She wanted to drop the receiver, but her fingers tightened painfully around it instead and for the fourth or fifth time that night Kagome's heart started racing. "What? What happened?"

"Then you haven't seen him?" The hysteria in her mother's voice rose another degree, "I thought… he asked for your address a few days ago, he said he was going to send you a letter. I… I thought when he didn't come home that he might have snuck off to go see you and…"

"I haven't seen him, but I just got home…" Kagome forced herself into action yet again, "I'll go look for him right now. If he's here I'll find him Mom, I promise…"

"I know you will Kagome, we'll be looking here too. I'll let you know if he shows up."

"I'll call you soon…"

"Oh Kagome, be careful it's late…"

"I will." Be careful, yeah because that always helped. She hung up the phone and wheeled toward the door, ready to run directly to the train station. If Sota had snuck away from home he would have come on a train and she had to find him.

"Kagome, what's wrong? She sounded really upset."

She ignored Keiko's question, not intentionally, but because she was busy trying to think of what to do next, where to check, where Sota would have gone. She didn't stop until she found her path through the door blocked by a tan arm and a white clad shoulder, "Yusuke, get out of my way."

"What's going on?" He demanded, crossing his arms to glare at her.

Kagome stared at him for a moment trying to rein in her temper that was being sparked by already short nerves. She may have wanted very badly to yell at him, but if Sota was out there she had to find him and if she'd learned anything from all of her time fighting with Inuyasha it was that getting into an argument would take up valuable time and keep her from accomplishing her goal. "It's Sota… he didn't come home tonight… Mom thinks he might have been headed here…"

There was a look of confusion, then shock and finally determination that went through his brown eyes that were so close to her own, so close to Sota's that it sent a pang of some unnamable feeling through her with the familiarity, "I know a short cut to the train station." He wheeled around, "Keiko, stay here and watch for the kid okay?"

"Kid? What's going on here, who's Sota?"

"He's my little brother." Kagome shrugged into the coat she'd left hanging by the door when she'd entered after Yusuke held it out to her, she would have been happy to leave it there the rest of the night.

"Little brother?" Keiko stared after them in shock as they rushed out the door, leaving her alone in the apartment again.

He took the stairs at a run, fuelled by panic for the little brother he'd never met, and was now worried that he might never. Kagome missing was one thing, she was roughly his age, should have been able to look after herself, even though he knew he should look after her too, and that he wasn't doing that good of a job. His first reaction might have been to blow up, to punch something, look for something to fight, but the second was guilt. Until earlier today he'd only thought about the little boy Kagome had told him about a few times, he was a little embarrassed to realize that he barely knew what the boy looked like, in fact hadn't immediately remembered his name. It didn't make him any less concerned though, if anything it made him more determined to find the boy before something happened to him, this little boy wasn't going to be going home with bruises and scrapes like Kagome had the last few times she'd mysteriously disappeared. Yusuke was new to being a brother, and so far his track record wasn't that great, but he wasn't the type to give up when it looked bad. He'd never had a family before, except his mother, and he didn't really count her, at least not most of the time anyway. Now that he had one he was going to look after it. He was just off to a slow start was all and he was going to make up for that now.

She didn't even feel the stairs beneath her feet as she made her way down them, too preoccupied with her thoughts to fully realize where she was going. Thankfully her body seemed to be more graceful on autopilot than under normal circumstances. She wanted to focus on the world around her, on looking for Sota, but she couldn't understand any of this. Sota wasn't the type to just take off, he never even went outside without telling their mother, as far as she knew he'd never even come home late from school without calling ahead. Sota was the reliable one. The one who did his homework, who was always home when he said, or could be found easily, he wasn't the one who disappeared randomly to have dangerous adventures, who brought dangerous demons home to his family. Sota was the good kid. Just disappearing, sneaking off from home wasn't something he would do. There had to be a reason, there had to be. She just hadn't figured it out yet, and she only hoped that Sota was behaving very out of character, because the alternatives, and the one in particular that she was dreading were so much worse. Children disappearing wasn't an entirely unheard of thing, there were abductions reported on the news all the time. But Sota knew better than to talk to strangers, than to wander off with people he didn't know. Kagome knew what it felt like to be kidnapped, the fear that clawed at you the entire time. If her little brother was going through that she was going to kill whoever did it, and she was not fond of violence.

But it was the other possibility that terrified her. The idea that she wished hadn't struck her, but had almost as soon as her brain had started working again. A single name had clashed like thunder through her brain. Inuyasha. She didn't want to think it, but an image was burned into the back of her eyes, a red clad, red eyed figure advancing on her confused little brother. If that had happened… if Inuyasha had had something to do with it, had done something to her little brother, Kagome didn't think she would survive it. She'd brought him there. Sure she hadn't thought he was dangerous, most of the time he seemed pretty nice to her family, even helpful part of the time, but lately he wasn't himself, and she'd known it, and she'd left, run away and left her family to deal with the half demon. He was Sota's hero. If Inuyasha had asked him to go somewhere Sota wouldn't have even put up a fight. And it would be entirely her fault.

She'd tried to leave them protected, but the sutras she'd put up to ward him off only blocked him from entering the house, there was nothing she could do to keep him from the area around the house. And there was no telling how long they might work anyway. As purpose and panic clashed inside of her Kagome looked up at last from the sidewalk, and broke into a run.

