The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(44)

Sweet Neven, who stood up for me against the other Reapers, even when it meant that I would be his only friend until the day he died. Neven, who’d come with me across the world because he would never let me go alone. Neven, who always did what he knew was right. I could tell from his clenched jaw and hands stuffed stiffly in his pockets that he was wary of Hiro, but he couldn’t bear to turn him away.

I linked my arm with Neven’s, and he relaxed at the grounding touch in the endless night.

“I think so, too,” I said.

The shock melted off Hiro’s face and he bowed deeply.

“I won’t lead you astray,” he said. “I swear to you.” Then he turned and gestured for us to follow him deeper into the darkness.

Soon, our feet no longer crunched on dirt but over the wooden panels of a bridge that dipped under our weight. I sensed a glassy surface of still water and lily pads below us and a monstrous building before us that grew taller as we approached.

Only two lanterns hung on either side of the massive doorway, illuminating the white paper doors and protective row of potted bonsai trees around the first story. The building spanned forever upward, with layers and layers of extravagant awnings over glass balconies that disappeared up in the dreamy darkness.

Hiro slid open the front door and the sudden influx of light scorched my eyes. I dropped both Neven’s hand and my tablet to cover them, Neven mumbling a complaint behind me.

“Come on, don’t let the light out,” Hiro said, waving us inside.

I blinked the stars out of my eyes and picked up the tablet, stepping over the threshold where a thousand mazelike hallways of sliding doors lined the main lobby. The soft sound of doors sliding open and shut played a soothing rhythm in the distance. The dead in their white kimonos shifted back and forth across the hallways, sliding like specters into their rooms.

Hiro walked up to an ornate desk at the far wall, where an elderly woman with a tight gray bun and eyes sunk deep into her sockets didn’t look up to acknowledge him.

“Two rooms, please,” Hiro said, reaching into his pocket and putting some sort of gold coin on the desk.

The woman reached out with shocking speed and snatched the coin off the desk, like a feral animal whose food had been threatened, yet her expression remained stony. She reached into a drawer and pulled out two keys tied to thin pieces of wood with room numbers scratched into them. She set them on the desk, then her other arm shot out in the opposite direction, pointing a skeletal finger down a hallway to her left.

Hiro bowed and thanked her, taking the keys and waving for us to follow.

“I assumed you wanted to share a room with each other,” Hiro said, tossing me one of the keys as he walked backward down the hall. “That way I can sneak in and murder you both at once instead of walking to two separate rooms.”

“Exactly how many jokes about murdering us do you think it will take before we start to find them funny?” I said, glancing at Neven with sympathy.

“Clearly more than I’ve attempted thus far,” Hiro said, grinning.

“I sleep with knives under my pillow,” I said, reaching for my sleeve out of habit before I remembered that both of my knives had been washed away with my clothes. “At least, I did before we met Datsue-ba. Do you know where I can get new knives in Yomi?”

“You can control time and light, but you prefer human weapons?” Hiro said, raising an eyebrow.

“How else will I actually kill the Yokai? Do you expect me to clobber them with my clock? Sparkle them to death with candlelight?”

Hiro shook his head. “That’s not how Yokai—”

“I need knives.”

Hiro sighed. “I’ll see what I can find for you,” he said. “And I didn’t ask, but I assume Reapers don’t need to eat?”

I shook my head.

“Good,” Hiro said, “because that might have been a problem. Don’t eat or drink anything you see here, or you—”

Hiro collided with a man coming out of his room, sending them both to the floor. As Hiro tumbled forward on top of the man, fish spilled out of his basket and onto the man’s startled face.

The man sputtered and hurled a fish at the wall, sitting up on his elbows. Unlike all the dead clad in white, he wore a bright red kimono embroidered with gold dragons. His skin burned bright like an overheated light bulb moments from shattering, his eyes a furious black. I took a step forward, drawn to him the same way I was to Hiro.

Death drenched his skin. His face looked like the last one you would ever see, iron-cold in its sternness. The weight of his anger curled the wallpaper and warped the floorboards.

Shinigami, I thought. And this time, up close.

I’d been enchanted by the Shinigami on the shore, but this time I could see the embroidery of the crimson robe, the blood under his fingernails, the dignified way that he carried himself. It was surreal to now have seen so many Shinigami in the flesh after only imagining them for so long. Was red the only uniform of working Shinigami? Could all of them control the brightness of their skin? A thousand unspoken questions went through my mind as the Shinigami set his eyes on Hiro.

“You,” he said, eyes narrowing.

Hiro, who had been scrambling to stuff his fish back in his basket, froze.

“Forgive me,” he said, throwing himself into a deep bow against the floorboards.

But the Shinigami was apparently not in a forgiving mood, for he reeled back and kicked Hiro in the face.