Kuro halted on the outskirts of the Riverbank Settlement, his paws slipping on the mud. No.

“What are they doing?” Yumi gripped his sides with her thighs, holding onto his fur with one hand, the other keeping Ren on Kuro’s back. Kuro could bolt if he needed.

Oh, he so needed to.

The mud road that had repelled humans for forty years teemed with samurai.

A samurai in full armour pinned a huge Undesirable male to the ground with a two-pronged spear. A commoner clapped shackles around the male’s wrists.

Ahead, three samurai forced a line of Undesirables chained together down the street. The samurai ordered them to move faster, but with shackles around their ankles, they could only shuffle. When a little girl wailed, the samurai hit her over the head with his hilt. She stumbled, but the woman behind her kept her on her feet.

And it wasn’t just the settlement closest to the execution grounds. Kuro slid to a stop and pricked his ears. Samurai rounded up Undesirables from the execution grounds to the Dragon God’s shrines. Even if he ran past these samurai, they’d alert the samurai ahead.

“No reason to hide their abductions anymore,” he told her. “Be quiet.”

He turned his muzzle, searching for escape. Gah. Peeking around the corner of a broken row house, the Cat Girl waved for him to come.

Kuro bared his teeth at her. He’d rather descend to hell than follow the Cat Girl. She’d probably only demand more mochi, or alert the samurai in revenge for her getting her fangs stuck on the cake. As if that had been his fault.

He had to move before she had the chance to yowl. They’d only see her as a cat, not a spirit, and while that could be dangerous enough in some parts of the city, the samurai would focus on him instead.

“DEMON!” the samurai holding down the man yelled.

Too late. Kuro backed up as the other samurai popped up their heads, like hunting dogs on the call.

The Cat Girl insistently waved at them.

“I say we go with the girl,” Yumi said softly, tilting slightly as she watched the samurai.

Girl? Oh, Yumi mistook the Cat Girl for a human. Someone Yumi assumed would be trustworthy.

Samurai peeled off from their duties and drew their swords.

The forest. The forest would be good, and every demon lurking in it would hunt the three of them down as surely as the samurai.

The samurai blocked him on two sides. They skulked around, always facing him, but steadily cutting off his other routes of retreat.

“Kuro,” Yumi snapped.

He had to take the chance. Damn it. And bite the Cat Girl if she played them false. But it was the best opportunity he had.

He bolted for the Cat Girl. She froze for a second, her ears pinned back and her tail standing on end. Then she turned and bolted through the gap and up the riverbank. Kuro followed.

The samurai hesitated, as if leaving the riverbank was against orders. One stroke of luck.

“This way,” the Cat Girl called back as she ran on all fours. She darted back toward the abandoned sake breweries.

Kuro tensed from nose to tail. The barriers around the sake breweries would trap them from the rest of the city. So the Cat Girl was trying to trick him!

But the joke was on her, because Kuro had a human with him who could remove the barrier… Which might have been the Cat Girl’s plan all along.

The Cat Girl nosed along the plank fence of the nearest brewery. No liquor spirits peered down at them. She found a hole big enough for a cat. She squeezed herself through, her human appearance warping.

“What—” Yumi started.

“Hold on,” Kuro told her. He loped away, circled around and galloped for the fence. He tried to make his jump as flat as possible, but when he landed on the other side, Yumi squeaked as she and Ren slid off his side to land in the dirt.

A dust cloud enveloped them. Kuro sneezed. Stupid dirt courtyards.

“Ow!” Yumi said, rubbing her side.

Kuro sat down next to Ren, and her by incident. Ren hadn’t made a noise. Kuro nuzzled his cheek. Ren’s eyes slid in his direction, but that was it.

Yumi whacked him in the side. “You could have warned me.”

“What part of hold on and me running at a fence did you not understand?” he snapped at her, more for the distraction from Ren than from irritation with her. He snuffled Ren, smelling for blood. But he seemed bodily fine, if not mentally.

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“If you two lovebirds are finished, meow,” the Cat Girl said.

“Lovebirds?! Me and her?” Kuro sank on his hindquarters, his muzzle wrinkling.

“Meow?” Yumi said at the same time.

“Don’t be gross,” he told the Cat Girl. To Yumi he added, “She’s a cat. Isn’t it obvious?”

“Obvious like — wait, what?” She spun back to the Cat Girl. “You think he — and I — and—”

“Keep quiet,” Kuro said. “The samurai can’t hear me or the Cat Girl, but you’re loud enough to wake a mountain from its slumber.”

Yumi slapped both hands over her mouth, looking properly ashamed.

“Cat Girl?” The Cat Girl flipped her paw against her cheek. “Is that what you call me?”

“You’re a cat and a human girl in your spirit shape.”

She sighed. “My name is Nekogami.”

Gami. As in a god? He couldn’t have been more disgusted than if she’d suggested he and Yumi did human things together. “You’re a cat.”

“Obviously,” she said. “Come on. Before the samurai get here and slaughter us all.”

Yumi helped Ren to his feet, and they followed the Cat Girl to a storehouse.

When the brewery had thrived in full operation, the owners would have brought onmyouji and priests to sanctify the storehouse and erect wards against thieves and spirits. But as the brewery decayed, so had the barriers. The Shogun only cared to keep the liquor spirits contained, not to keep empty storehouses safe.

Which made the perfect hiding place for spirits with the favour of a mischievous cat god.

Inside the cool, dark building, huddled at least twenty spirits — twenty survivors from the demon hunt. A family of tanuki, extended cousins included, huddled against an abandoned chest. Two red fox in their true forms curled up in another corner. An umbrella hopped nervously on its foot. And a rokurokubi demon, her human body kneeling while at the end of her long neck, her head bumped against the ceiling.

In the centre, Nurarihyon sipped a cup of tea, as if nothing unfortunate had happened. Why had the old spirit needed to flee? He enchanted humans so they thought he owned his house and never took a second thought to the fact that his extended head obviously meant he wasn’t human.

Yumi hissed in her breath, stopping in the entrance.

“Close the door before the humans notice,” the Cat Girl said, oblivious to Yumi’s real concern.

“They’re demons,” Yumi said, eyeing the rokurokubi.

“They’re spirits,” the Cat Girl said. “Mostly harmless, unless you have a phobia of really long necks.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Kuro reminded Yumi.

“Oh, Kuro, my boy,” Nurarihyon said. “When did you get here? Oh, there’s your friend from before.”

Yumi sent Kuro a glare, as if to say she knew he was a demon and couldn’t believe she’d allowed Kuro to trick her.

“Come on,” the Cat Girl said.

Yumi entered, and shifted to the side, as far from the spirits as possible. Ren followed where she led, walking on his own, but no other indication he was even alive in his flesh. Kuro started to follow them, his ears laid back, and a whine coming out.

The whine only served to attract the attention of every single spirit. Like yelling demon in the middle of a samurai’s banquet.

Kuro’s tail tucked between his legs, even as he bared his teeth. He wasn’t used to seeing such hate oozing from his fellow spirits. But then, he never allowed them to see his true form either.

“Get it out of here,” one of the fox snapped. It bounced forward, starting with barks and descending into aggressive snorts.

Kuro automatically returned the noise, more from instinct than thought.

“Mama, what is that?” a tanuki pup whispered.

The tanuki’s mother had also taken a defensive position against Kuro, fur on edge. “It’s all your fault. We lost our home, we lost our family because of you.”

“I didn’t—” Mean to call the Night Parade to attack? Order the Shogun to wipe out the spirits from the town?

“You can’t stay,” the tanuki said. “If the humans follow you, if the humans know you’re here, they’ll stop at nothing to destroy us. They won’t care about a few spirits, but you…”

It was true. The Shogun might care about Ren, if he hadn’t known Ren had fallen into a waking sleep, but he would care about killing Kuro. Everything he’d told Kuro about himself, everything Yumi had told him about his powers, meant he was too much of a risk to allow to live.

Kuro backed up, intent on jumping back over the fence and leading the samurai on a chase. He’d keep to his original plan of attacking the bridge and hiding in the forest. Without Ren or Yumi—

Yumi stepped in front of him, legs splayed and hands on her hips as she glared at each and every spirit. Her divine power rippled off her, driving the tanuki and kitsune back. Even Nurarihyon had to look up from his cup long enough to back away. Only Nekogami seemed unaffected, as if she really were a god.

“He stays,” Yumi told them. “If you have a problem with that, you can all leave.”

The spirits hunched into their shoulders, none of them wanting to risk that.

“And if you complain one more time, I’ll…” She lifted up her fist.

The tanuki gulped, and backed off. “As you say, onmyouji.”

“Onmyouji? Yumi blinked. “I’m not…”

“Rippling with spiritual powers?” Kuro finished, dryly.

Yumi shrugged, looking sheepish.

“We’re not here because of Kuro,” Nekogami told the spirits. “We’re here because of fear. The humans fear us. They fear the demons.”

“The Dark Kitsune let the Night Parade—” the tanuki stopped when Yumi shook her fist.

But it was all Kuro’s fault. He took the extra two steps in and Yumi closed the storehouse doors behind him. Yumi had directed Ren to sit next to the door, his legs straight out, and Kuro settled next to him. He kept an inch between them, as if the space would keep Kuro from rubbing off any more bad luck.

But what else could Kuro take away from him? What did Ren have left? Just two days before, when he’d first met Ren, Ren would have been ecstatic to meet all the spirits. He would have babbled a thousand questions in under ten minutes, leaving the spirits too befuddled to worry about Kuro. But now he just stared down at Kuro as Kuro looked up.

When Ren had run into the city at night to meet a spirit, Kuro would have paid a high price to dampen Ren’s spirit. Anything to keep him safe behind his walls, where Kuro wouldn’t be blamed for his death. And if he were honest with himself, and he had to be when he could trust no one else to be, then he also hadn’t wanted Ren to get hurt. For Ren to be frightened, and start to hate spirits like every other human.

As he was there in the storage house, Ren would have stayed safe. If the Imperial Palace had still stood, if his compound hadn’t burned to a husk, then Kuro could have placed him in those walls and Ren would never try to leave. Or try to cram poetry down his throat or force him to answer difficult questions or force him to use chopsticks.

He didn’t want this. He wanted the old Ren. And he could have had the old Ren, if he hadn’t been obsessed with getting his shrine. If he’d turned down the onmyouji’s offer, if he’d confessed as soon as Ren had revealed himself. He could have even had the angry, vengeful Ren if Kuro had ignored the siren call of money to build his shrine.

Kuro wasn’t a soon-to-be-god. He was a demon. No one deserved their own shrine less than he did.

The Shogun had been right that gods looked after humans. But he couldn’t even look after this one.