If any of you can guess the anime I'm watching right now, I'll update the next chapter early. Hint: purple and white.

Chapter 11

Turns out, while I had been out, daylight had died and a raging snow storm replaced it. Outgoing flights for that evening had been canceled, meaning no flight home for me, and since Naru drove back to the house like a zombie rather than the bus stop like he said, I figured he had listened to me when I told him that, as long as I was at base, under the protection of the seals put there before, nothing would happen to me.

I just about laughed out loud when, after I got out, Naru just turned off the car and sat there. He only got out after I knocked on the roof and asked if he was planning on sleeping in there. The zombie act continued up to the front door, which was answered by a solemn Lin. He gave Naru a glance before letting us in.

It got harder to hold in the laugh when Takigawa and John converged on us and Naru just walked through them. The boys shrugged it off as him being him, since he went straight to the monitors, but Lin got the most incredulous look on his face.

"What's so funny?" Monk asked, then he glanced behind him to where base was. John did as well.

"Nothing," I said lightly. "Aren't you going to ask about my welfare and visions and all that?"

"Well you look obviously better," said John. "Not that you looked that bad before! Just pale and, um, not awake."

A subtle crash and a curse came from the base. Lin strode past us and into the parlor.

I couldn't help it. A snort escaped me, which brought the attention of the spiritualists back to me. Monk looked both amused and baffled, while John pressed his lips in concern.

"What did you do to him, Mai?"

Like I was going to tell him that back in that white-washed hospital room, the moment my lips had touched his, his mouth had dropped open in surprise. Thinking I might as well destroy myself and get as much out of it as I could, I had taken advantage of his slack jaw to deepen the kiss, even going as far as to lean a knee on the chair besides his thigh. Eventually the scientist woke up and breathed in from my mouth as though suddenly starving and wrung his arms around my waist. I could feel him pressing to kiss back, though it became more than obvious that he had never done so before and ended up kissing my teeth once, which was when he had recoiled.

But his body heat drove me nigh wild, and I held on to teach him, with lip against lip, stroking his face, his neck, his hair, trying to calm his embarrassment and convey that I really did love him—that it was okay if he screwed up—that it was okay that he wasn't brilliant at everything he did. I pulled myself closer, desperate for that response in him, nearly crying for the touch of hope and need for his love. I ended up halfway straddling him with one foot touching the floor and my chest pressed down to him. His fingers twisted up into the back of my shirt, and his breath shook across my lips and tongue.

He was breathing heavily when I pulled away, more heavily than I thought a fumbling first make out session should have been.

"I'm stupid," he gasped. "You're right."

The apocalypse must be coming. Not only did Naru say that while looking up at me with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, but he still had his hands tight on my back.

I barked a laugh and tilted my head to the side. "Right about what?"

"Everything. Right." His hands were shaking again. "Wh-what?"

"Are you okay?"

He blinked. Then he slowly unfurled his hands from my shirt, face twisting in something like consternation. "Yes."

"Do you love me?"

At that question he scowled, successfully bringing him back to the normal Naru that I knew. "What, do you think I just kiss girls for fun?"

I snorted. "You've never kissed a girl."

Red blossomed across his nose. Oh gosh, this really must be the end of the world. I had never seen Naru blush before.

But though he averted my eyes and had become clearly uncomfortable, he didn't push me off. He did let me straighten, though I kept my hands on his armrests and my knee besides his.

"I love you, Oliver. Or Kazuya, or Noll, or my personal favorite, Naru." I smiled. "And I'm quite done being the pathetic girl waiting for you to acknowledge me. I won't stop loving you. Deal with it."

Which brought us to our current situation, with Naru trying his best to hide away from the world and me smiling like an idiot. He hadn't refused me, and it was more than obvious that my kiss wasn't just swapping spit to him.

But to Takigawa's question. "I haven't done anything to him." Another clack from the parlor as something that sounded like a tower of books being knocked to the floor. "But forget that, how did the exorcisms go?"

"As smooth as they could go," he said, still giving me an odd look. "John exorcised them and I backed him up by destroying the Kumen. Probably have a small fortune in gold in all that ash and bones in the back yard."

"How do you feel about exorcizing necromancers?"

Naru had appeared in the doorway, a handful of familiar old newspapers in one hand. He sent a very hard, pointed look at me, and I rolled my eyes, but side stepped John and Monk to get into the parlor. Naru and I did have a deal, after all. I could stay the last night as long as I stayed in the spiritually protected zone.

No sooner had I stepped through the doorway, my skin prickled with a rise in temperature and the impression that I had walked under shelter during a rain storm. I smothered down the temptation to touch him as I passed, though the new twitchy Naru was the most hilarious thing I had and probably would ever see.

"Necromancers?" said John hesitantly. "Do those even exist?"

"Wait, are we talking live necromancers or dead ones?" said Takigawa, whose face then screwed up. "Hold on, are you saying there's something else we have to do to destroy the Kuman?"

