 
Changeling Sisters Novellas #1.5

Year of the Boar:

TICA

## By Heather Heffner
The right of Heather Heffner to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act of 1988.

YEAR OF THE BOAR: TICA. Text copyright © 2014 Heather Heffner. All Rights Reserved. Smashwords Edition. No part of this book may be reproduced, re-sold, given away, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Find out the latest news on the Changeling Sisters series at: https://heatherheffner.blogspot.com/
_Year of the Boar: Tica_ (Changeling Sisters #1.5) is a flashback novella about Rafael's childhood on O'ahu. It is narrated primarily by his sister, Tica, and his enemy, Vampyre Prince Khyber. This novella contains spoilers for Changeling Sisters Book I: _Year of the Wolf_.

Seven deadly vampyre princes. Two sisters far from home. One spirit world in trouble. Let the shifting begin.

Changeling Sisters Series

Year of the Wolf (Book 1)

Year of the Tiger (Book 2)

Year of the Dragon (Book 3)

Year of the Rat (Book 4)

Changeling Sisters Novellas

Year of the Boar: Tica (#1.5)

~Available on major online eBook retailers~

Welcome to Hell. Don't abandon all hope. That wouldn't be as much fun.

AFTERLIFE CHRONICLES

The Tribe of Ishmael (Book 1)

The Staff of Aaron _(Forthcoming Book 2)_

~Available on major online eBook retailers~
To Greg, who first showed me the islands

# Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Boy on Fire

Chapter 2: A New Dream

Chapter 3: The Luau

Chapter 4: Kiss

Chapter 5: The Plague Man

Chapter 6: The Job Interview

Chapter 7: Bethany Hamilton

Chapter 8: The Spirit Sea

Chapter 9: Night of the Living Dead

Chapter 10: The Blood Drinker

Chapter 11: Confrontation

Chapter 12: Aina Becoming

Chapter 13: The Bigger Picture

Chapter 14: Rumors

Chapter 15: Stop n' Inspect

Chapter 16: A Storm Spent

Chapter 17: A Camping Trip

Chapter 18: Shifting Shapes

Chapter 19: Nightmarchers

Chapter 20: The Ritual

Chapter 21: Daughter of the Gods

Chapter 22: The Boar God's Offer

Chapter 23: Long Shadows

Chapter 24: The Ice Maiden

Chapter 25: The Return

Acknowledgements

Glossary

# Prologue

~Khyber~

At first, they watched me with unwelcoming eyes.

"Do you know why the sun shines so brightly here?" the tallest mo'o asked, his scaly tail the color of red earth. "It is to chase away all of the shadows."

Smaller mo'o—nature spirits of streams and palm trees—laughed, crawling over pebbles and branches until I was surrounded. A long time ago, the supreme mo'o, Mo'oinanea, sent her lizard-shaped children from Kuaihelani, the land of the gods, to cross the spirit bridge over to the islands of the living. They became messengers, tricksters, guardians.

It was my luck to run into the latter sort.

My enemy they spoke of erupted in the east. The molten eye gravitated close, hungry to swallow the sky and the islands and the ocean itself. The turquoise bay blazed with blinding golden light as if set aflame. The palm trees crawled before my eyes, and Kīlauea Crater blurred.

My skin began to flake like ash and was scattered by the Trade Winds. My fangs dislodged, sinking into my lower chin. My black wings, already tattered by the long flight over to the big island of Hawai'i from Korea, rattled like the last leaves in a harsh desert. I could feel my vampyre body begging me to find a dark cave in which to nest. A vampyre could not walk during the day.

However, I was no ordinary vampyre. I was Khyber, eldest Vampyre Prince of the East.

And I had come here to die.

"If you'll excuse me," I growled through my fully exposed fangs, "I have somewhere to be."

The tallest mo'o cocked his head. "You are a Child of Death, but you know nothing of it."

"Oh?" I asked sarcastically. "My mother is a soul eater. I have as many lives as people have regrets. For as long as I can remember, I have dealt out death and watched it veil its victims' eyes. What more would you have me know?"

"Fear." The mo'o's voice thundered around me while he shrank, his terrible lizard face and fearsome jaws shrinking into that of a harmless brown gecko. As he crawled away into the glistening bromeliads, I thought I heard a whisper on the wind: "There are things out there older than you, vampyre prince."

I might have remembered his warning if all rational thought weren't obliterated from my mind in the next few hours of hell. I staggered up the slope of Kīlauea, step by agonizing step, my wings long since burned to dust by the sun. My skin melted from my bones and dripped into my eyes until I had no eyelids left to hide behind. My mouth was set in a permanent dead man's grin because my face had long since deteriorated into a skull. My fangs were the only things that persevered, knocking against my chin bone, as I waited for my head to shatter into a million pieces.

That moment never came. I reached the top of Kīlauea at noon. The full force of the sun pummeled me time and time again. The winds blew up from Kīlauea's throat and shrieked and tore at my feeble frame, stoning me with caustic steam and sulfur: _You shall not enter here!_

My jaw bone clattered in the wind as I surveyed the blue roundness of the globe far below. The world swam before my spiraling vision. _Please_.

I heard the Mother curse me from far away. Then I threw myself down the crater.

***

I awoke with the taste of sand in my mouth and snow in my hair. The palm trees were dark silhouettes hiding the wary eyes of many mo'o, and the sky had blossomed the color of dark berry juices, running down the unknowable figure of Kīlauea in the dark. Turning over, I gazed out upon the sapphire ocean that had spat me out. A silvery orb arose from its depths like a newborn pearl.

I had lived to see another moon.

A woman stood nearby, a moonflower tucked behind her left ear. Her ebony hair was sleek like black ice and reflected the stars, while her pā'ū skirt was gold, her shoulder cape white, and her palms blue with frost. I had felt her and her sisters watching me when I'd attempted to freeze myself to death on Mauna Kea a week before. There were beings out there older than me, indeed.

I inclined my head, jagged black hair falling in my eyes. "Was it you who rescued me from Kīlauea, O Great Poli'ahu? Pele resides there; I know she would have left me to burn indefinitely."

"Each time you attempt to end your unnatural life, it brings the shadows that much closer to our home." The snow goddess's deep, haggard voice was disapproving—but curious.

I gazed into her timeless eyes whispering of icy winds blowing around a lonely white peak trapped in paradise. She could smell the snow on me. She understood that I had to die, or else the shadows would take us all.

I arose on my newly formed feet. My skin was still scarred and throbbing; the volcano goddess Pele had made sure I wouldn't forget Kīlauea any time soon. I took a step closer to Poli'ahu.

"You're wearing the moonflower I left on Mauna Kea's slopes."

"My sisters and I fought over it." The snow goddess gave a ghost of a smile. "I won."

"Please," I said, "pity me. My mother's shadow has not yet touched here. If there is any way I can die, then it will be here, on the sunshine islands of Hawai'i. You are wise and see many things from your mountain. How can I die?"

"I have consulted my sisters, and we cannot watch you continue like this," she agreed. "Here is what you must do. First, you must seek out the son of the shark god, whose name is Nanaue. He was defeated on Moloka'i a long time ago, but now he has returned to this world. Wrestle with him and contain him. You can do this: both of you hunger for the flesh and blood of your own people. This man-eater is of the day, and he will help you walk in sunlight."

"What do you and your sisters get in return?" I demanded.

"You will rid the world of him for us." Poli'ahu paused, and the rattling breeze around her face made her features harder still. "For second, you must seek out a young girl of mixed lineage on the island of O'ahu and feed her blood to Nanaue. When you find her, make sure you choose a different name than Khyber, my vampyre prince, or else her protectors will become aware of your presence."

"Why should I care to bring death to yet another child?" I asked, weary of such things.

"She is already dying," Poli'ahu said dismissively, "but she will not leave this world quietly. No, vampyre prince, seek her out—for Tica Dominguez shall be your death."

I raised an eyebrow. I had survived wars, plagues, storms, and the belly of Kīlauea itself. Now a young girl was to be the death of me? Challenge accepted.

I closed my eyes, and Poli'ahu showed me her face. I almost didn't want to see it.

Just one more death. One more family to ruin. One more future to rob.

Then I would leave this world before I destroyed it.

# Chapter 1: The Boy on Fire

~Tica~

The first word they taught me to say in Hawaiian was the name of the state fish: _humuhumunukunukuapua'a_.

"Humu—humu—" My best friend Ryoko stopped and thought, her fishing pole swinging in the wind.

"—nukunukuapua'a!" I grabbed her pole and scampered up the slippery rocks to Pele's Chair, turning to grin at Ryoko from the top.

Ryoko frowned and then tossed her silky black hair over her shoulder. She sat down on the smoothest rock she could find and pulled out her glittery pink phone.

"Whatever."

"It's not whatever!" I slid the first pole into an old iron anchor and looked for a good spot to position the second one. Pele's Chair loomed above us, a volcanic pinnacle spearing the blustery blue skies. It was named after Pele, my favorite Hawaiian deity: the goddess of volcanoes. Ancient and majestic, but if you spent too much time looking up, you risked cutting your feet on the broken beer bottles and trash littering the bottom. I scowled and opened up my tackle box, courtesy of my older brother, Rafael. Not that he knew about his generous loan.

"The reef triggerfish is a symbol of where we live, Ryoko."

"So? Knowing a few words in Hawaiian isn't going to get me a job," she replied, annoyingly cold and logical as always. "Everyone here speaks English. You're the only one who remembers the phrases they taught us in elementary school."

I was the only one who remembered the _humuhumu_ when it swam up to me a long time ago. I'd been sitting on the dock near old Kaiser Mansion, dipping my toes in the water. Suddenly all of the fish scattered, and I'd feared a shark was coming. However, then I spotted a lone reef triggerfish. Black bandit stripes shadowed its blue-rimmed eyes, and brilliant yellow stripes cut up its body into triangles.

I'd thrown the humuhumu bread crumbs and it had devoured them, circling ever closer. Its rainbow scales had glistened so brightly that I remember taking off my sunglasses and rubbing my eyes. When I'd looked back, the reef triggerfish was gone. In its place was a tall, dark-skinned man floating beneath the waves. He'd given me a brief, proud nod, and a single word had rolled through my mind like thunder:

_Daughter_.

Then the waves had swept him away.

I still dreamed of seeing the humuhumu again.

However, having otherworldly communions with fish wasn't a reason to get your best friend pumped about going fishing—more like one to make her doubt your sanity. With my poor health these days, I couldn't afford that.

So I rolled my eyes instead. "Tell that to _Obaa-san_ the next time she teaches you Japanese. I bet that'll go over well." Ryoko's stern grandmother was the first of her family to immigrate to O'ahu. Her hardness was always softened by the mochi ice cream, fish-shaped crepes, and pancakes stuffed with red bean paste she gave me whenever I came over.

Ryoko smiled and actually looked up from her phone. "You remember that word, Tica? Good lord, you really are a sponge. No wonder your brother is jealous of you."

"It's good for him." I selected a big red lure.

"Does Rafael even know we're here with all of his fishing equipment?"

"I emailed him. Figure he'll find out in a week or so. Why?" I grinned wickedly. "Are you hoping he'll show up and drag our asses back to Kaimukī? I bet _you_ wouldn't put up much of a fight. _Rafael! Please don't pick me up! Oh! But you're soooo strong!_ "

That was enough to make her climb to the top of the outcrop with me. She punched my shoulder, blushing furiously. "Shut up, Tica! Why? Has he said anything about me?"

"Mmmm... You'll have to catch a fish before I tell you."

"What about my sun bathing time?" she protested.

"There'll be plenty of time for that. We're not fishing on the inside, Ryoko. The big fish are out there." I nodded away from the rocky spit protecting the calm teal bay of the inlet and out toward the frothing ocean. "It'll take a while to catch 'em."

Ryoko grumbled but accepted a pole.

"This is so boring, Tica," she complained half an hour later. "Let's just go get sushi at Genki's— OH! Did you see that?"

The tip of her pole had begun to bend. I grinned and watched her wrestle with it for a bit.

"There's something on the line!" she cried excitedly. "You bring it in, Tica! I don't want to risk it getting away!"

What was on the other end was a rock. A big one, too. The line had definitely gotten stuck. I hesitated, looking at Ryoko's glowing face. She was the only friend who bothered to go fishing with me anymore. Everyone else always hung out at Ala Moana Mall or drove out to Sherwoods Beach to get drunk.

However, then the line tensed, and my brother's expensive red bobber dipped below the waves. I knew how pissed he'd be if I lost it.

"It's stuck, Ryoko," I muttered. "I'm going to have to cut the line."

"Oh." Her shoulders deflated. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. It's hard to fish on the outside." I hesitated, glancing at the building waves. "I'm going to dive in and grab the bobber."

"What? Tica! No!" Ryoko watched a sudden surge of water roar through the channel and reached for my shoulder. "It's too dangerous!"

I scampered over the slippery rocks toward the churning eddies, my excitement building. "Too late!"

Then I raised my arms and dove into the torrential sea.

I shot up to the surface, brown hair sticking to my face and nostrils stinging with salt. The dark blue waves circled around me like shark fins. I took a deep breath and then dove, opening my eyes underwater. A school of silver 'ō'io swayed tauntingly around my line, the red bobber glistening like a shiny apple amidst them. I propelled myself forward and unclipped it. Waves shuddered over my head in a storm of foam, and I dove deep again.

I broke surface further out near the tip of the spit, gasping for breath, and gazed out upon the full breadth of the sapphire sea. It was a dark blanket seamlessly blue until the island of Moloka'i, lost in the haze. I turned back to the sun-bleached cliffs, preparing to swim in, when to my surprise, there was a young man out farther than I was.

His black hair fluttered like a tattered wave, nearly invisible in the dark tide. He had no spit to shelter him; he was out in open ocean. And he was struggling.

I blinked. A hand covered in thick brown shark skin shot out from the waves and grabbed his head, trying to push him under. The boy grunted, snapping the thing's arm back. The thing's head tried to rise, slimy and dripping with seaweed, but at the touch of the setting sun, it screeched and dragged the young man down into the deep with it.

Ten seconds—twenty— Then, sudden movement caught my eye to the left. There, cutting through the water, was none other than the young man, propelling his body toward land in a way I'd never seen a human move before—like a sea snake.

Shadows seemed to unfurl from his back, and then he shot himself _up_ onto the cliffs and stood to survey the blood-red sunset, grinning.

I sucked in my breath. His skin blistered and sizzled under the sun as if on fire. The only piece of him that didn't melt were his eyes, twin shards of crystal blue ice out of place in the sunshine isles. They bore into mine, and my mind was suddenly filled with blizzards, starving ghosts, and a cold, loathsome hunger. Then a wave pulled me under.

I felt the strong undercurrent trying to wash me away, but my mother always said I learned to swim before I could walk. I shoved off parallel and felt the reassuring rocks of the jetty stab my fingers. I clambered up the outcrop—but not before pain jolted deep within my left arm, emanating from my shoulder. I cradled it a bit, and the pain abated.

"Tica!" Ryoko scrambled down to meet me, abandoning her slippers. "Are you okay? You were just bobbing in the water!"

"I'm fine." I stared back at the spot where I'd seen the boy. However, it was as if sun spots had been burned into my brain; I couldn't see anything except for mist.

"Your arm started hurting again, didn't it?"

My head shot up. I started to deny it, but then I was struck numb by the strength of her grip—and how weak my left arm felt beneath it.

"You're right. Fishing is boring." I laughed and held myself up on her shoulder. "My brother should be off work by now. Let's go see if he'll buy us that sushi."

# Chapter 2: A New Dream

~Tica~

Two Years Later

I sat behind the cash register, bored out of my mind.

A large man slouched up to the counter, holding a six pack of Kona Longboard beer. He said nothing while I rang him up, but he stared pointedly when I fumbled with the cash drawer.

"Car accident?" he finally asked.

I stared hard at the bills, the familiar whoosh of anger seizing up my muscles. One of these days, my eyes would quit tearing up whenever someone asked about my arm.

"Boating injury?"

"Bone cancer." I managed to say it without stuttering and handed his change back.

The man whistled. "Too young," he grunted and then lurched out the door. Outside, he shook his head sadly and cracked his first beer, as if unable to stomach the thought of my maimed torso; as if my amputated arm had untimely ripped away all of my hopes and dreams.

I scowled, glancing out at the brilliant blue ocean and the surfers bobbing amongst the waves. The sea waved at me as if to say, _come play_. In my dreams, I still sliced through the water with an arrow's precision, my body even, whole. Then all too quickly I'd wake, and memories of Rafael trying to teach me how to swim again after the surgery would come tumbling down. I would remember the unfamiliarity, the way my muscles would awkwardly negotiate in my new shape, and how the water's resistance would ultimately overwhelm me. Other days I would feel too nauseous to try.

I turned away from the rumble of the ocean and back to the silence of the Stop n' Shop, my mom's deli convenience store. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner ruffling my cropped hair. _It's going to be okay_ , I told myself for the umpteenth time. I just had to get different dreams, was all. At school, I was good at marine biology. I was always elected group leader during lab time. I would still spend time with the ocean, but I would be studying it from above instead of below.

Laughter and a jumble of conversation echoed outside, and I realized a group of my classmates was entering. Quickly, I reached for my jacket and slipped it on one arm while letting the other sleeve hang limply at my side. I'd experimented with prosthetics after the amputation, but the options available in our price range often caused me more pain than they helped, and I eventually found it easier to live without one. It didn't mean other parts of my life became easier. I'd just managed to adjust my sleeves before the doorbell jingled.

Aolani swept in first. Her thick weave of dark hair was pinned back, and a thin lacy white top covered her bikini and boardshorts. She was the type who could surf all day, drink all night, and wake up the next morning as glowing as a sea goddess, trivial things like salt and sand not permitted to stick to her. Her loyal subjects, the stoic Lono and the goofy redhead Mason, were only two steps behind her. Mason was the sole _haole_ in our grade. He immediately went straight for the sunscreen.

"Howzit, sista?" My scruffy brother wore his _Seahawks_ cap backwards, and his golden-brown hair curled out over his ears. He approached the counter with Ryoko in tow.

My bad mood soured further. "I thought I had to cover your shift today because you were _sick_ , Rafael Dominguez."

"Don't tell mom." Raf nodded over his shoulder. "I picked up a stray."

And there he was. I stared in shock at the sunburnt black-haired boy I'd last seen fighting for his life in the grip of the ocean two years ago. He was standing quite calmly in the cosmetics aisle, smiling at Aolani as she pointed out the best types of surf wax to him.

He glanced toward me, and waves immediately began rumbling in the back of my head. Something moved in the depths of the abyss, where the sea thought it subdued. A rotting hand snatched for my ankle—

The new boy bowed briefly to me. " _Pangapseumnida_. Nice to meet you. My name is Jinho. I am from South Korea. I moved here recently."

He spoke low and roughly, but there was a lack of accent that made it feel forced—not to mention the cool way he assessed me with those storm-swept eyes. I was pretty sure blue eyes were uncommon in South Korea, and the way he held himself self-assuredly, despite the numerous burns carpeting his face, made him feel older than any of us—certainly older than my college-age brother, sniggering with Lono over the branding of the popular _Sex Wax_.

"Do you swim much in South Korea?" I demanded. This was the same boy I'd seen off of Pele's Chair before I'd almost drowned myself, I was sure of it! It was a particularly vivid memory. It was one of the last peaceful times I remembered before everything became about hospitals and chemo treatments.

He blinked. "I—do not understand," he said too quickly.

"Tica!" Aolani was offended. "Jinho just moved here to provide a better future for his siblings back in South Korea. His father expects a lot from him. Jinho doesn't know much English yet, so speak _slowly_."

I caught Ryoko's gaze. She rolled her eyes and returned to texting.

"That's pretty cool, moving to O'ahu of all places. How can you afford to live here?" I drew the last phrase out nice and lo-o-ong, but Aolani still glared at me.

"It's okay." Jinho raised a hand, grinning. "In Korea, we are honest with our feelings like this. I am on scholarship. I go to your brother's community college. If I learn more English, work hard, and send money back to my family, then we will get by."

"You're a saint." I attempted to fold my arms before remembering that my right arm was reaching for a phantom. My cheeks burned, and I prayed they hadn't noticed.

Aolani sighed and drew Jinho away. "I'm sorry Tica is rude," I heard her whisper. "She's probably sad to see us go surf. She used to surf a lot."

"Oh? What happened?"

"Aolani," Rafael suddenly said in a dangerous voice. That topic was off-limits to anyone outside of family, as far as my brother was concerned.

Aolani blew out an exaggerated sigh. "We'll talk later, Jinho. We've gotta get to Toes before the town crowd gets out of school. Just the wax please, Tica."

"And this energy drink!" Mason thrust forth a lime-green one called _The Hulkinator_. Rafael bought a pack of e-cigarettes.

"Would you like a bag?" I asked, monotone.

"Nah, we're good." My brother squeezed my hand. My flesh-and-blood one. "I'll see you at home then?"

"Shoots," I said sarcastically.

Jinho was the last to leave the counter. "I did swim quite a bit in South Korea," he spoke, his voice suddenly melodiously smooth. His hand hovered over mine. "Perhaps there is something I could teach you. You didn't seem that great at swimming before, either."

My head shot up. That was impossible. Yet the smirk on his face confirmed it; this—creature—remembered me! He swept from the store, the breeze from the door seeming, if only for a moment, to pick up a set of tattered black wings from his back and send the feathers aflutter. My hand automatically dug into my purse for my meds. I'd never suffered hallucinations before. Why the hell was my mind fixated on this strange Korean boy?

"Snap out of it, Tica," I growled to myself. My mother didn't have medical insurance left to cover insanity. I'd strung her out thin enough as it was. Would I always only be just a burden to her? Rafael was a beach bum and my father was dead. I was her only hope for a secure future.

An engine spluttered outside. There were hoots of laughter as my classmates jeered at my brother for the hopelessness of his old '93 Ford Ranger. Surfboards bounced in the back as they turned toward the sun-speckled sea. My heart smashed against the cold glass of the air-conditioned convenience store, unable to follow.

_It's going to be okay_ , I consoled myself, clicking the cash drawer shut. _This is what my family needs. Me here, bringing in income_.

A series of clicks echoed from the shave ice aisle. Ryoko appeared, texting and sucking on a guava cone.

"You're not going with them?" I tried to ignore the sunshine playing in the royal palms outside.

My best friend shrugged. "Don't think you're so special, Tica. I just don't want to make a fool out of myself in front of your brother on a day when it's double overheads, is all." Ryoko shoved me over on the chair, squinting at my laptop screen. " _Greetings in Korean_? So you're going to quit practicing Japanese with me in order to flirt with _Jinho_ , is that it? Do I mean nothing to you?"

"Stop thinking you're so special, Ryoko." I elbowed her back.

"I _am_ special, but you've never appreciated that." She pouted and threw her silky black hair over her shoulder. "Now scoot over and let me learn with you. We've gotta get one up on Aolani, since she's made it clear to Jinho that he can ride her surfboard—day _or_ night."

She winked, and I tried not to laugh.

"Rafael will be so heartbroken when he hears you've moved on."

"Your brother and I are meant to be together, but it's not my fault he can't see that right now."

I shook my head but let her squeeze in the seat with me.

# Chapter 3: The Luau

~Tica~

"You look fine," Ryoko told me for the hundredth time. I hadn't asked, but Ryoko and I had been friends for so long that she knew when I was freaking out—like when your junior year Welcome-Back-To-School luau is being held at seven o'clock on a Friday night, and you've just gotten off an afterschool shift at the Stop n' Shop. I frantically combed my sun-streaked brown bangs over my eyes, checked the flower tucked behind my right ear, and stopped at Ryoko's stern look.

"Okay, okay. Let's go." We jumped out of her Toyota Corolla, my right hand awkwardly adjusting my beaded shawl. It was cool enough tonight that I could wear it with my white halter-top dress. My bikini straps bit into my skin underneath. Aolani had convinced our group that we should go for a midnight swim later.

Tiki torches lined the path down to the beach, from which the deep bass of the band pulsed and the smoky scent of huli huli chicken turning on the grill made my stomach growl. Aolani had organized the luau well—tiny golden lights glittered in swaying palm leaves, keeping the dark violet skies at bay. Students were already taking advantage of the dance floor, while teachers, parents, and younger siblings circled through a colorful buffet of steaming rice, juicy kalua pork, seasoned-and-grilled shrimp dripping in garlic butter, and three types of ahi _poke_.

"Mmmm." Ryoko licked her lips. "Is your brother here yet?"

"His night class just got out. He and Jinho are coming from Kapiolani Community College now," I said, checking my phone. My heart stumbled a little over the name: Jinho. Was I curious or scared to see him again? I'd grown up in a too-small apartment in a too-small neighborhood where there were only locals and mainlanders. I knew everything about the former and didn't care about the latter, because mainlanders always left. Now Jinho was making the transition over to our side. My mother had encouraged Rafael to help him settle in on the island. Perhaps his struggle to adapt to a strange place had struck a chord with her own. He'd already been by the house twice, the second time with groceries.

" _Now_ I know why you're really freaking out." Ryoko smirked. "Excuse me. I'm going to stuff myself full of huli huli chicken before your brother gets here."

"Don't you dare care what my brother thinks!" I yelled after her. "Stuff yourself all you want!"

"There she is!"

My business club advisor, Mr. Montoya, strode toward me with Aolani close behind. Both had full plates of food and virgin pina coladas.

Mr. Montoya raised his drink in toast. "Congratulations, Tica. Out of all the Junior Business Club intern applications, yours and Aolani's were accepted for an interview at Kalani Resorts, one of the biggest international hotel chains in the world. One of you will even have the unique opportunity to sit down with the visiting CEO himself, Mr. Crispin Summers!"

Aolani grinned at me, her pearl earrings catching the torchlight. "Isn't that exciting, Tica? I can't wait to hear about the tasks expected of us. Hopefully there is no heavy lifting involved." She _tsk_ ed in the direction of my left shoulder.

I glared at her. Aolani shrugged and popped a fresh mango slice in her mouth.

Mr. Montoya snorted into his pork. "Depends how much paperwork they load you up with. You'll be doing so much filing that you'll be begging to come back to high school. It's all a good learning experience, of course, and remember the first rule of business, girls..."

"Network, network, network," we both chimed.

"...and then network some more." Mr. Montoya looked unhappily at his empty plate. "Excuse me, girls. Come see me Monday to prepare for your interviews. Congratulations, again, and Tica"—he squeezed my shoulder—"I'm proud of you."

After we were alone, Aolani's dark eyes sharpened. "Why are you even applying for this, Tica? I thought you wanted to stop global warming or save the sea turtles or something."

"We live on an island; we should lead the way in sustainability," I repeated my mantra automatically.

She folded her arms. "Kalani Resorts isn't known for their eco-friendliness, unless you count the number of luxurious dolphin lagoons they have. Haven't you heard about their plan to build an underwater hotel, one room of which will be made completely out of coral?"

_I'm worried about my family's future and I don't know if a grant-funded marine biology career will cut it financially and I need something solid to fall back on!_ My heart surged against the bubble of my ribcage and burst.

I shrugged. "Like Mr. Montoya said, it's a good learning experience."

"Whatever. Is your brother here yet?"

I knew who she meant. Jinho's ice-blue eyes raked my face from beneath his jagged black hair. "He hasn't texted me back yet. I mean, how interested can he be in a high school luau?"

