That day, Mephisto Hospital had been visited by one unexpected patient after the next. First was Takako Kanan, borne there by Yakou’s subordinates. An hour later came Yakou himself, carried in by Setsura. They were quickly admitted and taken to the director’s special examination room.
There to meet them were Doctor Mephisto and Tonbeau Nuvenberg.
Tonbeau had been raring to go as soon as she’d learned that an ancient Chinese ship had shown up at the Keio Plaza Hotel. Mephisto urged a wait and see attitude. She was certainly conspiring to use Mephisto’s offices to wheedle more reward money from the mayor. The doctor didn’t leap into action at once, pointing out that others had been engaged to investigate and they should await the enemy’s next move.
A prudence, very much like him, that had perhaps been additionally affected by the blood of those interfering creatures of the night.
“You seem to be in one piece,” he said to Setsura, lying on the bed. There was a different timbre to his voice as well, though only he and Setsura would ever have noticed.
“What about Kanan-san and Yakou?” Setsura asked, his face waxy and pale.
“They are in the next room. Miss Tonbeau is watching over Kanan-san. There’s no need to worry.”
“The enemy is those two,” Setsura said coldly. “Bedding us down together like this, the security around here is going to the dogs.” He looked up at Mephisto. “To make matters worse, you and they are probably still buds.”
“Bridle such thoughts.” Mephisto pulled over a chair, sat down, and examined Setsura’s neck. “You haven’t used the bottle you were given?”
The bottle given him in Galeen Nuvenberg’s house, back when she was still alive. Setsura had treated himself with it.
“I will drink it afterwards.”
“How many times have you been bitten?”
Setsura held up three fingers.
“It might not be in time, then. You are a miser when it comes to deploying available resources.”
“You don’t have anything newer?”
“My knowledge reaches no further.”
“Well, run a few trials to see whether it is still effective now that I have become that woman’s slave.”
“I am not compounding that medicine again. Drink up.”
“Supposing I do, what about destroying that woman?”
“Such as driving a stake through her heart?”
“Do you think that would work?”
“No. Destroying Princess is impossible.”
“Then what?”
“Hold off going anywhere and don’t go anywhere by yourself. That woman is obsessed with you. Or to put it another way, refuse her and she might well wreck the world for spite.” Mephisto waited for a reaction from Setsura. When none was forthcoming, he said, “That woman is antimatter facing off against matter, a nihility facing off against existence itself. Any life that touches her ceases to be. There is no way to lay hands on her. Moreover—”
Sensing something in his voice, Setsura closed his eyes. “Don’t carry on just like her, Mephisto. You are strangely like me. You have a grasp of the situation.”
“Not at all.” Mephisto’s white face came within a hand’s breadth of Setsura’s nose.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought it time for a face-to-face talk.”
“About treating me?”
“About treating my troubled heart.”
“Get a freaking grip,” Setsura said in a weary voice.
“Somebody commands me to.”
A tense air, as lurid as it was sublime, filled the space between the two comely countenances. Mephisto suddenly pulled his face away. His hands flashed through the air, revealing a bespectacled man in a white lab coat, looking as long in the face as a man could.
“What is it, Takahashi-kun?”
“The patient has disappeared from the examination room.”
“Takako Kanan?”
“Yes.”
“What about her attendant?”
A black shadow slipped by Mephisto and headed to the door. With Mephisto at his heels, he sprinted to the next room.
The only person there was Tonbeau stretched out on the floor, snoring like a content hippo. She was sound asleep.
“Silent Night,” Setsura said, thinking of Ryuuki’s koto. “Does that mean Ryuuki’s shown up here?”
Doctor Takahashi soon ran in and dispelled that notion. A short time before, he’d ducked out to the back courtyard to take a breather, and spied there what he could only describe as the Goddess of the Moon. As soon as their eyes met, he lost consciousness. The woman had what looked like a koto in her hands.
He was only out for a moment, though when he checked his watch, ten minutes had passed. Recalling the beauty of the ghostly girl who had devastated the hospital previously, still in a mostly dazed state he had hurried to check Takako Kanan’s room.
“If that woman was playing the koto,” Setsura surmised, “then Ryuuki no longer lives.”
Mephisto didn’t contradict him, meaning he agreed. Setsura took a long breath and glared at Mephisto. “You would have known that Ryuuki was gone. Somebody commands you to, eh?”
“Let’s not bicker about who said what to whom,” said Mephisto, feigning utter innocence.
Setsura dropped the matter. He had other things to worry about. No matter where Princess was, Takako would go to her when beckoned. And no matter where Takako was, Princess would know where to find her. She must have used Silent Night to keep interfering busybodies out of the way.
The video cameras observing Takako’s room twenty-four seven were working normally. But none of them recorded Takako leaving the room. The dulcet tones of the ghost koto Silent Night had powerful directional abilities, or they would have put Setsura to sleep as well.
But why hadn’t Princess summoned Setsura while she was at it? Because she wanted Setsura to come to her by his own choice, of his own free will. She was trying to arouse his concern for Takako and make him suffer—by stealing back the girl he’d only managed to rescue a few hours before.
He should not have experienced such levels of existential despair, like the condemned criminal who receives a last-minute reprieve as he sits in the electric chair, only to be ordered back as soon as he exits the execution room.
“Did you tie one of your threads to Kanan-san?”
“It broke. Did you inject her with a GPS device?”
“Settle down.”
“You did? Where is she? That boat?”
“I did inject a tracer agent into her blood. But there’s been no response.”
Setsura was about to tear him a new one, but checked himself. A demonic aura emanated from the white doctor’s being. Princess had spirited Takako away from his hospital.
“My commission hasn’t ended. No, I shall give you a new one. Setsura, find out where Princess is.”
“And in exchange, are you going to clean up the pieces when it’s all over?”
“That is not my job,” Mephisto said bluntly. “But the bill for violating the sanctity of my hospital on three separate occasions shall be paid. See that she falls from the heights of bliss to the depths of hell. All I desire is confirmation that it happened. And you need a blood transfusion.”
“Promise that you don’t spike it with anything funny.”
“Your own blood. Synthetic, of course, but no different down to the DNA.”
“Manufactured how?” asked Setsura. He watched as an automated gurney rolled up next to him.
“Utilizing their knowledge. They’ve succeeded in a number of other areas also. Let’s go.”
“If something turns up about that woman during the transfusion—”
“Nothing to worry about. It’ll be over in thirty seconds.”
Mephisto wasn’t exaggerating on that score.