It didn't take long for the truth to come out: that Natsume couldn't "speak cat" any more than anyone else in Enma-cho.

But he did understand K on an uncanny enough level to reassure Todoroki that the cat had not conspired against Enma in any way by opening the portal into Gensoukai for Hisoka. It had been purely a favor for a friend in need. Hisoka had come to him for help as well, and Natsume assured the Peacekeepers that if he was sorry for anything, it was that he had not been a greater help to Hisoka in breaking the rules.

Which didn't help Hisoka's case, and didn't let the other two off the hook either. Natsume and K were dismissed, awaiting disciplinary action, and Todoroki rubbed a temple in frustration when Endo escorted them out. It didn't take an empath to see how much the two were distrusted by Peacekeeping in particular, if not the Judgment Bureau as a whole. They would only fall under greater scrutiny now that Todoroki knew K was savvy enough with computers to bypass the tengu and open her own portal into Gensoukai.

But if being watched more closely put Natsume's plan to hack Mother on ice for a while, that might turn out to be a good thing. Hisoka didn't want to be associated with any plan that revolved around keeping Muraki alive. If anything, he wanted to be the one who got the credit for putting that monster in the ground.

It didn't take a genius to see that Hisoka was Todoroki's real prize, either. But at least K had nothing to say about what had happened in Kurikara's realm—that is, nothing anyone, not even Natsume, could understand.

"Now," the Peacekeeping chief began afresh with a deep breath, "let's get to the real heart of the issue. As I understand things, my officers," that said with a glare in the direction of Kazuma and Nonomiya, who were awaiting their turns to speak at the far side of the table, "though they reached the Floating Desert first, were unable to stop you from challenging Kurikara again. And this time, against all odds, you managed to beat him and win him as your guardian. Is that correct?"

"It is." Hisoka didn't see what good it would do to beat around the bush. And, anyway, he wasn't sorry.

"So. After failing to control one devastatingly powerful shikigami in the field, you thought it wise to go back and get yourself one that was even more destructive and notoriously impossible to command."

"Pardon the interruption," Tatsumi said from the corner of the interrogation room, where he leaned against the wall as if a fly upon it, "but this isn't a trial. There's no one here for whom you need to prove Kurosaki's guilt. Ask him your questions, take his statement for your records, and let us all be done with this witch hunt."

"What I am trying to ascertain," said the chief, turning in his chair toward Tatsumi, "is whether or not Kurosaki needs to be locked up. For his own good as well as all of ours. None of us wants to risk a repeat of what happened with that bird. I need to assess the situation so that His Lordship may rule on how best to proceed."

"How do you know King Enma didn't want Kurosaki to have Kurikara?" said Kazuma.

Surprising everyone, including herself. She hadn't meant to speak, let alone those words, but they just slipped out. "His Highness has the ability to prevent Kurosaki from physically crossing the threshold into Gensoukai," she went on when no one else said anything. "He's done it to other shinigami in the past. If he wanted to ensure that Kurosaki couldn't confront Kurikara ever again, he would have acted long ago."

Hisoka waited for someone to state what was so obvious to him. Never mind that Kazuma had been suffering from a splitting headache ever since returning from Gensoukai—and trying rather unsuccessfully to hide that behind the cup of tea she was currently nursing. She may not have shown outward signs of possession, as Terazuma had—and, under any other circumstances, Hisoka might have been curious to know why that was—but he could sense the Black Lion's familiar qi within her aura. Even if he was the only one who could. Surely Nonomiya knew what was going on, too, but so far she wasn't saying anything remotely close to the subject.

Hisoka thought Kazuma made a fair point. But Todoroki must not have felt she was helping, because he asked his two officers to leave the room. His reminder that he would speak with them when he was done with Hisoka was full of warning. It probably hadn't helped Kazuma's own case to speak up for him like that, but Hisoka suspected she hadn't meant to. It was Kokushungei who had come to this defense.

"You will disregard Ms. Kazuma's opinion," Todoroki said to the two Summons officers when they were alone. "Obviously she does not speak for our King. Lord Enma has a duty to protect this realm, and a creature of Kurikara's calibre, in the hands of a reckless novice—who has a history of bad judgment calls himself, I might add—threatens its safety directly."

"Then ask me to summon him," Hisoka said. "Not in battle. Just as . . . a test. You want to assess whether I can command Kurikara? That's the surest way to do it."

It seemed from his scowl that not even Tatsumi thought that was a good idea. Even he doubts me. Does no one believe I'm strong enough?

"So you can set the dragon on me?" Todoroki sneered. "I don't think so. Safer to put a lock on you, to prevent you from summoning any shiki at all."

Like K had put on Natsume, Hisoka thought, imagining violet lines like those under his partner's skin superimposed over the red characters of his curse. His whole body crisscrossed with conflicting spells. Never mind that such a spell as Todoroki had in mind would make all the trouble Hisoka had gone through to obtain Kurikara and Rikugou be for nothing. Would he even survive it? That is, how would it react to the yatonokami within him? Yatonokami wasn't just some parasitic shiki Hisoka could release, or pass on to someone else like Shungei had been passed on to Terazuma. It was an indelible part of him, whether Todoroki liked that or not.

But Todoroki didn't know. At least, not for now. If the yatonokami had been among the Peacekeeping chief's thoughts, Hisoka was sure either he or the snake would have felt it.

Yatonokami was very much on Tatsumi's thoughts, however. Hisoka could sense it, if nothing else, in how quick the secretary was to join them at the table. "A lock will not be happening. For one, you would need an order approved by the High Court—"

"I'm sure one could easily be obtained," Todoroki smiled back, clearly loving that he had ruffled the secretary's feathers. "Once I make it clear to His Majesty the danger that Kurosaki's new friend poses."

"And if you lock away Kurosaki's ability to summon his guardians, there's no telling what other skills of his will be compromised."

"Ah, but isn't that the point? Haven't his so-called 'skills' been a problem from the very beginning of his tenure here? His empathy has proved to be more a liability to his casework than an asset, and what other potential he's demonstrated has remained woefully underdeveloped over the last five years."

Hisoka could have reminded the chief that it was his reibaku that had freed Tsuzuki from a high-level demonic possession, a feat shinigami far more senior than him were unable to accomplish. But given the climate in the room, it didn't seem wise to bring that up.

Tatsumi said for him, "You underestimate Kurosaki's value to King Enma at your own peril, Todoroki—"

"And you, Mr. Tatsumi, overestimate his worth to the functioning of your own department. I keep hearing that this partnership he had with Tsuzuki had been the most successful one yet, but more shit hit the fan after Kurosaki joined the team than in all Tsuzuki's previous six decades of service combined."

"That's because of Muraki! Not me!" Hisoka rose to his feet, tapping his finger angrily on the tabletop between them. "He's been the instigator of all this! If I hadn't been here when Muraki showed up, if I hadn't been here to mitigate all the damage he's tried to do to Tsuzuki over the past six years, there's no telling what Tsuzuki may have done, or what would have happened to him—"

"And where is he now, hm? Abandoned his post, gone radio silent—no way for any of us to know what secrets of this world he may be spilling out there to the living, or what laws he's broken! And now Muraki has Tsuzuki in his custody, and, we can be damn sure, under his control. So, you're absolutely right, Kurosaki. What a bang-up job you've done, keeping Tsuzuki out of trouble."