Aolani huffed and disappeared into the crowd with a swirl of her flower-patterned dress, fellow classmates already clamoring for her attention. I grinned and piled some rice and spicy ahi poke on my plate before going to join Mason in the throng of students watching the reggae band.

"One, two, three!" the lead singer yelled, and then the band kicked off with the drop-beat of the drum and the multi-chord blare of the keyboard. The two guitar players leaned in to the microphone to sing in harmony.

"Hi Tica!" Mason twirled me around by the waist.

"Not the poke!" I cried in protest as my plate nearly spun out of my hand.

"Dance first, eat later!"

"I haven't eaten since two!"

"Fine." He stopped jostling me and gazed up at the stage, his cheeks flushed and his eyes glowing.

I leaned in. "That dark-haired guitar player's cute, isn't he?"

"Tica!" Mason draped a hand over my shoulder and pulled me close, looking nervously behind. "Don't let Lono hear you."

I stared. "He doesn't know? You came out months ago."

"More like opened the closet to let a few trusted people in." Mason glanced toward where our stoic friend stood at the back of the crowd, his arms folded. "I want to tell him, Tica; Lono's my best mate. But...it's hard to tell how he'll react. He already gives me enough shit for being white."

I understood. Having a conversation with Lono was a bit like talking to a rock that wanted to smack you in the face. He hadn't always been so closed-off, but that was before his younger brother had died in a surfing accident on the North Shore. I remembered Kai as the livelier of the two brothers—laughing, mischievous as a monkey, and as dexterous as one, too—he was already out-surfing us by the time he was twelve. Lono always used to brag about how Kai would compete in the Eddie Aikau surf competition one day, which only happened if the winter waves reached a minimum of twenty feet. But the ocean had taken him back too soon.

"I think you should tell him already." Aolani and Ryoko joined us, Aolani linking her arm through Mason's.

"I know," Mason said, "but I feel like when I do, I'll be rewriting every moment of our time together. Every childhood memory he'll look back at and think, 'Did he know then?' I guess I don't want things to change." His arm tightened around Aolani's. "Our group. We've been together since that summer camp years ago, when Rafael convinced us to sneak into that rich person's backyard and play in their pool."

Ryoko rolled her eyes. "Remember what he said? 'They won't be home! This is their winter house!' "

"And then that lady ran out shrieking in her hair rollers!" Aolani was giddy after a few not-so-virgin pina coladas, and she leaned over Mason's arm, gasping with laughter. "And Tica! You told her we were there to sell Girl Scout Cookies!"

"Thin Mints or Samoas?" I posed, breaking into a grin. "Hey, I had to try something."

"And our parents made us apologize and clean her stupid pool. She probably never even uses it." Aolani smirked. "At least Lono left a cane spider in her flower pot."

We burst into irresponsible sniggers again.

"See? I want this. Us, together for one more year." Mason glanced briefly at me, and then his gaze fluttered down. "We already lost Kai."

_Oh, Mason_. My heart felt for him. _Change won't leave our group alone._

"Tica, think fast!"

I whirled around to see a water bottle whiz toward my face. I had to drop my paper plate to catch it.

"See? She has fast reflexes," my brother told Lono and Jinho, the latter casting a tall, rangy shadow in black boardshorts and a white T-shirt that accentuated his lean muscles and several rough but hot-looking scars. His storm-colored eyes darted to mine, and I felt heat rise in my cheeks.

"Thanks, dumbass." I propped the bottle in the crook of my stump and unscrewed it, giving it a sniff. "Vodka?"

Aolani clapped her hands, and Ryoko muttered, "Good thing I ate."

Rafael held up several more bottles. "Looks like we should take this party down to the beach."

# Chapter 4: Kiss

~Tica~

Dark purple ink bled into the sea, hiding the ocean's secrets from the brilliant underbelly of the sky, studded with diamond-bright stars. I quit spinning around the beach with Ryoko and collapsed near the bonfire. My head was warm and fuzzy with alcohol, snatches of laughter, and lovers' whispers beneath the palm trees. About two dozen of us had drifted down to the beach, hidden by a screen of trees while the band continued to play back at the luau.

"I was sitting there."

I looked up to see one of Rafael's KCC friends, a tall girl with straight bleached-white hair, glaring down at me.

A pale arm wrapped around my shoulder and pulled me close.

"There are many places to sit, Laney," Jinho said, amused.

I glanced back-and-forth between them, realizing I had interrupted whatever intimate, knee-bumping arrangement they'd had going on. My skin prickled beneath Jinho's cool fingers. _Play the drunk card._

"Yes, Laney. Join us!" I enthusiastically patted the wet sand beside me.

Laney's lips pursed. "Aren't you Rafael's baby sister?"

"I turn seventeen on Halloween." I shrugged. "If you ask me, Rafael's the baby. I had to help him with his taxes."

"Laney! Leave her alone!" Her friend came over and grabbed her. The girl glanced at me and then leaned in to drunk-whisper to Laney in what she thought was a quiet voice: " _Dude!_ That girl had _cancer_! She has _one arm_! You can't be mean to a _cancer kid_!"

Laney's eyes widened, and she shot a strained smile over my head in Jinho's direction. "We're going to get another beer. Do you want to come, Jinho?"

I don't know what made me say it. Competitive streak, maybe. However, I quickly held up my flask. "Jinho, I got soju from that guy over there! Want some?"

Silence fell around the bonfire. I realized Aolani, Lono, Mason, and my brother had stopped talking to watch us.

Jinho wrapped his hand around mine. I was struck by how cold his skin was, as if he'd spent the beach party with his hand stuck in the cooler. Shadows played over his hawkish features, but blue burned bright amidst his storm-churned eyes. "Good. I do not have to get up."

He took my flask and sipped. Laney gave me a quick glare she must have thought appropriate for a "one-armed cancer girl" before disappearing with her friend. Rafael shook his head and cracked open another beer, his narrowed gaze never straying far from us. _"What?"_ I mouthed at him.

"Nothing." My brother held up his hands. "You're 'almost seventeen,' as you keep reminding us, Tica. Of course, that's still not the legal age of consent in America," he added to his beer bottle.

I swore I saw Jinho grin as he elbowed me. "What does he mean?"

_Doesn't understand English, my ass_. Blushing, I kept my gaze on my brother. "I'm just excited to plan my seventeenth birthday, is all, Raf. Remember, we were worried if I'd be around then?"

"Oh ho!" Lono did a drum-beat drop. "She just played the cancer card on you, bro!"

"My father's friend has a beach house up in Laie." Aolani shrugged. "We could have the party there Halloween weekend if you want, Tica."

"We should visit the haunted pineapple fields on the way!" Ryoko flopped down in Laney's spot beside me.

Mason clicked a finger in Jinho's direction. "Do they celebrate Halloween in Korea, bro?"

"There is no—'trick-or-treat'? But Halloween is popular in clubs, I think."

"You know," Aolani teased, her hand caressing his shoulder. Jinho gave her that smile that lit up his eyes. I drank more soju.

"Okay," he said. "Maybe I know."

"I already have my costume planned out," Mason gushed. "I'm going to be Nanaue. It's going to be epic."

Lono snorted. "You're too white to be Nanaue. A leprechaun, however—" He caught Rafael's eye, and they snickered. I threw an empty water bottle at them.

"What is 'Nanaue'?" Jinho asked.

"He's the shark man!" Rafael mimed tearing into his kalua pork. "He lies in wait and then eats people!" He sprang upon Ryoko to demonstrate, and she giggled, not trying very hard to push him away. I rolled my eyes and drank more soju. Yep. I was definitely going to have a headache after tonight.

"In Hawaiian lore, Nanaue is the son of the supreme shark god, Kamohaoli'i," I told Jinho, seeing no more was forthcoming from my brother. Personally, I thought sharks were awesome, but the legend reminded me to respect their power—especially if a shark's body was combined with the mind of a human. "Kamohaoli'i warned Nanaue's mother that their son must never be fed any meat, because he was born with a shark mouth on his back that desired flesh. However, Nanaue's earthly grandfather unknowingly let him eat pork at a male-only ceremony, and that woke up the shark in Nanaue. He secretly began to transform into a shark and ate many of his people before he was finally killed off the island of Moloka'i."

Jinho wasn't the only one staring at me after I finished.

"Damn. Are you sure you aren't part Hawaiian, Tica?" Lono finally asked.

A secret thrill shot through my being, tingling at my stump and shooting through the memory of my left arm. The mysterious man beneath the waves reformed in my mind. His dark eyes bore into mine, a mirror image of my own. His voice boomed in my head as loudly as it had all those years ago: _DAUGHTER._

A short, bleak laugh pulled me back. Rafael fell away from Ryoko, suddenly looking remarkably sober. "Our father was a short, rich dude with expensive sunglasses that he never took off. One day he went back to the mainland and died, without mentioning us in his will. Guess we were just that 'other exotic' family to him. So if you mean: are these islands more of a father to Tica than her biological one? Then sure, I guess at heart she's Hawaiian."

I seized his hand with my good one. His was trembling. No one said much more, after that.

***

"I'm sorry, Mom. I know it's late. I got caught up talking story with my friends."

I adjusted the phone against my ear. A group of KCC students was hanging out smoking nearby. Apart from them I was alone, waiting for Jinho and my brother to come drive me home. The hours had evaporated in the smoke of our bonfire; I had three missed calls from Mom.

She wasn't buying any of it. "Your brother was supposed to bring you back by eleven."

Jinho walked up, keys in hand. His gray-blue eyes were sharp and alert, as if he'd been drinking water all night. "Rafael is coming," he told me.

"We'll be back soon, Mom," I said quickly. "Jinho's driving. He's sober." I glanced at Jinho, and he nodded in confirmation, glancing around the dark palms restlessly.

"Please, Mom, go to sleep. I know you have to open the shop early." I shut my eyes as she launched off into a tirade that made me want to sink deep into the earth. I hated disappointing her.

"Tica," she said, as she always did before she let me go, "do you feel okay?"

The night's cold rattled through me, and I clutched my shawl tighter. "I feel fine, Mom. Really. I'm a normal teenager with a really big hangover."

"We are going to cut out that hangover part," Ana Dominguez said sternly, "but I am glad you enjoyed yourself, Tica. I wish I hadn't been working so I could have been there."

"I got the job interview at Kalani Resorts," I said quickly.

This time I heard the smile in her voice. "Oh, Tica. You never stop working. Share some of that with your brother, please."

"I do what I can," I said dramatically.

"Be back in twenty. Tell Jinho he should sleep on the couch. I don't want any of you driving so late at night."

My fingers gripped the phone a little tighter, and I glanced at him sideways. "Uh—sure."

The KCC students laughed and looked at us. I saw one point at me and then lean in to her friend, whispering.

_They're just dumb and drunk_. I slipped the phone into my clutch and turned back to Jinho, smoothing stray hair behind my ear.

He was frowning. "Kalani Resorts," he said, breaking into that sharp, clear voice he only used when he was alone with me.

"Yes..." I was fast giving up on my hair staying in place, as well as ever finding my brother. The tree line stayed dark and silent. "Why? Stay at one of their hotels before?"

"Kalani Resorts sounds familiar." His grayish-blue eyes raked my face. "Someone I know works there...someone repulsive..."

I laughed. "Well, Kalani Resorts is a massive hotel chain dedicated to 'bringing paradise everywhere,' or something like that. I doubt I'll run into your 'repulsive' friend—that's an odd thing to call someone, isn't it?"

"No," Jinho said. "It describes him completely."

I raised a conceding hand. "Hey, far be it for me to question your English, considering how fluently you speak it now. Why the FOB act?"

He shrugged. "People say a lot around you when they think you can't understand them. I am here because there is something I have to do, Tica."

My heartbeat quickened when he said my name. Heat sprang up in the thin space between us, and shadows descended on everything else. I couldn't take my eyes from his lean shoulders where I'd seen those mysterious black wings folded. It wouldn't take more than a half-step to close the gap between us, to confirm that when my arm wrapped around him, feathers would rustle beneath my fingertips—

"What are you?" I asked.

His hand slowly, hesitantly, reached out to stroke my cheek. "Tica," he said my name again, his voice choked, "I am...cursed, by something others cannot see or understand, but I think...you can. Will you help me break the curse?"

My heart melted and warmth spread across my chest. _Um, YES!_ it shrieked.

_Be quiet_ , I scolded. _He didn't give a proper answer to your question_.

A beer bottle shattered close by.

"Jinho!" one of Laney's drunk friends cried. "Isn't it that little girl's bedtime? Send her home and come hang with us!"

"I'll help you," I said immediately.

Jinho smiled, and his stormy eyes searched mine. Before I knew it, his black hair was tickling my forehead and his pale fingers were tangled in my hair, sending chills reverberating through my body. His left hand gently tilted my mouth up to meet his.

I shuddered and closed my eyes as his lips fell upon mine. The only boy I'd kissed was Mason, when we were bored one summer and decided to practice with one another. We'd given up after five minutes. With Jinho, my lips willingly pressed against his, eager to caress and feel until I ran out of air. His mouth smiled against mine, and he murmured my name. My stump bumped awkwardly against his chest as I rushed to encircle him with my other arm. My right hand raked his back.

At first, all I could feel were knots of scarred, taut muscle—hardly disappointing—but then the moon came out from behind the clouds. That was when I felt the scars take the form of something else—something soft and rustling. I was so excited, I kneaded my fingers deeper, and that was when I felt something bony, sharp, like a _tooth_ —

Jinho shoved me away abruptly. I blinked, suddenly aware of the gap-mouthed KCC students. "Jinho, I'm sorry—"

But he wasn't looking at me. His face was harsh, feral, and his nostrils flared in the direction of the trees. "Don't leave the parking lot. I will be back," he said and then melted into the shadows of the forest.

I hugged myself with my one arm, glowing.

"Damn, someone should tell Rafael that his baby sister got lucky tonight," one of the KCC kids said. "Where is he, anyway?"

"I saw him wandering down by the tide pools," another guy replied.

A cold jolt of reality woke me. _Mom_. She was expecting us home soon.

"Where'd you see my brother?" I demanded of the drunk boy in a Rainbow Warriors cap.

He blinked. "That way."

"Okay. Tell Jinho I'll be back." I glanced one more time at the car, reassuring myself it was still there, and then headed down to the beach.

"Oh, I'm sure you will be!" he called knowingly after me, and the group hooted and turned back to their drinks.

# Chapter 5: The Plague Man

~Tica~

I stumbled along the shoreline, the moon spinning above me. Jinho's soft but certain kiss teased me still, setting my lips aquiver. I licked them nervously, scouring the beach for Rafael. This was ridiculous. My entire body was vibrating as if I were a goddamn purring cat!

The hiss startled me. Looking down at my feet, I realized a sand-colored gecko was standing up on its hind legs, its lidless eyes fixed on me. Its throat pouch undulated, and it made a series of curious high-pitched clicks, as if in warning.

Interesting, but all I could think of right now was my first kiss—certainly not with the boy I'd expected. In fact, I couldn't be certain Jinho was a boy at all. I shut my eyes and saw again Jinho smile and lean in, one hand coming up to cup my cheek. Shutting out all of the unkind eyes watching. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at me with anything other than pity. Jinho was quiet, intense, and _desperate_ —I'd felt urgency hanging around him like an ominous cloud. He would sit perfectly still with a hunter's grace, but he couldn't completely hide the inner anxiety eating away at him. I didn't know what his "curse" was, but I recognized his pain. I wanted to help.

Something slithered across my foot. I opened my eyes and saw small geckoes of all shapes and sizes scurrying over rocks and down the trunks of palm trees, fleeing further into the bush. Away from the water.

The moonlight struck the beach, illuminating everything in ghostly, white light, a pale imitation of the day. Amidst all of the lizards fleeing, I saw a lone figure gazing out upon the ocean.

"Rafael!"

The figure's head jerked up, and I realized it wasn't my brother. I stopped abruptly, the security of Jinho's kiss evaporating from my mind. The gecko's warning chirp echoed.

The thing had an odd, uneven stance, and its face was hidden behind a curtain of black hair, thick and coarse like a horse's mane. It turned to stare in my direction and slowly extended a pale hand, wet and dripping with seaweed. Its eyes, two pinpricks of eerie green, floated up into the night sky, still latched upon me. Its body spluttered to life. It took one shuddery step in my direction with hand outstretched, its head still bent.

I stood, petrified, as the wind carried my scent to it. The gust blew its hair out of its face, revealing a stump of a nose, horribly boiled red skin, and empty sockets dripping with pus. Its mouth hole twisted to reveal three large yellow teeth, and then it flew at me in a gale of black flies and green mist.

I shouted and ran. All of the bonfire pits I passed were cold and dead. My breath came out in hard, unnatural gasps that hurt my chest, and my left stump began to throb painfully. I'd nearly made it to the tree line when I tripped over the body.

I hit the sand and stared into the eyes of Laney, her gaze glazed over with eerie green mist. Her head had swelled exponentially, and horrible, potato-sized tumors engulfed her neck, calves, and even her stomach, spilling out through her shirt.

I coughed and scrambled back, something small and metal flying out of my shawl pocket. It was my brother's Swiss Army knife. He'd asked me to hold it earlier when he went skinny-dipping with Laney or Angie or Tammy or whoev— _shit!_

The wasting humanoid lunged over Laney's prone form, its black cloud of flies obscuring the night sky above. I lashed out blindly with my clutch and heard it rip under the force of the monster's bite. Its teeth sank into my left stump, sending waves of blinding pain through my shoulder. I suddenly felt drained and weak. Even as darkness began to cloud my eyes, one particularly vicious stab of pain reminded me that I was still alive. I felt around for the knife and flicked it open. When I opened my eyes, the horror was feeding on me. I stabbed it viciously through the skull.

At first, I felt it recoil. Then it laughed.

"Tica!"

The darkness, the flies, all of it vanished. I could see the moon again. Rafael and Jinho dashed toward me.

"Are you okay?"

"Call 9-1-1! We have to help Laney! She has some sort of _plague_!" I desperately crawled toward her slumped shape, heedless of my bleeding shoulder. "That _demon_! It did this to her!"

I turned to see Jinho staring at _me_ of all people, not the glaze-eyed, lumpy mess of girl. Rafael swiftly knelt beside Laney and checked her pulse.

"That demon alcohol." He shook his head and pulled out his phone. "Damn, I've never seen her this wasted. Give her some water, Jinho."

"That's not going to help!" I cried shrilly, when Laney stirred and vomited onto my dress. I stared. The boils, the tumors—where had they gone? Her skin was unblemished, if a bit pale.

"Ohhhh." Laney moaned and rolled over. Jinho helped her sit up.

"Jinho?" Her eyelashes fluttered.

"Stay with us, Laney." He held a water bottle to her lips.

Her fingers gripped his arm with sudden strength. "I thought he was an angel, like you. I'd never let him drink from me, but you..."

Her eyes glassed over, and she rolled back against him. Jinho and I sat mute, holding her between us. Sirens blared, and Rafael hurried off to meet the paramedics.

"It is good you find her, Tica," Jinho said in a low, lurching voice.

"Drop the accent," I hissed. "You have some explaining to do! You _sensed_ one of these things watching us!"

His face was unreadable beneath his jet-black hair. "What things?"

"Whatever did _this_." I pulled off my shawl. Something had punctured a hole in my left stump. It was an ugly hole that did not bleed—but I could feel the weight of it. I shuddered as I thought of those enormous incisors, large and vicious like a boar's.

His hand slapped over the hole so fast, I jumped. I looked up to see his gray-blue eyes inches from mine. "Do not—tell— _anyone_."

"Why not?" I challenged.

"Because they will murder you and your family—and no one will know what killed you." He spoke English effortlessly, shooting a dark glare at the surrounding foliage. "This pair of Dark Spirits does not want the world to know them yet." He added, softer, "They do not want the world to remember."

Later, I stood between my brother and mother with red-and-blue lights playing across our faces, watching Laney being loaded into an ambulance to be treated for alcohol poisoning. My mother had shown up despite my protests that she get some rest. Even with her lack of sleep, she looked stronger than I felt. I leaned into her shoulder and felt her hug me back, fiercely.

Rafael fell back from us, unable to meet my mother's unflinching stare. They wouldn't talk for a while now, I knew. I grabbed Rafael's hand before he slouched back to the car, tying him to us for a moment longer. Jinho prowled the edges of the crowd as if no longer welcome, as if he had never been a part of us in the first place.

The wind blew, carrying with it the scent of manure and rotting fungi. My reddened eyes shot around the palm trees, and then I saw them—two pale figures, eerie green eyes glowing in the darkness. Familiar pain cracked in the spot between my shoulder plate and arm socket. I frantically turned back to the scene of living, flesh-and-blood people. I refused to look at them, even as they laughed. Oh, how they laughed.

# Chapter 6: The Job Interview

~Tica~

It's fair to say I was a tad preoccupied during my job interview at the Punahele, a crown hotel of Kalani Resorts in Waikiki—mainly with peering over my shoulder to make sure scary Boogeymen weren't grinning at me between bikini-clad tourists. Aolani kept up a steady stream of conversation with our guide, the stern-faced Secretary Reynolds. The secretary looked bored enough to quit babysitting the charity-case high school interns and hire Aolani on the spot.

I was busy checking my phone for messages from Jinho. He knew what those freaky "Dark Spirits" were. He'd promised me an explanation. Finally:

I will come by your house at 7.

I smiled, but it turned into a grimace as my left shoulder throbbed with mild but oh-so-familiar pain. Suddenly, time felt suspended. All I was aware of was the quickening of my heartbeat and the frightened child in my head:

_Oh, no, no, no, no_ —

"Mr. Summers just got in?" Secretary Reynolds wheeled about on her heels, her equally red lips dropping into a surprised "O" at the response from her cellphone. "He wants to _see_ the girls? Well, of course I can arrange it. We'll head down to Ho'onani Pavilion straightaway. Girls!" She clapped her hands. "What an unexpected pleasure! Our CEO Crispin Summers just arrived from the mainland, and he'd like to meet you both!"

I was fairly certain my eyes were still red from bonfire smoke, and my collared shirt wasn't ironed. Aolani looked as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as a deer. She squealed with equal excitement.

"Mr. Summers likes to handpick staff whenever possible," Ms. Reynolds continued to lecture us as we traversed ivy-curtained trellises down to the second floor. Sunlight peeked in through the diamond-shaped leaves, casting laughing shadows on the marble floor. "Every staff member is a vital part of Kalani Resorts." She gave us a once-over with more interest than she'd shown all day. "Although I've never seen him express interest in meeting staff who are so...fresh."

_Weird_ , Aolani mouthed at me. We followed Ms. Reynolds around a sharp bend. Suddenly, the ivy carpeting the trellises, the sunrise-colored Bird of Paradise flowers shooting over our heads—all of the stunning foliage vanished. In their place was a lonely hall garlanded with ugly black roses. At the far end was a marble mausoleum.

Aolani ducked behind me instinctively. I felt her squeeze my wrist, so I plucked up my courage: "Um, Ms. Reynolds, if you don't mind me asking...what _is_ that?"

Ms. Reynolds turned her hostile gaze on me. " _That_ , Miss Dominguez, is Mr. Summers's daytime office."

"Uh...it kind of looks like..."

"A tomb," Aolani put in helpfully.

Ms. Reynolds turned a darker shade of red. "If you must know, Mr. Summers suffers from very specific health problems, one of which is an allergy to sunlight."

She continued to berate our shocked faces, "You will _not_ ask such impertinent questions while in his presence, nor will you remark upon his appearance. Is that clear, girls? I'd expect more discretion, especially from _you_ , Tica Dominguez."

Burning anger unfurled in my gut. _Why, because my cancer defines me?_

"Mr. Summers _does_ know it's sunny on O'ahu three hundred and sixty days of the year?" Aolani muttered, but she hushed up when Ms. Reynolds glared at her.

At first, I couldn't see anything inside of the tomb office. The only light came from hundreds of tiny red candles twinkling over silver bowls of fruit and meats, a feast with no guests. Water dripped on my head, and I realized that an ancient air conditioner was embedded in the wall, dutifully circulating stale, decrepit air. My left shoulder began to itch profusely. Then, something large moaned behind the curtain in the far back. Aolani and I jumped.

Ms. Reynolds was unfazed. "The girls from Momilani High School are here, Mr. Summers."

A giant, fleshy hand seized the curtain and jerked it back. Slowly, propelling itself up from the darkness, one massive, pale calf crawling with varicose veins swung off the bed. A second foot joined it with a _splat_ on the concrete.

The thing could get no further. It chose to roll over on its side, pound after pound of flesh undulating from its belly to drip down to the floor. Its head was sunk deep into its neck of fat rolls. Crispin Summers, CEO of Kalani Resorts, dedicated to bringing the sunshine of paradise to countries far and wide, fixed his beady eyes on us and gave an enormous smile that swiftly collapsed beneath his mounds of cheek fat.

"Mr. Summers," Ms. Reynolds continued as if this were all quite normal, "May I present Aolani Kahananui and—"

"Tica Dominguez!" He licked his lips, casting a resemblance to a corpulent toad that wanted to eat me. I shrank back; Aolani bristled as Mr. Summers gestured for me alone to step closer. I was terrified, but then I realized he just wanted to shake my hand.

"Such a fighter," his purple salami lips whispered before engulfing my hand whole in a gallant kiss. My skin crawled, and every hair stood up on my body to scream: _Danger!_ Even as I scolded myself— _the CEO of Kalani Resorts does_ not _want to eat you, Tica; he obviously gets enough food as it is_ —I couldn't stop Jinho's voice from rising unbidden in the back of my mind:

Repulsive.

"To have survived through such a terrible ordeal at a young age...your struggle against cancer will be an inspiration to many." CEO Summers leered at me again, and I stood there dumbly, aware of the saliva webbing my fingers and the sudden lash of pain flaring in my left shoulder.

_It's going to be okay._ I shut my eyes tight. _It's my puncture wound flaring up from the attack on the beach last night. The pain will go away. This isn't that...other thing._

I opened my eyes and managed to say, "Thank you."

"Modern medicine is such a wonderful thing, isn't it?" Mr. Summers tried to scoop some of his belly back up onto the cot unsuccessfully. "It's the only reason I am allowed to exist in this world, certainly."

Aolani fidgeted, unable to stand being ignored any longer. "We heard you had a—skin condition."

He regarded her with amusement. "That is an understatement. Of course, most things are when it comes to me!" He gave a great, pealing laugh that broke off into wheezes. Ms. Reynolds hurried to bring him some sort of odd red drink in a gallon container. It looked like strands of mutilated beef. Mr. Summers sucked it down greedily.

"Ah." He patted his belly and gave a contented burp. His slanted green eyes drifted to us. "It's okay; you can laugh, you know."

Aolani and I managed to summon up a few nervous chuckles.

Satisfied, Mr. Summers tapped his gallon cup for Ms. Reynolds to refill it. "I have a very rare condition called Tetraodontidae Syndrome."

I stared at him. "Tetraodontidae? As in the family name for puffers and blowfish?"

Mr. Summers took his time sucking red gunk off his fingers. " _Very_ good, Tica. I read on your resume that you have a love for the ocean and its creatures. Well, my little marine biologist, I have a unique genetic kink that causes my body to swell and deflate. Right now, you are witnessing the deflated version." He picked up the limp rolls of his stomach and dropped them; they oozed back into their crevices. "It makes it very difficult to be mobile during the day. You must come back for the unveiling of our newest wing off of Makani Pavilion on Monday evening. I will be much more...active, then."

