NOTE: This story occurs in two timelines. Each chapter will be labeled Before or After, and the POVs will alternate. I won't typically warn of this, but just wanted to call attention this first time! Enjoy!

Chapter 2

After

Nozumi did not believe in miracles or predestination. Nor was she so naive as to think good things always befell good demons. Not since her youngest days had she thought life would turn in her favor if she simply waited long enough.

But she believed success could be earned. That happiness could be reaped. That if the right opportunities were taken, if the right sacrifices were given, good could be found.

That she had to believe.

So when a summons came for her from the former lord of Tourin, she'd traveled to his remote lair in the desert without question. She didn't balk. She didn't hesitate. For years, her mantra had been that no opportunity could go wasted. This chance was no different—no matter its unique degree of posed risk—and as she climbed the many hundreds of steps to the throne room of Urameshi's stronghold, she held her head high, steadied her hands, and kept her pace sauntering and slow, rushing for no one, assured in the merit of the talent that had brought her here.

She knew the sort of demon she was—that in the eyes of powerhouses like Urameshi, her kind was nothing more than filth to be trod upon, a weakling to climb past. She could not hope to best him in a fight, could not even dream of injuring him in one. Yet, here she stood, poised in the midst of his vast receiving hall, waiting upon him to make a request of her.

If she wanted, she could reject his proposition, refuse to take on whatever job warranted offering up a hefty sum of coin for a mere consultation. That power lay in her hands. But she wouldn't utilize it. Already, she knew she wouldn't.

This was an opportunity.

And she always took opportunities.

Slumped in the throne of his forefather, Urameshi propped his chin in one lazy palm and eyed her over. His appraisal darkened his gaze, gears practically cranking in his irises as he ticked off all the boxes that rendered her worthless. He didn't look away from her when he spoke, but he angled his head to the left as he asked, "This is the tracker you told me about?"

The Rokurokubi standing at attention beside the throne sighed. "Yes, my lord."

Urameshi flapped a hand. "Hokushin, I swear, you call me that one more time, I'm gonna throw your ass off the tower." He jerked a thumb toward Nozumi, his gaze still locked with hers. "You're sure that you're sure about her?"

"This is her. Nozumi..." The Rokurokubi's black eyes shifted to her as if looking for her to supply a full name.

She said nothing.

Urameshi drummed his fingers against his jaw. "Huh. Never would have guessed."

It was an opinion—an insult—she'd heard many times before. Perhaps he didn't mean it as a slight. Perhaps blunt was simply how he operated. After all, the stories of Urameshi depicted him as bull-headed, tactless, and entirely bereft of masks. He wore his truth like armor, and his confidence in that truth turned it to faultless steel-plate, not a chink in sight.

But intended or not, his words landed like sharp, pointed daggers, joining the hundreds that whittled away at her day after day, job after job. In some distant future, her name might precede her as Urameshi's did him, but that future remained a dream, elusive and flighty.

His next words—at long last—were meant for her. "What kinda demon are you exactly?"

"Is it pertinent?"

Creases darkened his brow like thunderheads. "Define that word."

She didn't. "My lineage is mixed," she said instead. "I'm not any one thing in particular."

"Huh."

"My lord," Hokushin interjected, "remember our purpose today."

"Oh, right." Urameshi sat up a little straighter, his gaze darting past Nozumi for the first time, tracking across the back of the throne room as if he were looking for someone. There was only one soul to find—Sueko tucked beside the broad doors through which they'd entered. Nozumi's backup. Her muscle.

What a laughable prospect that was.

"Can't believe those bastards are late," Urameshi muttered, shoving a hand through his long mane of hair.

Nozumi wasn't sure who he meant. Competition for the job, perhaps? Other trackers? If his target weren't an easy mark, he might think multiple hounds on the hunt would increase his chances at securing it.

He'd be wrong on that count.

Nozumi was the best.

She'd worked damn hard to earn the reputation that brought her here. It was no fluke.

"Best start without them," Hokushin said.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it." Urameshi leaned forward, his elbows braced atop his knees. "Look, I'll put it to you straight: a friend of mine has gone missing. Think you can find her?"

For the first time, Nozumi faltered. That she had not expected. After all, people weren't the marks she tracked.

But she didn't admit that. Not right away.

