Dimension Fracture by Corinn Heathers Page B

baby due in six weeks. Go sit down in the living room and one of those useless girls will make you some hot ginger tea.”
    Mama grabbed Misaki by the hand and dragged her away, my unfortunate fiancee's tail curling down and tucking between her legs. Nicole couldn't keep a smile off her face as she eased herself into the living room area and slowly sank into the couch in front of the TV.
    I glanced at So-yi and shrugged. “Guess we're on dinner duty.”
    “Looks that way,” my sister agreed. “How the hell does she always manage to make me feel like I'm a kid again?”
    I shivered. “Magic. Scary, evil Mama magic.”

the storm
     
    I wasn't surprised when it started to rain again. The torrential downpour pummeled the tarps sheltering So-yi's perfectly-maintained vegetable garden, the wind whipping underneath and jerking the plastic sheets hard against their moorings.
    Alone on the back porch, I lit a cigarette and stared out into the rain. It was coming down so hard and in such large droplets that even the strongest gusts of wind couldn't change the angle. I blew out a plume of smoke and silently watched the falling rain. I suppose it was something of a blessing that no physical evidence had been left at the scenes of the murders with a wash-out like this.
    “Karin?”
    I didn't bother turning; actually, I felt her presence before she even spoke. The mana bond that sustained Misaki and fed back into my body to keep my injuries on the mend had other effects. Whenever Misaki was near, I could feel her as if she were a part of me.
    Which was true, after all.
    “I'm going to come in as soon as I'm done with this.” I leaned back against the bench built into the porch, the throbbing pain in my left leg and lower back starting to intensify. The change in pressure caused by the storm sure wasn't doing me any favors.
    Misaki walked across the wooden slats and sat down next to me on the bench. Her hair was very slightly damp and she'd braided it tightly, a precaution against her impressively dense mane tangling in her sleep. The brown yukata she wore was identical to the ones we'd worn at the Takeda family home.
    “You need to get to sleep if you want to be fresh and ready for work.”
    “I know.”
    “That means you should stop staring out into the rain and come to bed, love,” Misaki explained in a helpful tone. Ordinarily I would have given her a mock-indignant glare and engaged in some playful teasing, but something stopped me.
    “I know,” I repeated, my voice sounding odd in my own ears. I closed my eyes and felt her take my hand in hers. Gentle warmth seemed to flow from Misaki's hands into my own, but I still felt cold. An involuntary shiver ran through me.
    “You're afraid to go to sleep.”
    I opened my eyes and turned to see Misaki's own eyes wide and worried, her ears drooping just slightly to either side of her head. The regular swish of her tail slowed and stopped.
    “Anxious,” I corrected. “I just… I get the feeling that weird mage isn't done with me. I don't know how I know, I just know . It's… not pleasant.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The way they looked at me—I mean, I couldn't see their eyes or face or expression or anything like that, but I just got the feeling that I was being… fixated on. Like they were staring at me with an endless, infinite hunger in their eyes.”
    “That's… uncomfortable,” Misaki murmured.
    “To put it lightly.” I nodded and snuggled up closer to her, leaning my head on her shoulder. She and I were very close in height, so either one of us could easily lean on the other.
    “Yeah.”
    Misaki put her arm around my shoulder and drew me closer. “We'll trust your instincts on this. If the dark mage contacts you again, I can use that to our advantage.”
    “I knew you were going to say that.”
    “I can enact a continuous invocation before you go to sleep. If you experience another sending, the invocation will allow me to track them. We'll know where the