"I read about the wing opening, with the view of the _mauka_ side toward the mountains," Aolani broke in. "Do you know what you're calling it yet? Since you have a wind theme on the _Makani_ floor, then it might be cool to call this wing _Kūkalahale_ , a famous wind of Honolulu."

Mr. Summers blinked, as if remembering she was still there. "You speak Hawaiian, Aolani?"

She nodded eagerly. "I attended a Hawaiian immersion school until the age of nine. My grandmother and aunt are fluent."

Thoughtful, the CEO reclined back on his mountain of pillows. "You must come to the unveiling as well. We will speak more there. Now, pardon me, girls. I must nap. It was a long trip over from the mainland."

We bowed our heads and murmured thanks before Ms. Reynolds shooed us from the mausoleum. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder and watched the slumbering giant roll over on his side. The light from the midday sun glared into the tomb, and for a second, it happened again: enveloping his shoulders were emerald green feathers, which I'd mistaken for a blanket. The green reminded me of the eerie glow of the Dark Spirits' eyes, and my breath caught. Then the "office" door swung shut.

Ms. Reynolds escorted us to the hotel lobby, outside of which a large fountain sculpted in the shape of a tropical reef shot rainbow-colored water.

"Thank you, ladies," she said. "It appears both of you will continue working here...for now." She sniffed in our direction, as if Aolani's bright smile and my fake one offended her, and then tromped off with a click of her red heels.

"Well, that was bizarre," I said.

Aolani refused to be deterred from her excitement. "Mr. Summers obviously had to overcome a lot of adversity in his life to become the successful business mogul he is today. We're going to learn a lot from him, Tica."

"There is no such thing as Tetraodontidae Syndrome," I said.

She put her hands on her hips. "How would you know? Are you a med student as well as a 'young marine biologist' now?"

"Come on, a man who can deflate and inflate? The media would have been all over that a long time ago."

"How else do you explain his...condition?"

_Magic_. But when gazing into the eyes of my childhood friend, I realized I didn't recognize her. Aolani had become a stranger to me.

_Yes_ , I decided, _the only one who will understand why I'm seeing things is another stranger: Jinho._

So I gestured to the bulletin board advertising: _"Come visit the newest wing in the Punahele ohana! Book your stay with your Kalani Resorts rewards card now and receive our exclusive Polynesian Adventure package, including a free lesson in authentic hula dance!_ " "Are you sure you're okay with exporting your culture this way, Aolani?"

She didn't look at the poster. "If tourists want to give us money for it, then who are we to deny them? Besides, Tica, I don't have _cancer survivor_ to put on my resume."

My head shot up, but Aolani was already stalking out the door.

# Chapter 7: Bethany Hamilton

~Tica~

My mom placed the plate of blackened ahi in front of me. I dug in, interchangeably dipping the thinly sliced pieces in mango-ginger dressing and wasabi.

"How did the job interview go?" she asked.

I gulped down guava juice. "Okay, I guess. They asked me to come back Monday at seven."

"At night?"

I put down the chopsticks, my stomach churning. "Sorry, I forgot I have work! I'm sure I can reschedule—"

Ana Dominguez pointed her chopsticks at me. From what Ryoko had told me, that was plain rude, but my mom didn't care much for tradition. She was more in favor of whatever method accentuated her point. "You're going to that internship. Your brother can cover your shift. He only works at that boat company on the weekends."

Rafael hated the Stop n' Shop. I was going to get a lot of shit for this later. Sighing, I stirred more wasabi into my shoyu sauce. That was when the ticks started.

I barely noticed the first prickle, but by the time the third wave struck, my left shoulder was twitching violently. The chopsticks rolled from my hand, and I grabbed my stump, feebly begging the pain to stop.

"Tica!"

I hunched over, gritting my teeth. Through my hair, I saw my mother drop to her knees in front of me. She grabbed my knee with one hand and reached for the phone with the other.

"I'm calling the doctor."

"No!" The pain subsided to a dull throb, and the pounding in my head abated. "It's all right. I'm fine."

"You're not." My mother pulled back, blinking furiously. I knew she didn't like it when I saw her cry. I stared dully at the floor while she pulled herself together.

"They warned this might happen, Tica." Neither of us dared utter the word: _relapse._

Hand on her hip, my mother stared at the phone. "I'll schedule an appointment with Dr. Kaiser. Just to make sure."

Upon the faded yellow tile of our kitchen floor, I saw all over again the hygienic white halls of the hospital, the tired-eyed nurses, the clocks that passed time so quickly and slowly that days became meaningless; I felt the crackle of sheet paper beneath my thin hospital gown, the perfect plasticity of cups, smiles, the tips of needles; I heard the beeping of monitoring machines; I smelled death.

"FUCK!"

The word exploded from my lungs and left my throat raw and my chest heaving. I stormed from the kitchen, hating my missing arm. I'd gotten rid of it, and still, it wasn't enough. Giving up surfing and swimming and my friendship with Aolani who'd liked me better before wasn't enough. Relearning how to write with my right hand and drive with one hand and dress myself—all of it, in exchange to fumble through the world like a child all over again, except my mind was old and weary.

The front door opened, catching me in mid-stride to my room. Rafael and Jinho came in, their dark hair dripping with water and surfboards tucked under their arms.

"Hiya, Tica. Whoa—what's wrong?"

My brother reached for my shoulder, but I shoved past him and into my room. I'd barely slammed the door shut before my mom began laying into him about bringing surfboards inside the apartment.

I breathed in the stillness, my thudding heart the loudest thing in the room. This was the only place where I could admit what scared me most:

I don't want to die.

"Tica?" A low, melodious voice flowed in from the hallway, hesitant.

I jerked open the door, and there was Jinho. He cast a tall, rangy shadow as he ducked into my room. He was dressed in black boardshorts still damp from the ocean and a long-sleeved white rash guard that tightly hugged his chest.

His keen gray-blue eyes darted around my curtain-drawn room, taking in posters and dolphin stuffed animals. "I'm sorry. I'm getting your floor wet."

"It'll live." I tossed him a towel.

"Thanks." He gave his jet-black hair a quick tousle, causing it to spike out in all directions. I hid a smile and curled up on my bed.

"So. Who is this surfer you have all over your walls?" he asked, stepping closer to my 4x4 of a 5'11 blonde bombshell surfing a tunnel at Jaws.

"Bethany Hamilton." I flashed my stump. "She lost her arm in a shark attack many years ago."

"And she returned to surfing?"

"She was back in the water again in a month." I flopped back against my pillows. "They figured out a custom board for her. Bethany went on to win all sorts of surfing competitions."

"So she is your inspiration to surf again."

"She is my inspiration to get in the ocean again." I laughed softly. Next to Ryoko and Aolani, I was thicker and huskier, with about as many curves as a beanbag chair. I used to play water polo, and my teammates would always jokingly refer to me as "The Tank" because of the way I could barrel through the water: an unstoppable force. That way of swimming didn't work for me anymore. All of my muscles couldn't protect me from cancer, and now they couldn't protect me from something else: fear.

"Pretty pathetic, huh?" I rolled over on my back. "Rafael's tried to help me learn to swim after the surgery, but I don't know... I just freak out. I don't understand the water anymore."

"Yes, Rafael told me. You are afraid to risk your life after what it cost to save it. After all, your mom paid an arm and a leg in some ways, too." Jinho took a step closer to the poster, thoughtful.

Abruptly, he flung open the curtains. Sunset outlined him with lustrous pink light. Baring his teeth against the cascade of brilliance, he seized the bottom of his rash-guard and peeled it off to reveal a lean, muscular back rigid with scars.

"Look at my back, Tica. What do you see?"

Stunned, I stared at his protruding shoulders against which his bones strained, as if struggling to break free. Suddenly, my room exploded in a blizzard of black feathers. I clawed my way through the flurries to see a set of scraggly wings, the deep bluish-black of midnight, beating softly against Jinho's back. Every time they opened, I could a thin red line engrained in the boy's skin, a red line that appeared to be breathing. Its bottom lip dropped open, panting, and I realized I could see _teeth_.

"You're an angel," I whispered, "...with a giant mouth on your back."

The wings ducked over the mouth as if ashamed, and Jinho turned to face me.

"I believe you know him," he said grimly. "You can understand how I am cursed, Tica. During a wrestling match two years ago, the shark god's son Nanaue and I became infused. The longer we stay merged as one, the more I feel his...hunger."

"You can't eat meat or else you'll go ape-shit on everyone," I said automatically. I stopped and thought. "Dear God—did my mom feed you _ahi_?" I stopped and thought some more. "Dear God—the Hawaiian gods are _real_?"

Jinho burst out laughing, a melodious sound that lifted the scowling shadows from his eyes. "Yes, the Hawaiian gods exist, as do many others," he said in amusement. "Oftentimes they have grown into a shape or a complex set of ideas we do not recognize. If they do come to you in a form you comprehend, then...do not feel lucky. It means the situation is dire."

"So you're not a god?" I exclaimed, pulling my covers up to my chest. I felt like a little girl again, as if all of the folklore of my childhood fairytales had climbed off their pages and begun dancing around my room.

His face hardened. "No. I am something that does not belong to the world of the living or the dead. You can see me in my true shape in that time between waking and sleeping, when the veil between your world and mine is at its thinnest." He paused. "In the world of Eve."

Eve. It sounded like a magical twilight kingdom, a place both marvelous and deadly at the same time. "What is Eve?" I asked.

"It is the spirit world of all things in-between." He took a step closer to me, his ragged wings fluttering behind his back. Although I shut my eyes tight, when I opened them, he was still there, like some wonderfully bizarre dream. Jinho hesitated and then lifted my chin with a pale finger.

"For some reason, Tica, you do not see as other mortals do. You can see the spirit world while awake, whether the spirits inhabiting it want you to or not. You saw what those Dark Spirits did to Laney. You could feel Nanaue on my back when we kissed."

"I saw the same type of wings you have on the CEO of Kalani Resorts!" I blurted, excitement bubbling.

Jinho didn't seem nearly as thrilled. "Yes. That fat sanctimonious fuck is my brother."

I blinked. "Erm—you don't seem much alike."

A faint smile hovered on his lips. "Thank you. We're not."

"So how can I help you break your curse?"

He shook his head, dark hair falling in his face. "No. First I help you."

I watched him move around the room, picking up one of my scented sea breeze candles. "What are you doing?"

"Do you have another candle? Ah. Perfect." Jinho selected a large purple one. He glanced toward my door. "Do you mind if I lock this? Trust me, you don't want your mother or brother to stumble in on us."

"Uh...you _do_ know what the normal assumption is about the locked door of a teenage girl's room when male company is over..."

"They were arguing about Rafael's room full of surfboards when I left. That should give us some time."

I slipped out of the covers, shivering beside him in my green tank top and black spandex while he lit the candles. "Time for what exactly?"

He stood up to his full height and smiled down at the flickering candles, their soft glow flecking his eyes with silver. "To teach you how to swim again."

# Chapter 8: The Spirit Sea

~Tica~

I was lost in the sea-salty scent of candles, as if the ocean had gathered itself up and come rushing into my bedroom, sweeping me away to a new and dangerous place. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I became aware of was Jinho's hands resting on my waist. Shyly, I extended my right hand down and covered his. He grinned, leaning his head against mine so his breath played across my neck. "Look behind you."

There was nothing behind us except for a wall. However, when I turned, I saw that the wood was _moving_. My bedroom wall had turned into a rustling blanket of geckoes. They slipped over and under one other with crackles and hisses, like a heap of moving leaves. Every now and again, one let out its famous _click-click_ laugh.

"They are Mo'o," Jinho said.

I recognized the word. The mo'o were lizard-like spirits who inhabited the _aina_ in pools and forests; some were said to be inscribed in the sides of the mountains themselves. They could be benevolent—my mind flew back to that gecko on the beach that had tried to warn me—or they could be tricksters. They could also get big...like dragon-big.

"Do they mean us good will or harm?" I asked nervously.

"For me, harm," Jinho said grimly. "For you, I suppose you shall have to look closer."

I did so and saw that every tail was interfused with another's, so that the mo'o created one inextricable chain. Some even had overlapping vertebrae, to create two-and-three lizards.

"They represent a lineage," Jinho said by way of cryptic explanations.

"How am I seeing this?" I asked in wonder.

Jinho grinned again and extended a hand. "Come. You must cross through the candle doorway. Then your spirit can depart from its slumbering body and wander a different earth than you have ever known."

I hesitated on the safe side of the flickering candles. Yet this was the first time I'd seen the years of reticence peel away from Jinho's face. On the cusp of exploring this strange spirit world, Eve, he finally felt like the young man he embodied: eager, full of energy, and pulsating with the will to fly. Smiling, I took his hand. Together we dashed between the twin candles, pausing only for an instant on the windowsill. I held fast to his neck as he spread his black wings and jumped.

"Do not worry. The candles will guide us back to our earthly bodies," he whispered, his pale lips pressed against my ear.

"So we're in spirit form now?" I clung tighter as we rose above the swaying palms creating a dark sea beneath us. An infinity of stars danced within a fingertip's touch. Abruptly, they formed the shape of a _wa_ _'_ _a kaulua_ that shot toward the moon with a dip of its oars. I thought I saw ghostly people wave at me from the twin hulls, and I shook my head in disbelief.

"Yes. Why? Do you feel invincible?" Jinho's teeth clicked oddly, and he abruptly withdrew his head from my neck.

I shivered in the absence of his presence but moved forward as far as I dared within his steel-corded grip, extending my torso out so I could feel the wind swirl around me like an unseen stream. "I feel free."

Indeed, all of the pain that had been so tightly coiled in my left shoulder was gone. My muscles moved, and nothing hindered them. As we passed beneath the gaze of the moon, I could almost see a faint, star-covered arm extending down from my left shoulder, as if it had never left. It had only changed its form.

I was so overcome, I looked away, blinking back tears. The wa'a kaulua still hovered there, its ghostly crew members watching. They waved again, and this time, I raised a hand in return.

However, my greeting only seemed to agitate them. I realized, as I watched their hands gesture with increasing urgency, that they weren't waving in welcome. They were trying to warn me.

I retreated back into my angel's arms, heart pounding. No one else was around. There was only me...and Jinho.

I called Jinho an angel because I had no other word for him. That didn't mean there wasn't one.

The wa'a kaulua made no move to follow us, but I felt the shadows crossing the ghosts' faces long after they had disappeared.

***

I had never seen Waikiki Beach empty. Apartments and hotels towered above us, twinkling with millions of tiny lights as if daring the ocean to come get them. However, the white sands below were smooth and undisturbed except for scuttling ghost crabs and mo'o laughing amongst the palm trees. Colorful umbrellas waved along the city line, under which smoke rose from untended grills. Chicken continued to turn on spits and pork lumpia wrapped themselves.

Jinho walked up to a beachside vending machine. Before I could ask what currency the spirit world took, he put out his hand and gave a simple command: "POG, come."

Two cans of passionfruit-orange-guava juice zipped out of the slot, straight into our awaiting hands. I gasped.

"How'd you do that?"

He smiled mysteriously. "Objects have a funny way of listening to you here."

I walked up to the vending machine and asked for two bags of sunflower seeds. Its emotionless glass face merely stared at me. Huffing, I hurried to catch up to my winged spirit world guide.

"Well, what do you think?" Jinho grinned and sauntered backwards down the beach, opening his arms to the vastness of it.

I followed him, a small smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. "What, can you reserve beaches in Eve? Where is everyone?"

"Other spirits?" Jinho shrugged and plopped down on a waiting towel. "They're around. Ghosts pass through Eve quickly in this part of the world. They follow the chant of the Nightmarchers on to their rest, in the Beyond."

"The _huaka_ _'_ _i pō_ are real, too?" I was delighted. When we were young, Aolani's grandmother had enchanted us with tales of the ancient Hawaiian warriors. When night fell, the huaka'i pō marched forth from their burial sites to old battlegrounds and sacred places, blowing conch shells and playing drums to signal their approach. Tutu told us they came upon her on the highway in Waimanalo. She'd barely hid in time, for to behold the spirit army without a blood relative in their ranks was to die. We'd spent that night camping in her backyard. Aolani and Ryoko had fallen asleep quickly. I had fidgeted nervously in my sleeping bag until sun-up, my ears straining for a crackle of leaves, a snapping branch—any sound that the Nightmarchers were near.

Jinho cracked open his POG can. "Certainly. Their presence helps keep the Dark Spirits at bay. Trust me, in other parts of the world, Eve is not so peaceful. There, the Dark Spirits have amassed in great numbers, sickening Eve and stopping ghosts from moving on."

"Now they're here." I shuddered, thinking again of that wasting, disease-ridden creature I'd seen gazing out at the sea. What had it been looking for?

"Two particular Dark Spirits are," Jinho said grimly. "Most are spirits of anger and violence, but this pair...has purpose. They could not have come here without help."

I sipped my POG until I was unable to hold back my fear— "They made me feel sick again."

Jinho crushed his can, his eyes darkening to the color of deep ocean. "You must understand, Tica: I cannot speak their names here, or else they would find us. It has been a long time since that pair of Dark Spirits has walked the earth, and if they have awakened, then others of The Twelve have as well. Those two are the Lords of Tumors and Jaundice. With your medical history, you will be of great interest to them. If you feel what you thought you did, then you should seek a doctor's attention immediately."

He added, "Laney was diagnosed with Cirrhosis this afternoon."

"Oh, God." I unconsciously rubbed my left shoulder. I remembered the Laney I had seen that fateful night of the beach party: pasty and bloated with tumors spilling out of her belly, while my brother had seen a normal, passed-out girl. I was suddenly highly detesting this "spirit sight."

Jinho disposed of our cans in a recycling bin and cleared his throat. "So...swimming?"

I stared at him. "You obviously haven't been on a date in a while."

A slight smile crossed his shadowed face. "Discussing ancient demons of unspeakable evil hasn't become an icebreaker these days?"

I laughed as he swept me up in his arms. "For some reason, it doesn't seem to be catching on. I don't even know what _you_ are. How'd you end up with Nanaue on your back?"

I'd attempted to infuse the question with as much lightness as I dared, but nevertheless, I felt his muscles stiffen.

"I want to tell you," the winged boy finally said slowly, "but I want to show you something first."

"Why?"

"So you can trust me." Jinho slid off his slippers so he stood only in boardshorts, the moon illuminating his pale torso. His eyes were weighed down by sorrow. "As you might have guessed, I'm not an angel."

I hesitated for a moment, but in that silence, the comforting roar of the sea filled my mind. It had been a long time since I'd felt calm enough to face my fears of the ocean. I accepted his hand, and he led me out into the shallows of Kuhio Beach, farther, and farther, until the sand dropped away and we had to swim.

I remembered the one-arm freestyle drills Rafael had taught me post-surgery. I gazed down into the darkness stretching far beneath me, where my feet couldn't touch the bottom. This was no swimming pool. This was a silvery spirit sea which could very easily hold enormous ghost sharks or jellyfish. Yet the ocean's embrace felt silky and enchanting, urging my mind to relax. I was a spirit here. My real body was safe in the waking world. So I launched off into the darkness.

I twisted my body to the side until I was perpendicular to the ocean floor. My legs pumped furiously while I extended my right arm up and over my head and then plunged it vertically into the water. As before, my body balked under the unfamiliar movement, and I began to sink.

Someone splashed me and I coughed, salt water stinging my throat. I glared over to see Jinho gliding along on his back, his black wings fully extended like two tattered lily pads.

"Wow, you're slow," he said, smirking. His wings sent another wave tumbling toward me. My eyes narrowed, and I tensed up my waist in order to remain buoyant above the oncoming tide. I'd been swimming my entire life. Although I was afraid of how my strokes would have to change, of how I would have to change, swimming was still a part of me. I didn't care how old or powerful Jinho was. This was the second time he'd criticized my swimming technique, and there would not be a third.

I shot forward, my shoulder muscles bulging, and I diced through the waves like a knife. I made sure to kick extra hard in Jinho's direction and was rewarded with a spluttering cough. Grinning, I duck-dived under an oncoming wave. My legs fused together until I was a single force from my fingers down to my toes. Then I propelled forward like an eel, unstoppable and free. I heard a slow round of applause behind and turned to see Jinho's head bobbing amongst the sparkly foam, his black hair stuck to his face. I smiled and waved.

Suddenly, the shimmering spirit sea grew cold and hostile. I watched silver waves freeze in mid-motion. My breath blew out in frosty wisps, and I lost my concentration. My body seized up, trapped in a fist of ice.

"Poli'ahu!"

Jinho crouched on top of a magical iceberg nearby, his teeth bared as he glared at an unseen foe. My mind flooded with panic as the cold approached my brain with dark purpose. Suddenly, it let go—but I sank like a stone.

Underwater, I frantically pumped my legs and arm to break the last of the ice encaging me. The moon bore down upon me with little warmth, my only light in utter darkness.

Except for a flash of technicolor scales. The humuhumu darted off into the shadows of a reef.

I narrowed my eyes at the challenge. I remembered my missing arm made of starlight. Parts of us came and went; memories remained. I remembered when I was a little girl who saw the ocean and laughed for the first time. That little girl was surfing Sandy's by the time she was twelve. When her brother drove her out to see the North Shore in winter, she beheld it as a goal, not an impossibility. The ocean promised no mercy, but it did leave clues in its currents for those who knew where to look. So I gathered up my legs and kicked.

I broke the surface, and Jinho was waiting. He hoisted me up onto his iceberg and held me close. We had company.

The towering ice maiden was majestic, dark-skinned, and radiated luminescence that froze the sea foam for her to stand upon. A single moonflower was tucked behind her left ear. Her shoulder cape blew out with the strength of a blizzard, showering us with snowflakes. No matter which angle I assessed her, her true form slid from my mind like water. I recalled what Jinho had named her.

"You're real." I fell to my knees. This was incredible. I'd always been a fan of Pele folklore. Poli'ahu, one of four sisters to inhabit snowy Mauna Kea on the Big Island, was often the volcano goddess's foe. My smile felt strained. Poli'ahu didn't know about my preferences...did she?

"As real as that ice you felt around your neck," Jinho growled. "What are you doing here, Poli'ahu?"

The snow goddess smiled benignly. "I sensed something sick and rotting had entered Eve. I hastened over with all speed and attacked without thinking. I apologize."

I wilted beneath that cold gaze, my heart sinking. She couldn't mean what I thought she did.

"Tica was attacked by one of the Plague Lords," Jinho said. "If they are interested in her, then that is all the more reason for her to be here, where she can be protected."

"Are they interested?" Poli'ahu countered. "Or did they just see a sick girl who made an easy target?"

"Not so easy." I stepped out from the safety of Jinho's wings and faced the snow goddess. "Being 'sick' isn't new to me. I've lived through bone cancer and its treatment before, and I'll live through this, too."

The ice maiden gave me a gaunt smile. "Is that so, little ripple? You may have the endurance of a glacier, but the Plague Lords are not your only enemies. From what I've seen, you're making it easy for _him_."

It was fairly obvious who she was talking about. I glanced hesitantly at Jinho. "What does she mean?"

"She speaks of what I am," Jinho said softly. "There is a reason I can hold Nanaue without being devoured by him. Nanaue and I share the same nature, Tica. Both of us...blood drinkers."

I suddenly felt very small indeed, trapped on an iceberg between an unfriendly snow goddess and a—vampyre.

"What do you want from me?"

"Yes, _Jinho_ ," Poli'ahu said, reclining back on a frozen wave as if it were a throne. "Do tell. This should be very enlightening."

Jinho gave her a long glare before turning back to me, his raggedy black wings drooping. "To part from Nanaue, I must feed him blood that will sicken him. You, Tica, have experienced a Plague Lord's bite and survived. Your blood is now infected with their powerful poison. You can help me."

I bit my lip. "You mean to kill Nanaue, don't you?"

"The gods do not 'die' like mortals, but they can be dispelled for a time," Poli'ahu spoke in her hoarse whisper. "Shark god Kamohaoli'i warned Nanaue's human mother of what would happen if he tasted flesh. The mortals did not heed his words, and so Nanaue began to hunt his own people. You will not like what happens if he breaks free from Jinho in this day and time."

I knew the stories. Nanaue possessed the hunting instincts of a shark and the cunning of a human. No matter how hard he tried to hold back his hunger, it would always eventually win. He'd eaten through family and friends from Hawai'i to Maui before the people of Moloka'i trapped and killed him. I didn't want to know what the contemporary version of Nanaue would be.

I reached out and touched Jinho's lowered head. "You just need a little blood?"

Jinho's gray-blue eyes searched mine. "A little over an extended period of time. None of it can ever touch Nanaue's mouth on my back, or else he will wake. I will lack the strength to hold him back any longer."

"But if my blood is poison, then won't it kill you, too?" I asked tentatively.

"Yes," Jinho said quietly. "Tica, I am a blood drinker like Nanaue. However, I have lived far longer and killed with much worse intent. Because of the circumstances of my turning...I cannot be killed like other lesser vampyres. I had been searching a long time for a way to die before I met you."

"Think of it as killing two birds with one stone," Poli'ahu said brightly.

We both glared at her. "Why are you still here?" Jinho demanded.

The snow goddess sighed. "You, Jinho, are not the only blood drinker on this island. Your brother is here."

_CEO Crispin Summers_. I remembered Secretary Reynolds handing him the gallon-sized "specialty" drink that he'd downed within seconds. I shut my eyes tight and tried not to think of what—or _who_ that was.

"That is because I am trespassing in his dominion," Jinho said grimly. "He wants to keep an eye on me. Do not worry, Poli'ahu. Crispin will depart back to the mainland as soon as I am gone. My younger brother hates the sun and hates the islands more. The terrain is not exactly...accessible."

"I am well aware of your brother's desire to pave over all of O'ahu until it is a giant luxury resort shielded from the sun," Poli'ahu said. "However, I believe he is less concerned about your plans here and more worried about you discovering _his_."

She opened her hand, upon which a blue-scaled mo'o sat frozen in mid-snarl. She gently blew on it, and the ice melted. The mo'o came to life in a fit of hisses. I gasped. Its eyes were a lidless eerie green.

The mo'o laughed at me, its shadow growing taller on the water. Its blue tail, heavy with spiky armor, whipped across the sea and overturned our iceberg.

We plunged into the sea, and a torrent of salty ice crystals flooded my nostrils. Jinho grabbed my stump, and we both paddled up toward the moon. Suddenly, something began to drag us back. We whirled around to see the water spiral into a cyclone, sucking us down toward a cavernous throat. The mo'o, which had at first fit into the palm of Poli'ahu's hand, had now grown into a monstrous horned whale.

My chest burned from holding my breath, and my strokes grew weaker. Jinho pulled me to his chest, and his wings enfolded me in a defensive cocoon. But it was too late. We were pulled, kicking and squirming, toward the mo'o's awful throat—

A harpoon of ice struck the whale mo'o, and it froze underwater. Our bodies struck a shield of ice that sprang up between us and the mo'o's maw. We frantically clawed our way up the shield's glassy fissures until we broke the surface.

I collapsed against Jinho's shoulder, gasping for breath. That had been too close. A second later, and I would have been sitting in a mo'o's stomach. Rafael and my mom would have walked into my room to find me unmoving and unresponsive—a comatose body missing its soul. After everything we'd been through the past two years, how could I do that to them? I turned away and blinked back tears.

