Nightshade Read online

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  NIGHTSHADE

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  InterMix eBook edition / August 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Jonelle Patrick.

  Excerpt from Fallen Angel copyright © 2013 by Jonelle Patrick.

  All images copyright © 2012 by Jonelle Patrick.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57880-3

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my faithful readers—Marcia Pillon, Paula Span, Mary Mackey, Darlis Wood, Claire Abila, Elizabeth Soffer, and Shannon Manso—thank you from the bottom of my heart. You not only read the not-ready-to-be-pushed-out-of-the-nest manuscript, you also told me the unvarnished truth about what needed to be fixed and managed to do it without making me want to commit seppuku.

  Bottomless thanks to Noriko Raffauf and Shiho Nishida, who shall be held blameless for their student’s incorrect Japanese, but thanked profusely for helping me gather tons of useful information from kanji-infested websites.

  Eternal gratitude to Yuki Iwanaga and Ayumi Shirao, who endured strange costumed gatherings, introduced me to all the best people, and graciously fixed my rude Japanese.

  To Hugh Patrick, for convincing me I’d regret never having written this book more than I’d regret having brontosauran dustballs lurking under my bed.

  Sandy Harding, Queen of Editors, and Elizabeth Bistrow, Editorial Assistant Extraordinaire, every single piece of direction you gave me made the manuscript sing. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am so lucky to be working with you.

  To my beloved agent, April Eberhardt: Thank you for making dreams come true.

  To my family, for not rolling your eyes every time I mentioned the J-word and for Absence of Persecution, thank you forever and ever and ever.

  And to all the openhearted Japanese friends who took a chance and invited this foreigner into their hearts and minds and opened doors to the odder corners of Japanese society: This book and my life would not be the same without you. Kokoro kara, arigato gozaimasu.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Special Excerpt

  About The Author

  Photographs

  Chapter 1

  Friday, April 5

  9:00 P.M.

  The girl walked toward him across the moon-silvered parking lot, the long ribbons on her tiny black top hat fluttering behind. As she passed through the shadow of the looming Komagome Shrine, all he could see was the glow of white lace on the stiff petticoat peeking out from under her flouncy black frock.

  She just wanted someone to hold her hand, so she didn’t have to be alone anymore.

  He smiled. Holding girls’ hands for the very last time was his specialty.

  Chapter 2

  Saturday, April 6

  8:00 A.M.

  Yumi

  “Yumi, it’s time to get up! You’ll be late!”

  Pulling her pillow over her head, Yumi groaned. She was never going to drink again. Never. At least not at the Mad Hatter with Rika’s Goth-Lolita friends. The ones she
’d been with last night looked like little girls in their Bo-Peep frocks, but they could put away cocktails like sumo wrestlers. Yumi wasn’t a Lolita herself, but her best friend had been dragging her along for so many years she’d become an honorary member of their Circle. If Rika hadn’t left so early for her mysterious date last night, they’d have gone home together as usual at a reasonable hour and Yumi wouldn’t have this pounding—

  “Yumi, please,” her mother persisted, now standing over the bed. “You know that Ito-san is coming in early just for you. Don’t be late.”

  Crap. Now she remembered. Her haircutter was booked solid, but he’d offered to come in at the ungodly hour of 9:00 A.M. as a favor. Tonight she had Date Number Five with Ichiro Mitsuyama. Actually, Date Number Four if she didn’t count their o-miai, the formal matchmaking introduction lunch with both sets of parents making stiff conversation at the other end of the table. After tonight it would no longer be too soon for Ichiro to raise the subject of marriage. She burrowed deeper.

  “In twenty minutes you need to be on the train to Harajuku,” her mother insisted mercilessly.

  Wincing, Yumi threw off the covers and struggled to her feet, making her way to what used to be the room’s bedding cupboard. Hugging herself against the cold, she pushed aside hangers until she found her green pants. A light touch was required; the clothes bar had been improvised when they’d retrofitted the eight-mat parlor as Yumi’s bedroom, and sometimes the entire thing collapsed. The Hata family had moved in with big plans, but over time, as the money needed to modernize failed to materialize, temporary fixes had settled into permanence.

