The Accidental Seduction

Chapter

Home Again

The plane landed in Los Angeles without incident. Kagome rested throughout the layover, before venturing out of her compartment. The plane was a Boeing 747, and enormous. Servants offered her more food, she was given every comfort. It was getting annoying when she was not even allowed to pour her own ginger ale.

The flight over the Pacific was boring at best. Sesshoumaru spent a great deal of time looking over paperwork. In his suit he seemed so out of sorts, even seated and semi relaxed he seemed so regal. Whatever was in these papers was fretting on that regality. Kagome raised an eyebrow in query, but he hadn't looked up once since starting to look them over.

"Sesshoumaru?" she asked quietly. This seemed to snap him from his daze and he looked at her. Pulling off a pair of reading glasses he sighed.

"I apologize, Kagome," he said quietly. "These are the reports of the shrine house burning down. It was arson."

"I figured that much," she said quietly. "I am more worried who is the arsonist and that they leave the well alone."

"I think they were after you, not the well. It would have been easier to burn the well. Whomever it may be, felt that violating the well was a bad idea," he said with a sigh.

"Or they could not go past the ofudas that protect it," she said warily.

"That is possible," he said quietly.

"That rules out hanyou and humans," she sighed.

"Your mother did not see the arsonist, so there is no help there," Sesshoumaru said with a sigh. My contacts are unsure of the source of the arson. There was not anyone they could see near the house."

"You've been having my house watched?" she said incredulously.

"Ever since I found you were alive, I thought you may return home," he said dutifully. "You told me to watch and listen for you. I did as you requested."

It dawned on Kagome at that moment that for him to go out of his way in such a fashion meant far more to him that it appeared. Sesshoumaru did nothing that did not bring him satisfaction in some way or another. When he had not appeared when she gave him as many clues as she could, she assumed she had not been a pleasing thing for him to find. Or that he had heard about her attack and avoided her as a result. Kagome never realized that her hints had been so vague or something he would not have found. But then again, why would a 926-year-old demon be listening to modern music? The whole folly of it now was easy to see. Back then; it was all she could divulge without straining the time barriers.

His interest in seeing her again was more than just a compliment in his eyes. It was reassurance that she was the one he had been waiting to see for centuries. It was the proof that she needed to know that his affection went beyond just "mating". Most humans would have been lost on the sentiment, but Kagome realized this epiphany as it was happening.

"Thank you," she said softly. His eyes rose from his papers and his head tilted somewhat. Confusion read in his eyes but he said nothing as he continued to look upon her face. After a long moment, she clarified. "For not giving up on me. I can only imagine how terrible New York had to be on you."

"It reeks of death, decay and human destruction," he said with a snort. "But if you were there, you must have had reason to be amongst such atrocity. And truthfully, you did."

Death, decay and human destruction? Is that how he saw the larger cities? She pondered for a moment trying to discern his meaning behind his phrasing. Sesshoumaru had a nasty habit of speaking metaphorically about the realities in which people lived. Again, many would get offended or see his words as slights on their race as humans if they knew him to be anything other than a human. Humans overall were very arrogant to assume they understood the world as he did. She could only begin to grasp it all because of her years traveling in the Well.

This too had meanings behind meanings. Living amongst death and decay hid her scent from him. It offended his nose and his higher senses. That was the point, after all, to keep whoever was her "mate" from finding her. Granted, the world would have been a far different place if she had known it was Sesshoumaru. But there was no way of knowing such things at the time. This comment was a compliment to her ability to hide successfully from other demons. After pondering all of that, she let a small smile dawn on her lips at the compliment that was never paid to anyone by the stoic lord.

"Again, I thank your kind words," she said with a small smile of pride. He nodded and went back to the papers. She realized then something that had eluded her up until now. He needed her to understand human mentality. He still did not hold the firmest grasp of it and often slipped into old habits of dealing with them. That is why he wanted her skills as a profiler.

"Perhaps you would like me to help?" she said quietly walking closer to his desk.

"I must get this work done," he said dutifully.

"I am not trying to dissuade you," she said with a mocking finger shaking at him. He looked to the quick motion of her hand then up to her face. "I am useful in the ways of profiling, remember?" She smirked and this in turn gave him a smirk to match. She knew he had realized what she was saying. She was willing to take on the job position offered her.

