Ghosts and Grudges Read online

  Ghosts and Grudges

  a Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy

  Jasmine Walt

  J.A. Cipriano

  Dynamo Press

  Contents

  Important note from the authors

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Glossary

  Also by Jasmine Walt

  Also by J.A. Cipriano

  About the Authors

  Important note from the authors

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for picking up Ghosts and Grudges! This book is a reverse harem urban fantasy, featuring Japanese-American characters, and Japanese mythology. Japan’s mythology is rich and unique, but we realize that you may not be familiar with it, so we have enabled Amazon X-Ray for your convenience. This means that when you click or press any of the italicized Japanese words in this book, the definition will pop up immediately, so you do not have to hunt through the internet to find it.

  There is also a short, spoiler-free glossary in the back of the book, which you are free to refer to, or read ahead of time if you’d prefer to familiarize yourself with the mythology beforehand.

  A lot of research and care was put into this book, including Jasmine taking a two-week trip to Japan, where she visited many amazing temples and shrines, and drove the locals crazy with her incessant questions. ;) We sincerely hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor, and have fun following Aika and her men on this wild adventure!

  Love,

  Jasmine and J.A.

  1

  The day my life turned to absolute hell started out just like any other. I woke up to the sound of birds chirping outside my window, the sensation of a paperback novel digging into my cheek…and the horrible, horrible realization that my alarm clock never went off.

  “Shit!” The digital readout on my alarm clock flashed repeatedly—3:00 a.m., which definitely did not line up with the amount of sunlight streaming through my gauzy red curtains. The power must have gone out. Again.

  Throwing off my bed sheets, I dashed across the room to where my phone was plugged in and found it completely dead, which explained why my backup alarm system hadn’t gone off either. Dammit. I hastily fiddled with the charger while powering it on to see that it was at a whopping four percent charge. My heart sank into my toes as the screen finished booting and loaded the time.

  11:00 a.m.

  I was so late.

  “Aika?” my mom called sleepily from her room as I rushed down the hallway, making a beeline for the bathroom. “Why are you still here?”

  “Overslept!” I shouted, slamming the bathroom door shut. I jumped into the shower and stifled a shriek when ice-cold spray hit me full in the face. I hated cold showers with a passion, but there was nothing for it—in this old place, it took a good five minutes for the water to warm up, and I didn’t have time to wait.

  I stumbled out of the shower a few minutes later, shivering from head to toe. We tended to keep the heat on low in order to save on the gas bill, so the bathroom was nearly as freezing as the water had been. I toweled off as fast as I could, then rushed back down the hall and leapt into my clothes before my extremities iced over.

  Yeah, so maybe I was exaggerating. So what? I hate the cold. You would too, if you weighed ninety pounds and had almost no body fat. The curse of being Asian, I guess—we are slim and trim as a general rule, which is great in the summer when I can wear sundresses and bikinis. Not so great in the fall and winter, when I have to wear two pairs of socks and a big puffy parka that has the added function of making sure I don’t get blown away by a stiff wind.

  I’m a real badass, I know.

  After doing a quick check to make sure my clothes were wrinkle-free, I twisted my long black hair into a knot, secured it with a pair of faux-jade chopsticks, and wrapped myself up in the aforementioned puffy coat before I rushed out the door.

  Then I rushed back in and grabbed the monkey charm bracelet on my nightstand. It was a tiny red and white monkey, made of silk and stuffed with cotton, that hung on a leather band. I never left home without it. My father had given it to me when I was a baby, too small to remember. My mother told me it was a protective charm, and that my father had made her promise to never let me leave home without it.

  If I was being honest, I really didn’t believe in protective charms, or any of the other Shinto stuff that my mom swore by, but this was the only thing I had from my father, so I clasped it onto my left wrist before heading back out the door. The part of me that hated being late urged me to hurry down the stairs and out the door, but I ignored it and raced to the room at the end of the hall instead.

  “Aika?” my mom asked as I shoved the door open. She pushed herself up in bed, her thin limbs trembling a little under the strain. I picked up her glasses from the bedside table before she had a chance to reach for them. A smile twitched across my lips as I gently perched them on her nose. She smiled back, and as she did, the wrap she wore on her head slipped sideways a little, revealing her bare scalp. Without thinking, I adjusted it so she wouldn’t lose any of her body heat.

  “Your color is up,” I told her as I sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. I took her frail hand in mine. “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better,” she said. “I think that chicken soup you gave me yesterday did the trick.”

  She squeezed my hand, and I felt a zing of ki dart into me. She did seem to be more energetic than yesterday…but there was still pain in her, I realized as I examined the tiny bit of life energy she’d unwittingly sent into me.

  “Lie down,” I said, easing her onto her back. “I’ll give you a quick healing before I go.”

  “There’s no need,” she began to protest. “You’re going to be late.”

