When they finally returned to the condo, Yuki and Kagome made beelines for the bath, not because they wanted to (napping sounded more attractive), but because Hisui wouldn’t quit nagging them until they were clean enough for her delicate nose to be able to bear their presence. Being in another room had the added bonus of allowing the girls to avoid the stand-offs going on in the living room between Inu Yasha (whom Hisui hadn’t been able to intimidate into changing his clothes) and Sesshomaru, and Mikoto and his mother. Tsurai was conscious and in statue mode at his master’s side, while his brother Shinai took his place at Hisui’s, looking more like some hippie she’d picked up hitchhiking than a bodyguard. Even Shippo could feel the tension between the kitsune brothers. That, added to the bad vibes pulsing between the other pairs, was enough to keep Shippo hiding behind Inu Yasha. He really wanted to run and hide in some other room in case the Great Demon of the Northern Lands got physical but hell if he was deserting Inu Yasha with Sesshomaru right there. Nobody would sit down, not even Shunusuke, who stood by the doors to the porch, out of the way and for the moment ignored (or perhaps already disowned) by his family and the others.
        "Obey me, Mikoto," Hisui commanded her son in an icy voice. "You made a mess of this resort and terrorized hundreds of mortals—ordinarily I’d have no problems with that, but they are your children’s friends, are they not? So they must have money and come from good families." She took a long drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke straight into Tsurai’s face. He had absolutely no reaction whatsoever, so she ignored him for the rest of the conversation. Mikoto, on the other hand, looked like he was ready to strangle her. Hisui smiled angelically and stroked her son’s cheek. "Darling, just fix it. Throw them some money and everything will return to normal before you know it."
        Mikoto’s jaw went tight, and his claws dug holes in his palms at his sides. "Mother," he replied through a very tight smile, "it’s a bit more complicated than that—"
        "Whatever!" She chirped and waved her cigarette around in the air between them, leaving behind a perfect ring of smoke to frame her son’s infuriated face. "Make up a lie, give them money…whatever it takes, darling. If your name is attached to this fiasco, imagine what the news media will do with it. And what it will do our reputation! Ooh, I can’t even think about it!" She sucked smoke and blew it toward the ceiling. When her eyes locked with Mikoto’s again, they were steel and poison. "Just fix it."
        Meanwhile, Sesshomaru was enjoying his little brother’s discomfort enormously, though at the moment it was serving no purpose. Inu Yasha growled at him with his ears laid flat against his skull and veins popping all over his cherry red face. Sesshomaru looked mildly amused as he absently fanned Hisui’s smoke out of his air space. Neither brother had anything to say to the other. Suddenly, Hisui turned to Inu Yasha and sighed disgustedly through a puff of smoke: "Oh, darling, don’t do that with your face. It’s so ugly. Not that you had much to work with in the first place."
        "Didn’t have much to work with in the—" Inu Yasha sputtered and almost jumped Hisui, but Sesshomaru grabbed him by the hair and held him back. Shinai jumped between his boss and the potential danger. Shippo took cover behind a chair. Inu Yasha snarled: "Let me go, asshole! I can’t believe even you would fuck a bitch like her! Dammit, get your hands off me!"
        Hisui pouted. "’Bitch’? Was that supposed to be an insult?" She rolled her eyes. "I can’t believe Sesshomaru is related to such a primitive beast. I’m a female dog demon, you twit. Of course, I’m a bitch."
        "Mother, you are the shallowest person I have ever known!" Mikoto shouted at her, his own face as red as Inu Yasha’s. "You just blow in here and think you can interfere with my buis…ness…uh…*sweat* What are you doing?"
        Hisui had her cellular phone in hand and was pushing buttons. "Making a phone call, darling, what does it look like?"
        "Calling who?" He demanded in a voice that trembled with rage, while his stomach hosted a butterfly convention. Truth was, he had a good, solid feeling about who she was calling.
        She smoked at him. "My broker."
