Behind her face is a corpse. Half of her skin has peeled away, her eye sockets empty, her nose gone. Her mouth is just grinning teeth. It never occurred to me that she too could be a vessel. I scream, pushing myself away from the table, sitting down heavily on the chair with wheels. It rolls back a few feet before bumping against the wall.

I’m crying now as I throw myself at Ma’s arm, trying to pull her back. I dig my fingers into her shoulder, trying to wake her up, yelling beside her ear, “Wake up, Ma! Wake up! What’s wrong with you? This is messed up! You can both see that this is messed up, can’t you?”

“Ruby…” Mrs. Tsai says, voice gentle. “They can’t hear you.” When I look back at her again, she’s returned to normal. The same as she’s always looked. Like an elegantly dressed lady who works in an office, like a classmate’s mother, like one of Ma’s friends who I have to call “Auntie.”

“What did you do to them?” I’m standing between my parents now, my head racing with all the possibilities of what I could do. Somewhere in the distance, I think I hear the sound of a gong. The clock on the wall behind them continues to tick. It’s four o’clock.

“There’s our signal. The show’s about to start.” Mrs. Tsai grins again, that macabre expression. “Hope will understand everything I’ve done for her, like you will understand what your parents have done for you.”

I throw myself at the door and pull it open. I run down the hallway, screaming for Tina and Denny. I know I have to get them out of here, get help. If I can find my way up to the second level, then maybe I will be able to talk to Shu-Ling. She can bring the guardians to save us. She has to.

But the play area is empty. I run down the front hallway to the studio doors and pull at the handle, but it doesn’t budge. I slam my fist on the wall, crying out, hoping someone will hear me when they walk by. The doors rattle, and the locks hold. Footsteps sound at the end of the hall. Two young men in their lion dance costumes turn the corner, advancing toward me with their eerily blank expressions. They grab me by my arms, even though I yell at them to get off of me. I push them away, try to kick, but it’s no use. I’m too weak and they’re too strong.

“Where did you take my brother?” I scream. “Where’s my sister?”

Mrs. Tsai stands at the doorway of the conference room and watches as I’m pulled past her. My parents also stand behind her, their expressions mirroring the same vacant stares of the men beside me.

At the end of the hallway, they open a door and push me through. It’s a back stairwell, no windows. Concrete steps leading upward and down. One of them retrieves a piece of fabric hanging from a hook on the wall and pulls it over my face.

“No…” I beg, terrified that I’m not able to see anything now. “Please…Let me go.”

They push against my back, and I stumble forward as they half guide, half drag me down the stairs. My feet keep catching on the steps, and they lift my arms with bruising grips when I fall. The floor changes beneath my feet when we squeeze through a doorway, from the roughness of concrete to what feels like the slipperiness of tile.

The heavy scent of incense invades my nostrils, fills my mouth and throat under the covering. I’m spun around, disoriented as hands roughly grab and tug the fabric off my head, yanking some strands of hair out along the way. Someone pushes me forward, and I fall, catching myself on my hands and knees. I look up and turn my head slowly. I notice that the lower part of the wall is covered with a long red curtain. A strange decorating choice. It isn’t until I tip my head back that I notice what is hanging on the upper half of the wall. Rows upon rows of wooden plaques, dangling from red strings. Just like Tina described.

The Wall of Wishes.

Somewhere in the distance, a phone rings. But I can’t see anyone else in here with me, other than the two men who brought me here. They’re still standing there stiffly, hands folded before them. Watchful guards. I look down the other length of the room but can’t see an exit, only shelves running along the wall. On top of which sit items of various shapes, but all wrapped in black fabric and tied with red string, and it is impossible to see what is underneath.

On the floor before the wall there is a pile of bags. A peculiar assortment. A violin case. A backpack. A duffel bag. Another mound of what appears to be clothing is beside it. There’s a purple windbreaker, a dark blue hoodie with the yellow UBC logo. But before I can dwell on it for long, someone answers the insistent ring of the phone. A man’s voice. Too muffled for me to understand what he is saying, but the voice gets louder, and I realize that he’s getting closer. Until there’s a rustling at the end of the room. A curtain slides open to reveal a doorway, and a man steps through.

Salt-and-pepper hair. A black polo shirt and black pants. He turns off the phone and slips it into his pocket. He stands above me as my mouth drops open in shock because I know who he is.

“Hello, Ruby,” he says in his smooth, radio-announcer voice.

Mr. Lee. Melody’s father.

I don’t understand what he is doing here before the Wall of Wishes. My brain cannot make the connection. I knew that he was part of one of the many Chinatown business associations and had some connection with the Taiwanese community too. But what does he have to do with Soulful Heart or the temple hidden underneath it?

“I understand all of this must be very overwhelming,” he says. My hand fumbles for the pendant, closing around it, trying to see if his face hides something monstrous underneath, like Mrs. Tsai. But his face remains the same. Unchanged.

