My back slammed into something solid and rocky. Pain lit through me, but my hands found a jut of stone. I clung to it as tightly as my cold fingers could manage.

Someone grabbed me under the armpits and tugged. My head surfaced, and I wheezed in air. Lungs burning, I collapsed onto dry ground.

“Pahua!” Miv pounced on my face as I lay there.

“Agh!” I shouted, rolling over to make him fall off. Being suffocated by a wet cat doused in frog drool on top of nearly drowning is not my idea of fun. After a couple of tries, I managed to get my arms free of my sopping cloak, and I flung them limply over my head as I caught my breath. Squinting in the gloom, I saw that we were in some kind of cave. My mask was long gone, washed away with the pond debris.

Miv held out his front paws and looked at them with disgust. “This is so gross. I don’t even want to clean myself right now.”

“Wiping…saliva…on your fur,” I gasped out. “Already gross.”

He glared at me. But I could barely see his eyes through the wet strands of hair plastered over my face. I pushed the streaming mess from my eyes, patted my head to make sure my hair clip was still in place, and then tried to look around.

It was too dark to see much. Only the dimmest of light came from the opening behind us, where the pond water still sloshed.

Zhong, who must have been the one who’d pulled me to safety, was sprawled on her back beside me. Her mask was missing as well. I nudged her foot to make sure she wasn’t dead. She turned her head to squint daggers at me. Not dead, then.

“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “I can’t swim.”

“It was my turn,” she said, sounding exhausted.

If I thought about it too hard, it was pretty disturbing how many times we’d almost died today. I untied my cloak, grateful that it hadn’t choked me in the water, and dropped it at my feet. I removed my gloves and backpack next and then wrung out the hem of my dress.

“Where are we?” Zhong sat up, wiping her eyes. She shrugged off her backpack and gave it a good shake.

“Nowhere good,” Miv said.

Our voices didn’t echo, so we couldn’t be in too big a space. I could make out the rocky ceiling overhead but not much else. I gulped loudly.

“Can we go back?” I pointed to the underwater entrance. I startled when the water began to quickly recede, allowing in more light. The frog was drinking up the pond again. “We can make a run for it.”

Miv shook his small head. “We’re still too far from the tunnel. I’m afraid we’d never make it in time before that ridiculous frog released the water. We’d either get swept right back in here or smashed against the cliff.”

Frustrated, I rubbed both hands down my face and then gagged, because my hands smelled like frog, too.

Zhong opened her backpack and rummaged inside to check the contents. I frowned.

“How are your things still dry?” I asked. I gathered my hair around my hands and squeezed. Thick streams of water splattered the stone.

“Waterproof spell.” She lifted one shoulder, a little embarrassed. “My roommate is friends with a water spirit, and she owed me a favor. We’re technically not supposed to interact with that kind of spirit until we start venturing into Zaj Teb, where most of the realm is underwater.”

“That sounds cool. Maybe my uncle will let me visit it someday—if he and the other gods stop trying to kill me, that is. And I guess I should learn how to swim first.” I gestured to her backpack. “You wouldn’t happen to have any spare masks in there, would you?”

“I do, but I doubt we’ll need them. Those were just for the elephant guides. We’ll have to keep a low profile, though, to avoid any henchmen the gods have sent to look for you.”

To my surprise, Zhong pulled out a flashlight and flicked it on. That girl had left her school seriously prepared, and I could have hugged her for it. The light illuminated the dark maw of a tunnel, large enough for a few people to walk through. Besides the watery entrance, there was nothing else around us but dusty gray stone.

Somehow, our narrow beam of light only made the darkness beyond our small circle seem even more ominous. I inched a little closer to Miv.

Fun fact #4 about me: I’m afraid of the dark. Which I know sounds dumb, but remember, I can see spirits. I know what sorts of things tend to hide in the shadows.

“There’s another way out of here, right?” I asked Miv.

He gave me a look like How should I know? But out loud, he said, “Y-y-yes?” He didn’t sound very confident. “There has to be.”

“Ugh, why do these things keep happening to us?” I said, tugging at my soaked dress. At this rate, I would never find the ax or my brother in time. I wanted to kick a rock, but I couldn’t see any in the dim light.

“Well, there’s no way but forward.” Zhong smoothed her short, wet hair away from her face.

We took a few minutes to assess ourselves for any injuries. Miraculously, we were all generally okay. My backpack was soaked, but my granola bars and ramen packets were in a plastic bag, so those were fine. Even Aunt Chan’s rice sticks seemed okay. Banana leaves were no joke. The bad news? My phone, which wasn’t waterproof, was completely dead. My mom was so going to kill me when she found out.

I wrung out my cloak and then put it back on. It wouldn’t keep me warm, but it also wouldn’t dry if I stuffed it into my backpack with my gloves.