Poli'ahu draped two blankets made of feathery snowflakes over our shoulders. She meant well, but they did little to warm us up.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I underestimated the dark mo'o's strength. The others haven't been as strong."

"The others?" Jinho's fingers dug into my shoulders. He'd recovered far more quickly than I, but his skin was just as cold as the blanket. I shrugged off both of them, teeth chattering.

"They've been popping up everywhere on the islands," Poli'ahu murmured. "Dark mo'o, who do not recognize us or the land. Something is sickening them. We send them back to Kuaihelani, the land of the gods, and it helps restore their connection to the aina. But now this curse is spreading too far and too fast. The mo'o are being turned into slaves for a dark agenda."

Jinho's fists clenched. "What the hell is Crispin doing?"

"And who is he doing it with?" I piped up. "Jinho, the mo'o's eyes—they looked like the Plague Lords'."

Poli'ahu looked at me, and for once, some of her chill thawed. "You do catch on fast, little ripple. I hope you live as long as you think you will. Jinho will need your help to figure out what madness his brother has planned. However, both of you must exercise the utmost caution. Remember: the mo'o are shapeshifters." She nodded toward the dark whale frozen beneath our feet. "Not all of them will be so easily identified."

Did that mean the snow goddess wouldn't try to freeze me to death anymore? I beamed up at Jinho, but he was busy with another one of those long, drawn-out stares with Poli'ahu that suggested he was picturing feeding her to the whale mo'o. Poli'ahu smiled cruelly, twiddled the moonflower behind her ear, and then vanished in a swirl of snowflakes.

"Wow," I said, as I was left shivering on an iceberg with a winged vampyre who wanted my blood. "Great first date."

# Chapter 9: Night of the Living Dead

~Tica~

The sun was white-hot, its rays slanting through the waves like leaping rainbow light. Kaiser Mansion loomed behind me, faded and crumbling into the ocean. My eight-year-old self ran across the pier, bare feet thumping against the concrete.

" _Mom! Mom!"_

Ana Dominguez looked up from her book and lifted her shades. "What's wrong, Tica? Did you run out of bread to feed the fish?"

I cannonballed into her and held her tightly around the waist. "Guess what, Mom?" I said, beaming up at her from beneath my thick brown hair. "There's a man beneath the waves!"

Her hand paused in the midst of stroking my head. "Oh? There's a scuba diver?"

" _No." I shook my head, giggling. "He's a magic man. He can turn into a fish!"_

My mom snapped her book shut and tucked it under her arm. She thrust the towel into my arms and collapsed the umbrella. "Come, Tica."

" _But Mom! The bread!" I protested, pulling back toward the pier where a half-open bag of sweet potato bread lay._

A gecko's guttural cry cut through the trees. My mother's head jerked up, spooked. Before I knew it, we were dashing across the sand, Kaiser Mansion disappearing rapidly behind.

" _Leave it!"_

***

The flash of a camera brought me back. The photographer smiled and then motioned for Aolani and me to move closer together. "That's it, girls! Shower us with that _aloha_ spirit, now!"

We obliged, doing our part to look like happy and carefree staff members eager to welcome guests to the latest wing off of Makani Pavilion: _Kūkalahale Way_.

Aolani was still bursting with glee. "They chose _my_ name," she whispered for the fourth time. "CEO Summers listened to _me_."

Indeed, why had a billionaire CEO who was allergic to the sun lavished so much time and attention on two lowly interns? I glanced up toward the beautiful marble panorama of Polynesian warriors flying across the sea on the back of the wind. Few guests looked at it. Most eyes were fixated on Crispin Summers, who had transformed from a comatose lump during the day to a large, virile businessman bursting with laughter by night. He sipped on a strange "Doll's Eyes Martini" and had the tendency to wet his fingers and slick back his hair whenever Eva Lilova, a rich and attractive private donor, laughed at one of his jokes.

However, Crispin still made time to break away from the conversation and let his eyes drift around the room until they found me. I shivered, wondering how oblivious the blood-drinking CEO was to his brother's intentions after all. I suddenly wished for Jinho's surly but strong presence. Unfortunately, it couldn't be done; Crispin would then be fully aware that we were on to him. That left the task of snooping up to...me.

Fortunately, no Dark Spirits had been invited to the new wing opening. Everything smelled fresh and flowery, with enormous golden-hued Bird of Paradise flowers shooting over our heads like fireworks. I made another attempt to approach Crispin and was bumped to the side by a flood of journalists jostling for a view of the aromatic Wind Chamber and the upscale Garden in the Cliffs Lounge.

"If this is the forerunner, then I have no doubt that your visionary underwater hotel will be a huge success, Mr. Summers," one said.

Crispin shrugged modestly. "What can I say? But no environmental protesters here? Marketing just isn't doing their job these days." The journalists showered him with gales of laughter.

Frustrated, I fell back to Aolani and suffered through another picture at the request of our avid photographer. How was I ever going to discover what Crispin was up to on O'ahu? And did I really want to find out? The longer my investigation took, the more time I had to come to terms with Jinho the vampyre's...other request.

Pain bit into my shoulder, and I quietly detached myself from Aolani's side so they couldn't see that my eyes had begun to water. I didn't have that much time.

"Excellent!" Our photographer impatiently tugged on our arms. "Now, to the Wind Chamber! We'll take a couple overhead shots of you two spinning around the chamber enjoying the exotic smells of the isles—perhaps we should release some plumeria petals to blow around you like a flower storm! Yes, I like it!"

Aolani pulled back. "Well, I don't. Do you realize how long it took me to do my hair? And you want me to dance around a _Wind_ Chamber?"

The photographer put his hands on his hips. "Excuse me, but I believe I am addressing a pair of high school _interns_ , not Hawaiian royalty."

"Being interns doesn't mean we stop becoming people," Aolani snapped.

"Fine." The photographer took a step closer. "Go to the Wind Chamber— _please_."

A hand shot out to pull Aolani back.

"Sorry, am I interrupting?" The newcomer smiled at the photographer. I'd seen him around the resort before. He was tall and had tousled silver-streaked blond hair that made it seem metallic—a sharp contrast to his jet-black Versace suit and gleaming topaz eyes. A platinum Cartier watch rested on the wrist draping Aolani's, who didn't look like she minded the interruption at all.

"I was just finishing up—" the photographer began, but the man raised a hand to silence him.

"You've taken enough pictures," he said. "CEO Summers would prefer his interns mingle with the guests and enjoy themselves. They'll do their job providing good company, while you...why, I suppose you've completed your work for tonight. You may leave."

It happened so fast I almost didn't see it, but a second later, the metallic-haired man was holding the camera, and the photographer was grasping thin air. Disappointed, the smaller man slumped away.

Aolani and I clapped in approval. Our mysterious rescuer grinned and extended a hand. "Nikolaos Lilov."

"Oh!" Aolani glanced furtively back at Crispin Summers and his lovely guest donor. "You're not related to Eva Lilova, are you, sir?"

He laughed. "Call me Nik. Yes, I'm her not quite-so-wealthy brother. That is probably why CEO Summers hasn't paid me the slightest attention all night, yes?"

"You definitely don't have enough of something," I said wryly, and he chuckled, patting my back.

"You're a clever pair of girls. On behalf of Kalani Resorts I apologize; that photographer monopolized so much of your time. Would you like me to introduce you around the room?"

Aolani's smile couldn't have been wider as she pulled out her stack of business cards. Nik flashed her a warm glance and then strode over to a circle of patrons.

"Careful," I muttered in her ear. "You're going to make Lono jealous."

Aolani snorted, her cheeks flushed. "Who? Oh, the guy who's shone about as much ambition as a sea slug? He just screws around all day with those construction guys he works with. Besides, I have _you_ to stop me from doing anything too naughty, Saint Tica."

"I, um, have to use the restroom," I lied. "But I will be back! I expect you to be on your best behavior."

"Yes, _Mom_." Aolani flipped her hair over her shoulder. "Although your rules obviously don't apply to you and _Jinho_ , do they? Your brother told me about your little sleepover."

What Jinho and I were doing definitely wasn't safe, but it wasn't the kind of thing "Abstinence Only" counselors lectured about. "He left at midnight!" I protested as she sashayed over to a gesturing Nik and his circle.

Aolani _tsk_ ed over her shoulder. "Ouch. But I guess what else could be expected from _Saint_ Tica?"

I stormed off in the opposite direction, losing myself in the dark hallways of the Punahele. No one infuriated me like Aolani, not even my brother or dismissive Lono. She was damn lucky Ryoko was our intermediary friend or else I would have killed her a long time ago. So what if I wasn't as "experienced" as Miss Hawaiian Royalty? I had more important things to worry about like saving the world, damnit.

Speaking off... Crispin's mausoleum loomed before me at the end of the walkway, dark and silent. I glanced back toward the happy lights at Makani Pavilion and then hardened my resolve. Why should I be afraid? After all, I was already dying.

The thought stopped me in my tracks. The only thing I was aware of was my dully throbbing shoulder. This was the first time I had faced what I knew the pain's return meant. I closed my eyes and whispered a small prayer to the starlit sky above. Then I slipped a black glove out of my purse and stretched it out with my teeth so I could pull it on.

Movement slithered to my right, and I whirled around, eyes narrowed. There was nothing except for a rustling black rose bush. I turned back to the mausoleum door and slowly withdrew a black feather from my bag. It was Jinho's: scraggly and black, with hints of blue blossoming along the shaft.

He'd warned me the tips would be sharp, so I cradled them gingerly as I inserted the end into the keyhole. Who would have ever thought vampyres had wings and their feathers could act like keys? Of course, not all vampyres did. I'd gathered from Jinho's vague comments that only the oldest and most powerful of his kind had wings. Their feathers created a unique key signature that couldn't be picked by any mortal pickpocket...only each other.

Something clicked inside. My heart skipped a beat as the old door creaked open. The tomb office was exactly like I remembered it: cool, dank, and lit by multiple red candles. CEO Summers obviously wasn't concerned with fire hazards. I took a step inside and accidentally kicked over a bowl of fruit. A fat brown gecko darted out from under it and scampered up and over my toes to freedom. I realized similar plates of food sat between each of the candles. This reminded me of the offerings Ryoko and her family would leave out for their departed ancestors. My gaze returned to the far wall-side bed, where the monster would return to slumber. Who was the vampyre trying to feed?

A low growl rose up behind me. Whirling around, I realized twin eerie green eyes were locked on me from amongst the roses. My heart thudded into my ribcage and broke. It was him. The Plague Lord.

The black rose bush rustled louder, and I realized that the funeral flowers were indeed _moving_. Their poisonous branches slipped under and over one another, moving aside—for him.

"Oh no, no, no." I slammed my full weight against the mausoleum door, but it only creaked bad-temperedly.

One gray leg thrust itself through the thorns. The Dark Spirit's growl dissipated into high, hissing laughter. Its right arm broke through.

"Close!" I screamed at the door, which moved with all the momentum of a cranky glacier. "Close, damn you! Door, I order you to _close_!"

Suddenly, remarkably, it did. I just had time to see the Plague Lord scream in fury and disintegrate into a cloud of flies that hurtled forward like buzzing black bullets—and then the door boomed shut. I bolted it in a hurry. By some miracle, I'd bought myself time...by locking myself in a tomb.

I checked my phone. No bars in Crispin's cave of horrors.

"Fuck!" I kicked over another plate of food, and a yellow gecko scrambled out from underneath. I tensed as it sat on its hind legs and regarded me, its head tilted to the side. Great. I'd come here searching for clues about Crispin's plans with the Plague Lords, but instead had I stumbled upon his army of dark mo'o?

"Army? Wait." I began to lift the bowls of food. Mo'o of all colors and sizes scrambled free from beneath every one. They chittered at me and then fled through a small crack in the mausoleum's corner. I knelt and stared through the crevice longingly, wishing I was small enough to follow.

Suddenly, an eerie green eye glared through the crack, and I fell back, yelping. I seized the nearest rock and rolled it across the entrance, my shoulders trembling. This was it. I was so screwed. It was only a matter of time before Fly Man found a tiny hole to buzz through.

The Plague Lord began to mix up his efforts to get into the tomb. There was horrible scratching at the door here, repeated thumping on the mausoleum roof there. I swiveled about the chamber, unable to pinpoint where he'd attack next.

Then my shoulder began to throb under familiar pulsating waves of pain, and something inside of me snapped.

"Do your worst!" I screeched at my faceless assailant. "Trust me, I've already been through whatever messed-up fuckery you throw at my body! You better believe that when I find out how to hurt you, I am going to do so much worse!"

The relentless scratching ceased for a moment so the Plague Lord could let out a long, rattling laugh.

I marched over to Crispin's desk and began pulling out drawers. I couldn't let some evil Dark Spirit, no matter how creepy he was, dissuade me from my mission. My gloved fingers hurriedly rifled through documents. Most of the desk's contents looked like boring legal paperwork, but there was one locked box made out of dead coral that looked important, so I took it. Crispin also had a musty manuscript written in Hawaiian. My forehead crinkled. The CEO of Kalani Resorts hadn't seemed interested in the language before.

I'd stuffed my purse to the brim, and yet still, my gaze wandered over to the mysterious bed lying behind the curtain. Damn my curiosity. Snooping around the boss's king-sized cot...consider this my notice of resignation. I gripped the velvety curtain and jerked it back. Nothing except for a sea of covers. I dropped to my belly and squinted underneath. The mattress was sagging heavily, enough for me to make out a bulging square shape inside it.

I grabbed Rafael's Swiss Army knife from my purse. By now my brother had learned that anything he asked me to hold for the night would turn into a long-term loan. Wriggling under the bed, I rolled over on my stump and slashed a few times at the fraying mattress. That was all it took before the fabric gave way, showering me with a cloud of dust and manuscripts. I coughed as an ancient, rancid smell flooded my nostrils.

The manuscripts certainly weren't made of paper or even parchment—the texture felt like some sort of dried fish skin, possibly a shark's. I squinted. I didn't recognize these strange symbols. All I could tell was that they'd been written with dark, crimson ink...the color of blood.

Suddenly, the candles went out. I froze, clutching the shark hide manuscripts as the bed shifted above me. Something or _someone_ slipped out from beneath the mountain of covers. I held my position in the eerie quiet, my limbs stiff with fear.

Then a hand latched around my ankle and yanked me out.

I caught a glimpse of glowing green eyes floating amidst the blackness, and my heart jumped to my throat. I'd forgotten that there had been more than one Dark Spirit on the beach that night. They operated in pairs. One was the Lord of Tumors.

The other, the Lord of Jaundice, was locked inside the tomb with me.

# Chapter 10: The Blood Drinker

~Tica~

I immediately lashed out with all the fury of a captive octopus. The hand morphed in response, growing a set of claws that sank into my skin, drawing blood.

"Be still, Tica Dominguez," the thing whispered in my ear, its coarse white hair tickling my face. Its leathery body dragged across mine like a heavy snake while its frighteningly sharp claws scraped my stump. "Always you run, run from Ahalpuh and Ahalgana. Not smart for a sick little girl. You should take time to...rest."

I gathered up my breath in my chest. Time to test a crazy theory. The candles, the evening time, the mo'o, and all of these offerings left to no one... Crispin's mausoleum had plenty of similarities to the set-up Jinho had erected in my room the night we'd entered Eve. If Crispin was a vampyre who had to escape somewhere during the day, then why not through a doorway into the spirit world? Things didn't act normally here. That mausoleum door had _listened_ to me.

"Candles, light!" I cried out.

The Dark Spirit of Jaundice chuckled. "Oh, you really don't want to do that."

Flames sprang up in a ring of fire. I beheld the shadowy creature hunkered over me. She was a gaunt, skeletal thing with sagging skin and yellowed nails. Her few wisps of hair were shock-white and her teeth sprouted unevenly from her gums at all sorts of angles. The sickly eerie green of her eyes had been banished by the light—under the candles' glow, I could see them as they really were: jaundice yellow and red-streaked, with puss leaking around the edges.

The creature fluttered its ugly spider-leg-lashes. "Ahalpuh, our little Tica is stunned silent by how beautiful I am."

The Lord of Tumors, Ahalpuh, quit scratching and stood quite still at the door. "That is no fun," the demon replied in a low, hollow bass. "Let me in so we can make her scream instead."

I regained my nerve. "Desk, crush Ahalgana!"

I'd put every last ounce of desperation into the command. The second Dark Spirit, Ahalgana, turned to see Crispin's two-hundred-pound oak desk fly at her head.

I didn't check to see if it hit. Scooping up my purse and grabbing the most lethal weapon on Crispin's desk (a stapler), I bolted toward the tomb door. I heard the slow and steady scrape of Ahalgana's husks of feet as the jaundice demon rose up behind me, and I knew that she had survived and was madder than hell.

Suddenly, the door flew open. Both Plague Lords fled. I stared dumb-founded at the last person I expected to see: Secretary Reynolds.

"Tica?" Her beetle-black eyes rose from the overflowing bag on my shoulder to my upraised stapler. "Child, what on earth are you doing in here?"

Yes, the glove didn't look suspicious at all.

"I'm sorry," I blabbed. "CEO Summers told me to fetch some paperwork for him, and I got locked in the office, and I thought I heard something and got scared..."

" _Did_ he?" Secretary Reynolds's lips curled. "Well, you must have had plenty of time to fetch these 'papers' then. Come. I'm sure he'll be _very_ anxious to receive them."

I walked ahead of her suspicious glare, my back rigid. The reassuring night air flooded my senses with warmth and sun-ripened flowers. As we rounded the corner, I allowed myself a sigh of relief, grateful beyond words to have escaped from the decrepit darkness of the tomb.

Beneath it lurked dread. I knew their names now: Ahalpuh and Ahalgana, the Lords of Tumors and Jaundice. I could still feel Ahalgana's snake-skin body slithering across mine. I could still see those jaundice-shot eyes, nails, and teeth. I ducked my head to keep from gagging.

"Secretary Reynolds, I'm sorry. I know what this looks like—" I turned around and realized I was speaking to no one. Startled, I glanced down. The formidable Secretary Reynolds had dissolved into a pile of geckoes: the captives of Crispin's tomb. The little mo'o crawled across my slippers as they scattered, but the yellow one paused to regard me.

Immediately I began to shake, overwhelmed with gratitude. _"_ _Remember,"_ Poli'ahu's voice echoed in my head, _"the mo'o are shapeshifters."_

"Thank you," I whispered, kneeling, "for coming back for me."

The yellow gecko vibrated in response and then threw up a key in my hand. I rubbed the bone key between my fingers, recognizing the texture of a vampyre wing shaft.

"You stole this from the real Secretary Reynolds," I realized. "Don't worry, I'll get it back to her. Again: _mahalo_."

The gecko chirped at me and then scampered away.

***

My steps quickened when I finally saw Reynolds, the real Secretary Reynolds, standing in a stairwell speaking to someone. She rubbed one scarlet heel against her calf self-consciously while giving a high, girlish laugh that didn't sound like her.

The second speaker shifted in the shadows. I caught a glimpse of silver-streaked hair: Nik, then. The bone key grew sweaty in my hands. I'd have to sneak it back swiftly. I'd never been so ready to get the hell out of a five-star hotel.

"Look." Nik extended his hands. "She's already on the rooftop waiting for me. I swiped her phone. It'll be over fast."

"Yes, I know your nickname, Quicksilver." Secretary Reynolds glanced around warily. "Listen, Nikolaos. Prince Crispin doesn't want anything to happen to those girls until he finds out what his brother is up to on the islands."

"That Crow Prince only wants the cancer girl," Nik said dismissively. "Personally, I don't think she's the Changeling Soul, so I don't know why he's wasting his time."

I stumbled, and Nik's metallic-haired head whipped around, the depths of his eyes growing more luminous, like paved gold. I pressed against the colonnade until he turned back to Reynolds, but my stomach remained tangled in ugly knots. I didn't like where this was going...

Reynolds remained oblivious. "Yes, but that is the point: we don't know. If something happens to her friend, then she will lose faith in us," she stressed. "I will give you five minutes with the Aolani girl, but then you must return her to the party— _alive_."

Nik swooped in to kiss her hand. His lips remained poised over her skin as he murmured, "I knew I could trust your discretion, Mrs. Reynolds."

"It's Miss," she said breathlessly. Nik smirked again and then slunk up the stairs. As the night thickened around him, I swore that his shadow lengthened, his jaw extended, and there, protruding from his gumline, just barely discernable in the moonlight—fangs.

I rammed into Secretary Reynolds at a full gallop.

"Tica!" She pulled back, her eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry, I ran back from the restroom," I lied, the key successfully dropped back in her pocket. "I didn't know who to tell, but one of the toilets is flooding."

"The plumbing decides to go on tonight of all nights?" Reynolds scowled and stalked off. "Set up directions for our guests to the second floor restroom, Tica."

"Yes, Ma'am!" However, the moment her back was turned, I dashed to the elevator and frantically pushed the skylight button. The roof was on the fourteenth floor, but I didn't know if I'd beat Nik there at the speed he was moving. The elevator door dinged shut behind me, and I fumbled for my phone.

Jinho answered on the second ring. "Tica."

"How do you kill a vampyre?" I blurted.

"It depends on the type," he said slowly. "Most die by fire, beheading, or a stake through the heart. Why?"

"You have to help me." I sagged against the elevator wall, feeling sick. "I broke into Crispin's office like we planned, but it was guarded by the Plague Lords."

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. I heard the question he didn't say: _How are you still alive?_

"Get out of there now," he said finally.

"I can't." I watched the glowing numbers ascend one-by-one. "There's another vampyre here, besides you and Crispin. His name is Nik."

"Nikolaos Quicksilver." Jinho recognized the name immediately. "He is an ascendant vampyre, kin to one of my brothers' wives. Do not engage him."

I closed my eyes tiredly. "I have to, Jinho. He wants Aolani."

"Of course, Crispin would bring friends. He does not like to be alone." Amidst Jinho's silence, the elevator dinged. I was here.

"I cannot get there in time, Tica," Jinho said finally, "but remember: _he_ does not know that."

I gapped at the phone after he hung up. Incredible. A single skylight staircase stood between me and a hungry vampyre, and Jinho's advice was to bluff him.

A gecko's laugh echoed from the rafters. I squared my shoulders and approached the steps. I wasn't alone.

# Chapter 11: Confrontation

~Tica~

I could see their backs on the far side of the roof, illuminated by the ghostly glow of a bubbling hot tub.

"There are so many stars out tonight," I heard Aolani say. I crept around the vents toward them.

"Are you cold?" Nik's low voice murmured in amusement as Aolani leaned in. "We could watch the stars from the water as well."

Aolani glanced toward the rooftop spa and blushed. "I didn't even know there _was_ a hot tub up here."

Nik shrugged, his hand drifting down to caress her shoulder. The steam parted, and through my spirit sight, I realized I could _see_ him clearly for the first time—his grinning fanged skull, his lengthened spine, and that gleaming metallic hair, which had begun to smolder as if catching fire.

"It is a secret shared only with the most special of people." His lips brushed the bare skin of her shoulder. "You wouldn't... _tell_ anyone about it, would you, Aolani?"

"Of course not," she breathed. "Your secret's safe with...TICA!"

I stood calmly across from them, the hot tub fizzing between us and casting strange shadows across our faces. "Hi, Aolani. Secretary Reynolds is looking for you."

Nik stepped away from Aolani, but his flaming topaz eyes hardened, carrying no mercy or kindness. "Tica...you are quite diligent. Please let Secretary Reynolds know that Aolani will be down shortly."

"Yes, please go let her know _now_." Aolani glared at me, but I wasn't leaving this rooftop without her.

"It's an emergency." I looked past Aolani to the furious vampyre. "Someone is looking for you, too. You can wait up here for him, if you want. You know he will always find you, wherever you go."

"What are you talking about, girl?" Nik rasped, and I threw down the black feather. It floated on the boiling water between us, neither sinking nor disintegrating. I watched the monster wrestle within him, but ultimately, Nik's fangs clicked back. His face filled with warmth and humanity once more.

"Excuse me, Aolani. An urgent matter has come up." Nik glided back toward the stairwell, but Aolani grasped for his arm.

"Wait, can I call you?"

"That would not be prudent. I shall be occupied for quite some time." His amber eyes bore into mine, testing, before the Quicksilver vampyre vanished as if he'd never been there at all.

I stared at the indestructible feather. So, Jinho was indeed revered and feared among his kind. What had Nik called him before? A "prince."

Something smacked my stump, and I spun around to see a livid Aolani inches from my face.

"What the hell, Tica?" she cried. "That—man—could have solved every single one of my problems! He's a wealthy tycoon with connections to CEO Summers! I would have never had to worry about money or my family's future ever again! Don't you understand how hard it is to _be_ Hawaiian and not even be able to afford to live _here_?"

"He only wanted a one night hook-up," I said, too weary under the burden of the truth. "Don't do that to yourself, Aolani. Lono cares for you much more—"

"DON'T YOU DARE TELL ME ABOUT LONO! You think Lono and I haven't had this conversation? The only one Lono is interested in being in a relationship with is his fucking _pakalolo_!" Aolani gathered up her shawl and shoved past me. "What is wrong with you, Tica? I can't have Jinho and I can't have this job, and now I can't have Nik? You always get everything!"

"No." I shook my head. "Not anymore. Take the internship, Aolani. It suits you."

She flipped me off and disappeared back into the darkness of the Punahele. I stood a tiny figure atop the crown jewel of Waikiki, wondering how something that gave off so much light could be so dead inside.

# Chapter 12: Aina Becoming

~Tica~

A lime-green gecko with three orange spots on his back peeked at me from the coffee table, its head bobbing as it searched for crumbs. This was the second week I'd seen it hanging around the apartment. I flicked the last of my malasada at it and settled back against the sofa. "You're such a slacker, Mel. You're supposed to eat roaches and ants. The kitchen is in dire need of your services."

Mel slunk away up the lamp. I laughed and returned to studying the manuscripts I'd swiped from Crispin's office. The creepy shark skin files were still a mystery to me. The coral box remained locked, too, but I hoped another one of Jinho's feathers could remedy that. The Hawaiian manuscript should have been the easiest to figure out, but the person I trusted to interpret it wasn't speaking to me currently. Scowling, I resumed looking up the contact info for my fourth grade Hawaiian teacher.

"What the hell kind of class is this for?" Rafael strode over and held up one of the shark skin manuscripts to the light. He licked his finger and touched the ink. "Did you steal these from a shipwreck or something? Is this written in _blood_?"

"Well, if they were stolen, then congratulations: your fingerprints are now all over them."

My brother shrugged and tossed the potentially priceless artifact over his shoulder. "Sooo Ryoko told me that you and Aolani are in a bit of a catfight."

"More like an all-out war," I muttered, scanning through webpages. "I don't know what her problem is, Raf. That Nik guy was bad news. I only stuck up for Lono. Everybody knows he's loved Aolani forever."

My brother sat down on the sofa arm, squeezing one of my red stress balls. "Yeah, but that's Aolani's choice to make. In this case, she's right. Lono's my bro, but even I know he isn't ready for some meaningful long-term relationship."

I snapped my laptop shut. "You're right. He hasn't been ready since Kai's death, and he'll never be ready. Geez, I keep forgetting how much time the rest of you have."

