Zhong waited outside my apartment while I dropped off the gong. I didn’t want to make any more accidental demon calls, and I figured the fewer shaman-scented tools I carried, the better. I kept the sword, though, and grabbed the cell phone my mom had gotten me for emergencies.

I also checked on Matt, who hadn’t woken yet. Mom was on a call with someone, probably a nurse or something, because her voice was low and urgent. The incense was still burning on a saucer beside the bed. Three days to fix this. My stomach twisted in fear. If I didn’t succeed, Matt would never wake up.

Now that I knew what was going on, there was no way I could tell my mom about the bridge spirit. First of all, she wasn’t a shaman, and the knowledge would only worry her even more, especially if she knew I’d seen the ghost girl or that I’d tried to summon her and gotten a demon instead. Second, this was my fault. Even though I hadn’t meant to, I must have released the spirit from the bridge, and the first thing she’d done was go after my brother. This was my problem to fix.

I scribbled a quick note about forgetting something at school and left it on the dinner table. Guilt pricked at me for leaving her to care for Matt alone. She shouldn’t have had to stay with him by herself, and for a brief second, I let myself wonder what it would be like if my dad were still here.

But then, if that were the case, we wouldn’t be living so far from all the people my mom had grown up with, in a tiny town with a haunted bridge.

I don’t trust that shaman girl, Pahua, Miv kept insisting.

“I don’t have any other choice.”

Even Miv couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t know the first thing about demons or going after spirits in the Spirit Realm. Zhong was the best person to help me.

After the stop at my apartment, Zhong led me into town. We walked down Main Street, which was only a few blocks of tiny stores crammed together. It was a warm day, so people were out shopping or hanging around a bronze elephant statue that stood in a green at the center of town.

“Why are we here?” I asked.

“We need to talk to Shao.”

“Who?”

We stopped in front of the statue. Three teenagers sat against its bronze base. Their T-shirts said MERDEL HIGH SCHOOL PING-PONG CLUB. One of them had his hair dyed in rainbow colors, as if a unicorn had vomited on his head. They’d left burger wrappers and empty soda cups everywhere.

“Shao is the elephant statue?” I asked. Maybe I’d been wrong about Zhong. Maybe she was completely bananas and had made everything up, and now my brother was going to die because I had the worst judgment in the history of the world.

Zhong gave me a look like I was a fly in her rice. “No, Shao is a hermit. Master shamans sometimes seek out his wisdom. Elephants are guards and guides between important gateways.”

Even though she said all this confidently, the way she kept twisting the charm bracelet around her wrist made me think she wasn’t as calm as she sounded. Normally, I would have liked to know someone who pretended the way I did. But right now, for my brother’s sake, I needed her to be the shaman warrior she said she was.

Zhong rummaged in her backpack. I rose onto my toes to get a look at what else was in there besides her crossbow, but before I could, she snapped it shut again. In her hand, she held a miniature reed pipe.

I recognized it as a qeej, a traditional Hmong musical instrument. It had a straight body dotted with finger holes and seven pipes that stuck out at the bottom in a bow-like curve. Usually qeej much larger than this one were played at festivals and funerals. I’d always thought it was weird for an instrument to symbolize two completely different things—celebration and death. But my mom once told me that when a shaman played the qeej, the music could communicate with the spirits in a language forgotten by humans. Or mortals, as Zhong would say.

Zhong held the tiny mouthpiece to her lips. Her fingers danced over the holes. I stiffened as each note vibrated through me. Unless I was imagining it, I thought maybe the statue was vibrating, too.

She lowered the instrument and announced, “Zhong Vang, School for Shamanic Arts and Spiritual Mastery. Code Name: Sailor Moon. ‘In the name of the moon, I will punish you.’”

The teenagers began laughing and pointing at her. Zhong’s face turned bright red. But she kept her chin held high as she told me, “My mentor makes all of us use his travel code.”

I was about to tell her that Mercury was the best Sailor Scout when the elephant’s bronze trunk began to sway. I yelped, startling back. On my shoulder, Miv made a small hmm sound.