        "Oh, not this again!" Mikoto hissed. He knew where this was going. She’d threatened to do it many times before but had always aborted her plans when he backed down and did what she wanted him to. "It won’t work, mother. I won’t be intimidated in front of my own son!"
        Hisui shifted into schmooze mode when her broker answered the phone. "Carla, darling, it’s Hisui—no, I’m in Tokyo now. Rio was fabulous, darling, I met the sexiest man at Carnivale." Hisui made a conspiratorial snicker and gave Sesshomaru a sexy look. He raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh, darling, I’d tell you all about it, but everybody’s here, so I’ll just say one word: Hot." She giggled, Carla giggled, Sesshomaru couldn’t seem to decide if he should be flattered or disgusted. Everybody else quite clearly hoped she’d change the subject. She did. "Darling, it’s time to buy out Mikoto."
        "No it isn’t!" Mikoto grabbed the phone out of her hand, and she let him do it with a satisfied smirk. "Ms. Harris? She’s being a child again. I apologize profusely on her behalf for wasting your valuable time. Sorry to wake you. Thank you. Good bye." He disconnected the call, then handed the phone back to his mother, since she would’ve just taken it back anyway (and left nice, deep claw marks wherever she’d had to search). "She really should drop you as a client, Mother."
        "I pay her too much," Hisui retorted smugly. "Anyway, we’re friends, darling. We even wear the same designer."
        Mikoto seethed: "Have you any idea what time it is in New York right now?!"
        Hisui checked her diamond watch. "3:27 in the morning."
        "I give up."
        Inu Yasha and Shippo gaped at her. Shinai looked terribly entertained, while his brother maintained a perfect poker face, like some kind of Secret Service agent. Shunusuke retreated to the relative sanity of the porch and closed the door behind him. Sesshomaru finally let go of Inu Yasha’s hair, and got growled at for that, too. Inu Yasha made as if to say something that would probably have made an entire fleet of sailors blush, changed his mind and huffed off to his bedroom instead, slamming the door behind him. Shippo dashed after him but closed the door more quietly.

        Kagome and Yuki sneaked out of the bathroom and into the nearest bedroom without being noticed. With their bodies and hair wrapped in towels, the two girls collapsed onto the bed with gigantic, exhausted, sighs of relief.

        "I could sleep for days," Yuki groaned. "I don’t think I could fry an egg with my powers after what I did today." She snorted: "And not even so much as a ‘nice job, Yuki’ from Daddy. I held off the powers of two of his strongest oni, plus a few dozen rounds of bullets! I’d think that deserves a little recognition!"
        "Big time," Kagome agreed. "You saved my life, Yuki." Of course, she’d already thanked Yuki over and over while they got cleaned up. Kagome was glad her family wasn’t like the Asanos. If she’d done anything on the magnitude of what Yuki had done, her family would be trying to get her a medal for it.
        They lay there on their backs with their eyes closed for a while before realizing they were not alone.
        The boys cowered at the top end of the bed and began to sweat while the girls’ expressions got darker and darker as they lay on their backs and glared at the demons upside down.
        "W-we were her first!" Shippo protested in a voice that was little more than a terrified squeak. "Please don’t make us go back out there with her!"
        Inu Yasha bonked him on the head for his cowardice, which really pissed off Kagome. She jumped up with an indignant cry and pointed an angry finger at Inu Yasha. "Don’t you dare hit him!" She ripped the towel off her hair and threw it at him. It missed and draped over Shippo instead. Good thing, too, since her other towel chose that moment to come untucked and drop straight off onto the floor, and Shippo was a bit young to be seeing full-frontal nudity.
        Inu Yasha on the other hand…
        Kagome trembled with rage as his eyes roved over her body, and his face got redder and redder. He swallowed but kept staring, transfixed, at her curves…her perfect skin…her pink nipples…her little belly button…Another gulp. "I gotta look away…" but he couldn’t. "I’m dead," he thought, still staring like a total pervert at her pelvis. "Oh, shit. She gonna say the "s" word. Right in front of Yuki. I’ll kill her if she say it. I will so kill her." But those curves…she looked so soft…and really beautiful when she was angry. And naked. "This is worth a good ‘sit’," he thought, then did something really stupid: He grinned.
