His yokai grimoire being literally manifested in front of them. With long white-blond hair that belied her own Japanese heritage, Nashira had vivid purple eyes that were set in a beautiful, elvish face— complete with pointed ears that peeked out from her snow-white hair. Graceful and lithe, she moved like the wind and usually spoke in riddles that gave Nick more questions than answers.
And a resounding migraine he was sure was a brain tumor the size of a bowling ball.
At least that had been true in the past. Today, however, she answered like a “normal” human and not some pestilence demon sent to make him crazy.
“I came to see my husband.”
When she touched Takeshi on the shoulder and his harsh gaze softened, Nick’s jaw fell south without any effort on his part. “Pardon?”
Takeshi took her hand into his and kissed her knuckles. Then he pressed her hand to his cheek and held it there as if it were some sacred object. “It’s true. And I’m told that I owe her presence here to you. For that alone, Malachai, I’m willing to give you a great deal of slack and latitude.”
Nick turned his gaping stare toward Simi. “Did you know about this?”
“That Akri-Tashi married? Well, yeah. Don’t everybody?”
Given that Nick didn’t know Takeshi at all, no. But he knew better than to refute Simi as the demon didn’t like that. So, instead, he turned back to them and tried not to gape.
Nashira smiled. “I was an oracle long before I met Takeshi.”
Okay, he’d go with that. But it still left him with one burning question.
“So you really were a zeitjäger?”
The fact that Nick knew about that part of his past didn’t appear to surprise Takeshi. “An exceptionally long time ago I wore that garb and played that role. Yes.”
That wasn’t exactly how Nick had been told those time-sentinel things worked. Rather his understanding had been you were born as one of them and had to do it forever. Like being a Malachai. There was no choice.
No escape.
Which begged one majorly important question. “So how did you get out?”
“Made a pact with Zev Kotori.”
Takeshi said that as if Nick should know exactly who and what he was talking about, but again he had no clue. Maybe he should have been playing closer attention to all those Grim lessons, after all, and not ignoring the ancient being who hated him. There had been a reason why his father had sent Grim to tutor him—other than as another form of creative abuse. “Who?”
“The god of Time who was in charge of us back in the day.”
Ah … but it still told Nick nothing as he’d never heard the name before. It wasn’t exactly something they referenced in his manga or fighting games. And God forbid they ever covered something useful in school. “From the bitterness in that tone, I take it that he screwed you over somehow.”
“No. His sister, Tiva did. She’s the Untime to his Time. And unlike her brother, she can’t stand to see anyone happy.”
“As a chaos goddess, she’s the one who cursed me into a book.” Nashira’s eyes glistened from unshed tears. “It was her way of keeping me away from my husband. For no reason other than she was a jealous harpy.”
Man, that sucked. Nick couldn’t imagine anything worse than to be banned from Kody.
Well, maybe being locked in Caleb’s laundry room with three week old dirty football jockstraps.
In August.
Yeah, his eyes watered just thinking about it. However, he’d veered off topic again.
Not that it mattered as Takeshi was quick to bring them back to it. “You, as a Malachai, never released Nashira before this. In any known timeline or universe. Yet now she’s here.” He sighed. “I knew when she showed up out of the blue that you’d changed something about the past, probably major, but didn’t really want to investigate. I was too grateful to have her back, whatever the cause. Now that you’re here, I have no choice, but to face the fact that you’ve veered off the highway. So back to what I said … what have you done, boy?”
Nick shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Stopped a couple of apocalypses. Fought a butt-load of demons. And managed to stay alive, much to my daily and eternal surprise.”
Takeshi laughed.
And when he did so, Nick scowled as his powers kicked in with some unexpected disclosures. “Itzal Tsuneo.” The name was out before Nick could control his involuntary verbal diarrhea.
