Since I was awake, I got up to check on my brother. Matt’s red pajama top was bunched up around his chest, and he’d kicked his dinosaur-print blanket to the foot of the bed.

I reached out to fix his shirt and then stiffened at the heat emanating from his skin. Holding my breath, I rested the back of my hand against his forehead. Then I leaped away like I’d touched a burning pan. I may have felt that other strange sensation as well, but it’d been too quick to be sure.

Shaking out my hand, I counted to five and reached for his forehead again. I could only hold the touch for a few seconds, but it was enough. I recognized that angry feeling from yesterday. The bridge spirit was inside my brother!

I leaned over, grabbed his shoulders, and shook him. “Matt, wake up.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t groan or flutter his lashes. I shook him again, hard enough to rattle his teeth. But Matt still didn’t wake or even twitch.

Panicking, I ran from the room and threw open my mom’s door. At the racket, she lifted her head from her pillow. Hair was stuck to the side of her cheek. “What?” she mumbled.

“Mom, wake up!” I leaped onto the edge of her bed and ripped off her blanket.

“Oy! Pahua, koj xiam hlwb lawm los? Are you trying to scare my spirit from my body?” She squinted at the clock on her nightstand. “It’s five twenty a.m. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Matt—he won’t wake up.”

The urgency in my voice finally broke through her sleep fog. Instead of me tugging at her, she pulled me into Matt’s room.

Five minutes later, she had retrieved three sticks of burning incense from the altar. She chanted words I didn’t understand as she swept the incense smoke over my brother’s small body. I sat on the floor in the corner and hugged my knees. The stove spirit had warned me, but I’d ignored him. My mouth opened to confess what happened at the bridge, but I hesitated.

Telling my mom wouldn’t just mean admitting I’d disobeyed her warning to stay away from there. It could also mean revealing my secret about seeing spirits, and I wasn’t ready to share that. But then again, this was my brother…. Did I have a choice?

This looks ominous, drawled a voice beside me.

My eyes suddenly felt hot and stinging as Miv jumped into my lap. I hugged him, burying my face in his fur.

Not so tightly, please. I’m not a pillow.

I released him with a huff and left the room to be out of earshot from my mom. She didn’t even notice me go.

“This is all my fault,” I said to Miv when we were in the kitchen.

How’s that? he asked. He jumped onto the stove and prowled around it, sticking his front paw under the cold burners. He liked scaring the stove spirit out of hiding and then pretending to eat him.

“I think the bridge spirit collided with Matt in the school playground. Mom always says that contact with bad spirits can make your own spirit sick. If I hadn’t gone to the bridge, Matt wouldn’t have tried to follow me.” Then I gasped and smacked my palm against my forehead. “Do you think she went for him on purpose? He said he heard someone call his name….”

You did mention it right in front of her, Miv said. You make a good case. This is definitely your fault.

“Is that all you can say?”

I’m sure your mom will figure it out. It’s not like this is the first time someone’s ever gotten sick because of a nasty spirit. If it’s serious, she’ll talk to her sister about it.

Would she, though? They’d barely spoken since we moved here. Aunt Kalia had been furious with my mom about our moving away from the community, and they’d had a rocky relationship even before that. The weirdest thing was that some of their fights had been about me. Before the move, I’d occasionally heard my name whispered hotly between them, along with hissed warnings for Aunt Kalia to mind her own business. My mom had been so mad that I hadn’t dared to ask what they were talking about.

“But how will Mom know if it’s serious?” I asked Miv in a small voice. “She couldn’t even feel the spirit in him last night.”

I remembered what the stove spirit had said. You’ve brought something wicked into the house.

I didn’t have any experience with spirits that could make you sick. The only spirits I dealt with, aside from Miv, were the protective house kind and friendly nature ones. Everything else I ignored, and they were happy to ignore me right back. That was my best coping method for, well, life.

I couldn’t ignore this, though. I checked in on Matt and my mom again. There was no change, so I decided to wash up and get dressed. As I pulled on my clothes, I made a decision. Since I was the only person here who could talk directly to spirits, I should at least try to reason with the ghost girl.

Miv had abandoned tormenting the stove spirit and was now in my room, sprawled on top of my dresser.

“I need to go back to the bridge,” I said, fixing the purple hair clip above my ear. I didn’t know how or if I could reach her through my brother, but he was unconscious anyway. “See if I can find that ghost and tell her to leave Matt alone. I could feel her connected to him. That can’t be normal.”

Talking to her is what caused this in the first place, Miv reminded me.

“But this time I’ll be more careful.”

Once I was dressed in a rainbow T-shirt and khaki shorts, I slipped into my mom’s room and opened her closet. Tucked against the back wall was a large gray chest, like the kind pirates dug up that were always filled with long-lost treasure. Except my mom’s chest didn’t hold jewels and gold—it contained Aunt Kalia’s old equipment from when she was training to be a shaman.