        "Ooooh…you—you—" Kagome’s fists trembled at her sides, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth pressed into a taught, angry little line.
        Shippo looked out from under the towel, got a peek at some serious Kagome flesh, then shot a look at Inu Yasha, who appeared to be hypnotized. "He really deserves it this time," Shippo thought and ducked back under the towel to await the inevitable.
        Suddenly, Kagome’s eyes flew open and she screamed: "SIT!"
        KAPONG! Inu Yasha’s face mushed into the bedspread, but Kagome wasn’t finished with him yet. As she picked up her towel and wrapped it around herself again, she shrieked: "SITSITSITSITSITSITSITSITSITSIT!"
        "Owowowowowowowowowowowowowow!"
        Shippo’s frightened eyes peeked out from under the towel to gawk at poor Inu Yasha, who growled and struggled helplessly against the power of the prayer beads. "I can’t believe you did that in front of Yuki!" Shippo gasped. Clutching the towel around his head, he looked like a frightened Jawa (with a bushy tail).
        Yuki thought it was all quite hilarious. "Does it work if I say it?"
        All three of her companions shouted: "NO!"
        Yuki huffed and turned her back on them. "…well you don’t have to bite my head off…"
        Kagome burst into angry, mortified tears. "I can’t believe you stared at me like—like—like I’m some kind of porno show!"
        "’Porno’?" Inu Yasha groaned in puzzlement.
        "A sex show," Yuki explained.
        "Kagome is not a sex show!" Inu Yasha screamed back.
        To which Kagome tearfully replied: "You sure acted like I was! What kind of pervert stares at a naked girl like that?!"
        Yuki raised a finger and asked: "I thought he was your boyfriend? So, you have a relationship, right? You’re in love, right? So if anybody can stare at you naked, it’s him. I think you should reciprocate, Inu Yasha. Let Kagome see you naked."
        GASP! Kagome and Inu Yasha turned red, Shippo choked. "H-him? Get naked in front of Kagome? Yeah, right. That’ll never happen."
        "It will if she has his baby," Yuki drawled with a pointed glare at the so-called couple, "like Sesshomaru said."
        Shippo raised an eyebrow. "Baby?" He looked from Kagome to Inu Yasha but only got growls from them. "What? His baby?" He pointed at Inu Yasha. "Really?"
        "Shut up, Shippo…" Inu Yasha warned.
        Yuki, of course, ignored him. "Well, Sesshomaru didn’t specify who the father is, but I just assumed it would be Inu Yasha. Why? Is there somebody else you think it could be, Shippo?"
        The kitsune hesitated and backed out of range of Inu Yasha’s claws. Even though Inu Yasha was still pinned face down in agony from so many "sits" in a row, Shippo wasn’t going to take any chances.
        Yuki bounced excitedly on the bed. "Tell! Tell!"
        "Will you knock it off?!" Inu Yasha shouted at her at the same time Kagome told Shippo to be quiet.
        "Well, there is Miroku…" Shippo mused, just to watch Inu Yasha’s veins pop. "He’s always trying to get somebody to bear his child. He even asked Kagome to do it once."
        "SHIPPO!" Kagome and Inu Yasha growled. "You are so fucking dead, fox!" Inu Yasha added, cursing the fact that he still couldn’t move enough to get his hands around the kitsune’s neck.
        "Is this Miroku guy cute?" Yuki persisted impishly.
        Shippo scooted farther away from Inu Yasha, but now Kagome was after him. She grabbed for his tail, but he darted under the bed and hid right in the middle, where she couldn’t reach him. Kagome sat on the bed with her back to Inu Yasha in a major huff and fought for control.
        Inu Yasha’s eyes went wide. "Hey! How come you’re not saying you’d never bear Miroku’s child? You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?"