Hisoka's resolve withered under Todoroki's slow round of applause, and he sat back down hard, his arguments having abandoned him. If not his anger, and his hatred for the man sitting across from him.

Whether it was all his own, or whether Yatonokami was also seething on his behalf, wanting to sink his fangs into the Peacekeeping chief, he could not tell. At least Todoroki was not also an empath, but Hisoka would have to be careful not to project that particular emotion. Tatsumi had warned him to give the chief no reason to even begin to suspect the yatonokami's existence. Hisoka willed himself to take deep breaths. Told himself it would be less than helpful if he gave Todoroki even one more reason to dislike him.

Besides, Tatsumi was projecting enough hatred for the both of them, even if he did not let it leak into his tone. "Is this really necessary? Kurosaki's fitness to be a shinigami is not the matter at hand—"

"Perhaps it should be," said Todoroki with a nonchalance belying his smug glee. "Why he's here cuts to the quick of the matter at hand. Ever since he arrived he's shown himself to be defiant of authority, with little respect for the rules. Poking his nose into where it doesn't belong. He's the product of an aristocratic family, Tatsumi, in a meritocratic age. He seems to think he deserves to have things handed to him—"

"I do not," Hisoka began, but Todoroki continued over the top of him.

"This latest debacle with Gensoukai only proves it. Kurosaki is so special, the rules don't apply to him. He's so special, he alone can handle a shikigami so powerful it's been masterless its entire existence. And because he's special, he believes he can get away with it, without having to face any of the consequences of his actions."

"And what have I hurt by gaining Kurikara?" Hisoka demanded to know. If anything, his experience in Gensoukai had taught him that the two of them joining forces might be an improvement, perhaps even a solution to many of the problems that plagued that world. "Nothing."

"Yet," Todoroki finished. "A record which is sure to be shattered the very moment you summon him."

"Again, a theory that remains untested and unproven," Tatsumi reproached him, with a shake of the head.

So Todoroki turned in his chair and glared up at the secretary, even if what he said next was meant for Hisoka, and pointedly. "What I still don't understand is how Kurosaki managed to win Kurikara in the first place. Everyone else who's tried has been turned away before they had a chance to challenge him, or were destroyed outright. Now, Kurosaki might believe he's uniquely qualified, but I don't believe it for one second. So."

He turned back, and his level stare seemed to press against Hisoka's mental barriers, like a peeper pressed up against a tinted window pane, straining to see in.

"How exactly did you beat the unbeatable Kurikara?"

Hisoka glanced up at Tatsumi for support, but the secretary's resigned expression indicated that was a question Todoroki had every right to ask and receive an answer to.

"I . . . I'm not sure," Hisoka said.

Earning him a "Bullshit" from Todoroki and a harsh slap on the table.

"I'm not lying." At least, Hisoka told himself, not in any way that mattered. "The way shikigami determine when someone has bested them depends on their own nature and the person they're testing. If you want to know how I won, you'd have to ask Kurikara himself."

Todoroki glanced at Tatsumi, but the secretary just shrugged.

"I can tell you that Kurikara's goal was to test my limits," Hisoka offered up. "Physical, intellectual, and emotional. He wanted to see how I would react under fire. Literally, in this case. My empathy was surely a deciding factor." There, that wasn't half a lie, was it? "But, like I said, only he had the final say."

"And your empathy," said a skeptical Todoroki, "which was good enough to help you win, wasn't good enough to read what that final say was based on?"

A fair point, Hisoka had to admit. But one he could answer without letting anything slip that he didn't want Todoroki to know.

"He told me he saw what kind of person I truly was," Hisoka said, meeting the other's stare evenly, "but more importantly, what kind of person I wasn't, and that gave him enough reason to want to fight for me."

Todoroki snorted at that. "I don't believe it."

But Hisoka really didn't care if he did or not. That, at least, had been the truth. He shrugged. "Shikigami like to speak in riddles. Doesn't mean it didn't mean something deeply significant to him. What can I say? I guess my persistence just finally wore him down."

"I want a full statement of all of this, in writing," Todoroki said to both of them. "I want to see it typed up and on my desk first thing when I come in tomorrow morning."

"You'll have it," Tatsumi assured. "Is Kurosaki free to go?"

"For now. But I want him remanded to desk duty until I have time to confer with King Enma over appropriate punishment. Any trips he decides to take to the Living World must be chaperoned by a senior official. And absolutely no contact with living cases until you hear otherwise from me or my superiors."

Hisoka was about to protest that the sentence was unduly harsh—not to mention, unrealistic—but Tatsumi said, "It's a deal," before he could get a word out.

"God, I need a smoke," Kazuma growled as she and Nonomiya awaited their turn in the hot seats. "I would ask if you could bum me one, but I know you don't smoke, Kochou."

"Nasty habit to have on long flights." But Nonomiya's words were heavy with her concern. She lowered her voice, tightening her hands into fists as she pushed them determinedly into her trouser pockets. "Don't you think you should tell Chief? I mean, you can't hope to hide this from him for long."

"He didn't seem to notice before."

"Yeah, but in all fairness, he was busy grilling Kurosaki."

"It doesn't show, does it?"

"As long as you keep your hair over your ears," Nonomiya said, as Kazuma fussed to take her advice, "and no one looks you too closely in the eye, then no. I wouldn't be able to tell myself if I weren't there. And if I hadn't tou—" Nonomiya swallowed, and tried again. "If I hadn't noticed how you reacted to me when we got back."

There was pain in that admission, pain that, though she tried to bury it, Kazuma could still hear. "But he's going to find out, Shin. And the longer it takes, the more angry he's going to be when he does."

"Find out about what?"

Kazuma's hopes sank, and she could feel Nonomiya tense beside her. Even the cat inside reacted—with an intense revulsion that made the hairs on the back of Kazuma's neck stand up. "What do you want, Endo?"

"Oh, nothing." His smarmy smile said otherwise, of course. "Just couldn't help overhearing. Chief wanted me to come get you guys for your debrief, but it sounds like you don't plan on telling him everything that happened over there."

You careless . . . Just how much did he hear? The Black Lion was ready to grab Endo by the scruff of the neck and make sure he kept his big mouth shut, one way or another.

Luckily for both of them, Nonomiya possessed a cooler head.

"Shin broke her arm," she said, grabbing Kazuma's arm without any forewarning and making her hiss. It felt like something was raising itself to its full height in Kazuma's mind, and her skull wasn't large enough to contain it. But she resisted the urge to yank her arm away. The better to sell it.

"Fighting off giant spiders," Nonomiya said.

That got a sadistic little laugh out of Endo. "Sometimes the spider squishes you, eh, Shin?"

"Whatever," she grumbled, embarrassed to realize she was blushing. She did pull away then. "I knew the chief would get on my ass about filing an injury claim against Gensoukai, and that would just piss off what tengu are still talking to us. Plus, I figured he's got enough on his plate what with Kurosaki getting himself a dragon—"

"True. You're probably already at the top of the chief's shit list for failing to prevent that," Endo just had to rub it in a little deeper. "Glad I'm not you."