"Depends."

"On what?"

"Why is she gone?"

Urameshi blinked at her, utterly nonplussed. "What the hell kind of question is that? She's gone because some asshole kidnapped her."

His temper didn't rile Nozumi. She'd long ago stopped caring about the infantile rages of foolish men. Instead of rising to his bait, she ignored the heat in his voice and played back his initial words, dissecting his phrasing, parsing it down to its hidden meanings.

A friend of mine has gone missing.

Abductions weren't described that way. Abductions were called abductions. But escapes? Runaways? Intentional disappearances? Those were when someone went missing.

"Who kidnapped her?" she asked.

"Scum from the asscrack of the three worlds, probably," he snapped, his rage not simmering so much as roaring, a seething bonfire set to consume him from the inside out. "But what's that matter? You scared? Don't worry, we're not expecting you to do the rescuing. That's on us."

Us. Meaning who? The supposed bastards who hadn't shown up?

"So you don't know who took her," Nozumi said evenly, leaving no room for argument. "You won't give a name because you have no idea who it was. Is that right?"

Urameshi narrowed his eyes. "You a tracker or a fortune teller?"

The latter option was spat with such annoyance that Nozumi knew she'd toed a line not worth crossing. There was a difference, after all, between holding her own and being a stubborn idiot. As long as Urameshi's wrath was directed elsewhere, she was safe, but the moment it turned toward her—earned or otherwise—was the moment she'd fucked up.

Fuck ups weren't in the cards, so she changed course. "How long has she been missing?"

"Five weeks." Urameshi ground his jaw, muscles standing at attention in his neck, and for a second—the tiniest fraction of a heartbeat—Nozumi almost felt bad for him. His distress was palpable, heavy in the space between them, weighty enough to suck the air from his cavernous throne room.

She thought of the coin that had been promised to her, the wealth that had made a risky trip deep into Tourin worthwhile, and then she looked at him again, at the shadows beneath his eyes and the downturn of his lips, at the tension in his back and the disheveled fall of his mane. Only then, as his gaze met hers, did she utter the words she never usually allowed herself to say.

"I'm not the person for this job."

In the recesses of the receiving hall, a soft gasp echoed.

Nozumi ignored her sister. "I don't track people," she said. "Plenty of demons do. You'll be able to find—"

"We're aware," Hokushin interrupted. "We've tried the others. They've failed us."

Her brows pulled tight. "In five weeks you've tried every other tracker you could? Sorry, but I don't believe that."

"We have. They failed." The Rokurokubi stepped even with his master's throne, staring down the dais's short steps at her. "You track differently. Every worthy source in Demon World says so. We'll pay your price, whatever it is."

"I don't accept coin I can't earn."

Urameshi rolled his eyes. "Fuck off with that bullshit. Who do you think you're fooling? You came here because Hokushin promised you money just for showing up. Don't pretend you didn't. If we lob enough gold your way, you'll stay. We all know it."

Nozumi bristled, the condescension in his voice at last sinking its hooks beneath her skin, but a commotion at her back kept her tongue in check, and she went perfectly still, not turning so much as an inch even as three new energy signatures entered the hall. Sueko's energy ratcheted higher, nearly boundless, commanding attention—demanding respect—but it was just a show, another bit of the act. If Urameshi or Hokushin or any of the newcomers turned their fists on Sueko, her power would crumble away like the deception it was.

Usually, no one tested Sueko's illusions.

But Nozumi suspected that if anyone in the three worlds would punch a hole through Sueko's mirage, it'd be Urameshi.

"'Bout damn time," he shouted, lurching to his feet and glaring over Nozumi's shoulder. "You know I hate doing this shit alone."

"We thought we had a lead, Yusuke," a male answered. His tone was soft like silk, warm like honey, and yet barbed like thorns hidden behind a pretty rose. "Unfortunately, it didn't pan out."

Urameshi crossed his arms, his frustrated gaze slipping back to Nozumi. "Yeah, well, this isn't going great either."

Footsteps announced the trio coming closer, all that foreign energy crackling at Nozumi's back. One of them felt… off. Like their energy wasn't demonic, and she tried to chase that thought to its logical conclusion—tried to think of Urameshi's famed human companion, rather than the demons he called friends.

She didn't succeed.