        "What?!" Kagome spun on him, losing her towel again when her body moved and it didn’t. This time Inu Yasha had the good sense to shut his eyes while she wrapped the towel around herself and went to the closet to find some proper clothes. Since this was the room Yuki had given to Inu Yasha and Shippo, all she found were Inu Yasha’s things and she was sure none of them would fit.
        "Here."
        Inu Yasha’s coat landed by her feet. Kagome hesitated only a moment, then put it on, suddenly feeling rather stupid. This wasn’t the first time he’d had the chance to see her naked, it was just the first time he’d actually gawked at her. The last time it had happened, he’d given her his coat to cover herself, too. "I don’t want Miroku," she said, still with an irritated edge to her voice. "And before you ask, Inu Yasha, I don’t want Hojo, either. You’re so hung up on him all the time."
        As she secured his coat about her and came back to sit on the bed again, Inu Yasha realized she hadn’t said she didn’t want him. Did that mean she did? Had she thought about that kind of thing? He hadn’t. Not with Kagome. He’d thought about it a lot with Kikyo, but then they’d sort of agreed to marry once he’d used the jewel to become human. Inu Yasha closed his eyes with a painful sigh and wished for the millionth time that he could do something to ease Kikyo’s suffering and give her rest at last. She was a wanderer, thanks to him, he thought. Resurrected from the grave by an evil oni witch and forced to steal souls to maintain her existence—which she wouldn’t give up until she’d killed him, or so she said. Inu Yasha didn’t think she wanted to kill him any more. The last thing she’d wanted before she died was revenge on him for betraying her and stealing the jewel, so that was the driving force in her resurrected self. Until she’d learned the truth about that day, that the demon Naraku had tricked them both and stolen their chance for happily ever after.
        He didn’t realize he was crying until Kagome wiped a tear from his cheek. "I’m sorry I made you sit so much, Inu Yasha," she apologized quietly. Not knowing what he was thinking, she assumed the problem was being made to sit in front of Yuki. Since knowing would probably be counter productive, Inu Yasha let her think whatever she wanted and just accepted her apology with a nod.
        After a moment, Yuki asked: "Well, do you want to see him naked, or what?"
        Kagome’s jaw dropped, then she looked at Inu Yasha with a little smirk. "We should introduce her to Miroku some time."
        From under the bed, Shippo seconded the motion.
        After a while, the pain subsided enough for Inu Yasha to sit up properly and take care of a little unfinished business. He took Asano’s watch and lay it on the bedside table, raised his arm, aimed and shattered the face with his palm. Shippo emerged from under the bed to see what was going on. Kagome and Yuki came around the bed to look, too. They all watched wordlessly as Inu Yasha yanked the hands off the watch, then handed them to Kagome.
        "Jewel shards?" She sighed wonderingly. "When did you get these? I didn’t see them when we were on the beach. Did you have them then?"
        He nodded. "Yuki’s father had them in his watch." Inu Yasha held out his hand to reclaim them, but Kagome closed her fist around them and wouldn’t give them back at first. Then she remembered that everybody else thought Inu Yasha was the custodian of the shards and reluctantly pressed them into his palm and closed his fingers over them. He gave her a smug look. "Don’t worry, you know I can protect them."
        "Wait!" Yuki stopped him just as he started patting around his person for some nice, safe place to tuck the shards. "Are those pieces of the Jewel of Four Souls? Really? My dad had those?" Then she narrowed her eyes. "How’d you get them?"
        "They belong to me," Inu Yasha barked at her. "The whole jewel is mine and so is any part of it. I just took back what was mine to begin with."
        Technically, if the jewel had ever belonged to anyone, it belonged to Kikyo, Kagome thought, though Inu Yasha and Kikyo had been planning to use it together to make him human. Maybe that did make it his in a way. She bit her lip and said nothing. It always came back to Kikyo, she thought sadly. If only she didn’t look like Inu Yasha’s old flame, it would be easier to swallow the idea of him liking her for herself, no matter what he said about Kagome being Kagome and not really resembling Kikyo at all. That wasn’t true: She’d seen Kikyo with her own eyes and it had been like looking in a mirror. Then Kikyo had kissed Inu Yasha right in front of her and tried to take him with her into death.
