Thicker Than Water by Raeanna Red Roses

Chapter 1

I know I should finish Dream Thief first, but this idea just kind of sprung up out of nowhere. It's not going to be as long as Dream Thief, but I really had to get it down before I forgot it. Well, I hope at least someone enjoys this! =^ ^=

Also, the idea of a supernatural detective is something I borrowed from Laurel K. Hamilton, and belongs to her, not me.

Read, rate, and review as always! I love you for it. No flames, please.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 1

Haru Taijiaya had a daily routine: he came home from work (his supposed day job, anyway), read the newspaper, spent time with his son, Kohaku, and cooked dinner before his daughter, Sango, got home from her job as a secretary.

But that afternoon, when he came home, he noticed that Kohaku's backpack was thrown in the hallway, and that the door to the hall closet was open. He also noticed Kohaku still had his school shoes on; his house shoes were still sitting by the door.

"Kohaku?" he called, reaching for the gun at his waist as he entered the kitchen. His son was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a gun, which was aimed at his father's heart. Haru looked at his son's face, and noticed the dead look in his brown eyes. It was as if the very life was gone from within them. "Kohaku...!" but he got no verbal response from the shell that was his son.

In the peaceful suburbs of Tokyo, the afternoon was pierced by a single gunshot.

"Dad! Kohaku!" Sango called as she came home. She threw her purse and car keys down on the hall table, and was about to take off her shoes when she noticed that while her father and brother's things were there, all the lights were off in the house. Also, the hall closet was open. She walked past it on her way to the kitchen and saw that the fake back panel her father had installed to allow for storage had been removed. There were a few metal boxes in hall, and one of them was empty. Terrified, Sango grabbed her cell phone from her purse and quietly made her way into the kitchen.

"Dad? Kohaku? I'm..." Sango stopped as she heard something wet squish under her shoe and saw the figure of father lying in the middle of the kitchen floor. A halo of red was quickly spreading around his ruined head, surrounding the spent shell casing like an ocean, and the air smelled of gunpowder. The door that led from the kitchen to the backyard was open. "Oh... God..." Sango muffled a scream in her hands and turned and ran from the house, grabbing her keys and dialing 911 as she threw herself in to her car. "My dad... my dad..." she sobbed to the operator... my dad's been... my dad's been shot..."

About ten minutes later, as the ambulance and police siren's wailed up the street, Sango cried into her steering wheel, wondering who had done this and where her brother was.

"Kohaku, where are you?" she moaned as a police officer tapped on her window.

"Ms. Taijiya?" Sango turned around. She was holding a cup of strong black coffee, half of which she'd already drank, though it hurt her empty stomach to drink it. It took her mind off things.

"Did you find him?" the detective standing in the doorway was a young man, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, with short brown hair and wide gray eyes. He looked exhausted, Sango noticed, quite how she felt.

"I believe we have." A small spark of hope ignited in her chest, but was extinguished almost immediately. "But I must warn you, Kohaku is not in the best condition."

"I see," she said, looking down. "When can I see him? Is he okay?" His face showing no expression, the detective led her down a cold, tiled corridor and into a small waiting room. There was an older man in there, with a large stomach and a bushy white moustache. She barely spared him a glance because her attention was drawn immediately to the two-way mirror on one wall. It wasn't so much the mirror, but the boy behind it.

"Kohaku!" Sango ran forward, pressing her hands against the glass, her mouth agape.

"That is your brother then, Ms. Taijiya?" the younger detective, Yamuri, asked her. She turned to them, looking panicked.

"What happened to him!?" she turned to face the mirror again, looking at the silent boy sitting at the table. It was her brother, alright, but there was blood on his shirt and hands, and his eyes... they were... empty.

"We believe," said the older man, "that he fled the house after shooting your father..." Sango whirled around, her face alive with rage.

"No! He would never do anything like that!" Sango's eyes were full of tears. "Kohaku loved father. He would never..." her voice broke.

"We found him carrying a gun and wandering around Tokyo in a daze," said detective Yamuri. "Ms. Taijiya... he confessed." Sango seemed to loose all her fight in that moment. She shook her head violently as the tears poured down her cheeks.

"No..." but as the detective said it, she knew that it was true. The boy at the table was not her brother, but he had done it. He had killed their father.

A black Volkswagen Jetta pulled up to the white house that was roped off with caution tape. A young woman, her dark hair falling down her back, got out. She had on a dark green pantsuit and a cream colored dress shirt. Her heels clicked on the pavement as she approached a tawny-haired police officer.

"Detective Higurashi!" the young man said. He turned his thin face towards her and smiled, his bright blue eyes glittering.

"Oh, come on Gene," she said, smiling. "You can call me Kagome, you know that."

"Well..." he said, coloring slightly. He showed Kagome around to the back of the house. It was almost completely dark outside, and the scene had remained untouched. Kagome grimaced when she saw the man, who was missing the left side of his head, lying on the kitchen floor. His expression was one of shock. Kagome walked across the tiles and kneeled by the body, careful of the blood on the floor.

"And this is how he was when you found him?" she said, looking at the man. Gene nodded. "Who is he?"

