The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(39)

Before I could thank him, the shadows of the dream haze wrapped around him like a crashing wave, sucking him into the blackness with a startled breath. Where he’d once stood, only darkness remained.

“Hiro?” I said. I held Neven tighter, lest he disappear next.

“What happened?” Neven said.

“He’s gone.”

Then, with a sound like parchment ripping in half, the darkness parted and Hiro tumbled out, falling to his hands and knees.

“Dammit,” he said, panting into the ground. He got to his feet and glared at the darkness “I’m not on palace grounds yet, damn you!”

“Hiro, what—”

The words caught in my throat when the darkness thickened, swirling into itself and forming the silhouette of a man.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”



Chapter Nine


The guard had no face or shape, only a blurred silhouette painted with deep darkness, shifting and endless like a portal to outer space.

“I can come this far,” Hiro said, brushing the dirt from his coat. “I’m not trespassing.”

“You shouldn’t be here at all, leech,” the guard said, his voice vibrating in my bones like the language of Death, but a deeper frequency, a warm hum that ran down to my toes.

Hiro gripped the straps of his fish basket and glared at the ground. “I’ve brought the Goddess one of her children,” he said.

The guard turned to me. Though he had no eyes to see me, the air shifted in my direction from the force of his gaze. Neven shuddered next to me.

“And what are you?” the guard said.

I forced my spine to remain straight, rather than wither under the force of his energy.

“I am Ren, of London,” I said. “My mother is a Shinigami. I am here to speak to Izanami.”

“The Goddess,” the guard corrected, the air stirring with the weight of an impending storm. His silhouette dissolved and spun toward me, whispering over my face and neck like silk scarves, then quickly reforming into a human shape.

“You are not a Shinigami,” he said.

My jaw locked, my blood beginning to simmer. “That’s not for you to decide,” I said, regretting the words as soon as they were out in the darkness. Who was I to question this specter when I had no idea what he was capable of? I should have been groveling on my knees for permission to see Izanami, but something in my blood had churned viscerally at his accusation. Why was it so hard for everyone in Japan to see that I was a Shinigami when it was the only thing the Reapers had seen?

If my outburst had ruined my chances of meeting Izanami, the guard gave no indication of it. He remained still except for the galaxies churning inside the blackness of his silhouette.

“She can see in the darkness,” Hiro said.

The guard’s silhouette stretched into thin ribbons that knotted around Hiro’s neck and threw him to the ground. “Silence, leech!” he said, yanking the cords tighter as Hiro clawed at his throat, unable to make a sound.

“Stop!” I said, rushing forward and raking my hands through the ribbons, which slid through my fingers like particles of dust.

As I lunged forward, Neven grabbed on to my skirt and crashed to the ground with me. “Ren, what’s happening? Ren?”

But I couldn’t answer, too busy trying to seize something that didn’t exist. I turned to Hiro’s neck and tried to tear away the ribbons but did little more than scratch at the white skin of his throat as his legs kicked out and eyes rolled back.

Then the ribbons dissolved into black dust, and Hiro gasped and rolled onto his side, coughing.

“You can see,” the guard said, voice rumbling behind me.

“You couldn’t have just taken my word for it?” Hiro said, sitting up and rubbing his throat. He set a hand on my knee as if to thank me for my attempt.

“And who are you, boy?” the guard said to Neven, ignoring Hiro’s complaint.

I elbowed Neven, who stood up straight, staring somewhere in the approximate direction of the guard. “Introduce yourself,” I whispered.

He swallowed and nodded. “My name is Neven Scarborough,” he said in faltering, clunky Japanese. “I am a London Reaper. I’m here to...to—”

“He’s my brother, here to accompany me,” I said.

The guard hummed in thought, the sound droning deep in the dirt. “I will take you to the Goddess and ask if she wishes to speak with you,” he said to me. “But only Shinigami can enter her palace.”

Hiro scrambled to his knees. “Could I—”

“You are not a Shinigami,” the guard said, the venom in his words harsh enough to melt flesh from bone.

Hiro withered, sinking back down to the ground.

“Come now,” the guard said.

I nodded and let go of Neven’s hand.

“Ren?” he said, reaching out.

“Stay with Hiro until I return,” I said, setting a hand on his shoulder. I looked at Hiro. “You will take care of my brother,” I said in Japanese.

He bowed, one hand on his heart. As I stepped away, his white skin blurred into watercolors in the dream fog.

Then the guard turned and raked his fingers through the air, tearing a hole in the darkness that yawned open like a gaping wound. He pulled back one of the edges and the void stretched wider, a shade just as dark as the rest of Yomi but a with a twisting undertow, the night spinning in tight circles. I forced myself not to look back at Neven and Hiro, not to show the guard my hesitation. I took one step into the void, and the darkness breathed me in.