A Touch of Mistletoe (7 page)

He knew the spirit was female, but his talent didn't get more specific or helpful than that. Unfortunately, he needed more in order to finish the job.

*~*~*

The apartment was tiny, but if Ash was to serve as bodyguard there was no point renting out the room next door. After Yuki was done with his studies for the night and Ash had come up against all the dead ends he could handle, they were ready to bunk down. Yuki drew a thin, collapsible screen across the room, dividing the space in half, and Ash made sure to keep his face turned away rather than watch his shadow figure undressing. The first night he'd caught shadow-Yuki stripping his shirt off and that memory was seared into his brain in a way Ash couldn't afford.

"Ash?" Yuki whispered when the room was dark and they were lying on their pads on their respective sides of the screen.

"Hm?" Ash grunted.

"What are you doing for Christmas?"

"Wha—?" The question caught Ash off guard. They had glanced off the surface of personal inquiries, keeping it limited to small talk like music and favorite foods.

Yuki's voice was quieter and more breathy when he continued. "I only wondered, I mean, if this goes on very long, whether I would be keeping you from plans."

"Oh." Ash extracted a hand from the blankets pulled to his chin and rubbed his face. "Nah, I don't have any plans. My family's all back in Georgia, Yuki. I don't celebrate here."

"You don't have anyone special here to spend Christmas with?"

"Not a single one." Ash chuckled. "I mean, my cashier at the store is pretty special, but I always give her the day off so she can spend it with her boyfriend."

"Oh." Yuki shifted on the other side of the screen and the shadow shape looked as though he was propped on an elbow. "There's no one?" He sounded strangely hopeful.

Ash held his breath. Before he could answer, a strong waft of perfume rolled over him and his stomach bottomed out. The floor beneath him seemed to rock, and a picture rattled from its perch on a shelf stuffed from corner to corner with talismans above his head. Ash sat up, narrowly missing the picture frame as it fell onto the pillow where he'd been the instant before.

"Earthquake!" Yuki sounded panicky. He shoved the screen aside, scrambling forward on hands and knees.

Ash tried to get up but the sense of vertigo was too strong.

"No, don't. Just get to the door!" Yuki crawled past him.

Ash followed, and they made their way to the doorway, crammed thigh to thigh, braced between the frame.

The tremors halted at once. "Why isn't anyone else—" Yuki began, sounding frustrated. He got his legs up under him, bracing arms on his knees and looking wary.

Ash got to his feet and offered him a hand. He inhaled. The cloying remnant of perfume was still in his nose. "It wasn't an earthquake."

Yuki slid his fingers into Ash's, frowning as he let himself be reeled into standing position. He was a lightweight, as Ash had expected, but his fingers held steely strength. "What do you mean?"

"Didn't you feel the ozone charge?" Ash asked.

With a huff, Yuki turned away and pulled his hand free, crossing his arms. "It was an
earthquake
. I couldn't... I couldn't think about anything else."

Ash sucked in a quick, repentant breath.
Oh, right
. "You're from Osaka. You were in the earthquake a couple years back?" He should have realized. The unquiet spirits from that incident were one reason he'd come to Japan to begin with—and Yuki was from Osaka.

"Yeah." Yuki's shoulders dropped and he hovered on the threshold to his apartment, blowing out a sigh. "I forget not everyone knows. Or thinks about it every day."

"Come on." Ash patted his shoulder, offering clumsy comfort. "Let's see if we can get to sleep, all right? You have practice early again tomorrow."

Yuki nodded. Once they were back in his room, he shoved the screen all the way back and sat on his heels on the floor pad, turning imploring eyes up at Ash. "Can we put the futons together? I... I'm sorry, I know it's an imposition, but I don't want to sleep alone."

Ash was about to argue that even with a screen between them, sleeping in such close quarters was hardly alone, but the expression on Yuki's face stopped him. He looked strained, eyes glittering in a way that made Ash worry tears would fall if he said no. He'd feel heartless if he denied him. "Sure."

Hopefully he wouldn't do something embarrassing in his sleep.

*~*~*

"I thought you said you could guard against the spirit getting violent." Yuki confronted him on the subway on their way to the rink.

"She wasn't," Ash replied. "Not the way you're thinking."

Yuki's quizzical head tilt would have been cute if he didn't look so troubled. "What do you mean?"

