Page 53 of Son of Shadows

“Oh, I’m sure it is.”

He didn’t like how certain Masaru sounded. Granted, Masaru was always grim, but now he seemed even more dire.

“Have you known many shinigami?” Ryuichi asked him.

“I have.” Masaru’s tone was deadly earnest. “And none of them have ever been good.”

Great, their lives were now in the hands of a trickster god of death.

Awesome.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As Koichi entered Kagemura, he noticed a fishing boat on the horizon. It was a red barge with white sails. There were people on the boat, too, but from this distance, he couldn’t see who they were. Instead, they were just figures cast in shadows.

The boat drew a bit nearer, and Koichi noticed something. The captain commanding the boat. He was still too far away to see who it was. But something about this mysterious creature set Koichi’s nerves on edge. Like his instincts were trying to warn him.

Shinigami.

He heard that word echo in his mind.

Spirits of violent death, they left corpses everywhere they went. How Koichi hated them.

Sadly, he’d met too many yōkai over the years. They all irritated him, but only the shinigami made him shiver down to his bones.

“Something wrong?” Haruki asked as she came to his side.

“I just saw a shinigami.” He jerked his chin in the boat’s direction.

“That’s never a good sign. See a shinigami in the day, and your life will you pay.”

“I don’t think he’s here for us.” A good bet given that the boat was going in the opposite direction. “Let’s keep going.”

Koichi led the group to the nicer part of town. There he spotted a cheap inn where he hoped they could stay the night. He also hoped it would satisfy Haruki and keep her from complaining.

A man like him was fine with anything. He’d even sleep in a gutter if he had to, and honestly, the ones in Kagemura looked pretty good, as far as gutters went.

Splendid, even.

All they had to do was sleep for a few hours and get their strength back. Or at least he had to. Haruki and Ryuichi-kage didn’t have the same needs as humans.

Still, he knew if he told Haruki, “Let’s camp out in the gutter tonight,” her reaction would make him want to hand himself over to Orochi and let the snake eat him.

At least with Orochi, his death would be quick.

Or maybe not. He didn’t really know how long digestion took, but it had to be faster than whatever fresh torments Haruki would come up for him for even suggesting something so foul.

Clearing his throat, Koichi entered the inn to find a yōkai innkeeper. Smiling at him with wide blue eyes, she reminded him of an old neighbor of his from the human realm. Until she elongated her neck several inches so that she could better see Haruki and Ryuichi-kage as they entered the inn behind him.

“Is this human with you?” she asked Haruki in a snotty tone.

Haruki didn’t miss a beat. “He’s my servant. Why? Would you like to buy him?”

Koichi almost laughed out loud. But being human in a yōkai village, he kept his amusement to himself and decided to play along.

The yōkai innkeeper leveled a less-than-flattering stare at him. “No, he seems way past his prime.”

He started to interject, then thought better of it. Best not to cause any trouble.