A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) Read online

  Kara would not have wanted to stay in Japan forever but, as much as she missed her friends back home, when it had come time to discuss staying another year she had not hesitated a moment. She wanted to graduate with Sakura and Miho. Her father wanted to see where his relationship with Miss Aritomo would lead, and Kara wondered as well.

  And then there was Hachiro.

  Growing up, she had had crushes on any number of boys, and once or twice she had thought she had fallen in love. Now, though, something was growing inside of her that made her think that those other times had been just her wishing to be in love. Maybe the real thing was something entirely different, not just the space between a kitten and a cat but between a cat and a Bengal tiger.

  She tried not to think about it. Over the past few months, the idea of love had started to frighten her almost as much as Kyuketsuki's curse. All she knew was that, just as her father wanted to see where things would go with Miss Aritomo, she was curious to discover what the future had in store for her and Hachiro. And she couldn't wait to tell him she would be back for her senior year.

  For a long time, they had done a kind of dance, hesitant to open their hearts fully when they knew that she might be returning to America in the spring. After their encounter with the Hannya, knowing that life was too short for such hesitations, they had become closer than ever, but the question of the future remained.

  Now she hurried down the street toward the school, hoping that his parents had already left, though that seemed unlikely. If they were gone, Hachiro would have called her by now. She slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and double-checked — with her hat on and the thickness of her new winter coat, perhaps she hadn't heard the ring tone — but there'd been no calls.

  She crossed the street to the arch at the edge of the school property, but immediately veered off of the path that would have led to the front door. With the short winter day's light already dimming toward late afternoon darkness, she passed beneath the shadow of the school building, its architecture still so reminiscent of some ancient fortress out of feudal Japan.

  A cold wind blew off the bay behind her, whipping around the corner of the school, but now she put the building between herself and the bay and the wind dropped to almost nothing. The last of the day's sunlight glowed gold through the trees to the west. Her new boots crunched in a patch of snow left over from the last storm, though most of it had melted away from the low-lying areas for now.

  Sakura and Miho had only visited for a couple of hours. They had rushed right over to visit her upon their arrival, and had to get back to prepare for the next day's resumption of classes. Plus, they wanted to eat dinner in the dormitory's dining hall with the rest of the boarding students.

  Kara had hung around at home until her father had come back, about two-thirty in the afternoon, and they had discussed their own dinner plans. But then Kara had finally gotten a text from Hachiro telling her that he was back on campus. Her father had recognized the look on her face immediately and told her to go, but to be back by six o'clock.

  She walked across the quad to the dormitory, noting the cars in the lot to the right of the building. Some parents were only just now dropping their children off, and several students were walking up from the parking lot. A guy she vaguely recognized used his key to unlock the dorm's front door and Kara picked up her pace to catch it before it closed again.

  Hachiro's parents couldn't possibly still be here. He hadn't brought anything but a suitcase home, so dropping him off should only have taken a few minutes. But he hadn't called yet. She told herself he was just putting his things away, but a part of her felt hurt by this. Miho and Sakura had rushed over to see her first thing, not bothering even to unpack, but Hachiro seemed in no rush. Had he had second thoughts during the holidays? Had he met someone in those two short weeks?

  She told herself she was being foolish, but still quickened her pace up the stairs and down the hall to his room. After hours, girls weren't allowed in the boys' halls, but for now the corridors were busy with friends getting reacquainted, laughing and gossiping and trading small New Year's gifts. She and Hachiro had agreed on no gifts at the holidays. People tended to put too much weight on such things, interpreting any gift as if it defined the relationship, and she didn't want that kind of pressure for either of them. Now she regretted it a little. A sign of his affection would be nice.

  Oh, great. Doubting him already. He just got back. She rolled her eyes at her own insecurity, even as she realized that she had never cared so much about what anyone else felt about her, except for her parents.

  Amused at her own nervousness, she rapped on his door. She waited eight or ten seconds before knocking again, bouncing impatiently. Kara glanced up and down the hallway, wondering if he might be visiting Ren or one of his other friends. That wouldn't bode well, either, priority-wise, though he had texted her, so that counted for something.

  As she debated whether to knock again, the door opened.

  In his Boston Red Sox cap and a rumpled sweatshirt, he looked very cute. She had often told Hachiro he was her own giant Teddy bear, which always got a shy smile from him. But for a moment, as he pulled the door open, she caught sight of a look on his face that was anything but a smile. He seemed sad and tired.

  And then he saw her, and his face lit up in a grin, and she knew that all of her angsting had been pointless.

  Without a word he pulled her into his arms, crushing him in his massive embrace, and she squeezed back for all she was worth. Hachiro kissed the top of her head — receiving whistles and hoots from other boys in the corridor for the effort — and then took a step back, holding her hands in his as he looked down at her.

  "Hello," he said.

  Kara exhaled contentedly. "Hey."

  Hachiro lifted her chin and gave her a gentle kiss. She pulled off his Red Sox cap, revealing his unruly mess of hair, and donned the hat herself, setting it backward on her head.

  "You gonna let me in?" she asked.

  "Of course," he said, standing a bit straighter.

