One would assume that getting unexpected money would make anyone happy, but as Kikyō stared down at the check for $5.24, she was anything but.
$5.24 couldn't even buy a goddamn latté in New York City. But this particular $5.24 was mocking her, reminding her that when she was young and stupid, she did young and stupid things. Like… a collaboration with a certain college roommate that was supposed to disappear into all those other mistakes that happen in college. But noooooo, apparently not this one.
"I'm going to kill her," Kikyō snarled under her breath.
Kikyō thought about the moment she opened the envelope from Amazon with that little check made out to Kikyō Sekimuro, thanking her for contributing her book to their marketplace platform. The problem was… she'd never uploaded a book to Amazon.
She'd never written a book.
Except she had.
In college.
A book called Demons Among Us!
A book she co-authored with her college roommate, Kagome Higurashi.
Apparently, Demons Among Us! had been published to Amazon, and she was now earning meager royalties on it.
Kikyō Sekimuro and Kagome Higurashi became flatmates during their junior year of university. Despite being complete opposites, the two meshed extremely well. Kikyō was up studying and doing physics homework all hours of the night, while Kagome was up writing or sleuthing or completing articles for the school newspaper. Oftentimes they'd hang out on the couch in their shared apartment, drinking wine and sake and talking about their theories of demons.
It was always a puzzle why reiki existed in the world, because demons certainly didn't seem to. Reiki was also a gift that Kagome and Kikyō shared. They often created little glowing balls of reiki to pass between them, chatting and joking and theorizing about what happened to the demons. It… became a bit of an obsession, for them both. Kagome's sleuthing skills found every instance of a human disappearing, or a strange light and ring appearing in the sky, or sprite lightning, or strange-looking characters showing up randomly in the world and then disappearing just as quickly. And Kikyō was obsessed with the technologies that might be able to tap into the "hidden dimension" that seemed to exist but not exist. And so the two wrote down their ideas, and thought about whether spiritual powers could be the key to opening the gateway to the dimension of demons, all the while playing reiki exchange games. Kikyō could probably still pick out and identify Kagome's reiki if asked.
Apparently… what Kikyō always assumed was a fun little excuse to procrastinate on physics homework, Kagome had decided to turn it into a goddamned book. It meant… it meant Kikyō was going to have to do something she vowed never to do… she was going to have to find Kagome, and talk to her. Something she had not done in years. Not since it became clear the difference of opinion about… pursuing reiki and demons any further than philosophically over wine.
"Dr. Sekimuro…" A dull voice came from the door, causing Kikyō to flinch.
"Dr. Ginkotsu," Kikyō droned right back.
"Demons Among Us." Dr. Ginkotsu's robotic face turned up into a grin.
Shit.
"Wha-what about it?" Kikyō tried to cover her dumbfoundedness with snark. How the hell had the chair of her department found out about the damn book the same day she found out about the damn book?
"You wouldn't happen to have been working on it during business hours, hmmmmm?" Dr. Ginkotsu stepped into her office and leaned over her desk, coming within a foot of Kikyō's face. "You know how CUNY feels about its faculty taking up… side projects."
Kikyō often wanted to murder the physics department chair, and she was pretty sure that the other pre-tenure professors did too. Dr. Ginkotsu had a petty side, and he was lazy. He would reassign their offices like musical chairs if they upset him. That didn't stop them from calling him "the Robot King" though. He was endlessly dull, and seemed to assume that because Kikyō had a uterus she was a "diversity hire." The book… was not going to help with that.
"It was a college project that my collaborator published without my consent," Kikyō said; apparently the truth was actually the best answer.
"Well… well… well… I did not realize such hobbies were ones you, a young member of our faculty, would undertake." Dr. Ginkotsu had terrible breath, and was currently aiming it at Kikyō's sensitive nostrils.
"I have not undertaken any such hobbies like this for many years Dr. Ginkotsu," Kikyō answered back, trying her hardest to keep the barbs out of her voice.
"I should hope not," Dr. Ginkotsu sneered.
Unfortunately for Kikyō, his distance from her also gave him a clear view of her desk. A clear view of $5.24 from Amazon for a book. From the way a nefarious wrinkle came to his eyes, Kikyō wanted to burn that stupid little check. A check that could not get her a goddamned latté and was looking like it was going to get her tenure package in trouble.
"Just… you may want to come to my office so we can discuss how this impacts your research profile here," Dr. Ginkotsu grinned.
Kikyō groaned. She knew what was coming next.
"For instance. I'm much more forgetful when I have more time for my research… when I'm not… teaching Physics 101 to med students…" There it was. Ginkotsu's threat. Ginkotsu's blackmail.
Kikyō was about to have to teach the class everyone hated to teach and everyone hated to take. It was over a hundred students who cared nothing about physics and everything about their grades.
Because of $5.24.
"I'll teach it." Kikyō wished she had a laser that was capable of murder. "But… you are going to write me an email telling me why I am teaching that class. Otherwise… deal's off and I'll take my chances."
"We'll work something out," Dr. Ginkotsu purred, and swept out of the room.
Kikyō didn't have time to think through the threat that she'd just issued back to the chair of her department. She didn't have time to think about the ramifications of opening herself up to blackmail by that petty, horrible man; she didn't have time to consider whether it was worth fighting to get tenure at a school that made her teach so many classes she could never actually do any of the research she so desperately wanted to do. She didn't have goddamned time to do anything. But she would have to make the time, because she needed to know what Kagome did. And she needed to know if she could undo it.
It was nice having a job. And she could think of at least 13 locations around the city she was certain she could dump a body, especially if her ex-friend's decision to publish a book that shouldn't exist was going to cost her said job.
Kikyō pulled up Amazon and scowled deeply at what she saw. Demons Among Us! Apparently it was available as a paperback, an e-book, and an audiobook. Kikyō bought all three.
She started scrolling through the e-book on her iPad. The introduction was well-written (Kagome was a journalism major after all), but made it seem like the two were in a collaboration together, rather than something more akin to Kagome kidnapping Kikyō's image and using it to create a book. The pages were full of Kagome's conspiracy theories tied into Kikyō's physics (why the hell had she left Kagome those notes?!). It was all theoretical, and toward the end (Kikyō skimmed…) was written the theory that the two had believed to be the most feasible for the demon world—human world bridge.
The book was… well written, but Kagome had gone to great pains to make it seem like Kikyō had endorsed and co-written the whole goddamned thing. Even using a photoshopped image of the two of them looking like they walked out of a Carl Sagan documentary. And that was what did it: the "we"s of the book. Every page read like they'd done it together. And the more pages Kikyō perused, the more elaborate her fantasies about how she wanted to murder Kagome became.
Run over by a car? Too gruesome, and would be obvious.
Fed to a meat grinder? Where does someone find a meat grinder these days? It wasn't Sweeney Todd.
Fed to angry bears at the zoo? The bears were so fat that they wouldn't want to eat Kagome…
No. Kikyō couldn't murder Kagome. She needed to talk to Kagome. Which was… well, worse than murdering Kagome.
Because Demons Among Us! couldn't exist if Kikyō wanted to keep her job.