A figure emerged from the woods at the other end of the bridge.

I clutched the gong to my stomach. The creature had the rough shape of a person, but its arms were too long and thin, like they’d been stretched. It was covered in thin patches of dark fur. Beneath the fur, its skin was bone white. Both feet were backward, and long, stringy hair fell over its face. It wore a pair of ripped skinny jeans and a T-shirt with a lightning bolt beneath the words I WOULD RATHER BE A SATYR.

The thing looked a bit like someone in a half-finished undead-werewolf costume. I would have laughed, except the creature opened its mouth and snarled, revealing rows of unnaturally sharp teeth. My stomach turned to jelly.

All this would have been bad enough, but the worst part? Miv, who was one of the bravest beings I knew, leaped onto my shoulder and shouted, Run!

I didn’t need to be told twice. When I reached the cover of trees, I looked back.

It was fast for a creature with backward feet, but not as fast as I expected. Actually, I think the skinny jeans were slowing it down. Still, it crossed the bridge quickly. Planks of wood fell beneath its weight, splashing into the water below. Within seconds, the monster had bitten through the metal chain with the warning sign.

Come on! Miv shouted.

I couldn’t move as nimbly as the cat, and I stumbled on a root. Something smacked hard into my thigh. The sword!

I dropped the gong, which hit the ground with a dull ringing sound. I cringed, hoping it wouldn’t summon any more spirits. But there was no time to worry about that, because the hairy monster-thing was speeding right at me, skinny jeans and all. I drew the sword and swung it.

The blade bit into the creature’s spindly arm just as its heavy body rammed into me. I went flying, and my back hit the dirt hard.

Miv jumped between me and the creature. Stay back, demon.

“Get out of the way, Miv!” I shouted, but he didn’t move. The cat was the size of that thing’s palm—he didn’t stand a chance.

A few feet away, the creature was frowning down at its arm. A long black line split the fur-covered skin—the dull blade had actually cut it! Instead of blood, though, the wound leaked black smoke.

“Little shaman,” it growled in a low voice. Now that it was closer, I could see that its eyes were sunken and completely black. “The young ones give me indigestion, but you’re a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

I scrambled to my feet and thrust the sword out in front of me. “I’m not a shaman. You’ve got it wrong!”

“Oh, there’s no mistake.” The monster’s nostrils flared wide as it took a long, deep sniff. “I can smell the spiritual energy on you.” It curled its fingers, claws drawn, and lunged.

Miv leaped at the monster just as I thrust the sword. The demon howled when the cat spirit clawed its face and my weapon sank into its shoulder at the same time. With a roar, it tore off Miv and threw him aside.

“No!” I shouted right before the creature’s huge hand caught me on the side of the head. I fell again, stars exploding in my vision. My fingers lost their grip on the sword.

“You ruined my shirt,” the demon said, pulling the sword from its shoulder. Smoke billowed out of the wound. “I am so going to enjoy eating you.”

Because I was about to die, I didn’t point out that his jeans were already ripped, so a few holes in his shirt shouldn’t matter. But then the demon shuddered as something long and thin pierced its chest. We both looked at the projectile, confused. It appeared to be a crossbow bolt.

A second later, a short figure barreled out of the woods with a screaming battle cry. The demon staggered back, arms windmilling as a second bolt struck it. Its attacker tossed down their crossbow and drew a gleaming shaman’s short sword.

I watched in awe as the figure swung the weapon in a shining arc and took off the demon’s head. The creature disintegrated into a swirl of black smoke.

Nearby, still lying in a tiny heap, Miv groaned. I crawled over to him, relieved when he stirred. He lifted his head, blinked at me, and mumbled, How in the worlds are we alive?

I motioned to the person who’d saved us. Now that we weren’t in danger, I was able to get a closer look at our rescuer. I was shocked to see she was a girl. A Hmong girl, like me.

She sheathed her sword as I stood cradling Miv. The girl regarded me with a curl of her lip. She had to be around my age, but she was shorter and had light-brown skin. Her shiny black hair was cut in a straight line at her jaw, which made her look even fiercer.

