“You should have stepped aside when you had the opportunity,” Mr. Lee addresses his niece with distaste from the stage, looking down at her, the type of admonishment from an elder that always made me feel small. “I would have ensured you were taken care of. You and Kai-Shen. How powerful we would have been—the Chang and the Lee lines!”

“We had a sacred duty to protect the borders between the realms,” Shu-Ling replies. “Whatever you’ve done is destroying everything they’ve built.”

“Once, I believed in all of that nonsense,” Mr. Lee says, then turns his smile to the woman beside him. “But Joyce showed me a better way. She helped me see how I should have been respected, listened to. Now you will see what we have been able to accomplish with Hope.”

“It might be too late for her, but it’s not too late for you, Uncle. Listen—” Shu-Ling argues, but Mr. Lee waves his hand, dismissive.

“Who needs the gods? There are others with greater powers than them.” Mr. Lee lifts his arm. “You’ll see soon enough.” He rings the bell, and the sound quivers in the air, with the same peculiar quality as the gong, growing louder and louder, expanding outward. He continues to ring the bell, matching the rhythm of their steps around the edge of the stage. Then, the piercing screech of an erhu, the bow scraping against the strings in a painful sound that causes us all to flinch, before it begins a happy melody.

The girls behind them begin to dance. Their feet move, stamping on the wooden stage, making it rattle under their feet. Shu-Ling watches this with a thoughtful expression, her hand at her belt, waiting to choose a weapon.

The ten of them raise their arms over their heads and sway, like the wind blowing through the trees, then join hands, forming a circle. They spin around, the song still bright and energetic, as their faces stretch out in the same smiles, showing rows of white teeth.

They look like how robots would imitate the dance of children. Macabre and surreal. Then they all stop at once.

The floor in the center of the stage, in the middle of the circle, parts, as someone emerges from underneath. A figure sitting cross-legged, a long black veil draped over their head and falling to their knees. Just like the statue before the Wall of Wishes. Slender fingers lift the fabric slowly, revealing her face as she levitates from the ground.

It’s Hope. Mrs. Tsai’s daughter. The girl Delia still loves, after all this time. Her empty eyes look out from her expressionless face. Like no one’s home. She straightens her legs, eerily graceful as she continues to rise, until her feet touch the stage. The veil slips down behind her to drift to the floor.

The erhu’s song begins to play again, and the dance continues. The feet of the girls striking the stage with a frenzied beat.

Shu-Ling chooses the whip then. It snaps from her hand with a fierce clapping sound as it strikes the floor beside her, but Mr. Lee sees it and whistles. Two spirits fly out from the watching crowd, wailing. Black nails, sharp as daggers, extend from their outstretched fingers, aiming for her face. Shu-Ling jumps back, nimbly, fingers finding a talisman from a pouch, while her whip snakes back, winding itself around the leg of one of the spirits. The spirit is flung through the air with a howl, while another gets a talisman to the face and screams. Its head explodes into ash. Just like Shen said it would.

Mr. Lee’s expression darkens, his amusement gone.

“Kill them!” he yells over the sound of the dance. “Whoever succeeds will gain a new body!”

The spirits squirm and thrash in the back, eager for this promised prize. Some of them launch themselves at Shu-Ling, while others advance toward me and Shen.

Shen rolls up his sleeve and runs his hand over his tattoo. The tiger appears again from his skin, its golden form landing nimbly on the stairs beside us. It begins snapping at any of the spirits that come too close, taking off a hand or a foot in the process.

There are snarls behind us, dark forms appearing on the landing.

“Use the talismans!” Shen calls out, turning me so that we stand back-to-back. I look up the stairs while he looks below. The tiger leaps up the stairs and begins to fight the spirits who are attempting to descend upon us while the paper soldiers stand guard at the foot of the stairs.

With shaky hands, I fumble for the talismans, choosing the blue ones. Explosions sound good right about now. I risk a glance over at the stage. I can still see Tina among them, dancing in a frenzy. The shrieks of the spirits build and build, a growing cacophony. One of them comes too close, and I slap the talisman on an outstretched limb, clawing toward my face. Half of it explodes in a shower of gold sparks, and the remainder of it falls into ash. I draw out another talisman, ready to face the next threat.

There are so many. So many. I don’t know if we have enough talismans to hold them off.

The beat of the music seems to speed up as we fight. There’s a rustling noise, growing louder and louder, and then…the music stops.

“It’s time!” Mr. Lee yells, voice reverberating in the air. The spirits fall silent. All at once. The shadows retreat, beaten back by a peculiar glow that has formed above the stage. It’s a portal of dazzling blue, almost too bright to regard directly.

“Oh no…” Shen says beside me, and it is then I understand the spirits are only a distraction. Whatever horror is coming…this is only the beginning. The girls wait under the portal, their faces turned upward, eyes reflecting back that strange blue light. Hope extends her arms, rising from the center. She’s glowing too. As she lifts up, the other girls drop in unison to kneel in a circle around her. Mrs. Tsai and Mr. Lee drop to their knees too, bowing to whatever is within Hope.

She hangs there like an angel, then her body snaps, bending backward in an arc. Her head is thrown back too, arms and legs splayed out, convulsing as something…breaks free from her chest. A head, first, the shoulders coming after it, until it unfolds out of Hope’s body like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. A woman.