Rafael chuckled softly, staring at the small red ball. "Actually, you're the only one who remembers. Lono's not just smoking the bud, Tica. I caught him stealing money from my top drawer yesterday."

"Meth again," I whispered, memories of Lono's old habits rising.

"I'm pretty sure of it. Mason and I are gonna talk to him about it tonight after work." Rafael glanced at me. "Would you wish that on your best friend right now?"

"She's not my best friend," I grumbled, before meeting his gaze, "but point taken."

He grinned, draping an arm over the Hawaiian manuscript. "So, do you want me to give her this to translate?"

"She won't do it."

"Tica."

"Fine. But don't tell her it's from me."

He smirked. "Wouldn't dream of it."

My phone beeped, and I thumbed open a message from Jinho. A smile spread across my face.

Rafael didn't leave. "Jinho's coming over again?"

"What do you mean _again_?" I teased. "I thought he was 'family'. You convinced Mom to hire him under the table so he could take all of your shifts at the Stop n' Shop, remember?"

"You and Mom like him better than you like me," Rafael said, springing off the couch. "It's like he's your soul mate and the son Mom never had rolled into one. Honestly, I don't get what you, Aolani, and Mason are so excited about. He's not _that_ good-looking."

I reclined back, grinning. "True, true, _false_."

He huffed. "At least Ryoko's still faithful to me."

"Not really. I'll convert her in no time."

He put on his _Seahawks_ cap. "Fine. I'm outta here. Got an evening dive out near Shark's Cove for some big-time scuba divers."

"The price to live in paradise," I began, and he finished, "work all day and night, neva see it! Well, tonight I will. One of the divers was warming up to me at the dive shop. Says she likes tattoos."

He lifted up his shirt to reveal the compass inked across the lower part of his ribcage, his eyebrows waggling, and I turned away in horror.

"Get out of here! You only have one tattoo, by the way."

"She doesn't know that. Later she won't care."

"Okay, please go."

"Laters." He swung away, keys jingling, but then my mother entered the room with phone in hand.

"Tica," she began, her voice heavy, and immediately all merriment evaporated.

Rafael froze. "No."

"Dr. Kaiser called. Your test results are back," my mother continued, her voice strangled.

Rafael strode back and forth in agitation. My eyes followed him, but I felt weirdly detached and numb, as if I wasn't really here at all. I'd already known this was coming. Hadn't I?

"They want us to come in as soon as possible to discuss treatment options."

"NO!" Rafael threw the stress ball at the hallway mirror, shattering it.

My mother closed her eyes. "That's not helpful, Rafael."

"You think I don't know that?" he bellowed. "There is NOTHING I can do. Tica already went through this. She beat it! This is such fucking bullshit!" He kicked the ball against the wall, leaving a mark.

"Rafael," my mother tried again.

"What are they gonna do? Fry her? Cut off her shoulder? How much more of her do they have to take away before she can go back to normal?"

His voice broke, and I reached for his arm. "Hey," I said, "they haven't taken anything away. I'm still here."

He awkwardly patted my stump in return, and that seemed to wake something up. "Well, I guess we're going to need more money, then," he said, before picking up his keys and leaving.

My mother sat down beside me. We stayed motionless for a while, staring at the broken glass littering the carpet.

"We don't have to think about this tonight," she said finally.

"You're right." I leaped off the sofa, feeling returning to my fingers and toes. "Tell me when Jinho gets here, okay?"

"Do you still want him to come over?"

"Yes," I said, heading toward my room with shoulders hunched. "More than ever."

***

I was half-asleep when I heard the door creak open and Jinho's soft voice say, "Tica?" I flew off the bed and hurtled into him.

"Do it."

He held me back at arm's length, his steel-blue eyes dancing with wariness under the candles' glow. "Your mother told me what happened. These are not the circumstances under which you should make these decisions."

I broke down laughing, a half-mad sound made of tears and delirium. "I _have_ thought about this. I have thought about you being a vampyre who drinks blood, and I thought about why I had a problem with it, and I realized that it's because Crispin and Nik and all of those Dark Spirits just drink and drink from others to take. They never give anything back. So here's what I am not okay with: you can't use being a vampyre as an excuse to be apart from the earth—apart from _life._ So you're a child of death. It only makes you a monster if you're the part of death that isn't part of renewal. Drink from me. Give something back to me. Free me from this _pain_."

He swooped in on me, hands quivering, and I saw the need in his eyes. His fangs clicked out. They hovered over the bare skin of my neck, hesitant for a moment. Then his jet-black hair brushed my collar as he lowered his head to my stump. As soon as he bit me, relief flooded through my veins, dissipating the raw pain hollowing out my bones and leaving me blissfully floating on high tide.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "There is little I can give you."

I half-turned to his shadowed face. "There is this." My lips touched the corner of his mouth.

He exhaled, his lips meeting mine, and both of us toppled backward onto the bed. His arm sprang up to catch my back before I fell. Lowering me gently into the sea of covers, his cool lips continued to wander, touching my cheeks, behind my ears, and down the length of my neck. I arched against him, my fingers caressing the lean, muscular contours of his back.

His hand gripping my waist tensed, and my breath caught as his fangs teased my hips. His bowed head leisurely traveled all over my body before returning to rest on my chest.

"Hi," he said, his grayish-blue eyes deepening to the color of a storm-tossed sea. The tip of his wing teased my cheek, and I turned into it, sighing.

"Hi yourself."

His grin widened. "I got you something."

Reluctantly, I let him tumble off of me. He propped himself up on his elbow and showed me a photo on his phone.

I gasped. "Is that a...surfboard?"

"Custom-made." His black-haired head leaned against mine, and his rough feathers brushed the small of my back. He turned to kiss my ear. "Just like your Bethany Hamilton's. Think of it as something to fight for in the coming months. I think you'll look hot riding it in those tight pink boardshorts of yours."

"Jinho! Thank you. You're better at this giving back thing than you think." I giggled as his lips grew more attentive, tangling my stomach in hot, twisted knots. "How did you know that spot is so sensitive?"

"Mmmm...I hoped it would be. You're such a mystery to me, Tica Dominguez." His cool breath coasted over my damp skin, setting my body aquiver. "My local girl who can take down Dark Spirits."

I laughed, cuddling against his chest. "I just remembered you telling me objects listen to you in Eve, and a moment later, Crispin's desk was flying across the mausoleum to smash Ahal—I mean, the Jaundice Lord."

His forearm tensed, and his eyes sharpened. "You told _Crispin's_ possessions to move and they listened to you?"

"Yep. They were a lot more cooperative than that spirit world vending machine. Of course, I was really desperate." I stopped at his intent look. "What?"

"Objects do listen in Eve, but usually they will not heed your command unless you have a long and personal relationship with them. Or..." Jinho reclined back with an arm behind his head, thoughtful.

"What?" I demanded.

"You may be less ordinary than you know. How much do you know about your father, Tica?"

Rafael's angry voice flashed through my head, along with vague memories of a short, balding man who would swing by seasonally to take us out on his fishing boat.

Then I thought of a much clearer and powerful memory of a man who could turn into a fish.

"I think I don't even know who he is," I said slowly.

Jinho smiled, leaning in. "Try it."

"What?" I pulled away, suddenly shy.

He nodded at the shadowed bedroom. "It's twilight. The candles are lit. Let's see how much of a connection you have to Eve, spirit girl."

My smile grew mischievous. "Pillows, pin the vampyre."

They rose up in a fury, pummeling a helpless Jinho with no mercy.

"This is unfair!" he protested, shielding his face to no avail. "How can one girl have so many pillows?"

I flounced on top of my trapped vampyre prince and grinned. "Don't move. My pillows will whack you if you so much as twitch a feather."

A lazy smile spread across his face. "So. Your command is strong because you are truly desperate to keep me prisoner."

"Madly so." I crawled up so our foreheads touched, his captivating gray-blue eyes so close to mine that my breath caught. The pain from his bite had receded to a dull throb beneath the pleasant warmth blossoming from my stump down to my toes. My heartbeat quickened, and my lips darted forward to catch his.

***

~Khyber~

I ducked out of the girl's bedroom later and slipped as quietly as a shadow down the hall. Rafael's bedroom door was open at the opposite end, and I could see a glowing television screen behind the rack of surfboards. I turned to slip through the kitchen.

She was waiting for me at the table, a cup of tea in her hands.

I bowed my head, strangely embarrassed. Customs and cultural practices changed throughout the ages, and in this place and time, it was definitively taboo to stay in a young unmarried girl's room for long.

"Ms. Dominguez, I must apologize. Truly, nothing happened—"

Ana Dominguez cocked her head, short dark hair falling across her face. "How is she doing?"

I quieted my excuses, intrigued by the fearlessness sharpening her stare. "Better. She is readying herself for the fight ahead."

Ana nodded, as if she expected as much. "Sit."

I did as she asked, amused at feeling like a young misbehaving boy again. However, the words that left her mouth were the furthest thing from a lecture:

"I know what you are."

I looked up, my unseen wings unfurling. My alert posture changed something inside of her. There. Now I saw her fear. I was a young man in his early twenties no longer. I'd shown a glimpse of the dangerous predator that lay inside me, pondering whether to attack or disappear.

Ana took a deep breath. "You are not the first paranormal being I've encountered, vampyre. I've believed in the spirits since I was a young girl. The intentions of some were so dark that I fled Peru."

I nodded. "I suspected as much."

"I don't mean you harm." Her gazed dropped to the tabletop, and she blinked back tears furiously. "Indeed, I think you are the only one who can help me."

I waited quietly, although my muscles were still poised for flight. "What do you want of me, mortal woman?"

She looked up. Her fearlessness had returned. "Help me save my daughter."

I paused, weighing her proposal for an instant. "You know what that will take."

Her callused fingers gripped the tea cup. "I'm willing to give it."

# Chapter 13: The Bigger Picture

~Aolani~

She was supposed to be brainstorming Hawaiian names for Crispin Summers's underwater hotel project off of Fiji, but when Rafael brought her an unexpected gift, Aolani couldn't concentrate. On the unveiling night of the new Kūkalahale Way, someone had broken into CEO Summers's tomb office. Among the items stolen? A valuable 19th century Hawaiian manuscript. Aolani didn't think it was a coincidence that Tica Dominguez had quit on the very night of the robbery—not to mention the photo of the stolen manuscript matched the one in her hand.

Crispin's bodyguard let her into his private suite. Aolani strode purposefully forward, her heart surging with excitement. However, the raised voices in the kitchen gave her pause.

"He is the one behind this! You heard Nikolaos's testimony. Now my brother's stupid little hapa girl thinks she's safe?" Crispin bellowed.

"They can't know about Kuaihelani, or else they wouldn't have broken into your office. They're still grasping," the cool voice of Secretary Reynolds replied.

Crispin's voice turned cunning. "Then we strike back. Give them another enemy to go against."

"Who did you have in mind?"

There was a pause. "Each other."

Secretary Reynolds sucked in her breath. "Ah, so shall I give the order to use the—"

"Yes, yes, we'll speak more of it later," Crispin interrupted. "Right now we have a guest. Do come in, Aolani."

Her heart skipped a beat. How had he known? His bodyguard must have messaged him. Nevertheless, Aolani found herself tucking the manuscript back into her purse before she straightened her aloha uniform and entered. How the hell had the CEO of Kalani Resorts, who hadn't so far shown a shred of interest in the Hawaiian language, known about Kuaihelani, the land of the gods?

Crispin lurked in a large armchair, unnerving her with the cold, reptilian intensity of his stare. Sunset had fallen, so his saggy folds of skin had begun to inflate again. Ms. Reynolds was at the counter, shaking up his favorite evening cocktail, a red Doll's Eyes martini.

"Navid notified me you wished a word in private. What can I help you with, Aolani?"

"Uh—" Her mind went blank. All she could see was the stolen manuscript and Tica's face.

"Word is that Tica is no longer on staff," she blurted. "I was wondering if that makes the internship, um, mine."

Crispin laboriously climbed to his feet. "I have been impressed with your dedication, Aolani. I know the late evening hours may seem odd, but they are when I am most accessible. As I have made clear, both you and Miss Dominguez are quite special to me. Sadly, it is true: Miss Dominguez is no longer with us."

Aolani chewed her bottom lip. Rafael had seemed upset when he'd arrived late last night to hand over the manuscript, and she hadn't bothered to ask why. Then Tica hadn't been at school today. Dread stabbed her heart whenever someone mentioned the words _no longer with us_. Just in the past six years, she'd realized how much of a reality those words were, not some far-off whisper in a funeral parlor.

"The internship is yours." Crispin gave her a toothy smile. "Get ready, my dear. Ms. Reynolds will keep you quite busy."

Secretary Reynolds nodded, coming around to hand him his drink. "She starts leading tour groups on Monday."

"Oh? Well then this will never do." Crispin plucked the _Aolani_ _Kahananui_ nametag from her blouse and tossed it to Secretary Reynolds. "The name is too long to fit properly. Just use her first name."

"Or we could shorten her name altogether," Secretary Reynolds suggested. "Some of the guests were having trouble pronouncing _Ao_ lani. How about _Lani Kahana_?"

Crispin nodded thoughtfully. "Short and memorable. I like it."

"You can't just cut up my name!" Aolani protested. "It tells a story!"

Crispin smoothed back his gelled dark hair in the mirror. "You'll be leading tour groups through a Kalani-catered, personalized Polynesian experience. By all means, tell them your name means 'She who Dances with the Octopus' and see if they know the difference. Ah!"—he raised a finger as Aolani opened her mouth—"You have great ambition, my dear. I admire that. So let me share what drives a successful business: convenience. Give the guests what they want in a _convenient_ form that is easy to digest. You have a lot of cards to play, Aolani, but you must know when to play some and fold the others. Convenience is this island's greatest asset."

"Really?" Aolani reported bitterly. "Have you _tried_ getting around O'ahu? There is nothing convenient about how the roads are set up here. Going anywhere is a traffic nightmare."

Crispin looked over at Secretary Reynolds. She nodded and withdrew from the room. Aolani stood tall as the giant CEO approached, but she suddenly felt vulnerable in the starchy aloha uniform, beads of sweat trickling around her collarbone. She remembered Tica's reservations about the man, but she had never understood them until now. It had been a long time since Aolani Kahananui had felt...afraid.

"Your heart is beating so fast," Crispin muttered. "Of course, my dear, you touched on the thing that trumps convenience: security. Take a look." He reached out to brush her hair behind her ear so she could look out the window. Aolani held her trembling fists at her sides, not daring to move.

"The street design may not be convenient, but that doesn't mean they don't make sense. After all, where do all of the major highways end?"

"At military bases," Aolani whispered. Tanks rolled across the islands, eroding the aina and erasing paradise because of the perpetual threat of imminent attack.

Crispin nodded, his purple-salami lips curving into a smile. "Yes, it seems that your islands are conveniently placed after all. Some sacrifices in comfort must be made to protect the people from the enemy out there." He waved in the vague direction of the window.

"Yes, but then who will protect us from the enemy in _here_?" Aolani reported, glaring him straight in the eye.

The CEO chuckled. "My dear, you're looking in the wrong direction. If there _is_ an enemy to be found inside, then guess who that shall be?" He suddenly moved fast, impossibly fast, to stand behind her. Aolani felt dizzy. His enormous hands sprang up to engulf her upper shoulders, and he positioned her toward the mirror. Aolani blinked. It was her and only her. CEO Summers had no reflection—and yet she felt his fingers dig into her skin.

She whirled around, but Crispin was at the suite counter, stirring that sickening smelling Doll's Eyes martini.

"Your kind will always be the internal enemy unless you choose to act...conveniently." Crispin smiled at her and set his drained martini glass on the counter, the pair of white Doll's Eyes rolling around the bottom. "Now, go see Secretary Reynolds about your new nametag. I have a board meeting to attend."

He'd nearly exited the room before Aolani called out: "Mr. Summers, sir, I thought of a name for the new underwater hotel project: _Ka Hale_ _Pupuka_."

He paused, his triple chins wriggling. "Oh? That's quite pretty. What does it mean?"

"Deep Sea Paradise."

"Lovely. It rolls right off the tongue!" He waggled a finger at her. "I told you, Lani: you have ambition. You can make a future here."

Aolani waited until the door closed before snapping her nametag in half and dumping it in the CEO's martini glass. She stormed out, aware of the weight of her purse and the treasure it held. Hopefully Ka Hale Pupuka would make it at least to advertising before they realized it meant _The Ugly House_.

# Chapter 14: Rumors

~Tica~

I didn't walk to school anymore. I floated.

I'd fall back from Jinho's embrace with a gasp, pain gushing from the scarlet spring bubbling up from my skin. I'd watch Jinho's cool fingers tend to the bite from far away, my mind already drifting free from my body. The pain couldn't chase me. My bulky body of sinew and flesh couldn't imprison me. Doctors' needles slid right through me and nausea ate itself.

Dr. Kaiser didn't understand. "Your condition has improved remarkably, Tica. Your body appears to have rallied on its own and is fighting off the cancer cells," his voice echoed while my mother cried for joy and patted my shoulder.

I didn't look at either of them, distracted by the giant eel spirit gamboling in the air above Dr. Kaiser's head like a colorful kite. Jinho had warned me that his bite contained a powerful venom that drew the mind closer to the spirit world: Eve. It was designed that way so vampyres could feast on the comatose body while the mind flirted with the veil, astounded by what it saw. Where the impossible was possible. I could chat with ghosts. I could swim without fear. I trusted Jinho. He spaced out feeding times and only took just enough. That way I always came back.

However, when I came back, I wasn't the same. My skin began to wilt under the sun until it was pasty, chalk-white. A side effect from the combination of vampyre venom and prescribed meds, I told myself. Then while eating _hayashi raisu_ at Ryoko's, I couldn't keep down the hashed beef rice that we both loved. I bolted to the bathroom and returned shame-faced. I managed to swallow some of the grilled vegetables Ryoko's grandmother prepared for me, but only barely.

At home, I went through five stalks of celery and three mangoes. I was walking on eggshells around my upset stomach, and only raw vegetables and fruit didn't come back up. I felt like Crispin, my skin sagging off my bones and my waist thinning. I was a drooping tree that begged to snap away and crash into the earth. These were the things I noticed before the next bite sucked me into oblivion.

Jinho's fangs retracted from my shoulder. "That's enough for a while," he said softly. "You're too close to slipping away completely, Tica."

I smiled, swaying, and then fell forward to grab his shoulder. My homework lay scattered in one corner of the room, undone, and my custom surfboard lay in another, untouched. "I feel fine. It's going to take a lot to get rid of Nanaue, isn't it?"

"Yes, but he can wait. Your blood helps weaken him every day. It's going to be a marathon, Tica. After we fused, it took me two years to control his hunger and learn his secrets. Now I can walk in the sun for a time, which is one of the oldest curses against my people."

"Only a powerful vampyre prince could do it," I teased.

Jinho nodded. "Yes, but I am no ordinary prince, especially in regards to my birth—" He stopped, his grayish-blue eyes rueful. "You clever girl."

I giggled and flopped back on the pillows, the ceiling spinning above me. "Well, I wasn't going to wait around for you to tell me. That 'closemouthed as a clam' saying was inspired by _you_ , Jinho." My hand reached for his. "It's okay if we stop. I don't want you to die."

His fingers gripped mine painfully hard, and then he let go. "You should."

He prowled around the room restlessly after that like an encaged panther. His dark mood bled into the contours of bliss fogging my mind.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No, Tica." The vampyre prince stopped and glared at me. "Don't you have school tomorrow?"

I shrugged. "I'm not tired. Let's stay up and watch the sunrise!"

"Another time." He paused by my side and kissed me on the head. "I must go track my brother's movements."

I frowned, displeased, but I managed to restrain myself from begging for more than a peck on the head. Jinho had taken to keeping me at arm's length, never more than a kiss or a cuddle. We had to stay in control, he warned me. He had to stay in control. Otherwise, Nanaue might awaken.

"Did you translate the shark hide manuscripts?" I asked instead.

Jinho nodded grimly. "I've seen that scripture before. It would take a dead language to summon the dead. Apparently, Nanaue came back to this world because my brother and his Plague Lord cohorts summoned him."

"They brought back Nanaue?" My brain struggled to think under the fog of bliss, and sharp pain spasmed in my forehead. "How about the coral box? Can you open it?"

Jinho brought forth the small box made of dead coral and placed it on my dresser. "This is a powerful thing you brought me, Tica," he murmured, unlocking it with a twist of his feather key. I squinted. It was empty. However, more of the strange, unknown symbols engraved the box's interior, their red jagged lines filling me with dread.

Jinho wasn't looking at me. He was watching little green Mel climb down my window curtain. The moment the gecko drew close enough, Jinho's hand sprang out and seized him. He placed the gecko inside the box and closed the lid, locking it shut with a savage twist.

Mel began to scream, a high, distorted cry that sounded like hissing radio static. The entire box rattled, emitting an eerie green light, and the air around us darkened. As his pleas grew longer and more intense, I couldn't stand it.

"Let him go!"

Jinho was staring at the coral prison, a look of gruesome fascination on his face. I grabbed the feather key and released the lid. Mel's scream deepened to a heavy roar, and something indistinguishable flew free from the box, disappearing through my window in a burst of green light. We were left staring at an empty cage, the insides now splattered with fresh blood.

I whirled about on Jinho, trembling and angry. "What did you do?"

"An experiment," Jinho said quietly. "This is how he is changing them."

"That—mo'o—was watching out for me and my family!" In the echo of Mel's scream, everything roared to life in hot, furious pain. I fell to one knee, cradling my burning shoulder. Pain swelled and reverberated through my bones like thunderbolts.

Jinho tried to take a step closer. "The venom's wearing off—"

"Get out!" I pushed him blindly through my tears and slammed the door shut in his face. I limped back to bed. My spine spasmed, blood flushed my cheeks, and pain leaked through my ears, but I embraced it all.

I'd forgotten how it felt to be alive.

***

I'd forgotten other types of pain. Like jealousy, flaring to life like a viper in the pit of my stomach, when I spotted a familiar tall, jet-black-haired figure leaning casually outside the school walls, talking to Aolani. His hand roved up to cup her chin for an instant, and Aolani laughed, glancing down as if suddenly shy.

"What the hell?" Lono paused by my side. "Tica, what is Jinho doing?"

I clutched the strap of my shoulder bag, my insides twisting. "I don't know."

"He's with you," Lono said. When I didn't confirm it, he said again, louder, "He's with you, Tica."

I turned away. "I don't know that, either."

Of the three of us, only Mason didn't seem surprised.

"They've been hanging out a lot together lately," he muttered to his shoes, scuffing up gravel. "Been surfing Mako's a lot."

"Mako's is locals' only!" Spots of color appeared in Lono's cheeks. "Why the hell is she showing him places like that, brah?"

"I don't know, man," Mason said quietly.

Lono snorted. "Well, fuck me. What the hell do we know about each other anymore? For starters, you look like death, Tica."

I couldn't answer. The smell of the local hot dog fundraiser had drifted over to my nostrils, and I was struggling not to puke. Just because the bites on my skin had scarred over to a dull purple didn't mean the venom was going anywhere soon.

"Treatment has a few side effects," I rasped finally. "The doctor says I've got this thing beat, though."

"Tica wins round two!" Mason raised my hand enthusiastically. "When's cancer gonna take the hint? You ain't interested."

Lono glared after Jinho. "How the hell could he leave you at a time like this?"

"I ended it. Trust me: I'll get better faster without him."

"Yeah, don't hang with that guy. You need your real friends right now." Lono unlocked his truck. "Anything on that doctor's list against toking, Tica? You look like you could use a couple hits."

I didn't want to know what smoking weed would do to my quickly destabilizing mind. "Thanks, Lono, but I'm good. You guys go ahead. I'm gonna wait for Ryoko."

Mason smiled at me and hopped in the truck with Lono. I wanted to ask if he'd brought up his best friend's old habit yet, but I was too tired to even formulate the sentence. After what I'd asked Jinho to do, I was the last person to lecture Lono about drugs.

Ryoko left her afterschool tennis practice with a bunch of girls from our class.

"I swear, I saw him kiss her!" Leiko Ichikawa's high soprano floated over, her cheeks still flushed from the match. "What on earth is Aolani thinking? Messing around with her best friend's guy while said friend fights cancer?"

"Can we not talk about this?" I heard Ryoko say.

Maile Thompson glanced over, her cheeks reddening. "Ryoko's right, Leiko; be quiet! Tica's standing right there!"

The waves of pain and nausea finally coalesced into something strong enough to bar them from hurting me: hate. It enclosed me in layers of icy, crystalized armor until I felt cold and dead...like him. With the usual waves of agony cooling down, I felt strong enough to stand.

"It's okay, you guys." I shrugged. "I'm not surprised Aolani hasn't waited until my body's cold before going after Jinho. She will do _anything_ to get what she wants. After all, why do you think CEO Summers kept her on as an intern at Kalani Resorts?"

"No!" Leiko and Maile clapped their hands over their mouths, while the other girls looked away embarrassedly.

"Tica," Ryoko said softly, "that's not true."

My heart thrashed wildly in my chest, and heat scorched trails up my cheeks. However, I couldn't back out of the lie now.

"How would you know? You weren't there, Ryoko. She was also flirting with another fat cat—some rich Russian millionaire. She got all mad when I interrupted their privacy on the _roof_."

The other girls began to nod. Leiko and Maile exchanged delighted glances. "Yes, yes, Nik! She couldn't stop talking about him!"

Ryoko didn't back down, her hands clenched at her sides. "Seriously, what the fuck are you on, Tica? You and Jinho, too—his eyes are all weird and green."

The hate evaporated as swiftly as it had come. I stared at her, tongue-tied. I couldn't take back my words even as they bounced off in fifteen different directions.

# Chapter 15: Stop n' Inspect

~Tica~

I was adrift in the ocean, the tip of my childhood surfboard gently bobbing against my chin as I gazed up at Koko Head Crater. Rain fell from above and below, and a double rainbow wrapped itself in a helix across the sky. Dawn's rays broke through the gentle rain mist, burnishing the sea in a warm, coppery glow. Daylight had come too soon. I felt my head sink into my chest, and my surfboard began to drift away from me. That was fine by me. I had no desire to paddle back. I would stay in Eve forever.

A sharp bite on my toe snapped me out of it. Muscles heaving, I crawled up onto my board and surveyed the honey-tinted waters for any sign of a shark. There were none. Only one determined humuhumu charging toward me, tail pumping hard, eyes masked by two black bandit streaks. I gasped. It was him.

He soared up out of the sea in a burst of prismatic light, showering me with rainbow water droplets. His feet whistled down until they hovered above my board, and I _saw_ him.

"Daughter," the shapeshifting god said. I gapped. My mind came alive like it hadn't for weeks, shifting through all of my childhood folktales until I came up with a name:

Kamapua'a the boar god was my father.

I should have known. The humuhumu was his sea form. According to Aolani, humuhumunukunukuapua'a meant "fish with a nose like a pig." Scorned by his first father as an illegitimate "hog" child, and rejected by the second as a liar, Kamapua'a soon found it easier to become the defiant, adventurous pig his first father called him, plundering the islands and seducing women as he desired. He first changed into a reef triggerfish to flee into the sea after his old lover Pele sent lava from Kīlauea to chase him.

In other legends I recalled of him, he could bring the dead back to life.

