Shadow of The Fox (Shadow of the Fox #1) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,40

suppose you have travel papers, do you?” the boy asked.

I blinked. “No. What are travel papers?”

“They’re...” He shook his head. “Never mind,” he murmured, dismissing the matter. “It can’t be helped now. We’ll deal with the problem if it arises.”

“Ano,” I added as the human turned away. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated a moment, then replied in a low, empty voice, “Kage Tatsumi.”

Kage. Kage was the Shadow Clan, a family of secrets and hidden knowledge, according to my studies. It seemed fitting for the dark, cold-eyed boy in front of me. “I’m Yumeko.” I tried to smile, though with his back turned he probably wouldn’t see it. “Thank you, for taking me to the capital, Tatsumi-san. And, you know, saving me from the demons.”

He didn’t give any indication that he’d heard. With a quiet “Let’s go,” he stepped forward and vanished into the shadows like he was part of the night itself. I glanced once more at the sky, at the smoke and embers still rising over the treetops, marking the end of a way of life.

Closing my eyes, I whispered a quick prayer to Jinkei, the Kami of Mercy, and Doroshin, the Kami of Roads, for Godspeed and to guide everyone to their final destination, before I turned and followed Kage Tatsumi into the dark.

PART 2

9

The Lingering Soul

Being a ghost was an exercise in patience.

When Suki was still very young, her mother would tell her ghost stories in the flickering candlelight of home. At the end of the day, while Mura Akihito was in his shop, slaving over his newest masterpiece, Suki would sit on a stool as her mother swept or cooked, and listen to tales of beautiful women betrayed or abandoned by their lovers, who pined away until their bodies died but their yearning lived on. In these stories, it was always the women who died of broken hearts, Suki noticed. Who took their own lives in grief. Or who were brutally murdered and returned for vengeance. Sometimes, immoral women became something terrible and unnatural. A greedy woman might grow another mouth in the back of her head that consumed all the food it could find. An unfaithful woman might discover that, while she slept, her neck elongated to incredible lengths as her head roamed around freely, licking up lamp oil and attacking small animals. In the most wicked cases, the woman’s grief, jealousy or rage would turn her into an oni, a hannya, or even a terrible giant serpent, demons that always met their ends on some great samurai’s sword.

Terrible fates, the soul that had once been Suki mused, floating soundlessly down a narrow castle hallway. Certainly, the women who turned into such monsters were grotesque and to be pitied. But right now, she thought she would much rather be a demon.

A few yards ahead of her, Lady Satomi sauntered down the narrow corridor of the abandoned castle, parasol swaying, unaware of the soul trailing behind her. After the terrible night of her death, Suki had attempted to follow the woman, but had lost her in the twisting halls of the castle. Alone, the ghost that had been Suki had drifted aimlessly from room to hallway to courtyard, bewildered and confused. She’d been certain that, before she became a ghost, she had been a maid at the imperial palace. How she’d come to this dark, abandoned castle was a mystery; the last thing she remembered was delivering a coil of rope to a storehouse in the imperial gardens. But this castle was definitely not the emperor’s golden Palace of the Sun. Everything felt cold, lifeless, abandoned. Even the demons were gone. After feasting on her body, Yaburama and the smaller demons had departed the castle as well, and with no company but the spiders and rats, time had blurred into a bleak, lonely haze.

But this evening, Lady Satomi had returned, striding through the halls of the abandoned castle as if she did so every night. Stunned, Suki trailed behind her, keeping out of sight while she pondered what to do.

Her first thought, of course, was vengeance. To haunt Satomi relentlessly until she went mad from guilt. But, unlike the ghost stories her mother used to tell, where the spirits could curse and even physically harm their victims, Suki’s interactions with the world were limited. She had no body; her insubstantial form passed through everything she touched. If she thought about it, she could manifest as a ghostly version of her old self, but if she lost