Falling Through Glass Read online

  The Maeda clan ruled some of the most fertile land during the feudal era. Their resulting wealth from the abundant rice crops elevated nearly every Maeda male to the social rank of daimyo, which she’d always equated with dukes and princes. She remembered the passion in Great-grandfather’s failing voice as he spoke of their ancestral domain, the Kaga han.

  A wry smile curved her lips as Emmi thought of how vexed the ancient man had become when his thoughts turned to the Meiji Restoration, which had abolished the old, feudal class system. In protest of the military governor Tokugawa’s overthrow, Maeda Takehito, her great-great-great-grandfather, had renounced his citizenship, sold everything and relocated to America. He’d considered it the perfect slap in the face to the new government, which professed support for the emperor but had no intention of letting him truly rule the land that was his by divine right.

  “They need you on the set, Miss Maeda,” one of the director’s assistants called, jarring Emmi away from her memories.

  She reverted to her earlier internal chant as she wove her way past the cameras, cables, technicians and actors to take her place on the set. Slip off shoes— Hurry down hall— Slide open shoji— Look in horror at dead bodies— Scream like banshee.

  “And cut!” Dan Cruze shouted after Emmi did her short scene. “Nice job, kid. Looks like we have another ‘One-take Maeda’ in our midst.”

  Emmi blushed as Jake led the crew members who’d known her dad in a wild round of applause. Fortunately for Emmi’s pride, Cruze called for everyone’s immediate attention a moment later.

  “Listen up, people. We’re shutting down for the day.” He paused as a murmur arose. He waited until his assistants had regained everyone’s attention before continuing. “All I know is what the Toei Studio rep just told me. Some freak storm with hurricane force winds has come out of nowhere within the past hour, and it’s headed right for us. Get to the hotel ASAP. That means go in costume and take the props in your hands with you. We’ll collect them once we get there.”

  Emmi shivered as a deathlike chill blew over her. “Uncle Jake. I have a bad feeling.”

  He gave her a hug and urged her toward the exit. “It’ll be fine, Em. It’ll probably blow over before lunch.”

  * * * *

  Emmi hadn’t seen such a commotion in the streets since wildfires had spread through Southern California a few miles from her parents’ house. She was very glad to reach the safety of the hotel—until she entered the room she shared with Jake and found her mirror missing.

  “We were robbed! Uncle Jake, someone stole my mirror!”

  “Emmi, Emmi, calm down. It wasn’t stolen.”

  “But it’s gone!”

  “I had to borrow it.”

  “What?”

  “The prop one was dropped, and it broke. Cruze insisted that he needed it for his shot. It will be all right. I’m sure Eric will grab it.”

  “Eric came back on the shuttle with us. He didn’t have it. I have to get it!” Emmi darted for the door.

  Jake grabbed the back of her kimono. “No!”

  She pulled away. “It will get ruined! I need it with me!”

  Jake grabbed her shoulders and gave her a quick shake. “Emiko! It’s a mirror. It’s just a mirror. I’m not letting you risk your life to get it.”

  “You said the storm was nothing!” she shouted back.

  “Look, the Toei people wouldn’t have ordered us out if it was nothing.”

  Emmi jerked herself free from his grasp. “Then I have to get it, or it will be destroyed!”

  “No!” Jake took a deep breath. “Look, I’ll call the studio. I’ll make sure one of the security guys puts it in a safe place, okay?”

  Biting back a snarky reply, she nodded and simply said, “Okay.”

  Emmi bit her thumbnail and tried to think of the quickest foot route back to the Uzumasa Movie Village as Jake went to use the phone on the desk.

  “It’s out.” He reached for his cell phone, but it wasn’t there. “Damn loose clip. I must have dropped it. Look, I’m going to the lobby to see if the phones work down there. You stay put.”