But he seemed to buy Nonomiya's story, and the two women could breathe a bit easier when he walked away.

At least for the meantime. Now the hard part began, Kazuma thought. Lying to her boss about the big, black ball of hair-trigger, nicotine-deprived furry rage that she had picked up in the Imaginary World.

Imai couldn't help staring when they released the kid from his interview. It wasn't just how the other officers seemed to tense when he went by, either, as though they were waiting for something to explode from within him at any moment.

So. Kurosaki Hisoka, we meet again. He didn't look like much. A skinny kid of better-than-thou bearing who barely looked the sixteen years of age his file said he'd been at death, but carried himself with a do-not-touch vibe that could only in part be attributed to the angst of adolescence. He hadn't been around long enough to be a paranoid old man mentally, so Imai could only guess that it was from some private weight. He saw it with guys on the force who had seen more than their fair share of violent and sexual crimes. After a while, being exposed to that much of the worst of humanity started to follow you around, like your own personal ghost.

But it was neither that nor the reaction of his colleagues that made Imai stare. It was the light hair and green eyes. Even if they weren't normal for a Japanese, kids these days dyed their hair all sorts of shades and wore contacts to change their eye color. No, it was the fact that these particular traits, and all the rest, were familiar to him. Imai was certain he had met Kurosaki before. And not just in passing on the street. There had to have been some incident that fixed that face and those eyes in his mind. . . .

God, but he just knew that was going to bug the hell out of him. He'd be lucky if he got any work done the rest of the day.

One thought in particular wouldn't leave Imai alone: If he had met Kurosaki at or around the moment of his death—if it was true what his coworker had said, that Kurosaki had essentially killed him—wouldn't just seeing the kid's face trigger some sort of flashback or post-trauma anxiety? The fact that it didn't was curious, and all the incentive Imai needed to start digging. Perhaps there was a way he could resolve this conundrum, if he could somehow just access Kurosaki's file on the Livertaker case. . . .

It didn't surprise Hisoka one bit when, instead of turning toward Summons on their way back to the office, Tatsumi led him in the other direction, toward Watari's labs.

They found the scientist in the back, in one of the infirmary rooms, bent over a laptop. "Just putting the last touches on some wards. . . ." 003 walked in circles on top of a cot, looking for a comfy place to settle down. "And—there!" Watari announced with one final keystroke. "We should have total privacy. Any Peacekeepers listening in will only hear white noise and whale song."

"Why whale song?" Hisoka said, but Watari only said "Why not?"

Tatsumi knew better than to ask when it came to his old colleague. "Why don't you have a seat, Kurosaki."

"Sure," Hisoka said a bit uncertainly, but he did as asked. 003 immediately hopped over for pets, and to see if he was hiding any treats in his pockets. "But can I ask what this is all about?"

"I think you know," said the secretary, meeting Hisoka's eyes.

Thankfully Watari said before Hisoka had to come up with an answer: "This is largely my fault. I shouldn't have let you go without providing you some sort of context for what you saw in my memories. That was no way to spring something as delicate as that on a person—"

"You mean that I'm part Yatonokami?"

The other two could only stare at Hisoka behind their respective glasses. "Y-you figured that out . . ." Watari said, blinking.

Hisoka shrugged. "I had a lot of time to think about it over in Gensoukai, and what it might mean for me going forward. Rikugou convinced me the quickest way to get answers was to confront Yatonokami directly, so I did. We talked, and it showed me everything. How it made me, what it had planned to do with me—had I lived, that is."

"That's horrific, Bon!"

"I can't believe you're speaking of it as though you're okay with all this," said Tatsumi, folding his arms over his chest. "When you ran off to Gensoukai so soon after finding out, we feared you would try to destroy yourself. Watari said you were in a state of shock when you left him."

"It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to commit suicide by shikigami," Watari confirmed.

"Why would I do that?" Was that how they saw him—as some fragile kid who couldn't handle learning the truth? "I was shocked," Hisoka said with a shrug. "I was angry, and confused. I didn't want to believe that all this time I had no idea what I really was, let alone that I was some sort of hybrid monster. But I got over it."

"But how does one just get over something like that?" said Watari. "You've seen what just being half demon did to Tsuzuki."

"Yes! Exactly! I saw how he carried the blame for that around on his shoulders, like it was somehow his fault. Like he had somehow asked to be born that way. I'm certain a lot of this mess we're in now is because he couldn't handle Muraki reminding him of that. But I refuse to buy into the same nonsense that this is something I have to be ashamed of."

Or maybe it was that caving to the pressure to be ashamed, to feel guilty for what he could neither choose nor control, felt like handing Muraki another victory. Muraki had enjoyed taunting him at every turn, trying to make Hisoka believe that he would never be anything but a pawn in other people's schemes, that he had no control over his own fate. And Hisoka was sick and tired of handing that man wins.

Tatsumi, however, wasn't so quick to take Hisoka's word for it. "You're not angry?"

"Of course I'm angry." For a moment, Hisoka had thought about denying it. "But there's no use getting upset about my condition. It's not like it's reversible. If anything, I'm a little pissed off that it's taken me twenty-two years to learn the truth about myself. And that I seem to be the last one around here to know about it."

Watari and Tatsumi exchanged a look at that, and Hisoka thought he could detect an unspoken "told you so" in it.

"You're not the last to know," Tatsumi assured him in a quiet voice. "Watari and I have told no one else what state we found you in the night we brought you back here. As far as we know, no one outside this room knows about you and Yatonokami."

"Other than Rikugou, that is," Watari put in, "if he put you up to confronting it. And whoever else you might have let in on the secret while you were in Gensoukai."

Which turned out to be quite a lot of people, now that Hisoka thought back on it. Everyone who was gathered in Kurikara's throne room when he summoned Yatonokami. Which included K—though he was pretty confident the secret would remain safe with her. Kazuma and Nonomiya? No, Hisoka was fairly sure they had missed that spectacle. At least, they had made no mention of it when they met up with him over there. But if somehow they did find out, could he trust them to keep quiet about it?

"We can't say for sure about Enma," Watari went on, echoing the direction of Hisoka's thoughts. "It stands to reason that if Yatonokami's presence had been detectable at the time of your judgment, then he knew exactly what he was signing us all up for when he made you a shinigami."

It stands to reason. . . . Shungei had thought Kurikara was part of Enma's plan for him, too. Could it really be that all this time Hisoka thought he was forging his own future, he was really just fulfilling a plan that had been laid out for him years ago? Damn it, he was not just a passenger on the way to his own destiny!

Tatsumi said, briefly meeting Watari's eyes: "There's a good chance Enma would know the details of our investigation of your parents. I'm sorry, Kurosaki. He may have drawn conclusions from our findings the way we did. The same way I believe the chief suspects the truth, but understands that what he doesn't know can't be used against him. Or against his employees."

Hisoka knew only a little of that case himself. Regrettably, as it concerned his own family. When he was called back from Gensoukai the first time, he was informed of his parents' deaths. The details, however, had been glossed over. In his shock, at the time, he hadn't thought to ask for the full run-down. "So, even then you suspected Yatonokami might have had a hand in my conception."

