Falling Through Glass (27 page)

Kae wrapped his arms tighter around her and kissed the top of her head. He rubbed his hands across her back. “You will not die, Emiko. No one is going to die.”

She looked up, sniffled, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You mean it? You’re not lying to me?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

She cried and hugged him again. It was going to be all right. They were safe and together, and he forgave her for being so stupid with Sachi.

“We will have to leave Kyoto, however,” he said softly.

She looked up and rubbed her eyes again. “Leave Kyoto? But will we be together? Will I have to go away alone?”

He smiled and rubbed the last of her tears away with his fingertips. “We will go together. The first thing in the morning.”

Emmi nodded and hugged him again. It would be okay. As long as he was with her, it would all work out.

Kae pulled back and smiled at her again. He looked so tired. He looked like she’d been feeling all these days since the Sachi business.

“Are you sure you’re all right? You look awful. They didn’t hurt you or your father, did they?”

He shook his head. “We were not harmed. My father has disowned me, but I expected as much. He is allowed to stay on here as the emperor’s advisor.”

Emmi touched Kae’s face. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I really didn’t know who Sachi was—”

Kae touched his fingers to her lips to silence her.

“None of that matters now. Come with me. I have something for you.”

He took her hand and headed down the hall toward his rooms.

Emmi prayed that this wasn’t some cruel setup, that he wasn’t turning her over to guards for execution. She didn’t think he could be so horrible, but if the emperor was testing his loyalty…

She held her breath as he slid open the door. There was no one in the main room. He led the way to the bedroom. Emmi closed her eyes and took another deep breath as he slid that door open.

“Emiko.”

The sound of Kae saying her name made her open her eyes, and when she did, she saw it. The mirror. Her mirror. It was sitting on top of a small lacquered chest on the far side of the room, across from the futon. She ran to it, picked it up, hugged it to her chest, then turned to look at Kae.

“It’s mine. It’s really mine. How did you get it?”

“I had to buy Aneko one with genuine gold trim before she would consider parting with that. I also had to buy her freedom for her and give her enough money to leave Kyoto.”

“But that must have cost a fortune. It must have cost everything you had… You did that to get back my mirror? You did all of that for me after everything that happened?”

He removed his swords from his belt and set them in the rack near the bed. He smiled and came across the room.

“I would do anything for you.”

Emmi thought she’d cried all the tears she could possibly cry, but she cried again from sheer joy. She was happier than she could ever remember being. She put the mirror down on the cabinet and threw herself back into Kae’s arms.

He kissed her long and slow, and she didn’t care if she never saw her own time again.

* * * *

Kyoto

Present day

Something was happening, Jake could feel it. The air in the room was unnaturally heavy, and the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled as if copious amounts of static electricity was spiraling around them, almost the way a tornado swirls and begins sucking things into its vortex.

A chill shot down Jake’s spine when Emmi’s mother gasped.

“I see her. I see her in the mirror!”

The former monk said nothing—he was deep in whatever trance he’d put himself into with his chanting, which continued in a preternatural drone.

Jake, too, saw something—a distinct blue fog reflected in part of the mirror’s edge.

A shadow fell over the room, and Jake looked over his shoulder. Outside the hotel window the waning daylight had totally faded, as if a dark cloud had settled over the setting sun. A boom of thunder rattled the window, and a white-hot bolt of lightning cut directly in front of the glass.

The air raced and howled outside the window, and Jake finally understood the true meaning of the word kamikaze—Divine Wind. This was not natural.

* * * *

Kyoto

1864

Emmi barely heard the clap of thunder through the rush of blood in her ears as Kae kissed her again and again. His hands began to tug at her obi. She felt the fabric give way and fall free, and she sighed. She pressed forward when he slipped his hand inside the front of the kimono to brush his fingers across her silk-covered breast.

“Emiko… Emiko… Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you,” she sighed.

“What?” Kae asked pulling back from the kiss.

“Nothing. Forget it,” she said, coaxing his head back toward hers.

