O-bei moves down from the veranda and into the mossy courtyard, her gaze fixed on Shiro. Her furisode may be the most magnificent kimono I have ever seen, its colors a cascading purple ombré that starts as lavender at the shoulder and falls into bruised eggplant by her feet. Embroidered butterflies shimmer on the fabric, decorating the entirety of the kimono’s long train.
Shiro bows as O-bei approaches us, and, not wanting to appear rude, I do the same. As she moves, the butterflies flutter their silver-thread wings, scattering across the silk. She presses her fingers together in an upside-down triangle in front of her obi, and her hitodama descend to float around her head and shoulders. Their light makes her look otherworldly. Dangerous, too.
It takes me several seconds to realize my mouth’s hanging open. I close it, before noticing the small brown stain on the front of my sweater. Standing next to this creature, I must look like a fool.
“So,” O-bei finally says, puncturing the silence. “You’ve come a very long way to tattle on your elder brother, Shiro.”
“To tattle on him?” Shiro says, his brow furrowing. “No, Mother, I came to you because Ronin broke the oath he swore to Amaterasu. His actions got many people killed.”
“And since when has that been a problem in this house?” O-bei asks, arching a brow. “Death is the family vocation, my child.”
“It’s your vocation,” Shiro snaps. “Not mine.”
O-bei’s pout turns into a close-lipped smile. “And now it is also your brother’s.”
A beat of pure silence rolls out around us.
Shiro growls from the bottoms of his lungs, low and guttural. When he curls his upper lip, his incisors look sharper than before. “Ronin would never forsake his heritage to become something like you. We came here to ask for your help, not to hear your lies.”
“Shiro, you wound me,” O-bei says, reaching up to rest a hand on Shiro’s cheek. She stands several inches shorter than him, so she reaches high to touch his face. Her kimono’s sleeve slides back, revealing pale skin with blackened veins beneath. “There is no greater calling in all of Yomi than to usher mortal souls into death.”
O-bei’s words strike my mind like a gong. I’d thought she might be some sort of yokai, perhaps a kitsune who preferred a fully human form, or even a futukuchi-onna. But O-bei Katayama is no mere yokai.
“You’re a shinigami,” I say, and my voice shakes with the words. “You’re a death god.”
“Goddess, yes,” O-bei says, barely taking notice of me or my shock. Instead, she looks up into Shiro’s eyes. “Ronin has chosen to join me in my work. Who am I to deny him the right to be my successor and heir?”
Shiro trembles with barely restrained rage. “He swore an oath to the Goddess. . . . He was one of her priests. . . .”
“As was I, many centuries ago. Our kind are sometimes made in that fashion,” O-bei says, stroking Shiro’s cheek with her thumb. He growls and steps away from her touch, flattening his ears against his scalp. “Everything I do, my darling boy, I do for my children, my family, and my people. The Twilight Court cannot sustain itself without human hosts. And if Shuten-doji succeeds in his old mission, well, my people will starve.”
“Ronin was with Shuten-doji’s monsters tonight,” Shiro snaps.
“I know,” O-bei says, pointing a finger in Shiro’s face. “It has taken me decades to earn the trust of Shuten-doji’s general, Tamamo-no-Mae. Don’t you dare interfere with my plans to destroy them, no matter how opposed you may be to my methods.”
Anger swells in my breast. Over the last twelve hours, this world has tried to convince me that I am powerless, unwanted, unloved. And now I’m told that my grandfather’s murder was just a political power play? Among monsters, no less?
O-bei continues, “It will be our power, not our principles, that will save us in the coming war, Shiro. Remember that.”
“You’re wrong,” I say.
O-bei turns her head in a slow, deliberate way, considering me out of the corner of her eye. Her very gaze chills the air around me.
“Perhaps we haven’t been properly introduced,” O-bei says. “I am O-bei Katayama, Lady of the Twelve Dread Wastes, the August Granter of Wishes, and the Keeper of the Mortal Souls of Kyō. And you should know, girl, that I am never wrong.”
It’s strange how, in certain moments of sheer stupidity, fear can give way to fury.
“What is power without honor?” I say, balling my fists so tight, my fingernails bite into my flesh. “You stole my loved ones from me. You desecrated my home, and made the sacred profane for your wars—”
“Kira,” Shiro says, a note of warning in his voice.
“Which means you now owe me a debt of honor, Lady Katayama,” I say, ignoring Shiro. “You took something from me in exchange for nothing, and if you think I will easily forgive that debt, you’re wrong.”
The word wrong echoes through the empty courtyard.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
One by one, the hitodama lights hovering over O-bei’s head wink out. Little by little, the glow seeps from the room, till the shadows draw close and my bracelet burns my wrist.
“Wrong?” O-bei turns to me, slowly. Black veins branch across her throat, over her jawbone, and up her cheeks, as if her blood had been pumped full of sumi-e ink. Her brilliant, kaleidoscopic eyes darken into ebony mirrors, and the kernels of her teeth now have an onyx gleam.
Beside me, Shiro sucks in a sharp breath. He holds up his palms, placating, apologizing. “Mother, please, Kira didn’t mean it, her grief is making her say things she doesn’t understand—”
“You think I am wrong, Kira Fujikawa,” O-bei says, cocking her head, examining me. She pulls the ornaments from her hair, dropping them to the ground. They tinkle like bells as they strike the soft earth. When she shakes her hair loose, a thousand dark-winged butterflies spill from between the strands. The tiny creatures flutter around her in a great cloud. They stir up an icy breeze that bites into my cheeks.
“You think I owe you a debt of honor.” O-bei thrusts out her right hand parallel to the ground. A pale katana materializes in her palm, its blade reminiscent of the one Ronin carried at the shrine. The metal glows with the dull, ashen light of a cloudy day.
Shiro and I both step back. He eases in front of me, shielding me with his body.
“Then allow me to take one more thing from you,” O-bei says, her voice no longer a musical, courtly sound, but the woven litany of a thousand wails. “Your life.”
Her butterflies rush at me, enveloping me in a dark, velvet-winged wind. With an unholy shriek, O-bei leaps up into the air, the room’s shadows unfurling around her like a set of great black wings. She draws her katana up in both hands, pointing its glowing tip at my chest.
O-bei dives toward me.
Someone screams.
Instinct kicks in. I throw my hands up in vain, crossing my wrists in front of my head. I expect the blade’s chill to slice between my ribs, to stop the beating heart in my chest. To steal the soul off my lips.
The sword’s tip collides with my raised wrists. Pain sends white-hot sparks crashing down my arms.
And light—radiant, golden light—explodes around me.