It doesn’t take long before I feel her standing beside me. I can feel the warmth of the souls she carries in her arms, the peace and relief that comes with each successful rescue. Technically, I no longer need her to fend off other supernatural entities—something in the hell’s gate energy cured me of that lapse when it left my body. But habits are hard to break, and while I could be miles away, back at my house asleep in bed, I find that my need to be here with her is just as great as her need to be with me.
She sits, still holding the ten-year-olds close to her chest. The changes in Okiku are extraordinary. In her darker moments, she still adopts the guise of the drowned undead, but more often than not, she chooses to appear as her human self. The hundred days she spent in the afterlife gave her the ability to retain a greater semblance of who she was when she was alive. The frightening, malevolent voices no longer speak to her. The ritual took away her malice, like it took the power I’d acquired from that silkworm tree. She is no longer driven to hunt killers because of the voices in her head.
But we hunt them all the same. For the first time in our lives, we have a choice.
It was an easy one to make, now that I think about it. It’s odd how some decisions we make when we feel we have no other choice are the same ones we make when we do.
I take Okiku’s hand in my own and feel the little fluttering souls dancing in my palm. As one, we release them. They glide away from us, circling us briefly the way moths are drawn to flame before they remember themselves and fly up into the night.
“Don’t you have any regrets?” I ask, as we watch the spirits wink out. “You could be up there with them, you know.”
“No.” She squeezes my hand. “I am content.”
We don’t say much after that—happy enough to keep watching the sky, even when there are no other stars in sight. Just a boy and his ghost. Maybe this was a selfish choice. Someone nobler than me might have given Okiku the final peace she deserves. Someone with less baggage than she has would have let him.
But flawed as we are, we are perfect together.
After all, I’m no hero.