I had no idea why this stuff wasn’t at Aunt Kalia’s house. Most of the tools could only be used by a shaman. But the chest had been in the closet for as long as I could remember.

What are you doing? Miv asked, peeking over my shoulder.

“I can’t confront an angry spirit unprepared, can I?”

The tools were neatly wrapped inside thick blue-and-green towels. I pulled them out one by one, unfolding each to check out my options.

Do you even know what these do? Miv asked, poking at a set of split water-buffalo horns.

Nope. “I have…a rough idea….”

In the end, I chose the small hand gong, which was supposed to summon nearby spirits (in case the ghost hadn’t gone back to the bridge yet), and the short sword. The blade was dull and wouldn’t cut anyone. My mom said it was only meant to hurt spirits. Shamans had to carry them when they crossed into the Spirit Realm in case they ran into evil creatures.

I strapped the sword belt around my waist. The scabbard was a little long on me and kept knocking into my knee. The gong and attached hammer I had to stuff into my backpack.

It wasn’t until I was putting on my sandals that it fully struck me what I was about to do. I paused with only one shoe on, fear worming through me.

I could handle this. All I was going to do was talk to a spirit, and I did that every day. Pretend it’s a game, I told myself. I was a shaman warrior setting out to negotiate with a wicked ghost. The idea of pretending was familiar enough that it unstuck my legs.

Before long, Miv and I had crossed the playground and were on the trail through the woods. The sword’s leather sheath smacked my thigh with every step, making my skin turn red and itchy. I had to be the most pathetic shaman warrior ever.

A cluster of mushroom spirits waved to us as they darted through the tall grass. Wind spirits flickered through the air, swirling around Miv’s head. The cat spirit hissed and swatted them away. It felt like a normal day, which was both weird and comforting.

But I had to keep my guard up. Unless they were tied to the mortal world by very strong emotions, I couldn’t usually feel the presence of human spirits. The bridge spirit was powerful enough that she could be felt even by regular people.

When we reached the bridge, everything looked like last time, except the ghost hadn’t returned. I wondered if that meant she’d left for good or if she frequently wandered off. The idea of a malevolent, disease-causing spirit roaming around wasn’t very comforting.

Even worse…what if she was stuck inside my brother?

The warning sign still hung from its rusty chain across the bridge’s entrance. The river and fish seemed to have recovered from being frozen yesterday.

I shrugged off my backpack and pulled out the gong. “I guess I’ll try summoning her.”

Are you sure? Miv sat on a flat stone, licked his paw, and groomed his face with it.

“Blegh. You know you’re just wiping spit all over yourself, right?”

Don’t compare my high-quality spirit spit with your sixth-grade spit.

“I’ll be in seventh grade in two months.”

Doesn’t count yet. And, for the record, I think this is a terrible idea.

I held out the gong with one hand and the hammer with the other. “Well, if you’re done licking yourself, then maybe you could come up with a better idea, O Elevator One.”

Miv gave me a withering look. The word is Elevated.

“Whatever. This is partly your fault, you know. You told me to go with June, so unless you’re going to be more helpful today, go lick yourself somewhere else.”

He stuck his tiny nose in the air and rose from the rock. Excuse me for wanting you to have friends.

Miv scampered away, trailing wisps of black smoke. I sucked in my cheeks, annoyed. For a spirit, he could be awfully moody. I hadn’t meant to yell at him. But I was worried about Matt, and I wasn’t going to sit around all day waiting for a spirit that might not show up.

I moved to the spot where the ghost girl had been yesterday. Then I took a deep breath and rang the gong.

The sound that issued forth was much louder than I’d expected. Maybe I’d hit it too hard. Low and resonant, the note echoed across the bridge and down the bank to the water’s edge. It lingered in the air way longer than was probably normal.

Something splashed in the river. Bubbles rose from beneath the surface, and a moment later, slick, webbed fingers rose from invisible depths.

I took several giant steps away from the bridge and the rocky bank. Water spirits can’t leave their liquid home, so as long as I wasn’t close enough for this one to grab me, I would be fine. Water spirits are nothing like earth-based nature spirits. They mostly ignore people, unless a person pollutes the water by littering or washing clothes or something. In that case, the spirit might get angry enough to drag the human in and drown them.

Now you’ve done it.

Miv had wandered back. His ears were high and alert, and his tail flicked back and forth in agitation, but it didn’t seem to be because of the water spirit. He smacked the surface of the river with his paw. Water splattered the bank, and ripples spread outward. The webbed fingers curled, sharp claws flashing in the sunlight, and then disappeared into the depths. Once again, there was only the shallow rock bed.

“Done what?” I asked. “Nothing happened.”

Having seen way more movies than the average eleven-year-old (bored babysitter, remember?), I should have known better than to say that. The universe always makes you regret it.