        "But he snapped out of her spell and rescued me when her youkai tried to hurt me," she remembered, "so maybe it really is me he wants."
        Inu Yasha nudged her shoulder. "Hey, what’s with that face? I said I’d protect them." He got up and went to the closet to find something with pockets to wear. "There’s nothing to worry about." He chose the leather pants and changed into them right in front of the girls and Shippo, though his long, white shirt covered everything while he pulled on his pants. He stuffed the jewel shards into the watch pocket of the pants, then he took off the shirt, leaving his upper body bare for the time it took him to throw on a black Harley T-shirt. "There, I gave her an eyeful. We’re even," he thought smugly. Well, sort of an eyeful, anyway. Nothing like what he’d got from her.
        As he turned around, Yuki grinned mischievously and commented with a twinkle in her eyes: "I said it before and I’ll say it again: Inu Yasha, you have a killer ass."
        "Shut up."

        Yuki poked her head out the door to find out if anybody was in the living room to see her and Kagome nip from that bedroom to the one with girl clothes in it. They were all still out there, but nobody seemed to be looking her way, so she motioned for Kagome to follow her and tiptoed out the door. They were immediately spotted by her grandmother’s dude of a bodyguard, Shinai. "Sounded a little frisky in there, ladies. Did I hear something about a naked girl?"
        Kagome and Yuki froze. Kagome blushed, while Yuki chuckled nervously and replied: "Kagome’s towel fell off, but nothing—"
        "Making babies, girl?" Sesshomaru paused in his conversation with Hisui to sneer at her. "I wondered if he had it in him."
        "Why you…" Kagome fumed, wide eyed and tight lipped and shook with the overwhelming need to kill him but knowing he could squash her like a bug. Yuki grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her into her bedroom and shut the door firmly behind them.
        Sesshomaru was still smirking when Inu Yasha and Shippo emerged from the bedroom. Inu Yasha gave him a glare of undiluted hatred then he and Shippo stalked past him to join Shunusuke on the porch. Much to Inu Yasha’s ire, Hisui’s eyes burned into his backside the entire way past. As he shut the glass doors, he heard her comment: "Not bad for a filthy mutt."
        "Shunusuke," Inu Yasha growled as he joined the man at the railing, "I hate your family."
        Shunusuke sighed. It was a gorgeous evening with just the right touch of a cool breeze off the ocean and a sliver of a moon just becoming visible in the sunset sky. The soothing sounds of seagulls and the incoming tide did little to comfort him after the events of the past couple of days. He cursed himself for not defying his father in the first place and cursed Yuki for tipping Mikoto off to the fact that Inu Yasha, whom he’d sought for centuries, was with her at the beach house. Now they had Hisui Oukami to deal with, as well as her boy toy of the moment, Inu Yasha’s own brother Sesshomaru. Even worse was how different Hisui was from her son’s descriptions of her character. Frankly, Shunusuke wished he’d could disown her and get away with it.
        "I’m sorry I lied to you about us, Inu Yasha, but I…my father ordered me to, and I didn’t have the balls to refuse." He looked at the demon with sad eyes, "can you forgive me?" He chose not to reveal Yuki’s part in all of it. If Yuki didn’t have the courage to tell Inu Yasha herself, the demon seemed to have enough brains to figure it out on his own. Shunusuke just didn’t think he’d want to be there when Inu Yasha did figure it out.
        Shunusuke’s humble tone took Inu Yasha aback. Very cautiously, he nodded. "Yeah, sure. Your father made you do it, right? Nice."
        Shunusuke looked away, and for a while nobody spoke, then he sort of laughed and said: "You know, this is the first I’ve met my grandmother. She’s definitely…unique."
