Falling Through Glass (2 page)

“Miss Maeda, you’ve got the part in the opening scene if you want it.”

Emmi looked at Jake. He gave her that same proud look her father used to give her. Tears stung her eyes—her dad would have been all over this moment. She was not going to cry. She’d embarrassed them all enough for one day.

“Thank you. I’d be honored.”

* * * *

When they returned to Malibu, Emmi took the mirror up to her room. She wanted to clean it with the stuff Jake had picked up on the way home but an inexplicable unease prompted her to leave the mirror in the white plastic bag. Her grandmother once told her that kimono carried the feelings and, in rare cases, the spirits of their previous owners. Emmi wondered if the old superstition about kimono went the same for all personal possessions. Perhaps that was how the demon in the mirror legend began. Maybe this thing was haunted. Emmi put the bagged mirror into the closet then went downstairs.

Jake was out on the deck talking on his cell.

“Tinseltown’s new starlet breaks onto the horizon,” he said with a chuckle. He offered the phone to her. “It’s Jonny.”

Emmi’s heart sank. She was certain her older brother had no desire to talk to her. She’d gotten the point months ago that he held her responsible for the accident. She shook her head then stretched out on the sofa and began flipping through the multitude of satellite channels, none of which had anything good on. She cycled through again and stopped on a documentary about samurai films.

She couldn’t help but smile when they mentioned several movies devoted to the Shinsengumi. Her father had been quite a ‘fanboy’ of that shogunate police troop. At night he’d read her history books instead of the usual bedtime stories. She’d heard so much about the civil war that had brought down the last shogun that it felt more real to her than the boring renditions of American history she’d gotten in school.

* * * *

Unable to sleep that night, and with nothing to watch on TV, she decided to sit out on the balcony of the condo and finally polish her new mirror. It wasn’t creeping her out quite as much. Emmi decided her silent chanting of, “There are no onis, there are no onis, there are no onis…” must have helped.

Despite being beaten up, the mirror really was a pretty thing. Emmi didn’t understand why no one had seen past the grime and the dent. She put a bit of the smelly liquid polish on the rag and began gently rubbing over the raised petals of the sakura cherry blossoms.

The full moon had shifted position by the time she had removed the worst of the tarnish. Emmi set the mirror down on the small, glass-topped patio table before going to the kitchen to wash her hands. Making her way back through the darkened living room, she noticed that the room was slowly growing brighter, and she turned to see if the light reflected from the upper floor was caused by Jake coming down.

It was still dark by the stairs.

The weird glow was coming in from outside. “Ja—” Emmi clamped her hands over her mouth. She didn’t want to wake Jake.

Emmi hurried to the sliding glass balcony door to look at the mirror, but once she stepped onto the patio, she realized the glow that she’d thought she’d seen was gone. She must have imagined it. A trick of the moonlight?

She slid the mirror to the center of the table and rested her head on her hands, her gaze gliding from one raised metal flower to the next. The craftsmanship was beautiful. It was like a sculpture in a way, so mesmerizing, and even more familiar now than it had seemed at the rummage sale.

The moonlight glinted off the glass. Emmi cocked her head to the side, certain she’d caught a glimpse of a bare-chested man with long black hair reflected in the mirror. She glanced over her shoulder. She was alone—it couldn’t have been Jake.

She was reminded again of that weird, old legend about the oni in the mirror, and she wondered again if a ghost had started the legend rather than a demon.

“Daddy?” she whispered.

Emmi held the mirror in her hands and drew it closer to her face. Again, she felt that weird vibration when her skin touched the metal. Soon the humming began to flow through her. She wasn’t afraid, even though part of her knew she should be.

She continued to stare at the old, mottled glass. There was a man in there, deep, deep within—as if he was at the end of a long, dark tunnel. He was Japanese, definitely Japanese.

“Daddy?” she whispered again.

Chapter Two

Shimabara Pleasure District

Kyoto, Japan

Spring 1864

“Aneko, I need you,” Nakagawa Kaemon said.

“You mean that you want me. There is a difference,” the woman across the room said as she slowly removed her elaborate wig.

