Rin woke up to the sound of birds in the garden. The sun looked kind of green coming in through the windows, and they'd forgotten to close the paper doors to keep it out. He and Daphne had pushed their bed rolls together to sleep, but of course he'd wound up in the crack between them in the middle of the night. Daphne's eyes opened as he gingerly sat up to stretch.

"What time is it?" she asked. Her voice sounded rusty with sleep.

Pulling a sore arm across his chest, Rin shook his head. "No clue."

Daphne reached up a hand and traced her fingers absently over the laurel wreath tattoos on his shoulders, then let them drift down his spine, then the length of his tail. He glanced at her and she smiled. Rin brushed her hair away from her face.

"You wanna hike Misen today?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said and lay back down, snuggling close to Daphne. She draped an arm across his and gave him a couple of kisses. "Hike hike, or take the ropeway?"

"Hike hike."

"Me too."

They didn't get up, though. Instead they stayed how they were and closed their eyes, dozing sort of. Rin didn't know how much time had passed, but the sun got brighter and the birds got louder, so he sat up and woke Daphne again and hunted around for his phone until he found it.

"Seven thirteen," he said, ignoring the texts from Mephisto and Yukio and Shura.

Breakfast was at seven thirty, so they got dressed and went to the little dining room to eat, then grabbed their shoes and water and headed out the door to climb the mountain. Outside, the air was extra clear from the rain the night before, and the ground was still a little wet. Daphne passed him a water bottle and they started toward the trail.

"It smells amazing out here," Daphne said.

"Right?"

The woods and the sea were a welcome change to the general city-stink of Academy Town. He and Daphne were quiet as they climbed, eventually leaving the park behind in favor of the trail. As they wound through the trees, Rin let his mind empty completely. A thought struck him several minutes later.

"I left Kurikara," he said.

Ahead of him on the course, Daphne paused to look back. "Hm?"

"Kurikara. It's back at the ryokan."

"Did you want to use it as a walking stick?"

Rin caught up to her as she chuckled. He shook his head, coming to a stop. "No, I just… I feel like I might need it."

A concerned look crossed Daphne's face, so he shook his head harder, sorry he'd mentioned it at all and disturbed her good mood.

"Never mind, never mind," he said, and pushed her forward on the trail. "Forget I said anything."

It took them an hour to reach the summit, and by the time they got there, Rin had worked off most of his worry about Kurikara. The sword would be fine. Chiba wasn't going to let anything happen to it. And if one thing was certain, Rin didn't need it for hiking.

They lingered for a while at the summit, enjoying the view—Rin enjoying Daphne enjoying the view more than anything. He liked the light in her eyes as she looked out at the sea and the islands. It reminded him a little of how she used to look when she was glowing, surrounded by a rainbow halo from her head to her toes.

"Let's go," she said, and Rin jumped at the loud sound of her voice in the silence.

Apparently he hadn't worked off as much of that worry as he'd thought.

On the way back down, they took a different course, wandering through the shrines and temples that dotted the side of the mountain, hidden in the woods. The isolation didn't help to shake Rin's unease. Neither did the look of the old buildings. They found themselves in front of Kannando and Monjudo Halls, which were creepy as all get-out, just faded wood alone on the trail. Rin shouldn't have found them creepy—he knew this. They were sacred structures, meant to be places of peace. Something had disturbed that peace.

"Look, you're supposed to ask for safe childbirth at this one," Daphne laughed, pointing at the hall on the left and stepping up to it. "What do you think, Rin? Should I go for it?"

She was teasing, but he wasn't listening, focused instead on the forest, following the disturbance, or trying to at least. Behind him, Daphne had approached the structure and was halfway through a Shinto prayer when Rin saw something move in the bushes a little ways down the mountain face.

"Daph!" he shouted, and reached back to grab her and pull her away from the hall.

She stumbled, laughing, and said, "Great, now you've cursed me," as she regained her footing and looked at him. Any trace of humor vanished from her face when she saw his. "What?"

"There's something out there. Off the trail."

He pointed to where he'd seen the movement. Daphne looked. Rin did, too. They looked for a long moment until their eyes turned to each other and they nodded. Quickly both of them climbed over the wooden fence that separated the trail from the outlook and moved carefully down the steep incline. They only had to go a short ways before Rin saw movement again.

"This way."

He set off at a brisk pace, as fast as he could go moving down a mountain covered in rocks and trees without a trail. Daphne stayed close behind.

"Demon?" she whispered.

Rin shook his head. "I can't tell. Something's not right."

All of a sudden the ground disappeared in front of him in a drop-off. Rin barely managed to stop himself before he stepped over. Daphne crashed into him from behind.

"Christ. A little warning, next time, please."

Below them was a trail.

Rin knew instinctively that it wasn't on any of the maps. It looked new, barely worn down, or maybe really old but covered up. As he peered over the drop-off to get a better look, a tanuki scampered across the path into the bushes. Daphne whacked his arm.