The fingers of her right hand found the vulnerable underside of her left wrist, talons slipping beneath the edge of a loose scale. She was due for a molt in two weeks, three at most, and her scales had grown dull, faded like dusty silt, their bonds to her flesh weakening as her body prepared to start anew. Under normal circumstances, she never would've traveled in this state, never would've come before a former lord of Demon World when she was at her most pitiful.

But she'd heard he would be in Alaric, tending to his border patrols. She'd thought he wouldn't be here.

She'd thought this was her window.

Her nails caught on the scale, lifting it up, seesawing it back and forth as if she might convince it to come loose early. In her head, she could hear Sueko scolding her, could imagine her sister's hand clamping over hers, but non-imaginary Sueko was a hundred meters away, on the wrong side of the approaching intruders, and in the end, it was the pain that stopped Nozumi's picking, not her sister—the pain, and the roaring silence as the footsteps ceased.

She didn't look to the left. Her peripheral vision swam at the edges of her sight, hazy and undefined, and she tipped her head the barest degree to the right, keeping Urameshi firmly in view but blocking out everything else.

"I hunt objects," she told him. "Things. Hidden places on occasion. Not people."

"Nifty," he snapped back sarcastically, "but she's not an object, and the assholes who took her left all her things behind, so you're gonna have to find her, not her shit."

It was like he wasn't hearing her. Not like her words registered and were forgotten, but like they never reached his ears as all. It was as though everything she said merely bounced off him, blocked by some sonic forcefield, and rather than reading her lips, he chose to shout back at her instead, like he thought maybe she wasn't hearing him either, and if he was just loud enough, the message would sink home.

As if to prove that point, he stuck out a hand to Hokushin, and his advisor produced a length of folded cloth from beside the throne. He passed it to Urameshi, who in turn tossed it at Nozumi. The careful folds came loose as the cloth flew, but Nozumi made no attempt to catch it, and it pooled at her feet, a heap of dark blue fabric.

An obi, perhaps.

"Are your reflexes that shitty or what?" Urameshi growled. Then he thrust a hand at the heap. "Come on. Pick it up. Do your tracker thing."

"That's not how it works."

"That smells like her. Promise. We got it fresh, straight out of her closet."

Nozumi stifled a sigh.

Sueko had been right. They never should've come here.

"I don't follow scents." Carefully, her wrist still stinging around her battered scale, she bent and gathered up the obi. Keeping her gaze locked on her hands, she folded it neatly and returned it to the step. "I'm not like the other trackers you worked with. That's why I don't track people." She eased onto her heel, readying to turn right, to leave this room without ever looking at the trio on her left. "I'm sorry. I can't help you."

She'd made it three paces before a hand clamped around her elbow. A massive palm swallowed up her arm, gentle despite the strength she could sense in its long fingers.

The human.

He tugged her back around, urgent but still mindful of his force, and she had to tip back her head to see him properly. Brown hair, slightly orange, sloppily styled. Bloodshot eyes. Haggard cheeks. The face of a man who hadn't been sleeping properly—the eyes of a man who'd stopped caring if others knew he'd been crying.

"Please," he said hoarsely. "We're out of options."

There wasn't a nerve in Nozumi's body unaware of his spirit energy, not so much as a stitch of her that missed the fact that the power contained in his pinky finger alone dwarfed what little lived in the entirety of her bones. Yet despite that, she knew the desperation in his voice, understood the fear that drove him—recognized it from memories she tried so hard to leave buried.

"I doubt that," she said.

He shook his head fervently. "We've tried everyone else. Everyone who would answer." In nearly a whisper, he added, "You don't get it. Yukina… She's my fiancé. I love her. I can't… I have to know where she is. We have to find her. Please."

Nozumi didn't know the meaning of that word—fiancé—but the human was so imploring, so earnestly, heartbreakingly vulnerable, that she couldn't bring herself to pull away.

She knew the pain in his heart.

And though she hated it, she couldn't leave him wallowing alone.

"I'm not trying to be difficult," she said, glancing from the human to Urameshi and, stubbornly, to nowhere else at all. "I can attempt to help you, if you insist on it, but that doesn't mean I'll succeed."

