Still Waters 3, Book 2, Chapter 19: Darkness: Sayo

Saturday, July 11th, 2009, Late Night

Sayo floated through the hallway on the floor of the dorm where most of the second year students had their rooms, occasionally poking her head through a door to check on the girls sleeping inside if she heard anything suspicious. She knew they wouldn't appreciate it if they knew she was there, but...it was a perk of being a ghost! Seeing who might spot her while half asleep—a state that seemed particularly prone to enhancing one's ability to see ghosts, she had discovered—and listening to the resulting ghost stories was always entertaining, she thought quite deviously. 'A little mischievousness is the hallmark of a good ghost,' she thought to herself, and nodded playfully. In such spirits, she went into the room occupied by two of her current classmates, Sophie Rivers and Takahashi Shizuko, and poked around until she came up with Shizuko's pencil case. She opened it up, giggled as she rearranged the pencils and pens inside, and put it back where she had found it.

"Hehehe~"

She could just imagine the dumbfounded look on the girl's face when she opened up her pencil case at school and found everything different...! "Hehe~" Sophie mumbled something in her sleep, and Sayo cut off her laughter and concentrated on avoiding squeaky floorboards as she floated out through the door. She floated on down the hall, thinking about whose shoes she should put upside down or backwards, when a sudden chill ran down her spine.

Sayo froze. "U-um...if, um, i-if somebody scary's there, um...p-please go away. I-I'm a scary g-ghost, you know...I'll c-curse you!" She hesitantly turned around to see what was behind her, but as she moved her head, she froze again and faced toward the northeast.

"What...?" she said aloud, the inexplicable sense of doom she was felt completely drowned out her previous feelings of mischievousness. Something bad was coming; she could feel it down in her bones. 'If I had any,' she thought in the back of her mind as she stared off into the distance toward the northeast. All the new ghosts in the city...had they been running from this, this...whatever was making her feel like this? She knew she needed to go and investigate, but she felt oddly reticent about going anywhere but away from that feeling. She shivered. She knew she was being ridiculous; she knew ghosts didn't have skin or internal temperatures or even glands or other things like that, but she shivered anyway.

In the dorm building full of sleeping girls, Sayo suddenly felt very, very alone.

Sunday, July 12th, Mid Day

Kazumi looked up from her lunch in Natsumi's Diner in confusion at the ghosts moving quite quickly along the road outside, heading in the general direction of the world tree. "What the..."

"Hmm? Is something wrong?" Natsumi asked from her seat on the other side of the table where she was eating her own lunch on her break.

Kazumi shook her head. "Nah, the, ah..." she looked around to make sure she wouldn't be overheard. "The ghosts are moving around again, and something...um..."

"What is it?" Natsumi asked.

Kazumi frowned in confusion. "I...don't know. Something just seems strange, over..." Kazumi paused a moment, cocking her head like a bird before pointing off to the northeast. "Something's strange over there. I don't know what it is, but I've never felt anything like it...it's like there's nothing there. At all."

Natsumi frowned curiously at Kazumi's confusing remarks and the two fell into a thoughtful silence as they continued to eat lunch. "The ghosts have been doing that a lot lately...are they going somewhere in particular?" she said.

Kazumi nodded in response. "I think so, but I don't know. I can't get them to tell me much of anything, and Sayo tells me the same thing...the ghosts are scared."

"What about Reiko? Do you think she's heard anything?" Natsumi asked, and took a bite of her ramen.

"Heh, well, you know Reiko," Kazumi said, shrugging helplessly.

Natsumi sighed; she did indeed know Reiko, and how Reiko and Kazumi had never got along. The only reason the two mediums ever even spoke to each other was because Sayo liked them both and dragged them together any chance she got; after all, if she was friends with both of them, why couldn't they be friends with each other as well? Or so Kazumi had told her when Natsumi asked about it some time back. There was also the fact that Reiko tended to keep to herself until she got into something way over her head. Natsumi rolled her eyes as she recalled similar tendencies in several of her other friends, and one particular black haired dog-boy.

"I haven't heard anything from her, but..." Kazumi paused, looking off in the direction from which the ghosts had been fleeing. "I can't help but feel like something's just wrong over there..."

Shortly after starting her daily patrol of the ghost hotspots of Mahora, Sayo spotted a ghost she recognized, one that been hanging around Mahora for the past year or so, as he tried to flee and called out to him. The ghost paused, looked back at her, looked in the direction he had been headed, and seemed to slump as he turned back and slowly floated over to Sayo.

