The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(72)

He stood up, stretching his arms above his head. “This has been a lovely discussion,” he said, avoiding eye contact, “but if we want our clothes to dry by morning, we should wash some of the blood out now.”

I looked down at Neven, who still snored against my leg. “I—”

“I’ll go first,” Hiro said, already walking to the mouth of the cave. “You watch over him. I’ll return soon.”

Then he strode into the darkness, headed for the sea.

I leaned against the cave wall, dazed by Hiro’s quick departure. One of my hands began stroking Neven’s matted hair again. More scar tissue had formed in his neck. That was a good sign. I imagined his body regenerating all the lost blood and slowly circulating it through his veins.

I turned my head, and through the opening of the cave, I could see Hiro in the water, partially hidden behind the rocks.

He started undoing the ties of his kimono, and heat rushed to my face. I should have looked away, but I kept stone-still as Hiro shrugged out of his jacket and cast it to the ground. This was wrong. It was indecent and impolite and I absolutely needed to look away right this instant, but for some reason I didn’t move at all, my skin turning feverish as I watched Hiro undress.

The skin of his neck and shoulders glowed even more than what I could normally see around his kimono, highlighting the muscles around his shoulder blades. Like me, he had his name tattooed in kanji across his spine, harsh strokes of black stark against his pale skin. The characters—

—didn’t say Hiro.

My hand tensed in Neven’s hair. I leaned closer, trying my best to get a clear look from around the rocks.

I knew from my studies in London that there were different ways to write Hiro, but I’d never seen it written with the characters on Hiro’s back. Those characters together were unfamiliar to me. At least, I thought they were. I’d caught only a quick glimpse before he’d moved behind a rock. I wanted to crawl closer to be sure of what I was seeing, but Neven was still sleeping on my leg.

While Reapers had spectacular hearing, we weren’t known for having extraordinary vision, if Neven’s severe nearsightedness was any indication. Even under the best of circumstances, I wasn’t very good at reading Japanese. Hiro was not only distant and poorly lit but constantly moving, preventing me from getting a better look.

I heard a splash as he went into the water and knew my chance had been lost.

I turned my gaze to the ceiling. The more I tried to recall what I had seen, the less certain I was of the characters. The only thing I couldn’t deny was the feeling of shock that had coursed through me when he’d first revealed his tattoo, when whatever I’d seen hadn’t been what I’d expected.

It was entirely possible that I’d been mistaken. My Japanese was far from perfect, especially my ability to read kanji. And perhaps Hiro was short for something else. Regardless, there wasn’t a way I could ask him about it without revealing that I’d watched him undress. If it turned out that I’d been wrong, or that Hiro was simply a nickname, he would never stop teasing me for being a voyeur.

But if I wasn’t wrong, that meant that Hiro wasn’t really Hiro at all. What could possess him to tell me how to kill him, but not tell me his real name? What kind of power could his name possibly hold?

“What does it mean, Neven?” I whispered.

His only answer was his slow and stable breathing. I closed my eyes to that comforting sound, and the faraway murmurs of cold water crashing against black rocks, and the footsteps of the Shinigami who called himself Hiro crossing the shore, returning.



Chapter Sixteen


And last, there was Tamamo No Mae.

Hiro had found us a train to Yahiko, saying his myriad connections had told him Tamamo No Mae was rumored to be there. He’d told me she was a Kitsune—a fox shape-shifter—but every time I asked him to sit down and help me read her story in Hakutaku’s book, he changed the subject.

Neven was fast asleep, drooling against the window, while I had unrolled Hakutaku’s book and was busy glaring at the characters as if I could translate them through sheer anger.

“You’re going to burn a hole in the paper,” Hiro said as he watched me reread the same line for the tenth time.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to hide from me,” I said, my voice colder than I’d meant it to be. But this was about more than Tamamo No Mae. I couldn’t help remembering the kanji on his back. It wasn’t fair that one warm look from Hiro made me want to unravel, yet he withheld so much from me.

The smile fell off Hiro’s face. He stood up and sat next to me once again, smoothing out the paper.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes far too wide and far too close to me. “It wasn’t my intention to anger you.”

I looked away. Hiro’s face was too painfully earnest. No one had ever apologized to me before. The only person who cared enough to do so was Neven, and he never did anything wrong.

“Help me read it,” I said softly to the paper, rather than acknowledge his apology.

“Of course,” Hiro said, nodding quickly. “Anything, Ren.”

Then he smoothed out the scroll and told me the story of Tamamo No Mae.

On a cool morning in late autumn, a train arrived in the mountains of Yahiko village.

A man stepped off the train, the shadow behind him twice as long as he was tall, as dark as all of Yomi. He had black eyes like burning coal, and was the most handsome man that anyone in Yahiko, or Japan, had ever seen.