Kae lay naked on the futon, touching himself as she teased, taking her time to carefully place the wig upon the wooden form on the small, red-lacquered cabinet. “I want you because I need you.”

Aneko laughed. “You need me because you are young and always want sex, like every other man in Shimabara.”

He frowned. “I am not like every other man in Shimabara.”

Aneko knelt on the floor and bowed low. “No, Nakagawanomiya-sama,” she corrected herself, using his honorific as well as his royal title. “You are not like them at all. You are far above them in every way. Please forgive this unworthy one.”

“Since you asked so nicely.”

Clearly relieved by the playfulness of both his tone and his words, Aneko crawled toward him, loosening her front-tied obi sash as she went. She knelt beside him and reached out to caress his cheek.

“What do you see in a woman of my profession, when you could have as your bride the most beautiful young girl in Japan?”

Kae sat up, taking her hand in his. “I don’t want a wife. I want a friend I can trust completely. I’ve known you for ages. I can be myself around you without having to observe court protocol with every breath.”

“Just like your father.” Aneko smiled wistfully. “Is he happy these days?”

“As happy as anyone can be with the current state of things.” Kaemon paused. “He fears for his brother’s life.”

Aneko gasped. “He doesn’t really think someone would harm the emperor—no one would dare!”

“Wouldn’t they?” Kaemon asked with a smirk before lying back down and folding his arms behind his head. “That rebel Katsura and the rest of the Choshu dogs will stop at nothing to gain control of this country, and what better way to do that than to gain control of the emperor?”

“But your father—”

“He stays as close to the emperor’s side as possible, but, to be a proper advisor, he can’t stay with him every moment. Should the emperor meet an untimely death, a twelve-year-old boy will ascend to the throne. And with his maternal grandfather being sympathetic to the radical faction…” The rebels would find a way to eliminate everyone who could keep them from manipulating the inexperienced boy.

Aneko sighed and poured them each a cup of sake. “If only I could do something.”

Kaemon grinned, drained his cup and let it fall to the woven mat that covered the floor. “There is something you can do, that only you can do,” he drawled before reaching for her.

“At least let me cover the mirror first.”

“Leave it.”

Aneko grinned and lay beside him. “Fine. When the demon woman comes from within to steal your soul, don’t expect me to save you.”

* * * *

Kae stared up at the ceiling, listening to the soft, even breathing of Aneko, who dozed peacefully beside him. Moving slowly, so as not to wake the prostitute, he untangled himself from her limbs and sat up. As he reached for the sake bottle, light from the floor lantern glinted off the prostitute’s newest prized possession, a gift from a Western diplomat, and he smiled to himself at her earlier words.

‘
When the demon woman comes from within to steal your soul, don’t expect me to save you.
’

If pretty demons in mirrors were all he had to worry about, he’d be a happy man indeed—

Wait.

There
was
a woman in the mirror, and she was staring straight at him. He set down the sake bottle and reached for the razor-sharp katana that he always kept within arm’s reach, even in the Pleasure Quarters. He climbed over Aneko, who stirred when he jarred her.

The mirror was turned slightly away from him, giving him the advantage over his ghostly enemy as he made his way toward the lacquered cabinet where it stood. He used the tip of his sword to turn the brass-framed mirror so he could look at the unnatural woman again. Strange. She didn’t resemble any oni he’d ever imagined. She had long black hair and pale skin. Her dark eyes shone with blue flashes as a distant, silvery light reflected off her.

She seemed worlds away, and yet he could almost put his hand into the fathomless glass and pluck her out. She said something in a strange, lilting tongue and Kae pulled back, lest she suck him into her clutches and steal his soul as Aneko had warned. He prodded the mirror with the tip of his sword so that the glass faced the wall then covered it with the black silk cloth that Aneko used to keep the mirror’s demons at bay.

Kae returned to the futon and finished off the bottle of sake, content that he was safe once again.

Yet, she had been a pretty little demon.

