Yumiko simply said, “Yumiko Sessai.”
“Is it dead?” Roach pointed toward the shattered the black willow that Hal, Nigel, and Taggart were cautiously filming.
“It’s like a Christmas tree after you cut it down,” Hal called. “It’s not quite alive but it’s not completely dead.”
“I would not advise getting close to it,” Nigel said even as he was cautiously edging closer to it to get some wrap-up shots.
“I brought the dynamite.” Roach pointed toward his locked truck. “What did you mean by ‘a wave’ of black willows?”
Jane pointed out the oncoming trees and caught Roach up to speed the best she could without mentioning Lawrie Munroe.
“How sure are we that this is the work of Kajo?” Durrack looped the conversation back to where they were before Roach showed up.
Yumiko explained how Kajo had always worn a mask anytime he interacted with the tengu. “Kajo has killed everyone that might have seen him unmasked. All we have is this.”
The female took out her phone to show Durrack a picture of a red scowling demon face.
Jane studied the photo instead of staring at Yumiko as she tried to remember who knew what. Was Yumiko keeping info from the NSA to protect Boo? It wasn’t like the female had to admit where the information came from. Her family had told Yumiko that Boo was a prisoner of Kajo for years — hadn’t they? Maybe? Maybe not?
“What about Jin Wong’s nephew?” Jane said cautiously. Did Durrack and Briggs know about Joey? Roach didn’t. “The one that Kajo was using?”
Was that vague enough? Most people only knew about Riki, although the NSA might know about Riki’s other young cousins, Keiko and Mickey.
Yumiko shook her head. “We already asked him. He never saw Kajo without the mask.”
Then Boo was the only person who could identify Kajo.
Briggs caught the dismay on Jane’s face. “What?”
This was not how she wanted to break the news to Roach. The good guys, though, all needed to get onto the same page. Monsters in Our Midst was an information gathering and dispersal tool so that everyone who stood against the oni knew what they were fighting. If the oni were making their move soon, she couldn’t worry about her cousin’s feelings.
“I can get a description of Kajo,” Jane said. “He kidnapped my baby sister, Boo, when she was six. He kept her as his personal plaything for eight years.”
“Wait,” Roach said. “What?”
Jane ignored the question; she trusted Roach to catch up without her having to explain everything. That said, though, there was very little she knew about the oni male. “I’ve avoided asking her questions about the time she was with him. We all avoid talking about it. There’s nothing we can do to change the past. Nothing we can do to make things better for her — except kill him. I already planned to do that if I have the chance. As much as I want Kajo dead, I don’t want one of my little brothers to be the one that pulls the trigger. I’ve already got blood on my hands; a little more won’t make much difference to me.”
Yumiko made a face as she realized that she’d missed the obvious. “Joey said that she’d been brought to Sandcastle the same time he was. I didn’t consider that she might have been moved from someplace else. I should have realized that she was editing what she told Joey so he would be less frightened, especially since she didn’t tell him that his aunt and uncle had been murdered. Kajo kept her hidden but we knew he had a concubine; our people caught glimpses of her. They called her the White Bride of Death because if anyone that saw more than a glimpse of her, Kajo would kill them.”
The word “concubine” put a dagger through Jane’s heart. Roach breathed out a curse.
“You need to talk to her,” Briggs said. “You don’t just walk away from something like that and be alright. You need to get her medical treatment.”
Jane shook her head. “Pittsburgh doesn’t have shrinks. We checked. Being officially diagnosed as mentally unbalanced got you exported, so nobody dared to go to a doctor, even if they desperately needed one. All the psychologists left within the first two years of the treaty being signed.”
“Some of our people are therapists,” Yumiko said. “Our centuries of enslavement left deep scars. Many of them are quite fresh.”
Jane winced as guilt lanced through her. It felt like she’d just found Boo a few days ago but it had been nearly two months. Two insane months of fighting a secret war. This was a set of cards that she couldn’t play close to her chest anymore. They might have lost valuable time in not bringing the tengu into the loop.
With the crate of dynamite, the tengu could deal with the black willows. The real threat was Kajo. Law had two possible suspects but no way to determine if either person was the real oni commander.
“I’ll talk to Boo about Kajo; I’ll try to get a description out of her. Gently. Roach, can you give the dynamite to Yumiko?”
Roach nodded, looking somewhat shell-shocked.
“You’re not giving her all our dynamite?” Hal cried. “We need it for…emergencies.”
Jane wanted to say no but Hal had gotten them out of a tight jam at the museum with a stick. “Roach, how many sticks are left in the crate?”
“Forty,” Roach said.
Yumiko said there was a score of black willows heading to Oakland. The tengu might need more than one stick to destroy a tree.
“Hold back ten sticks,” Jane said.
Roach nodded. “I want to see Boo.”
“I’ll have to call Duff,” Jane said. “I’m not sure who has babysitting duty today. I thought it was Alton.”
“Not Guy or Geoffrey.” Roach jerked his thumb in the direction of Oakland. “They’re both at Oilcan’s installing the security gate that Geoffrey made. That’s why I have the dumpster hauler. The gate didn’t fit on either Guy’s or Geoffrey’s pickups so they called me and I called Team Tinker to help move it since it weighs a ton.”
Her mother was at her café downtown. Duff was at the bakery. Alton was in Schenley Park, looking for black willows. She doubted that Alton would drag Boo through that.
“Boo is probably with Marc, then,” Jane said.
Roach nodded and kept nodding, obviously mentally checking boxes for seeing Boo. “I need to swap trucks. This dumpster loader stands out too much. People might wonder. I should change clothes too; I didn’t take a shower this morning. Maybe I should grab donuts or something…?”
Swapping vehicles was a smart idea. The Chased by Monsters production truck was the gaudiest thing in Pittsburgh. She should swap back to her SUV. “If you tell Andy about Boo…”
“God, no, not yet,” Roach said. “I’ll have to figure out some way to keep him from blurting it out without thinking.”
“That was one of the reasons we didn’t tell your family,” Jane admitted.
“Andy might be Andy,” Roach and Jane said at the same time.
“He and Guy went off to help Oilcan move something anyhow,” Roach said.
Jane continued. “We need to backtrack to WQED for my SUV. We’ll meet you at Marc’s.”
17: TOAD HALL
The Mexican War Streets was a housing development that had been built a century ago on the North Side. The brick town houses weren’t cookie-cutter copies of one another but were all of a similar style, so that every building was slightly different from its neighbor. What all of the houses did have in common was a narrow window over the front door with the house number painted in gold leaf. The district had only a handful of streets running parallel to one another, starting at 1200 and going up.