The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(46)

“He’s just a Shinigami,” I said. “Maybe he’s a little different from me because he’s full Shinigami.”

“The other ones weren’t like him!”

“Shh!”

I looked around, as if Hiro would burst through the paper doors at any moment, but the night remained still and silent.

“I wouldn’t turn him away for his eye color alone,” Neven said, quieter this time, “but I’m not sure about him, Ren.”

“I’m not sure of anything we’ve seen here,” I said, “but I think he’s the least of our worries.”

Neven looked at me for a long moment, his eyes hazy blue. Without his glasses, I could see the purple darkness under his eyes.

He turned away from me and curled into the sheet. “Good night, Ren.”

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling again, then waved my hand toward the lantern and extinguished the flame.

What felt like a few hours later, Hiro knocked on our door. He smiled as if he’d never been struck by another Shinigami in all his life, making me question whether anything I remembered was real. All of Yomi seemed like a distorted dream, since half of it existed only in my mind and not my visual memory. At least Neven was with me to tether me to reality.

Somehow, while we slept, Hiro had managed to procure kimonos for me and Neven—both ghostly white, as that was the only color non-Shinigami could get in Yomi, and technically he wasn’t a Shinigami. While Neven still had his weathered boots from England, my shoes had been lost to the river, so Hiro gave me wooden sandals that just barely fit and socks that split between the toes.

My knives had been lost in my clothes given to Datsue-ba, so Hiro had found me a couple throwing knives too dull to slice butter and cheekily handed me a river rock with which to sharpen them. Mercifully, he had elected to leave his basket of raw fish behind.

Clothed and armed, we needed a plan to destroy the Yokai. As much as I hoped it would be a matter of simply finding them and slitting their throats like the Jorogumo, something told me that Izanami would not have given me such a simple task.

“Where can I research the Yokai?” I said as Hiro started tying Neven’s kimono.

In London’s library there had been books to teach me almost anything in the world—how to read Japanese poetry, how to draw paralytic poison out of flowers, how to understand why humans acted so brashly despite their short life spans. With no friends to speak of, I had always spent my time outside of collecting with Neven and books and nothing else, just the two of us and all the words in the universe at our disposal, and that was the way I preferred it.

I needed books to understand the Yokai beyond the watercolor portrayals of my children’s anthology. I needed their backstories and urban legends and written records of their sightings, anything to help me understand why they were so special, why Izanami had sent me to destroy them.

“You can’t,” Hiro said. “At least, not easily.”

I caught Neven’s startled gaze in the mirror of our hotel room as Hiro finished tying his belt.

“Why not?” I said.

“There were many books written about the Yokai,” Hiro said, “but almost all of them have been lost or destroyed.”

“I had a book of Yokai in England,” I said, frowning.

“Yes, I’ve heard of other countries writing about Yokai,” Hiro said, grimacing. “Those stories are for entertainment, not research. I don’t suppose your book told you how to defeat any Yokai?”

“No.” I thought back to the illustration of the Jorogumo, portraying her as taller than a ten-story building. Perhaps my children’s-book knowledge of Yokai wouldn’t be enough any longer.

Hiro sat cross-legged on the floor. “There is only one remaining text about the Yokai that I would trust, and few people even know where to find it anymore,” he said. “Its location is one of Yomi’s many dark secrets, the knowledge lost to all but a few souls.”

Though his words were morose, Hiro’s eyes glowed and his lips twitched like he was trying desperately not to smile. Was I missing some sort of joke?

“How can we find it?” I said.

“Well,” Hiro said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall, “you would have to find someone who knows where it is. Someone with connections all across both Yomi and Earth, someone incredibly trustworthy and knowledgeable.”

Hiro still looked far too delighted to be delivering news of an impossible quest. I looked at Neven in case he understood, but he only shrugged. Hiro looked at me expectantly, then gave his own reflection a pointed glance in the mirror.

I sighed. “Hiro,” I said, “do you know where it is?”

A smile broke across Hiro’s face. He reached under one layer of his kimono and pulled out a long scroll from under his belt, then tossed it to me.

“You have it?” I said, snatching the scroll from the air. I nearly fell over from its unexpected heaviness. The knobs at each end were made of gold, the white washi paper held together with a braided red bow.

“Well, technically it’s a copy,” he said. “An unsanctioned one, so take care not to wave it around in front of any Shinigami, but yes. If you feed people enough high-quality tuna over the years, they don’t mind doing you favors now and then.”

“Are all your friends made by peddling fish?” I said.