        "She’s a shallow, disgusting, stuck-up bitch," Inu Yasha corrected him with a bitter snort.
        Shippo hopped up onto the railing and nodded his agreement. "I’ve only been around her for a few minutes and I already wanna kill her." He realized he was talking to the woman’s own grandson and hastened to apologize, but Shunusuke didn’t seem to care.
        Shunusuke frowned thoughtfully at the trees and said in a low voice: "I’m ashamed of her. All my life, my dad has told me stories about his mother the Great Demon of the North, slayer of thousands of youkai in a single battle, the brilliant businesswoman who taught him everything he knows." He shook his head. "I can’t believe this is the same woman."
        "Bet he’s ashamed of her, too," Shippo said, "so he lied about her to you guys."
        Shunusuke shut his eyes and a pair of tears ran down his cheeks. Angrily, he wiped them away with the back of his hand. "I wish I’d never met her. No, I wish I wasn’t even related to her—that I was just a normal, human guy. Or related to you, like Dad made me tell you I was. Even Sesshomaru has to be better than her. She’s sickening."
        Back in the living room, Hisui’s sharp ears heard every word, and from the look on his face, so had her son. Their conversation faltered into an uneasy silence. Hisui closed her eyes and her jaw tightened. After a few tense moments, she opened her eyes and fixed Mikoto with a look that was a mixture of anger and hurt. "Are you ashamed of me, Mikoto? Did you feel you had to lie to your children about me because you’re embarrassed?"
        He looked away and paced over to the glass doors to watch his son bemoan his lineage to Inu Yasha and Shippo. Shunusuke wiped another tear off his face but the trio had stopped talking, no doubt because Shunusuke had sensed he was being watched. "You’re shallow, greedy, selfish and a complete boor, Mother. It’s pathetic and, yes, embarrassing. I wanted this latest crop of children to think better of you, since I thought they hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever actually meeting you." Mikoto turned and leaned his back against the glass. "I wasn’t surprised in the least when you didn’t even remember I had children." He pushed away and walked over to look into Sesshomaru’s eyes. The other demon coolly returned his steady gaze. Mikoto looked for some sign that her boyfriend might come to Hisui’s defense, even the slightest twinge of irritation in those lovely golden eyes—but there was nothing, no emotion at all. Sesshomaru didn’t bloody give a damn.
        Mikoto sat on the couch and regarded his mother, who let her cigarette burn between her fingers, ignored, as she stared back and said nothing for once. "I was a little surprised to hear you were seeing Sesshomaru," Mikoto confessed. "Frankly, I’d given him more credit for depth and character." He looked up at the demon, who was still not rising to his woman’s defense. "What’s the allure, Sesshomaru? Good sex?"
        Sesshomaru raised a bemused eyebrow. "You want to know how your mother is in bed? Rather perverted of you, don’t you think?"
        Mikoto tried to ignore the headache that was building between his eyes. Maybe he’d misjudged the son of the Great Demon of the Western Lands, and the man was perfect for Hisui after all. In that light, Sesshomaru’s father had shown great foresight in not willing his fabled blade and symbol of power to his firstborn. If only Hisui’s father had taken better steps to keep her from his. Once upon a time, Hisui Oukami had two older brothers, faithful servants of their father and joint heirs to his territory. She’d also had a mother. All three of her relatives were ahead of Hisui in line to be the next Great Demon of the Northern Lands. As soon as Daddy was dead, Hisui made sure there was no one else in line, then slaughtered all of their supporters, anyone who might have challenged her claim. Hisui was soaked in blood, even more than her own kind thought acceptable, and she’d done it all for her father’s gold and the power his name gave her. Her habit of eliminating any who opposed her exenteded even to her own offspring. Mikoto hadn’t always been an only child, but his sisters had been much more ambitious than he was (which said a lot).
        So maybe he was taking his life in his hands telling his mother exactly what he thought of her in no uncertain terms, without cute little jokes to soften the blow this time and no apologies. His opinion had been seconded without outside influence by his son Shunusuke and at least two other corroborating witnesses. Perhaps they were all going to die.