  Emmi said nothing. As soon as he left, she waited by the door. When she peered out, he’d already disappeared around the bend in the hall toward the elevators. The stairs were in the opposite direction, not far from their room. She yanked up the layered kimono as best she could and tore off down the hall toward the stairs. She was thankful the wardrobe lady had given her a pair of thicker soled outdoor tabi sandals since the geta from the scene had been too loose.

  The sky grew darker the closer she got to the movie lot. The winds picked up, pelting her face with debris and shoving against her like a football linebacker. She was running headlong into the approaching storm, but she didn’t care about that or the looks that the few people scurrying by gave her. The mirror was all that mattered.

  The decorative combs and hair sticks fell from her elaborate wig until it blew off. Soon her own long black hair came loose from its pins to whip about her face. She kept her mind focused on the mirror and kept her fingers clutched tightly to the layers of kimono that weighed her down.

  The guard at the gate refused to let her in despite her pleas, but another guard, frantically trying to prepare for the coming storm, called him away. Emmi slyly slid the edge of her kimono in the gate opening, and it was just thick enough to keep the lock from catching all the way. Once the guard was gone, Emmi slipped inside and ran toward the set where they’d been filming.

  A torrent of rain exploded from the sky just as she got inside. The building’s metal roof vibrated, and the wind whistled through whatever tiny cracks it could find. The lights flickered and went out just before she reached the set. It was so dark she had to feel her way along the walls.

  The soundstage shook from the wind and rain hitting the building, and Emmi felt like Dorothy about to be sucked up into Oz. The storm ripped the functional shutters off the window across the room a moment before Emmi stepped inside the set. The outer soundstage window broke, and Emmi screamed as the driving wind propelled tiny shards of glass against the back of her neck.

  There it was, on a red lacquer cabinet. She lunged for her mirror and hugged it to her chest seconds before part of the set wall blew in, shoving her against the furniture and burying her in debris. Her foot was wedged beneath the small cabinet where the mirror had rested, and she screamed in pain as something else fell on top of the pile. She could feel the wind gusting outside her cave-like prison. She heard a crackling noise and soon smelled smoke.

  A fire!

  “Please help me!”

  You’re in Japan, Em!

  “Tasukete kudasai!”

  “Help me! Help me! Please!”

  The smoke grew thicker. Her lungs protested at the noxious fumes. She kept calling for help between coughs.

  “Onegai! Onegai…tasukete…” she pleaded. Her grip tightened on the mirror as her lungs constricted. “Help me!”

  Chapter Four

  Kyoto

  1864

  Kae’s eyes flew open the instant his senses recognized the smell of burning wood. He was on his feet, katana in hand, before his consciousness registered that this was not the fire-prone Imperial Palace and that the smell was distant, somehow not quite real.

  Please help me!

  Kae looked down at the empty futon. Aneko was gone. She’d had an appointment with an outside customer that she couldn’t cancel. He went to the door leading to the corridor and peered out. Only the usual sounds of merriment and sexual encounters drifted back. There was no smoke smell.

  Help me! Help me! Please!

  His eyes finally adjusted to the faint light of the small lantern Aneko had left lit, and he was certain that a wisp of smoke came from beneath the cloth covering Aneko’s mirror. Again, the mournful cry for help followed.

  Help me! Please!

  For a number of years his father had sent Kae to serve as a retainer to the Matsudairas, the leaders of the Aizu clan. T
here he’d learned the wariness of a battle-ready warrior, and now that training sprang to the forefront.

  It was another trick of the oni in the mirror to steal his soul. Yet…

  Please, help me.

  The terrified wail was too much to bear, too similar to the pain-filled cries of his father’s mistress that night when he was ten years old and the palace had caught fire, trapping them both and killing her after she’d shoved him out of a window to safety.

  The wisps of smoke coming from beneath the cloth grew thicker while the cries for help grew weaker.

  The fire that long ago night had caught the hem of Yumi’s kimono even as she’d lifted him to the window, to safety. As Kae had tumbled out backward, he’d seen her engulfed in fire, seen her writhe in utter agony, seen her hands reach out, seen her skin bubble and melt…

  No. It would not happen again.

