“Okaa-san!”I yelled, flinging open the bathroom door. My bedroom. Rushing down the stairs into the kitchen. God, wherewasshe?
“Aika, she’s not here!” Raiden hurried down the stairs after me. “Theogamatookher!”
“Butwhy?” I whirled around to face him, tears blurring my vision. Grief and anger warred in my heart, and I had to fight against the urge to lash out at him physically. “Why weren’t you able to stophim?”
“Believe me, I tried,” Raiden growled. “The bastard was too fast for me. He jumped right over me and grabbed your mother, then poofed out in a puff of purple smoke. There was no way for me to follow—I don’t even know where hewent.”
“Well we need to figure that out,” I said, clenching my hands into fists. “We need to track him down, we needto…”
But how? How the hell were we supposed to track down a magical toad? A wave of hopelessness filled me, and suddenly, the anger fell away, replaced by agonizing grief as I realized a terribletruth.
This was all myfault.
“This isn’t fair,” I choked, tears spilling down my cheeks. “My mother doesn’t deserve this. She’s already dying of cancer. Why did this have to happen? Why didn’t he take me instead, like he was supposedto?”
“Shhh.” Raiden gently enfolded me in his arms, pressing my cheek against his strong chest. I was briefly struck by the urge to push him away, but my need for comfort won out, and I buried my face in his T-shirt and cried. This day had been beyond stressful, and the dawning fact that I was the one responsible for my mother’s kidnapping was the straw that broke the camel’sback.
“It’s all right,” Raiden said roughly, stroking my back. His big hands gliding down my tense muscles eased some of my pain, and as I sucked in breath after shuddering breath, I took in his scent. It was some kind of incense, mixed with his inherently masculine scent, and it calmed me enough that I finally drewaway.
“Sorry about your shirt,” I muttered, swiping at the big wet stain on the front ofit.
Raiden shrugged. “Shirts are replaceable,” he said, slipping a hand beneath my chin. He tilted my face up to meet his. “You’re not, Aika, and it’s obvious that someone thinks you’re valuable enough to kidnap. We need to find out who, andwhy.”
“My mom specifically mentioned Kai,” I said as I wiped at my face with mysleeve.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Raiden raked a hand through his long hair, inadvertently yanking it from its ponytail. It swung free around his angular face, lending an edge of wildness to his otherwise stoic appearance. “Kai has been sealed away for thousands of years. The only way he could have come back isif…”
“If what?” I asked. My stomach sank as an expression of dawning horror crept over Raiden’s face. “Raiden, what isit?”
“That archaeology excavation we heard on the radio…” Raiden swallowed. “I think they might have been digging where Kai’s tomb waslocated.”
“Shit.” It was my turn to rake my hand through my hair. “Just who is Kai, anyway? If he was buried in some kind of tomb, how is he still alive? Was itrecent?”
“Recent?” Raiden laughed hollowly. “The last time Kai was seen alive was nearly two thousand years ago. He was imprisoned for using dark magic to kill the son of his clan’s leaderandthe woman he was engaged tomarry.”
“Two thousand years ago?” I squeaked, my mind struggling to process that. “That doesn’t make sense. How can he still be alive in that tomb two thousand yearslater?”
Raiden reached for the kitchen towel hanging from the refrigerator door and handed it to me. “It’s a long story, but he’d been joined with a powerful evil spirit when he was sealed away, so that spirit might have kept him alive all this time,” he said as I mopped my face. “Powerful spells were placed on that tomb so that humans would never find it. I don’t understand how these archaeologists managed to dig itup.”
“Maybe Kai figured out a way to weaken the spell,” I suggested. I couldn’t even believe I was saying these things, thinking in these terms. But as they said, when inRome…
“We need to go and talk to my parents,” Raiden said firmly. “There’s no point in standing around here speculating. My entire family are shamans, and they know more about the legend of Kai than Ido.”
I nodded. “Let me grab some stuff first.” There was no point in fighting Raiden on this any longer—his parents were the only people who could tell me who Kai was and help me find mymother.
“Okay. But hurry up. We don’t have a lot oftime.”
I dashed up the stairs to my room, then exchanged my backpack for a cross-body purse and stuffed my wallet, keys, a small canister of pepper spray, and lipstick inside. I didn’t know if pepper spray was going to have any effect onyokaior ghosts, but it was the only weapon I owned, and I damn well wasn’t going to leave withoutit.
The lipstick wasn’t going to do anything either, but my mom had taught me to never leave the house without makeup.You never know when you might need it,she’d always cautioned me.What if you run into Mr. Right? Or your dreamemployer?
Tears stung at my eyes at the thought of my mother. I’d pray to any god I had to if it meant getting her back safe and sound. Sniffing back the tears, I shrugged on a denim hoodie, then ran down the stairs to meetRaiden.
“I got us another cab. It’s outside,” Raiden said, standing by the front door. He looked me up and down, and whatever he saw must have reached past his tough exterior, because his gaze softened a little. “Are youready?”
I pulled in a long breath. “Yeah. Let’s just get this overwith.”
I locked up the house and got into the cab with Raiden. As I was putting my seatbelt on, Raiden leaned forward to talk to the driver. “Takaoka Investigations,please.”