“Destination,” came a loud, clear voice.

My eyes went huge. The elephant blinked. Its mouth somehow formed a smile beneath its mini tusks. I quickly looked around, but the teens didn’t seem to notice.

“People who can’t see?” Zhong said. “Well, they can’t see.”

I nodded. It was like how spirits went unnoticed by everyone except me.

Zhong cleared her throat. “The Echo, please.”

“Business or pleasure?” the elephant asked cheerfully.

“Business.”

“Wonderful. Remember: no foods, liquids, or cursed relics allowed between realms. Enjoy your flight!”

The elephant tapped its base once, twice, three times with its trunk. The plaque on the bottom began to grow until it became a door tall enough for us to step through. A moment later, the door swung open.

I gaped. On the other side was an entirely different world. It looked like no city I’d ever seen before. There were brick houses in every color imaginable. Far in the distance, enormous buildings loomed, their doors and windows built for giants.

“Let’s go,” Zhong said, stepping through. The doorway shimmered gold.

“Wait!” I shouted. But it was too late. She was gone. I stood there, dumbstruck, staring at where she’d been. Then, closing my eyes tight, I stepped through as well.

Now I knew why the elephant had said Enjoy your flight.

I was falling through complete darkness. I would have screamed, but I was too afraid to do even that. Frost pricked my face. Miv’s small body was tucked tight against my neck.

After a moment, I realized we weren’t technically falling. It was more like floating. Through blackness. With no end in sight. Yeah, still terrifying.

“What is this place?” I squeaked. I blinked the melting frost from my lashes and was relieved to see a Zhong-shaped figure a short distance beneath me. I didn’t know what I would have done if I’d lost her.

“The Echo.” Amazingly, she sounded bored. “One of the first things apprentices learn at school is how to cross into the Echo. It’s the least regulated of the six realms. Plus, it helps prepare apprentices for the Spirit Realm.”

She had a funny way of talking. Like she thought she was an adult. “What you said to the elephant…You called it the School for Shaman…Artists?”

“The School for Shamanic Arts and Spiritual Mastery. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

Even though I couldn’t see her, I could imagine perfectly the way she was sticking her nose in the air.

“Where is it?”

She took a few seconds to answer. I wondered if she was trying to come up with a lie.

At last, she said, “In Minnesota. Ish.”

The summer before we moved, my mom had driven my aunt, Matt, and me to St. Paul to visit the Hmong Village Shopping Center. We ate beef pho and eggrolls stuffed with pork and bean thread noodles, and drank boba tea with chewy tapioca pearls. Aunt Kalia bought an entire crate of fresh vegetables that made the car smell the whole ride back.

The drive had taken ages, especially because we’d had to make half a dozen bathroom stops for Matt. He’d refused to sleep, instead alternating between singing the same song over and over again and pointing out every single cow we passed. In Wisconsin, there are a lot of cows.

What I wouldn’t give to hear him nagging me again.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I asked Zhong, “How’d you get to Merdel? That’s a whole state away.” Maybe she’d taken another magical shaman portal or something.

“The night bus.”

“Oh.” That was less exciting. “By yourself?” I instantly cringed at my words. Zhong had just killed a demon with a sword. Riding a bus was a lot less dangerous, although my mom would ground me until I was sixty if I ever left the state on a bus by myself.

Probably best if she never found out I’d left the entire realm.

Before Zhong could make a rude retort, I added, “But my aunt is a shaman, and my mom grew up with her. Wouldn’t they know about this school?”

“Maybe they do,” Zhong said, which made me frown. “Most shamans don’t have the spiritual energy to become a warrior. Those who do are invited by the elders to enroll.”

I scrunched up my nose. It sounded like those snobby clubs at school that didn’t want you unless you were supersmart or superrich or superpopular. No wonder Zhong was unbearable.

The longer we floated in darkness, the more anxious I became. So I did what I do best—I pretended I was someone and somewhere else. I was an astronaut soaring through space on a hunt for new planets. But I couldn’t hold on to the fantasy. Maybe because Matt was usually with me, and I kept expecting him to chime in with something like I’m an alien searching for intelligent life. That’s not you, Pahua, and then crack up at his own bad joke.