"His name was Haru Taijiya," Gene said. "Apparently self-employed. His wife died a few years ago. He had two children, a daughter, about your age, a year or so older, and a son..."

"The one who shot him. They told me that much on the phone," Kagome said, staring at the dead man's face. She wished she could read what was in those eyes, but they were blank. There was nothing she could gain from Haru himself, so she would have to look around the house.

"Correct," he said. Ever since she had arrived, Gene had seemed a bit nervous ever since she had arrived.

"What's wrong, Gene?" she asked, standing up. She looked around, and began sniffing the air. Gene watched her curiously before answering,

"This house makes me uncomfortable," he said. "There's just something about it that I don't like." He watched Kagome pace the floor, her nose in the air. She walked over to the kitchen table, her gaze on the empty chair there.

"Me either," she said absently. "He was sitting here, wasn't he? The son."

"Uh... yeah," the young officer's eyebrows rose a bit. "That's kind of creepy, Kagome." She looked over her shoulder with a smile and shrugged.

"It's just what I do," she said, and kneeled in front of the chair. "This is strange."

"What's strange?"

"When something traumatic happens, the people involved leave a kind of imprint of themselves behind on the scene. They even leave behind a trace of their emotions, but I can't feel anything. It's almost as if the kid didn't have any emotions when he shot his father," she said, passing her hand over the wooden seat but keeping it an inch above the surface. "I can't feel anything here." She stayed there for a moment, looking at the chair in puzzlement as if it would tell her something.

At 25, Kagome had been in this business for about three years, not needing much formal training for what she did. As one of the last miko youkai, it was all natural to her. She stood again and walked around the kitchen. There was still a faint trace of emotion around the man: fear, sadness, confusion, surprise. But the boy: why had he felt nothing? Kagome didn't like it. It seemed almost as if he had acted mechanically. Kagome had seen that before, but for someone to kill a family member and not feel anything was a new one on her.

She widened the net of her senses, letting her concealment spells loosen just a little bit. She walked outside and entered through the front door and got as close to the body as she could without disturbing it. There was already a footprint in the blood: the daughter's. Kagome could sense her fear still lingering in the air. Kagome looked at the scene once more before saying,

"The boy didn't act on his own."

"But Kagome, the other investigators already proven that he was the only one here when Taijiya died," Gene said, watching his friend studying the scene before her like one might a difficult math problem.

"No," she said, "what I mean is that he didn't just decide to kill his father on his own," she looked a the kid's backpack. "Someone made him do it." Kagome kneeled in the middle of the hallway and ran her gloved hand along the hardwood floor.

There was a hint of a half-demon here, but she didn't know the aura and it was so faint she could barely feel it. It disappeared completely before she could read anymore into it, and with a frustrated sigh, she stood up and turned to leave. She had the file in her car; she'd picked it up at the office before heading over here, but it was 6:30, and she was off the clock an hour ago.

"Gene?" she called. She could see the officer standing in the kitchen, staring in any direction but at the dead man on the floor.

"Yeah?"

"I'm going home for the day." Even as she said that, she knew she'd be taking more of this case than the file home with her.

"Okay," Gene said, walking out the back door. He came around the house as she was coming down the front walk, and gave her a big hug. At 5' 11", he was short for a man but an easy seven inches taller than Kagome. "Take care of yourself, Higurashi." Kagome sighed and poked him in the side. The young man jumped.

"You, too, Himamara," she said, smirking, and continued the short walk to her car.

She saw Gene waving and raised her hand quickly before backing out. There was something about the dead man that was bothering her. When someone dies in such a traumatic fashion, they can leave behind not only emotions, but sometimes the tiniest trace of a thought. It isn't like an actually thought, like you'd be able to hear in your head what they had told themselves, but more of a hint. And what she had been getting was that this man had carried death, had worked closely with it, but had never actually expected it to turn on him.

She turned up the Counting Crows and sang along, trying to put work as far behind her as she could.

As Gene Himamara watched Kagome drive off down the road, another officer, a young woman with a short mess of black hair ran out of the house, panting and looking terrified.

"Gene, I've been looking everyway for you!" she said. "Where's Kagome?"

"she just left," he said, and at the startled look on her face, asked, "Why?" The woman swallowed and turned motioned towards the house.

"You better come look at this," she said, and Gene followed her upstairs, both curious and afraid.

"It seems Mr. Taijiya wasn't your average working Joe," she said, walking down the hall and into the bedroom, where there were two other officers waiting. The young officer walked over to another officer, who handed her a folder.

"Thank you," she said shortly, and, with a sigh, handed it to Gene.

"What is this?" he said.

"As I was saying, it seems that Haru Taijiya had a rather... unusual job," she said, pointing at the folder. "He was hit man, and this was his next target." Gene looked at her for another moment before opening the folder.

"Oh my God," he gasped, staring down at a file full of pictures and information about Kagome.

End Chapter 1.

I'm sorry it's so short, but as of now, it's just a little experiment. I'm hoping that if I continue this, the chapters will get longer. Do ya'll think I should keep going with this? Let me know. Thanks!!! =^ ^=