places the snow seemed more significant, the trees
frosted with ice. Every time she studied their path ahead and tried to guess
where Kubo would lead them next, she was correct. Yuki-Onna was a creature of
winter, and she left her mark.

Perhaps an hour had passed since
they had come up a steep rise where an outcropping of stone jutted from the
snow, walked past a few bare trees that seemed to lean together into a kind of
arch, and found Kubo sitting just as he was now. The old monk had looked up at
Miho and spoken a single word: "Call."

Miho had done as she was told,
using her cell phone to call Kara and tell her to get in position for the
summoning. Kubo had explained that no return call would be necessary; if the
summoning worked, he would know, and sense Yuki-Onna's departure.

But for Miho the waiting was
torture.

She pushed away from the tree
and walked over to Mr. Yamato. He held his unlit cigarette down low as if to
hide it, though that was impossible. Obviously the principal did not wish
anyone to know that he smoked, so Miho did him the courtesy of pretending she
did not see it.

"I wonder —" she
began.

Kubo thrust himself from the
ground so abruptly that he startled them both. The cigarette fell from Mr.
Yamato's hand and Miho uttered a squeak of surprise, reaching up to reassure
herself that her glasses would not slip off.

The old monk turned to them,
grim and commanding. "We must hurry."

And then he was off, darting
through the trees, and Miho and Mr. Yamato ran to catch up to him. Branches
whipped at Miho, the forest blurring around her, her entire focus on following
the cloud wanderer, whose shoes barely seemed to touch the snow. Mr. Yamato
breathed heavily as he struggled to keep pace with her, but he began to fall
behind almost immediately. Miho did not slow to wait for him; if she had, she
would have lost Kubo's path.

For several long minutes they
ran, and before Miho truly understood what had happened, she realized they had
entered a storm. The wind blew. Branches swayed and cracked. Snow whipped at
her face. Terror seized her. The storm had come on even more suddenly than the
one during their field trip, when Sora had been frozen to death.

But then the truth struck her. This
storm had not found them, they had found it.

She came around a thick stand of
evergreens and nearly collided with Kubo. He stood and stared at a formation of
ice and snow. It had the shape of a giant ant hill, but twisted and pitted and
scoured by the wind. A large, dark, cave-like hole yawned in the face of the
thing and Miho could only stare at it.

The snow had begun to subside. Did
that mean Yuki-Onna had left?

"We may not have much time,"
the old monk said.

But Mr. Yamato came stumbling up
behind them, and he stared at the ice hill. "Impossible."

Kubo sniffed. "Very few
things are impossible."

"This wasn't here
yesterday," Mr. Yamato said, taking several steps toward the ice hill.
"The police and volunteers have been scouring the mountain. They would
have found this."

Kubo shook his head. "It
isn't always here."

Miho turned to stare at him.
"What?"

The cloud wanderer looked back
at her with eyes like thunderstorms, full of lightning. "Yuki-Onna is an
ancient thing. She exists now in a world that is neither here nor there,
neither spirit nor flesh. The winter she brings is not the winter you know, and
it is with her always. Your friends have been with her in that storm, but now
she has gone to see who has summoned her. But Kara will not be able to distract
her for very long. We must be gone before the witch returns. Do you understand?"

Miho nodded. "Enough."

Mr. Yamato ran past them, headed
for the dark cave in the face of the ice hill. Kubo and Miho hurried to catch
up. As they reached the hole in that strange, tapered hill of ice, Miho felt a
fresh wave of fear wash over her, but Kubo did not hesitate and she knew that
she could not, either.

Mustering her courage, Miho
followed Kubo and Mr. Yamato into the ice cave. Snow crunched underfoot. Only
when she had gone ten or twelve feet did she realize that a dim gray light
filtered in from somewhere, holes in the twisted surface of the ice hill,
perhaps.

Mr. Yamato had paused in front
of her, but once he started moving again, she saw that they had entered a small
chamber, whose floor was dark and textured. It took her a moment to realize
that this was not ice or snow, but earth and scrub and roots — the
ground.