"Hello, Miss Sayo," he said.

"Hello, Donovan," Sayo said pleasantly. "Why are you running away like that? It can make the other ghosts panic, you know?" she said, pouting cutely. She had found that, for some reason, older male ghosts tended to get all mushy when she did that, but Donovan in particular seemed susceptible to it. Kazumi had told her she was ridiculously cute when she did it, when Sayo asked her about it.

The male ghost looked away sheepishly. "Well...it's that, you know?" he said, pointing off toward the northeast. "I've been running from it for a long time now. I thought I had finally escaped from it when I got here, but..."

Sayo smiled pleasantly, waiting for him to continue. This was the most any of the fleeing ghosts had admitted about what they were doing; most of them simply seemed ashamed or terrified. "But?" she asked.

The ghost heaved a sigh in spite of not having any lungs and reluctantly continued. "That thing...I was in San Francisco when I first felt it. I'm not weak, you know? I've been around for a hundred years or so and I was a medium back when I was alive, so I've got quite a bit of power." He said this without any sign of gloating or showing off in the least, and Sayo agreed. As far as ghosts went, he was indeed strong; not nearly on her level, but stronger than most.

"What happened?" Sayo asked.

Donovan the ghost snorted. "Some psycho summoned that," he said, pointing off toward the northeast again. "It, well...it eats ghosts. I-I...I saw it," he said, shivering at the memory. "It..." He paused, looking around, then hesitantly continued. "There was this real strong little girl that used to haunt this big old house in one of the half decent neighborhoods, in the direction the thing was in. Anyway, I thought I was pretty badass at the time, so I went over there to see if we could team up, you know, take it down. Well..." Donovan trailed off, his face pale even for a ghost. "When...when I got there, I heard screaming. It was her. I guess the thing realized I was there; it came out through the wall and came toward me, and this long tentacle thing was...it was sucking her up like a straw."

Sayo's grin was suddenly strained. "S...sucking...?"

"Yeah," Donovan said. "Like a straw. It..." he shuddered again and looked ready to bolt, but Sayo forced herself to smile encouragingly at him. "It sucked her up."

Sayo's smile felt sickly, even to her. "W-what does it look like?" she forced herself to ask before Donovan could flee.

"Well...it's like this big blackish-purple cloud that floats along the ground; it doesn't really have much of a shape, but it's got these tentacle-tube things it shoots out, and if the end of one touches you, it starts sucking you up." He looked away, clearly not wanting to continue on.

"And...?" Sayo prompted.

"W-well...the ghosts it sucks up turn into these little blue lights in the middle of it. They don't last long at all..." he said, trailing off as he looked away again.

Sayo shivered; this was really scary stuff, way worse than what she had imagined! She hadn't even known such a thing could exist...

Donovan started to float away, but paused and looked back. "Sayo-chan? Come on, why don't we run away together? I don't want to see you get sucked up by that thing..." he shuddered again.

Sayo swallowed the lump in her throat and hesitantly shook her head. "No...I...I can't," she reluctantly said. Now that she understood why her natural response to the 'thing' was to run away, it suddenly became a lot harder not to run; but she couldn't. The ghosts of Mahora depended on her; and besides, Kazumi and Reiko were here. If anybody could get rid of such a monster, it would be those two.

"Go ahead and escape, this place will be really dangerous before long," she finally said. "I'll be okay; I have strong friends. We'll get rid of this monster, don't worry!" she said with more energy than she felt. Donovan looked torn, but fled anyway when the oppressive feeling of the ghost eating thing's power suddenly increased.

Sayo watched him go, wishing she could escape as well, but she had a responsibility to this place, to the ghosts who were tied to the land and couldn't escape at all, to her friends, to Kazumi and Reiko. She looked off to the northeast, though she couldn't see anything past the building that was directly in front of her. Now that she knew what it was, she could feel it, the ghost eating monster. Her lips thinned out in a tight frown. Mahora had dozens of ghosts, mostly asleep or so weak their presence was nearly undetectable by any but the most skilled mediums, but that didn't make them any less people. She couldn't just run away and save herself, the ghosts of Mahora depended on her; they had for years. Someone had to protect them...

"I'll keep them safe," she said aloud, sounding much more confident than she felt.