Or maybe because, for the first time in my life, my reality was more bizarre than anything I could’ve imagined. I had just walked through a doorway between realms that was guarded by a talking statue, with a shaman warrior as my guide.

None of this should have been happening. If I’d just left the bridge spirit alone, my brother’s soul wouldn’t be in danger. My eyes began to sting, and I squeezed them tightly shut.

“How long is this supposed to take?” I asked. “Talking to Shao, I mean.”

“I’m not sure, but we won’t even know where to begin looking for your brother unless we do this first.”

So we didn’t have much choice, then. Fortunately, my feet touched solid ground a moment later. I opened my eyes to see that we stood beside another elephant statue, this one made of stone, on a paved path between great rolling hills. A city sprawled in the distance, colorful and strange.

“What is that?” Zhong shouted, making me jump. She pointed over my shoulder.

“What?” I spun around, expecting to find another demon like the poj ntxoog. But there was only the empty road and a blue sky speckled with clouds.

“That,” Zhong said again. She drew her sword and thrust it toward me.

I threw up my hands. “What are you talking about?”

“Right there!” She shook the tip of her blade at what I realized wasn’t something over my shoulder but on my shoulder.

“I think she’s talking about me,” Miv drawled, licking his paw.

Zhong’s nostrils flared, indicating that she could not only see him, but she could hear him as well.

“Oh!” I beamed. “You can see him now!”

“You know this creature?”

“Sometimes I know things you don’t. Weird, right? Put down your sword.”

She didn’t. “Has he been with you this whole time?”

“Yes?” It came out a question, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell her the truth when she was pointing a sword at my best friend.

“You do know it’s never a good thing when a spirit latches onto you, right?” She was using that annoying tone again, like she thought I was an idiot.

She did sheathe her sword, though. I began to relax. But then she pulled a slip of paper from her bag. It was bookmark-shaped and looked a bit like joss paper.

“I can exorcise him for you,” she said, as if that were a good thing.

“No!” I backed away and cradled Miv to my chest. “He’s been with me since I was four. He’s my best friend. Don’t you dare hurt him!”

Zhong looked exasperated. “The paper talisman won’t hurt him. It just subdues him so I can send him back to the Spirit Realm. It’s like the shaman equivalent of tying up a soul with rope, although it does only work on the less powerful ones.”

“I don’t want that, either!”

“Well, you can’t keep it.”

“It is right here and can speak for himself, thank you very much.” Miv’s whiskers tickled my neck as he turned to hiss at Zhong.

“What kind of spirit are you?” she asked. “You don’t look like a normal cat spirit. Are you a shape-shifter? A demon?”

“If I told you, I’d have to pluck out your tongue so you could never repeat it.” He stuck his little nose in the air in a perfect imitation of Zhong.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Calm down, both of you,” I said. “Miv, you’re not plucking out any tongues. That’s disgusting—why would you say that? And, Zhong, you’re not sending him anywhere.”

Zhong’s mouth twisted to one side. After a second, she grudgingly put away the paper talisman. I glimpsed a whole stack of them in her bag. She really came prepared.

“Miv? You named your cat spirit Cat?” she asked flatly.

I hunched my shoulders. “I was four, okay? My imagination wasn’t so great yet.”

Besides, Miv didn’t seem to mind. He even thinks it’s funny how the word sounds like a cat—mee.

“Whatever.” She stalked down the road, heading away from the city in the distance.

She seemed to know where she was going, even though nothing but green hills stretched along either side of the road. But past those hills I got glimpses of things I wanted to ask about—the colorful city was one of them, but also forests with leaves that glimmered like crystals, and a frothing lake that looked like boiling water. Those would have to wait, though.

I hurried to catch up to Zhong, afraid of being left behind in this unfamiliar place. The road veered to the left, up and over a hill too high to see what lay beyond it.

“Why is it called the Echo?” I asked.

“Because it’s a copy of the mortal realm. As the mortal realm changes, so does the Echo. The spiritfolk who live here learn to adapt.”