When we were ready, we set off into the darkness. I might have stuck a little too closely to Zhong’s side, because she elbowed me. But I couldn’t help it. This place was like a tomb. There weren’t even any nature spirits down here—everything was dead or abandoned. The only positive was that it wasn’t wet or cold, so at least we didn’t have to worry about dying of hypothermia.

The smell down here was a little moldy, though, and a lot frog-breath-y. Fortunately, the stench faded the farther we traveled.

“Shouldn’t we have come across a door or an exit sign by now?” I asked.

Something brushed the top of my head. I shrieked and dropped into a crouch, hands covering my hair. Miv yowled, and Zhong drew her sword.

After a tense moment, during which nothing leaped out of the darkness to eat me, Miv smacked my cheek with a wet paw.

“It was just a root,” he said, annoyed.

Embarrassed, I straightened. Tugging at my damp dress, I peered up at the ceiling. Roots and bits of earth had broken through the stone and dangled low over our heads.

“That’s a good sign,” Miv said. “It means we’re getting closer to the surface.”

We continued. My hands felt restless, and my back kept itching like we were being watched. I knew it was just my imagination, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I reached up and unclasped my hair clip. Holding the familiar shape helped calm me a little. Zhong glanced over as I clipped it back in place above my ear.

“What’s with the hair clip?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep touching it like you’re afraid to lose it.”

“Because I am. My mom gave it to me.”

She pointed to the front of her jean jacket. It was too dark to see the pins clearly, but she said, “I get it. Most of these are from the school, but a couple are from my parents. It would suck to lose them.”

I wondered if that was another dig about me losing her pins in the Bamboo Nursery, but she didn’t sound mad or anything. That was the first time she’d mentioned her family, though.

“What do your parents think about this whole shaman-warrior thing?” I asked.

When she answered, her voice was quiet. “I don’t see them a ton, but we do get two-week breaks every three months to go home.”

“Do you miss them?”

“You get used to it. My sister goes to the school, too, so I get to see them when they visit her.”

It was strange how she’d worded that—when her parents visited her sister, not when they visited her.

“That’s cool that you have an older sister at the same school. Shaman-warrior siblings. Is that normal?” I wondered if Matt was a typical mortal or if he had any hidden abilities, too.

“We’re not very close,” she said quickly. “And no, that’s not normal, but my family has pretty strong spiritual energy.”

I couldn’t imagine not being close to Matt, although that might have been because I had to watch him all the time. Once I got him back, I would let him pick out everything we watched for the next year, even if it was Spirited Away on repeat.

The ability to become a shaman wasn’t an inherited thing, according to my mom. It wasn’t about your blood—it was about your spirit. For Zhong’s family to have numerous shaman warriors in it was pretty impressive.

“Are your parents shaman warriors, too?”

“My dad is.” Her voice was devoid of any enthusiasm.

“But he doesn’t work for your school?”

“He’s a graphic designer. The shaman-warrior thing is just part-time for him, though Dad is good enough that he could be a mentor at the school if he wanted.”

“My aunt is a shaman,” I said.

“You said that before. Does she know you can see spirits?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never told anyone but Matt. Although…” I frowned and looked at her. She was holding out the flashlight, her face cast in shadows. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’re always asking me something,” she said.

I took that as a yes. “My mom and aunt used to argue a lot—I’m not sure what about, but sometimes I overheard my name. One time my mom was so mad that she told her own sister to get out of the house.” I frowned into the darkness. “Do you think they know that I’m, you know, Shee Yee’s reincarnation?”

“I should have listened in on their fights,” Miv mused, sounding less like he was sympathetic and more like he was sad to have missed out on juicy gossip. “But there’s always something more interesting happening than mortals bickering.”

I poked him with one finger, which he pretended to bite.

“I doubt they know,” Zhong said, answering me. “Unless you’re an oracle like Shao, there’s no way to tell who a person was in a past life without performing a special ritual, and the shaman doing it would need to have really strong spiritual energy. At most, your aunt probably knew you were meant to be a shaman. That would’ve been easy enough to find out with some divination.”

“But I don’t know why my mom would get so mad about that….”

“Why don’t you just ask her?”

I wrinkled my nose. “We don’t talk about that kind of stuff.” Mom wasn’t home enough for us to talk about much besides what we did that day. Also, she’d been through a lot with Dad leaving and then our moving away from the Hmong community. I felt guilty asking questions that made her think about those things. “She works a lot to take care of me and Matt. I don’t like making her sad.”

Zhong sucked in her cheeks, like she was annoyed, but I didn’t know what I’d said wrong. She didn’t explain, either. She just said, “What about your dad?”

My shoulders climbed up to my ears, and I mumbled, “He’s not around anymore.”

Miv shoved his paws against my neck so I’d relax and stop squishing him. Luckily, Zhong got the hint that I didn’t want to talk about my dad and she fell silent.