"To put it simply," Tatsumi affirmed.

"But we weren't about to blurt it out to you when what we had were no more than suspicions," Watari said.

"But it was about me! I had a right to know! Watari, aren't you always saying it's always better to know?"

"And what good would hunches have done you, huh? It's not like any of that stuff was good news. Honestly, we didn't think it would matter whether you knew the truth or not. With your father and uncle dead, as well as the child Rui was carrying, we thought that particular yatonokami was eradicated from the Living World."

"Or, at least, weakened enough to where it no longer posed an immediate threat," Tatsumi said. "It had occupied that house and the land around it long enough an ambient trace of it was bound to remain, but it had no host body left to possess."

"We weren't thinking that it could still be viable inside a dead person," said Watari. "We didn't have any evidence at that point to suggest the part of Yatonokami inside of you remained conscious after your death."

"But you did know it was there?" Hisoka couldn't help the note of desperation that had entered his voice.

"Not for certain," said Tatsumi. "We knew you were born to be the carrier of its curse into the next generation. It wasn't until the night you summoned Rikugou that we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Yatonokami didn't just intend for you to be a carrier, but that it had actually made you a vessel in which to hide a piece of its self."

Hisoka was glad to be sitting then, as it felt like the walls were spinning around him. The whale song didn't help matters either, even if it was set at an almost inaudible volume.

The details about his own person were nothing new to him. That wasn't what he found so upsetting. But learning that other people knew such intimate information years before he found out felt like being stripped naked in front of an audience. To speak nothing of the details about his family that had never been shared with him before now. It was his family. How could no one have told him? "What did you mean, what my mother was carrying? Are you saying she was pregnant when you were sent to investigate? Was thatwhy you were sent to investigate?!"

"Her soul had overstayed its time on earth," Tatsumi confirmed, in a low voice filled with regret. "We were sent to investigate the cause and bring her back with us. Investigating the cause of your father's illness, as he professed it to be, was secondary to our main objective. We arrived to find your mother had been suffering the effects of a two-year-long pregnancy. The . . . child," he struggled with the appropriateness of the word, "had been keeping her body alive . . . barely . . . but her mind . . ."

Tatsumi trailed off when Hisoka buried his face in his hands. It was clear he didn't need to finish the thought. Hisoka could envision it as though he had been there himself. As if the yatonokami had placed the memory directly in his head. In a sense, it had, when it showed him everything it had had planned. Its plans within plans—in case someone, like Muraki, interfered. He could feel Yatonokami's glee as his own, as it tortured his mother with her own regrets, terrified her nightly until madness was her only refuge.

Hisoka thought his own life had been a nightmare, but he only knew the half of what it could have been. Those images would haunt his sleep as long as he existed. But not today. 003's gentle hooting pulled Hisoka away from them, and he opened his eyes to see her big golden ones staring into his with concern that was no less human for coming from an owl.

He was not alone, she reminded him. He did not have to sink into that pit of despair Yatonokami had prepared for him because he had other avenues of escape. He had people who cared.

"It did that to her," Hisoka said when he had recovered enough to speak. "I was dead and it needed to produce an heir. I just can't believe Father would be so cruel as to force her to go through that a second time. Weren't two children enough of a sacrifice to that monster?"

Watari, who had been staring at Hisoka silently with deep sorrow in his eyes, suddenly sat up. "But, Bon, he didn't force it on her. That thing your mother was carrying was not human."

"So? If you want to get technical about it, I'm not sure I qualify either."

"That's not what Watari means," Tatsumi reproached him, but Hisoka wasn't going to apologize for his outrage. They were his parents. He could hate them for their weakness all he wanted.

"What would you know about it?" he said to both of them. "You spent, what, a week or two in that household? Try sixteen years! I know exactly what my parents were capable of—what kind of miserable excuses for human beings they were. And I'm glad they're dead—I'm glad my whole family is, and the curse with them."

"Bon, you don't mean that—"

"Of course I do! When you're raised for the slaughter, by a person incapable of loving his own children as anything other than livestock, then you can tell me what I do or don't mean!"

"But your father did love you!" Watari insisted, though Hisoka wouldn't see it.

He shook his head, wishing he could shut out the words, because if they were true, then all those years . . . "What kind of father shows his love by shutting his son up in a prison, telling him he's a monster, that he's not his son? Killing his own daughter, for God's sake! and then trying to replace her with another child he never even wanted—"

"Is that what you think happened all this time? Bon, your father didn't kill your sister! Your uncle, Iwao, did!"

"He confessed at his judgment," Tatsumi confirmed.

"Your father loved you both so much. If he ever told you he didn't want you, it's because he never wanted you to suffer! He knew what kind of pain you were destined for, being born into that house, a son, an heir to that curse, and he wished to God that he could have spared you everything that went with it. If you could have seen how it tortured him in those last days, how much guilt he carried for being relieved when you died before you could inherit that curse, you wouldn't have the nerve to sit there and accuse him of failing to love you!"

Watari's words succeeded in shaming him, and a glance at Tatsumi, who was staring at his shoes, was even harder to bear. Hisoka may not have felt any judgment from the secretary, but the dark direction of his thoughts was sobering enough. The regret. The guilt. His parents' case had opened some old wound deep within Tatsumi, even if it was too shrouded in shadow for Hisoka to see.

But Hisoka could not let go of his resentment that easily. It was too deeply rooted in his person, and had been growing vigorously for far too long. "It doesn't matter what Father's intentions were. How does that begin to excuse the pain I've had to endure—a lot of it because of him! How could he excuse away how he treated me?"

Watari shrugged. "I can't speak for your father. But maybe he thought it would be easier on you in the long run, if you grew up resenting him, rather than feel betrayed by the folks you cared about most when you reached an age to learn the truth."

Like pinching off a bud before it could freeze in the first hard frost of winter. If Tsuzuki were here, he might have put it in terms like that.

That's what Muraki had done, Hisoka thought. Snipped off the bud that had been his life before it could even begin to come to its awful fruition. And was he supposed to thank Muraki for that? Is that what Hisoka's father had done? Thanked the stranger who had sent his son to an early grave?

He sniffed back tears that refused to come. For all Hisoka had thought he was coming to peace with what he was, there was still a great deal surrounding his life and death that he could not forgive.

Watari was wrong. This resentment wasn't easier. Hisoka would have given anything to go back, to have a memory where he truly felt that he had been loved—and wanted—unconditionally. Even if it was inevitable that love would be betrayed, the memory would still be there. That, at least, would remain genuine and unadulterated, even through death.

"I'm sorry to have put you though this, Kurosaki," Tatsumi finally said, "but I must impress upon you the importance of everything we've discussed here remaining confidential."

"That goes without saying, doesn't it?"

Perhaps feeling that he deserved the sarcasm, Tatsumi let it roll off. "I really do believe you were brought here for a reason. Your recent successes in Gensoukai only strengthen my belief. However, not everyone in Enma-cho views the same set of circumstances the same way. They already distrusted Tsuzuki for his shikigami and will only see your gaining Kurikara as an escalation. They must not know what you are. If the wrong people find out about Yatonokami's involvement, on top of everything else, I fear even Enma won't be able to defend your continued presence here."