“Who are you?” I asked as I bent to retrieve my own sword. I tried to sheathe it the way she had—in one smooth motion—but I missed the first time and had to fumble to fit the sword tip into the scabbard. My face went hot.

The girl’s eyes narrowed. I knew that expression. She was adding up the sum of my parts and deciding that it wasn’t enough. That’s how it was at school, too. I didn’t fit other kids’ expectations with how I looked, what I ate, how my family talked. Even though I was used to it, the scorn felt especially hurtful coming from another Hmong girl, one who’d just beheaded a demon no less.

She obviously wasn’t from Merdel—I hadn’t seen another Hmong kid in town since we’d moved here. But then, where had she come from? And what was she doing out in the middle of the woods?

“Never mind that,” the girl said. “Are you the one who freed the bridge spirit yesterday?” Her voice was kind of nasal, which suited her, because she talked down her nose at me.

She wore a jean jacket over a striped green-and-purple T-shirt dress and had on black high-tops. Shiny pins decorated the front pockets of her jacket. On her shoulders hung an oversize backpack, which she unzipped so she could shove her crossbow inside. She would have looked like a completely normal kid if not for the weapons.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I wasn’t about to admit anything to this stranger, and anyway, how did she even know about that? “This has all been really weird.”

The look the girl gave me made me want to disappear into smoke like the demon had.

“I knew it.” She threw up her hands. “I knew it had to be an accident. No one could botch a spirit release that badly on purpose.”

“Why would anyone botch a spirit release on purpose?” And was she implying that I had broken the spirit’s tether to the bridge? That was ridiculous.

I thought about the weird sensation that had swept through my arms and snapped at my fingertips like a painless static shock. Then there’d been that even more bizarre rush of wind and ice.

Had I done that? Panic fluttered in my gut, but I pushed it down. No way. It couldn’t be possible.

“Don’t play dumb,” the girl said. She began searching the ground around us.

Was she looking for the creature? Luckily, it hadn’t left pieces of itself everywhere. But that wasn’t it, because a moment later, she strode over to the metal gong I’d dropped.

“You didn’t do anything right. You were supposed to guide the little girl into the Spirit Realm for reincarnation, but all you did was unleash her from the bridge. You are so lucky she got to the Spirit Realm on her own. The shaman elders sent me to check out what happened, but I wasn’t expecting to find a demon.”

Wait. Something suddenly occurred to me that made my breath hitch. “How were you able to see that thing?”

Her lips pursed like I’d asked a really stupid question. “Apprentices at the school are trained to sense evil spirits from the moment we’re assigned a shaman mentor. But only the best apprentices can develop their spiritual energy enough to eventually see them.”

I didn’t really understand what she meant. Becoming a shaman was what my mom described as “a calling.” You couldn’t just decide to be one. So what did this girl mean by “school”?

Before I could ask, she walked up to me and thrust the gong into my face. “Are you an apprentice? How were you able to see the demon?” She sounded suspicious.

I resisted the urge to step back as I took the gong from her, careful not to let the hammer hit the metal. “I…don’t know,” I said pathetically. “I’ve just always been able to. I’m not an apprentice.”

“Great,” she muttered. “An untrained shaman. This just figures.”

“I’m not a shaman at all,” I insisted. What was going on? I felt overwhelmed.

“Well, you must have some spiritual energy if you could see that demon,” she said. But she’d seen the demon as well. Did that mean she could see other spirits, too? Was she like me?

I glanced at Miv, whose whiskers twitched. His large eyes glowed. He must have been wondering the same thing, because he stared intently at the girl and said, If you can see or hear me, say, “Miv is my lord and master, and I will do everything he tells me to.”

The girl didn’t react.

Disappointed, I said, “Lucky you were close by. What are you doing here?”

“Trying to figure out what happened yesterday,” she said. “I need to go scope out the bridge.”

“I, um, left my backpack by the river.”

