Page 31 of Black Curtain

She stared at the metal kitchen counter, no expression on her face.

Nick, who’d second-guessed leaving entirely, mostly because he didn’t want to upset Jem any more than necessary, had slid behind an industrial cooking rack to wait. He told himself it was better that he stay anyway, rather than risk the door making a sound when he tried to leave. Even so, his vampire eyesight picked out Jem and Kiko where they stood, utilizing reflections bounced off several different metal surfaces.

Even his damned vampire senses made it impossible for him to leave the situation.

He watched Kiko stare at the remaining cakes.

Nick knew the names on every one of those cakes.

Among the five sitting there, one was his.

Another was hers.

Dalejem had written her name in pink frosting:Kiko Niko Nakamura.

Nick winced, remembering him and Kiko laughing about both of their names.

He’d teased Kiko about hers rhyming.

He told her it made her sound like a Korean pop star.

When he’d told her his Japanese name, Naoko, she blinked and burst out in a laugh of her own. She informed him that Naoko was “a girl’s name,” like somehow that fact would have escaped Nick’s notice, like he hadn’t been teased about that very thing by Japanese friends and relatives for decades.

“Yeah, no shit,” he’d said, shoving her playfully with a hand.

He’d been human then.

He also had a huge crush on her.

They’d been on the Thai island ofKoh Mangaan,and that was before Nick found out Kiko and Dalejem were sleeping together.

He’d told Kiko to laugh it up… that his mother and father had three girls and just wanted Nick to blend in.

Kiko laughed harder, snorting Thai whiskey out her nose.

They’d both been pretty drunk.

They’d been sitting by one of the big beach bonfires they had, when everyone still felt like they were there on vacation, before the missing tourists and the murder and the vampires, and definitely before they got kidnapped by those Nazi weirdos.

More seriously, Nick told her that his parents picked out the name before they knew his sex. After she knew he was a boy, Nick’s mother decided to keep the name anyway.

Kiko asked him why, why they hadn’t just given him a new name, and Nick shrugged, taking another long swig of whiskey.

“No idea,” he said.

That was mostly true.

When Nick asked his mother that question, Yumi made that joke about wanting him to fit in with his sisters. She also said she thought it would be easy for Americans to say, and easy to shorten to more common American nicknames.

Like Nick, for example… which Nick had been called since he was in diapers.

Yumi told him she’d always liked the name Nick.

Knowing his mom, Nick guessed it might also have been pure stubbornness on her part. Maybe she figured she was American now, and could name her son whatever the hell she wanted. Yumi had never been a fan of the strict gender rules of her parents. She could have done it simply to annoy her father, who she rebelled against constantly, mostly due to his conservative beliefs.

Even marrying Nick’s father had been a form of rebellion.

Remembering how amused Kiko had been by the whole story––amused enough to snort Thai whiskey out her nose a few more times while they sat around the bonfire, Nick remembered what he’d done to her and felt sick to the point of wanting to die.

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