She didn't say why, couldn't manage to force those words past her lips, but the likelihood of her failure sat heavy in her chest, burning in that strip of skin at her wrist where she'd inflamed her scales. In her experience, when people went missing, it was because they didn't want to be found. They disappeared to escape.

They vanished on purpose.

But this human wasn't ready to hear that. Nor was Urameshi.

Nor the demons standing to Nozumi's left.

"Well," Urameshi said after a painful beat of silence, "we're fucking insisting on it." And then, less certain, "Right?"

The human nodded. "Whatever it takes."

No answer came from their silent audience of two, but the human's word must've been enough, because Hokushin reached behind the throne again and emerged with a money pouch. He tossed it at her, and the purse landed at Nozumi's feet with an obscene clatter of jangling coins, sliding to a rest against the human's boot. She started to refuse it, readying to reiterate her policy on rejecting money she couldn't earn, but the human interrupted her, yanking her sideways into his chest, smothering her in a hug that crushed the air from her lungs. He babbled something, spouting off thanks she didn't hear, his words bouncing off her as if she'd stolen Urameshi's forcefield.

It didn't matter. Not the human. Not Urameshi. Not Sueko nor anyone else in this hall.

Because there he was.

Right behind the human's shoulder. Staring at her. Eyes as scarlet as she remembered. Hair just as dark, a blue so midnight deep it nearly always shone black.

His jaw had grown sharper, more defined, the last vestiges of his younger days melted down to sinew and muscle and bone in the long years since she'd last seen him. He was taller by far than the boy in her memories, and across his forehead, he wore a strip of white cloth. That was new—an accessory the demon she'd known would've scoffed at—but his cloak might've been a sibling of those he'd always used to wear, like he'd pulled it out of time and donned the same garment he'd worn thirty years ago.

Still, out of everything, it was his energy that was most different. Unrecognizably so. But she knew why that was.

And energy or not, this was Hiei.

After all these years, there he stood.

Breathless, she tore her gaze away and extracted herself from the human's embrace. "I'll do what I can to help you," she said—to the human or Urameshi or maybe even Hiei himself, "but I make no promises."

"Got it," Urameshi said. He grinned, the first flicker of relief crossing his grieving, angry mask since she'd arrived, and then, as if he'd still heard nothing she'd said, he added, "We'll pay you half your fee now, half once we've found her. Hokushin will take care of it." He glanced at his companions. "When do we start?"

Her brows rose. "We?"

"Duh. I told you, we're not expecting you to deliver an ass kicking. You just need to get us to the right place, then we'll deal out what these assholes have coming to them."

Nozumi wanted to deny him, but by now, she knew better than to waste breath trying. "I need supplies. What I brought with me is meant for tracking items, not demons." An inconvenience, but only a minor one. "There's a market a day's travel from here. I'll head there—"

"Nope," Urameshi interrupted. "You aren't going anywhere solo. We're coming with."

The redhead who'd arrived with the human and Hiei cleared his throat, and Nozumi placed him now. Kurama. Not the infamous Youko Kurama precisely, but near enough to unsettle her.

What hell had she gotten herself into?

"Once you have your supplies, we should begin immediately," Kurama said. "It's better that we come with you. The less time wasted, the sooner Yukina will be safe. For now, it's late, and we should sleep. Yusuke, do you have a room Nozumi and her companion can rest in? In the morning, we can begin."

Hokushin eased down the dais's steps. "I can arrange a room. The rest of your payment as well. If you'll follow me…"

He left the thought's open ending trailing in his wake as he paced across the echoing hall. Nozumi remained still a moment longer, the senseless absurdity of the last minutes striking her numb, but then she grew cognizant of pain at her wrist, her fingers picking at her loose scale, and she lurched after Hokushin, sparing not so much as a backward glance at the trio of demons and their grief-addled human.

As Sueko fell into step beside her and pulled Nozumi's hand from her wrist, Nozumi knew but one thing. She didn't believe in miracles—but curses?

Those were real.

And damn, if they weren't inescapable.

AN: Y'all, I am really excited to share this story with you. Nozumi's timeline is post-series (clearly), and Hiei's is before it, and I'm having such a blast telling a story on both sides of the one we all love. I can only hope it's as fun to read as it has been to write.

Big thanks to those of you who reviewed the first chapter! You rock, and it was extremely fun seeing familiar names after years away. I've missed you all!