have much to talk about.”

CHAPTER Seven

Akiro supposed it was inevitable. The reporters had not been

satisfied with Mono. They would not be put off by a spokesman,

they wanted the investigating agent and they had staked him out,

catching him as he was leaving the building. They had descended

upon him with their cameras and microphones and notepads,

surrounding him and peppering him with rapid-fire questions. He

knew that it had not gone well, but as he sat in his apartment and

morosely watched the evening news, he saw that it had gone even

worse than he had thought.

They had gone with the story as their lead. The anchorman had

started off by reciting the mounting toll of heinous murders and

then they cut to the interview, showing him leaving the building

furtively, his hat pulled low over his eyes, visibly recoiling as the

reporters descended upon him, wincing as their microphones were

pointed at his face. He hesitated, he stammered, he floundered, he

looked like a man caught doing something wrong. He cringed as he

watched the interview. He looked awful on camera. He looked

nervous. He looked incompetent. He looked stupid. Worse, he

looked guilty. His answers to their questions were lame and

sounded exactly like the sort of rote things people said when they

were trying to avoid saying anything. It was painful to watch. His

worst fears had been realized.

To make matters even worse, they had also interviewed

Kanno, apparently having caught him earlier in the day, and

they ran that segment immediately after they ran his. It made for a

sharp contrast. On camera, Kanno looked much better than he did.

He was good-looking and well spoken, totally unruffled. He

confirmed that he was “assisting the Bureau on the investigation in

an advisory capacity” at the request of his old sensei, Master

Yohaku, to whom the Bureau had appealed for help. Under

questioning, he confirmed that necromancy was involved, that the

murders were the work of some sort of “creature, ” and when