Dangerous Souls

Shoji no Noroi

Chapter 9- Ritual

"A hefty price you must pay for my services." The woman flashed fanged teeth in a wicked smile. "What child have you brought for your sacrifice?"

"Mai."

October, Day 6, 7:47 A.M.

"Mai," the young brunette heard Masako call her. She groaned in loathing as she opened her eyes only to shut them again against the blinding sun. She felt a pillow being thrown on her head. "Get up, you can go back to your date with him later, until then, Naru wants to see us at base before breakfast." With that, she left for the hall.

"Yeesh, what did you do to each other?" Kiko commented, gathering her clothes from her suitcase as Mai slowly rolled up and off the bed.

"I don't know," she shrugged. "Some days we are pretty close to being friends other days we're mortal enemies."

"Like now," the older girl confirmed as Mai nodded. She walked into the bathroom and called out behind the closed door. "So were you?"

Mai raised a brow. "Was I what?"

"On a date with Naru?" Mai's face turned fifty fades of red.

"Not you too!"

***

"What were you able to find out last night?" Naru asked, turning to Yasuhara and Kiko who sat on the couch.

"Not much," Yasuhara shook his head, pulling out the small list of notes he wrote down. "Just dates when additions were made to the hotel."

"And pretty much everything we already knew, original owners of the hotel, their families. Only placing names with people we already knew, like the first man in room 534 to 'commit suicide' his same was Sora Fukui. His wife Natsuki was the sister of Itsuko Koizumi who left her lover, Yoru shortly after she gave birth to Otsune." Kiko explained, then shrugged. "We're still digging, we were only at the library for a couple hours before they closed."

"Do you have information on whether Otsune is still alive?" Naru asked, leaning back against the wall.

"She's about seventy-eight now and lives about a hour outside of Kyoto," Yasuhara smiled triumphantly, handing him a slip of paper. "Here's the address."

"Good, now-" Naru would have finished, but there was yet another interruption at the door.

"Sorry to intrude, but good morning," the blonde haired priest stepped into the room. "How long was I asleep?"

"Well, it's October now, so you slept away the rest of September," Ayako teased.

"Hey, isn't that an American song?" Monk asked then started singing very very VERY off key. "Wake me up when Sep-"

THUNK!

"Please, have mercy on my eardrums." the priestess said, annoyed.

Naru completely ignored the discrepancy between the monk and priestess. "Father Brown, will you be able to perform and exorcism today?"

"Of course," John nodded.

"Mai, Lin and myself will pay a visit to Otsune," Naru ordered, turning to his body double. "You and Kiko will go back a do more research." He turned to Ayako. "Miss Matsuzaki, I need you to make enough charms to seal the room Yoshiko is in-"

"I already made them-"

"Then make more." His voice rose slightly only to fall back to its normal tone as he turned to Monk. "Monk, I need you to prepare some sort of spell to seal the room on top of Matsuzaki's charms and Lin's shiki. We cannot have this spirit getting away when we exorcise it."