It was the second time Muraki had killed her.
His bullet in her back killed Tsubake instantly. Her soul fled into death.
But Eileen had only been in the body as a guest. She stood up from the body, but she stayed in the world. To her it was this world which had become the ghost. She couldn't smell the sea, or feel the ship deck beneath her feet. She could barely hear the voices of the outraged shinigami. And she was too insubstantial for these older, stronger ghosts to notice her. One thing stayed clear. Him.
Muraki.
Muraki, now denying her very existence to the shinigami. His dark solid in the mists and flickers of this ghost world. The man who'd cut her heart out, with only just enough pain killer to keep it beating as long as needed. She began to move towards him.
Without Tsubake's body, she found it so difficult to walk. She kept trying to dissolve out of this plane. Using the same will that had held her after her first death, she kept herself together, walking step by step toward Muraki.
He left before she arrived, stepping into his helicopter. It vanished into the night sky, a brief grotesque black silhouette that blotted out a few stars.
The other ghosts couldn't follow him either. But Hisoka had wanted revenge. Eileen turned her narrow, wavering focus on Hisoka.
She reached out to him, and his head turned. "Tsubake?" His eyes looked, not quite at her.
Tsuzuki's violet eyes gleamed with something not quite human, and he raised both his hands. Hisoka touched the wrist nearer to him, pressed it down a little. Then he held out his hand to Eileen. She desperately willed hers be something more than a shapeless grasp. She concentrated on remembering each finger. The rest of her dwindled to a breath of cold air, but finally all five fingers twined through Hisoka's.
The ship lurched further sideways.
There was a brief, almost supportive pressure, like the barrier between air and water. Then all of them were standing on green grass, beneath flowering cherry trees. She held Hisoka's hand even tighter.
Tsuzuki said, "Tatsumi?"
From the night surrounding them coiled a tendril of dark like a snake. She dropped Hisoka's hand and jerked away. But too fast for her to avoid, it reached her foot and struck. The dark ran up through her shadow body. Like poison.
One of the young girl shinigamis said, "It is Tsubake-chan!"
Like strength. Feeling more solid, almost alive, she glanced down where her arm should be, and saw it sketched in dark mist. She could see through it like smoky glass.
She glanced away, dizzy. She looked back at all the faces watching her, and told them, "Eileen!" She was surer of that than she had been in Tsubake's body.
A tall, handsome woman in black leather asked, "Tatsumi, is she one of your creatures?"
A tall, handsome man in a brown suit said, "Less than she should be. And growing less all the time."
The woman said, "But she still needs your shadows. Will you keep an eye on her until she's stronger?" It wouldn't be long before Eileen learned she was Kazuma Shin, who felt it her duty to guard other women.
Tatsumi nodded. "I'll take care of her."
It would take Eileen far longer to learn Tatsumi started caring for her to help Tsuzuki, wanting to make amends to his ex-partner.
And by then there was a better reason for him to care.