  Hachiro had been raised to be a proper Japanese boy, with all the courtesies and formalities that implied. Kara had broken him of some of those manners, but he still treated her as a guest whenever she visited his room. Now he stepped back to let her in, and she went to his desk and slid herself up to sit on top of it.

  He left the door open. The school had rules governing all areas of conduct, and were very strict about the interaction between male and female students, but Kara thought he would have left the door open anyway so that no one would get the wrong idea about what was or wasn't going on behind closed doors.

  Not that she would have minded a little time behind closed doors. But that was what late night walks were for.

  "Happy New Year," she said.

  Hachiro gave her a very formal bow, but she knew that now he was overdoing it for effect. "Happy New Year," he said in English.

  "I'm sorry I didn't wait for you to call, but I have news and I really wanted to share."

  Hachiro sat on his bed, looking more than ever like a giant bear. The bed was too small for him. "What news?"

  "Well, there's a little bad, but also some good. Which do you want first?"

  His smile faded and she saw a trace of that uneasiness and exhaustion again. "Bad first, please."

  "Don't worry, it's not that bad," she said, swinging her legs where they hung over the edge of the desk. "At the end of this term, my father and I are going home —"

  Hachiro glanced downward, disappointment etched into his face.

  " — for two weeks. And then we'll be back for senior year."

  He laughed out loud. "You're staying?"

  Kara nodded. "Staying."

  Hachiro got up and went to her, picked her up off the desk and swung her around. When he set her down, she felt like she was still flying. He brushed a lock of her blond hair away from her face and traced his fingers along the cheek and the curve of her jaw. Kara swallowed hard, staring i
nto his eyes, and for several long seconds she was speechless, despite a thousand unsaid things that blossomed in her heart.

  He kissed her again, not nearly as gentle as before, and they only stopped to breathe.

  With a quick knock on the open door, Ren stepped into the room. "Hachiro, can I borrow —" he began, halting abruptly when he saw them and covering his eyes. "Ahhh, I'm blind."

  Kara and Hachiro both laughed.

  "What do you need?" Hachiro asked.

  Ren shook his head, long bronze-dyed hair falling across his eyes. "Nothing. Go back to what you were doing. I'll come back later."

  Before either of them could argue or ask him to say, he darted off down the hall. Kara hugged Hachiro again, but as she did she found herself looking around the room, realizing that something was out of place. Or, rather, not at all out of place. Hachiro's suitcase had already been stowed away, whatever clothes he had brought home already integrated back into his school wardrobe. Even his books for the new term were organized on his desk.

  A little tremor of disappointment went through her as she stepped back from him.

  "You've been home for hours."

  Hachiro's happiness fell away like a mask and she saw again the sadness that weighed on him. He seemed exhausted by it.

  "Since last night, actually," he confessed.

  Her heart sank. Part of her mind immediately started making excuses for him, mostly to make herself feel better, but the hurt was too much.

  "What? You didn't . . . why didn't you tell me? Or come see me?"

  "I meant to," he said. "I came back on the train. I wanted to surprise you, but something happened on the train and I've been trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out if I really saw what I think I saw."

  Kara felt a chill dance along her spine. "What do you think you saw?"

  Hachiro looked away from her, out at the darkness beyond his window. When he looked back, his face had gone pale.

  "Jiro's ghost."

  Her breath caught in her throat. Jiro's ghost. Oh, my God.

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm not sure of anything," he said. "Once I would have said it was impossible, but —"

  "But 'impossible' doesn't mean much anymore," Kara finished for him.

  "What do you think it means?" Hachiro asked. "Do you think it's just . . . I don't know, symptoms of the curse? That we've brushed up against so much of the supernatural that we're more aware of it now? Or do you think it's something else, that something else has come to try to finish what Kyuketsuki and the Hannya started?"

  Kara shook her head. "I don't know. But we've got to keep our eyes open. We have to be on guard."

  "I'm always on guard these days."

  He took her hand, then, and she stepped into his embrace, relishing his warmth and strength and how safe she felt in his arms. But she knew it was an illusion.

  As long as the curse remained in place, they were never really safe.

  Chapter Three

  By Saturday morning, Kara's schoolwork was already suffering. She sat in the back of 2-C while her homeroom teacher, the gray-eyed Mr. Sato, droned on about the drop-off in attentiveness — and thus test scores — that many students showed during winter term. She knew she ought to be paying attention, since he might as well have been talking specifically about her, but his voice was such a monotone that it lulled her into a stupor.

  For the past few days, she had been able to think of nothing but Jiro's ghost, and what it might mean. She felt uneasy most of the time, an awful paranoia creeping up on her in quiet moments. Hachiro had been unnerved at first, but with every hour that passed he seemed less and less sure of what he had really seen, and now he acted almost embarrassed by his ghost sighting. Kara had not witnessed it herself, so there was no way she could know for certain what he had seen, but she had a hard time thinking the apparition had been nothing but Hachiro's imagination, and he couldn't claim that it had been some other boy who looked like Jiro, since the kid had been barefoot . . . on a train . . . in the middle of winter.