Two figures lay curled up on the
ground as though sleeping. Mr. Yamato rushed toward them, but Miho was faster.

"Hachiro, wake up!"
she said, crouching beside him, jostling him hard. She glanced over at Ren, who
shivered with the cold, even asleep.

Mr. Yamato shook Ren. "Boys,
let's go!"

Kubo remained at the chamber
entrance. His breath plumed in the freezing icebox the ice hill had turned out
to be. Not far away, Miho could see a sort of menagerie of human statuary that
she felt sure had once been actual people. But the boys . . . she felt Hachiro's
pulse. Slow, but his heart was beating. They were alive.

"Come quickly," Kubo
urged.

"Hachiro!" Miho
shouted.

His eyes opened. He flinched
with surprise, then scrambled backward as if fearful of them. For a moment it
looked as though he had thought he might be dreaming, and then relief and
happiness lit his face.

"Is Kara--?"

"She's fine," Miho
said. "Put this on!"

Miho held up the ward Kubo had
set aside for Hachiro, then quickly helped him tie the leather thong around the
hulking kid's thick neck.

Ren sat up as well, and
submitted to Mr. Yamato tying the last of the wards around his own neck, but
his gaze was dark and hopeless.

"You shouldn't have come,"
Ren said. "She'll never let us leave her. You're all as good as dead."

Miho smiled. "You're
welcome," she said, reaching out and pulling him to his feet. "But
Yuki-Onna is occupied elsewhere at the moment, so start running, and try not to
die!"

The book of folktales fell from
Kara's hands and dropped into the snow. A gust of wind picked it up, whirling
it around, lifting it on air until Yuki-Onna plucked it out of the gently
swirling snow with pale, beautiful, slender fingers.

"What is your name,
girl?"
the Woman in White asked.

The words gripped Kara with a
fear deeper than any she had ever known. Yuki-Onna could see her.
Girl
! The
witch could see her. The ward had worked before, in the cafeteria kitchen, but
now somehow it had failed.

The snow woman flipped through
the pages of the book with a gentleness and delicacy that seemed like little
more than a mask. Kara took a deep breath and studied Yuki-Onna's beautiful
face, so perfectly sculpted and so beautiful except for the black pits of her
eyes. Her hair moved in the breeze as if she were underwater, swaying and
floating. Her feet did not touch the ground. Her skin was whiter than the
whitest snow.

Yuki-Onna threw the book and a
gust of wind carried it away, spinning the book, fanning its pages and sending
it soaring up over the bare branches of the skeletal trees around them. Then
the witch looked at her and —

No
. Those black eyes were
hard to read, but Kara was certain they were not focused on her. The witch was
clever. Kara had been fooled at first. Yuki-Onna could not see her after all.

But that did not mean the Woman
in White could not kill her. Or could she? If Yuki-Onna only saw human essence,
and Kara's was masked, would the witch even see her footsteps in the snow if
she walked away? Kubo had instructed her to say nothing and to stay completely
still, but she could not help the tremors of fear that went through her or the
urge to flee. This close to Yuki-Onna, she could feel the cold at the heart of
the witch, could sense its otherness and its malice.

A rustle came from the trees and
Kara held her breath.
No, no, Yuuka. Stay still
, she thought, praying
that Miss Aritomo would not give herself away. If she believed Yuki-Onna was
about to attack, Kara knew that her father's girlfriend would try to save her.
Please,
stay still. I'll be all right
.

Yuki-Onna looked over at the
place where Miss Aritomo had hidden herself, with only a mask over her face to
distract the witch and no guarantee, even from Kubo, that it would work.

The witch began to glide toward
the trees.

"No!" Kara said.

Yuki-Onna spun, her triumphant
smile revealing rows of little shark teeth.
"I asked your name, girl? Who
are you?"

"If you are winter, then I
am spring," Kara said.

Hatred contorted the witch's
face, making beauty hideous.
"You are nothing. Just a little girl with
a sprig of magic."