"It was an illusion," Ash said. "The earthquake wasn't real. It didn't happen to the whole building, or even the whole floor—only to you and me."

Yuki tucked his arms in and gave him a defiant frown. "Why?"

"She wanted to get your attention."

The spirit had Ash's attention secured, but he didn't have enough to resolve her fixation on Yuki. There hadn't been any suspicious deaths in his apartment, or even the entire building. He needed more information.

Meanwhile Yuki was on edge. He fell on almost every attempted jump that morning until Ash was wincing in sympathy and his coach from L.A., a short, portly white man with a brush cut and flared-up rosacea, took him aside and spoke quietly to him for several minutes. Ash watched their respective body postures. They leaned in toward each another, loose-limbed, Yuki with his hands on his waist and the coach making expansive gestures. At last he patted Yuki on the shoulder and rolled a hand toward the door.

Yuki jogged toward Ash, mopping his sweaty face with a towel. Even with his eyes downcast, shoulders dropped, there was a glow about him—not an aura, Ash couldn't see those. Yuki simply had his own inner radiance.

"What's up?" Ash asked, wishing he had a water bottle to hand him.

"Coach Andrew says to take a break." Yuki plopped down beside him. "So I'll take a break."

"Did he mean for you to take that break in the rink?" Ash turned a crooked grin on him. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but he had overheard Andrew telling Yuki to go outside, blow off some steam, maybe grab some lunch.

Yuki started. "I almost forgot you speak English."

"I'll take that as a compliment on my Japanese."

"Oh, it is!" Yuki got to his feet with a weary sigh, bending over to massage the muscles of his right leg, then his left. He glanced sidelong at Ash, biting his lip and brushing hair from his left eye. "Go to lunch with me?" His long, slender fingers were well-shaped in a way Ash couldn't help but admire.

Ash had to remind his racing heart to calm down; Yuki might appear to be flirting, but Ash couldn't take it that direction. Though it had almost sounded that way. "Of course," he said with a laugh. He stood. "I'm your bodyguard, after all."

"Okay, let me go change out of my skates."

Once he was gone, Ash tried to get a handle on his emotions. He pulled out his phone and fiddled with it. His momma was psychic, though not in the way Ash experienced it. He was surprised she hadn't given him a call or sent him a text to browbeat him for his inappropriate and misguided interest. He could admit privately that he was powerfully attracted to Yuki, despite the age difference, and Yuki acted like... well, Ash hadn't seen him interact with any of his peers so Ash didn't know for sure that he could call it flirting. But it felt like it.

But the age gap was only the beginning of a long list of reasons it was a bad idea. Cultural gaps, for one, and he didn't think for a minute anyone would forget he was black. Ash's job was better off if he kept a low profile, and if he was with an internationally famous figure skater, that would be anything but. There was also Yuki's profession…

The cloying cotton sugar and jasmine scent rose thick and fast in Ash's nostrils, breaking into his thoughts. He looked up from his phone, saw Yuki walking up the nearby aisle toward him. Ash reached into his jacket pocket but before he could pull out one of the paper wards he'd prepared, the gym bag twitched where Yuki had left it sitting one seat over from Ash. A charm dangling from the zippered end rose up, snapped off, and flung itself across the five seats' worth of distance to land at Yuki's feet.

Yuki froze, eyes wide. He stooped to pick up the charm—a typical shrine token, red placket with gold kanji lettering—and his face was pasty as he stared at Ash.

"Yuki—" Ash got to his feet.

Yuki turned on his heel and ran out, clutching the charm to his chest.

Ash followed. Yuki was swift, but Ash's long legs ate up the distance between them. He didn't even have to hurry too much before he closed in close enough to catch at Yuki's arm.

Yuki swung around, eyes down, his face a study in misery.

"Let's go have lunch, okay?" Ash palmed his shoulder gently, stroking the top with his thumb. "Lunch."

With a nod, Yuki let Ash lead him out of the building. He didn't know the area, but the district was bustling with shops and little eateries of all kinds. Ash selected one at random, figuring they couldn't go wrong with a place that boasted rice bowls with choice of toppings.

He didn't ask any questions until they had been seated for several minutes, drinking tea at a mostly-empty counter, and Yuki had released his white-knuckled grip on the charm. Ash nudged Yuki with his elbow and Yuki slumped toward him, elbow on the counter, the top of his head brushing Ash's arm.