“EMIKO!”

Pain ricocheted through her head. It was like the accident, when the car slammed through the guardrail. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear.

She couldn’t feel Kae’s arms around her anymore. “Kae!”

Kae was flung back by an unseen force when Emmi was wrenched from his embrace. He hit the futon flat on his back, and his head bounced off the floor despite the thick cushion. He shook off the impact and pushed himself to his knees in time to see Emmi enveloped in a strange blue mist. He rose and lunged forward, tried to grab what he could see of her outstretched hand.

“Emmi!”

It was too late. The mist was gone. Emmi was gone.

The mirror…was broken.

* * * *

Everything was a blur as Emmi flew backward across a million miles of nothingness. She slowed for a minute, but then she was jerked harder until the blackness turned bright.

“Ohmygod!”

Was that Uncle Jake’s sister?

“Emmi!”

Mom?

She was in a room. She was flying across the room. She could see a window coming closer, closer…

Someone screamed.

Big hands grabbed her and pulled. Uncle Jake. She fell, hit something—someone—hard.

Her mother grabbed her, hugged her in a crushing embrace.

“Kae. Where’s Kae? Mom, where am I? Where’s Kae?”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Kaga Domain

1864

Takehito thought he was seeing a specter when Nakagawa Kaemon entered the finely appointed reception room of his home. The young man bowing his head in greeting was not the vibrant young warrior he’d entrusted his Emiko to, and he knew that the incident with the young imperial prince was only a fraction of the cause for Kaemon’s current state.

“Emiko is gone,” Takehito said flatly as he knelt opposite his guest.

Kae looked at him questioningly with his dark eyes empty, haunted. “You know. But how?”

Unable to explain, Takehito shook his head and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Fleeting thoughts, dreams, nothing more.”

Kae exhaled a long, dismal sigh and sat back on his heels, wetness pooling in the corners of his eyes. “I miss her,” he said in a dull, soft tone. He managed a faint trace of a smile. “The days are too quiet and predictable without her.”

Takehito reached out to touch Kae’s shoulder. “She was…unique.” His expression hardened when a knock sounded on the shoji. A servant looked in.

“Forgive me, my Lord, but the monk has returned. He insists that you see him. He has had yet another vision. This one clearer. This one featuring a girl riding upon a golden dragonfly.”

Kae’s eyes grew wide, and Takehito knew he was thinking of the same thing—the charm Emiko wore—the golden dragonfly of Lord Maeda Toshiie.

“I will see him. Nakagawa no miya will see him as well.”

Monk Anji entered, and his old eyes grew wide the instant he saw Kae. “You! You are the one! You are the one who torments her spirit. You are the one her soul cries out for!”

Kae leaped to his feet, rushed forward and gripped the old man’s shoulders. “You have seen Emiko? Where is she?”

“She is in great pain, my son. Her soul cries out for what it lost. It cries out for…you.”

“Then do something!” Takehito shouted. “I have looked into your background. I know what they say near Osore-Zan—you communicate with the dead. You have powers to reach beyond the living world.”

Kae faltered, his shoulders slumping. “Emiko is…dead?”

“No, no, no,” Anji said. “She is among the living, but it is on a different plane. It is a magical place where great silver birds rule the sky, and where unseen men sing out from small circles of solid rainbows. It is a frightening, wonderful place.”

Kae grabbed the monk’s shoulder. “Can you take me there? I need to be there. I must see her again.”

Monk Anji looked down and wrung his wrinkled hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know. There may be a way. There are places on Osore-Zan that may be portals to other worlds, but it is all so dangerous.” He looked up. “There are no guarantees. You could be killed for daring to use the gods’ magic. You could be transported to a place where demons will eat you alive.”

Kae met the monk’s frightened gaze with a cold stare. “Death is preferable to the empty life I live now.”

Takehito removed a small silk pouch from within his kimono sleeve. Pieces of gold clinked when he shoved it into the monk’s hands. “You will work your magic, priest.”