Kama was ferociously handsome with thick black curls, a white _malo_ , and a shoulder cape of boar fur. I could see how my mom would have been intrigued, no matter what time period of dress he showed up in.

The boar god laughed at my gasp of recognition. "Daughter!" he boomed again, the force of his voice chasing the rain from the sky. "You have much wisdom for one so young, but you also have much to learn. There is too much poison in your veins, my child. You must leave Eve now and reclaim yourself."

I would have given anything to freeze this moment in time. I had a trillion questions to ask my father, but I was mindlessly enthralled by his presence. He filled me with the kind of inspiration that Poli'ahu killed with her cold, creeping frost.

Kama bent and gripped my chin so I could stare up at the mirror image of my dark, earthy-brown eyes. "This world is not yet for you, my daughter," he said kindly.

"But I am so tired," I whispered.

"You must go back now," he wheedled persistently. "Your mother has too much poison in her veins, too."

That woke me up. "My mother? That's impossible. She doesn't know about vampyres."

Kama smiled sadly. "She knows about me."

I understood. Ana Dominguez had always believed in the unseen things.

"Hurry!" the boar god cried, drawing back the waves to gather around my surfboard. "One day, Tica Dominguez, you, too, shall change your form, but now is not that time. Flee!"

The waves drew back to monstrous black heights, and I realized that in the flares of sunrise, I could see them watching me: the dark mo'o. They took the forms of shadow tiger sharks, metastasized octopi, horned whales, and one extremely large megalodon, whose mouth was the size of a deep cave that could drink the bay whole.

"Tica," Kama whispered, "surf." Then he released the tide.

That was one big motherload of an order, coming from my estranged immortal father who'd shown up only once before in my life to mutter mysterious things at me. It wasn't as if he'd just unleashed the biggest wave I'd ever seen, maybe a triple overhead. However, the set was building bigger behind, and it contained a dozen evil spirit creatures, so I got my ass straight on the board and leaned back.

The wave cracked through me like a wrecking ball.

I shot through the air, my old waterlogged longboard suddenly as light as a feather. The giant black wave's awful roar chased me, and I stared down a slope of building-smashing water. Yeah, screw skiers and snowboarders. They should try it when the earth beneath them was _moving._ I had maybe a millionth of a second to catch this wave, or else I would be crushed to death by one hundred tons of merciless, pounding currents.

Shark shadows darted beneath the wave, but I didn't fear them. Whether they were Dark Spirits or not, we both shared respect for the waves. If they managed to eat me while I was flying on foam and lost dreams, then more power to them. The wave roared its hunger to the skies, building up, up, higher, and higher, as if it intended to swallow the newborn sun. When the water finally began to freefall toward the earth, dozens of questions ran across my mind, chiefly: how much did I want to survive?

The wave blocked out the sky. I threw myself forward, a torso exploding from the sapphire wall with frothy fireworks shooting overhead.

My childhood longboard touched down on the wave, faithfully refusing to nose dive. I stood to salute it. From cowering lean, to knee, to crouch. I extended my arms, my left stump pointing the way ahead, while my right arm maintained my balance behind. The sun shone in my eyes as I watched the shoreline grow rapidly larger to greet me.

My stump steered me ahead, to safety. My right hand, I extended back, allowing my fingers to brush the belly of the behemoth. Its roar still bore down upon my ears, but now its intensity awoke something else within me, something I hadn't felt since I'd been diagnosed with bone cancer: awe. I was cradled within the wave's belly, and if I did something stupid, then I would be catapulted to kingdom come. If I didn't, then for a brief, infinitesimal moment, I would know what it was like to be the ocean: to fly across the earth wild, unbridled, and free. Its slow swell and thunderous touchdown were the only forewarning it sent to the earth— _bitch, I'm coming_.

And I'm about to fuck you up.

I opened my eyes to see my room.

***

The sunlight was harsh and gray, glaring at me from beneath the windowpane and through palm leaves. I squinted as I stumbled my way toward Rafael's junky old jeep. A gecko clicked nearby, making a sound similar to Jinho's fangs emerging, and my pulse quickened involuntarily. I unconsciously scratched my wrist, upon which faded purple bites lay. My fingers moved to my abdomen, to my neck, to my stump, as the old bite sites suddenly blazed to life with itchy, stabbing pain. I swung about blearily, mango trees and rhododendron bushes blurring into one another. The sun's rays whipped my pale skin again, and I cowered beneath Rafael's jeep for shade. I needed release. I needed vampyre venom.

"Tica? Are you okay?" I hazily made out Rafael's dark shape approaching with a set of car keys.

I lurched forward and grabbed his T-shirt. "We need to find Jinho."

I convinced Rafael to track Jinho down with some ridiculous story about him seeing another girl. Who that girl was, I feared to tell him.

"Alright, fine!" Rafael exclaimed, ramming his foot on the gas. "We follow him once, and then you make up your mind about him. Either he's a serial cheater or he's a flake, but you decide how Jinho is not good for you and then be done with him."

I sat pacified in the front seat, although my eyes drifted to Rafael's thin, angular face and lean frame. We both had our mother's sun-streaked dark hair and golden-brown complexion (well, not me currently), but Rafael's eyes were liquid and warm as milk chocolate while mine were earthy black soil...like my father's. Now I knew I was built like him, too: shorter and stockier with thickly padded muscle, the better for charging with.

I smiled and touched my half-brother's hand. "Thank you."

Jinho's silver Hyundai Accent was where it was supposed to be: in the parking lot for the Stop n' Shop. So were the vehicles of two other employees on shift for the day, as well as my mother's van. As the shadows lengthened, only two telltale cars remained. I tried to stop it, but the cold, ugly hate unfurled in the pit of my stomach again, silencing all of my itchy bites. I jumped from Raf's jeep and strode toward the florescent lights with detached purpose.

He was feeding on her. I stood in the Stop n' Shop doorway, swaying for an instant at the torrid sight, and then grabbed the nearest thing I could find.

My mother sat up first in the booth. "Tica! What are—?"

They ducked as I bellowed like a wounded animal and threw the beer bottle.

Rafael caught me by the waist. "Let's get out of here, Tica. Come on. It's not worth it. We'll figure this shit out—"

"His eyes!" I sobbed. "Are his eyes green?"

Rafael stopped and stared at me as if I'd gone crazy. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"His eyes!" I wailed again miserably.

"Whose, Jinho's? They're the same color they've always been, albeit carrying a lot of extra douchiness. Don't worry, Tica; I'll deal with him. But...are you seeing things?"

His concerned expression doubled and then tripled in my spiraling vision. My father's warning reverberated in my head—"Your mother has too much poison in her veins, too"—but it was pushed aside by violent, crimson-tainted waves:

He betrayed me!

She betrayed me!

I need...more!

Fangs sank in and released. I exhaled in ecstasy. Then I turned into my mother, her full lips slightly parted in sigh. Frantic to escape the rising tide of images, I reached out and latched onto the one thing that could quell the need for more vampyre venom: hate.

I snuck back at night to plant mold in the Stop n' Shop storage room and then called the health inspector. When my mom came to my room later to confront me about it, I waited on the bed with fiendish glee. We yelled and shrieked at each other until our lungs tore open, spilling out like the blood we had freely given, the venom craze in our eyes a mirror image of each other's.

# Chapter 16: A Storm Spent

~Tica~

Two weeks later, I felt like my head was beginning to clear. The longer I lay on the cot at Ryoko's house, the more I didn't want to leave it. Gradual realization sunk in about the wake of destruction I had caused during the throes of vampyre venom, and I huddled alone and scared with the blinds tightly drawn. Ryoko's grandmother told me that my mom had come by at least five times, begging to speak with me, but I couldn't face her. I couldn't face any of them.

When the house intruder alarm went off, I realized I didn't have a choice. Ryoko was at school, and her grandmother was out attending physical therapy. Eyes narrowing, I crept up the stairs and peered out into the family's backyard. Someone had broken into the lanai by the pool.

The phone rang. It was the security company, telling me the police had been notified.

"No, it's okay," I told them, my own voice sounding low and weird in my ears. I hadn't heard it for days. "It's just a friend who tripped the alarm. Yes, here's the code."

I slowly walked outside. Aolani looked up at me from the lawn chair and tipped down her sunglasses.

"So you are still alive after all," she said.

I sagged against a colonnade. Dull pain had reemerged in my stump after the vampyre venom detox, but I welcomed it back after that mind fuck.

"Aren't you supposed to be in Montoya's class?"

She shrugged. "I skipped it. He started being a judgy ass toward me after I quit working at Kalani Resorts."

I went very still. "He said he could understand why I would have to turn down the internship, given my relapse, but you—"

"Had no excuse." Aolani rolled her eyes. "I guess listening to the CEO spout a bunch of bull about the inferiority of your people is part of the job description. Screw it. That's not what I want to spend my life doing. Sometimes a job isn't just a job anymore."

I sat down on the lawn chair opposite, realizing just how long it had been since Aolani and I had talked, really talked, to each other.

She blew out a pent-up sigh, her fists clenched on her lap. "It just sucks when you grow up sitting in a history classroom that tells you about how your queen 'let your people be conquered' and how you 'lost' the islands. It's like every mainlander just expects you to be this 'defeated' person who's ready to play along like everyone else. But I'm not defeated, Tica. I don't want to go all separatist, either. I want to be both."

She looked down at her hands, and I reached out to grab hers. "Then you can be. That classroom history isn't the only history. Yours is just as valid. Share it with everyone you know."

Aolani sniffed. "Saint Tica. How'd you get so wise?"

"When you're dying of cancer," I said, "and one of your best friends asks you for advice, then you don't waste time being thoughtless."

She stared at me for a moment. "I was so nervous going up against you in that internship interview. I know, it's stupid: to be jealous of your cancer. I'm sorry."

My mouth went dry. "I'm sorry I spread those rumors about you. What I said about you was just so fuckin'— _evil_."

"I don't know what's worse: the fact that you insinuated _Crispin_ and I fooled around, or the fact that they believed you," Aolani muttered. She glanced away toward the pool, blinking furiously. "We didn't do anything, Tica," she blurted. "I thought Jinho just wanted to hang out, but he seemed—off. When he tried to kiss me, I pushed him away."

I smiled sadly. Ryoko claimed Aolani's Jinho had weird green eyes, but how did I know for sure if it had been a dark mo'o masquerading as a vampyre prince? I couldn't be certain of anything, except for my friends.

"I know. I should have known."

She glared at me. "Damnit, Tica. You may live on an island, but that doesn't mean you are one. We all depend on each other; what affects one affects us all. You need to tell us what the hell is going on with you. Ryoko's too respectful to ask, but I will strangle the answer out of you if I have to."

_See, there's this spirit world in trouble, and the Hawaiian gods and vampyres are real, and they asked me to help save it_. Or how about: _I caught Jinho with my mother. Yes. In that way._

Yeah, and I should start out by telling her that my father was the boar god. Great way to spend out my remaining days: in an asylum. The scary thing was....I didn't know if I _hadn't_ cracked. Maybe Eve and everything else was just my overactive imagination's way of helping me be okay with what was to come.

So what I said instead was: "You know about the relapse, Aolani... This time it is terminal. I was improving steadily for a while"— _just a daily dose of vampyre venom to see me through the day_ —"but I got test results back from the doctor yesterday. There are...malignant tumors in multiple locations. I could either go the surgery-chemo route and deal with the pain and recovery steps again...but my survival rate's been downgraded to fifteen percent. Or I could live out my last six months peacefully"—my eyes blurred with tears—"with the people I love."

She launched off her lawn chair and hugged me so tightly, I couldn't cry. That was how Ryoko found us when she returned from school. We talked about my upcoming birthday and decided to hold it at Bellows Beach Park. I smiled to myself. Where the wild boars were.

"Tica," Aolani said before we parted ways, "I finished translating that old manuscript Rafael gave me."

My head shot up as she pulled it out of her bag and placed it my hands, along with her notes.

She smiled broadly at me. "It's a really beautiful story. It tells the tale of how to find Kuaihelani, the land of the gods."

# Chapter 17: A Camping Trip

~Tica~

The waves began to pick up toward late afternoon, the legion of teal white caps bombarding the sparkling Bellows Beach with mounting intensity. The soft wet sand was the color of gingerbread dusted with powdered sugar, while the dry sand dunes above were white flour. Aolani, Lono, Mason, and Mason's friend Paul exited the waves with boogie boards tucked under their arms and hair dripping, laughing at something Paul had just said.

Paul Chi was a hot half-Chinese, half-white paddler Mason had met while rowing for the Hui Nalu Canoe Club over the summer. He jokingly threw his arm over Mason's shoulder, and Mason shrugged out of the embrace, glancing worriedly at Lono.

"Yummy," Ryoko said from where she squatted next to the grill, and I didn't think she was talking about the teriyaki burgers. She shrugged at me. "Hey, if Mason doesn't want him, then I'll take him."

I added a slice of juicy pineapple on top of my sizzling burger patty. "Mason doesn't really expect Lono to figure out what's going on, does he? Lono's the type who says things bluntly and expects the same in return."

"The guys are all sharing a tent together tonight. I'm sure he'll figure it out then," Ryoko said with a sly wink. "Ooh, I would pay to be there."

I laughed, setting aside a plate of pineapple and onion slices to wrap in foil. I had a trip of my own to take later tonight, and it involved traveling into the spirit world to warn my father about Crispin and the Plague Lords' plan to gain access to Kuaihelani. My time under the vampyre venom was hazy, but I still remembered Jinho's rules about entering Eve: if he wasn't with me, then I should leave out food offerings so hungry ghosts wouldn't attack.

Ryoko's eyes narrowed on the plate of food set aside. "Who is that for?" she demanded.

I knew my brother had appointed Ryoko to watch my every move since he'd been scheduled to work my Halloween birthday weekend. "Extras for later," I said. "The doctor says I have to keep my weight up, but it's hard to fight off the nausea at times."

Usually the moment I nudged the conversation toward cancer, my friends clammed up, but not Ryoko this time.

"How are things between you and your mom?" she asked softly. She knew how ugly our fight had been, but not the contents. Rafael wasn't jumping to spill the details, either. How could I explain to him, or to anyone, that our mother had fallen prey to the seductive charms of an evil monster?

"There's still a lot I need to talk to her about," I said, "but trust me, it's better if I'm not there right now." _It's better for the vampyre venom to have left both of our systems before we face what happened._

Aolani always accumulated endless amounts of energy on the beach. Even after enduring the pounding surf for two hours, she still ran up to us with two stakes in hand.

"HORSESHOES!" she cried. "Let's play horseshoes!"

"There are six of us," Lono said, scoffing down a teriyaki burger in four bites.

"We can do it in three teams. Partners stand opposite each other and try to loop the stake for points. I have pink, silver, and gold horseshoes, all properly bedazzled with fake rhinestones." Aolani beamed at us. "I think my baby sister got into them."

"Well, if I'm going to be chucking pink horseshoes around a beach, then I'll need another drink," Lono reported, "and you on my team."

Aolani flashed him a knowing smile and hurried to set up the stakes.

"I'm with Tica!" Ryoko hugged me.

Paul toweled off his spikey black hair. "Are you feeling up to it, Tica?"

"Are you kidding?" Ryoko shot back. "Tica's right arm is freakishly strong."

I smiled at Paul. "I'm fine. Thanks for your concern."

"Nice. You're a fighter, girl." Paul grabbed a teriyaki burger and sashayed backwards down the beach after Aolani and Ryoko. "Guess that means I get Mason! Not bad, not bad at all!"

Mason's lips quirked. "For you. You better not screw this up, Chi."

Paul winked. "That's not the type of screwing I do with Jars."

Mason's mortified red face said it all, and even I blushed.

Aside, he muttered, "He thinks my last name is 'Jar' because—"

"Yeah, yeah, 'Mason Jar'; I get it. _Damn_." I tried to keep from giggling. "Be careful with that one."

Lono elbowed Mason on his other side. "Dude, I think he has a crush on you."

Mason was quiet for a moment, watching the first of the horseshoes, Aolani's pink one, come sailing through the air. Then he said with sudden fervor: "He does. The thing is, Lono, I think I like him, too."

Lono laughed, slapping Mason on the back, until he noticed neither of us had cracked a smile. Then he got quiet.

"Dude," he said slowly, "am I the only one you didn't tell?"

When Mason nodded, he scowled and crunched his beer can. "That's fucked up, man."

"Is it?" Mason's voice was high and strained. "The other day you stole money from Rafael, Lono. I think we can all guess for what! You'd rather do meth with those construction guys and live in the past when Kai was still alive, instead of fighting for your friendships with us. So why the hell would we tell you anything?"

The silver and gold horseshoes landed with thumps in the sand. Aolani's was the closest. It touched the stake and earned her and Lono two points, but Lono was oblivious.

"Fine." He heaved the pink horseshoe, and it struck the far-off stake with a rough _clang_. Aolani cheered and danced around while Ryoko and Paul yelled encouragement to us.

Mason was next, but he was having trouble focusing. " _Fine?_ That's all you have to say?"

"What, do you expect me to give a Nobel Peace speech or something?" Lono growled. "Apparently you like dudes now; I'm the messed-up drug addict you couldn't trust to tell. Fine."

Mason threw the silver horseshoe with an extra amount of rage, and it bumped Lono's out of the way. Paul spread his arms wide in triumph, and Aolani shoved him.

"Do you know how much shit we've had to go through to stay friends?" Mason snapped, his heat ringing in my ears as I stepped up to throw. "First we had to take all that crap from our families: 'Oh, why is that haole boy hanging around?' from your folks and 'Lose the _moke_ ' from mine. Then you went off the deep end after Kai's death—"

"Mason, I'm warning you: don't fuckin' talk about him—" I lost the strand of conversation as I threw, my golden horseshoe whistling through the air to loop the stake. Ryoko sat back like a smug cat to celebrate our lead, while Aolani and Paul shouted scoring advice at the feuding pair behind me. I was too numb to feel glad.

"I want to talk about Kai!" Mason bellowed. "Don't _you_ tell me I can't because I'm not a great surfer like he was, or I need to respect his memory! How are _you_ respecting him by going off and getting high all day and not giving a shit about living?"

The others had finally realized what was going on. Aolani mouthed _What's wrong?_ at me, but I just shook my head. This was another storm that needed to spend itself.

Lono turned his ire upon me. "Fuck this. You talk stink, too?"

I puffed out my chest. "Eh yah man, I'm one crazy buggah. I almost messed up my friendship with Aolani because I didn't take the time to _talk_ to her. So why don't you lay down your arms, cuz, before you become like me?"

Lono stared at me for an instant, and then he broke out laughing. "Ho, tita, your pidgin's awful."

I elbowed him playfully. "I learned it all from you, brah."

Unclenching the pride from his face, Lono slowly turned back to Mason. "If Saint Tica says she's not right all the time, then go ahead, man. I listen."

Mason laughed ruefully and gazed down at his hands. "Look, Lono, there is one reason I put off telling you for so long: I felt like I had already told you...through Kai. He was the first person who ever knew. That kid must have been only ten years old when it happened. He was there when this barista dude was flirting with me. Maybe it was a word he picked up at school that day, but Kai straight out asked me if I was gay. I just looked at him, and there he was grinning back at me, no malice or political agenda beneath his words, and that was the first time I ever really allowed myself to think...maybe it would be okay."

Lono gazed out toward the ocean, and the smallest of smiles tugged at his lips. "Young punk never had any manners. No wonder the sea wanted to teach him some."

"No wonder the sea wanted him indeed," Mason said softly and then hesitantly reached out to place a hand on Lono's shoulder.

I grinned, flashing a thumbs up to the others. Aolani and Ryoko clapped and waved back. Paul enthusiastically wound up his horseshoe and chucked it. The glittery horseshoe skipped off a rogue piece of driftwood and hit Lono's knee.

"Motherfucker!" Lono dropped to one leg, swearing, and Mason and I hurried to see the damage.

"Lono, are you okay?" Mason asked frantically.

Lono cracked one eye open and jabbed the skinny redhead in the chest. "Bro, your boyfriend is gonna die."

I smiled. Tonight I would definitely feel comfortable leaving all of them together—while I entered Eve alone. I glanced toward the trees, through which I could see the chain link fence encircling Bellows Air Force Station. I could also see two black boars snuffling around the bushes, in the dirt track where the soldiers did their conditioning drills. My heart twisted. The boars were here, but would my father be among them?

# Chapter 18: Shifting Shapes

~Tica~

I stole across the shadowy sands, leaving my friends' tents, the candle doorway, and my sleeping body behind. The silver waves roamed restlessly on All Hallows' Eve, coagulating into anamorphic shapes and then bursting. I saw a pair of black wings cross the face of the moon and froze. Then I realized it was a three-legged crow spirit. Shaking my head, I hurried toward the tree line.

A small, bristly-furred boar charged out from the underbrush. I tensed, but then I realized it wasn't attacking me. It was running away.

Suddenly a shadow streaked out of the trees so fast I couldn't see its face. I did, however, catch a flash of metallic-tinted hair.

The familiar vampyre ascendant hoisted the protesting boar up by its tail. He snapped off one of the pig's tusks and rammed it straight through its chest. His glittering topaz eyes rose up to meet mine.

"Hungry, Tica?" Nik asked softly.

_Crap_. I sprinted for the forest, but Nik blurred and reappeared in front of me. The boar's severed head swung from his fist tauntingly.

"Go ahead." He grabbed my forearm, dragging me closer. "You _want_ to become one of us, don't you? That is why you let the Crow Prince drink from you. Becoming a vampyre is the only thing that will stop your imminent death. So _drink_."

He shoved me to my knees. The rotting stench of the boar's head pierced my nostrils, making me so dizzy I couldn't see straight. Then Nik shoved my head into the spurting red flesh.

" _Drink!_ " Compulsion underlined the command, angry and laced with bitterness. Still, I clenched my teeth tight and turned my head to the side, blood staining my cheeks.

"Don't think the Crow will save you," Nik said quietly. "I know you've lost his favor. Poor cancer girl. You're too much of a self-righteous prude to be a vampyre, aren't you? Or maybe you're just being nice and letting me eat first!" His head bent close to mine so I could see his grisly stained fangs, the black veins webbed across his eyes, and the blood splattered in his gelled hair. The smell of rancid meat stung my eyes.

"Don't worry," he breathed. "I'll dine later on your sweet little friend...Aolani, was it?"

Suddenly he arched up, cursing. I tumbled out of his grasp and saw none other than Ryoko of all people standing behind him, staring grimly at the rusty old horseshoes stake she'd planted in his back.

"Ryoko?" I whispered in disbelief.

She hunched her shoulders stubbornly. "Rafael told me to follow you no matter what you did. No matter where you went. When you bedded down next to the candles and the plates of food, I... _saw_ something. Your spirit departed through the candles. So I did the same..."

Staring at her, I realized that only Ryoko had commented upon the eerie green of the fake Jinho's eyes. Her grandmother had instilled in her the importance of tending to her ancestors' graves. On some level, my best friend had always believed in spirits, too.

Nik ripped the stake from his back and swiveled around, his fangs gleaming. His spine made sickening pops as his gray skin stitched itself back into place, and the silver tips of his hair began to smoke. He was good and pissed off now. Yet he still managed to laugh.

"Excellent!" the vampyre cried, one of his long arms whipping out to spear Ryoko through the palm with the stake. She gasped, falling to her knees. With tears soaking her eyes, she struggled to free her impaled hand. Her blood gushed freely like a geyser. Nik grinned, shoving me in front of him. He held both of my arms tightly behind my back so I couldn't get away.

"You have such a cute array of loyal friends willing to give up anything for you, Tica, my dear," his hot breath hissed in my ear. "They say you're a fast learner. So why don't we skip the animals and go straight to feeding on your own kind? Think of how happy it will make your precious Crow Prince!"

"And think of how happy _you're_ making me by forgetting something," I said through gritted teeth, my left shoulder prickling.

"Oh? What's that?" he whispered, leaning against my captive fists.

"I only have one arm."

Nik jerked back to stare at my bound hands, but by then, it was too late. The moon passed out from behind the clouds, and my left arm shimmered and then reappeared as a three-foot-long boar tusk, which staked him straight through the heart.

The vampyre toppled over like a felled tree, his fiery hair shuddering and then going dark. I darted forward, carefully retracting the stake from Ryoko's palm.

"Thank you!" she gasped. "But Tica—how did you do that?"

I wrapped her wounded hand in leaves and applied pressure. "Kamapua'a the boar god is my father," I murmured. "He is a notorious shapeshifter. I figured that if I'm in spirit form, then I can do it, too."

She was able to stand, so I grabbed the rusty horseshoes stake and dashed back to Nik's fallen form. The boar tusk I'd created was fading, so I staked him again.

"Is that thing...dead?" Ryoko asked uncertainly.

"Well, half of him is," I said awkwardly. "We're in the spirit world, Eve. His body is still 'alive' in the waking world, but no mind will come back to it."

She gulped. "So if we die here..."

"We become comatose vegetables in real life."

"My grandmother would kill me."

I laughed and grabbed her elbow. "Let's get you out of here."

She drew back defensively, forgetting her wounded hand. "Not unless you're coming, too."

"I can't," I argued. "I have to find my father and warn him about the vampyres' plans for Kuaihelani."

Ryoko shivered as the temperature dropped. "Well, great, let's do it. I've always wanted to meet your dad. Hey, why is it so cold in the spirit world?"

I stared at her again, wordless gratefulness bubbling up inside. "You're my best friend, Ryoko."

"And you're mine, when you aren't keeping secrets from me and running rampant around a bizarre-o ghost beach. Seriously, is it snowing?"

"Oh, shit." I watched blue ice creep across the sands, crystalizing palm trees and freezing the ocean in mid-motion.

Laughter broke the icy stillness. I whirled around, but it was only Ryoko, spinning under the ghostly glow of the moon as the stars began to fall like snowflakes. Her lips cracked in a smile. "It's kind of pretty."

Poli'ahu touched down upon the ice amidst a blizzard of flapping winged mo'o. "Well, at least you have one decent friend," the snow goddess said.

# Chapter 19: Nightmarchers

~Tica~

Ryoko shifted to stand behind me, away from the penetrating stare of the stoic ice maiden.

"She looks like she wants to kill us."

"Poli'ahu has tried, in the past," I muttered back.

"Who? Just how many enemies do you have here?" she hissed.

"Too many." Poli'ahu held a small ice sculpture of a boar in her hand and then shattered it with a single breath of frost. "Really, Tica thinks the cancer will be what kills her."

My eyes narrowed. "Leave us, Poli'ahu. We're here to speak to my father."

"Do you see any giant man-pigs rolling in the mud anywhere?" She looked at me flatly. "Forget it, child. Your father is like Pele—their desires change with the wind. Only I am the patient and unchanging guardian who remembers, who endures despite rising temperatures and the selfish greed of your kind. I thought your vampyre friend 'Jinho' was like me." Fissures momentarily surfaced in her glacial mask.

Ryoko elbowed me frantically. "Jinho's a _what_?"

"I promise I'll explain."

The snow goddess snapped her fingers. "Yes, _later._ Priorities, cancer girl. Tell me what those cursed undead have been up to before you croak."

Ryoko immediately stepped up to my defense, but I shook my head. I didn't want to explain to Ryoko's grandmother that a humorless snow goddess had turned her granddaughter into a snow ornament. Perhaps Poli'ahu was more like her fire rival Pele than she liked to think.