"You gonna tell me why you're so worked up about the charm?" Ash was building different potential explanations in his head, but he couldn't just select the most plausible. He needed to know why Yuki had reacted that way, worse than the spilled paint or even the perceived earthquake that had triggered memories of the one in Osaka.

"It's the shrine." Yuki straightened, putting a finger on the red charm and sliding it over the counter toward Ash. "The paint on the wall, the photograph that fell during the earthquake, and this... they all have the shrine in common. That can't be a coincidence, right?"

"Maybe not," Ash said. "Which shrine?"

"Yukinoha," Yuki said. "But I haven't been there in weeks. I go there for good luck sometimes, for skating or before a test."

Ash began to nod. "A few weeks ago, then, what did you go to the shrine to do? Can you remember what was on your mind that day?"

Yuki sucked in a sharp breath and sat up straight, tucking his arms and legs in close. He gazed across the counter and said nothing.

"If you had a strong reason for being there that day, it could have attracted an unquiet spirit," Ash continued.

"Do you...
need
to know that? To dispel the spirit?" Yuki spoke so quietly it was almost an undertone, his fringe of black hair obscuring his eyes as he bent his head.

Ash stirred his chopsticks through the rice bowl, mixing egg and bits of seaweed around. "Strictly speaking, no. But it can help significantly. I might be able to resolve the spirit's fixation faster—before anything else happens."

Yuki breathed in and out, high and sharp. He lifted his head and spoke looking straight forward instead of at Ash. "I don't want to say."

"All right." Ash kept his tone low and affable. "I respect that."

"Can we change the subject?" Yuki swiveled on his seat and struck Ash with the full force of imploring eyes. "Coach said to take a break, and this is only winding me up. What kind of... oh, I've got it. What kind of cake do you like?"

Ash smiled. "Now, that's a tough subject." He lifted a hand, splaying out his thumb to begin counting. "I'm a man who's serious about cake. First you've got your chocolate cakes, then you've got your cheesecakes, then there's boozy cakes..."

*~*~*

During the afternoon session of Yuki's practice, Ash buried himself in research. The Saitama arena didn't have wireless so he was stuck relying on his phone, but it pulled up relevant details. The Yukinoha shrine was a distinctive landmark, and the only problem was its resurgence of popularity due to Yuki's recent patronage.

Ash had to smile as he scrolled through articles on the shrine, many of the recent ones involving either a picture of Yuki at the shrine, or the fact that Yuki went to the shrine for luck before competitions. It really cemented in his head that Yuki had become Japan's beloved Prince of the Ice, and they had their hopes rooted in his chance for an Olympic medal.

No one had died at the Yukinoha shrine, but in digging through the articles, Ash tracked down a few covering a landslide nearby that had been caused by the most recent, violent earthquake in the vicinity.

"Takahashi Maya, huh?" Ash uttered softly.

The air seemed to contract around him and he looked up, tucking his phone in his inner jacket pocket. Energy twanged briefly but settled into normal human rhythms. Yuki was leaving the ice. Ash did a careful survey of the nearby surroundings. Yanking the charm and tossing it at Yuki had probably taken up a great deal of the spirit's energy, so they were due a reprieve.

Ash stood. "Ready to go home?"

Yuki lifted his chin to Ash, but stood beside the rink a moment longer, speaking quietly with his coach. Rather, Coach Andrew did most of the speaking, and Yuki did a great deal of nodding. At length, Andrew clapped his shoulder and Yuki bent to cover his skates.

"I'll be back," Yuki told Ash, striding toward the locker room.

Ash fiddled with his suit jacket in lieu of his phone; the charge was running out and he hadn't brought his portable battery.

To his surprise, Coach Andrew came over. "Yuki tells me you're helping him with the harassment problem," Andrew said in English, tilting his head to look up into Ash's eyes. He offered his hand in belated introduction. "I'm his coach, Andrew Amante."

"Of course." Ash shook his hand. It only made sense Yuki, or Asami, had told Andrew there was a harassment problem. If the coach heard anything about ghosts he'd assume the stress had caused Yuki to have some kind of mental break. "Ash Harmon. I'm a detective."

"It's good of you to take Yuki on for something so small," Andrew said, expression earnest. "He means a lot to us, so his peace of mind is paramount. Especially with Nationals so close."