She waved at me, like she was giving me permission to come along. As we retraced my steps, she held out her hand. “I’m Zhong.”

I looked from her hand to her serious eyes. Only adults introduced themselves with a handshake, and Zhong was shorter than I was. Still, I shook it.

“I’m Pahua. What was that thing back there?” That had definitely been a different kind of spirit than anything I’d ever come across before.

“Poj ntxoog,” Miv and Zhong said at the same time. But Zhong added, “Better fashion sense than others. It shouldn’t even be in this area, but you called it when you rang the gong. You can’t just go around hitting that. Don’t you know anything? You’re only supposed to use it during a ritual so you can summon good spirits to help you. Otherwise, it’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” I mumbled. I touched my temple where the poj ntxoog had hit me and winced at the bruise that was forming. Hopefully, it wouldn’t look too bad.

Miv climbed onto my shoulder. I don’t like her, even if she did save your butt.

I wasn’t sure I liked her, either, and I didn’t know whether to believe her story about being a shaman warrior. But I wanted to. The way she’d attacked that demon had been epic. It was everything I’d only ever imagined doing.

“Poj ntxoog,” I repeated slowly, sounding out the word. Paw…zong. I’d heard that phrase before. If I was remembering correctly, it had to do with tiger spirits.

In the dab neeg (or traditional Hmong folktales) my parents used to tell me, tiger spirits were always evil. Maybe the big cats got stuck with the bad rep because they were such a danger to jungle settlements back in Laos.

Anyway, tiger spirits supposedly lurk around villages and can mimic human voices. I know—super freaky. They use that talent to lure victims into the forest so they can eat them. The spirits of the people who get killed become twisted and vengeful and return as poj ntxoog.

Or at least that’s what I thought poj ntxoog meant. I wasn’t completely sure, though.

Fun fact #2 about me: My Hmong is terrible. I used to speak it when I was little. But when some kids at school heard me using it with my mom, they’d made fun of me by yelling random sounds that didn’t mean anything. It had made me feel small.

That’s when the whole pretending thing began. I couldn’t change the fact that I was different from everyone else in real life, but in my fantasy life, I could make myself unique in more exciting ways. Then it wouldn’t matter what anyone else thought.

The pretending had started small—I’d imagined myself as a Girl Scout, or a ballerina, or a world-famous ventriloquist. You know, attainable things. But Mom hadn’t had the money or time to make those dreams real, and I never would have fit in anyway. So my daydreams grew from there until I was riding dragons in my backyard, usually with Matt as my copilot.

Matt, who was currently lying unconscious in our apartment. Worry for him gnawed at my insides.

“A poj ntxoog is an evil spirit that was once mortal—a person who got stolen by another evil spirit and was turned into one themselves,” Zhong explained.

So the folktales had it about right. Why would a poj ntxoog be around here?

We’d reached the bridge. Everything was quiet again. My backpack was where I’d left it. I stuffed the gong back inside and then waited as Zhong poked around the area.

“Were you hunting that thing?” I asked. That seemed like something a girl who went around with a crossbow and sword would do.

“No,” she said, squashing the fantasy. Her nasal voice had that tone people use when they think they’re more important than you. “The shaman elders sent me after they dreamed of the little girl’s spirit last night. They knew something important must have happened here.”

Shaman elders? I didn’t get it, but the whole universe-flipping-out-at-me thing that happened yesterday had been really strange. Even Miv had agreed it was out of the ordinary.

“Wait, so what are you again?”

She rolled her eyes and turned away from the bridge, apparently deciding there was nothing there that interested her. “I’m a shaman warrior.”

I tilted my head, intrigued. Shaman warriors were real?

Miv swatted the side of my head with his tail. I don’t trust her, Pahua.

I ignored him as we returned to the path. My fingers danced over the plain hilt of my aunt’s old shaman sword. Zhong’s sword was polished silver and etched with pretty swirls and sunbursts, the same kind of designs as my mom’s traditional Hmong jewelry.

“What is that, exactly?” I asked. “What does a shaman warrior do?”