“Spiritfolk? Is that like human, I mean mortal spirits?” I couldn’t quite connect what I already knew about spirits—which was apparently very little—with what Zhong was telling me.

She made an impatient sound, like she couldn’t believe I didn’t know something so basic. “There are four kinds of spiritfolk: beast, nature, guardian, and mortal.”

“And they all live here?”

“No. Mortal souls only go to the Spirit Realm for reincarnation after they die.”

My gut tightened. Matt’s soul was trapped there with the ghost girl, but the only mortal souls that should be there belonged to the dead. I glared down at my feet. He wasn’t going to die. Not if I could help it.

“Other spiritfolk can travel between all the realms,” Pahua continued, “but it’s strictly regulated. Some realms are closed off to outsiders, even with the proper paperwork. Shamans can enter the Echo and the Spirit Realm because of an ancient pact we made with the gods, but any travel outside of that requires a special license.”

“What gods?” I asked. “Do the Hmong have gods?”

Her eyes went wide. “Of course we have gods! If you value your life, don’t ever say that again. Their spies could be anywhere. The four oldest and most powerful of them sit on the Council of Elder Gods. They basically run the six realms.”

I’d never heard of any council, but I decided not to say that.

“It’s really pitiful how uneducated most Hmong people are about our own stories,” Zhong continued. “For centuries, everything was passed down orally, and almost nothing is recorded in writing.”

“You sound like my aunt,” I muttered. Aunt Kalia used to lecture my mom about how Matt and I didn’t know enough about Hmong customs. Whenever she heard me speak to Matt in English, she snapped at me to use Hmong, but she never bothered to actually teach me the right words.

“Well, it’s true,” Zhong said. “The school has tried to archive what they can, of course, but still, so many stories have been lost, and those we did record have a dozen different versions, because the details change between every person who tells it.”

“I’d hate to be the librarian,” Miv drawled, which earned him a glare.

Just then, a cart passed us along the road. I gawked, first at the bird-faced spiritfolk driving the cart, and then at the two striped horses pulling it. My mom had described these zebra-like spirits to me before—I knew they helped shamans—but she’d left out the part where the horses had cloven hooves like deer.

Zhong didn’t even give the cart a second glance. She seemed perfectly comfortable in this extraordinary place. I had to admit, even though I still didn’t like her much, I was a little in awe of her.

“This is all so weird,” I said. “Also, who is this Shao again?” If we couldn’t look for my brother until we spoke to Shao, then he had to be someone pretty important.

“He’s a hermit oracle. A thousand years ago, back when travel between the realms wasn’t as regulated, Shao tried to follow in the footsteps of the first and greatest shaman, Shee Yee, and earn the favor of the gods. Shao wanted to study in the coral library of the Dragon Emperor and dine with the Sky Father in his palace of storms.”

“Sounds like a noisy dinner,” Miv remarked.

Zhong’s gaze twitched in his direction, but she continued. “Somehow, Shao survived the treacherous journey into the Sky Kingdom, the home of the gods, and presented himself to the Council.”

“Are they nice gods?” I asked hopefully.

“Define nice,” Miv said.

“Anyway,” Zhong continued. “Unlike Shee Yee, Shao wasn’t family. The Sky Father had seven daughters, and Shee Yee was the son of his youngest and favorite. Shao was just some random shaman who wanted fame and glory.”

“This doesn’t end well, does it?” I asked Miv.

He gave me a flat look. “Does it ever?”

“Can I finish?” Zhong said. “The gods didn’t know whether to reward Shao’s bravery or punish his insolence, so they did both. They granted him immortality and the powers of an oracle, but they exiled him to the Echo, where he would be bound to help any traveler who sought his wisdom.”

“That…sucks,” I said.

“Majorly sucks,” Miv echoed.

“Yep,” Zhong said, surprising me. It might have been the first time she’d agreed with me about something. “The Echo changes with the mortal realm, but there are a few cornerstones that remain the same no matter what, like the Bamboo Nursery, where Shao lives.”