  As she picked out a sweater, her mother couldn’t resist adding, “If you hadn’t stayed out so late with Rika and her Freeter friends . . .”

  Yumi grabbed some underwear and quickly shuffled to the bathroom to avoid the familiar lecture. It wasn’t unusual for grown children to live at home until they married, but after being pushed and prodded through school, a growing number of Japanese graduates just stepped off the treadmill. If they didn’t land a job in their chosen fields, they refused to get married or launch any kind of career. Freeters lived at home, worked part-time day jobs, and cruised the clubs at night.

  At least I’ve got a real job, thought Yumi, shutting the bathroom door. Sort of. Interpreting lectures on penile dysfunction for convention-going urologists, and professorial ramblings on “The Splendor of Longing in The Tale of Genji,” wasn’t exactly something to brag about to her former English Lit professors at Boston College, but at least she wasn’t working at a tea ceremony sweetshop like her friend Coco. She sighed, regretting for the thousandth time that she hadn’t been able to land a job in America with a permanent resident visa attached.

  Glancing in the mirror, she hoped her haircutter had made a big donation at his local shrine this year. Today it would take some divine intervention to transform her into anything remotely resembling a potential Mrs. Mitsuyama.

  Pulling her shoulder-length hair into a spiky ponytail, she splashed water on her face. Better. Did the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled made up for her sickly pallor? Better not answer that before chugging a bottle of Ukon no Chikara hangover cure on the way to the subway station. Nose nearly touching the glass, she inspected the dark circles under her eyes and prodded the slightly painful spot next to her nose, hoping it wouldn’t turn into something red and hideous by tonight. Fortunately, Ito-san—makeup wizard as well as haircutter—used industrial-strength foundation that had proven effective before at fixing the ravages of the Mad Hatter.

  In the kitchen she found her mother settling a pickled plum into the middle of a bowl of breakfast rice. She handed it to Yumi and poured her a cup of green tea. Yumi noticed a large empty sake bottle sitting by the back door next to the nonburnable trash. Uh-oh, it hadn’t been there yesterday when she’d come home from her interpreting job.

  “Did Dad come home early yesterday?” she asked, picking the plum off her rice and squinching up her face at its salty sourness.

  “Yes,” her mother sighed. “Remember that professorship that’s going to be vacant next year? His interview was yesterday at three.”

  “How did it go?” Yumi asked, dreading the answer.

  “He says it went well.” The worry line between her mother’s brows deepened. “But he’s already predicting they’ll give it to the retiring professor’s protégé.”

  “The skinny guy with the terrible teeth?” Yumi frowned. “Isn’t he a lot younger than Dad?”

  “Yes, but apparently he won a prize recently. And his area of specialization is popular right now. He’s already written three books.”

  They contemplated that fact in silence. After twelve years, Yumi’s father’s magnum opus still wasn’t quite done. His angry outbursts on the “publish or perish” dictum he blamed for his series of temporary professorships were never mentioned within the family. Every time he’d been passed over for a permanent position during their years in America, he’d spend the first week nursing his disappointment with liberal doses of sake, then he’d dig in for several weeks of feverish writing and research on After the Black Ships: Japanese-American Trade as an Instrument of Change. Eventually he would run out of energy and put the project aside until inspiration returned—usually when another coveted chair was awarded to a rival.

  Then his mother died, leaving them this house in Tokyo. Yumi was transplanted from the third grade class at Boston Elementary to Komagome Shogakko, and Dr. Hata took a lecturing position in the history department at Toda University. They’d all hoped that moving back to Japan would bring a change in his fortunes, that perhaps at Toda he’d be judged by the quality of his scholarship, not by his failure to publish. But as the years slipped by and he continued to be passed over for promotion, the plans for renovating the drafty old house grew outdated and Yumi learned to make herself scarce when she saw her mother’s lips set in a thin line and empty sake bottles by the back door.