Two of the three members of the Fortune Telling Club, Regular Member Ono Ran and Club Leader Kotobuki Minami walked along the sidewalk side by side, each carrying a bag full of paper and several rolls of heavy duty duct tape.

"Put one of these here," Ran said as she ducked into an alley, followed by Minami.

"'Kay. One power directing symbol, coming up~" Minami said in a singsong voice as she held up a piece of paper on the wall of the alley and glanced back at Ran for her opinion. Ran nodded, and Minami taped the paper up. "Seruhiko-sensei came by the club room looking for you yesterday," Minami said as the two of them moved back out to the sidewalk.

"Mm," Ran said noncommittally. "Did he say what he wanted?"

"No," Minami said, looking at Ran out of the corner of her eye. "He just said to let him know if you came by the club room." They walked along in silence for a moment.

"So what's this supposed to do, anyway?" Minami asked after the duo had walked along in silence for a long moment.

Ran looked down at the sidewalk as she debated what exactly to tell the president of the Fortune Telling Club. Kotobuki Minami and Mari Nichols were among the rare few she considered to be good friends; she didn't want to say too much and end up introducing them to a world that would put them in danger...or more danger than they were in just by living in Mahora, anyway. "It's..." She hesitated.

'That's rare,' the other person inside her head said. The woman Ran knew as Kuroi Yuina was a mystery...or should have been. Thanks to Ran's mind reading abilities, she knew Kuroi as well as she knew herself; the woman was a previous personality that had somehow remained attached to her soul, to put it simply if inaccurately. Kuroi was her own person, just as much as Ran or anyone else was; the difference lay in the fact that Kuroi had died centuries upon centuries ago, while Ran was still alive. Kuroi Yuina was Ran's friend and adviser, trainer and confidant, and she knew Ran as well as she knew herself. The two of them got along surprisingly well, all told. 'You always seem to know exactly what you want to do next.'

'Be quiet,' Ran thought at the woman. 'I don't want to get her involved, but I don't want to lie to her; she's an important friend.'

'That's a sacrifice you have to make sometimes,' Kuroi replied solemnly. 'She's your best friend; step carefully, Ran.'

Ran looked at Minami as the girl paused to shift her burden to a more comfortable position. "Is it too heavy?" Ran asked.

Minami shrugged as best as she could, considering the heavy bag she carried. "About as heavy as a thousand sheets of heavy paper and a dozen rolls of duct tape," she said, smirking at her. "How about you?" While Minami was a healthy girl and was actually quite active and athletic, Ran was not; when one took the time to look past the standoffish personality and oppressive, gloomy atmosphere around the girl, she was actually surprisingly frail. Much to Ran's chagrin, Minami had apparently decided to appoint herself as Ran's very own health and diet adviser, and did all she could to make sure Ran had plenty of the right things to eat as often as possible. It could get incredibly annoying.

"I'm fine," Ran said, looking away. She didn't want to admit that she found the bag she herself carried to be excessively heavy; even though it contained less than Minami's bag. "It's magic," she said, as if it was an afterthought.

Minami walked along beside her for a moment in silence. "Well that's kinda obvious. Magic circles and all," she added when Ran looked at her in surprise. "But is it real magic? Will it work? It's not something like the books on magic you can find in the bookstore, is it?"

They turned off into another alley, where they taped up several pieces of paper with different things printed on them. "It will work," Ran said.

'Are you going to tell her about what you're REALLY doing?' Kuroi asked.

'No, that would just make her worry or try to stop me,' Ran said.

Minami grunted at Ran's response to her question and took up her bag again. Out on the sidewalk again, she spoke. "Should be neat. I don't know what you want to do with all this, but it looks like you're trying to direct power either that way," she said, pointing off toward the southwest, "or that way," she said, looking to the northeast. "Right?"

Ran focused on trying to not be nervous about how perceptive Minami was.

'You could always force her stop asking questions,' Kuroi said.

Ran made the mental equivalent of a glare at the woman. 'No! I will NOT do such a thing!'

'Good girl', Kuroi replied, radiating amusement and praise. 'That's a slippery slope; if you manipulate your friends, you won't have anyone left in the end.'

"You just have to trust me," Ran said quietly.

Minami glanced at her, cocked an eyebrow at her comment, and shrugged. "Sure. I don't think you'd try to do anything bad, I'm just worried about you. I hope you know what you're doing..."