"My mate has no need to do such trivial tasks," he said as an eyebrow rose.

"Well, your mate is going to assist her mate," she said with an equally raised eyebrow. "I refuse to sit and do nothing, getting fat and being lazy." She chuckled. His smirk turned to a close-lipped smile as he handed her the papers he was looking over. She accepted them with grace and sat down near his seat on one of the plush couches. Her brows furrowed in concentration on the facts presented to her as she flipped through the pages.

"It's a demon," she said firmly. "It is vengeful and the fire was meant to cleanse or purge an emotion."

"And what emotion would that be?" he said trying to remain calm. A direct assault on her home would mean that she was in danger, even in Japan. Her home did not fall on his lands, so protection would be difficult.

"That's difficult to say, but it is definitely based in the primal emotions. Anger, fear or lust," she replied. "Fire is often used as a method of "Cleansing the Soul" or "Purging". Whether the purge was meant on me or on the Shrine House itself, I cannot tell. Obviously the demon in question must have known I would not be there. It must have also known that I had not been there for some time to do something so drastic," she mused, letting her thoughts run freely from her mouth. "There is no other reason I can think of at this moment for a demon to set fire to the Shrine House. If they were advanced enough to use accelerants, they could have just thrown a Molotov Cocktail at the Well and avoided the Wards that keep demons out of it."

Sesshoumaru listened with interest of Kagome's interpretation of what she was reading. He did not correct her in any manner, or suggest anything. He watched as she scanned her fingers over the pages, taking in facts and listing out possibilities. If she was right, and this was a demon purging out something, it should be over unless the attack was meant on her directly.

"The best course of action right now is to send some of your best to sift through the rubble and see if there was an item or something of importance that was giving off magic that may have attracted a demon," she said smoothly. "Being that the house hasn't been used as a temple in years, it may have been corrupted by something."

"And if there is nothing?" he imposed.

"The attack was meant on a more personal level," she shrugged. "And something else of value to the person he or she was trying to slight will burn again soon."

"If the attack was meant for you, what in Japan could they burn?" he inquired.

"Anything that would hold a personal memory for me," she said quietly. "But I doubt they will be so quick to burn something like the tree or the Well. More than likely it would be something like my school, or something similar that could easily be dismissed without being tied to me directly."

"Why work in such a manner?" he moved to the seat beside her and she smirked at him.

"To try and make me take on the guilt of not being able to stop him or her," she said smoothly. "To try and make it so I had part to blame. I would recognize that all of the places burning were tied to me, but could also be tied to a hundred others in the same manner. It would be a guile of guilt."

"Interesting theory," he said smirking. "We shall see."

--

Muteki and Kagome sat eating dinner quietly. They had discussed everything that she and Sesshoumaru had. Muteki was stubborn, but he had seen the advantage of having a powerful demon protecting his mother. Li had explained it very well to him over the course of the trip.

"Mother," he started causing her to look up to him.

"Yes?" she said with a soft smile. "You look very upset."

"I have been worried, and Sesshoumaru all but kept you sequestered away," he said petulantly.

"I was badly hurt," she said quietly. "I took two flights of those stairs at the hotel we were in rather badly. The potion mixture Sesshoumaru gave me was quick healing, but it also made me very tired and extremely vulnerable. It was only out of concern that he kept me away," she said sweetly. "I know you do not know your father well, and I do not expect you to understand everything about him. It took me a very long time to understand him, and I'm still learning. Please be patient and you will see there is much more to him than meets the eye," Kagome said softly to her worried son.

"Tell me about him, tell me what makes him so special to you," Muteki said quietly. Kagome gave it some thought, and decided it would be best if he understood how his mother and father had come to know and respect one another rather than the only information him having being from years of staring at the scars on her body.

The rest of the trip was spent telling the stories of the Bone Eater's Well to her son, who needed to know to stay away from the blasted thing.

"So let me get this strait," he said softly shaking his head. "You sang to him from songs of our time now, to help him find you in the future. Then you went somewhere so vile he might never find you?" His questions had valid points and she answered them point for point. The humor he found in the fact that Sesshoumaru, the Mighty Lord of the Western Lands, had fallen for a human Miko with nothing more than the power of song was worthy of a children's storybook.

In fact, with his father's permission, he may just write said story.

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