“What do you mean?”

“Well, at the risk of sounding immodest, ” Kanno said, “I know of

no one in Japan, with the exception of myself, whose skills at

thaumagenetic engineering would be sufficient to create such a

creature. And if it was ‘on the loose, ’ as you put it, it would seem

unlikely, in a district as crowded as the Ginza, that no one should

have caught a glimpse of it. Consequently, it would seem more

probable that the creature is not, in a manner of speaking, on the

loose, but that it appears and disappears during the times that the

killings actually take place.”

“Which would suggest that the necromancer must be present on

the scene, ” Akiro said.

“Exactly.”

“I see, ” Akiro said. “Well, at least that’s something. I had already

suspected the possibility of a shapechanger. Your conclusions seem

to reinforce that.”

Kanno smiled to himself. This was going to be even easier than

he had expected. It was a stroke of luck that this Bureau agent had

gone to Yohaku for help. Anxious to do as much as he could to help,

the frail old man had asked his favorite pupil to render his

assistance, never suspecting that Kanno himself was the killer. And

it had taken so little to impress this bumbling investigator. The

discovery of a minute clue that everyone else had missed. The scale

on the blouse, which, of course, had not been there before. It would

be a simple matter to mislead them.

They would now be looking for a shapechanger, which suited

Kanno’s purposes perfectly. He was becoming more and more adept

at controlling the dragon. He could animate the tattoo and release

it, then, if necessary, arrange to be somewhere else, among

witnesses, when the murders actually occurred, thereby giving

himself an ironclad alibi. It was perfect. The fools would never

catch him. And that left him with only one thing to be concerned

about.

Leila.

He had never suspected the existence of anyone like Leila. And

where there was one, there would probably be others. The Dark