Ran nodded thoughtfully. "So do I."

"I-I can't run away," Sayo said aloud as she wandered around the city on her daily patrol. Donovan had only been the first of many terrified ghosts trying to leave; from what she had learned from talking to others, he was the only one who knew what the ghost eating monster actually looked like.

"I have to see what it is, I-I have to f-fight it if I can..." She tried to swallow the sudden lump in her throat, wondering where Kazumi was. She wished she could use one of the 'cell phones' that her living friends always carried around; it would be easy to find Kazumi or Reiko whenever she wanted if she could use one of those...

The wispy material that made up the area where her legs would have been were she still alive whipped back and forth at a sudden scream in the distance followed immediately by a startled shout. The scream had been a ghost, the shout a human.

Sayo flew off at top speed toward the source of the noise, and it didn't take long to find.

Sayo came around the corner of a building just in time to see rampaging spirit, driven mad by the presence of the ghost eating monster, flailing around and striking at anything it saw; two ghosts who had been in Mahora as long as Sayo could remember were busy keeping it occupied.

"Sayo-chan!" Kazumi called out.

Sayo quickly went over to where the girl sat, propped up against the side of a building. "Kazumi! Are you okay? What happened?" she said as she fussed over her, looking for wounds.

"I'm fine," Kazumi said, her teeth chattering as she kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "I just got careless, that's all. That," she said, indicating the rampaging spirit, "tried to possess me when I wasn't expecting it; it tried to take over, but I didn't let it. Then it hit me," she said, shivering the whole time. "I've still got chills. Think you can take care of it?"

Sayo nodded. "I can! I'll avenge you, Kazumiiiii!" she said, rushing off toward the spirit.

"...I'm not dead yet," Kazumi said.

Sayo sized up the opposition as she approached. This particular spirit resembled an octopus more than anything else, if only an octopus as big as a bus that floated along above the ground. She wasn't particularly impressed. Octopus spirits were a dime a dozen, it seemed; she wondered briefly why spirits all seemed to have tentacles, but brushed it off as unimportant as she rocketed in and flicked the octopus in the middle of its head.

"Bad octopus! Bad!" she said, wagging her finger as she pouted at it. "You know better than that! Put down Sally and Himiko right this instant!"

The octopus spirit reared up, lifting the two squirming female ghosts in its tentacles, but Sayo stood her ground.

"Octopu~s," she said, dragging out the last syllable in a way known to every child of a strict mother. "Put them down! Now!"

The octopus spirit, more than a match for just about any local ghost in its current state, hesitated.

"Octopus, are you listening to me?" Sayo said, wagging her finger at it again, increasing the power of her pout as she did. "Put them down now."

The giant floating octopus spirit somehow managed to look slightly ashamed of itself, not unlike a dog that's just been caught chewing up a shoe or making a mess on the carpet. It reluctantly lowered the two female ghosts to the ground, hesitated, and released them.

"Good octopus," Sayo said, putting her hands on her hips and nodding. "Now, you aren't going to rampage around anymore, are you?" she asked, wagging her finger at it again. It looked away, but began releasing the power it had built up and slowly shrank back to its natural size, close to that of a cat. When it was done, it looked up at her hopefully, and Sayo beamed at it. "Good little octopus!" she said, kneeling down so she could rub its head. "Now go and be a good boy, and don't go grabbing ghosts anymore, okay? Off you go," she said, giving it a little push to send it on its way.

When the octopus spirit was gone, Sayo turned to see Kazumi had climbed to her feet, though she needed to lean against the side of the building for support. "Kazumi! You need to sit down! Here—"

"No, it's okay," Kazumi said, waving her off. Reluctantly, Sayo let her stand there. "Thanks Sayo-chan, you saved those two," she said, nodding toward Sally and Himiko, both of whom were blushing furiously as they tried to recreate their clothes, which the octopus spirit had, for some unknown reason, promptly torn off as soon as it caught them. Sayo sighed and shook her head. In Sayo's experience, that was one of the first things octopus spirits did when they went on a rampage: catch a girl ghost, and rip off their clothes. Weird things, octopus spirits...

"Ero-spirit," Sayo said, shaking her head sadly. "He's a good boy, he means well, but he's a weirdo."

Kazumi just gaped at her, the disturbing presence in the northeast forgotten if but for the moment, and cracked up laughing.

