A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (3 page)

So she waited, and the wait was
torture. She fiddled with her guitar for a little while, but found it impossible
to focus long enough to play any song all the way through. Television in Japan
usually bored or appalled her, depending on what was on, and she didn't have
time for a movie . . . she hoped.

Finally, she logged on to her
computer and started to upload her favorites among the most recent batch of
photos she had taken in and around Miyazu City. Her friends back home in
Medford loved when she posted them on her Facebook page.

As she studied the pictures on
her computer screen, she shivered. December had been chilly, but now that
January had arrived, it really felt like winter. The shirt she had on had been
fine this morning, yet for some reason she felt colder now. A glance at her
window showed her that the day had turned gray, as though threatening snow. The
forecast hadn't called for any of the white stuff, but with the sun gone, it
certainly was cold enough.

Kara jumped up from her chair
and pulled a green, V-neck sweater from a drawer, tugging it on over her head.

Tea
, she thought.
Nice
and hot
.

The photos temporarily
forgotten, she went out into the kitchen, and as she reached for the teapot, a
soft knock came upon the door. She glanced up, smiling, and hurried to answer
it.

Kara opened the door to discover
Sakura and Miho on the stoop wearing matching grins. For once the two girls,
polar opposites in so many ways, looked almost exactly the same in their gray
wool coats and winter hats.

The three girls let out a chorus
of squees and threw themselves into each other's arms as though they had been
separated for months instead of weeks. They all began speaking at once, talking
instead of listening, and then laughing at the absurdity of it. Somehow in the
midst of this Kara managed to usher them inside and close the door, and then
they were taking off their boots and jackets and hats, and suddenly they were
the Miho and Sakura she knew. Sakura was tall, with eyes the color of brass and
spiky hair. Miho was a couple of inches shorter and had a shy, bookish demeanor
that was punctuated by her glasses and her long hair, clipped up on one side to
keep it from hiding her pretty face. The two girls had become her closest
friends in the nine months since school had begun.

"Okay, okay, let's all
breathe," Kara said. "Come in and sit down. I was about to make tea. Does
anyone else want some?"

Miho raised her hand
immediately, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear.

"Me, too," Sakura
agreed. "It's cold out there. I think winter should be over on New Year's
Day."

"It's just starting,"
Miho said, frowning at the impracticality of the statement.

"I know. I'd just like it
to end now."

"No way," Kara said as
she put water in the teapot. "I look forward to snowball fights and
snowmen. And there will be tubing."

Miho and Sakura shared a dubious
glance. Kara pointed at them with the teapot, water sloshing inside.

"There
will
be
tubing!"

The girls laughed, raising their
hands in surrender, and another giddy wave went through Kara. She was so
grateful to have them back. As the girls chatted to her about their New Year's
Eve activities — they had all updated each other about Christmas already —
she put on the teapot and then joined them at the table.

"My father and I got up to
see the sunrise on New Year's Day," Sakura said. "It's good luck."

Kara blinked in surprise. "You
didn't tell me that. Was it your idea or his?"

Sakura gave her a tiny, sheepish
shrug. "His. I know. It is strange."

"Not strange at all. It's
amazing that he actually noticed you were there," Kara said.

"Actually, Sakura had a
good time with them," Miho said.

Kara looked at her, then at
Sakura. Her hair had been freshly cut but she had not altered the style. Short
in the back, but longer in the front, it framed her face in two slashes of
black hair, highlighted by dyed streaks of bright red. Yet she wore a black and
white checked sweater, and her face had an uncharacteristic softness about it,
a lightness that took some of the edge away from her rebellious image.

"That's huge," Kara
said. "That's great!"

Sakura nodded. "I suppose. I
don't want to make too much of it. I'm back, now, and it will be easy for them
to forget me again."

Even before her sister, Akane,
had been murdered, Sakura's parents had not paid their children much attention.
And with Akane's death it had only become worse. Kara had spoken to her father
about it once and he had suggested that their grief might have made the
Murakamis afraid to love Sakura. But Kara refused to let them off the hook. They
had lost a daughter, but they had one still alive and they barely acknowledged
her existence, traveling on business or on holiday, leaving her at boarding
school even when she was on break, hardly ever coming to visit. Their neglect
had reached a level where Kara had been genuinely surprised when Sakura had
told her she was going home for the holidays. And now to hear that her father
had made an effort to spend time with his daughter came as an even greater
surprise, but a welcome one.

"I don't think they'll
forget you again," Kara said. "If they're trying to . . ." She
couldn't think of the Japanese words for 'amends.'

"It's a start, at least,"
Miho said.

"It's great," Kara
said, but she could see that the conversation had begun to make Sakura
uncomfortable, so she changed the subject. "Anyway, I have something I
wanted to talk to you both about."

Flashes of worry flickered in
the girls' eyes and Kara realized they had misunderstood her.

"No, no," she said
quickly. "No demons, no curses. Nothing bad. Something good, I hope."

"Don't scare us like that,"
Sakura said, her tough-girl core resurfacing.

"Sorry."

Miho smiled. "It's not your
fault. We're all trying not to think about the curse, but it is always in the
back of our minds. I guess it always will be, even if nothing happens for
years."

An awkward, dreadful quiet
descended upon the house. It lasted only a few, nervous seconds before Kara
rose and went to get them tea cups.

"A new year, a new
beginning," she said. "We can't live with that shadow over us all the
time. And nothing's happened for months."

"I know," Miho
replied. "It is just difficult to put it out of my mind."

Miho was right. Kara had to work
at forgetting. It took an effort not to be afraid of the dark, to be able to go
out at night or feel safe being home alone. It helped that they weren't the
only ones who knew about the events of the spring and fall. Her father and Miss
Aritomo had been involved, and Mr. Yamato, the principal, knew. So did the
Miyazu City police, who had instructed them all to report anything unusual
immediately, but otherwise not to discuss it with anyone. Officially, those things
they had experienced had never happened. The deaths of the students and
teachers who had been killed in both instances were attributed to human causes.
Human killers.

