Shadow of The Fox (Shadow of the Fox #1) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,105

magic had a certain feel, I’d discovered. Fox magic flickered and pulsed like heatless fire. The monks’ ki energy tingled like the air before a storm. Tatsumi’s shadow magic was almost invisible, but it was still there if you were very observant; it felt like a cool, dark mist settling over your skin.

This felt like a million spiders, maggots and centipedes were wriggling under my clothes. I shuddered, but as quickly as it had come, the feeling faded as the magic scattered to the wind and was gone.

“There.” The ronin shouldered his weapon, seeming oblivious to the strange energy pulse. “Fixed. No more creepy birds. We can go now, right?”

Tatsumi sighed. “You might have made it worse.”

Resisting the urge to flail my arms to make sure there were no insects in my sleeves, I walked across the road to where the bird had fallen. Circling the trunk, I saw the arrow tip poking up from the weeds and peered down, expecting to see the corpse of a large black crow.

A chill went through my stomach. There was no body, not technically. The arrow shaft, jutting up from the dirt, pierced the rib cage of a bleached white skeleton, fragile wing bones crumpled in the grass, surrounded by feathers. The skull lay against a tree root, beak open in a last indignant caw, completely bare of skin. It looked like it had been dead for months, rather than the few seconds it took to cross the road.

I swallowed hard, feeling the two boys come up behind me and peer over my shoulder. Okame let out a low curse, as I stepped closer to Tatsumi, glancing up at his expression. “That’s not normal, is it?” I asked in a small voice. “I’m pretty certain that’s not normal.”

“No,” Tatsumi answered, his eyes narrowed to violet slits. “It’s blood magic.”

A shudder went through me. Blood magic. Master Isao had told me about it, once, as a warning. Unlike normal magic, where it was believed the kami-touched were chosen by the gods themselves, blood magic could be performed by nearly anyone, from the lowliest farmer to the highest-ranking magistrate. As its name suggested, blood fueled its power; the more blood spilled, the stronger the spell. It could raise the dead, manipulate emotions, or summon a demon from the depths of Jigoku. But such power came with a hidden, terrible price. Blood magic was the magic of death and corruption, the magic of Jigoku. The more you used it, the more pieces of your soul you gave away, bit by bit, until you were a husk of something that had once been human. Eventually the practitioner was consumed by the darkness of his own making and became one of Jigoku’s own, an oni or other demon, damned to the abyss until the end of time.

“Blood magic.” The ronin curled a lip at the pile of feathers and bones at the bottom of the tree. “Well, that’s great, now I’ve killed someone’s favorite abomination. There’s probably a fuming blood mage out there who’s making a wara ningyo in my image right now.”

“Unlikely,” Tatsumi said. Wara ningyo, straw dolls fashioned in the target’s image, were a common item for carrying out curses, but they needed a bit of the victim itself—hair, blood or fingernails—for the ritual to work. Once, when I was younger and angry at being made to repolish the floor in the main hall, I’d used fox magic to make a bit of straw look like a curse doll and hung it outside Denga’s quarters. It was hard not to wince at what had come next. That was the one and only time I could remember Master Isao being furious with me.

And then, I had another thought, one that turned everything inside me to ice. “Someone sent this thing,” I said, looking at Tatsumi. “To follow us. Because of the scroll.” Quickly, I added, “Because they think we have it. Or that we know where it is.”

“Wait, what?” The ronin stared at me like my ears had suddenly appeared. “Clearly, I’ve missed the first half of this story,” he said. “Back up a bit. Who’s following us? What’s this scroll you keep talking about?”

Tatsumi didn’t answer, but I saw him stiffen. Clearly, he did not like talking about the scroll, especially in the company of the ronin. I didn’t, either. I could feel the scroll case hidden within the furoshiki, my great, terrible secret. But it made sense. Master Isao had warned that many would be