"Heya Negi, I'm back again," Asuna said as she strolled into his hospital room, slung the small pack she carried off her back and into a chair, propped her sword up in the corner, and finally plopped down in a chair herself. She took a deep breath, held it, and let it out, temporarily forgetting the stress of the day. In addition to Ako's kidnapping at the festival, Negi's class seemed to be in the process of imploding, what with the student Ono Ran somehow putting Negi into this state and then running off somewhere, not to mention Kobayashi Ayumi and the way she'd been skipping school off and on for the past two weeks. But, Asuna thought, at least the long-missing Possum Cade had been found and even resumed attending school; there was just the little problem that she was now some kind of vampire.

Asuna heaved another sigh. The fact that Possum had turned into a vampire seemed to bother Possum more than anyone else who knew; sure, Taro was upset, but... "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to get your class roster for the substitute," Asuna said, reminding herself to not mention the name of the substitute teacher, or the fact that he was the very same vampire who had so recently attacked the city and kidnapped Possum. Vampire or not, he had had to work with a handwritten list of names provided by the class rep, and she had been understandably reticent about dealing with him; she wasn't the only one, either.

Asuna looked around for Negi's briefcase, a fashionable black leather affair she had bought for him several years ago to replace the one she had accidentally ruined, finally finding it in the nightstand next to the bed. She set it up on the foot of Negi's bed, popped the straps holding it shut, and opened it. The interior was a jumble of textbooks, notes, and whatever else Negi had jammed in there in the weeks before the incident that had left him in the hospital, but she quickly found the class roster between an English textbook and a folder full of ungraded tests.

"Man, Negi! This thing's a mess!" Asuna said, holding the briefcase open wide so she could pull out the roster. As she did so, something else caught her eye: a deck of cards wrapped around with a couple of rubber bands. She pulled out the class roster and set it aside, then focused on digging out the deck of cards.

"Wow, won'tcha look at this," she said as she held the cards up. Now that they weren't buried under notebooks and scrap paper, she could see they were pactio cards. "Hey Negi, you don't mind if I look at these for a minute, do you?" she asked. When she got no response, she quickly removed the rubber bands and started scanning through the deck. "Ha, I remember that," she said, grinning when she spotted Kazumi's pactio card. The incident that had led to its creation was the result of a long series of accidents and coincidences that ultimately resulted in Negi being struck in the back of the head with a half-baked pot from the pottery club while teaching Kazumi about the intricate details of magic circles. Naturally—for Negi, anyway—he had fallen nearly unconscious on Kazumi, the two of them had landed on the circle in exactly the right position for their lips to touch, and, miracle of miracles, the pactio circle had activated. When Negi woke up later that day, he had gained another pactio partner.

Asuna continued looking through the deck for a long minute, grinning as she recalled the absurdities that had led to the creation of most of these cards. There were several cards from girls she didn't recognize, but for the most part his pactio partners seemed to be former students. It wasn't until she was nearing the back of the deck that she paused on a card belonging to yet another unknown girl. This one, however, was different from the rest of the cards in one very important way.

It was a dead card.

Whoever the pretty, dark haired foreign girl in the harem outfit on the card was, she had died, stripping the card of its magic and leeching much of its color. Asuna couldn't recall ever seeing the girl on the card or hearing Negi speak of her. The only information on the card was a name: Rikki Suvari. The only Rikki Asuna knew of was some girl connected to her friend Max Linell, a former agent from the American Division who had come to Japan six years ago during Negi's first year of teaching. He had never said much about her, but Asuna got the impression something bad had happened to her. She took the card from the deck and held it up to the spare light from the desk lamp to get a better look, frowning. If this was the card from that Rikki girl Max refused to talk much about, what was Negi doing with it? She put the rest of the deck aside and sat down in a chair as she inspected the card.

"Huh..." Asuna said aloud.

"It's almost here."

Asuna nearly jumped out of her seat at the sound of a strange girl's voice. A quick glance around the room showed it to be empty of anyone but Negi and herself, and she knew she hadn't spoken, so... Asuna moved to stand beside Negi's bed.

"Hey, did you say something?" she asked.

Sure enough, Negi's spoke, though it wasn't his voice. "It's almost here...I don't like it. I don't want it..."