He reaches out for me, and I flinch away from his fingers, but hands are suddenly on my shoulder, holding me still. With one hand, he lifts the pendant out of my shirt and looks down at me, brow slightly furrowed, then he nods in recognition.

“Ah…this won’t help you,” he says, and with a sharp tug, the string snaps, the pendant falling into his hand.

“That’s mine!” I protest, trying to snatch it back, even as he straightens away from me and examines the pendant closer.

“Actually, this belongs to my family,” Mr. Lee tells me. “This was my sister’s pendant.”

“That’s a lie!” I raise my voice, even though I probably shouldn’t in my precarious position.

“You got this from my nephew, did you not?” He lifts a brow. “A’Shen?” I must have looked baffled again, because he laughs.

“This belonged to my sister, Evelyn Lee.” He dangles the pendant above me for a few moments before slipping it into his pants pocket. “Though most people know her as Mrs. Chang. Mother of Shu-Ling and Kai-Shen.”

“But they follow the guardians.” There must be something I’m not understanding. Some way for this all to make sense, if only I can see it. “They fought the Temple of Wishes.”

“The Temple of Hopeful Desires,” Mr. Lee corrects me. “They fought against the demon who called himself the God of Good Deeds and got themselves killed in the process. But my sister and her husband were always foolish and weak, never understanding the bigger picture.” His lips curl in disgust.

“What do you mean?” I whisper, the sense of danger growing now rapidly. “Did you have something to do with their deaths?”

“No, I was foolish too. Still believed in the cause of the guardians.” He smiles then, and I did not know why I once thought he was kind. “All that has to change now. The start of a new order.” He snaps his fingers.

I look over my shoulder to see more figures in yellow, dragging another person between them. She’s thrown forward and lands on her side at Mr. Lee’s feet. Another girl. One of the performers from the garden. She looks up at the man, terrified. Her hands are bound behind her, but still, she kicks and struggles, trying to break free. Her screams are muffled by the gag in her mouth.

“You are so blessed that you will play a part in the grand ritual.” Mrs. Tsai’s voice sounds behind me as she walks around us and ends up beside Mr. Lee. He takes her hand between his and pats it, looks at her with affection as she regards him in turn. “We will bring fortune and prosperity again to those who deserve it, and our enemies…well, they will deserve their fate too.”

“What ritual?” I manage to gasp.

The sound of the gong rings again, and this time it feels like we are inside it. The room seems to tremble with the sound, and I have to cover my ears with my hands to try and stop that ringing.

“It’s time for the second sacrifice,” Mr. Lee announces. He grabs the girl at his feet and pulls her up, even as she kicks and thrashes.

“The gods will stop you! You can’t do this!” I plead, trying to stop them from doing whatever they are going to do to that poor girl.

“Oh, there are plenty of gods watching us, don’t you worry.” Mrs. Tsai pulls out a sharp knife the length of her forearm. It glints in the light as she points it in the direction of the wall of shelves and their mysterious objects. “But they won’t be able to hear you. No one is coming to help you. Just like no one is coming to help her.”

Before I can even react, Mr. Lee pulls back the head of the girl by the hair, baring her throat. With one quick slash, Mrs. Tsai cuts her throat open. Blood spills all the way down the front of her body as she convulses. The awful sound of her choking. She falls to her knees, hands clutching at her neck, as her blood pools beneath her legs.

I turn my head at the sputtering, groaning noises she makes as she takes her final breaths. I can’t look at her. Sobs rise up in my throat at the horror of what’s in front of me. They murdered her, and I know I’m next.

The ground rumbles beneath our feet, like an earthquake. The ringing of the gong finally stops.

“The next door opens!” Mr. Lee exclaims, and then he begins to chant. The other figures in the room step close, joining him.

I witness the blood on the floor before my feet moving, joining together into large droplets, and then rising into the air. A spiral of blood, spinning above them, reminding me of those decorations hanging from the ceiling in the studio. An optical illusion, except this one actually moves, making its way toward the corner. Where it falls upon a large shape draped under black cloth.

A statue, Tina mentioned last night.

Under my gaze, the cloth twitches.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to Delia?” Mrs. Tsai is suddenly before me, crouching down. Her cold hand grips my chin as she turns my face to look at her. At her gleeful expression. Then she forces my head to turn, to look down, as she pulls up one of the jackets to reveal…

Delia’s face. Her eyes are still open, giving her a faint look of surprise. But there’s a gash at her neck. The front of her white shirt soaked in blood. She’s dead too. Mrs. Tsai lets go of me and steps away, joining her voice to the chants as I collapse, hands flying to my mouth as I hold back my screams. They’re dead. I rock back and forth on my knees. They’re all dead.

“Psst…” a voice whispers to my left, coming from behind the lower curtains. “Psst…Ruby!”