The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(21)

“There’s a Reaper down below chasing after his clock,” I said, my voice raw and every word painful. “Let’s go before he comes back.”

Neven turned and looked at the ferry heading toward the horizon. It hadn’t seemed to move very fast when we were on it, but in the short moments that time had turned since we’d jumped off, it had grown much smaller in the widening distance. Even with inhuman strength, we could never catch up to it.

I’m sorry, I thought as Neven shivered and began swimming in the direction of the ship. I could never say it out loud, because there were too many things to apologize for. For throwing him into freezing waters. For bringing him with me. For being his sister and ruining his life.

For a small infinity, we swam to shore, shrouded in a blanket of shadows. We couldn’t grow tired in such a mundane way as swimming, so the passing hours mattered little. For a while, I appreciated the isolation, with nothing but gray sky and dark ocean in every direction. We didn’t speak for the rest of the journey as the cold numbed our lips.

By the time we reached France, night had grown heavy enough to conceal our arrival on the rocky shore. I turned time just long enough to pickpocket some francs from humans passing by, then led us through the doors of the closest hotel, sopping wet. I slapped the francs on the desk and argued with the concierge, who steadfastly pretended not to understand my French but somehow understood Neven perfectly, even though his accent was worse. By the time we reached the room, it felt like years had passed.

As I shut the door behind us, Neven sat on the floor by the window in a wet heap and gestured toward the bathroom.

“Go ahead,” he said, his voice sore from swallowing salt water.

“Neven?”

He looked up, his eyes dull. Exhaustion had drawn his features down, his glasses blurred from salt water.

“I didn’t...” I pressed my lips together, numbed from hours in the frigid sea. Our journey had only just started and already I’d nearly been killed and forced Neven to swim until his lips turned blue. Neven was going to realize how much of an ordeal this was and regret coming with me, even though he would never say it out loud. He deserved so much better than me. “I didn’t think that...”

But Neven shook his head before I could finish the sentence, waving a hand as if to wipe the words from the air. He always knew what I was trying to say.

“The worst is over,” he said, offering a soft, fake smile. “But I’m soaked, so could you please...” He gestured to the bathroom again.

Without another word, I entered the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I turned on the water in the bathtub and the gas furnace on the side, then peeled off my wet clothes and wrung them out over the sink.

I climbed into the lukewarm water, rubbing the soap first through my hair and then over every inch of my body. I thought of the Reaper with his arm around my throat and scrubbed harder, the soap slipping from my fingers and sliding across the floor. When I no longer smelled of salt, I had the sudden urge to get as far away from water as possible.

I nearly slipped out of the tub but caught myself on the rim and dried myself with shaking hands. Thanks to my newly cut hair, the mirror reflected the kanji inked into my spine between my shoulder blades: 蓮.

My name was the only thing my mother had ever given me. According to Ambrose, all Shinigami were born with their names painted on their spines in black ink that would never wash away. I wondered who I would have been if I’d grown up in Japan as Ren and not Wren, if someone would have loved me there, if I still would have had to flee and drag my poor brother along with me.

I twisted my arm back to touch the tattoo, but couldn’t quite reach it. Like everything else about Japan, it was just barely out of reach.

I thought once more of the High Reaper dragging me through the water, my hands reaching for the horizon. For a brief moment, I had thought I was going to die. I’d seen that moment in the eyes of so many humans whose souls I’d collected. Confronting your final end made you realize what was important, because death stripped away all the comfortable and convenient lies you told yourself. And in that moment, all I had wanted was to reach a place that could be my home.

“Neven,” I whispered, knowing he would hear me even through the closed bathroom door.

“Are you all right?” he said, his voice cracked and weary.

I grabbed a towel off the shelf and wrapped it around myself, then threw open the door.

Neven was sitting on the floor in a puddle, still in his wet clothes, glasses in one hand. I knelt down in front of him.

“I need to go to Japan,” I said. It was the first time I’d spoken the thought aloud, to him or to anyone. “The Shinigami there won’t be afraid of my light powers like the Reapers. I can find my mother and live there with her and the other Shinigami.”

Neven rubbed his right eye and said nothing, letting his hand drop to the floor where it splashed in a shallow puddle.

“How will you find her?” he said at last, his words so heavy and waterlogged that I wanted to cry for him. But at least his first response hadn’t been a resounding no.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I have to try. I know it’s easier to stay in Europe, but anywhere I go here, they’ll look at me the same way the Reapers do, and I can’t live like that anymore.”

Neven was still staring at me, his expression too tired to read.