Raiden shrugged. “Some of them are, which is why shamans have to join with them in order to use their powers. But a ghost with a grudge is a powerful thing. Killing her own husband didn’t bring the Kuchisake-onna peace—it only corrupted her heart further, which is why she can’t pass on. It is the duty of a shaman to purify these souls so they can move on to the afterlife.”
I pressed the heel of my hand against one of my throbbing temples. So many questions were swirling through my head, questions I could spend all night asking. But foremost in my mind was the desire to shut myself in my room, crawl under the covers, and pretend like this had never happened. I had no room in my life for ghosts. I might be a reiki practitioner, but I was pragmatic. I didn’t believe in ghosts.
“Look, I’m sorry I screwed up your…purification ritual…or whatever it was you were trying to do,” I said. “But I don’t really have time for all this. I have to get home to my mother.”
“Are you telling me you’ve never seen a ghost before today?” Raiden’s eyes widened.
I shook my head. “Nope. And I don’t plan on seeing one ever again.” I pushed myself upright, then made to move past him. “Nice meeting you, Raiden.”
Raiden slapped a hand against the opposite wall, nearly clotheslining me. “Oww!” I complained as my chest slammed into his rock-hard forearm. He had some serious muscles hiding underneath that shirt and jacket. “What is your problem?”
“You can’t just walk away from this,” he said. “Once you gain the Sight, you have it for life, Aika. It’s not something you can wish away.”
I scowled. “Well I’m damn well going to try,” I snapped, shoving at his arm. Unfortunately, my attempts to move it were about as effective as shoving at a brick wall. “Are you going to let me go? You can’t hold me hostage in a restaurant all night. Fifty bucks can only buy you so much time.” I slid my gaze sideways, toward the chef, who was watching us again. I knew that if things got violent he would step in—it wasn’t in his best interests to have a fight break out in his kitchen.
Raiden sighed. “At least let me take you home,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon, and you’ve lost your bike.”
I cursed. “I have to go back and get it,” I said, ducking under his arm. “It’s my only mode of transportation!”
Raiden snagged my wrist, pulling me to a stop yet again. An electric current shot through the veins in my inner arm at the skin-on-skin contact, and I jerked, startled. His eyes flashed, as if he’d felt the same thing, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air in my lungs. He was way too close.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said gruffly, to my surprise. “I’ll pay for you to replace it. It’s not safe for you to be wandering around, especially now that you can see the ghosts. They don’t like knowing that others can see them for who they really are, and if you don’t know how to defend yourself you can get killed.”
An icy chill rippled down my spine at the dire note in his voice. As much as I didn’t want to believe Raiden, I also didn’t want to get myself killed by my closed-mindedness. Better to be safe than sorry, right?
“Fine,” I said. “I live in the Richmond district.”
“All right.” Raiden finally let me go. “We’ll call a cab, then.”
We went back to the main street, and I blinked—the sun was already setting, bathing the tops of the buildings with gilded light. Just how long had he and I been arguing? Raiden flagged down a cab, then held the door open for me so I could get in first.
Pretty gentlemanly behavior, I thought as I slid along the faux-leather seats, considering he was yelling at me before.
“So,” he said casually as the cab eased into traffic. “You work at Shabu Shabu House?”
I nodded—he must have recognized my uniform. “My mom and I run the restaurant together.” I didn’t see any reason to tell him that, right now, I was the only one running the place. I winced as I remembered all the paperwork I’d skipped—I would be having a very full day tomorrow.
“I see. And you’ve never noticed anything…odd, about any of your employees?”
I was about to shake my head when I remembered how Janet had changed from her normal appearance to a weird, monstrous, mummy thing. My stomach turned as the memory of her yellowed, sunken eyes and skeletal arms filled my head.
“I see that you have,” Raiden observed quietly, switching to Japanese so we wouldn’t be overheard by the driver. “She’s a gaki.”
My mouth dropped open. “How…how do you know that?” Was this guy friends with Janet? Surely I would have noticed if she was hanging around a hunk like this.
“I’m a shaman. It’s the family business to know which yokai are hanging about town, and Janet has a file. She’s actually been working at the café since the day it opened, under different guises.”
“Well that explains why she’s always eating,” I muttered, trying to wrap my head around it. I couldn’t deny that the hallucination I’d seen looked pretty much exactly like a gaki. Gakis were tormented spirits who were constantly hungry and thirsty, but no matter how often they ate, they could never satisfy themselves. And Janet had a constant habit of taking frequent food breaks. She always brought in a huge bag filled with snacks to tide her over on every shift.
“So, if you know that Janet is a yokai, how come you’ve left her alone?” I asked warily. “Or do you not hunt down every yokai that you find?”
Raiden shrugged. “She does no harm, so we leave her be,” he said. “The reason she is so attached to your café is because it once belonged to an ancestor of hers.”
“Oh.” Sadness swept through me—what must it be like to be tied to a spot for all eternity, simply because you couldn’t bear to part with something that had belonged to a loved one? But I shook it off—I couldn’t let myself be swept into all this stuff. I needed to focus on my medical degree and keep the shop running at the same time. I hoped to start working in cancer research, and if my mom went back into remission, that might buy enough time for me to help find a real cure for her.
A slim hope, but one I clung to daily.
“You need to come by my family’s shrine,” Raiden said, breaking my train of thought. “I get that you don’t want to be a shaman, but since you obviously are one, you need to learn the basics of how to defend yourself.”
I scowled. “Just because I can see ghosts doesn’t mean I’m a shaman,” I argued. “Maybe I’m just clairvoyant. Ever think about that?”
Raiden threw back his head and laughed, flashing perfect white teeth. The sound raised the hairs on my arms, and I couldn’t figure out if I was annoyed or turned on, which really pissed me off. Why did he have to be so damn attractive?
“Denial doesn’t suit you well,” he finally said, his gaze hard again. “You’re a walking statistic right now, Aika, and as a shaman, I can’t just stand aside and watch you get killed. You need to learn what you’re dealing with.”