Keiko caught up to him. “Don’t panic. If their shadows are here, so are they. They’re alive. You can use the shadows to find them.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
He looked back to where he’d left the shadow versions of his friends. They weren’t moving. Instead, they remained clustered around Koichi and Masaru.
With a ragged breath, he decided to try and use his fledgling powers again.
Praying he got this right, he commanded those shadows to return to their bodies.
As if they knew what he was doing, they sneered at him before they dispersed.
Ryuichi ran after them, hoping they took him to his friends.
They did. He found Takara first. She was helping her brother, who was wounded, strangely, in the legs, as if Mikito had suffered the same injury as his shadow. “What happened?”
She swallowed hard before she answered. “It was awful. A bunch of monks attacked us.”
He scowled at her words. “Monks?”
“Yes, they...” Her voice trailed off as she met his gaze. “Ryuichi? What happened to your eye?”
“My eye?”
“It’s turned white.”
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Two days later, after everything had settled back to a seminormal state, Ryuichi stared at himself in the mirror, still unable to believe what had happened to his friends. What had happened to him. He was like Masaru now, only his friend had two white eyes.
He had one of each.
Because he was tied to both worlds.
The human and the shadows.
Either the darkness serves me, or I serve it. Even now, he saw the shadows in a way he never had before. Could hear them whispering their secrets to him.
Even his own.
Ryuichi-kage. His best friend.
His worst enemy. Because he knew his shadow was hungry now. Salivating. Having tasted its freedom, it liked it.
And it wanted more.
It was a scary proposition. Terrifying, really. How had he come to this?
Oh, that’s right. He remembered. Bad guys chasing him. World in chaos.
Parents fighting.
Masaru being stupid.
Keiko hiding him in the human world when he didn’t belong here. But this was the only home he’d ever known.
It was the world he was willing to die for, no matter how it treated him.