"Jinho interpreted these weird shark skin manuscripts I stole from Crispin's office. Crispin and the Plague Lords used them to summon Nanaue from Kuaihelani. Crispin also had a dead coral prison that could turn mo'o dark and an old Hawaiian legend about finding Kuaihelani."

Poli'ahu stood so still for a moment, I thought she'd turned into an ice statue. Abruptly, she blinked. "I see. Thank you."

"Wait, where are you going?"

"I must spread the word to the other gods," she said quietly. "We need to prepare for war."

"Please, tell me," I begged, running after her. "That's my father you're talking about."

She hesitated. "When Crispin and the Plague Lords summoned Nanaue back to the earth from Kuaihelani, it was not pretty, you understand. Nanaue's teeth tore a hole in Kuaihelani as he passed through. Kuaihelani is the cloudland, the bridge to the Beyond. The land of the gods is vulnerable now."

"But why Nanaue?" I pressed. "Why now?"

"Remember what I told you," the ice maiden replied. "Nanaue is in many ways like the vampyres: he feeds on his own kind. Before I called Jinho to imprison him, I found Nanaue prowling around a certain controversial hotel project off of Fiji."

"Kalani Resorts," I realized. "The launching spot of their notorious underwater hotel."

"One of the rooms is made entirely out of 'dead' coral." Poli'ahu nodded grimly. "It is large enough to hold thousands of mo'o. Or the supreme Mo'o matriarch herself, who lives in Kuaihelani: Mo'oinanea...the Dragon."

"A shapeshifting guardian like Mo'oinanea would make a powerful soldier," I whispered.

"One powerful enough to change the tides." Poli'ahu gazed out at the horizon. "If she were to turn dark, then she would sway the allegiance of the remaining mo'o. Hawai'i would no longer be safe from the Vampyre Queen's shadow. Dark spirits would flood our part of Eve. And the Twelve would be that much closer to returning to plague the waking world."

"Poli'ahu," I asked timidly, "who are the Twelve?"

She paused, her black ice eyes scanning the trees. "We have no time to speak of them safely. You must return to your bodies swiftly, children. I see dark mo'o coming for them...and for your mother, Tica."

My heart seized up in my chest. "I have to get back to her!"

"I will make the winds blow cold and hard for as long as I can to hold them off." Poli'ahu extended her arms to the skies, blackness swallowing up her eyes completely. "Run. Get back to your bodies. I will send help soon."

Ryoko put out her hand, and I grabbed it. Together, we pelted back across the sands, our legs pumping furiously. The campfire reappeared, dreary and gray a veil away. We dashed through the candles and reentered our bodies—but my spirit sight gave me no rest.

Poli'hu's icy winds died, and rain began to fall, so dark and heavy that we couldn't see the others. I saw the creeping shapes of many dark mo'o advancing toward Ryoko and me, and my heart despaired.

Suddenly, chanting breached the darkness. A great host of torches approached: a hunting fire, unquenched by the torrential rain or shadows. Ryoko and I stared at each other, petrified. I knew she couldn't see the torches, but she could smell a dank odor and hear the call of the conch shell. Poli'ahu had not sent friends—she had set the huaka'i pō, the Nightmarcher warriors, upon us.

However, at the sight of the torches, the dark mo'o fled in terror. The chanting grew exponentially, vigorous shouts of hunger and joy that raised my spirits and urged my eyes to look upon the ghost army. My fingers locked in Ryoko's, and I stared hard at the ground, desperate not to fall for their trick.

A battle-scarred finger tipped my chin up. I realized that the Nightmarchers had surrounded me like an escort, making no move to attack. Their leader smiled and nodded toward the east, back toward Kaimukī. Back to my mother.

I returned his smile.

"Tell the others where I've gone," I told Ryoko.

"Um—what the hell am I supposed to say?"

"That I love them." I squeezed her hand one more time and let go. "That I love you all."

I saw two shapes draped over one another on the moonlit beach as I stole by in the company of the Nightmarchers. It was Aolani and Lono, her head resting on his shoulder. I blinked, my eyes wet, and then flashed them the shaka sign. Good will and the best to them. I hoped one day I would see them again.

# Chapter 20: The Ritual

~Tica~

I was carried through the night on the chants of the huaka'i pō. At one point, we soared high above the islands, and I could see the island chain in its entirety: living, breathing, becoming. The Nightmarchers' song reached up into the stars, until time and space bent back down to earth. We fell with the rain, through a cloud so dark I couldn't see. Whistles and drumbeats pounded in my ears.

My hand flailed frantically for something solid, and I thudded onto the back of something hard and bristly. The gigantic black boar laughed at me as he cavorted amongst the clouds.

"Daughter!" Kama's voice boomed. "Isn't this fun?"

My fingers knotted into his coiled ruff. "So much that I might pee myself."

"I think you'll forget your bodily worries in a moment," the boar god replied, and then he launched himself off of the cloud. We went spiraling down toward the earth surrounded by the glow of the Nightmarchers' torches, and I called upon my stump to entwine with my father's stubbly bristles so I wouldn't fall off.

"Happy Birthday!" I heard Kama shout.

Everything finally refocused on a familiar concrete block lit by fluorescent lights.

Ahead of me was our drab little apartment. I could see the television screen flickering with the late night news behind the sliding glass doors of our red-stone lanai. One of Mom's potted hibiscus flowers had toppled over in the rain. The smell of soil mixed with the scent of slick oil on the street filled the air.

The Nightmarchers began to disappear one by one in the torrential downpour. Soon only their torches winked in and out around me like fireflies. I smiled at them, at my father, and maybe at Poli'ahu, too: "Mahalo."

The door slid back, and my mother came running out into the storm. "Tica?"

"Mom!"

I slammed into her, hard, and I felt her arms spring up to enfold me.

"I'm so sorry," I cried into her chest. "I said all of those horrible things to you. I didn't realize how sick I was. I was seeing things that weren't real. I was trusting a boy who was a demon."

"Jinho is on his way over here," my mother said calmly.

"What? No! Why?" I pulled her inside and slammed the door shut. Our hair dripped on the hardwood floor. "Mom, we need to revoke his invitation to enter our home! He's evil! His vampyre venom made me into a monster, just like him!"

The storm quieted. Lowly thunder echoed, but it was far away, already moving on. In its absence, the stench of gasoline grew stronger, seeping into the damp earth like rot. Suddenly, I became aware of the candles surrounding us and the dragon fruit left out as an offering.

My mom smiled and walked to the window, leaving her hair thick, wet, and uncombed. "It wasn't Jinho who brought the cancer relapse upon you, Tica. It was the Plague Lords."

"What did you say?" I grew aware of my ragged breathing and the stabbing pain in my shoulder creeping down through my chest. The rain had been protecting us. It had confused our scent. Now I could see them in the night: the long-limbed cadaverous Dark Spirits, their nostril slits flaring and their eerie green eyes floating. They were coming for us.

My mother's sad smile turned to me. "You fought their servants off before, Tica. So brave, but the Plague Lords want you for themselves. Jinho tried to help. His touch is death, so he was able to kill off their presence inside of you for a while. However, his venom bears too great a cost. That is why we must try another way."

She squared her shoulders and clenched her hands into fists. "He must drain their poison from you and give you my blood in return."

I stared. The sheer shock of her pronouncement cut through the haze. "Some type of magical blood transfusion? How is that even possible?"

"It will be." Her voice trembled. "In Eve. There, our spirits shall commune together to decide our bodies' fates. Sometimes what happens in Eve is more real than what happens in our waking one."

"You've known all along about the spirit world."

Her smile grew wistful. "Oh, Tica. How do you think I met your father?"

The sky's darkness thickened outside like a badly burnt stew bursting with pustules. My mother gathered me into her arms to protect me from it: me, her full-grown sickly daughter. "I knew the first time you came running up to me on the beach that day, babbling about the man beneath the sea, that you had the spirit sight like me. I knew then that there were forces bigger than either of us listening who would see you as a threat. I was grateful for every moment we spent together. Sometimes, it was at a cost to your half-brother." She blinked, suddenly looking as scared and young as I felt. "Tell him, Tica. Tell him I loved him and should have loved him better."

"Mom." I shook my head fiercely. "You're not sacrificing yourself for me."

"I'll live on in you." She touched my face, smiling. "You're a part of me living and breathing in this world. I choose you to keep breathing, both of us living."

My eyes blurred as I stubbornly repeated, _"No,"_ but she cupped my chin.

"Look." She shrugged off her shawl. The faded purple bite marks on her dark skin matched my own. "I knew a long time ago that a powerful blood-feeder like Jinho could give you my strength. It is already done. He almost has all of my health now, built up inside. He will give it to you in one final blow to shove the Plague Lords out. All of this"—she gestured to the candles, the offerings—"is in preparation for this final moment."

Something smacked the window. We whirled around, eyes narrowed, and saw a fly fighting to get inside. Another joined it. A low buzzing started up, as if the television had been left on in the other room...but we knew that _they_ were here. It wasn't only the dark mo'o, like Poli'ahu had foretold: it was their masters.

My mother gestured to me. "Draw the curtains."

I couldn't let her do this. Only weeks earlier, I had succumbed to the fever haze. I had believed my own mother was betraying me with Jinho. I had fought with Rafael and told lies about Aolani. I had tried to destroy my family's shop, heedless of others.

There had to be another way. If Jinho was so powerful, then he could perform the blood transfusion so both my mom and I lived. He could control himself, I knew. He would stop before he took too much from my mother.

I dashed from window to window, yanking down shades and pulling curtains shut. I reached the final window across from the front door, and the cord turned to ice beneath my hand. I flung about, heart hammering, to see the jaundice-shot eyes of Ahalgana pressed against the rose-colored glass. Her long yellow arm ended in lethal black claws that extended all the way to the top of the door frame. She opened her mouth wide to smile at me, and her needle-thin teeth clicked against the glass.

I spun around, and there was Ahalpuh. He lunged at the window, and I flipped him off before dropping the blinds.

Ahalgana began to scratch the glass with fervor, her pupils rolling back into her head so her empty irises leaked milky-yellow puss. I heard the click of a gun behind me. My mom appeared in the stairwell, wielding Raf's boar-hunting rifle. The candlelight painted her little statue of the Virgin Mary blood-red for war behind. She nodded grimly and tossed me a speargun. Ahalgana grinned and began to scratch with greater fury. Suddenly, black wings descended upon her.

Ahalgana wailed and disappeared. There was silence for an instant, and then something thudded high above, sending a shock reverberating through the entire building.

"They're on the roof." We locked eyes. Our apartment had four floors.

I gestured to my mother. "Straps."

She nodded, grabbing the bands. I pressed the speargun to my shoulder socket, and she bound it tight with the straps until it felt anchored, its metal burrowing into my flesh. I swung it around. The razor-sharp point of the spear pierced the darkness while my finger rested on the trigger. Ahalgana was occupied, but Fly Butt was still out there.

Someone knocked on the door. We both froze but then tiptoed to either side. I readied my speargun and nodded to my mother. She flung open the door, and both of us surged forward with weapons at the ready.

Jinho looked amusedly at the speargun and rifle aimed at his chest. "I feel sorry for your door-to-door missionaries."

Relief welled up in my chest before I could stop it, along with something else—nostalgic longing. I forced myself to remain scowling. This vampyre I'd stupidly cared for might be able to help us, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

Then a large shadow lizard with glowing green eyes dropped from the trees, mouth open.

"Jinho, look out!" I cried and shoved him inside, away from the dark mo'o.

"Come in quickly." My mother locked the door securely behind and ushered us into the living room.

"Where are the Plague Lords?" I demanded of Jinho.

"I left Ahalgana stuffed in a vent," he said, his gunmetal-sharp eyes darting around the room. "Ahalpuh turned into a cloud of flies to escape from me. It won't be long before they trick someone into letting them inside."

"Like you did?" I asked sarcastically.

"Tica!" my mother admonished. "Jinho is going to save your life!"

I placed a hand on my hip. "Why?"

He didn't miss a beat. "So you can help me. We must defeat Nanaue tonight, Tica. The Plague Lords aren't here for you. They want him."

I stared at him, realization dawning. "The hole into Kuaihelani isn't big enough yet, is it?"

"No," Jinho said quietly. "Don't you see, Tica? Both of us will get what we want. A massive ingestion of your poisoned blood now will kill Nanaue...and me. Your cancer will be defeated. However, your mother will be in poor health, and you must take her to a hospital straightaway."

I swallowed, allowing hope to leak in once more. "You'll stop before she dies?"

His eyes locked with mine. "Understand this: I'll only stop once I'm dead."

Across the room, my mother nodded at me. It wasn't reassuring. It was desperate. This was the last card she had to play in order to save her daughter's life.

"Okay," I heard myself agree. We took our places at his side and then entered the spirit world.

The extraction process began. The familiar intoxicating haze settled over my senses as the vampyre's fangs sank into my skin, but I had developed a hardy shell of stamina. Precariously, I balanced on the waves of bliss, careful not to let even one toe get swept under. Whenever I grew too weak, Jinho gave me some of my mother's blood. Mine he ingested, shadows of gray deepening in his eyes. One moment I caught him looking at me, a look of torrential heat and intensity, and my mouth parted involuntarily. His lips brushed mine roughly before he returned to my neck again. I gasped, sinking against him.

To my surprise, he buckled. Ingesting my poisoned blood was working. His hands twitched unsteadily, and his skin shrank to cling to his bones. His face grew gaunt and cadaverous beneath his black hair, until I had the impression of a fanged skull leaning in to take yet more poison.

As he bent down, I saw two sets of eyes, one eerie green, and the other jaundice yellow, leering at us from the kitchen doorway. They were inside.

"Jin—" I didn't have time to warn him before the Dark Spirits hurtled toward us.

The vampyre prince backed away from me, his jaw frantically trying to close. He just managed to whip out a hand and imprison Ahalpuh within an iron grip. To my astonishment, blackness began to bleed forth from Jinho's knuckles and into the Lord of Tumors, sickening him. Ahalpuh thrashed and wailed, but he couldn't dissolve into a cloud of disease-ridden flies to get away.

"Hello there," I heard a soft singsong voice say behind. I whirled around and shot Ahalgana through the chest with a spear. Then I ordered a nearby vase to smash her over the head. Across the room, my mother also advanced, pumping the demon full of rounds from the boar hunting rifle.

Yellow puss poured out of the Jaundice Lord's wounds like miniature waterfalls, and Ahalgana collapsed completely into a pile of mucus. Then she propelled herself up into a new form, the bullets and spear popping out of her skin. She laughed and ran at me with black claws outstretched.

Ahalpuh had coiled his rotting body around Jinho's like a serpent, shredding the vampyre prince's shirt as he fought to get out of the death grip. Jinho teetered but remained standing, shooting more rot into Ahalpuh until the Dark Spirit's neck curled back in pain. Then Jinho spun him around and threw him into a lamp. My mother was waiting with a candle to set him on fire.

The demon's anguished cries filled the room, but I couldn't see what was happening with Ahalgana in my face. She laughed and struck me again and again. Each time I fended her off with the speargun. Finally, she tore it free from my stump.

"Poor Ahalpuh. He's always such a baby," she sneered at her burning brother and then streaked forward to gash my cheek. I gasped, falling back, but she made no move to attack. She stared at my blood staining her claws, her yellow eyes glowing with wonder.

Too late, I realized what she was about to do.

"Couch, crush her," I whispered, but strength left my knees and my head suddenly felt very light.

Our sturdy old sofa flew forth to do my bidding, but Ahalgana contorted her spine backwards up and over it.

"Is that Tica girl's only trick?" she cried. "How about you see one of mine?" And then she whipped about to leap on Jinho.

"Jinho, guard your back!" I shrieked, dragging myself forward despite waves of head-pounding pain. How come my body wasn't cooperating?

Jinho snarled at her with fangs bared and then tore for her jugular. For a moment, all I could see was Ahalgana's legs wrapped around Jinho's torso like a malignant spider, while her bone-white hair shrouded them both. Then Jinho snapped her leg in half and hurled her off of him. She joined a scorched Ahalpuh in the corner.

I took a tentative step closer. "Jinho."

He stood very still with shirt ripped and black wings fully extended. They beat once, twice—enough for me to see Nanaue's slumbering mouth on his back, now open with my blood spotting his serrated teeth.

"Jinho—?"

"Get your mother out of here now!" the vampyre prince thundered before something quivered through his entire being, bringing him to his knees. His back began to bulge, and then his spine abruptly split along the seams, flinging both of his wings to either side of the room. The shadow of an enormous tiger shark grew on the living room wall, enveloping the desk and overtaking our family photos. Nanaue's fins bumped me aside as the shark godling departed from Jinho, and I painfully crawled away from that deadly thrashing tail. Still Nanaue grew larger, a gigantic brown beast with black stripes and eerie green eyes overtaken by the Plague Lords' madness. His teeth jutted out at all angles, full of bits of flesh from his last meal. I watched those jaws leer toward my mother.

"No!" I threw myself in the way and felt his teeth sink into the scarred sinews of my stump, flooding me with shock. Several white-hot bolts of pain stabbed me in the brain. Once, twice, and then I couldn't feel anything. My tether to my body was gone.

The candlelit doorway quivered behind the shark god's son. My eyes hardened. Then I shoved back.

# Chapter 21: Daughter of the Gods

~Khyber~

I gritted my teeth as I came to, my body painfully sewing itself back together. The Plague Lords and Nanaue were nowhere to be seen, and the mother was crying at her dead daughter's side. I stared out the window into the night, hollow and defeated inside.

There was the mother's other child: Rafael. He stared at me in horror from the other side of the window. With the amount of spirit activity the tiny apartment had just experienced, I knew the veil between the waking world and Eve was very thin right now. He could see _me_.

I clenched my teeth together, struggling to pull back my fangs. Now that Nanaue had departed, I was ravenously hungry. The room was heavy with blood and damp with tears.

"Come back to me." Ana Dominguez shook the motionless girl's shoulders again. Her fingers frantically pawed at her glossy brown hair. "Please, Tica! Why won't you come back?"

_Your daughter is dead, woman._ The guilt that seized me was the only thing strong enough to hold me back from plunging my fangs into her exposed neck.

I touched her shoulder instead. "Listen to me," I said quietly, "your son is coming to help. He will take you to a hospital. There, you must fight the vampyre venom in your system for all that you're worth. Fight it for him. Fight it for...her."

By the time Rafael burst through the door, I was gone.

~Tica~

I wrestled Nanaue into the spirit world. We rolled over and over on white sands and then into the surf. If Nanaue thought the sudden shock of spray would scare me, then he clearly hadn't grown up with a brother who'd gleefully dunked me every chance he got. On and on we fought, my stump inextricable from his mouth.

We dove deep. As the pressure tightened around my head, I saw one of the shark-man deity's lidless green eyes watching me. Despite the depth, I smiled back and reshaped my lungs to be like a fish's. Gills sprouted along my neck. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that the moment Nanaue had sunk his teeth into me, that had been it. I wasn't waking up ever again.

So I left behind my mortal body and fear, and I saw Eve more clearly than ever before. A thick film developed over my eyes, and my skin hardened into scales. My free hand grabbed Nanaue's fin, and I bent it in half.

That frightened him. Nanaue shot up and hurtled through the spirit sea at unbridled speed. We shot under arches of blue coral and past waving sea fans. I knew where we were heading. Nanaue's instincts told him to return home. To Kuaihelani.

I caught a flash of eerie green eyes on my left and then red-veined yellow ones on my right. I blew out a spout of bubbles in shock. Ahalgana and Ahalpuh had followed us into Eve. Nanaue was free of Jinho. Now the Dark Spirits wanted him to finish the way into Kuaihelani.

Nanaue vaulted up out of the sea. My eyebrows rose in shock. A towering wall of water stood before us, a frozen sapphire tsunami poised to fall. Up we soared, and I could see the shadows of tropical fish flitting about inside.

The colossal wave trembled at the Dark Spirits' approach and began to fall. Tons of whitewash broke over Nanaue's head like a crumbling skyscraper, and the wave's awful roar drowned out all other sound. However, Nanaue had jumped high enough, and we just barely made it over. We streaked down the back of the wave and plunged into the calm aquamarine waters of a black sand islet, which glittered as if it held a million tiny diamonds. There, hissing like a slowly deflating balloon, was a hole in the air wreathed with silvery mist—the hole torn in Kuaihelani after Nanaue's unholy summoning.

Nanaue finally released me. I hesitated but then let him go as well. Slowly, the black-striped shark clambered up onto land, his bulging eyes fixed on the hole. His teeth and snout retracted, and his fins changed into hands. Then the young shark-man pulled himself, panting, toward home.

However, he couldn't lift his tail from the water and let loose a bellow of pain. My eyes narrowed as the leering faces of Ahalgana and Ahalpuh rose above the tide, their claws sunk deep into Nanaue's flesh. They had hitched a ride over.

"Kuaihelani!" Ahalgana stepped onto the black sand beach first and licked her lips. "I can smell the soft bodies of the divine from here, Brother. They do not know pain or illness."

"Feasting here will make us strong enough to free our brethren," Ahalpuh agreed. "Screw that fat vampyre toddler's demands. Nanaue, finish what you started and open the way."

I stepped forward. "Nanaue, don't move."

The great shark-man wheeled around, froth dripping from his mouth. Certain evil blocked the way behind, and if he entered Kuaihelani, then it would surely follow him there.

Ahalpuh stalked toward me, seaweed dripping from his wild black hair. "Shut up, girl. Don't you understand? You, the daughter of a mere mortal woman, are _dead_. You have lost the game. You are ours, the same as this shark godling is."

"I am my father's, who is a god." I matched him step for step and didn't back down. "I am my mother's, _a mere mortal woman_ , whom a god fell for. I am my brother's, who taught me how to throw a punch. And I am my own, who is the best at everything, including beating you, what is it, two times now? No, let's make it _three_."

They shrieked and flew at me. I placed my stump on Nanaue's bent dorsal fin, where they blended seamlessly together. Then I became the shark.

Nanaue was so weak from combating the Dark Spirits' compulsion that his mind melded with mine gratefully. If Jinho had been able to fuse with a shark, then I sure as hell could, and I was going to keep the cool sea hunter's shape.

The Plague Lords just had time to see Nanaue's eyes snap to black, and then we lunged at them.

The ocean was eager to help. Waves battered the Plague Lords mercilessly, and I stalked them from the shadows. My tail pummeled into Ahalgana's chest, and my teeth sunk through Ahalpuh's torso, only letting go because he tasted so foul. Weakened and bleeding, the Plague Lords were torn away on a riptide, out into the merciless depths of the spirit sea. I tracked the scent of their blood to where they thrashed about in the currents overlooking an abyss. Then I rose up from the depths and ate them.

Later, I returned to prowling the shores of the black sand isle, determined that no Dark Spirit should enter the hole in the bridge land.

"Tica."

I hesitated, comfortable lurking in the drop-off near the coral-encrusted cliff. Nanaue did not wish to emerge, so I finally did, my human feet feeling weird after slashing through the water with my great tail. I found my father waiting for me, along with a host of other gods.

My father smiled at me, his boar-furred shoulder cape fluttering in the breeze. "Our thanks to you, my daughter. The way is now clear for us to retreat to Kuaihelani until this darkness recedes."

"You're leaving?" I swallowed hard. "But I don't know anyone else in Eve!"

"Mo'oinanea is calling us back," Kama said. "Power flows through the gods in four things: in memories, blood, tears, and land. If we enter through this gash in Kuaihelani, then such power shall follow us and close the hole. All must return except for a few warriors, whom Mo'oinanea has granted leave to guard the islands against the servants of Death. The rest of us must heal our mo'o, heal our land, and heal ourselves. The evil of the Dark Spirits is insidious and has many arms, both seen and unseen. All of us have been touched by them."

I straightened up. "Then I'm staying to fight, too. Nanaue needs me for now. I can swim again, Father. I can swim deeper and farther than ever before." _Maybe far enough to see Mom and Rafael again, from time to time._

Kama rested a hand on my shoulder. "I understand. One day, Daughter, you, too, shall enter the Beyond."

"What's in the Beyond?"

"Guess," the boar god said with a devilish smile as he returned to his place in line. "Someday, we'll see if you got it right."

I stood aside and let the first returnee, the god of thunder, evaporate and then zap through the hole. A tendril of fog followed him.

The gods passed me by one by one into the misty embrace of Kuaihelani. I did not see Poli'ahu among them, nor Pele. Kamohaoli'i the Shark God, Nanaue's father, swam by as a great whale shark. An entourage of remora and pilot fish darted in and out of his flowing beard. Namakaokaha'i, goddess of the ocean, told me not to eat too many fish in her absence. Little mo'o crawled over her slippers in their anxiousness to go home. Beyond the mist, I could see the monumental shadow of Mo'oinanea shifting restlessly as she awaited her children's return. The hole grew smaller with every new god who passed through it, power flowing inward and then threading tighter in an impenetrable weave.

My father stopped beside me and tipped up my chin. I tried to smile at him, but it was hard because my eyes grew so teary.

"Oh, Tica," he said sadly, "those who die young are the most precious. We are jealous gods, my daughter." His voice broke. "We want to take you back too soon."

"I just want my mother and brother to know everything's okay now." I blinked rapidly. "I want them to know how much I love and miss them, but they must go on and be strong. I'll see them again."

Kama hesitated. "No," he said finally, his nostrils flaring. "It is not right that you cannot come with me, and you cannot go back to them. You are stuck in Eve, this place in-between, which is for those departed who do not know where to go."

"It's fine, Dad." I shook my head, amused. "I will guard this way in Eve until Death's Shadow recedes."

Still the boar god hesitated, and then he stepped out of line. "Kuaihelani pulls me back," he said. "I am not strong enough to resist for long. However, I shall not enter yet. There is still something I have to do."

He left, stampeding over the ocean in the form of a giant black boar and causing tidal waves in his wake. I sighed and shook my head. _So that's where I got my pig-headedness from, Mom._

The line of gods grew smaller, until I was left completely alone. Of the hole, there was nothing left except for a faint sliver. Thankfully, the sky remained clear of Dark Spirits. The strongest of the Hawaiian pantheon in root and memory were fending them off as of yet.

When dawn came, I watched from Eve as it broke over my childhood apartment. The veil between our two worlds was so thin that I could almost touch the front door with my fingertips. Perhaps the neighbor's wife saw me for a moment as she returned home from a graveyard hospital shift; she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and then hurried inside so she wouldn't get caught in the morning showers.

Me, I stood and let the rain wash over my skin until I felt the tiniest pinprick of a droplet slide down my cheek. Then I smiled. I would never be part of my mortal home in the same way ever again. But I was still _a_ part of it. I had only changed my form.

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance as the day chased the clouds away. I soaked up the hot earth through my feet while cool raindrops ran down my cheeks from above. The air smelled fresh and alive with soil and steam. Rain overflowed from the gutters of houses like miniature waterfalls. I stopped and breathed the mist in for a while, until my eyes grew teary under the rising sun and my body began to disappear. Then I called upon Nanaue.

He responded, eager to return to the spirit waters of Eve. I dove into the ocean and became the shark-woman who guards the way into the land of the gods.

# Chapter 22: The Boar God's Offer

~Rafael~

Rafael knew who it was when she entered, but he didn't move from his vigil beside his mother's hospital bed.

"Rafael," Ryoko's voice fluttered over, hesitant.

"I asked you one thing: don't let her out of your sight." A deep fury, like nothing Rafael had ever felt before, stirred inside. He attempted to still it in vain—none of this was Ryoko's fault, after all. It was His. That _stranger_ had wormed his way into Rafael's life, befriending his friends, his mother, his sister... Rafael had never known a truly remorseless sociopath until he'd met Jinho. That— _thing_ —had acted so helpless, when really he was a tiger shark lying in wait.

"I didn't—" Ryoko tried, and Rafael rose from the bedside of his fading mother.

"Really? Then how did Tica show up at our apartment when she was supposed to be enjoying her birthday camping trip with you?" Accusation flared wildly in his voice, and this time he let it.

"Rafael," Ryoko said in a low voice, "after what you saw in your apartment, I think you know that this world isn't only made up of what we see. Your mother knew it. Tica knew it. Now you—"

"Know that we don't see certain things because they're evil?" Hate burned his voice away to a mere rasp and set his skin on fire. "My sister is dead and my mother is on her way to join her because of this spirit bullshit!"

"It's not all bad," Ryoko said quietly. "There is great power in the spirit world, too. Power that could be used for good and healing, if you just open yourself up to it."

"And die like my sister, leaving my mother alone?" Rafael snapped. "No thanks, Ryoko. Some things you don't fuck with. You just fuck them up." He threw down a plucked wing shaft. The blood-eater's feathers had cut up his hands, but he'd torn off each one with glee.

Ana Dominguez shifted on the bed, muttering, "Rafael, my son."

He immediately dropped to her side and grabbed her hand. "Mom, it's me. I'm here."

"Why can't I..." Her voice dropped, and her head folded into her chest. "Why can't I fight it...for you?"

That night, Rafael fell asleep inside the hospital chapel. His lips were numb from mumbling prayers, and his eyes were dry from staring at the two blinding white candles. One for his mom, and one for his sister. Offerings—crinkled photographs, rosemary beads, and flowers—lay beneath the giant cross.

In his dream, Rafael thought Tica's candle suddenly leaped brighter and higher than ever before. He caught a flash of curly, sun-streaked brown hair in the hospital corridor.

"Tica." The name had scarcely escaped his lips before he was sprinting down the hall at full-speed to catch her. However, he was so intent upon reaching the short brown-haired girl that he didn't realize the hospital had also begun to change. Geckoes scampered across the ceiling, chasing her alongside him. Doctors looked up at him from their charts with the long whiskers and noses of seals. Nurses hissed at him with their serpent tongues because he was disturbing a bearded man's departure on a burial canoe.

Rafael's breath caught. He plastered himself against the wall, staring about wildly. The clock hands on the wall spun around and around, never settling on one time.

"Fuck this. I want to go home," Rafael whispered as a roar shook the operating room. Inky black goo began to trickle out of the nearby door, taking on the dangerous look and strength of octopus tentacles. Rafael cried again, louder: "I want to go home!"

A sudden magnetic force surged to life in his abdomen, jerking him forward. Rafael pulled up his shirt, startled, and then realized that the tattoo of a compass he'd gotten for his eighteenth birthday had started spinning. It pointed east, back down the corridor. Rafael didn't question it. He ran.

However, someone blocked the way between his freaked-out spirit and his body in the waking world. A gigantic hulking shape huddled in the chapel. Upon hearing him, it turned and rose up to a towering twelve feet. The monster had the head of a hog and the body of a man. Bristly black fur ran up the length of the boar-man's spine to his tremendous head, which had a pair of lethal tusks and two boiling red eyes.

"Rafael!" the large pig-man boomed. "Welcome, Ana's son! Do you know who I am?"

His heart was pounding, but Rafael slowly pulled out his Swiss Army knife. "Get the hell out of my way."

The pig-man chuckled. "You are different than your sister, I see. I will forgive you, but you must listen, for there isn't much time. I am Kamapua'a the Boar God...Tica's father."

"Yes, and I'm a fuckin' ninja. I already heard this nonsense from Ryoko. If Tica wanted to dream up some fantasy tale to make facing her imminent death easier, then good for her. But she could have told her _real_ family instead of listening to some sadistic monster who _drinks human blood_. I'm done trusting strangers, and guess what: you, her so-called _father_ , who never once showed up to give her a birthday card, qualify as exactly that. So you go your way, and I will go mine."

The boar god's nostrils flared, and Rafael worried he'd gone too far. Kama took an earth-shaking step closer.

"You do not understand, boy. I can bring her back."

Rafael paused, his fingers relaxing on the blade.

Kama sighed. "You do not know of the Hawaiian gods like your sister did. I am the shapeshifter; I am the life-giver. I can bring Tica back from the dead."

Rafael still couldn't move. "I don't believe you," he whispered.

"I am fading; Kuaihelani pulls me back. You must set up the rites, and I will ignite them with my power. Tica will return," the boar god wheedled. "She has a strong enough spirit to."

Rafael swallowed hard, and his vision blurred, wet with tears. The brown-haired girl he'd glimpsed before turned. And there was his younger sister again, teasing him with a surfboard tucked under her arm and the sun on her face.

Tica had told him, she'd _promised_ him that it was still her after the relapse. But it hadn't been. Not after Jinho had sunk his fangs into her. Now wherever Tica was, whatever she had become, she was free of that. She had herself again.

"I understand," he said slowly, "but I don't trust you, and I don't trust what you're planning to do. Leave my sister the hell alone."

The boar god's eyes fumed lava-red with anger, and black fur began to ripple down his human skin. "BOY!" he roared. "You know not what you do!"

Rafael ducked behind a pew and readied his knife. Kama started toward him, furious, but then he stumbled. His mighty tusks grew transparent, and the fire in his eyes cooled.

"It is too late," Rafael heard the boar god say, his voice dim. "I must return. I will tell Tica I am sorry; I failed her. But perhaps you will not. I sense that you are able to change your shape, too, Ana's son. Maybe one day you will see her again."

From far away, Rafael heard the heart monitor issue a shrill warning. He charged through the boar god's misting form and back into his body. Bursting out of the chapel, he sprinted down the hall to his mother's room.

She was gone. Rafael clung to her outstretched hand and wept, feeling terribly frightened. A black hole grew in his heart, sucking him into it.

When he left the hospital the next day, he feared no longer. He was dangerous and alone, only eighteen years old, and he wanted blood.

# Chapter 23: Long Shadows

~Khyber~

It takes a special type of monster to be able to seduce a young girl recovering from bone cancer, destroying her and her family in the process. I stood amongst the snows of Mauna Kea and waited. When Poli'ahu appeared, sledding down the slopes on a _mamane_ board, she was alone. Her other three snow sisters had retreated into Kuaihelani with the other gods.

"You're still here," I said.

She threw up a hand, and a gust of icy wind halted her sled. She jumped down and placed it under her arm. Her dark eyes were challenging. "So is Pele. Someone must stay to fight the fighters. Left unchecked, who knows what that crazy volcano goddess will do to these islands?"

"Such dedication," I said bitterly, "and yet you didn't think twice about sacrificing a young girl with _mixed_ lineage for your cause—the lineage of a mortal woman and a shapeshifting boar god. Tica might have grown into another rival for you."

" _We_ thought it over many times, my sisters and I." It snowed harder, and Poli'ahu's shoulders slumped beneath the drifts piling on top of them. "The Plague Lords and the greedy vampyre princeling thought they could use Nanaue to do their bidding. The shark god's son had to be stopped, and it could only be done by _changing_ him. Tica was the daughter of a legendary shapeshifting resurrection deity and a friend to the seas. I believed she would imprison him and take his place, but she proved better. She _became_ part of him, a part that will control his hunger. Nanaue will never be the same again."

"Neither will she," I said sharply. "Tica is dead."

A patch of ice-encased bushes exploded to my left, and I sucked in my breath as an icicle speared me through the foot.

"She was dying anyway," the snow goddess hissed in her hoarse whisper. "At least this way, she will live on with us. One day she will enter the land of the gods."

"All mortals are dying," I said sardonically. "They die, and we're still here. You lied to me, Poli'ahu. You said Tica Dominguez would be my death."

"She will be." Poli'ahu slowly looked up at me, and the blizzards that swirled through her hollow eyes blew away all sentiment. She was deadly beautiful and untouchable in her pitilessness. "For her brother, Rafael, will never stop hunting you until you pay for the deaths of his mother and sister."

I remembered the evenings spent surfing with Tica's older brother. He was a king in the small world he knew: popular, humorous, and carefree, with a kind smile for the stranger he'd invited into his home. Now he would never trust again.

"I fear him less than his sister," I growled.

The snow goddess merely smiled. "Oh, give him a chance, will you? If you freeze something long enough then it will grow hard enough to withstand it. How much of the original thing will be left, well..." She shrugged. "But to give you death, it will take that great of a hatred...and the right moment."

"What moment is that?"

"The moment when you have something to live for." Her merciless smile grew. "Or someone."

Before the snow maiden left, something slipped from her hand: a crumpled moonflower.

"Khyber," Poli'ahu said softly, "do not ever presume to play games with a snow goddess's heart again."

I stayed on the slopes a long time after, a lone silhouette with folded black wings illuminated by the moon against a sheet of blue ice. Perhaps I wanted to feel fear of the cold again. My mind drifted to the red mo'o's warning on Kīlauea so long ago. He was right. There were things out there older than me, and I should have feared them. Fear would have made me more aware of the things they weren't saying, more suspicious of their pledges to help. In the days ahead, there would be many more older things to face.

I hoped they'd enjoy screwing with me as much as I was going to enjoy fucking up them.

# Chapter 24: The Ice Maiden

~Ryoko~

Months Later

Rain slipped down the gutters and dropped cold and wet on Ryoko's forehead. She shifted under the umbrella with Mason as they watched the taxi driver load the rest of Rafael's luggage into the trunk.

Rafael walked toward them, his adorable sun-kissed brown hair that Ryoko loved so much absolutely drenched. Nevertheless, he stopped just short of the umbrella, as if the monsoon shower didn't bother him. Not much did anymore. Things like rain were necessary to numb the pain.

"Well," he said and opened his arms. "This is it, guys. I'm gonna travel around a bit and end up at my uncle's military base in South Korea."

"Will you ever come back?" Mason asked mournfully.

"Yeah, man, of course. But right now I just can't"—Rafael hesitated, staring around—"look at anything to do with Hawai'i without thinking of them."

"Let us know when we can visit," Mason said, hugging him.

Ryoko waited, aware of the hardness in Rafael's eyes as he returned Mason's hug. He wouldn't be sightseeing, she knew. He would be hunting.

"I'll miss you," she whispered as they embraced. Rafael said nothing, but he squeezed her a little harder and kissed the top of her head. Then he was gone, heading toward the taxi with purpose in his stride. Something dropped out of his pocket. Ryoko knelt and unfolded it.

A photo of Tica and Jinho beamed back at her through the mist, splattered with raindrops. On the back were the words written in slashing black strokes:

I'll be waiting.

– **Crown Prince Khyber**

Mason sighed. "Aolani and Lono should have been here. I don't know why Rafael changed his flight to an earlier time."

"A lot about him has changed." Ryoko straightened and tucked the photo into her pocket. They walked back toward her car slowly, arm in arm.

"Aolani's decided to pursue a teaching career after graduation," Mason said. "She wants to have a conversation about the role of the Hawaiian language in the public school system."

Ryoko _tsk_ ed. "That sounds like a lot of work."

Mason shrugged, draping an arm over her shoulder. "That's why she'll have Lono and me to support her. I believe we can both help her out in different ways."

" _Very_ different ways."

He laughed. "Yes, less kissy-kissy on my end and more hitting the books. Becoming a lawyer isn't going to happen overnight."

"For you it will, dope. Promise me you'll never doubt yourself." She hugged him back.

He bit his lip, blinking away tears. "Are you sure about going to live with your grandmother's family in Japan?"

"It won't be forever." Ryoko stared at her sandals, already imagining how they would soon disappear along with the orange gecko that lived in her room and the rusty gate that squeaked whenever she walked to the beach. "I can't stay here right now, Mason. Tica was my best friend. It's just so unfair, because I thought she was getting better and everything was going to be all right again, but now she's just...gone."

Her tears bled into his jacket, and he stroked her hair, neither of them able to look at the other.

"I go to her apartment now and it's empty. The entire Dominguez family, gone in one day. It's like I blinked, and they all evaporated without a trace. I still see them in my dreams. I look through the screen door, and there they are all together, laughing and eating dinner around that small circle table..."

Tica's mother gets up and calls, "Tica! Set an extra plate! Your sister's here!"

_Rafael leans back in his chair, grinning. "Ryoko's not_ my sister _," he says, and I flush with pleasure._

Tica flicks a carrot at him. "Ew! Stay away from my bestie, perv! Ryoko's too good for you!" Then she runs to open the door. I duck inside like I've done a million times before, to my home, to my loved ones who will always be here, to a part of my life I can't live without.

Ryoko stopped crying, but she stared at the gray mist with reddened eyes. "When I wake up, it hurts so much," she choked out.

Mason nodded, squeezing her wrist. "Video chat me every week."

She smiled. "Two times a week."

"Deal." Mason hesitated, shoving his hands into his pockets. "How long is the flight time from Japan to South Korea?"

"Two hours." Ryoko's eyes hardened. "If Rafael ever needs me, I'll be there."

***

Every night since Tica's death, Ryoko had locked herself in her room, pulled out a pair of lavender candles, and entered Eve. She left out plates of ramyeon to attract good spirits. It wasn't much, but it managed to attract a hungry chicken spirit. The chicken promised to bring any news of Tica.

The bird didn't have much luck. Frustrated, Ryoko asked the good spirit to bring a message to the Big Island—to Mauna Kea. The chicken agreed after being bribed with Sapporo-style miso ramyeon.

Dawn broke rose petal pink across the bay after another unsuccessful night of searching. Ryoko realized she'd dozed off waiting. She turned groggily upon hearing a flutter of wings and realized that the erratic chicken spirit was zooming around her room, pooping on everything.

"Um...what are you doing?"

"EGG!" the crazy chicken spirit screeched, clawing two angry red scratches down Ryoko's cheeks. "THERE WAS AN _EGG_ IN MY RAMYEON!"

"I'm sorry," Ryoko protested. "There wasn't supposed to be. My grandmother must have added it—"

"See if I ever help you again, you MONSTER!" the chicken shrieked, and then it hurled itself out the window.

"Because you were such a great help anyway, eating us out of house and ramyeon," Ryoko muttered, kicking over the bowl.

The broth froze before it hit the floor. Ryoko jumped back, startled, as blue ice crawled across the floor and up the walls to her fan. The fan blades continued to spin, albeit blowing snowflakes, and the sunrise rays refracted through a glittery coat of frost caking the window glass.

"Not asking someone to guard your earthly body and dealing with the likes of a chicken spirit for all of these weeks? My, my. You must really want to speak with me."

Ryoko whirled about to find a beautiful ice maiden sitting on her bed, her dark eyes cold and unforgiving—but curious.

"O Great and Powerful Snow Goddess—"

Poli'ahu waved a hand, and Ryoko's lips froze shut. "Spare me, child. Unlike Pele, I do not need to hear frightened mortals sing chants of praise to know my power."

Ryoko folded her arms tight against the frigid cold. "You lied to Tica and me."

A glint appeared in the black ice that formed her eyes. "I did not. I told you dark mo'o were coming for you and Tica's mother."

"It wasn't dark mo'o after Tica's mother; it was Jinho, that horrible vampyre! He killed her!" Ryoko was close to tears.

"Everyone is so accusatory these days. They fail to remember that it was they who chose to listen." Poli'ahu sighed. "Get to it, girl. Why am I really here?"

"Now Rafael travels alone to South Korea to destroy that...monster," Ryoko said brokenly.

"Ahhh." Poli'ahu stood and swept around the room, examining Ryoko's collection of Kimmidolls on the dresser. "I knew I liked you. Now I know why. So detached and full of quips on the outside, in order to hide how much you really care underneath." She whirled around in a cloud of sparkling snow powder, holding a photograph of Ryoko and Rafael in her hands. "I can help you, child. I can give you greater power than you have ever known, power strong enough to protect your love from death. However, my magic carries a price. You will be able to protect Rafael from harm, but in turn, he will never fall in love with you."

Ryoko bit her lip, hesitant. The snowflakes hovered around the image of the laughing Rafael, the last living Dominguez. Finally, she moved to hold the photo frame with the snow goddess.

"That is your curse as well, isn't it?" she murmured. "You can protect those you love, but in return, they will never care for you."

Poli'ahu's face thawed just for a moment, and she took Ryoko's hand. "I knew I chose right. Now it is your turn. Think carefully, Ryoko child. Which decision will _you_ make?"

Ryoko made her choice. Suddenly, although she stood up to her bare ankles in an icy, glitzy wonderland, she didn't feel the cold—only the pain, and how many different drifts of snow there were to hide it beneath. When she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror, she exhaled no frost. The red chicken scratches still ran down her cheeks, two permanent blood tears.

Somewhere in the upper recesses of her room, a gecko laughed.

# Chapter 25: The Return

~Khyber~

I entered the penthouse suite at the top of the Punahele Hotel overlooking Waikiki. The land was dark, but thousands of twinkling lights lit up the beach like beacons, whispering of warm, living bodies, of flesh growing hot with desire, of blood.

My fangs clicked out. I was raw inside, impossibly angry at everyone and no one. For the first time in centuries, I felt...the hunger, uncovered after Tica's death. It was enough to distract me from the damning silence enveloping the penthouse suite, not one heartbeat echoing within the upper floors.

"Ho, ho, something that can tempt even Prince Khyber." Crispin emerged from his suite kitchen with a kettle of boiling hot blood and two teacups. He poured carefully. "It's nice to see you've hung up Jinho in the closet for a while. He interfered far too much in my dominion and ruined my chance to capture Mo'oinanea for Mother. Ah, but we've all fucked with each other at one point or another. Welcome back, brother."

"And you," I said coldly. "It's nice to see you've returned to your family instead of consorting with Elder Dark Spirits you know nothing about."

"The Dark Spirits are our servants. We are their bridge to the waking world."

"Is that why they went off-book without telling you?"

Sweat began to pour off Crispin's brow, dripping into the teacups. "Charming as usual! You'll understand then, dear elder brother, why this tea isn't for you."

My gaze drifted to the two untouched teacups of blood on the table. Suddenly I knew why the night was so silent.

They emerged on either side of the gloating Crispin. Aaron, my second eldest brother who ruled the Middle Eastern sphere, stalked toward me with wary apprehension; he took no delight in being an errand boy. The same could not be said of Donovan, my white-winged third eldest brother who claimed Western Europe. He smirked and draped himself over Crispin's fleshy shoulder.

"See, Aaron? We didn't come soon enough. The Tica girl is already dead, before we had a chance to play with her," Donovan drawled. He dabbed a finger in his teacup and sucked on it. "Is this her blood, Crispin?"

Crispin chuckled uneasily. "She was cremated."

Donovan's vacant teal eyes locked on mine. "Of course. Crown Prince Khyber never shares. What was so special about that little girl who tempted a brideless vampyre? Was she a little _changeling_?"

When I stayed silent, his lip curled. "Whatever. One dead, lowly hapa girl tastes the same as any other."

"Enough, Donovan," Aaron said harshly, his short dark beard twitching. He took another step toward me. It was impossible for the eye not to get drawn to his broadsword, the silver-encrusted scabbard tip of which touched the floor, a reminder that his strength was great enough to wield that heavy blade like a stick. His violet wings arched menacingly. "You know why we are here, Khyber. You must come home to Korea."

My gaze bore into Crispin's, allowing my disgust to settle over him until he looked elsewhere, uncomfortable with its weight. "Really, Crispin? You had to run crying to Mummy to make me leave?"

My brother folded his chubby arms. "I understand why you want to stay in the Americas, as it is the best of all the spheres, but it is mine!"

"Is it?" I smiled. "I would check how much of it still claims _you_ , CEO Summers."

"At least I have a dominion!" Crispin protested, his green wings snapping up in anger. "You are the eldest of us all, and yet you just float around, anchorless, going from 'Dylan' to 'Won' to 'Malachy' to 'Jinho'! Do you even remember your original Korean name?"

I ignored him, turning instead to Aaron and seeing the same weariness written in his eyes, the one place where our timelessness didn't touch. There was no original name left, just as there was nothing left of me except for sarcastic taunts toward a world I couldn't feel anymore. Crispin and Donovan still carried a spark of excitement to live out their twisted lives for; Aaron and I had already played the game in its various forms for so long that winning felt like losing.

"Two of the Twelve were here," I said.

Aaron's posture suddenly stiffened, hard and alert. "Which ones?"

"The Plague Lords."

He sucked in his breath. I could hear Donovan's jaw grind; he hated being ignored, and Crispin was too proud to admit his ignorance. I smiled and continued addressing Aaron: "If they have awakened, then the others may have as well."

"You know as well as I," Aaron said, "the Mother has made Eve a haven for the Dark Spirits. They amass in great numbers around her throne. Who knows if the Twelve's servants lurk among them? They call upon the Mother with increasing frequency. You know what they want." Aaron's dark eyes flashed to mine. "If the Twelve are waking, then we also know why."

Crispin puffed out his chest and extended a hand toward me. "Brother, we must present a united face to them."

Donovan slapped Crispin's peace offering down, disgusted. "Where are these two Plague Lords now?" he demanded of me.

I raised an eyebrow. "They are momentarily dispelled. Some lowly hapa girl fused with Nanaue and ate them."

Donovan scowled. Aaron grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Welcome back to the game."

-

### End of Changeling Sisters #1.5: Year of the Boar

### ~TICA~

_Ready for your next Changeling Sisters adventure?_ Check out:

_Year of the Wolf_ (Changeling Sisters I)

After they move to South Korea, sisters Citlalli and Raina Alvarez discover a mysterious spirit world and a supernatural war brewing to protect it.

_Year of the Tiger_ (Changeling Sisters II)

The Alvarez sisters team up with Rafael and his shapeshifting friends to take down Queen Maya and her nightmarish Vampyre Court.

Available on all major online eBook retailors!

Author Facebook Page:

www.facebook.com/heatherheffnerauthor

# Acknowledgements

I wish to thank God for blessing me with an amazing family and friends who inspire me every day with their kindness and compassion: Mom and Dad, Craig, Uncle Johnny, Aunt Belle, Aunt Nancy, Janae, Trisha, Greg Sr., Maria, and Cynthia. A special thanks goes to the Hawaiian Islands that I've been blessed to call home for the past few years, and to Greg, who showed me a different side to them. The fierce beauty of the islands reminds me that our time here will always be too short.

I am also very grateful for the advice of my friends and faculty in the Hawaiian community at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa on the Hawaiian language. Any mistakes are my own.

# Glossary

Hawaiian Terms and Phrases

Disclaimer: Translation is approximate and in some cases only minimally describes certain Hawaiian terms and concepts.

A

Aina — The land

Aloha — Used to convey love, welcome, or gratitude

H

Hale — House.

Haole — Foreigner/commonly used to refer to a white person

Huaka'i pō — "Nightmarchers." Night procession of warrior ghosts. They are the topic of many urban legends, such as you must not look them in the eye or else they will take you—unless you have a deceased relative amongst them.

Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (humuhumu) — Triggerfish with a snout like a pig. Hawai'i's state fish.

K

Kuaihelani — Bridge land to the realm of the gods

Kūkalahale — A wind in Honolulu

M

Mahalo — Used as an expression of thanks, gratitude, admiration

Makani — air movement, wind. There are many types of winds.

Malo — A male's loincloth.

Mamane — A rare native tree that grows at high altitudes on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Its wood was used for tools or sleds.

Mauka — Directional term that means "mountain side" or "toward the mountain"

O

Ohana — Family

'Ō'io — A silver bonefish

'Ōkole — Butt

P

Pā'ū — A woman's skirt, can be used for riding or dancing

Poke — A dish often consisting of rice and sashimi-style fish, seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, limu seaweed, and chili pepper. Many variations.

Pua'a — Pig

Pupuka — Ugly

W

Wa'a kaulua — Double canoe

Hawaiian Pidgin English Terms

Disclaimer: Translation is approximate.

B

Brah — Brother

H

Hapa — Person of mixed blood, usually with Pacific Islander or Asian ancestry

Howzit? — How's it going?

L

Lolo — Crazy

Lolo buggah — One crazy person

M

Mako's — Fictional surfing area on the west side of O'ahu

Moke — A big tough local guy

P

Pakalolo — Marijuana

T

Talk stink — Trash talk behind someone's back

Tita — A big tough local chick

Tutu — Term of affection for elders, usually grandparents

S

Shaka — A hand gesture made by extending the thumb and pinkie while curling in your middle three fingers. Shake your hand a little to greet, convey general good will, or in surfer culture: hang loose.

Japanese Terms

Obaa-san — Grandmother

Korean Terms

Pangapseumnida — Formal "Nice to meet you" greeting

Hawaiian Origin of Myths

**Kamapua'a** — A pig demigod. His father rejected him as a child because he believed his wife had cheated on him with his younger brother. Kamapua'a grew up strong and handsome with a taste for adventure and pleasure. He plundered the lands and began to take on the form of a hog. After murdering his "father," he journeyed to Maui to track down his father's younger brother. After the younger brother, too, rejected him as a son, he returned to his pillaging ways, seducing women along the way. There are variations of his relationship with Pele the volcano goddess: in some they are enemies after she rejects his romantic pursuits; in others they have a child or are lovers. Kamapua'a is said to be a shapeshifter who can resurrect the dead.

**Nanaue** — The son of Kamohaoli'i the shark god and a Hawaiian woman. He was born with a mouth on his back and the ability to turn into a shark when put in water. Kamohaoli'i warned Nanaue's mother to never let him eat meat, but he does during an all-male ceremony, and it awakens his hunger for human flesh. He hunts his tribe and others before he is finally killed off of Moloka'i.

**Poli'ahu** — A snow goddess who dwells on Mauna Kea with her three sisters, i.e., "the bosom goddess." She is incredibly beautiful but unlucky in love. Oftentimes Poli'ahu is a rival to Pele the volcano goddess. In the popular sledding race legend, Poli'ahu beats Pele the first time, which results in Pele barring the snow goddess's way with lava during the second race. This angers Poli'ahu, so she freezes the lava and thus claims Mauna Kea.

**Mo'o** — Spirit shapeshifters who often take the form of lizards. They reside in lakes, forests, or rocks and can be beneficial or harmful. Mo'oinanea is the supreme mo'o.

# About the Author

**HEATHER HEFFNER** was born in Seattle, Washington, where she grew up being dragged along on endless hikes by her well-meaning parents. Luckily, her brother was forced to come, too, and they ended up storytelling to entertain themselves. Heather's never given it up since, and now she can't think of anything better than imagining a thousand-page-long epic (and maybe even going for a hike, after).

Heather is the author of the dark epic fantasy book, THE TRIBE OF ISHMAEL (Afterlife Chronicles #1), about a boy who accidentally boards a train bound to Hell, and the urban fantasy book, YEAR OF THE WOLF (Changeling Sisters #1), about a girl who faces off against supernatural evil in Seoul, South Korea. You can read all about her adventures, or more likely, misadventures, on her blog: <https://heatherheffner.blogspot.com/>.

