The minutes stretch so long, they might as well be hours.
“Hey!” Araki-sensei, her voice muffled by the closet door. “Who are you? What are you doing in here? Is that a sword?”
I press my lips together, praying silently that the Shinigami in White doesn’t harm Araki-sensei.
“Be quiet, woman,” the Shinigami in White says. Her wooden geta sandals click on the linoleum floor. Getting closer.
No, I whisper in my head. No, no, no. Turn around, go away. My palm grows sweaty in Shiro’s hand.
“Only authorized personnel are supposed to be in the school after hours,” Araki-sensei says. “I’m calling the police.”
“Very well,” the Shinigami in White says. “See how much good it will do you.”
There’s a loud ding! like the sound of one of the school’s old phones being smashed against the floor. Araki-sensei shrieks, so high and piercing, it makes my blood’s temperature drop. I shut my eyes and bite my lip to keep quiet. All the memories of the night Grandfather died rush back at me, taunting me from the closet corners.
Coward!
Your grandfather’s dead because of you!
Everyone will die because of you!
The shinigami’s voice breaks through the closet door again: “Get out, or I’ll kill you.”
A weeping Araki-sensei must comply with the demand, because the door to the teachers’ office slams a few seconds later.
Click-clack.
The Shinigami in White’s steps draw closer.
Click-clack.
She takes her time, rummaging through the room.
Click-clack.
A shadow falls over the line of light on the floor. I hold my breath, my heart bashing itself against my ribs.
The door opens.
I can’t see the shinigami’s face, nor any part of her besides the hem of her pale kimono. A single moth lands on her toe. I wonder if it can see me, shrouded in musty school flags and shadows, or if Shiro’s spell has worn off or worn down.
After several torturous seconds, the shinigami closes the door.
I don’t breathe again until the office door closes, too. Then Shiro and I slump together, our shoulders touching. We don’t risk so much as a word. He leans down and presses a kiss into my hair, breathing in deep. It’d be romantic if I weren’t so terrified all my insides were about to become my outsides.
My phone rumbles in my pocket. Cursing in my head, I yank out my phone and check the messages.
It’s from Roji: Send me your location now—we’ll open a torii gate for you. O-bei’s here and she says your life is in danger.
I drop her a pin of my current coordinates, then type back to her. There’s a shinigami here, at my school—
A white moth flutters down and lands on my screen. Its little pipe-cleaner antennae twitch as if to say, Caught you.
“Oh no,” I whisper, fear gripping me.
“Move!” Shiro kicks the closet door open. He darts out first, looking right, then left. “Hurry,” he says, offering me a hand. We race past the teachers’ desks, papers fluttering in our wake, to the big bank of windows on the far wall. I throw the latch on the closest one, but it’s painted shut. Wire mesh tempers the glass pane. Shiro punches the window, but it doesn’t shatter.
“Try the other ones!” I whisper fiercely, hurrying to the next window and fiddling with the lock. None of them budge. My heart pounds in my throat, and I beg the latches to move. “Can you use the door-opening spell again?!”
“That’s an air pressure spell!” Shiro shouts. “It won’t work on—”
The door to the teachers’ office explodes open. A cloud of white moths swirls into the room, heralds of my would-be killer. I spin, putting my back to the wall of windows.
“Enough!” the Shinigami in White shouts. “You die, now.”
“I don’t take orders from dead people!” Shiro shouts. A plume of fire explodes through the room, roaring over the desks and setting their surfaces alight. The Shinigami in White leaps through the flames, brandishing her blade. Shiro dodges her first swing, then counters her second by grabbing a desk and flipping it upright. The Shinigami in White’s sword slams into the wood. Papers, lamps, staplers, and wire baskets roll off the desk’s surface, bouncing off her shoulders and body, and then crashing into the floor. The shinigami shrieks with rage, trying to wrench her sword free.
With a shout, Shiro throws his shoulder into the desk. It topples over with a crash, trapping the Shinigami in White from the hip down. She claws at the wooden desk, her sword just out of reach. Shiro won’t be able to hold her off much longer, not without help.
And that’s when I spot the sasumata. Every school in Japan has a set of these polearms—they look like long, blunted pitchforks. I grab two from the wall rack and rush across the room, tossing one to Shiro. He snatches it from the air, leaps onto the desk drawers, and slams the sasumata’s prongs around the Shinigami in White’s torso and upper arms. She swears and struggles, but Shiro keeps her trapped against the floor. When she tries to tut a spell, I leap forward, capturing her right arm against the desk’s back flank.
Shiro looks up at me and grins. “You’re getting good at this.”
“I guess that’s one way to put it,” I say with a grimace. The Shinigami in White grabs my sasumata with her free hand. I lean my full weight on the pole, engaging the calf muscles in my legs. I’m holding her, but barely.
“Now what will you do?” the Shinigami in White asks us. “Keep me captive till the room burns down? Or hope your mortal police arrive in time to save you?”
“Please, Yuza darling,” someone says from the hallway. “Do you really think I’d let you kill an ally of the Twilight Court?”
I turn. O-bei stands in the doorway with a smirk. Even in the world of the living, she looks every bit as ethereal as she did in Yomi—her furisode is made from black silk patterned with glowing white chrysanthemums and shaded with the red shadows of butterflies. She wears her hair in an elaborate updo, and when she steps into the room, her delicate hair ornaments twinkle and ring.
“Damn you and your lies, Katayama,” Yuza—the Shinigami in White now has a name—wheezes from the ground.
“I sent my son to stop you the first time,” O-bei says, strolling to my side. “But since you are so very persistent, I thought a personal visit might be more . . . impactful?”
O-bei knew about the train attack, and she didn’t warn us? I shoot a dark look at Shiro. He narrows his eyes, but otherwise, his expression is unreadable.
“I’ll kill you all,” Yuza snaps.
“I see you are succeeding in that goal,” O-bei replies, sounding bored.
Yuza hisses, but she’s interrupted by the sound of heavy boots in the hallway. “Did you find them?” Roji calls. She pokes her head into the teachers’ office, her eyes going wide when her gaze lands on Yuza. “By the gods, is that Yuza of Osore?”
“Indeed,” O-bei replies.
Roji blinks. “Whoa. Do you want me to kill her?”
“Oh no,” O-bei says, and her smile looks positively crocodilian. “No, no, my children. She comes with us. I have plans for our dear Yuza-san, the Black Blade of the Iron Palace.”