* * * *

Los Angeles

Present day

Emmi was home, in her own room, in her own house, and she hated it. It had nothing to do with her mother. Her mother was fine. In fact, she was great. She was smiling and happy, much like the way she’d been before the accident. While Emmi realized that her mother had only blamed her for the accident—as Jake had said—to deal with the pain of losing her husband, Emmi felt little comfort in her mother’s renewed grace. Emmi’s own lonely pain was eating her away inside. She hated everything, absolutely everything. She hated the California sun and the days that dragged by like excruciating months. She had always been proud of the home’s tribute to their culture, had loved it, but now she hated it.

There were too many Japanese things here—the low tables, the lacquered chests, the porcelain, the garden—they all reminded her of Kae. There were too many posters and pictures of her father and Jake from their samurai movies, wearing the traditional kimono and hakama. Everything about home constantly reminded her of Kae. She couldn’t even bring herself to talk to Jake when he called from Kyoto to check up on her. Simply knowing he was there, where she wanted to be, where she belonged, made her cry.

Of course, that wasn’t exactly correct. She didn’t belong in the Kyoto of now any more than she belonged here in L.A. She belonged back in old Kyoto. As weird and dangerous and alien to her as it had been, she wanted to be there. She needed to be there because Kae was there. Somewhere.

* * * *

One day, Emmi was sitting in the back yard tossing tiny pebbles into the koi pond when her mother called to her. “Em-chan! It’s Grandmother Maeda on the phone. She wants to talk to you.”

Grandmother probably wanted to lecture her about returning to college in the fall.

“Emmi!”

“I’ll be right there.”

Emmi had to cross the patio where her mother and her weird Buddhist friend had been having lunch to go inside to get the phone. Emmi stopped long enough to grab a grape from the fruit bowl in the center of the table and say, “I hate you. Why did you bring me back?”

The former monk put his hands together as if in prayer. “All things have their time and place.”

Emmi flipped him the finger and went inside.

Grandmother Maeda told Emmi again that she needed to visit before the summer was over. Her brother always visited every summer, and she would accept no more excuses. Emmi’s grandfather had a business meeting in L.A. in two days, and he was going to pick Emmi up and bring her back to Kauai if he had to stuff her into his carry-on bag to do it.

“Fine. I’ll come visit.”
And, if I’m lucky, maybe a big wave will suck me up and wash me away while I’m there.

* * * *

Grandfather Maeda’s business was with the multinational corporation that he’d worked for before retiring to Hawaii. They flew him in on their corporate jet, and he and Emmi would be flying back the same way. A chilling inexplicable something bordering on a compulsion hit Emmi as she trudged out of the house. A private flight meant none of the usual security hassles and restrictions.

“Wait a minute,” Emmi said, grabbing her suitcase out of the back of the car. “I forgot something.”

She rushed back to her room and nearly dove into the back of her closet. She pulled out the mirror, which she’d wrapped in the pink silk kimono she’d been wearing when she was pulled back from Kyoto.

Once the plane was in the air, Emmi began to feel like an idiot. The last thing she needed was to have that mirror reminding her of how miserable she felt.

But it also reminds you of Kae
, her heart told her.
It almost brings him closer to you.

Almost.

* * * *

Emmi was reminded constantly of Kae from the moment she set foot in her grandparents’ house. Her cousin, Midori, and her fiancé had impulsively set a wedding date, and Grandmother had taken charge of the wedding preparations. Midori’s parents were working in Hong Kong and Midori’s fiancé was set to begin his medical residency on the East Coast.

“A girl’s wedding day is so special! Oh, Em-chan, when you find someone…”

Been there, done that, Grandma
, Emmi thought miserably as she trudged back to her room. The sugary sweetness of it all was enough to make her teeth fall out. She’d had the Emperor Komei attend her wedding, had gotten drunk without even trying, and had had the most perfect wedding night anyone ever dreamed of in the arms of the first—and only—man she had ever loved.