The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(65)

I bit back a frustrated sound, knowing that it might alarm Neven, and got to my feet.

That was when I saw her.

Farther down the shore, a woman sat on the rocks, facing away from me. Her long black hair spilled down her back and into the water like a veil decorated with white starfish, revealing the bare white curves of her waist. The skin around her shoulders pulled tight against her bones, and her whole body blurred around the edges like a dream.

Hair so long that it dragged behind her on the sand, tangled with starfish and seaweed, the legend had said. This had to be Iso Onna.

She sat a bit outside of the range that I could comfortably stop time in, so I held my clock in one hand and began to climb down the rocks, careful to keep my eyes on her. The sounds of the ocean rose up around me, and I wondered if Neven really would hear me if I called for him among the sound of waves shattering on the shore.

A stone rolled away under my foot, sending me sliding down the incline. I dropped my clock to catch myself rather than break my face on the rocks, tumbling until I spilled onto a flat bed of stone. I anticipated the Yokai’s teeth in my jugular, or her hair shackling me down, or a horrible screech that would split through my brain like a pickax. But when I rolled onto my knees and crouched in a defensive stance, the Yokai hadn’t moved at all.

Her stillness rivaled that of an oil painting, but I couldn’t ignore the uneasy shift in the atmosphere that confirmed her realness. I could sense Death nearby, but not in her blood and bones the way Reapers or Shinigami carried it. Instead, Death watched us from across the water, far away and crawling closer.

I pulled on the chain of my clock, but it was caught between two rocks a few feet ahead of me, closer to the Yokai than I would have preferred. I lifted my scraped palm off the rocks and crawled forward.

“Have you come to finish me?” the Yokai said. Her words did not have the magnificent and ethereal ring of Yuki Onna, or the hypnotic echo of the Honengame. Instead, she spoke so quietly that the waves nearly overwhelmed her voice, each word soft and delicate.

“Finish you?” I said.

The Yokai sighed but still didn’t turn around.

“I know what you’re here for, so why do you hesitate?” she said.

Because my clock is not in my hand, I thought, tugging on the chain to bring it back to me without any sudden movement. Everything about our interaction felt so delicate, and I was sure that any sudden lunges or loud sounds would shatter it.

“I’m here because you’ve upset the balance,” I said, trying to keep my voice even as I crawled closer.

She let out a sharp laugh. I froze, palm outstretched, waiting for her next move. Then she shook her head, hair spilling over her shoulder. “What balance?” she said. “I haven’t eaten in half a century.”

I frowned, shifting one knee forward. Hadn’t the Honengame said the same thing? That would certainly explain why no bones remained on the shore. Surely whatever was left a half century ago had long been pulled out to sea and sunken to the bottom of the ocean.

“None of the humans dare to sail into my waters anymore,” she said. “I am bound to these rocks forever, even if it means I starve.”

“Am I meant to believe you so easily?” I said, giving my chain another pull with no success. In truth, I did believe her, but I needed her distracted because my clock remained firmly between the rocks.

“What you choose to believe is of no consequence to me,” she said. “You can see me here, starving.” Indeed, the closer I got, the more I could see of her bones—the sharp edges of her collarbone where it connected to her shoulders, the joints in her elbows. “Your opinion won’t change my fate, Shinigami.”

Then a cloud of Death numbed my tongue, filling my mouth with bitterness. I realized then why the air around the Yokai felt heavy with an invisible storm, why Death swirled in the sea around us, overhead in the gray cast of the sky and ocean that reeked of shipwrecks and riptides and a thousand things lost.

Iso Onna smelled like someone who was already dying.

“How long will you live if you don’t eat?” I said.

The Yokai hung her head low, hair parting slightly to reveal the knobs of her spine.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t even know if I’ll die at all. Perhaps I’ll keep withering like this until the end of time.”

“And yet you won’t eat me,” I said. Surely, if I had smelled like food to a starving Yokai, we wouldn’t have been conversing so calmly.

She scoffed and shook her head. “I can’t drink Shinigami blood. Believe me, I’ve tried. You all taste like ash and rot and leave me hungrier than before.”

“How did you know I was a Shinigami?”

“I can smell it in your blood,” she said. “Along with something else.”

“Yes, British Reaper,” I said, yanking my clock again. “I’m well aware.”

“No.”

I paused, letting the chain go slack. “No?”

“I smell a sourness in your blood,” she said.

My fist clenched tighter around the chain. “That’s because I’m a creature of Death.”

“No, it’s more than that,” she said. “Inside, you are rotting.”

I held my breath. What was it that she smelled, exactly? Was it the cloud of Death that seemed to have followed me everywhere since I’d left London, or was it just my soul?