XXXXX

It had been quite a while since he'd been entranced by something in this way, with the exception of a certain girl he was still nowhere close to understanding. But the little orb in his hand had done a great job of capturing his attention. There was something strange about Kagome's trinket that he couldn't place. It continued to almost pulse against his palm, so faintly he was practically certain he was imagining it. The smooth surface changed constantly, warm one moment, cold the next, shifting through an irregular cycle he had yet to find any real pattern in. And Kurama was trying to. He'd been studying the thing constantly for the last half hour, not paying attention to where he was wandering as he did so, a habit of his for some time that he'd fallen back on recently.

It had the feel of something he would have hunted once. Ancient Treasures had been his specialty after all; he'd learned to recognize them easily. This must have been something more than the simple keepsake Kagome believed it to be, perhaps her grandfather had passed her a family heirloom and not told her, or more likely had told her to keep it secret. She did live in a shrine after all, plenty were kept by families through the years, and relics could be passed through the generations as well as the shrine itself. Most of those relics were junk now though, replicas or simply kept for sentimental purposes or because they happened to look old or impressive in some way. This bauble was differently a find, it was almost a shame he would have to find a way to get it back to her, it would have been a nice addition to the collection he still kept hidden away. But Kagome never seemed to go anywhere without it, and he'd found her preoccupied with the little gem more than once. When she realized it was gone if she hadn't already, he was certain she would be very upset.

It was the steady staccato of running feet breaking the silence that finally brought his attention away from the jewel resting harmlessly in his palm and back to the street around him. It took only a moment for his sharp ears to discern that there was only one person, and that the runner was coming directly toward him and showing no signs of stopping.

"Hey Kurama!"

He tucked the newly acquired treasure into his pocket as he turned toward the taller boy rushing toward him, "Kuwabara, what are you doing on the street this time of night?"

"I've been looking all over for you man…" He slumped slightly as he gasped for breath, catching his side, "I thought you should know we found Kagome…"

"That was very thoughtful of you, but you shouldn't have bothered. I saw her earlier with Hiei. I'm glad to know she made it home safely."

"Then what are you doing out here still?"

"Oh… just thinking…" He found his hand going unintentionally into his pocket, his fingers brushing across the smooth surface of the crystal resting there until he found the sharp edge of the crack in it. "I'm sorry for having kept you out, you should go home and get some rest…"

"Nah, I couldn't sleep anyway. You mind having some company?"

He would have preferred to wander alone with his thoughts, but dismissing his friend so suddenly would have been extremely rude and possibly given Kuwabara the wrong impression that something was bothering him, a mistaken idea that would have surely found its way back to Yusuke and by association Kagome and caused him far more trouble than he needed. She wasn't the type to let those sorts of things go. "Of course not, but I haven't a set route…"

"That's okay." He fell into step beside the only one of his friends that was even close to his height, "What are you thinking about anyway?"

"Nothing in particular."

They continued on, their steps loud against the otherwise silent street.

XXXXX

She was breathing hard as she skidded to a halt beside him on the empty platform. Almost frantically her eyes began searching for any signs of life and found nothing in the dim circles of yellow light provided by flickering bulbs along the platform's length. "He isn't here…" She whispered, struggling to pull enough air into her lungs to speak, "This isn't good… This IS NOT good." She turned in a circle, searching anxiously for him as panic began to set in again.

"Kagome calm down already." He gave her a slight glare, "standing around here freaking out isn't going to do any good. We'll just have to keep looking." He turned sharply back the way they'd come, "Let's see if there's anyone at the ticket booth that's seen him. The kid doesn't know his way around town he'll have to have asked for directions or get a map or something…"

He wouldn't have. Kagome's eyes quickly found the ground again as she accepted reality. Sota wasn't here. Sota wouldn't have just run away from home. No Inuyasha had to have taken him. They could search all night, but they wouldn't find anything. Not until Inuyasha came to find her with whatever ransom demand he'd come up with, and she was certain of what the ransom would be. The jewel in exchange for Sota, the problem was she didn't have the jewel anymore. She would have to come up with something else.

"Kagome, let's get a move on! You're wasting time standing around here gawking!" Yusuke's scream normally would have had her snapping to her own defense, but instead Kagome found herself turning back to him.

"You're right…" She couldn't reveal what was happening to Yusuke, she didn't have time to explain everything, not to mention she'd gotten to know her half brother pretty well over the last few weeks, and he would definitely try to fight Inuyasha. She couldn't allow that. Sure against humans Yusuke might be tough, he seemed to have a lot of stories about getting into fistfights, and he claimed to have won them all, people around here certainly seemed wary enough of him, but against a half demon like Inuyasha he wouldn't stand a chance. She couldn't put both of her brothers in danger, Kagome simply wouldn't let it happen. She only hoped that Inuyasha would wait until she was alone to cause trouble. Then she would just have to find a way to slip away from Yusuke unnoticed and find the jewel. If she had to trade the jewel for Sota, and in the process likely trade her own life for her younger brother's Kagome knew she would do it. She couldn't let Sota suffer for her mistakes. She could only hope she had the chance.