Back in Kaede’s hut, Rin flitted excitedly about the main room, pointing out the array of potions and charms she’d concocted over the months of Sesshoumaru’s absence. Taking down a softly glowing bottle of purplish-pink serum, she tossed another radiant smile to the demon lord.

“This one is called ‘Widow’s Broth’. It soothes the souls of those whose spouses have unexpectedly perished, and guards them from malevolent spirits who would take advantage of their weakened state.” Replacing the vial, she sat seiza across the tatami from Sesshoumaru, all but bouncing on her heels. “Normally, the serum is more violet in color, but I’ve adapted it to work for grieving mothers as well.”

“Aye, Rin has a talent for potion-making,” Kaede said, smiling as she set down a tea tray between them. The crinkles around her visible eye deepened as she glanced toward the far end of the room. “Wouldn’t ye say, Kagome?”

At a worktable near the door, the head priestess paused in her task of slicing roots, her shoulders stiff. Rin’s cinnamon eyes shimmered up at her hopefully. Kaede’s darker gaze was measured and expectant, Sesshoumaru’s stare glinting and vaguely bemused. Kagome’s grip tightened around the knife handle.

Her smile was tense, strained. “She certainly does.”

Rin flushed, looking pleased nevertheless to have her merits validated before her guardian. As her cheerful attentions returned to him in full, Kagome clenched her jaw and resumed her thinly-veiled vigil. It grated on her, to see her apprentice fawning over him so. Kaede, too—the sound of her chuckling at one of the demon lord’s dry remarks as she refilled his teacup making Kagome’s blood boil beneath her skin. Even her wizened former mentor was totally enamored with him.

Totally deceived.

Besides Kagome herself, Kanako alone seemed wary of him. Encountering them on the way to Kaede’s hut, the waif had outright shrieked at the sight of him before bolting off to hide. It had taken almost half an hour for her to come creeping back, another to finally stop loitering outside on the porch and enter. Huddled on a stool in the far corner, ensconced between the worktable and Kagome, Kanako peeled roots in fidgety silence, her eyes swiveling distrustfully toward the demon lord every few minutes.

“And that trigram?” Sesshoumaru asked, his claws gesturing elegantly toward a stack of three reeds, spaced and bound with silver wire. “What is its purpose?”

“Oh, that is a sealing conduit,” Rin answered, turning to gaze up at the shelf. “But it isn’t mine—it’s Kagome-chan’s. I’m supposed to dismantle and reconstruct it by tomorrow.” Her expression shone with enthusiasm. “It’s the first of the elementary seals devised by the legendary priestess Hideko-sama. I’ve been studying the basic patterns for weeks now—did you know that it’s much easier for a miko to seal youkai than it is to kill them? The only problem is that even the strongest of seals can be broken, if you know the weak points. For example, with the silver trigram—”

“Rin,” Kagome said sharply, “that’s enough.”

Baffled, Rin stared at her in wounded shock. Similarly stricken, Kaede frowned toward her, her features lined with disapproval.

“Kagome child, surely ye don’t—”

But Kagome had had enough of their laxity, their blindness. Ignorance aside, their behavior was reckless and inexcusable.

“You are both forgetting yourselves,” the miko admonished. “The secrets of our sacred rites aren’t something that should be publicized—especially to a demon like him.”

Eyes wide, the two other priestesses seemed to shrink from the force of her condemnation. As her ruthless gaze cut from them to Sesshoumaru, she saw that his attention was focused decidedly south of her face, toward her heaving chest.

By all the gods—his perversion knew no bounds.

Kagome’s cheeks flared in violent indignation. Reiki crackled in the air around her as she glared down—and saw that the finger she’d thrust forward in reprimand was streaming with red.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi