I join him by the door, leaning one shoulder against the plaster wall. “Where’d you go this morning?”
His smile drops off his lips. “Mother wanted me to pick Ronin up from the train station.”
“And you didn’t kill him?” I ask in deadpan. “That’s a shame.”
“Don’t think I didn’t want to,” he says through clenched teeth. He balls his fists, the tendons popping out in his neck. “I couldn’t even look at that bastard, not after everything he’s done. You lost a grandfather last night, and I lost a brother. He’s forgotten the face of our birth mother. His tails are gone. He is gone.”
I open my mouth to respond, but can’t find the right words to say. Maybe there aren’t any, really, that can fix this kind of grief. Reaching up, I cup one of his cheeks in my palm.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Those are the only words I can think of, but at least they’re true.
“Me too.” Some of the anger drains out of him, softening the angles of his face. “Why choose death over life?”
“I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that question, no matter who’s asking it,” I say, stroking his cheekbone with my thumb. Shiro shifts closer, bringing our faces just inches away from each other. My breath catches, and I go still. My heartbeat thumps in the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if he can feel it on his cheek.
But before he can kiss me, something shatters near the breakfast table. I startle. Oni-chan hops off the table, headed for the puddle of natto on the floor. The cat slurps soybeans off the shell of a broken bowl.
“You’re a rude cat,” Shiro says with a little laugh. Oni-chan growls at him before polishing off my breakfast.
“I wasn’t that hungry,” I say, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. While Shiro and I couldn’t have been in Yomi for more than twenty minutes, we lost almost six hours in the real world. My body still hasn’t adjusted for that fact. “We should get going, anyway. The day’s already half-gone.”
“Where do you want to start?” Shiro asks.
“The Kanda Shrine,” I say, turning toward the door. “Maybe Goro will know how to get us out of this mess.”
Ten
Yoyogi Park
Tokyo, Japan
Goro no longer works for the Kanda Shrine.
The Kanda priests tell me it’s been months since Goro was reassigned to the Meiji Shrine in the heart of Tokyo. It’s a more prestigious assignment, yes, but the fact leaves me feeling hollow inside. A small seed of doubt sinks into the darkest soils of my mind: Why did Grandfather keep such an important detail from me? What harm would it have caused for me to know Goro was now at the Meiji? And what else did Grandfather neglect to say? Did he think we had more time, even with a blood moon looming?
It hurts to know I’ll never have answers for any of these questions.
“The Meiji’s right in the middle of Yoyogi Park,” Shiro says as we head toward the train station, Oni-chan trotting at our feet. “We can look for shinigami while we’re there. Two birds, one stone.”
“It’s already getting late,” I say, shielding my eyes as I look up at the sky. “We might have another three hours of sunlight, and another day will be gone. We’ve barely started, and we’re already running out of time.”
“We still have a few good hours to look,” Shiro replies. So we take a train. Two. People shoot looks at the ugly “cat” peering out of the crate beside me, but say nothing. I’m used to people staring at me, and Oni-chan seems unconcerned with the opinions of mortals.
After finding Oni-chan his yakitori skewers, Shiro and I begin our search in Yoyogi Park—a sprawling, 130-acre park at the heart of the Shibuya district. Here, the trees stand so tall they block out most of Tokyo’s skyscrapers. Wide walking paths snake through the trees, skirt ponds, and crisscross the lawns. On weekends, subculture groups gather in the park: not just cosplayers, but rockabilly enthusiasts, martial arts clubs, jugglers, and more.
As we walk in, a girl group dances to a Twice K-pop song. College-aged men toss a baseball around on the lawns, while a mother chases her laughing toddler down the path. Everything looks so ordinary, so . . . normal.
Well, everything except for the boy with the fox ears and the two-tailed demon cat walking on his hind legs and eating yakitori skewers. I’m not sure what other people see when they look at Oni-chan, but I know they don’t see the foul-tempered, mannerless creature I see. The one who, for some reason, has taken an instant liking to me.
We pass a group of schoolchildren playing Kagome, Kagome, and I shudder. I’ll never be able to hear that tune again without thinking of Grandfather’s blood on my skin, or remembering the way his last breath wheezed from his chest. I hear so much darkness in the song now. Darkness and death.
“You sure we’re going to find shinigami here?” I ask Shiro, scanning the crowds. “Shouldn’t we be looking in a place that’s a little more . . . maybe like the Red Oni?”
“Meaning?” Shiro asks.
“Someplace more . . . I don’t know, magical?” I say, frowning at the word because it’s not exactly what I mean. The Red Oni is more than magical, it’s . . . “Otherworldly.”
“Shinigami are drawn to human crowds,” Shiro says. “Busy street corners, hospitals, bars—the more accident-prone a place, the better.”
We wander down a manicured path, beneath tree canopies edged in autumn reds and oranges. “But how do they know when it’s someone’s time to die?” I ask.
Shiro shrugs. “Shinigami see both the mortal realms and Yomi at once. When it’s time for a mortal to die, they . . . flicker. Or something. Mother never talks about what she does in detail. I guess she thinks it’s tacky.”
“I’m surprised she cares,” I say, frowning as a scruffy, unleashed dog wanders a little too close to Oni-chan . . . or maybe a little too close to his yakitori. The yokai cat hisses and swats at the dog’s nose, then throws an empty skewer at the canine as it scurries away, whimpering.
“While she can be ambitious, vain, and definitely murderous”—Shiro smiles at a child as she scampers past us—“Mother does care for the welfare of her people and the Twilight Court. And I think—in her own twisted way, at least—for me.”
I cock my head at him. “I thought you hated her?”
“No,” he says with a firm shake of his head.
“Even after everything she’s done?”
“She took Ronin and me in when our birth mother died. Besides, I’m not sure you’re in much of a position to judge,” he fires back, nudging me playfully with an elbow. “Your relationship with your mom sounds messy, too.”
I sigh. “You know, Grandfather once told me that my mother used to love the shrine, and now—”
“Look,” Shiro says, pointing at a young businessman lingering on one of the park’s arched bridges. He wears a suit of solid black, but the fabric looks like it’s edged in twilight. A cloud of gray butterflies whirls around him, the tips of their wings trailing bright moonlight. With his slicked-back hair, high cheekbones, and skin as smooth as glass, he’s just as beautiful as O-bei.