I settle into an aisle seat as the train pulls away from the station, Shiro at my side. Goro sits in the single seat across the aisle, looking around the train car with curiosity. To my eye, it’s not much to look at: an eggshell-white interior with large cube windows and a burgundy carpet underfoot. Shiro sprang for Gran-class seats, however, which are roomier than their economy counterparts. There’s enough room for Oni-chan’s crate by my feet. The cat growls as I set his carrier down.
Ronin seethes two rows behind Goro. If I turn my head a few degrees, I can see him from the corner of my eye. I consider asking Shiro to switch places with me, but if I move I’ll have to listen to the brothers argue all the way to Kyoto.
“How long is the trip again?” I ask.
“Three and a half hours,” Shiro replies. “It’ll be a good time to practice your mudras and tuts. Goro’s right, you’re getting yourself into enough trouble. You should learn onmyōdō, even if you only master a spell or two for now. Let’s see how fast your fingers can go, hmm?”
“What does speed have to do with spellcasting?” I ask.
“You need to be able to tut in your sleep,” Shiro says, moving his fingers through the Nine Celestial mudras, or the Kuji-in, with ease. “Rin, Pyoh, Toh, Sha—”
“Show-off,” I say, as he turns to me and performs the mudras without looking at his fingertips.
“C’mon, do it with me,” Shiro says, elbowing me playfully and steepling his index fingers into Rin. I mimic his hand motions, and together we say, “Rin.”
Shiro knits his fingers into the next mudra, Pyoh. With his hands pressed together, his middle fingers move over his pointed index fingers and curl down to touch the tips of his thumbs. He does this without thinking; I very much need to look at my hands and sculpt them into the proper position.
“For mortals,” Shiro says, slipping into the Toh mudra, easy as breathing, “these mudras are an aspect of esoteric Buddhism. They symbolize the forces of the universe, and how all the elements are united against evil. But for people like us”—Shiro performs a mudra I don’t recognize, followed by a cut quick through the air with two fingers—“well, they’re magic.”
The tips of his fingers catch fire. It dances along his skin without burning him. Shiro grins at me, and then shakes it off.
“But I’m a mortal,” I say.
“A mortal who carries the blood of Abe no Seimei in her veins,” Shiro says.
“He lived a very long time ago,” I say softly.
He runs a knuckle down the side of my face, leaning closer. “And yet it seems that his mother hasn’t forgotten your line, not through all these centuries. Who knows, maybe you have enough kitsune blood to cast foxfire, even—”
Something smacks into the window beside us. Shiro and I both jump. I smother a scream with my hands, not wanting to disrupt any of the other passengers in the car.
A heavy clunk! echoes against the train’s roof. We all look up. There are at least ten other passengers in our car, all of whom startle from their seats, asking variations of What was that? Others peer out the windows, shielding their eyes from the mid-morning sunlight.
“We’ve got company,” Ronin says, getting out of his seat.
Shiro looks at the other passengers. “Get out of the car!”
“What?” one of the passengers asks. “Why?”
Before Shiro can answer, the connective tissue between the train cars splits open. Light stabs through the wounds. A torrent of white silk moths spills inside, their wings beating against the train car’s glass doors. My mouth falls open.
“Go!” Shiro shouts at the other passengers. “Just go!”
The others flee as the glass doors shatter inward. The moths flurry through the car like snow, rushing toward us. Soft, fuzzy bodies slam into me, chalking up the air and making it harder to breathe. I hold my hands up to block my face. Someone shoves me backward, toward the window, and I nearly trip over an armrest. The other passengers shriek, fleeing out the other side of the car to safety.
Goro speaks a single word in a language I don’t recognize. A shock wave slams into the train car, shoving the moths away from us. They scatter like autumn leaves, driven forth by strong winds.
Metal whistles through the air, its screech halted by a sharp clap. I look up, barely able to see Goro standing several feet down the aisle from me, the blade of a katana stoppered between his palms.
A woman in a white kimono wields the sword.
No, she’s not a woman, she’s a shinigami. One with more butterflies than any death god I saw in Tokyo. Her hair’s done up in a simple chignon. Her beauty is like the edge of a sharp sword—best appreciated from a distance.
Shiro pushes me behind him, putting his body between me and the shinigami’s blade. Oni-chan growls at my feet. He sinks his claws into the crate walls, making it buck and rattle. Ronin steps into the aisle behind this new intruder, one hand on his sheathed sword.
“Stand aside,” she says. “My orders are to kill the girl.” Her gaze hits me like a blade between the ribs. I try to gasp, but I can’t suck the air in. My lungs feel like they’ve popped in my chest.
“Who are you?” Goro asks. “I know most of the shinigami in Yomi, but I’ve never seen your face before.”
The Shinigami in White narrows her eyes. “It doesn’t matter who I am.”
“I disagree,” Goro says. “For I’ve heard stories of a shinigami who serves Shuten-doji as an assassin, one who dresses in white so that the blood of her victims may stain her garb. It is said she keeps every kimono.”
One corner of the Shinigami in White’s lips twitches upward. “Do they also say that she displays the patterns from her favorite kills in her home?”
“No,” Goro says, returning her wicked smile with a grimace. “But I’d believe it.”
“You are surrounded, lady.” Ronin draws his sword. “The only blood that will be staining your kimono today is your own.”
“Is that so?” the Shinigami in White says with a short laugh. She lifts a hand, beckoning to the moths that cover almost every nearby surface in the train car. They beat their wings and rise. “Let’s see you try to land an attack on me, child.”
Her moths envelop her in a cyclone, and then explode outward in a swift-moving cloud. Blades clang. Goro swears, then grunts in pain. Shiro scrambles into the aisle, shouting, “No!”
I drop between the seats. As the moths thunder overhead, I reach down and open Oni-chan’s crate door. The cat darts out with a yowl. To my right, the sounds of a struggle reach through the drumming wings. Another shout rocks the train car, clearing the moths from the air; but this time, the voice belongs to the Shinigami in White. I rise, white moth dust speckling my shoulders and everything else in the car. My allies are cocooned in pill-shaped, silken white sacs. One sac writhes on the floor in front of the Shinigami in White. Hands press against the springy wall, from the inside, and I swear I hear Shiro shouting, “Run, Kira!”
And go where? I ask him in my head, easing back as the Shinigami in White turns toward me. There isn’t anywhere to run on a train!
I scramble to remember the spells Shiro taught me, but all I can think about is the shinigami’s katana plunging into my gut, or feeling my heart stop beating around that blade. Fear scatters everything I’ve learned to the dark corners of my brain.