he asked.
“No. It’s not our athame they’re using,” she whispered. “It’s yours—or your mother’s. It had a dragon on the pommel.”
“What?”
“They have your family’s athame.” Her eyes came into focus on him. “You’re wearing the focal,” she whispered.
“I had to,” he told her. “I wouldn’t have made it.”
She nodded, and her eyes fell closed. He slid his arms beneath her and lifted her easily.
“I’m taking you back.”
Her head was heavy against his chest. She was spent. After a moment, she murmured, “I thought he was going to kill me. But you stopped him. You saved me.”
Shinobu carried her through the anomaly and back to Hong Kong. As soon as they were safely in a taxi, headed for the Transit Bridge, she pulled the focal from his head. He collapsed against her immediately. Quin held him, and he wrapped his arms around his stomach and groaned quietly, as his body came to terms with separation from the helmet.
Her own head was throbbing, and she was dizzy from the blow the largest boy had dealt her. She closed her eyes as she laid her head against the seat, and felt the taxi spinning around her.
When the car had wound its way down steep streets and they were closer to the harbor, she heard Shinobu’s breathing evening out. He was lying in her lap by then, and when she opened her eyes, she found him looking up at her.
“You brought the focal with us,” she said.
That was why he’d turned away each time he’d opened the backpack. He hadn’t wanted her to see it.
He looked ashamed. He closed his eyes. “I’ve been wearing it, Quin. A lot.”
“You have?”
He opened his eyes but didn’t look at her. “I don’t know why. I—I couldn’t stop myself. It was like opium, only much, much better.”
She ran a hand through his hair and leaned over, so her face was close to his.
“You saved me with it. You saved both of us.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look happy about what she’d said. He rubbed his eyes, then took one of her hands in his own. He was gazing up at her with that look that was particularly his, the look that said he would do whatever he must, just as he’d done in this fight, just as he’d done every other time he’d saved her.
“Maybe the focal helped today,” he whispered. “But I never want to wear it again. Don’t ever let me put it on.”
“Was it so bad?”
“It’s always strange. But today, during the fight, it hurt. I felt it twisting my mind.” Such a pained expression had appeared on his face that Quin pulled him closer, as though she could ward off the bad memory.
“I won’t let you use it again,” she promised him. “I’ll find somewhere to lock it up.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
Her head fell back against the seat, and she watched the tall buildings rolling by outside.
“We were right about those boys and the Middle Dread,” she said after a while. “They were still there, at that fortress where he trained them almost two centuries ago.”
“Yes, they were,” he agreed. He was holding her hand tightly.
When they reached the Hong Kong Island side of the Transit Bridge, they left the taxi and tottered onto the Bridge thoroughfare. Quin was completely exhausted from the fight, and Shinobu was barely able to keep his eyes open. By leaning against each other, they made it to her house somehow.
Fiona was home. She pushed both of them into Quin’s examination room, where she cleaned up their cuts and bruises as Quin tried to explain some of what had happened. Then her mother helped them both upstairs and they collapsed onto Quin’s bed.
When Fiona had gone, Shinobu pulled her close, fitting her body into the shape of his own. Quin felt, as Shinobu’s father used to say, like a bruised sack of potatoes—and one that had been awake for days.
“I didn’t really think we’d find anything, following those journal entries,” she whispered. “At least, nothing quite so dramatic.”
“The Middle was very busy,” Shinobu murmured into her ear. “And whatever he was doing…part of it’s still happening, with those boys.”
She nodded. “Shh now,” she said softly. “I can’t keep my eyes open another moment.”
“You’re always trying to sleep with me,” he murmured, his voice barely audible, as if he too were almost unconscious.
Quin smiled as she drifted off.
—
Quin woke to the warmth of sunlight streaming in through the window by her bed. Her body was sore, but her sleep had