"O...kay then," Asuna said to herself. She wished Eva was there; Eva always knew what to do when people started speaking in tongues or whatever. Or maybe Nodoka... "Yeah, I think Nodoka's the right one for this," Asuna said aloud as she pulled out her cell phone.

"It's coming," Negi said in that same girly sounding voice from before.

"Okay, I believe you," Asuna said as she typed Nodoka's number, a decidedly quicker method than trying to wade through the maze of folders in her enormous contact list.

"It's coming..." Negi said again, the girl's voice sounding troubled. Negi's head turned to the side, and he stopped speaking.

—Hello?—

Asuna let out a sigh of relief. "Hey Nodoka, it's me. I need you to get over here right away; something weird's come up, and..." Asuna trailed off as she looked back at Negi, who had started twitching. "Um...I think you'd better hurry. I'm with Negi."

—I understand; I'll be there right away. Should I bring Yue?—

"Yeah, if you can find her. She might be able to find something out in her book," Asuna said, referring to Yue's pactio artifact, which had grown to be a veritable encyclopedia over the past six years. The others had come to depend on Yue to be able to find out just about anything, just as they depended on Ayaka to pull strings and get everyone organized and Nodoka to keep them organized with the vast pactio networks she could set up. "But didn't she say something about going to Tokyo this weekend...?"

"It's too close; it's almost here...!" Negi said loudly, turning his head back and forth, as if in the throes of a nightmare.

—What was that?— Nodoka asked. —Is someone else there?—

"Yeah, Just me and Negi and some crazy girl," Asuna said into her cell phone as she nervously eyed the fallen teacher on his hospital bed. "You'd better hurry."

—Okay, see you in a few minutes— Nodoka said, then hung up her phone.

Asuna looked down at her cell phone for a moment, wondering who else she should call. If Negi was possessed by the dead girl on the card as she was beginning to suspect, he'd need an exorcist, and the best one around was Reiko. But Kazumi was far better at peacefully dealing with dead people; she was the one who had befriended Sayo-chan, after all. But then again, if the dead girl was dangerous...

"It's almost here!" Negi screamed.

Asuna dialed quickly.

'It's almost here!' Sayo thought in sudden horror as she looked off toward the Northeast. That horrible ghost eating monster Donovan had told her about was nearing the outskirts of the city. Now, at last, she understood why so many ghosts had been flooding into the city recently; she had thought she understood before, but now everything in her screamed at her to drop everything and run, or rather float, away as fast as possible, in the opposite direction from which the thing was approaching. She felt a little better now that she was with Kazumi, but...

The sensation was so strong now that she knew she was now one of the few ghosts that hadn't run away from the city or begun swarming around the world tree. She bit her lip as she looked back at the top of the world tree and the myriad of tiny shapes moving among its branches, just visible past the rooftops in the area she was in. She could sort of understand the swarming ghosts' behavior: something about the giant tree just screamed safety, and she really wanted to go there. But she had a reputation to uphold, and friends to protect.

"Hey, Sayo-chan? Hang in there," Kazumi said seriously as she looked toward the northeast. She started to speak when her cell phone rang; she quickly answered it. "Hello?"

—Kazumi? Yeah, this is Asuna. I'm with Negi right now, and something weird is going on; I think I need a medium here. How fast can you get over here?—

Kazumi shook her head, even though Asuna couldn't see her. "Sorry, I can't do it; I'm investigating this, this thing," she said, unable to come up with a proper description. "You know, the one that has all the ghosts scared. Sayo-chan's with me," she said, looking at Sayo. Sayo gave her a sickly smile as she listened.

—Oh...I didn't know. I think this is related to that, but I need someone here now. I'll call Reiko, but come as soon as you get a chance, okay?—

"Yeah, sure thing," Kazumi said, and hung up, grimacing. "Something's going on with Negi," she said by way of explanation to Sayo.

Sayo nodded. The problem with things of that nature, she knew, was that when one was too close to the victim, their perception was distorted. Even a powerful medium like Kazumi or Reiko could easily overlook any number of supernatural problems just because their closeness to Negi blinded them to it; she knew even she herself as a ghost wasn't immune. She put it out of her mind for the moment, and took Kazumi's hand. "I'm worried, Kazumi..."

Kazumi listened in growing disquiet as Sayo related the story the ghost Donovan had told her about the ghost eating monster. "That's horrible...!"

Sayo nodded sadly. "We have to stop it..."

Ono Ran's head snapped up as the wards she had set up days ago at the edge of the city activated.

