“Sure.” My stomach sank with disappointment as his hand fell away, but I did my best not to show it. I lifted my wrist and touched the turtle charm I’d added to my bracelet, summoning theUmigameback to us. He appeared in less than five minutes, speeding around the side of a huge coral reef in thedistance.
“You’re pretty fast for a turtle,” I teased as we floated onto hisshell.
“Turtles are only slow on land,”he huffed back.“Where do you want togo?”
“Monkey Island. Do you know where itis?”
“I know where everythingis.”
“Is it close by?” I asked, patting the turtle lightly on theshell.
“Closer than the last journey. Relax now. We will be theresoon.”
Nodding, I settled down on theUmigame’sback. After a moment of hesitation, Raiden joinedme.
As the turtle sped off into the ocean’s great wide beyond, Raiden and I lay down on our backs. We stared up at the distant ocean surface, like we were sunning ourselves on a beach instead of riding on a giant turtle shell. Even with the water swirling around us, I could feel Raiden’s body heat caressing my skin. He was close enough to touch, our hands barely an inch apart, and as he turned his face toward mine, my heart skipped a beat. There was such intense longing and regret in his eyes…a longing mirrored in my own heart, if I was honest with myself. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to run my hands down his chest and explore the tanned skin and muscles hidden beneath his shirt, just out ofreach.
The look in Raiden’s eyes deepened as if he could sense my intention. He shifted a little closer, reaching for myhand…
“Umm.” Heart hammering, I quickly propped my head up beneath my hand, turning my body sideways to create distance. How could I feel this way, when just a little while ago I was turning green with envy overShota?
“What do you know about Sarushima?” I asked, desperate to put my attention on something,anything, else. “Do the monkeys have superpowers, or are they just normalmonkeys?”
Raiden stared at me for two very long, tension-filled seconds, his hand still outstretched. That tug in my chest intensified, but I resisted, refusing to give in to the urge to wrap myself up in him. I needed to sort out my feelings for these two before I made any moves. I refused to be the asshole who strung two different guys around because I couldn’t make up my mind about which one Iwanted.
“I don’t know a lot about Monkey Island,” Raiden finally said, dropping his hand. “I think they’re normal-sized monkeys, but they can talk like humans, and they’ve built some kind of society on the island. Beyond that, I’m notsure.”
“Right. That’s why there’s a king, I guess.” I chewed on my lower lip as I thought about that. “Do you think myfurimight come in handy? Since it’s kind of like amonkey?”
Raiden shrugged. “Not sure. It’s worth summoning him, though, especially if it turns out that the monkeys can’t talk. We’ll need a translator.” His lips twitched a little. “You end up saying the damnedest things sometimes when you become ashaman.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I never thought I’d find myself needing to communicate with a tribe ofmonkeys.”
“Trust me, this isn’t even going to come close to the weirdest thing you’ll ever encounter,” Raiden said. “My parents and grandparents have told me all kinds of crazy stories about their encounters withyureiandyokaiinJapan.”
“Oh really?” Yesterday, I would have blown this off as nonsense, but my eyes were open now. After all, knowledge was power, and I needed to know everything I could if I wanted to defeat Kai and save my mother. “Likewhat?”
“Well, there was this one time my mom went to a hotel in Japan to help out with a group ofmakuragaeshithat kept flipping pillows.” Raidensmirked.
“What do you mean flipping pillows?” I asked, pursing my lips as I tried to remember something about the creatures. Unfortunately, they’d never featured in the stories my mother had toldme.
“Makuragaeshiare these childlike spirits that sort of look like samurais.” He waved off the comment. “They like to haunt rooms and play pranks on the guests. So they’ll take a sleeping person’s pillow and put it under their feet or step into ash and track footprints on the ceiling. That sort ofthing.”
“So your mom went to Japan to deal with a bunch of supernatural pranksters?” I asked, raising aneyebrow.
“Supernatural pranksters that looked like children dressed up for Halloween, yes.” Raiden shook his head. “It was kind of ridiculous when you think about it, because they’re harmless, but the client paid a lot of money because they were losingmoney…”
“Oh, do you guys do a lot of jobs like that?” I asked, gesturing at him. “You know, remove harmless spirits formoney?”
“Not as many as you think, but we rely on enough of them that it bugs me.” He shrugged. “It pays the bills, though, and besides, no one wants to deal with horrible monsters all the time. Jobs like that do help shamans learn the ropes.” He smiled at me. “Normally, that’d be the type of job I’d take someone like you on fortraining.”
“Oh, are there lots of easier spirits and such?” I asked, surprised the jobs were socommon.
“Tons of them,” Raiden said, nodding, before he launched into a story about another hotel that had trouble with amokumokuren. He spent the rest of the journey telling me more stories from his family’s history. As he talked, he grew more animated, his eyes sparkling with laughter as he painted me the most outlandish pictures using only his words andhands.
Watching him talk about his family business made me wish we’d met under better circumstances. In a world where my mom hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer, and my father had survived, I would have been brought up with the safety and security of a real family. A shaman family, going by what thefurihad told me, where I would have been taught to use my powers from a young age. My father probably had his own set of crazy family stories, stories that would have been both entertaining and educating. He had likely been the only man alive who knew the truth about what had happened to theyokaishamans after Yamatai had crumbled away intonothingness.
“Do you think there might still beyokaishamans around?” I asked suddenly, interrupting Raiden. “If my father was one, he had to have come from a family of them. Could I have relatives out theresomewhere?”