  So either Hachiro had hallucinated, or he had seen a ghost. And after what they had all experienced over the course of the school year, the supernatural explanation seemed more than likely.

  Though Hachiro had been reluctant to talk about it any further, Kara had insisted they tell Miho, Sakura, and Ren. If this were indeed a sign of new supernatural activity, they had a right to know. They had discussed whether to mention it to Kara's father and Miss Aritomo — and by extension, to Principal Yamato and the police — but decided against it for the moment. If anything else happened, they would report it right away, but Hachiro had sensed no menace in the apparition. He had thought it seemed sad, but not evil, and in the days that had followed none of them had seen anything remotely out of the ordinary. In the past few days, the strangest thing any of them had seen was the bright orange tie that Mr. Sato had worn on Wednesday. Kara took some comfort in that, but still, the idea that ghosts were wandering around Miyazu City disturbed her.

  People were always reporting ghost sightings. All over the world there were places that were believed to be haunted. Japanese folklore was rife with ghost stories. And despite what Kara felt, they could not deny the possibility that Hachiro really had been dreaming or half-awake and imagining things. It might not have anything to do with Kyuketsuki's curse.

  Still, much of the excitement and enthusiasm they had all had about the new year had vanished. Kara knew that she had not been alone in thinking of the new term and the change in the calendar as a fresh start, but they would not escape the curse so easily. Such thoughts troubled her so much that she had been finding it very difficult to pay attention in class, so much so that even her father had noticed. Her homework had been rife with errors and she had started having difficulty retaining what she had read. All of that, and they had only been in school for a few days.

  She wished she hadn't had to come into school today. It had been hard for her to get used to having classes on Saturday mornings. This weekend she really needed a break, and something fun to distract her. But at least she would have this afternoon and all of Sunday off. Maybe she could talk her friends into going to a movie tonight. She had already decided to try to persuade them to go tubing. She doubted her father would have time to take them up to one of the mountains tomorrow, but the weather reports had been hinting at a potential snowstorm. If it arrived quickly enough, they could go someplace nearby. She knew a hill not far from the school that seemed promising.

  Mr. Sato finished his lecture and glanced at the clock. Soon the bell would ring to signal the end of homeroom period and the teachers would all move to their first classes of the day. That was one thing Kara loved about school in Japan. It made so much more sense for the teachers to be nomads, roving from room to room for each class, instead of sending hundreds of students herding into the halls between each period.

  "Miho," Sato-sensei said. "I believe you have responsibility for the toban today."

  Hearing her friend's name, Kara perked up for the first time this morning. Miho's shyness had lessened over the course of the school year, but as she stood up and went to the front of the classroom she looked like she wanted to crawl out of her skin. No matter how much she might come out of her shell, Miho did not like to be in the spotlight.

  She took a clipboard from Mr. Sato and turned to face the class, adjusting her glasses. Her long hair fell in a curtain across her face and she did not push it away, choosing instead to hide behind it as if it were a veil. Toban was a rotating duty schedule for the homeroom. Every day a different student took attendance and made announcements and every time it was Miho's turn, she got stage fright, which was funny because she loved Noh theatre so much. If she had the opportunity to be on an actual stage, portraying someone else, she would probably be fine. It was only being herself that made her self-conscious.

  One by one, she called the names of their classmates. When she got to Kara, she glanced up and Kara gave her a little wave,
which made Miho smile.

  After attendance, she flipped a page to announcements and immediately her eyes lit up. Then Miho grinned.

  "This year's ensoku will be on Monday," she announced. "The entire school will be visiting Takigami Mountain Observatory. Appropriate footwear and winter clothing are recommended."

  Immediately the excited chatter began. Kara smiled so wide that her face hurt. It felt like her prayers had been answered. She had just been thinking about how badly she needed a break, something to take her mind off of Jiro's ghost, and now their Monday classes had just been replaced by a field trip. The English translation of 'ensoku' was something like 'far feet,' and from what Kara had read, sometimes they literally entailed much farther journeys than Takigami Mountain Observatory, but as far as she was concerned, any field trip would do.

  Mr. Sato tapped his fingers on his desk and gave the class a dirty look, which would normally have silenced them but today only managed to diminish the chatter to whispers. When he frowned and took off his glasses, that had the desired effect. It was like he had superpowers or something. Anytime he took his glasses off, they knew that he meant business and that from that point forward any infraction would lead to punishment. Someone would be kneeling on the hard, cold floor of the corridor.

  "I will see you all at the end of the day," Mr. Sato said. "Do not let your excitement dull your focus on your studies."

  Kara smiled. The news of the ensoku would not dull her focus. On the contrary, it finally gave her something good to focus on.

  When the wind gusted, it became quite cold on top of Takigami Mountain. The morning had begun with a clear blue sky, but as the day went on it had gradually turned a stark white and then an ominous gray. Even so, Kara did not feel very chilly except when the wind picked up. She had worn her new boots over two pair of socks, so her feet were warm enough. Her new jacket — which Miho loved while Sakura attempted to hide how much she hated it — had been the perfect choice. When the wind started to gust she put the hood up and felt very cozy.