        "Sesshomaru," Hisui asked in a tone so subdued and out of character for her that Mikoto feared the end was nigh, "do I embarrass you?"
        He smiled and ran and finger down her cheek. "I’m not the sort of man who puts up with anything he doesn’t like. Had I ever found you embarrassing, Hisui, I would’ve deserted you weeks ago." That said, he tilted up her chin and placed a light kiss on the tip of her delicate nose. "I do, however, find your obsession with money and image…irritating at times. I fail to see the point of obsessing over something as trivial as who designed my shirt and who else is wearing it."
        Her eyes narrowed and her expression grew very dark at that. She jerked her chin away from his touch with an indignant snort. "You only want to be seen with me. I should’ve known you’d be a gold digger, Sesshomaru."
        "Believe what you will, Hisui," Sesshomaru sighed wearily, as if he’d weathered this sort of childish tantrum before. "I have enough wealth and power of my own that I haven’t even the slightest interest in yours." He checked his watch, then headed for the door. "Jaken will have my bags unpacked by now. If you want me, Hisui, I’ll be at the hotel. May I have your man drive me?"
        She fumed at him for a few moments, then made a bored gesture at him. "Fine. Tell him to return for me in an hour."
        Without another word, not even a good bye to his girlfriend’s son, Sesshomaru left. Yes, thought Mikoto, Sesshomaru might just be his mother’s perfect match. He’d never seen her deflate so fast in his life. Hisui’s cold stare snapped him out of his musings. "Mother, I—"
        "I don’t care what you think," she sniffed, "and I don’t care what your son thinks, either." She waved Shinai out of her path and opened the door to the porch. The boys turned to face her at the sound, Shunusuke going a shade paler, Inu Yasha and Shippo tensing for trouble. "I don’t care what you think of me, boy," Hisui told Shunusuke with a proud toss of her head, "I don’t know you. If you don’t want to be in my family, don’t be. You’ll have no inheritance from me." With that, she slid the door shut with a bang, collected her bodyguard and headed for the front door.
        Shunusuke threw open the door and snapped: "My name is Shunusuke and my inheritance comes from my father and mother. I don’t want your money and I don’t need it." He closed the door and stomped back to the rail to glare at the trees, anger and embarrassment burning in his gut. She’d heard every word he’d said about her before, so he figured he had nothing to lose by speaking his mind. Anyway, if his father could do it, so could he.
        Hisui froze in shock. How dare that little whelp, who had only a few drops of her mighty blood in his body, talk back to her? The brat was his father’s son, alright: No gratitude and no respect. She turned very slowly to find Mikoto standing right behind her, Tsurai at his side, both of them ready to stop her if she wanted to punish Shunusuke for his honesty. Mikoto’s eyes were as hard as hers, his face set in the same taught expression. In that instant, Hisui saw herself reflected in her son’s face and felt a twinge of pride. "Do what you will, Mikoto, but you should pay for the damage you’ve done. It’s bad for business to wreck a place like this and not make reparations or at least offer plausible explanations. Remember, you represent a high-profile corporation and an important family. You will always be under public scrutiny. If you go about destroying property and harming innocents, the public will crucify you, and your company will replace you with someone less damaging to its image...and so will I."
        Mikoto relaxed and started breathing again. "You’re right, Mother. I’ll take care of it right away."
        She smiled, victory was hers. "My car won’t be here for another hour, darling, fix me a drink and let’s talk like civilized demons." Hisui sat down on the couch and arranged her skirt, then looked up at Shinai and frowned. "Oh, darling, I know I interrupted your holiday, but would you please put on something more appropriate? And Mikoto, darling?"
        "Yes, Mother?"
        "Have Shunusuke and Yuki join us. Oh, and those other people, as well. I wish to speak to Inu Yasha about those shards." She smiled at her son’s surprise and added: "You see? I do remember you children's names."