  Help…

  Kaemon plunged himself forward, tore the cloth away, and, with a kiai, a loud battle cry, he thrust his hand through the glass. The mirror did not shatter, and he felt his fingertips at last connect with smoldering silk.

  He stretched his arm until his shoulder collided with the mirror’s frame then let out another kiai while he used all his strength to pull backward on the handful of silk in his grasp.

  The tatami mat scratched Kae’s back when they hit it and slid. It took a moment for him to catch his breath. The smell of singed fabric prickled his nose. Instinctively he rolled out from under the stunned woman and threw a blanket from the futon over her, patting it to smother any hint of fire.

  Within seconds, Emmi began coughing. She flailed her arms and legs, swatting a blanket from her face.

  Her brain took its own sweet time processing the Japanese words someone called out. “Calm down. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

  Coughing, she sat up and scrambled to her knees as much as the cumbersome layers of clothing and the blanket covering her would allow. She bent forward, taking in large, gasping breaths, hacking to expel the smoky air from her lungs.

  “Daijoubu desu ka? Daijoubu desu ka, oni?”

  Was she a demon? What the hell kind of question was that?

  Still kneeling, Emmi straightened and swiped her tousled hair from her eyes. She then turned to look over her shoulder. Had her mother sent some distant relative to watch over her and taunt her with the demon epithet in her stead?

  “Are you a demon?” the man kneeling before her asked again.

  Emmi blinked and wiped her eyes, which still stung from the smoke. She glared at her supposed rescuer. “Yes, I’m all right, and I’m not a demon, you idiot.”

  She looked around. This did not look like the soundstage. Where was the storm? Where on earth was she?

  “What?”

  Emmi looked back at the confused man. He was around her age and seemed rather familiar somehow.

  “What?” she asked in answer to the very same question from him.

  “Nani? Nan desu ka, oni?” he repeated.

  “Look, I know I should be grateful to you and all, but…”

  She broke off as his look of bewilderment grew. She closed her eyes a moment. She hadn’t carried on any long conversations in Japanese since she’d last seen her grandparents at the funeral. In fact, that hadn’t been quite normal, since a lot of the time they chose to use the old, classical Japanese…

  Which was exactly what this guy was speaking.

  She spoke to him slowly in Japanese, hoping he’d get it straight that she was not a demon and that she was indeed all right.

  “What is i-di-ot?”

  Emmi coughed and wondered if coughing more might distract him from wanting to know what idiot meant. However, when he repeated the question, she knew that wasn’t much of an option. She looked at him and translated ‘idiot’ as best she could.

  She gave a start when the look of bewilderment, which she thought might be his natural expression, turned to one of fury. He jumped to his feet and grabbed the katana lying on the floor a few feet away, and Emmi knew without a doubt that he was not holding any movie prop.

  It didn’t look like any unsharpened practice or prop sword she’d ever seen, but it did look exactly like the antique sword her father had owned. She knew without a doubt that this katana was very much the same—very real and very deadly.

  She looked around the room again. Why wasn’t she in the same room? Why wasn’t it a shambles? Where were the security people or the paramedics, the police and the firefighters? Where the hell was she?

  Before she could figure it out, the man ordered her to stand. She knew that to refuse would not be wise—even if he insisted on calling her a demon.

  He pointed the katana at her. “Go back to where you came from, demon. Now!” he ordered in Japanese, pointing the blade to the mirror lying face down on the floor near a small lacquered cabinet.

  The mirror!

  Emmi ran forward, fell to her knees and picked it up, making sure it was unharmed.

  It was her mirror, but it was different. It looked newer, shinier, and while it had a dent on the right side, the other nicks and dents were missing from the base. Where had the cloth tacked onto the back come from?

  “Go back inside, demon! You will not have my soul! Not now or ever!”