  “Hush.” I placed my hands directly over her chest, just beneath her collarbones, and closed my eyes. Taking in a slow breath, I envisioned my own ki gathering in my chest, a soft ball of light. A friend of mine had dragged me to a reiki class forever ago, and although at first I’d been skeptical, I’d quickly found I had a natural aptitude for it. The reiki master had agreed, and had taken me on as his student for a little while. Using reiki to heal was what had inspired me to go to medical school in the first place—I enjoyed healing people, but even reiki had its limitations on what it could do. Proper medical care was still important.

  Gently, I sent a stream of healing energy flowing into my mother’s body. She sighed, her body relaxing beneath my hands, and I smiled. I might not be able to cure my mother’s leukemia, but the healings augmented her treatment and had helped beat back the cancer before. I kept it up for a minute longer, flowing more energy into her, until I felt her pain ease.

  “Thank you,” my mother said as I opened my eyes. “I didn’t realize how much I needed that.”

  “You’re welcome.” I leaned in and kissed her cheek, then reluctantly stepped back. “Please take it easy today, Mom. If you need help with anything, just call. I’m not that far away.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” she said, shooing me away impatiently. “I’m a grown woman, and you’ve your own life to live. I�
��ll be fine.”

  I grabbed her hand again, and her chin stiffened in the same way mine did whenever I was about to dig my heels in. The healing I’d just done had obviously given her a boost if she was already being this obstinate.

  “Promise me you’ll call if you need anything,” I pleaded. “Please.”

  The desperate note in my voice worked—she softened, her shoulders relaxing again. “I promise,” she agreed, “if only so that you’ll get out of here. Now shoo! You’re late already. And tell Sanji I said hello.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice.

  Shabu Shabu House, the hot pot restaurant my mom owned, was only a twenty-minute bike ride across town, but as I pumped the pedals as hard as I could, it was the longest twenty minutes of my life. The Presidio golf course flashed by as I zipped down Lake Street, and the late morning sun glittered off the San Francisco Bay beyond the stretch of green. The briny breeze beckoned, practically daring me to change direction and go lounge on the beach.

  But my days of being a carefree girl were long over. They’d died the day my mother had been diagnosed.

  I liked to split my life into two epochs—Before Cancer, and After Cancer. Before Cancer, I’d been a cheerful college student, working in my mom’s restaurant part time while I took pre-med classes, and hanging out with friends during my spare time.

  The last time I’d gone to the beach with my friends had been over a year ago. Before Cancer. Before my mom had received the terrible diagnosis that changed our lives forever.

  By the time the doctors identified the leukemia, it had already progressed to Stage III. She’d originally gone in thinking she had anemia. I knew I should have forced her to go sooner—she’d been suffering from fatigue for months, and had grown far too thin. But my mother had always been a workaholic, and she’d refused to listen to me until the day she collapsed and nearly spilled a tea tray on a customer.

  That was truly the day that After Cancer began, before we even really knew what was going on. While Mom had been on bed rest, in and out of the hospital as they tried to figure out what was going on, I’d switched to online classes and taken over running the restaurant. She’d already groomed me for it—I’d been by her side from the day she’d first opened it when I was four years old. I knew how to handle the books, how to deal with the vendors and manage the employees.

  I just hadn’t expected to be doing it for quite this long.

  “Aika!” Janet, one of our waitresses, exclaimed in relief as I entered the restaurant. She was Japanese, like me, but smaller, and her fine black hair was dyed a honey brown and styled into corkscrew curls that bounced around her heart-shaped face. “Thank goodness you’re here. I thought something had happened to you!”

  “Just a case of dead alarm clock,” I said, glancing at the clock—twenty minutes until opening time. “Sorry I left you hanging. Where are the others?”

  “Sanji and Matthew are in the kitchen, as usual,” Janet said, referring to our chefs. “Mihoko called in sick.”

  “Damn.” Being down one waitress on a Saturday was not a good thing. “Guess I know what I’m doing today,” I said, stalking to the closet behind the counter. I shucked off my jacket and hung it up, then grabbed a spare apron and tied it around my waist. “Let’s finish getting set up.”

  Janet and I hurried around the orange-colored tables, testing the hot pot burners to make sure they were working and putting out silverware and condiments. Once I was certain she had that in hand, I went into the kitchen to check on Sanji and Matthew.

  “You are late,” Sanji said, not bothering to look up from his workstation. He was cutting a loin of Kobe beef into very thin slices, while Matthew chopped up vegetables. Matthew was a culinary student who worked part time, and Sanji had worked for us for close to fifteen years. He was close to fifty, with silver threaded through the goatee jutting from his chin and faint lines creeping in on his thin face.

