Whatever this creature was, it did not fear her.
A thin smile sparkled at the right corner of his mouth. “The year is somewhere between 1868 and 1878, isn’t it?” he said.
Sen went very still. She had the odd sensation that the world was suddenly tilting downward, shifting the balance in the spirit’s favor. He had asked her a question that made no sense—of course he knew what year it was, so why ask her?—which meant his game had begun.
“You don’t know what year it is?” she asked, rather than answer his question. She was certain that any answer she gave would be her undoing.
“I know what year it ishere,” the spirit said, tilting his head toward the room behind him. “But the tatami on your side is still green, which means it’s new, and the last occupants of this house were in the Meiji era. I can also smell that you’ve burntcharcoal, maybe for a stove, since it’s too hot for an irori. Even rural parts of Japan were industrialized in the early Meiji period, so you should have an electric or gas stove by now. But your robes are un-dyed, so you’re probably poor and not the first to buy new appliances. It’s most likely the beginnings of the Meiji era, between 1868 and 1878.”
When he finished, his gaze flickered all over her, itching like spiders crawling across her skin. It lingered on her sword hand, the frayed hem of her skirts, the mended socks on her feet. Sen could do nothing but sit perfectly still and let him dissect her with his eyes and blind her with his words. She didn’t know what game he was playing, but she felt the distinct sensation that she was losing.
“What year is it?” he asked when she didn’t respond, his voice tight with impatience.
Sen knew she shouldn’t have responded. But she turned the answer over in her mind and didn’t see how telling him such a fact could lead to her demise. It wasn’t as if she’d told him her name, her hopes, her fears.
“1877,” she said at last. “As I’m sure you know.”
The spirit nodded as if she’d responded correctly. “Well, that’s unfortunate,” he said. “For you, I mean.”
Sen’s pulse echoed in her ears. “Excuse me?” she said, clenching her teeth and sliding her sword out an inch.
But his gaze didn’t even drift down to her sword, like he saw nothing at all except for her eyes. “I mean that if the year is 1877, then I’m not the spirit.Youare.”
For a moment, Sen felt as though she’d plunged into a cold, dark sea. It was not his words that scared her, but the unflinching way he stared back at her, the ease in his posture, the way his words felt as light as a piece of silk carried away on a cool wind—Sen could not detect a lie in his features.
But there it was at last, out in the open—his plan for unmaking her.
He was here to burrow into her brain like a maggot into the flesh of a corpse. Maybe he wanted to distract her from her training and ensure that she failed when the soldiers came for her family. Maybe he wanted to drive her mad until she cut her own throat with her sword. Or maybe he just wanted to watch her squirm the way sick children cut the bellies of rats and squirrels to see how they twitched and cried and died in the dirt.
But Sen could not be toyed with so easily.
“I am not a ghost,” she said. She knew this was true from the way her pulse hammered through her body, the way sweat gathered beneath her palms, the way her stomach burned with hunger.
But the spirit only blinked at her protest, like her words were nothing but dying petals torn away in the wind. “Today is October twentieth, 2026,” he said. “You don’t look over a hundred and forty years old.”
Sen’s grip tightened on her sword. She shouldn’t have entertained his games. Already, his words had grown roots that were trying to worm their way into her mind, to make her fear. “You expect me to believe that?” she said.
He tilted his head. “I’m just telling you the truth,” he said, his words light as dandelion parachutes, as if he was the singular keeper of the truth, as if words could not cut flesh if they were true.
Sen shook her head. “I will not be undone so easily. If you wish to destroy me, you’ll have to try harder than that.”
A frown carved down the pale skin of the spirit’s brow. He drew back, as if this possibility surprised him. “Destroy you?” he said. “I want to work with you, not destroy you.”
Sen let out a sharp laugh, shaking her head. “I don’t makedeals with demons,” she said. “If that’s all you have to say, you might as well leave now.”
Something thumped in the hallway beyond her room, and she winced as she realized she’d been too loud. When she turned back to the spirit, his expression had softened, his posture wilted and gray. Even his eyes, which had been a blazing green when she opened the door, now seemed more like stormy sea glass.
“I’ve said all I came to say,” she said. “Do not show your face to me again, or I will be the last person you ever see.”
She reached for the door and began to pull it closed.That was easier than anticipated, she thought as the paper door covered up the spirit’s forlorn expression.
His hand shot out, stopping the door before it could finish closing.
With unexpected strength, he shoved the door back open. Itthunkedas it hit the end of its track. He leaned forward, crossing the invisible barrier into Sen’s side of the house, his eyes blazing green, his starkly pale face lit by the moonlight through her window.
“Do you want to know how you die?” he whispered.
Sen flinched back before she could remember not to show fear. She grappled for the door and tried to yank it shut, but the spirit had braced it open with one arm.
