Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Kenji held me tighter. “I’m so sorry, Hiro.”
The twin ghosts drifted toward me through the red light, and even dead and ruined, they moved in sync, one creature in two bodies.
Aki looked at Yuki. "Hiro said he could see ghosts, and we didn't believe him."
Yuki grinned, and the shimmering red on his lips caught the light. "I'm glad we were wrong."
Of course the twins would be the ghosts who talked to me.
It wouldn't be enough to haunt me, to stand silent in the corners the way the others did, the wrist-open woman, the half-faced fisherman, and all the rest.
No.
That would be too easy for the twins. They would be the ghosts to annoy me too.
Can I live with this? Is it enough?
I shut my eyes and tears spilled from me.
Kenji rubbed my back. “Goddamn it.”
I would have kept on drowning if not for the baby ghost.
She giggled, and it was this melodic sound of joy in this horrible moment of suffering. That giggle had no business existing around me.
Too bright.
Too cute.
Too certain.
She giggled again, luring me from the bottom of the ocean like a distorted siren's call.
Don’t laugh, little one. I just want to be sad.
Kenji rubbed my back again. "I'm with you, Hiro, and I'm never going to let you go."
The baby giggled some more.
What is so funny to her?
I opened my eyes and looked at the baby ghost. The view was blurry with tears, but the baby girl was on Kenji's back, watching me with wide eyes and pure delight on her face. She giggled again, and her chubby cheeks crinkled with the sound.
Why are you here?
The twins' ghosts gazed at her.
Yuki frowned. "Our Tiger has sacrificed a lot."
Aki nodded. "Too much."
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
Aki pointed. "The baby."
Yuki nodded. "The Little Tiger."
I shivered. "Little Tiger?"
Kenji gazed at me. "Who are you talking to, Hiro?"
Little Tiger? What do they mean by that?
I studied the baby girl, leaning all the way forward until my nose was barely an inch from hers, and the world went small, close, and clear.
Kenji had no idea what I was looking at right behind him. “Hiro?”
Her skin was a warm brown.
She’s Japanese, but she’s also from African descent too.
I’d known her hair was curly, but this close I could see all the tiny corkscrew curls. Her brown cheeks were full. Her mouth was a little open in that gummy way babies have when something delighted them.
And her eyes.
Those were Nyomi's eyes. That same dark depth. That same calm that should not exist in a world like ours. I had seen those eyes across a kitchen and in a war room. And I was seeing them again.
Yes. That’s our Tiger’s eyes.
However. . .the rest of the baby girl’s face was Kenji’s.
How did I not see that before?
The brow. The set of the jaw, even soft and unfinished. The shape that ran in my own blood. I knew that face. I had grown up beside that face all my fucking life.
I was looking at my brother and the woman he loved, folded together into a child the size of a loaf of bread, and my chest cracked at the impossible logic of her. My throat closed so hard I could not have spoken her name if I'd known it.
Our Tiger was pregnant. . .
My stomach twisted.
Did she know days ago?
I doubted it.
She would have told me. Kenji too. But still. . .all of the memories of these past days came to me different. All that time, Nyomi had walked into every room with a second life within, made of the two people I loved most on this earth. This little life curled within her womb.
Pregnant? Dear God. . .
A cold, terrifying shiver ran through me as my heart shattered into tiny pieces.
And. . .Nyomi sacrificed her for the war?
I didn’t know how she did it, but in my mind. . .I saw our sweet Tiger holding this precious life in her hands and tears falling from her eyes as slowly. . .she opened them and let the little life go.
For Kenji. For us. For the war. No, Tora. No. . .
This unbearable pain crashed into me.
Nyomi. . .you love us too much.
For some reason, my mouth filled with the copper taste of blood, even though none was within it. I swallowed it down.
Did Kenji know? There’s no way. . .
With this new knowledge, I looked at the baby ghost again.
She’s my niece. . .
She giggled at me again, and then those eyes—Nyomi’s eyes—began to. . .shift.
I trembled from the impossibility before me.
No ghost had ever done this.
Her black pupils widened for a heartbeat until they swallowed almost all of her irises. A second later the pupils narrowed, stretching vertically into long, feline slits.
What?
As the pupils reshaped, the roundness of her eyes subtly changed. The upper lids lowered at the outer corners while the lower lids tightened, giving her eyes a longer, more almond-shaped appearance.