“Go, Komako! Go!” he shouted.
But she couldn’t, there was nowhere to go. An old woman came forward, an ancient woman in a shabby yukata, her robe hanging wetly from her, and she leveled a crooked finger at Teshi. A hush fell over the mob.
“Her,” she whispered. “It’s her, it’s the demon child.…”
A ripple went through the mob. A voice from the back shouted something, then a second voice. A brick landed near Teshi, a rock struck Komako in the chest. The mob was gathering its courage, its anger rising again.
“Jacob!” she cried out. “We can’t—”
But then he was beside her, sweeping Teshi up over one shoulder, striding through the rain toward a dark shop front and kicking the door down and dragging Komako forward with him, into the gloom. He stood in the doorway, a tall bearded figure of rage, and glared out at the gathering crowd.
Komako hurried through. The shop was just two small rooms, front and back, and there was no other way in or out. In the darkness she could smell something awful. The back room was filled with the cholera dead.
“We’re trapped,” she cried. “Jacob! We can’t get out!”
Jacob just shook his head. “We only needed to be out of the rain, Ko. We only needed to be dry.”
She saw him take off his gloves. The dust. He meant to use the dust.
“No,” she whispered. “You can’t.”
He looked at her, his eyes completely black. He seemed to be waiting but she didn’t know what more to say. She looked for Teshi and saw her little sister kneeling in the back room, a pale figure in the gloom, kneeling among the laid-out dead. In her head flashed, again, the words Jacob had said to her on the roof of the theater. Whatever was wrong with her sister, it wasn’t illness.
Jacob turned back, raised his hands. And all at once the dust in that filthy shop poured toward his fingers, swirling around and around his outstretched arms.
A man had come forward from the edge of the crowd, swinging a torch, the flame guttering in the rain but not going out, and Komako saw that he meant to burn the shop, to let them burn inside it, and without thinking she ripped at her linen bandages and felt the icy pain in her wrists, and she gathered a skein of dust and sent it arcing out toward the torch. The fire went out in a quick strangled gasp of smoke.
The mob gave out a collective gasp. She looked over at Jacob and saw the dust spiraling around him, saw him step forward now under the dripping awning and raise his eyes and look at the angry mob. There was fear in their faces. They were witnessing the work of demons, of spirits, of an evil witchcraft. There could be no life for her and Teshi now, not here, not after this. They’d seen her.
Then came a glow from next door, and she glanced quickly over and saw someone had lighted the thatched roof. Despite the rain, the fire was already leaping toward them.
“Jacob—” she cried.
“Get your sister,” he said, and his voice sounded strained.
But she didn’t, not at once, and instead she watched as he fell to one knee and dragged his hands forward as if through a thick water, the cords of his neck straining, and the great whirling dust flew out in its billions of particles into the faces and eyes of that gathered crowd, descending on them like a swarm of locusts, and they cried out, clawing at their eyes, stumbling, suddenly blinded.
“Hurry!” he was shouting.
And then Komako was in the dark of the shop, grabbing her sister’s wrist, dragging her out, and Jacob picked the little girl up and the three of them ran through the rain, away from the guttering shops and gambling dens, the frenzied mourners and all the silent dead, through the darkness of the district, toward the old kabuki theater and the only home she’d known.
* * *
Coulton stared at the trunk in the swaying light, the lid battering with a fury.
His heart in its cage was pounding. He could hear the landlady calling for Jacob from below, in a panicked Japanese. “Marubu-san? Marubu-san!” and he hesitated only a moment before picking grimly through the mess and pocketing his revolver and then kneeling down beside the trunk.
“I don’t know if you can understand me,” he growled softly. “But either you shut the fuck up this minute or I unload this Colt into this trunk. Do invisible stop a bullet?”
The lid stopped thumping. The trunk fell still.
“Right,” muttered Coulton, glancing off.
He stepped out into the hallway, leaned out over the railing. He called down in a calm voice that everything was fine, he’d just fallen over and broken a screen, an accident, but he was fine, all was fine, not to worry. He would of course pay for the damage, yes, yes.