The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(84)

Just like the pull of Death—at times a distant longing and at other times a crushing magnetism—I found myself tethered to Hiro. I could no longer pretend otherwise. And while Hiro murdering the girl’s grandmother hadn’t thrilled me, I would have been a hypocrite to criticize excessive bloodshed. I wanted all the dark and ugly parts of Hiro, even if they terrified me. That way, I knew I could never scare him away.

But I didn’t know what to do with my new feelings. Hiro respected the careful distance I kept between us, and the three of us crossed the rice fields in the cool night, the stars beginning to fade overhead.

“When you start work as a Shinigami,” Hiro said, “you’ll have your own lantern to guide the dead down to Yomi. The Goddess will give you a place to live in a commune of other Shinigami at first. Then she’ll assign you to a town, or several towns, depending on where help is needed.”

The job of a Shinigami sounded not unlike that of a Reaper. I ached to finally touch souls again, to feel them slide like liquid silver through my hands. I imagined a house of a hundred lanterns for me and Neven, as bright as Yomi was dark. I imagined red robes and dark nights and a place that could maybe one day be a home. Neven would be safe and happy, and I would have Hiro to tell me all of Japan’s secrets, to melt away the chill of Death with his voice. In the summer, I could visit my mother in Yakushima and watch the blue fires dance across the ocean. For the first time, I saw a future before me that didn’t hurt.

In the village a short distance behind us, a woman’s scream echoed across the rice fields. We stilled as more panicked but indecipherable words floated up the hill.

“They found Grandma,” the Yokai’s small voice said. Was she only guessing, or could she sense the other people in her village?

“You hid the body, didn’t you?” Neven said, turning to me.

I looked at Hiro, who shook his head. “We were a bit preoccupied chasing after the Yokai,” he said.

Neven sighed, shooting me a bitter look, as if everything was my fault.

The Yokai tugged on Neven’s shirt. “Go faster,” she said. “They’re gonna catch you.”

Without hesitating, Neven turned and walked faster into the rice fields. I pulled a sheet of darkness over us, staring at the Yokai with unease. Why was she trying to help us kidnap her?

“You don’t want to go back to your village?” I said.

The Yokai shook her head, rubbing her wet nose into Neven’s shirt. “They’re scared of me,” she said. “Without Grandma, they’re not nice.”

I frowned. “Why not?” After all, Reapers or Shinigami could sense the pull of Death around her, but humans weren’t that sensitive to it. They shouldn’t have seen her as anything but a little girl.

“I speak too many languages and have too many tails,” she said. “Grandma said people don’t have tails, so I should stop having them.”

“They’ve seen you as a fox?” Hiro said, raising an eyebrow. “No wonder they’re scared.”

“They can’t be that scared if they’re coming after her,” I said, glancing over my shoulder as more and more street lanterns ignited.

“They have to come, since I’m not allowed to leave,” the Yokai said, her voice growing quieter as she muffled it against Neven’s shoulder. “Grandma said in five years I’ll be worth four million yen.”

A coldness filled my stomach. I looked to Hiro, whose face had gone gray.

“To who?” I said.

“The yakuza,” she said, and stuffed her thumb in her mouth.

Any resentment I’d felt toward Hiro for killing the old woman evaporated. She hadn’t been raising an orphan out of kindness, she’d been grooming her to sell off to gangsters. If the other villagers had seen her as a fox and had let her stay, they were probably hoping for a cut of the profits.

“Do you know what the yakuza is?” Hiro said to the Yokai, his expression bleak.

“Kind of,” she said. “Grandma said it’s a school where I can learn more languages.”

Hiro pressed his lips together and said nothing as Neven hitched the Yokai higher on his shoulder, shooting me a confused look. This was one conversation I didn’t particularly want to translate.

We pressed forward through the fields, this time shrouded by a translucent sheet of night. More of the villagers began to wake up, the small village shining brighter in the weakening darkness of early morning. Tamamo No Mae watched the village grow smaller over Neven’s shoulder.

“Bye-bye,” she whispered, waving a chubby hand to the retreating houses. I wondered if Yokai even understood the concept of “home” the way we did.

Hiro’s warm fingers slipped into mine, hidden in our cloud of darkness, where my brother wouldn’t see.

“It’s been a privilege to travel with you,” he whispered. I couldn’t help but look at him, hoping that the morning shadows hid the heat rising to my face. He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“You say that as if we won’t see you in Yomi,” I said, rather than acknowledge the sentiment.

Hiro laughed, but the brightness quickly faded. He cast his gaze to the sky. “I can come to Yomi as I wish,” he said, “but once you work for Izanami, you won’t see me anymore.”