"You've been hanging out with the Count too much," Watari told him. "You're starting to sound like him."

But Tatsumi remained as somber as ever. "When a man like Todoroki is allowed as much free rein to exercise his authority as he has been of late, a little paranoia can be healthy. I'm not sure he realizes how much damage he will do the Judgment Bureau if he continues to actively undermine Summons' most powerful agents."

"Or," Watari said, "it could be that's exactly what he intends. In which case, Enma help us all."

Imai was going to owe Kazuma big. Somehow she had managed to convince the younger Gushoushin to grant him access to the last twelve months of Kurosaki's case history. He would have to find out what kind of cuisine his sempai liked and take her out to a nice restaurant in the Living World. That was, if shinigami did that sort of thing.

And if the information he was looking for wasn't classified or redacted. Once Imai started looking, it didn't take long to realize that the Kurosaki kid, despite his age, had been investigating some cases that were considered a pretty big deal by Enma-cho standards.

Imai, on the other hand, had never felt like a smaller deal than when he was looking at a file where nine out of ten words were blacked out. But the finer details of the cases weren't what interested him anyway. He was looking for dates and places that stood out as significant to him—certain times when Kurosaki would have crossed over into his territory.

He found it in September of the previous year. Kumamoto Prefecture, Kumamoto City. Bingo. This is the one.

It was one of the dreaded redacted files. Imai didn't have access to the report, or the dossiers that were attached to it. But what was a matter of public record had enough in the way of dates and place names for him to know precisely what it was about. This had been his case, too.

The murdered high school kid, the one who had been best friends with Imai's colleague's son. Left for dead in an alley, mysteriously drained of blood. And the suspect: another student at the same private school, name of Fujisawa, who had supposedly been dead for more than three years before he committed the crime. At the time, Imai had wondered if he was losing his marbles, as none of what he and Asai uncovered during their investigation seemed to make any sense. Since being here, however, Imai was a bit more willing to put down as credible what he had passed off as impossible in life.

He noticed Muraki Kazutaka's name was absent from what of the file was available to him, too, yet it seemed inferences to him or his work could be found everywhere. Knowing that guy's activities were being followed by Meifu too left Imai feeling justified in a way he hadn't felt in a while, alive or dead. See, Sempai, he could imagine Asai might say to him if he were here, I told you we were on to something big.

A name popped out at Imai—Sacred Heart Catholic Academy—and finally it clicked. Like flicking a switch. No wonder he couldn't quite place Kurosaki's face. If he had just pictured him in a private school blazer . . .

He had interviewed that kid about the murder. And now that Imai knew Kurosaki had been conducting his own investigation on the same people at the same time, right under his and Asai's noses—

Son of a bitch. . . . The little brat lied to our faces!

Imai wasn't sure just then what ticked him off more. That Kurosaki had been actively deceiving him, intentionally obstructing his investigation at every opportunity, and Imai had been none the wiser. Or that the kid who'd done all that was the same kid responsible for Imai's death.

When Imai asked if she would help him check out Kurosaki's case files, Kazuma had been skeptical. It wasn't going to be easy trying to convince the elder Gushoushin to do her a favor, even if it wasn't for her exactly. He seemed to have lumped Imai in with all his other grudges by association, and Kazuma dreaded telling the former detective that he had a long, upward climb ahead of him if he wanted to get himself on both Gushoushin's good sides.

Luckily for the two of them, however, the elder brother was nowhere to be found when they arrived, and the younger was in good spirits—in more ways than one, it turned out—and didn't mind fulfilling their request.

As Gushoushin got Imai logged in at a terminal, a curious feeling tugged at Kazuma. She would have been at a loss as to how to explain it. Even saying it was a peace officer's intuition didn't quite do it justice. It was more animal than that. Like how she imagined it might feel if she had an identical twin, and something were to happen to that twin miles away.

Then she caught a glimpse of Terazuma in the copy room off the library entrance, and it all clicked.

Her feet carried her over there before she was half aware of what she was doing. Kazuma had planned on telling Terazuma sooner rather than later, only the fear of how he would react holding her back from just popping on down to Summons and getting it over with. How do you break the news to someone that you're dating their ex? Though even that wasn't an entirely appropriate analogy to their situation. It was worse, because Terazuma and Shungei hadn't just shared a relationship. They'd shared a body and a brain—for more than a decade. Kazuma truly had no idea how Terazuma was going to take the news.

But the moment Kazuma came within arm's reach of him, and he turned around from the copy machine, some primal urge inside her took over. The next thing Kazuma knew, she was pressing Terazuma up against the copier, her fingers in his hair, his shirt bunched in her fist, and her tongue halfway to his tonsils.

Terazuma jumped. A squeaky sound like a frightened kitten escaped him. But he was too stunned to do anything but try to make himself smaller against the copy machine.

Kazuma prided herself on her muscle, but Shungei was strong. Like a Terminator. The Black Lion resisted letting go, even after the impulse had severed itself from Kazuma's consciousness and her repulsion took over. She wasn't attracted to Hajime! She liked giving him a hard time and all, and didn't have anything against him as a Summons officer, but he was kind of a chauvinistic prick. Not to mention, tasted like cigarettes—and it was really bothering Kazuma how much she was liking and hating that at the same time.

Finally, she managed to break away, and, on instinct, slapped Terazuma across the face.

"The fuck was that for!" he yelped, holding his cheek.

"I'm sorry!" Kazuma was apologizing just as quickly, "it was an automatic response, I didn't mean it—"

"B-but you came on to me!"

Then it clicked. Terazuma took a closer look at Kazuma's face—or, to be precise, her eyes—and blinked. "Well, isn't this just perfect. I don't believe it. . . ."

"Trust me, this wasn't how I wanted to tell you. I don't know how I was going to tell you, really," Kazuma amended, "none of this was my idea. It just happened. Though, I guess if I'm honest, it was my fault, I did kinda challenge her—but I didn't know I was asking for this."

"Kuro-chan?" He wasn't speaking to her anymore. And Kazuma was trying not to resent it, but it was really unnerving the way Terazuma spoke through her. Like a demented old man trying to remember if he knew her, and if she was his late wife. "Is that you in there?"

"She's in here, alright." Otherwise I wouldn't have snogged you for all the tea in China, obviously. "Sorry for the sneak attack. I didn't think I'd run into you in the library."

"Yeah, well, Gushoushin Junior can sometimes be convinced to let up on the lifetime ban a little if you catch him around Suntory time. Plus, I can't transform and burn down the place if I'm no longer possessed, can I? But you hardly show any outward signs of possession. Other than the eyes. You've definitely got her eyes. Which can only mean—"

"That we're more compatible than you two were?" Kazuma rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, I guessed as much. Don't take it too personally, though. We're both tough broads, so we have that in common. You just can't hope to compete on that level."

All joking aside, though, it was kind of sad. She could feel Shungei's longing inside her still—not for Terazuma so much as to be with him. To be a part of him. And the frustration that she wasn't and couldn't be. Some of that frustration was even directed at Kazuma, for not knowing just what she was doing when she challenged Shungei to a fight. If Kazuma had ever wondered if shikigami shared the same spectrum of emotions as human beings, she wasn't wondering now. In some ways, they were more intense, as the denizens of the Imaginary World seemed to experience what attributes they embodied to an extreme.