  “Sumanai,” I apologized, biting my tongue at the thinly veiled belligerence in Sanji’s tone. He had a lot of respect for my mom—me, not so much. Not since the day I told her, nearly four years ago, that I had no intention of continuing the family business. “My mother needed a little extra help this morning.” A white lie, but I didn’t need to give Sanji yet another reason to doubt me.

  Sanji’s face softened a little—he and my mother had become good friends over the years. “Is she doing any better?” he asked as I went to taste the pork stock that was keeping warm on one of the burners. “I was very worried when I went to visit her in the hospital last week.”

  Mom had given us all a very nasty scare recently. The leukemia had gone into remission for a while, and she’d even been spending more time in the restaurant, giving me more time to hit the books and even relax a bit. But last week, she’d collapsed in the middle of making dinner. I’d come home to see her lying on the kitchen floor with a knife clutched in her hand and a pot of soba noodles burning on the stove. Chills of horror still raced through me every time I thought about how close a call that had been—if she’d landed on her knife, or if the place had caught on fire, she could have died.

  “She seemed stronger this morning,” I told Sanji, not wanting him to worry. “I think she’ll be starting chemo again soon.” I hated the idea of her going through that again, but dying was far worse.

  “Good.” Sanji nodded decisively. “I will go to the shrine and pray for her this afternoon. The kami have smiled down on Hamako before—surely they will do so again. It is not her time to pass yet.”

  I nodded as a sudden lump settled in my throat. I didn’t believe in the old gods, but Sanji did, and there was no point in telling him otherwise, especially since he meant well.

  Swallowing back my tears, I pasted a smile on my face and went to unlock the front door for the lunch crowd. There was already a small crowd of people out front—Shabu Shabu House was a popular spot in Japantown, known for our cook-it-yourself Japanese hot pot dishes. Within minutes, the place was packed, and I was too caught up in the hustle and bustle to think about my troubles. Taking a deep breath, I stationed myself behind the counter and focused on greeting customers and getting them seated.

  A good three hours passed before the crowd finally began to die out, tourists and regulars filtering out to go about their business or continue touring Japantown. Exhausted, I leaned against the bar counter for a minute to catch my breath. Maybe I could even sneak into the back and grab a glass of water.

  “Hey, Aika.” A familiar voice, smooth and with just the slightest hint of mischief, snagged my attention just as I was sending a couple off to their table. My pulse quickened and my nerve endings tingled as I turned to see a man saunter through the front door. He was tall and lean, close to six feet, dressed in a white chef’s coat, black jeans, and high top sneakers. He swept his wind-tossed, shaggy caramel hair out of his almond-shaped eyes and grinned at me. “Still serving the same old stuff around here, huh?”

  “Better than your second-rate sushi!” Janet retorted, instantly appearing by my side. She leveled a scowl at the intruder even as she struggled not to eye the black box in his hand. “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Hayasaka.”

  “Is that any way to talk to a customer?” Shota Hayasaka pressed a hand to his heart in mock offense. “I’m amazed you keep the doors open with such a rude waitress,” he said to me in a loud stage whisper.

  Janet gave him the evil eye. “You’re not a real customer. You’re just a money-grubbing, second-rate chef trying to steal our business!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Enough,” I said, putting a hand on Janet’s shoulder. “I don’t need the two of you clawing each other’s eyes out in front of the customers. Go do your job, Janet.”

  Huffing, Janet flounced off toward the tables. Shota watched her go, an odd look in his eyes that gave me pause. I’d seen him looking at Janet like that before, and it wasn’t the way a man looked at a woman when he was attracted to her. It was more like the way you looked at someone when there was
something off about them. Like their eyes were set a bit too far apart, or there was something funny about the way they walked. Except that didn’t make sense, because Janet was flawless. She got more than her fair share of male attention, and went out on dates all the time.

  If only I had some of her mojo.

  “Don’t you have fish to fillet?” I asked, drawing Shota’s attention back to me.

  “My junior chef can stand to be away from me for a minute or two.” Shota leaned against the counter as if he had all the time in the world. He placed the box on the countertop, drawing my attention to his muscular forearm. His sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, and I caught a glimpse of a kanji tattoo on his inner wrist. “You’re a lot more interesting to look at than he is,” he teased, his dark eyes gleaming.

  “If you think that bringing me lunch is going to convince me to accept your business proposal, you’re dead wrong,” I said, even as I fought to keep the blush out of my cheeks. Shota had this kind of magnetism about him—an air of carefree confidence that drew me to him like a moth to a flame. The only problem was, I was smarter than a moth. And I had no intention of going down in flames for the sake of a pretty face.

  “Oh, come on, Aika.” Shota lowered his voice, leaning in a little. This close, I could smell his aftershave—something spicy with undertones of cinnamon. “We both know your life would be so much easier if you sold this place to me. My offer is more than generous; your mother will never have to work another day in her life, and you’ll be free to focus on your own future.”