Eight Million Gods-eARC by Wen Spencer Read Free Book Online

headquarters. She was starving, and she desperately needed to write. For the last half hour, between chewing on her fingernails, she’d been madly clicking her pen and cycling through every single deserted-island fantasy she’d ever constructed. She needed to scrape off Walcott, find something to eat before the need to write completely took her, and then let the muse run loose.
    Rush hour was starting, filling the streets with tiny cars and miniature trucks and office workers on town bicycles. The subway station was down the hill, the same direction as her apartment building, so Terrence walked with her. They were the only non-Asians on the street. Everyone moving purposely around them was short, slim, dark haired, and dark-eyed.
    “Are you going to be safe?” Mr. Walcott asked.
    It was hard not to be angry with him; he was about to unknowingly bring her mother down on her. Nikki reminded herself that he did get her away from the Japanese police. Play nice with the man; he could be an ally in the coming war .
    “Yes, I’ll be fine. I’m very capable of taking care of myself.” I’d been doing it off and on since I was eight.
    He looked down at her, worry written all over his face. “It’s just that you’ve posted a lot of personal information.”
    Nikki laughed. “Not really!” Of course she hadn’t; her mother had trained her well. “It only seems like it. Yes, I talked about getting my apartment. How small it is. That it doesn’t have an oven. That it has an on-demand hot-water heater. I even posted pictures of the interior. I didn’t mention that I was in Otemae neighborhood, that I’m in a building that caters to gaijin , or that I’m on a monthly lease. None of the photos showed the exterior of the building or even the view from my balcony. When I post that I’ve gone someplace—like the Hanshin department store that’s in Umeda—I don’t say if I took the subway or just walked across the street.”
    Nor could anyone trace her via her apartment IP address—as she always used an anonymous proxy service that masked her location.
    “I see. That makes me feel better. Please, be very careful.” He shook her hand firmly and then went down the steps into the subway.
    She went to the corner. There was a rare break in the traffic, but no one moved to cross the street until the walk light came on. She had discovered quickly that the Japanese always waited for the walk light and always crossed at the corner. She had seen people stop in the middle of the night and wait on deserted street corners for the walk light to give them permission to cross. Jaywalking was simply not done. Terrence Walcott was getting on to a subway train full of people texting like mad because talking on cell phones was against the rules. No one would be eating or drinking. There was no graffiti on any of the walls, all posters were carefully placed in accordance with the law, and people carried little portable ashtrays for their cigarette butts.
    How did she find—in this city full of obedient, lawful people—a person looking for inspiration to kill?

    Despite her screaming need to write, she stopped at Family Mart to pick up dinner. She had learned the hard way that the hungrier she was, the longer her hypergraphia took to burn out.
    News that the strange American woman was linked to a murder must have filtered through the employees. The male cashier startled visibly when she came through the door. He watched her nervously as she picked up a basket and walked to the ready-made meals. She picked up a pre-cooked okonomiyaki to make up for the one left behind with Miriam. The rice balls looked good, so she got three of those. She added two of her favorite filled buns to her basket before she realized that hunger and stress was nose-diving her into a major pig-out.
    But if being stalked by a killer wasn’t justification for a pig-out, nothing was. Generally she avoided alcohol, but she was feeling the need for some medicine-induced