In this case, righteous anger. But also a need to protect. Kazuma had never really thought about it before, that that was Shungei's driving directive when she came bursting out of Terazuma in the form of a black lion. Now she understood: It wasn't an offensive move, but a defensive one, albeit on steroids.

"I'm sorry," Kazuma said again. "I was afraid no matter how I tried to break the news to you, it would hurt."

Terazuma wasn't in the habit of showing his vulnerabilities on his sleeve, and he wasn't about to start now; but there were cracks in the tough-guy veneer, if Kazuma looked hard enough. Maybe she'd pegged him all wrong. At least Shungei's experience of him was giving her a different perspective.

"It's funny," he said, "but when we were sharing a body, I used to dream of finding a way to get rid of her. People aren't meant to share their every thought with another consciousness. It's embarrassing. And annoying."

Don't listen to him, came the little voice in the back of Kazuma's skull. I'm an absolute joy to have around. And I don't judge. Well, only when you deserve it.

"But the day after she left. . . ." Terazuma chuckled to himself, but it was melancholic. "You never really know what they mean by 'deafening silence' until you experience it yourself. The same way that people go mad when they spend time in solitary confinement. Part of you thinks 'What could be better than some peace and quiet? No one to disturb you?' Until you find you need the support, or even just the presence, of another soul, and it's not there when you reach for it."

For as long as she had been a shinigami, Kochou had been that person for Kazuma. Now she was out of reach—if only physically. Kazuma never thought twice when she'd given Terazuma a hard time about the tension between him and Kannuki in the past. Now she understood the real pain that had been there, the real barriers. It wasn't funny anymore.

"I suppose I have you to blame for my wanting a cigarette all the time," she said, however, desperate to lighten the mood.

Terazuma snorted at that. "Yeah. Yeah, that would be my fault."

And Kazuma sobered. "Does the pressure ever let up? This feeling like my skull is going to split in two?"

"Not really. But you learn to live with it. Or, you know, whatever you want to call what it is we do. You never get used to transforming either. There's no way to lessen the discomfort of having your body completely rearranged and all the extra bits shunted into another dimension, so it always hurts like hell. You'd think after a while you'd get used to your coworkers seeing you naked—"

"Let me guess," Kazuma grumbled. "Each time feels as fresh as the first time." She was liking what she'd gotten herself into less and less.

"But it's not all bad."

Kazuma had to break it to him, that Terazuma wasn't doing a very good job of selling the good points of shiki possession. So far she'd yet to hear any.

"I know," he said. "I'm really not. I don't know how to explain it, but you'll just have to take my word for it when I say I wish I could do it all over again. As great as it is to be my own person again—"

"And not have to worry about any embarrassing fur-splosions?"

"That. I'd still take her back in a heartbeat if I could. You should use this time to your advantage, Kazuma. It's no use appreciating what you had only after it's gone."

Kazuma could have told him she'd already been doing a lot of that lately. And with Shungei threatening to burst out of her every time she touched Kochou, she was in for a lot more of it for the foreseeable future.

Desk duty was a surprisingly excruciating punishment. Which was to say, the boredom was almost unbearable, as was the feeling he couldn't shake that he wasn't contributing as much as he should, and Natsume's quips were getting on Hisoka's nerves more than ever. And so far he'd only had to endure a few days of it. He never thought he'd miss having a case so much. But despite the emotional roller coaster they usually took him on, at least he got out for some fresh air, and wasn't stuck looking at the same four walls and faces of his coworkers all day.

With the exception of Tatsumi's. The secretary was curiously absent from the office the last few days.

Perhaps he was fighting Hisoka's case down in Judgment. It wouldn't be the first time. Hisoka would have to get him a nice thank-you present the next time he was in Chijou (whenever he was allowed back to Chijou). Humble and frugal though he may be, Tatsumi still had a taste for fine things, all the more so when someone else was paying for them.

And after their last conversation together in the labs, Hisoka didn't mind Tatsumi's absence. It still didn't feel fair, when Tatsumi knew better than anyone how private one's feelings about their family ought to remain, that Hisoka had had to bare his without any thought of reciprocity. It still didn't sit well with him that Tatsumi knew details about his family that even Hisoka didn't, not to mention that he seemed to know Nagare better than Hisoka ever had. Though he supposed if he had to choose whom to trust such secrets to, he would choose Tatsumi nine times out of ten.

The slow pace of things at the office didn't seem to be helping Hisoka sleep any better either. A return to the real worlds meant a return to nightmares. And ever since his communion with Yatonokami, the serpentine theme of them was getting worse. Wriggling shadows on the walls. Glowing eyes in the background. The suggestion of a flickering tongue, darting out to taste the air.

One night he dreamed he was back in his childhood home's cherry grove, the red moon above and Muraki and his female victim on the horizon. Hisoka watched the knife fall. He heard it plunge into flesh and blood and bone. The woman sagged in Muraki's arms, just as she did in his memories.

But instead of legs folding beneath her as she collapsed to the ground, it was a thick, scaled coil that slid from Muraki's hold to pool on the wet earth. Long, tangled black hair spread out around it where the head should have been, but he could not see a face to go with it, human or serpent or otherwise. All Hisoka knew with any certainty was that that hair was just like his mother's.

But it could have belonged to any number of women. Rui hadn't been Muraki's victim that night. Even as Hisoka was thinking that, he tried to turn his eyes to Muraki in his dream . . . but couldn't find him. Someone else was standing there, holding the bloody knife. Someone not in a trench coat, but in a cotton robe. Someone who looked a lot like Hisoka.

But that can't be me! I'm standing right here!

Or was he? Hisoka looked down at the grass around his feet, drawn by a movement like waves all around him. On every side, snakes were coming up out of the soft ground like worms after the rain. Different colors and sizes, a variety of species. He peered closer, trying to figure out why there were so many and where they were coming from.

And that was when they noticed him. As one, every snake in the grove turned its head toward him. He could sense the thousands of eyes, even if he could not see them all through the grass. The ones that were closest slithered toward him with alarming speed. A viper puffed out its cheeks, only a heartbeat from springing its jaws open wide and gathering itself to strike—

But before a single fang could touch him, Hisoka woke.

Heart pounding, sweat sticking his clothes to him, he sat up in the dark. Just a dream. But waking could not rid him of the reality of what he carried inside.

What he needed was a new case. Sitting around filing and refiling old paperwork all day was leaving Hisoka too much time to think about his own situation. Maybe it was time he humbled himself, went to Todoroki begging and promising to be on his best behavior. If he thought that would make a difference, that was, and if it weren't so much easier thought than done.

Hisoka could feel that something had changed the moment he entered the Summons office that morning. Many of his coworkers still hadn't forgiven him for running off to Gensoukai when he'd been expressly forbidden from doing so. Just as many still felt betrayed by Saya's reporting to Peacekeeping, even if they were kind to her in person.