Yuki-Onna came for her, then,
her fingers elongating into icy knives. Her jaws opened too wide, revealing
only blackness and those shark teeth within. Her eyes sunk deeper, turned
blacker. Kara's lower lip trembled and she thought she might scream or cry. Instead,
she held her breath and shrank down, crouching as the witch grasped at the air,
searching for her, head cocked to one side. Her icy fingers missed Kara by
several feet, but they kept clutching at nothing and eventually they would find
her.

But then the witch faltered and
lifted her chin. Her beauty and poise returned and in seconds it was as if the
monster had never been there. Even her eyes seemed soft and almost ordinary in
that moment.

Until the witch's savage grin
returned.

"Stupid girl. I am
ancient, but I am no fool."

Kara saw it in the witch's eyes.
Yuki-Onna knew that she had been lured away, knew that she had been tricked. The
wind whipped into a raging storm, snow churning around Yuki-Onna for a few
seconds before it subsided, but when the moment had passed and the wind
returned to normal, Yuki-Onna was gone.

"Oh, no," Kara said.
"She's going back for them."

Mai and Ume stood over Sakura's
bed, only the injured girl's breathing and the soft beep of machines breaking
the quiet in the hospital room. Though Ume continued to insist that she had
done nothing wrong, her air of superiority had begun to crack. She had been
hesitant to even enter Sakura's hospital room, but Mai had insisted. And now
Mai watched as Ume fidgeted uneasily, not wanting to even look at the
unconscious girl on the bed . . . the dying girl.

Ume reached up and tucked a lock
of her hair behind her ear. In all the time Mai had known her, Ume had moved
and spoken with a swagger that sometimes verged on arrogance, and other times
fully embraced it. Now, for once, Ume seemed at a loss for what to say or do.

"This has nothing to do
with me," Ume said, almost as if she were arguing with herself.

Beside her, Mai stiffened, anger
sparking in her again. "It has everything to do with you. You may not have
intended for the chain of events that followed — there's no way you could
have guessed at the power you were invoking, the evil that would come from it —
but you committed murder."

Fear and anger flashed in Ume's
eyes and she shot Mai a bitter look. "She was never meant to die." In
a blink, her uncertainty returned. "Not that I'm admitting anything. I'm
not."

Mai almost laughed. "You
don't have to admit anything. I told you. Everyone knows you're guilty. That
you're a killer."

What flickered in Ume's gaze
then, Mai could not interpret, but she wondered. Had she seen regret there? Sorrow?
Grief? Or just varying shades of anger and ego?

"Listen, I have no
intention of just hanging around the hospital all day waiting for the little
bonsai to call and tell us it's time to chant a magic spell around the
campfire." Ume arched an eyebrow, glancing down at Sakura, whose breath
had quickened. The beeping of the machine seemed to have sped up. "And I
didn't come here to watch this girl die."

Mai could feel a sharp retort
forming on her lips, but as Ume's words hung in the air she heard the pain in
them. The mask of arrogance was slipping further, revealing another person
underneath, maybe the person Ume had been before she had perfected the identity
of the queen soccer bitch. She had made herself ruthless in order to stand out,
to be popular, to create a perception of herself as elite.

So what are you?
Mai
asked herself.
You took the bitch crown quickly enough when she was out of
the way.
A sick feeling roiled in her gut. Yes, Mai had assured herself and
Wakana that she had only filled the void left by Ume's departure because
someone had to, and she thought she could protect herself and others and hold
the reins on Reiko and the girls by being queen bitch herself. But how much of
that was true, and how much of it rationalization?

She had been demonizing Ume even
as she became her. And if that was true, then what was really in Ume's heart,
now? Unless the girl was a complete psychopath, she really had not intended for
Akane Murakami to die, which meant that her life now must be utter torment. Bad
enough that her parents suspected, that all of her friends and teachers
suspected her of murder — but worse, she had taken a human life.

She must by dying inside. Rotting
from the inside out.

Mai shivered at the thought.

"What did you come here
for, then?" she asked.

Ume began to bristle, turning to
her, but she must have seen the sincerity of the question in Mai's face,
because she hesitated before speaking.