"It's here."

The Fortune Telling Club President Kotobuki Minami cocked an eyebrow as she looked at her friend. "What are you talking about? What's here?"

Ran shook her head. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. The less Minami knew about what she was doing, the better; especially if her efforts failed, because if it did, it would fail spectacularly. "It doesn't matter. Please go find Mari and go to a safe—"

"What do you mean it doesn't matter?!" Minami demanded, poking her in the chest. "You're posting magic symbols all over town, and you've had me and Mari making more for a week! We're too deep in this for it to not matter already! Tell me, Ran-chan. What's going on? Me and Mari are your friends! Even..." Minami paused, seemed to gather her nerve, and forged ahead. "Even if it's something bad, we're friends, right?" she said, tears starting to well up in spite of her fierce expression.

Ran stared at the other girl, shocked to the core by her outburst, though she did her best to hide it. "You..." She paused as Minami angrily wiped away a few tears. Ran had never really had any friends before; not real ones, anyway...and Minami and Mari had been helping her with this project after that day they found her trying to use that copy machine. But...if they became more involved than they already were, they would likely soon be just as much outcasts as she was herself, especially if her plan failed. "It's..." She paused, tried to look away, but Minami just glared. "...it's complicated," Ran said, looking away again.

"Ran-chan—!"

Ran closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm herself. "You're right," she said, looking at Minami. "You're right; I'll tell you all about it, but it will have to be later. Right now, I have something I have to do. Just...trust me. Please?"

Minami stood there for a long minute, watching her, completely unaware of the fact that Ran's wards were blaring in her head. "You're not going to pretend this never happened, right?" she finally asked. "After this is over, you're going to tell us everything, right? About what you've been doing?"

Ran hesitated at that; after all, everything...? Then again... She looked Minami in the eye and nodded.

Minami locked eyes with her for a long moment, and finally nodded in return. "Okay. I'll go and find Mari. But...where should we go? I don't even know what we're hiding from; how am I supposed to find a safe place?"

Ran let the ghost of a smile cross her lips. "Go to Library Island; it's the safest place in the city," she said, trying to radiate confidence. She didn't think it fooled Minami, but the other girl showed her acceptance of the suggestion with a nod.

"You'd better not forget, Ran-chan," Minami said. "And be careful!" she said as she turned to go. "If you get hurt, I'll kill you!"

Ran watched her go for a long moment until the second line of wards activated.

'You'd better hurry; there isn't much time left,' Kuroi said in her head. 'I hate to admit it, but it's even starting to make me nervous.'

'I know,' Ran thought back at the woman. 'I'm activating it now.'

Student Number Eleven, Sophie Rivers, jerked upright on her bed in her dorm room so fast her head almost hit the bottom of the top bunk, the magazine she had been reading already forgotten.

"...something wrong?" her roommate, Takahashi Shizuko, asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sophie shook her head to clear it as much in answer to Shizuko's question, an automatic lie of the sort she had always told when asked that particular question. This sensation, coming from the northeast...now that she felt it, she wondered how she had managed to miss it for so long. She scratched at the scar on her cheek as she considered what to do. She hadn't ever felt anything like it before; it was just a sort of oily feeling in the corner of her mind...sort of like a ghost, but pretty much completely different. She became aware that Shizuko was still looking at her, and her cheeks went red in embarrassment, making the scar stand out even more than it usually did.

"I-I need to take care of something," Sophie said as she got down on her knees and rooted around under her bed not for her schoolbag, but her other bag, the one containing her stakes, string, powders, and the other items she used in her spiritual magic. She pulled it out and chanced a quick peek inside to make sure everything she might need was there; Shizuko didn't know about her secret activities out in the woods.

"Take care," Shizuko said idly as she looked back down at the book she was reading. "Don't stay out too late," she added after a moment.

Sophie paused at the door, glanced back at her, her cheeks going red again at the idea that someone cared enough for her to worry about her well-being, and nodded. "Thanks."

Author Notes: Northeast – In feng shui, the northeast is a very inauspicious direction; so much so, that it's called something that translates to "demon gate", where demons gather. So, seeing as how the Ghost Eater is a ghost's worst nightmare, I figured I might as well use a little of the local mythology to enhance the imagery. Or something. Too bad all of two people probably understood the link : p I've referenced it before, but I don't know if anyone caught it.