“You know what you’ve done. I would rather poison you, but I have neither the time nor the access. I’ll have to make do with this.” She drew back the sword and she raised it in the air.

“Wait,” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Before you kill me … Yuji said to tell you something.” It was a pathetic ploy on my part, and I had almost no faith that it would work.

She rolled her eyes but lowered her weapon. “Speak,” she said. “Yuji told me—”

“Louder,” she said.

“I can’t. My throat. Please. Closer.”

She crouched down so that we were eye to eye. I could feel her breath on my cheek. The scent was slightly acrid, like she had been drinking coffee. I thought of Daddy making coffee for my mother on the stovetop. Oh Daddy, it might be nice to see you again. I felt my eyelids start to drop.

“Speak,” she repeated. “What did Yuji say?” “Yuji said … He was so handsome, wasn’t he?”

Sophia slapped me across the face, but I didn’t even feel it. “Stop stalling!”

“Yuji said that the fish have no regrets because…” “You are not making any sense.”

I was about to pass out when I felt something tickle my thigh. Of all things, it was the peacock feather I’d put in my sheath—Win’s feather. Get the machete, I thought. Machetes are meant for chopping, not piercing, and my injuries had left me at a serious disadvantage. But I knew this was my only chance.

I wrapped my fingers around the machete. I pulled up my arms as high as I could, and I thrust forward, piercing what I hoped would be her heart. I withdrew the machete. She fell over into the koi pond, and strangely, I remember feeling guilty for the disturbance it would mean to the fish.

Sophia Bitter had once given me good advice. What had she said? It isn’t tough to have injured someone if you ought to have killed them.

I tried to scream for Kazuo, but my voice would not work. I could tell I was bleeding out fast, that if I did not get medical attention soon, I would die.

I tried to stand, but I could not. My left leg felt dead. I did not have time to be scared. I dragged myself by my hands along the stone path. It was perhaps a thousand feet back to the house, and I knew I was leaving a trail of blood behind me.

My heart was beating faster than I can ever remember it having beaten. I wondered if it might give out.

When I was about halfway there, a man with a hook for a hand came out of the bushes. I knew him. My advantage, in that moment, was not that I would be able to outrun anyone, but that I was level with the ground.

“Sophia!” the man called. Obviously she did not reply.

I saw him look at the bloody trail, but he did not pause to consider that it led toward the house and stopped. At that moment, Yuji Ono’s cat began walking on the path in the direction of the koi pond. Upon spotting me, the cat paused—I worried that she might come over—and then she meowed, attracting the man’s attention. She continued walking to the koi pond, and he followed her.

I pulled myself to Kazuo’s room. The adrenaline had begun to wear off and the pain was nothing short of excruciating. I scratched at the door. Kazuo was a light sleeper, and he was immediately on his feet.

“Sophia Bitter is dead. Her bodyguard is on the estate. There may be others, I don’t know. Also, I may need to go to the hospital,” I managed to say.

I had always thought I’d die young. I thought I’d die because of something to do with crime and chocolate, but it was Sophia’s love (and my own poor choices) that had done me in.

Sweet Jesus, I thought just before my heart stopped, Sophia Bitter had really loved Yuji Ono. It almost made me laugh: some people never got over their high school boyfriends.

WHEN I AWOKE, I was in a hospital bed. Without knowing why, I could tell that this was different from any other time I had been injured. I was not in pain, but my body had a peculiar, ominous numbness to it.

The miniature nurse said something encouraging in Japanese. It seemed like she was saying, “Yay, you are not dead!” But I couldn’t tell. She scurried out of the room.

Moments later, a doctor came in, and with him were Mr. Delacroix and my sister.

I knew whatever was wrong with me must be serious if Natty had been summoned to Japan. She took my hand. “Anya, you’re awake, thank God.” Her eyes filled with tears. Mr. Delacroix stayed in the corner, as if he were being punished. It did not strike me as particularly odd that he had come, as there was business to attend to in Japan. With me indisposed, either he or Theo would have needed to make the trip.

I tried to speak, but there were tubes in my throat. I pulled at them, and the nurse grabbed my hand. “Do you remember what happened to you?” the doctor asked. It was a relief that he spoke English. I nodded because that was the only response I could make.

“You were attacked and stabbed.” He showed me a diagram: I was represented by a one-dimensional cartoon girl with an intimidating series of red Xs to indicate areas of trauma. The girl looked as if she had made many mistakes.

“The first wound went from under your shoulder blade, penetrating through your chest, to below your collarbone. Along the way, it grazed the wall of your heart. The second wound penetrated your lower back, severing nerves along the left side of your spinal column. That is why you can’t feel your left foot.”

I nodded—same reason as before.

“Luckily, the wound was very low. A bit higher and your entire leg might not work. A bit more central, and you might have been paralyzed entirely. The other good news is that your right foot should work perfectly, and it is likely that you will be able to walk normally again but no one can say how long that will take.”

I nodded though I considered rolling my eyes to mix it up.

“When the wall of your heart was damaged, it set off a series of cardiac incidents. We had to perform heart surgery to repair the wall and to return your heart to normal function.

“You’ve broken your ankle, so you will notice that your foot is in a cast. We suspect you tried to stand at some point after you were stabbed, and you must have twisted your foot.”

I had not noticed, but now I saw that it was. It didn’t seem to make much difference as my foot apparently didn’t work anyway and obviously this was only one of many problems.

“Also, your larynx was badly bruised, but as you are intubated, we can’t yet know the outlook for this injury.

“You are on a morphine drip, and your pain should be manageable for the time being. I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation, Ms. Balanchine. You have a long recovery ahead of you.”

He probably didn’t need to say that last sentence. The fact that it had taken over two minutes to deliver a cursory description of my injuries was a pretty good sign that I would not be up and about for a while.

“I’ll leave you to your friends,” the doctor said, and then he left.

Natty sat down on my bed and immediately began to cry. “Annie, you almost died. Does it hurt?” I shook my head. It didn’t. That would come later.

“I’ll stay with you until you’re well,” she said.

I shook my head again. I was glad to see her, but even in my current condition, I could think of nothing worse than her staying with me when she was supposed to be at college.

Mr. Delacroix came over to my bedside. He had not spoken once during this scene. “I am, of course, attending to the openings of the Japanese clubs while you are out of commission.”

I wanted to say thank you, but I couldn’t.

He looked at me with eyes that were steady and unemotional. He nodded and then he left. Natty kissed me, and though I had been awake for less than a half hour, I fell asleep.