We’d reached the top of the hill. I held my breath, expecting to see a fantastical landscape, something plucked straight from my imagination, like an enchanted forest or herds of spirit-beasts. Instead, spread out before us was a clothing store.

“Huh,” I said.

Zhong’s mouth fell open. “Noooo, this can’t be right. The Bamboo Nursery should be here.” She hurried down the road toward the parking lot.

Miv and I shared a confused look, but we followed. The store was tall and boxy, like department stores in the mortal realm. The glass storefront displayed mannequins dressed in everything from boring business suits to glittery dresses to blue jeans. Above the automatic doors, curly capital letters spelled out THREAD AND NEEDLE.

“How are we going to find the Bamboo Nursery?” I asked, eyeing the empty parking lot. The bright lights inside the store seemed to indicate it was open. Why wasn’t anyone here?

“The Nursery shows up in a few different locations, depending on where you are and how urgent your need is. Based on where we arrived, this is where it should be.”

“Maybe the Echo thinks we need new clothes more than we need wisdom right now?”

Zhong didn’t seem to think that was funny. She marched up to the front doors. They opened just before she would have smacked her forehead into the glass. Inside, aisles split off in three directions between endless racks of clothes. Signs hanging above each section declared unsettling things like BUSINESS CASUAL MURDER and FORMAL EVENING TORTURE.

“Zhong, what are we doing here?” I whispered. It was eerily quiet. We hadn’t seen anyone else yet, not even a store employee. This didn’t feel right, and we really couldn’t be wasting time wandering around a store.

“This is one of the Bamboo Nursery’s fixed points, so it’s here somewhere. We just have to find it. And after we’ve spoken to Shao, I’m filing a complaint with the manager. This layout is too confusing.”

We passed an aisle of accessories and a sneakers display. I paused. A tag on the silver necklaces read PERFECT FOR THAT LITTLE BLACK DRESS OR FOR STRANGLING YOUR ENEMIES. On the shoes display, the sneakers looked wrong. The laces were in the back where the heel was instead of down the front. Was this some weird Echo fashion trend?

Then something else caught my eye. Ice-blue gloves shimmered from the center of a rack. They were oddly labeled NEUTRALIZERS. I reached for them. The slick fabric was as fine as the whorls of frost that painted our windows in winter. But when I slipped my hand into the first glove, subtle waves of warmth spread up my arm.

The attached tag read FOR THE NEUTRALIZATION OF SPIRITUAL ABSORPTION.

“What do these do?” I asked, trying to find a price tag.

“You have more problems than I can fix if you don’t know what gloves are for.”

I frowned at the back of her head. Normally, I would’ve let the insult go. I’d had worse things said to me. But the empty store made me uneasy. I was starting to think I’d made a mistake by trusting Zhong, and it was my brother who would pay for it.

“Why do you have to be so rude?”

To my surprise, Zhong’s ears turned pink. But her voice was still as obnoxious as ever when she said, “If you don’t like hearing the truth, then don’t ask me questions.”

I held up the gloves. “‘For the neutralization of spiritual absorption.’ I bet you have no idea what that even means.”

Zhong spun on her heel to face me. “It means that when you cross between realms, the gloves will neutralize the spiritual energy pulled from your body so that you don’t freeze.”

“Why didn’t you just say that, then, instead of being a jerk about it?”

“This jerk saved your life, and now I’m trying to save your brother’s.”

Miv stood up on my shoulder, his chest puffed with outrage. It gave me the courage to say, “Saving my life doesn’t mean you get to treat me like I’m an idiot.”

Zhong looked down her nose at me again. But instead of arguing, she gave me a grudging nod. “Fine. I guess you’re r—” Her voice broke off as her eyes focused on something behind me.

I turned. On a corner display, floral dresses hung beneath a poster board featuring a creature that looked very much like the demon that had attacked me in the woods. A poj ntxoog.

“Oh no.” Zhong’s gaze darted around the store as if she was seeing it for the first time. “Oh no, no, no.” She grabbed my wrist and began running back the way we’d come.

“I don’t get it,” I said. My feet kept slipping over the polished floor tiles.

“This is a store for demons,” she hissed.