Eight Million Gods by Wen Spencer

Author:Wen Spencer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Urban Life, Fantasy, Contemporary, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781451638981
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2013-06-03T23:00:00+00:00

20

Soba Noodle

They stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall soba noodle shop that looked a hundred years old. The table was a large square of rough planks wrapping an elevated fire pit. Nikki wasn’t sure if she was relived or disappointed that there was no fire going so early on a summer day. There didn’t seem to be any chimney overhead, just a vaulted ceiling of rough beams and wooden planks. The menu was on wooden plaques tacked on the wall. Considering there was a McDonald’s next door, Nikki was surprised that Leo had chosen the ancient noodle shop.

His choice became less mysterious after he ordered the food; he went outside to do secret agent stuff with his phone to get Kenichi’s place of employment and his home address. She opened up her laptop and quickly connected to the McDonald’s Wi-Fi. She hadn’t wanted to use the hotel’s Internet since it might have given her location away, but they were leaving Izushi after they ate.

She logged onto her ultra-secret forum. The log-in information was only linked to an e-mail account that had no data trail back to her. For this account alone, she was Mango Nana.

The first message was from Miriam as SexyNinja on Monday. “Who has the ball?”

“Incoming!” Pixii answered.

“Have fun playing with ball!” ChibiX said from the northern reaches of Hokkaido.

“Will do!” Pixii replied but posted an unhappy face on Tuesday. “Does someone else have the ball?”

Miriam posted minutes later with, “OMG, you don’t have it? Scary-ass male came looking for the ball!”

“Not me!” Jaynaynay said.

“Me neither,” Cloud said.

Nikki winced. She hated this sneaking around. “Bounce. Bounce,” she typed in. They deserved more information, but she didn’t know how closely anyone was tracking her movements. They’d know at least that she was mobile and checking in.

Almost immediately, Pixii posted “Bounce!” in reply.

And on the heels of that, Miriam posted, “Guard Dog sighted at Narita.”

Nikki’s breath turned solid in her chest as she stared at the words.

Her mother was in Japan? Oh God. Oh God. Her life had gone completely, impossibly insane, and her mother was here to witness it all? Nikki checked the news. Sure enough, there was a CNN sound bite of her mother visiting with an official-sounding cover story to make it seem like she wasn’t here to hunt down her mad daughter.

What the hell was she going to do? Her mother would be looking for her in Osaka; she couldn’t go back there. She didn’t know anyone but Miriam, and her mother would have people watching Miriam’s place. Tokyo might be a city of twelve million people, but the idea of being that close to her mother was threatening to trigger a panic attack.

Rather than sit and scare herself, Nikki logged off, shut down her laptop, and focused on breathing again. As if he’d been watching her, the elderly chef appeared with two heavily laden trays of food. He wore a blue happi with an apron and a little dark blue cap. He looked at Leo’s empty chair askance as he put the trays down.

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