"You made me come all the way down here for a goddamn raccoon?"

"Daph, look."

He sat down, eased himself over the side of the drop-off and jumped to the bottom. A couple of steps put him on the trail. It ran left and right off into the woods.

"Is that a path?"

Intrigued now, Daphne climbed down. She studied the ground, even bending to touch a hand to the dirt. Eventually, she stood.

"Which way?"

Rin could sense something—something that had brought him down here that wasn't a tanuki. That feeling of being off-kilter had grown stronger since they'd come through this part of the mountain. He nodded to their left.

"Here."

They hurried along the path. Going was easier now that there was a trail, faint as it was. The trees were thick, and though the sun must have been nearing its peak in the sky, shadows dominated the mountain face. A light shone up ahead, a light like a clearing. Instinctively, Rin slowed.

Daphne followed suit, both of them taking near-silent steps. That tilt to reality grew stronger, made Rin more aware of his heartbeat in his chest, then they reached the break in the trees and Rin saw someone.

Jolting, he made a signal at Daphne and each of them ducked to either side of the trail to hide. He took deep breaths, trying to listen, but hearing nothing. A few seconds passed and he leaned to look out at the clearing again and again he caught a glimpse of someone or something definitely shaped like a human. He ducked back.

Daphne pointed at the clearing, raising her eyebrows. Rin nodded. She nodded back, then reached behind her head to draw Castor and Pollux from their seals. On the count of three.

One.

Two.

Three.

He and Daphne burst into the clearing, Daphne whirling her blades down from her shoulders and tossing Pollux his way. Rin caught the blade and brought it up to bear, but as it turned out, he didn't need to.

The something he'd seen was human.

But it was also dead.

And it wasn't alone, either. The bodies of several other men in robes were scattered throughout the clearing. All of them had their throats torn out. The one he'd seen from the trail had been propped up against a rock, its head back and its eyes open.

"Oh my god."

"How many are there?" Rin asked, holding on to Pollux just in case.

Daphne shook her head and split from him to check the opposite side of the clearing. Rin could count five from where he was standing.

"Two more over here," Daphne called.

Rin moved a little further toward the forest line. "I've got another one, no—two." He could just barely make the second body out—lying in the tall grass. He might not have been able to see it, except the ends of the blades leading up to it were stained with blood.

Daphne approached from behind. "Nine here, then. Could be more."

"You think?"

She shrugged. "Want to go tromping through the forest to look for them? Or is nine enough for you?"

"You say that like it's my fault."

"It is your fault," she replied, scoffing. "You're the one who chased a raccoon down the mountain."

"No, you don't get it, Daph, this is bad."

"You think I don't understand that finding the bodies of nine people who were obviously murdered is bad?"

"No—the shrine—the island—the whole island is sacred. Nobody is supposed to die here. It pollutes the purity."

That seemed to click. Daphne fell back, her face turning serious. Her eyes drifted from body to body, surveying each one of the seven that was visible. She looked them over so coldly. Rin had come to expect that from her, but he had never gotten used to it. She'd seen too many brutal deaths. They no longer affected her.

"We need to get more exorcists out here," she said. "Now."

Thus ended any remaining anniversary plans. Daphne stayed with the bodies while Rin tromped his way back into cellphone service to call Mephisto and let him know what they'd found. The rest of the weekend turned into a madhouse of forensic exorcists and local police and monks from the shrine, everybody walking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth from town to the site of the murder, constantly calling on Rin and Daphne to give advice or look at some data or help with a purity spell.

The whole thing was impossible to keep out of the news, so Daphne and Rin also turned into spokespeople and media liaisons, and by Sunday night, Daphne was ready to tear a few throats out herself.

Rin came into their room at the ryokan, holding a bunch of papers in his hands, looking them over and saying, "These are the final autopsy reports. You should—"

She gave him a look to freeze hell and he shut right up.

"Sorry," he said.

She turned her attention back out the windows, onto the garden and the koi pond she no longer found relaxing. Two years with Rin officially come and gone. She'd married a demon. She didn't know what she'd expected.

"Thursday night," she said, propping her head up on her fist, "in the bath, when I felt that presence, it disappeared. It didn't retreat. It vanished. Entirely. Have you felt it since?"

Rin came onto the engawa and sat in the chair next to hers. "No. At least, not like it was."

She nodded. The whole balance of the island had been upset. Perhaps that was what they had been tapping into since they'd set foot there. She was certain the deaths were related somehow, she just didn't know which had come first.

"They were able to identify the bodies," Rin said, raising the papers a little to remind her of them.

"And?"

"Exorcists."

"What?"

Daphne couldn't help sitting up in her seat. Rin passed over the documents.

"Every last one," he said. "And guess what?"

She looked up from thumbing through the reports. "What?"

"They're all from the Hiroshima field office."