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trying not to press his body against mine, trying to give me some kind of modest space. This was the kind of guy he was, I reminded myself. Not the one who could lurk in dark alleys and call up people-eating dragons just by sketching them on paper.
    But that was him, too.
    The buzz of worried conversation hummed through the train car. No one would hear us, I thought. We were pressed so close together anyway.
    “It was a warning, wasn’t it?” I whispered, hoping everyone else would just think I was the foreigner who didn’t really understand the Japanese she was using. “Those ink fireworks.”
    “A warning? Since when have there been warnings?”
    “I don’t know, it just feels like it. It’s like when my doodles came at me that time. Or when the picture of Shiori looked at me.” Like they were letting me know that they saw me, that they wanted to reach me.
    “The doodles were an attack, not a warning,” Tomo said. “And are you sure the message wasn’t meant for me?”
    “It knows I stayed in Japan. It’s not going to stop, Tomo.”
    “You mean I’m not going to stop.”
    “Don’t say that. It’s creepy.”
    “Well, you talk about the ink like it has a life of its own.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening, and lowered his face only a few inches from mine. “It’s me, Katie. I’m the Kami. I’m the one drawing the pictures, not the other way around.”
    “Right, but the ink in you has its own agenda. If we can figure it out—if we can figure out how I fit into all this—we can stop it.”
    Tomo’s voice was breathy and dark. “I think there’s only one way to stop me.”
    I shivered.
    The ink dripped off Tomohiro’s bangs and curved down his cheeks. I reached up with the elephant towel and dabbed his face. “ Arigatou ,” he said quietly, and I wanted to kiss him right there on the train, to tell him everything would be okay.
    “What about the other Kami?” The k came out so loudly. We shouldn’t be talking on the train; it wasn’t safe. I pressed my lips right to his ear. “What if one of them suddenly loses control? Although you’re the only one I’ve seen that’s so powerful, except for J—” Oops. “Um, I mean...”
    If he was hurt by my comment, he hid it really well. “It’s okay. Except for Takahashi. He’s strong. I know it.”
    “But you can’t be the only two. Has anything ever happened before? Some other you-know-what losing control?”
    Tomo scrunched up his nose a little while he thought. The train curved around the Abe River and tilted us to the side. Someone behind Tomo stumbled, their bag smacking him hard in the leg. He buckled forward, stopping himself from falling over by pressing harder against the wall. He grimaced as they apologized, but all I could think about was how he was pressed up against me, the warmth of his body against mine.
    He didn’t seem to notice, still lost in thought. “I don’t know. Except for Takahashi and his groupies I don’t know any others. Except my mom, and I can’t ask her.”
    I thought about what Jun had said, about how the ink in me was pulled like a magnet to the ink in him and Tomo. If I was going to get anywhere, I needed to know more about how it all worked.
    “Maybe Jun can...” I trailed off. The look on Tomo’s face made me stop in my tracks.
    “You can’t trust him. He wanted to use us.”
    “I know,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. Maybe I’d overreacted. Sure, he was a little messed up in the head, but he’d done a lot more kind things for me than creepy. I mean, was it really such a bad thing that he wanted to take out gangsters and world crime? His methods were questionable, but his intentions?
    The train ground to a stop and Tomo leaned into me as the doors sprang open beside us. We were pressed so close his cheek was against my ear, his bangs tickling my skin.
    “We need to figure it out,” I whispered, pretending that’s what I was still thinking about. Only a few weeks apart,