But Hisoka had only to see the looks on their faces to know that wasn't the problem. The coworkers he passed quickly looked away when he met their eyes—perhaps from shame, or embarrassment of him, but he felt there was something else to it. Their energy told him something bad had happened, but it didn't say what.

Todoroki must have gone and done it. He had sought Enma's permission to have Hisoka locked up and Enma must have granted it. Peacekeeping officers were probably waiting for Hisoka to arrive for work to officially arrest him. What else could it be, Hisoka thought with a sinking feeling when he saw Tatsumi and Konoe coming out of the debriefing room. Weary expressions on their faces, they conferred in hushed voices.

But with the dread came a sense of resignation. If confinement was to be Hisoka's fate for the near future, at least he could count on those two to give him a straight explanation.

"What happened?" Hisoka asked them. "Why is everybody—"

But the question died on his lips. His heart felt as though it had sunk like a stone inside him as soon as he got near enough to sense their auras. It's worse than I thought. . . .

Konoe clapped a hand on his secretary's shoulder. And when he said to Hisoka, "Why don't you step inside, Kurosaki," he could barely keep his voice from cracking.

God. . . . He was going to find out demons had attacked and killed Hijiri while he was in the Imaginary World, or someone else he should have been responsible for.

But even as he entertained the thought, Hisoka knew it wasn't true. Or else Tatsumi wouldn't be smiling. Though the blinds on the room's windows were closed, Hisoka knew exactly what was waiting for him inside that door. He just couldn't bring himself to believe it, for fear that if he did, for just one second, it would break the spell and this would all prove to still be a dream. He wasn't sure he would be able to bear it if he woke up now.

Hisoka must not have been the only one to feel that way.

He was sitting in a chair against the inside wall when Hisoka went in. Elbows on his knees, anxiously tapping one foot, and poised to flee at any moment, like a loved one in a hospital waiting room anticipating bad news. Not like he belonged there, as he had belonged for the past seventy years and more. More like a stranger. Just passing through.

But all that changed the moment he saw Hisoka. The restlessness evaporated from him, and a thousand different thoughts coalesced into one behind his eyes when they met Hisoka's.

Tsuzuki leapt to his feet, and Hisoka had barely a second for it all to sink in before Tsuzuki's arms were around him, holding him tight. Tsuzuki's face was buried in his shoulder, breathing his name back into him: "Hisoka . . . You're alive. . . ."

"Tsuzuki," Hisoka chided out of habit, and felt the hitch of breath in Tsuzuki's burst of a laugh that told he was crying as he said, "I know, I know. . . . But you're still here. They told me you were, but I didn't believe it. I wanted to, I wanted that so badly, but I couldn't. I couldn't believe it until now."

You thought I was gone, didn't you? Forever. Tsuzuki had believed that so deeply, for so long, it was all Hisoka could feel. Like a knife to the heart, it pierced him through, and lodged there: the aching loss, the regret, the self-loathing of knowing that he was responsible for destroying the one thing he was still fighting for. Somehow, for having Hisoka there in his arms, Tsuzuki felt it all the worse. It was what could have been, Hisoka told himself—what so easily could have been, and the terror of how close it had been to being real, that dragged Tsuzuki over the coals of his mourning all over again.

Meanwhile, the shock of seeing Tsuzuki again had stunned Hisoka stiff. But as it sank in for him, too, that this was no dream, his arms came up to return the embrace, and he allowed himself to surrender to the reality. Behind him, he heard Tatsumi gently shut the door, leaving the two of them alone, and thought he could see in his mind's eye the secretary's satisfied smile.

"I'm here," Hisoka repeated. Now that they were alone, it felt like a confession as much as a promise. There was so much he had been meaning to say since they parted ways nine months ago, but he couldn't think of a single thing. Just "I'm here."

"God," Tsuzuki sobbed into his hair, "the things I've done—" But whatever horrors Tsuzuki was referring to he shut from his mind the next moment, before Hisoka could know them. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"It's okay," Hisoka soothed him. "You're back. Nothing else matters now."

Too soon for Hisoka's liking, Tsuzuki managed to pull himself back to arm's length. He sniffled as he wiped one cheek with the heel of his hand. "I was so sure I'd killed you for good this time—"

"I know—"

"He told me you were gone." By "he," Hisoka assumed he meant Muraki. "He said he'd seen you destroyed—"

"Obviously he lied to you. I'm sure he didn't even believe it himself, he just said those things to you to break you down. Just like he always does." Hisoka was sure of it. Just as he was sure the news of his own demise wasn't the only lie Muraki had told to try and manipulate Tsuzuki into seeing things his way. "We can talk about that later, alright? Right now it isn't important." It was disturbing to talk about his own destruction, like if they kept on the subject, it might actually happen retroactively. "More to the point—what are you doing here?"

"I got away, Hisoka," Tsuzuki said as he leaned back against the edge of the conference table. "I—I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to do it. Maybe Muraki slipped up or I finally figured a way out of his trap. . . . Either way, it wasn't easy, but I made it. I'm free."

Free, huh? Hisoka couldn't help his suspicions. It wasn't impossible that Muraki had actually messed up; but experience told him it was far more likely that man had let Tsuzuki go. Which begged the question: why would he? Wasn't Tsuzuki the culmination of everything Muraki wanted?

In any case, "I didn't mean that. I meant, what are you doing here? Tsuzuki—in case you didn't know, Enma practically put out a manhunt for you when you disappeared!"

Tsuzuki blinked, with that kicked-puppy look that said he wasn't sure why Hisoka was yelling at him. "Well, where else was I going to go? This is where I belong."

"You're a wanted man, Tsuzuki! When you took off without a word, the higher-ups thought you'd abandoned your post. Todoroki has done everything he can think of to try and get you charged with treason." Either the other chief's name or the charge earned Hisoka a wince; maybe a bit of both. "He could still have you arrested and brought to trial for this. And you thought you could just waltz back in here like you just got back from a vacation?"

Oh, Hisoka so itched to call him an idiot. Even after several months of missing Tsuzuki terribly, he just slipped right back into old habits. Something told him it would have done more harm than good.

But it was concern that filled Hisoka now, and made the backs of his eyes sting with unshed tears. Concern, and fear. He just got Tsuzuki back. He couldn't let them take him away again. "That was a stupid, thoughtless thing you did, Tsuzuki! You should have followed protocol—I'm sure there's protocols for this sort of thing. . . ."

"I wanted to see you, Hisoka, before anything else happened. I had to. To make sure—"

He cut himself off. But Hisoka could guess what he had been about to say. Something like To make sure they weren't lying to me about you being here.

But why Tsuzuki felt like he had to lower a curtain on his emotions, keep them all to himself all of a sudden, was beyond Hisoka. "I'm not stupid," Tsuzuki said. "I know I can't hide myself here in Summons forever, and I don't plan to."

He looked up at the gentle knock on the door, nodding for Tatsumi to come back in: "I fully intend to surrender myself to Enma's judgment over this. Maybe if I throw myself at his mercy, promise to be the best shinigami he's ever seen, he'll take pity on me and let me come back to work. Let me pay off my debt with my service. A guy can hope, right?"

"We can all hope for such a favorable outcome," Tatsumi said. "However, what you did may just have crossed a line too far, Tsuzuki. You should prepare yourself for a harsh sentence."

"I know," Tsuzuki said, but he smiled stubbornly. "I wouldn't have come back if I wasn't ready to accept that."

"You don't really think Enma would terminate Tsuzuki over this, do you?" Hisoka asked the secretary. "I thought you said before that Tsuzuki was too valuable to him, that he wouldn't dare let him go."

"There's a first time for everything," Tsuzuki said, with that same smile; and Hisoka didn't like the way it felt like he was trying too hard. "What I did this time might have finally been too much for Enma to ignore. But if retirement is to be the verdict, there isn't much I can do about it now, is there?"

"I don't see how you can joke about this," Hisoka said under his breath. But on second thought, it wasn't a joke. It was just like Tsuzuki to already have come to terms with his fate, whatever it ended up being. Now Hisoka realized why he hated that smile. He'd seen it before, in Kyoto, before the fire.

And he never liked that term, "retirement." Why couldn't they all just call it what it was?

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Tatsumi. "First things first, Enma will want to interrogate you about your whereabouts over the last nine months. I'm sure he will have his two floating heads examine you for any booby traps Muraki might have placed on your soul while he's at it."

Booby traps? Is that possible? Though Hisoka supposed his own curse scars were pretty much the same thing. Albeit placed on him in life, so that death made them indelible. How much of a stretch would it be for a man with as much knowledge of the arcane as Muraki had to do something similar to a shinigami?

"I submit myself to his judgment, fully," Tsuzuki said. "I don't have any knowledge of any traps, but if Muraki tampered with me in some way, I want it found out just as much as Enma does.

"I want to repent for what I did," he added, this time, to Hisoka. "This mess you're in now, this fighting between the departments that Tatsumi's told me about—all of it started when I ran away from my duties. It's past time I stood up and took responsibility, not just for my actions but for the consequences they've brought."

"So you're going to fall on your sword."

Hisoka couldn't quite catch the crack in his own voice when he said those words, and Tsuzuki noticed it. Such guilt and sorrow he returned with his stare—but though he opened his mouth to answer, he never got a word out.

"Everything but," Tatsumi said for him, with a note of finality that dared the other two to contradict him. "On Enma's mercy, yes. But Todoroki will be hearing of Tsuzuki's return soon, if he hasn't already, and he's sure to insist on taking him into Peacekeeping custody."

"Sounds like code for 'locking Tsuzuki up where Summons will never see him again'."

"My thoughts precisely. Which is why we don't intend to surrender him without a fight. Chief Konoe and I have been on the phone all morning, pulling what favors we still have in Judgment. The Count has also been informed of the situation. You can rest assured that he will sue most ardently for our cause with King Enma."

"Another debt I'll owe him that I can never repay," Tsuzuki muttered with a droop of the shoulders.

Hisoka wondered what he would have thought of Tatsumi's and the Count's newfound amity. Perhaps Tsuzuki would have just taken from that that the two were conspiring to share in their spoils. "So long as you agree to behave yourself and not run away again for the foreseeable future," the secretary said, pretending he hadn't heard Tsuzuki's objection.

"I promise," Tsuzuki said. "I don't see that I have any better options anyway. If I run, Enma will send his Peacekeepers to pursue me to the ends of the earth. At least this way I have a chance of everything returning to normal, however slim it may be."

"It isn't as slim as that. I have faith that the Count will come through for us, even if no one else does. And, if it comes to it, everyone here is prepared to fight for you. Maybe not by taking up arms, but they have other means of resisting and making their wishes clear. Enma would not risk losing all of Summons in a single blow. We are too vital a department to go without, and he has spent too many years building up our team to afford to start over from scratch."

That seemed to reassure Tsuzuki somewhat, even if his nod wasn't the most confident one Hisoka had ever seen.

But as he watched his two coworkers, Hisoka felt the curious itch of an old jealousy that he knew was silly but could never seem to shake. For all that everyone told him he was Tsuzuki's most compatible partner yet, there was a place inside Tsuzuki that even Hisoka could never reach yet somehow Tatsumi could. Effortlessly, and despite their past animosity. Of course, they had a history that Hisoka could never take away from them, nor was it his place to pry into it.

But he could not afford to give up on Tsuzuki again, like he had, if only briefly, on the Kyoto case. If their partnership was going to heal—if they would even be allowed to remain partners after everything that had happened—Hisoka could not afford to leave gulfs in their relationship that he could not bridge. He would have to work harder. Not at being Tsuzuki's Tatsumi, per se, but at being Tsuzuki's everything.

"Speaking of the team," Tatsumi said, "there are a lot of people here who have been worried sick about you, Tsuzuki, and would really like to say a few words when you have a moment. Not criticism," he added quickly to the concern that flashed across Tsuzuki's face. "Just . . . to express their relief to see you back in one piece. It's been a long time. The place hasn't been the same without you. That is, if you think you're up to seeing more people?"

That concern concerned Hisoka as well. He could feel Tsuzuki's terror at facing his own coworkers, even if he hid it well on the outside, and it didn't feel like the Tsuzuki he knew. The Tsuzuki who couldn't wait to greet everyone in the morning. "Maybe one at a time," Hisoka suggested, and felt rewarded by a loosening of Tsuzuki's tension beside him.

Tatsumi nodded at that. "I'll let you two get back to it, then." And with that, he left them once again to their privacy.

There was still too much to say. Tatsumi understood that without having to put it bluntly. More than what could be said in a single afternoon. But Tsuzuki wasn't sure how much longer than that he had left. He started to say "Hisoka, I—"

But Hisoka, for reasons he wasn't sure even he would be able to explain, couldn't let him get any further. "There'll be time for all of that later," he said gently, even as he shot to his feet. "I promise, Tsuzuki. I won't let Todoroki or Enma or anyone send you anywhere until you and I have had a chance to say everything we've been wanting to say to each other."

It was just that he couldn't bear to hear it here. It was too public, even in the relative privacy of the conference room. And he wasn't ready. After all Hisoka swore to himself that he would say immediately upon Tsuzuki's return, if it ever happened, now that the opportunity had come, he just wasn't ready to say it.

No, that wasn't the whole truth either. He was afraid to. After everything he had been through, everything the two of them had faced together, he was suddenly afraid of a few words.

They're never just a few words. Not when Tsuzuki's involved.

"Wakaba's dying to make sure you're okay. I can feel it through the wall." Which wasn't a lie. Hisoka could sense her nervous energy just on the other side of the door, saw her in his mind's eye trying to peek between the closed venetian blinds. "Maybe we should put her out of her misery and let her see you're not a hologram or anything?"

Tsuzuki was about to protest, but he must have seen that Hisoka was going to get his way one way or another, even if he had to teleport himself out of the room. Though the crestfallen look on his face was almost enough to make Hisoka stay, out of pure guilt. "I guess it would be cruel to keep her waiting," Tsuzuki said. Though his smile, which was obviously forced, begged Hisoka, Don't go. What if this is all just my imagination? What if I never see you again?

"I'll just be right outside if you need me," Hisoka assured him. But he didn't feel like he could breathe easy again until he was on the other side of that door.