“We track down evil spirits and send them to the Spirit Realm,” Zhong said. “They’re usually restless mortal souls, though, like the little girl, not demons like that poj ntxoog. Why were you out here ringing a shaman’s gong anyway? Any spirit in the area could have shown up.”

I flushed, feeling dumb now that she’d put it that way. Even Zhong, a shaman warrior who went around with a crossbow in her backpack, thought I was weird. But although I could see and talk to spirits, she seemed to know a lot more about this stuff than I did, so it couldn’t hurt to get more information from her.

“I did see the bridge spirit yesterday,” I confessed. I decided to leave out the part where I’d approached the little girl because I’d thought, stupidly, that I could help her.

“Did she speak to you?” Zhong’s eyes narrowed like she knew I was hiding something.

“She was just surprised I could see her. But then she looked at me like she hated my guts and jumped at me. There was this freak windstorm, and ice, and the spirit must have escaped into the woods, because the next thing I knew, I heard my brother shouting. He said something flew out of the trees at him.”

“You’re telling me you didn’t do anything to release the spirit?”

I hesitated, recalling again that moment right before she disappeared from the bridge. “I…I wouldn’t know how,” I said, twisting my shirt around my fingers. Anxiety turned my stomach. “If I did, I didn’t mean to. Then last night, Matt got a fever, and this morning, he wouldn’t wake up.” My voice caught at that last part.

To her credit, Zhong’s hard look softened. But when she spoke, it was to say, “You really messed up. Luckily, the bridge spirit is gone now.”

“But if your, um, shaman elders think she’s in the Spirit Realm…how come I could feel her when I touched my brother’s forehead?”

I looked at Miv. He was busy glaring at Zhong and mumbling about how he’d like to leave hair balls in all her shoes.

“The shaman elders were certain the spirit had crossed over, and they’re rarely wrong.” She scrunched up her eyebrows. “But if you can feel her connected to your brother, that’s not good. It means the bridge spirit took his soul with her into the Spirit Realm.”

My feet stopped. I stared at her, her words echoing inside my skull. “She what?!”

Zhong was chewing on the corner of her lip. She seemed worried…except when she caught my eye, the look faded, replaced with that smug tilt of her nose. “She took his soul—”

“No, I heard you,” I cut in. Fear made my heartbeat quicken. “But how? He was fine all afternoon yesterday.”

“It’s a gradual thing. When a living soul leaves its body, it’s like a battery slowly draining. They might seem fine at first, but then they become sick—and the longer the soul is away from the body, the worse it’ll get.”

“But you just said that spirits stolen by evil ones turn evil themselves.” Panic ballooned in my stomach, and I shouted my next question. “Is that going to happen to my brother?”

I began to pace, my body suddenly restless even though there was nowhere to go. This was my fault. What was I supposed to do now? Why was I so useless?

Miv pressed his paw against my cheek. Calm down. These things don’t happen overnight, Pahua. You have some time to fix this. I’d guess a week at least.

I took a deep breath, the panic deflating a little, but it was replaced by a needling worry in my gut. A week wasn’t much time, and what could I even do? Wouldn’t I need a shaman to fix this? Except what did it mean that even Zhong, a shaman warrior who’d just killed a demon, looked worried?

But then Miv continued. Time passes differently in the Spirit Realm, though, so it’s probably more like three days.

“THREE DAYS?!” I shouted, startling Zhong.

On reflex, she went for her sword. “What are you shouting about?” Her fingers tightened around the hilt, like she wanted nothing more than to draw it on me.

“My brother has three days before he becomes a demon.” I tried not to hyperventilate.

It’s not an exact science, Miv said.

That was not helpful.

Zhong crossed her arms and scowled. “We don’t know anything for sure. We need more information about this bridge spirit if we’re going after it, like how dangerous it might be.”

Her words surprised me. “We? You’re going to help me?”

She sneered. “It’s my job as a shaman warrior to stop evil spirits from hurting innocents. Besides, I was sent here to figure out what’s going on, so that’s what I’m doing. Come on.”