Over the course of the ensuing weeks, in those fleeting moments before Aneko covered her prized mirror, the demon entranced him. A few times in the dead of night, curiosity propelled him to lift the silken cover and peek at the reflective surface. Often the glass reflected only the room’s objects, and he was certain the demon girl was nothing more than a trick of his mind, an odd play of light and shadow. Other times he’d see her deep inside, looking at him as if her captivating eyes called out to his very soul through the blue-tinted mist.

Chapter Three

Los Angeles

Present day

“You can’t take that to Japan, Em-chan.”

“But you don’t understand. I have to keep this with me. If I put it in the checked bag, it will break.”

Jake rubbed his temple and looked at his watch. “We have to get moving or risk missing the flight. If anything happens to it while we’re gone, I’ll find you another one.”

“No!” Emmi shouted, hugging the mirror to her chest. “You don’t understand! I saw Daddy in it—” She broke off, tears stinging her eyes. She turned away.

Gently placing his hands upon her shoulders, Jake turned Emmi to face him. “Tell me what happened, Emiko. All of it. I need to hear it.”

“You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I won’t. I promise. Trust me.”

Emmi accepted that Jake may have experienced something supernatural without question. Her dad, too, had never been one to hide his open-mindedness about things that pushed the boundaries of ‘normal’. She explained to Jake what had happened that night when she’d first cleaned the mirror, and how she’d been getting up every night since, trying to see the image of her father again.

“I thought I caught a glimpse of him a couple times, but it was all blurry, like the glass was clouded or steamy—the way mirrors get when you shower.” She sighed. “It couldn’t have been Daddy. It probably was just a weird reflection.”

“You don’t have to brush the experience off because you think it’s what I want to hear,” Jake said softly.

“I’m not,” Emmi said defensively. “At first I was positive it was Daddy, but this man is younger, a lot younger, around my age, and he looked so serious. Daddy never let anything get to him. He was always happy and smiling.”

Jake nodded. “That he was.” He looked at his watch again. “Tell you what. Let me call the prop master. I know there are a couple of pieces that he has permission to carry on. Maybe he can slip the mirror in with them.”

* * * *

Halfway through the flight, Emmi had the uncontrollable urge to check on the mirror but forced herself to contain the impulse. Jake had been right back at the condo—airport security would probably consider the mirror a dangerous weapon if broken into shards. She should have left it at home. Even as she assured herself that the mirror was perfectly safe with the prop master’s more fragile things, Emmi’s stomach knotted with worry.

Emmi closed her eyes and tried to sleep, since there wasn’t much else to do to pass the hours. A weird, dreamy vision came to her just as she began dozing off. It was like the dream she’d had before the accident—the flash of insight that had told her there was going to be a wreck, and that she would be behind the wheel. However, this was clearer and more than a quick flash. Yet it still didn’t make much sense.

As if in a samurai movie, she saw herself on a street, being pulled against her will by a man in traditional Japanese clothing.

Emmi jumped in her seat and looked over to Jake, sitting quietly with his eyes closed. Was there going to be an accident on the set?
Please, don’t let it be another omen
, she prayed. She couldn’t lose Uncle Jake on top of everything else.

* * * *

“Finally moved up in the world, eh, Jake?” Dan Cruze, the film’s director, joked when they joined the crew assembling near the front desk of the luxury hotel not far from the Imperial Palace.

Jake grinned. “Only the best for the stunt coordinator slash martial arts choreographer hyphen consultant.”

The director flipped Jake off, which made everyone laugh, then he handed out the room assignments and hotel keys to Jake and the rest of the advance crew, who’d arrived ahead of the film’s actors and other crewmembers.

Emmi was getting her mirror from the property master when the director approached with the keys.

“Giving away our stuff, Eric?”

“No, Dan, I was carrying it for Miss Maeda. It wouldn’t fit in her carry-on, and I didn’t want to chance it in the checked bags.”

Jake gave the prop master a playful hug. “Eric is so sweet that way.”

Everyone but Eric laughed, and the director asked if he could look at the mirror. Emmi didn’t want to let him touch it, but Jake had that ‘do it for me’ look that coerced her to hand it over.