A hiss came from the darkness, and then the soft shush of something moving along the ground. The small hairs on the back of Kara’s neck stood up and gooseflesh pimpled her skin.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
And then the sound was gone, and the shadows were only shadows.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Miho demanded. “I heard it on the grass, coming after me. I knew it was there. I only caught a glimpse, but…”
She shuddered.
Hachiro stood and reached a hand down for Miho. Kara only spared a glance at them, focusing instead on the shadows.
“I saw… something. Kind of felt it, too,” Kara replied. She thought of her fear from a few minutes earlier, the sense that someone had been watching her, but now she thought that had truly only been her nerves. What had just been here, after Miho, had weight and presence. It felt… the only word she could think of was sinister. An old-fashioned sort of word, but it fit.
“It was chasing you?” Hachiro asked.
Miho nodded. “I was coming from Kara’s house.”
As she offered this, her gaze darkened with some unpleasant memory, and Kara thought she saw anger there.
“Why were you at my house?” Kara asked.
“Later,” Miho replied. “Right now-”
“We have to get inside,” Hachiro said, as the three of them started back toward the dormitory, glancing repeatedly over their shoulders toward the place where Kara had seen that ghostly silhouette.
“I’ve got to get home,” Kara said, suddenly realizing her predicament. To get back to her house, she’d have to pass through the very same shadows through which someone or something had just chased Miho.
“You could call your father,” Hachiro said. “Ask him to come get you.”
“And when he asks why?” Kara wondered.
“You tell him. Or you lie,” Miho said. “But you can’t walk home through that alone, and I’m not going back.”
Hachiro held up a hand. “I’ll walk you,” he said, looking at Kara with a gentle half smile. “Let’s just get Miho safely into the dorm, and-”
“No,” Kara said. “Then you’d have to walk back alone. And besides, it’s got to be close to curfew now as it is. I’ll call him. I don’t feel like asking him for anything right now, but he’ll come get me.”
“What will you say?” Miho asked.
“I’ll say maybe he was right, that I shouldn’t have gone out alone after dark, that I’m scared. The truth, basically. Only without monsters.”
Miho hugged herself, glancing back at the darkness as the three of them walked across the field toward the dorm. Kara and Hachiro kept Miho between them. When they reached the place where Kara had put down her guitar, she picked it up and slung it over her shoulder.
“When you’re ready, we should talk about it,” Kara said.
“Not yet.” Miho shuddered. “Wait until we’re inside. I want lights and locked doors. I want to hide under my covers.”
Kara understood, and fought the urge to try to comfort Miho with humor. Reminding her that her sheet and blanket weren’t much protection wouldn’t be funny right now. If ever.
“I thought I saw a girl,” Hachiro said, whispering as he pulled open the door of the dormitory and stood back to let them pass. “Or a woman.”
Miho shook her head. “That wasn’t a woman. No matter what it looked like.”
8
K ara’s father picked her up in front of the dorm, shooting a stern look at Hachiro as the boy escorted her to the car. It was a total Dad look, and Kara wanted to shout at her father. What, did he think Hachiro had caused the fight they’d had earlier? That he had done something to upset her enough that she didn’t want to walk home? Stupid. She knew that all guys could be stupid sometimes, that they lost the ability to interpret what their eyes were showing them, but it still frustrated her hugely when her father turned out to be one of those men.
Yeah, Dad, she wanted to say, Hachiro is the problem.
Sigh.
Hachiro carried her guitar, put it into the backseat, and headed back into the dorm with about three minutes to spare before curfew. Kara sat in silence beside her father as he turned the car around and drove the almost absurdly short distance back to their house. She had figured he would assume her silence stemmed from their fight, and Kara let him go on thinking that. She wasn’t ready to explain.
“Look,” he said, reverting to English. That was getting to be a habit now, whenever things between them grew tense. “I should have talked to you more about what’s going on between Yuuka… I mean, Aritomo-sensei… and me. But, honey, you can’t pretend you didn’t see this coming. You were the only one who did. I wasn’t looking, and you know that. You know it. And you seemed to want something to happen with us-”
Kara heard the pain and confusion in his voice and knew she had caused it. Her heart gave a painful twist.
“I did,” she admitted, sticking to Japanese. “At first.”
“And now?” her father said, returning to Japanese as well, as if in reaction to her. It seemed safer, somehow, the foreign language putting distance between them.
He pulled the car in beside the house and killed the engine, then looked over at her expectantly. What did he want her to say?
Whatever it was, it would have been a lie.
“Now I need to sleep,” she said. “It’s been a weird night.”
She opened the door and he reached over to touch her arm. Kara glanced sidelong at him. The pleading look had left his face, and now he only seemed frustrated.
He went back to English. “I’m dealing with these feelings as they hit me, honey. Same way you do. I can’t consult you on them before I even know what I’m feeling.”
Kara forced herself to smile. “I know that,” she said, relenting by returning to English as well. “Come on, let’s go in.”
That seemed to satisfy him, but Kara had said it only to end the conversation. She needed time alone-time to think. The instant she was inside the house she made a beeline to her bedroom and shut her door. She’d left her guitar in the car, but no way would she be going out to get it before sunrise.
Miho lay in her bed, covers pulled tight around her, feeling vulnerable in just her T-shirt and underwear. A small fan buzzed at the end of her bed, where she had clipped it to the edge of her desk. The windows were shut tight and locked. Living on the third floor ought to have given her a sense of security, and once upon a time it had. No longer.
The small reading lamp on her desk remained lit. Sakura had known better than to protest. Especially after the whole thing with Ren. Miho had confronted them while they waited for Kara’s father, and told them of her humiliation in front of Ren. Both girls had been hugely apologetic. According to Kara, Miho had “gone so quiet” about her crush on Ren that they had thought she was over him. She had been so angry at them, but that had sprung from her own embarrassment. Her friends loved her and would never have knowingly put her in a position like that. Miho knew that.
It all seemed so foolish now. In comparison to whatever had chased her out there in the dark, and the sheer hunger she had felt emanating from it, a little humiliation was nothing. Someday, she might even find her fumbling flirtation with Ren funny. Not tonight, though. Tonight, nothing was funny.
Miho took a deep breath and shifted under the sheet. In the dim glow of that tiny light, she watched Sakura sleeping, grateful for her presence. She could never have stayed in the room by herself.
Mustering her courage, Miho closed her eyes and hated the darkness behind them. It took her back immediately to the hissing she’d heard in the shadow of the school, away from the moonlight, and the fear that had rushed into her heart returned. She’d been marching back to the dorm from Kara’s house. Had she heard something, noticed something in the shadows? Probably. All Miho knew was that her anger had slipped away and she found herself listening intently to the darkness coalescing around her.