Hope falls down to the stage when the feet at last emerge, collapsing onto her side. Her eyes remain open, unseeing. Three lines of black blood trickle out from her nostrils and slightly parted mouth. The woman above her has her eyes closed. Her lips are gray. Her skin is pale with a bluish tinge, like the skin of a corpse. Her tangled black hair spills over her shoulders in riotous waves. She has on a long red dress, which further contrasts with her unhealthy pallor. Dark lines run down her arms like too-prominent blood vessels, and they seem to writhe on her skin, forming symbols that seem almost decipherable, and then they change….

What I thought were scars along her cheekbones are eyes too, blinking open to reveal the black pools behind them. She opens her mouth, and a clicking, crackling sound can be heard, her jawbone shifting from side to side as she moves the bones of her face like no one human ever should.

Two sets of arms, extending from her ribs, unfold from the side of her body, palms up. She lowers slowly, bare feet landing lightly on the stage. The portal above her head flickers and then disappears from view. She turns and regards the girls kneeling around her. Beautiful and regal and terrifying, all at the same time.

“Who among you called me?” she calls out in Mandarin. Her voice is higher than I expected, followed by a faint echo, like she’s speaking from a different plane entirely.

“We are your servants, Great Goddess Juyan.” Mr. Lee crawls on his hands and knees to bow at the edge of the circle. “We offer you ten willing bodies for your selection. Pick from among them the vessel with which you will walk upon the earth. The rest…you can feast upon—their flesh or their suffering.”

“Hmm.” She looks down at the girls, then gestures for them to rise. The girls slowly stand and look upon her with adoration, as if she is the most wonderful thing they have ever seen. It sickens me to see it.

Juyan regards each of them in turn, all her eyes spinning, hands reaching out to touch a chin or run her finger through their hair. The demon then stops before my sister. Tina smiles up at her, docile and compliant. Juyan reaches out and cups her face. Her sharpened gray nails stroke Tina’s cheek. She closes her eyes. Tendrils of black emerge from Tina’s eyes, and Juyan inhales them into her nostrils, as if savoring the scent.

“This one…this one has good flavor. So much anger, so much pain…” She sighs, rocking back. “She tastes the best of all.”

“No!” I yell from the stairs, not even caring what she is, how easily she could crush me. I already understand that if she chooses Tina to be her vessel, then I will truly lose my sister forever. I’m certain of it. I run down the stairs, even as Shen tries to stop me, but I slip past him. The paper soldiers try to stop me too, but they are partially shredded now with the attacks from the demons, and their symbols do nothing to me.

It’s Shu-Ling who stops me with a crack of her whip, flying in the air, close enough to my face that it would have struck me if I hadn’t stopped in my tracks. The demon turns to look at us, eyes grazing over me from head to toe.

“You can’t have her!” I shout, even as I realize how weak and pathetic I sound, with only my words to hurl at her. “She’s not yours!”

“Impudent child!” Mrs. Tsai snaps at me before hurrying over. “Goddess, forgive us. There are those who are unwilling to bow to your great power. Destroy them.”

The demon Juyan slips her hands off of my sister’s face and turns fully to regard us from the stage. I find myself cowering below her, terrified of that fearsome appearance and the weight of that attention. While Shu-Ling wields her whip above her head, in her other hand she draws the wooden sword and holds it in front of both of us protectively. She’s confident, unafraid.

There’s a rustle to our right and left, the paper soldiers making their way forward too. Shen adds his steady presence with a hand on my back. He mentioned the dark roads his sister and his family walk down, but I never fully understood what it meant until now.

“The almighty wardens?” Juyan’s eyes roll in their sockets as she laughs, raspy and amused. “This is what you have been reduced to? Sheets of paper, puppets in the hands of the guardians?”

Then the amusement sweeps away as quickly as the winter wind clears the snow, leaving only an icy expanse, a chill to her words. “Which one of you shall I feed upon first?” She takes one step forward.

“Wait for us to bring them to you, Glorious One!” Mr. Lee scurries forward in supplication, snapping his fingers. Figures in yellow emerge next to the stage. I see them now for what they are—possessed soldiers. They seem eager to drag us over as the final sacrifice.

Shu-Ling chuckles, drawing the demon’s ire.

“Did you think your bravado would impress me?” Juyan sneers. “Will you continue to laugh when I feast on your still-beating heart?”

“I would give up my life to ensure you never walk upon this earth.” Shu-Ling’s voice rings out clearly over the din of the eager servants, waiting for their master’s instructions to unleash their violence. “But demons are all the same. Unable to see the lies that are in front of them.”

“She is the one uttering lies!” Mrs. Tsai says, frantic. “Do not listen—”

One slender arm darts out and closes around her throat, lifting her up, kicking and choking.

“Silence,” Juyan hisses, then redirects her attention to Shu-Ling. “What lies?”

“They call themselves your faithful servants, but you don’t know the full extent of their offering.” From her pouch, Shu-Ling slowly draws out a vial.

“Stop her!” Mr. Lee roars, and the figures in yellow quickly surround us. One of them makes quick work of the paper wardens, ripping them apart with their bare hands. They saved these men for this. To ensure that we will be compliant, brought up to the stage as willing sacrifices. But Shu-Ling throws the vial onto the wooden stage before they reach her, and it shatters and releases gold sparks into the air.