  “Wha—?” Emmi’s voice died the instant she turned. The guy had the tip of his katana a fraction away from the base of her throat.

  “Go back inside to where you came from.”

  What was happening?

  Was she dead and in some kind of hell for causing the accident that killed her father?

  Was she unconscious and having some freakish dream?

  “Go back now, demon!”

  Shaking in fear, Emmi blinked back the tears that formed in her eyes and prayed she wasn’t screwing up any old Japanese pronunciations. The last thing she wanted was to say something wrong, something that would push this guy over the edge.

  “I’m not a demon. I swear I’m not. I don’t know how I got here. I was caught in a storm at a place I was working. The wall fell on me. There was a fire. That’s all I remember. I’m not a demon. I swear I’m not. My name is Emiko. Maeda Emiko.”

  “Maeda?” he asked.

  “Yes. My family comes from Kanaz—the Kaga han,” she added.

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Then how did you come to be in the mirror? He pointed the tip of the sword to her throat. “Prove to me that you are human.”

  Chapter Five

  Kyoto

  Present day

  Even as the hunt for Emmi was going on within the hotel, Jake knew where she’d gone. He tried to follow but didn’t make it past the hotel lobby as the weird storm hit the hotel dead on. Then, as quickly as it had engulfed them it was gone, much like the devastating tornadoes near his hometown in Oklahoma. The wind died to nothing. The rain stopped and brilliant sunrays poked through gobs of fluffy white clouds.

  At the Uzumasa Movie Village, the nightmare hit him full force. The soundstage they’d been using was a smoldering shambles, and though the authorities tried to hold him back, Jake used his size and strength to shove his way past the rescue workers and into the thick of the devastation.

  He prayed to any deity who would listen to see that Emmi had survived this.

  Calling out her name, he began pawing at the fallen sheetrock, twisted metal and broken glass. After hours of searching and repeated pleas for updates from a sympathetic cop, no trace of Emmi was found.

  Oh, shit. He had to call her mother and brother.

  He was picking his way back through the rubble that had been their set when excited voices of nearby rescue workers caught his attention.

  A miracle!

  No miracle. Dark magic. Drop it. Get away.

  Jake spun around. The sunlight pouring through the mangled roof glinted off unbroken glass. It was the mirror, Emmi’s mirror.

  Where the hell was she?

  * * * *

  Kyoto

  1864


  Emmi licked her dry lips and tried not to flinch. “How do I prove I’m human? Maybe by dying if you stab me?”

  “Perhaps,” he said flatly.

  She did her best to bite back a scream and clutched her hands into fists on her lap. “P-please don’t kill me. I’m a real person. I swear.”

  The man—the samurai, she realized—lowered his sword a bit. “Then perhaps I’ll smash your mirror and make you my slave.”

  “No!” she shouted, rearing back. “Please don’t break it. How will I get home if you break it?”

  “You mean how will you capture my soul if I break it?”

  “No—”

  A pounding on the other side of the shoji door leading out of the room interrupted her.

  The samurai went to the door, but his gaze never left Emmi. He slid the shoji open a few inches and glanced out. “What’s the problem?”

  “Fujiwara-san! You must leave at once! Downstairs is crawling with rebels. I recognized one of them from the other night.”

  The samurai muttered an obscenity, then sheathed his katana and stalked back across the room. He grabbed Emmi’s arm and jerked her to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked.

  “Quiet! I’m not leaving you until I find out what you are.”

  He pulled her forward.

  She pulled back. “The mirror. I need the mirror.”

  “No.”

  “Fujiwara-san. Please hurry,” the samurai’s friend pleaded in the doorway.

  The sound of men’s raucous voices echoed from the direction of the stairs.

  The samurai grabbed the mirror with his free hand while the other still grasped Emmi’s arm.

  “Matsuyama, this way,” Fujiwara instructed as he led the way to a secret door and passage hidden within the wall in the adjoining room. He pulled Emmi in after him.