  Yumi rinsed out her bowl, detoured to her room to toss her phone into her purse, then scuffed on some shoes by the front door, calling a hasty “Itte kimasu” as she escaped the dim, cramped house.

  A handful of cherry blossom petals fluttered by in the fresh spring wind, and Yumi began to feel better. At the Family Mart on the way to the station, she ducked in to buy a can of hangover elixir and downed it right outside the store, tossing the empty can into the recycle bin.

  Crossing the bridge near the subway station, she discovered that a few of the trees lining the tracks had turned into princesses overnight. It still thrilled her each spring when, among the regiments of bare, brown trees, a few suddenly revealed themselves as blossom-crowned royalty. Even the hoary old cherry tree at the Komagome Shrine was beginning to flower, changing from a crusty old man to a dowager queen. A gust of wind swayed the heavy, rice-straw rope on the torii gate as she crossed the intersection to the subway station.

  Waving her train pass over the turnstile sensor, she didn’t even slow as it beeped her through. A train was still paused at the platform, but the doors closed with a sigh just as she came within range. The train pulled away.

  Four minutes until the next one would arrive. Time to call Rika. Pulling out her mobile, Yumi flipped it open and was surprised by a picture of the scary, rooster-haired band Moi dix Mois on the display.

  She groaned. This wasn’t her phone.

  She and Rika had gone to the Docomo store together to buy new phones a few weeks ago. As usual, they’d decided on the same model, and, after a brief argument, the same color. There’d never been any danger of a mix-up before, because Rika always transferred her collection of phone ornaments. The thick tassel of little figures on their strings was a living record of Rika’s enthusiasms and travels since first grade, but she hadn’t switched her collection to this phone yet. Rika must have scooped up the wrong one when she left the Mad Hatter.

  Yumi woul
d have to remember not to answer any calls today, unless the display showed they came from her own number.

  Scrolling through Rika’s address book, she found her own name and hit Send. The call went immediately to voicemail. She asked herself to leave a message. That was strange—Rika always picked up, even when she was sound asleep. Was she . . . with someone?

  Rika had been awfully closemouthed about where she was going last night and whom she was meeting. The only thing she’d admitted was that she’d seen a new editor that afternoon, some guy interested in a freelance piece she was pitching.

  That was why she’d been dressed so strangely. Well, strangely for Rika, anyway. Ever since middle school, Yumi had rarely seen her in anything but thigh-high, lace-edged stockings, frilly pink dresses, and eccentric little French-maid mobcaps. Rika was the queen of the Sweet Lolitas, girls who demonstrated their commitment to each other by dressing in variations on Little Bo Peep. Outsiders often made the mistake of thinking the Lolitas were trying to appeal to men with weird fetishes, but that was before they saw the scorn Rika and her friends heaped on salarymen who looked at them the wrong way. All the Lolitas—Sweet, Goth, Elegant, Punk—put on confidence and style when they tied the ribbons of their frothy hats beneath their chins, no matter how shy or awkward they’d been before. One end of the spectrum was defined by petticoats, Mary Janes, and bonnets, the other by artfully tattered dresses, black-buckled boots, and top hats.

  That’s why all Rika’s parasol-toting friends at the Mad Hatter had turned to stare when she’d appeared last night in a navy blue suit and high heels. Clearly the new editor she’d been meeting didn’t work at GothXLoli magazine, where Rika was a staff writer. And whoever she’d had a date with last night hadn’t been a member of her Circle, either.

  Yumi heard the train approaching as the phone’s low-battery icon glowed red. She texted, dying to hear about last night CALL ME, and pushed Send.

  Chapter 3

  Saturday, April 6

  8:00 A.M.

  Kenji

  Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Kenji Nakamura leaned his tall frame against the side of the squad car and watched as Assistant Detective Suzuki arranged roadblocks across the entrance to the Komagome Shrine’s parking lot. A slight breeze lifted the wings of his thick, nearly-black hair, reminding him he ought to get it cut on the way to judo practice tomorrow. Once a would-be girlfriend had embarrassed him by saying it drew attention to his dreamy eyes, but Kenji found it annoying to have his hair in his face all the time.