Last spring, they had stopped an
ancient demon called Kyuketsuki from entering into the modern world. In the
process they had learned that some of the spirits and gods and demons that had
once been worshipped in Japan still existed, weak and nearly extinguished
because most people did not believe in them anymore. They were kept from vanishing
entirely by legends and songs and plays, but most did not have the strength to
manifest in the real world anymore.

The combination of Akane's
murder and Sakura's grief over her death, and an act of pure happenstance —
or fate, if such a thing was to be believed — had been enough to stir the
demon Kyuketsuki. Kara and her friends had stopped the demon and driven it from
the world, but not before it had cursed them.

Little remains in the world
now of the darkness of ancient days . . . but what there is will come to you,
and to this place. All the evil of the ages will plague you, until my thirst
for vengeance is sated.

Kara shuddered at the memory,
the words burned into her mind. There might not be many supernatural evils left
on Earth, but Kyuketsuki had marked them all for death. For months, nothing had
gone wrong. Nothing strange had occurred. And then students had begun to
disappear. A new demon, the Hannya, had possessed Miss Aritomo and nearly
killed them all.

They had destroyed the Hannya,
but not before it had confirmed that the curse had drawn it to them. If there
were other ancient evils still strong enough to manifest in Japan, they might
appear at any time.

Kara and her friends knew this,
but they still had lives to lead.

"So what was it that you
wanted to talk to us about?" Sakura asked as Kara set their cups in front
of them and went to get the teapot.

"Well," Kara said,
excitement dispelling the shadows from her mind. "My dad and I are
planning to go home for a visit at the end of winter term, before the new
school year starts."

"You're going to be gone
the whole time?" Miho asked, her disappointment obvious.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "You're
not listening. It's great news! That means they're coming back for next year!"

Miho's mouth dropped open and
then she clapped her hands like a little girl. "I wasn't thinking. That is
great. That's wonderful!"

"Hey, I couldn't pass up
the chance to be seniors with you two," Kara said as she poured their tea.
"But there's more. I talked to my father about it, and he agreed. If you
can get your families to pay for plane tickets, you can come with us."

This resulted in an eruption of
babble, some of it so fast that Kara could not translate, as the girls
speculated on whether or not their parents would let them go, and if they would
be willing to pay for airfare. Sakura felt fairly certain she would be able to
go, but Miho seemed less sure. Still, they started making plans about all of
the things they would do and see if their parents could be persuaded.

The shadows had been driven back
for all of them, at least for a while.

The house Kara shared with her
father was just up the street from Monju-no-Chie school. There were times when
it still felt awkward to her, being the only gaijin girl — the only
western student, period — at the school, but she loved the foreignness of
the whole experience, the challenge and constant stream of new cultural
information that came with each day. Like any school, there were teachers that
she liked better than others, there were mean girls and jocks and cliques, and
there was gossip galore. But she enjoyed her classes and her calligraphy club,
and she had made the best friends of her life.

Kara would not have wanted to
stay in Japan forever but, as much as she missed her friends back home, when it
had come time to discuss staying another year she had not hesitated a moment. She
wanted to graduate with Sakura and Miho. Her father wanted to see where his
relationship with Miss Aritomo would lead, and Kara wondered as well.

And then there was Hachiro.

Growing up, she had had crushes
on any number of boys, and once or twice she had thought she had fallen in
love. Now, though, something was growing inside of her that made her think that
those other times had been just her
wishing
to be in love. Maybe the
real thing was something entirely different, not just the space between a
kitten and a cat but between a cat and a Bengal tiger.

She tried not to think about it.
Over the past few months, the idea of love had started to frighten her almost
as much as Kyuketsuki's curse. All she knew was that, just as her father wanted
to see where things would go with Miss Aritomo, she was curious to discover
what the future had in store for her and Hachiro. And she couldn't wait to tell
him she would be back for her senior year.

For a long time, they had done a
kind of dance, hesitant to open their hearts fully when they knew that she
might be returning to America in the spring. After their encounter with the
Hannya, knowing that life was too short for such hesitations, they had become
closer than ever, but the question of the future remained.

Now she hurried down the street
toward the school, hoping that his parents had already left, though that seemed
unlikely. If they were gone, Hachiro would have called her by now. She slipped
her cell phone out of her pocket and double-checked — with her hat on and
the thickness of her new winter coat, perhaps she hadn't heard the ring tone —
but there'd been no calls.

She crossed the street to the
arch at the edge of the school property, but immediately veered off of the path
that would have led to the front door. With the short winter day's light
already dimming toward late afternoon darkness, she passed beneath the shadow
of the school building, its architecture still so reminiscent of some ancient
fortress out of feudal Japan.

A cold wind blew off the bay
behind her, whipping around the corner of the school, but now she put the
building between herself and the bay and the wind dropped to almost nothing. The
last of the day's sunlight glowed gold through the trees to the west. Her new
boots crunched in a patch of snow left over from the last storm, though most of
it had melted away from the low-lying areas for now.

Sakura and Miho had only visited
for a couple of hours. They had rushed right over to visit her upon their
arrival, and had to get back to prepare for the next day's resumption of
classes. Plus, they wanted to eat dinner in the dormitory's dining hall with
the rest of the boarding students.

Kara had hung around at home
until her father had come back, about two-thirty in the afternoon, and they had
discussed their own dinner plans. But then Kara had finally gotten a text from
Hachiro telling her that he was back on campus. Her father had recognized the
look on her face immediately and told her to go, but to be back by six o'clock.