Shadow of The Fox (Shadow of the Fox #1) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,91

be eaten by gaki. I bet he’ll explain everything now.” Tatsumi didn’t answer, and I frowned at him. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on, Tatsumi? Aren’t you even a little curious?”

“No.”

“Well, I am.”

“I am, too,” Okame announced, to my surprise. “Now that you mention it, I sure would like to have a chat with our friendly headman and ask why he’s feeding travelers to the resident gaki. In fact, I think we should go right now.” He strode to the doorway and peered out, dark eyes searching. “I don’t see any hungry ghosts wandering around,” he muttered. “And if we do run into more, we know they can be killed, or banished or whatever.” He looked back, a challenging smirk crossing his face. “To the headman’s house, then. You coming or not, Kage-san?”

Tatsumi continued to say nothing, his expression blank as he watched us. Finally, he rose gracefully to his feet, slid Kamigoroshi through his belt and glided across the floor. I felt a strange tingle in the pit of my stomach, my heartbeat quickening as he drew close.

“Let’s do this quickly.”

* * *

The villagers watched us as we marched down the path toward the headman’s house. No one had slept tonight, it appeared. Not a soul was in the open, but I saw them peering through the slats in their windows, eyes wide with amazement and fear. Clearly, they hadn’t expected us to survive the gaki attack, and they were wisely staying out of reach. No one challenged us as we strolled through the village, past the headman’s front gate and up the steps to his house. Only now I did I notice that his door was made of heavy, reinforced wood, and that several long gashes had been raked across the surface.

Unsurprisingly, it was barred from the inside. Okame rattled it a couple times before stepping back with a dark smile. “Kage-san?” He glanced at Tatsumi and gestured to the door. “Would you like to do the honors?”

Tatsumi’s sword flashed from its sheath, slicing through the thick wood like it was made of rice paper. Stepping forward, Okame raised one finger and tapped the surface, and the doors swung back with a groan.

Warily, we stepped into the house. The entryway was empty, but a faint light came from farther inside, flickering over the walls and floors. Sliding open a panel, we saw the headman kneeling in the center of the floor, a lit brazier casting his features in a red glow.

As soon as the door opened, he fell forward, prostrating himself to the floor, pressing his face into the wood.

“Mercy!” His muffled voice floated up from the floor, shaking and terrified. “Have mercy, my lords. Kill me if you must, but spare the village. They don’t deserve your wrath.”

“They don’t?” Okame crossed his arms. “So, you’re telling me that they didn’t try to feed us to the gaki? That they were completely ignorant of what was happening tonight?” He snorted in obvious disbelief. “Well, don’t I feel foolish, thinking this whole village was setting us up to get eaten.”

I frowned at him. “But I thought they were setting us up to be eaten. That’s why they were...oh. Sarcasm again. I see.”

“Please.” The headman didn’t lift his face from the boards. “Have mercy. We were desperate. You’ve seen what we face. You don’t know what it’s like, living with those creatures. We don’t know what else to do.”

“They’re not unkillable.” This from Tatsumi, his voice hard and unimpressed. “If your people would take a stand to destroy them, you wouldn’t have so many gaki wandering around.”

“We’ve tried! We’ve tried killing them, burning them, cutting off their limbs, trapping them underground. No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they always come back.” The headman clenched his fists on the floor in distress. “It’s part of the curse! The curse that damned monk placed on us, and now we’re doomed to be haunted by gaki for the rest of our days and beyond.”

Ah. Now things started to make sense. “What curse?” I asked, stepping forward. “We’ve seen the monk. Is he the one responsible for the gaki?”

“You’ve seen him? Merciful Jinkei, will he never be satisfied?” The headman shuddered violently and sat up, closing his eyes. “I suppose there is no point in hiding it anymore,” he whispered. “Please, sit down, and I will tell you our village’s greatest secret, and greatest shame.”

Okame and I edged forward and knelt on the tatami mats. Tatsumi chose