"No. There's still a spirit left here, and if my findings are correct," Naru lifted his hand of the old newspapers. "He is a homemade Thai necromancer, specializing in the production of Kuman Thong."

I picked up my book from where I left it and curled up on the couch, though I hung over the back to watch the conversation going on in the entrance hall. Lin had already buried himself in pages of data and monitors of recordings. The whizzing tap of his fingers brought back the air of productive work.

"Should we take this to the kitchen?"

I wrinkled my nose at him. "Come off it, Naru, are you really going to keep me out of the mystery?"

I expected him to deny me, or sneer some sort of irritation at me, but instead he sighed heavily and came back into the parlor, where he came round to flatten out the yellowed classifieds on the coffee table. I grinned in triumph and snuggled into a corner as John and Takigawa gathered round.

After Naru gave a brief overview of my vision and how it had pointed him in the right direction, he went on to explain what he had found. The classifieds had been kept for a reason: instructions. Apparently the editor of the local classifieds paper was an old Thai shaman who had come over during the second world war when the cultural cleansing threatened his practices and life. In America he found it even more difficult to find a need for his magic, so he came up with a system via his classifieds. He'd bait those by putting up a classified every week for a selection of Thai antiques—the details of which would be given on contact. Anyone who asked about anything within the realms of Thai talismans or other necromantic products, he'd give it to them.

But for our gentleman who owned the house before our client, receiving a talisman hadn't been enough. Once he saw the power and gold involved with the production of Kuman Thong, he made a deal with the old man: teach me, and I will get you all the bodies and ingredients you need.

Naru theorized that it had been this old Thai shaman who had set up the parlor as a safe place and the utility closet as his practice room. In order to keep it secret (the price for being caught creating authentic Kuman Thongs was a federal, even international offense, due to the use of a fetus), they couldn't meet as often, so the shaman sent him direction encoded in the classifieds, which our gentleman-turned-apprentice than kept as a sort of spellbook.

Even after years of knowing him and seeing his process, we all did plenty of awestruck staring.

"How did you get all that?" asked John.

"Ever heard of multi-spectral scanning? It's what people use to see portraits that have been painted over by the masters, like the first try of Mona Lisa. I put it to better use scanning for the symbols on the walls of this parlor," he gestured around with a spare newspaper he still had rolled in his hand. "And the walls of the utility closet, while you two were exorcising, of course. I've grown rather tired of this place and would rather not waste time. The symbols proved to be the work of a necromancer, and one I think is more likely to have lived in this house. And also, after doing a background search into the history of these classifieds, I happened to find the Shaman."

"Jeeze, Naru, you should be in the FBI or something." I said, looking at the classifieds to see if I could see the code, but it was probably one between them that only Naru could have picked out by god knows what.

"Like I said, lottery numbers," said Takigawa with a grin.

But Naru had met my eye and the corners of his mouth had twitched. "All I looked for was out of place words, Mai. For example, I doubt an old washer machine would have anything to do with fire or random Thai gibberish. It's amazing how much people miss." He closed his eyes in a full on smirk. "Maybe I should apply to the FBI."

Once more, he had read my mind, and I rolled my eyes. "Yeah yeah, inflate your ego later, what's so special about a necromancer's ghost?"

"I thought it would be obvious. Anyone who aspires to control death would have a warped perspective about death itself, which makes purifying their spirits impossible, especially given that they almost always are murderers."

Takigawa nodded fervently. "Yeah, remember Urado, Mai? In a sick, twisted sort of way, he had been trying to use necromancy. Any spiritual or otherwise magical attempts to manipulate the time of death and what happens afterwards can count as necromancy."

But my brain had stuck at 'Urado' and frozen my gut. I clench my hands into the blanket I had pulled onto my lap. "W-wait, are you saying we're—"

"Calm down," said Naru, with an annoyed glance at Takigawa. "This ghost is obviously different. He hasn't killed anyone, nor, do I think, that he has the power."

"What about Ayako?" piped up John.

"That was a Kuman Thong," said Naru.

"Can you prove that?" said Takigawa.

The younger boy sighed. "My theories are very often right, but even if it wasn't I doubt we'll be in much danger, unless one of you are hiding uteruses in your guts."

John blushed furiously, and Takigawa just grinned.

"So, John, Lin, and I all go up to that closet you and Mai wandered into, do are thing, and call it good?"

"I would hope you'd have a bit more grace than that. You can sense spirits, right Takigawa?"

"When they're powerful or especially evil—but a necromancer, yeah."

"Then we'll have to rely on you. Masako is not only busy, but with this weather…"

"We can always just wait for the cries," said John. "From what I've been hearing from Takigawa, they've been rather consistent, haven't they?"

Naru nodded. "We'll have to use that as an indicator as well."

Takigawa aimed his confident grin at me. "And we always have our Mai-chan. Say you'll keep your super senses peeled for us, sweetheart?"

"I'll do my best!" I chirped. "But don't expect anything like Masako."

"That's it, then. Get prepared."

With that final command in the air, Naru dropped the last of the yellowed classifieds onto the coffee table.