When she’d said her dad was a graphic designer, it had made something jump in my stomach. Mine had been an artist as well, and he’d had a big imagination.

Back before I’d learned that having an invisible friend wasn’t normal, I used to talk about Miv with him. Dad would draw little pictures of us, like me on a tire swing with a black kitten in my lap, or me reading in bed with a black kitten curled on top of my head. I’d loved the drawings so much. I’m not sure what happened to them after we moved.

Zhong and I walked on for another few minutes before we came across anything, and it was the worst thing possible—a fork. Two dark tunnels split in different directions, and neither looked very welcoming.

“The left one is bigger,” I said. Maybe it was a trick of the shadows, since our only light was Zhong’s flashlight, but it did look wider. I really didn’t want to have to squeeze through the smaller right tunnel. It would feel even more like we were being buried alive. No thanks.

Miv cocked his head. “I vote for the right.”

I rolled my eyes. Smaller spaces didn’t bother him—he was the size of a cereal bowl. Not to mention that cats, including the spirit variety, are made of Jell-O and can squeeze through just about anything.

“I think Pahua is right, actually,” Zhong said. She squinted into the tunnels and flicked her flashlight back and forth.

“No,” Miv said. “The right one is the right path. Right is right.”

“Have you been here before?” I asked.

“Of course not. But my gut tells me I’m right.”

“Your gut also tells you to spread spit on your face, so it probably shouldn’t be making decisions for us,” I said. “It’s two against one. We’re going left.”

Miv huffed and stuck his little nose in the air. “Yes, let’s listen to the two children over the wise and powerful cat spirit. That’ll end well.”

The walls in the left tunnel were dry and musty, and the roots had disappeared from the ceiling. That worried me. The farther we walked without any sign of an exit, the more anxious I became that we’d gone the wrong way.

“At least there aren’t any booby traps,” I said.

Zhong frowned and gave the stone walls a wary look, like she hadn’t considered until now that spikes might start growing out of them. “Why would there be booby traps?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that what always happens in movies? The heroes find a mysterious tunnel and walk into a bunch of booby traps because it turns out to be the villain’s evil lair.”

Zhong sneered, her shoulders relaxing. “I really don’t think the bridge spirit has an evil lair. She was stuck in the mortal realm for however many years? That wouldn’t even make sense. And anyway, an evil lair shouldn’t be so easy to”—she froze, her eyes going big—“find.”

Her flashlight shone on an engraving in the stone. She swiped the light in a wide arc to reveal that the walls and ceiling of the tunnel ahead were completely covered in elephant-head designs. Not only that, but every single one had two sharp stone tusks poking out of it.

“Is this what a booby trap looks like?” Miv said.

I gulped. “Maybe we should have taken the other path.”

Even though I was already turning around, Zhong moved forward, looking fascinated. “What is this place?”

Since she had the flashlight, and I didn’t want to stand in a pool of growing darkness, I sighed and followed her. She ran her finger over the smooth grooves that formed an elephant’s ear and then down the length of one tusk. I had to admit, the images were kind of awesome in a really eerie way. Who had created them? And why were they here, hidden beneath the Spirit Realm?

“Someone is way too obsessed with elephants and sharp pointy things,” I observed. We had to step carefully to avoid getting jabbed by a tusk. But the ones sticking down from the ceiling made me especially nervous.

Then I felt something. It began as a cold lump in my stomach. I edged away from Miv and Zhong, taking slow steps into the gloom. The cold lump grew heavier, filling me with ice and the absolute certainty that something was waiting for me ahead. Something very old and very angry.

“Pahua?” Miv asked from behind me. I’d left the circle of light.

Spinning on my heel, I hurried back. “Do you guys feel that?” I whispered.

“Kind of?” Zhong pulled herself away from the engravings. She rubbed her stomach, looking a little unnerved. “It’s uncomfortable.”

No, it was unbearable. Even though she was a shaman warrior’s apprentice, it seemed I was more sensitive to spiritual energy than she was. That explained why she couldn’t see Miv in the mortal realm and why she couldn’t feel the bridge spirit’s presence the way I could.

“She’s here,” I breathed into the silence. My heart raced with fear, and goose bumps rose on my arms. I pulled my still-damp cloak tighter around me.

“Are you sure?” Zhong asked, reaching for her sword.

Then my whole body stiffened as I realized something. “If the bridge spirit is here, then so is my brother’s soul.”

Without thinking it through, I drew my sword and charged into the darkness. Miv pounced on my head and dug his claws into my scalp.

“Ow!” I shouted. I reached up to pull him off, but Miv had already retracted his nails. “What’s your problem?”

“You’re not ready to face her yet.” He jumped out of reach before I could strangle him.

“But Matt—” I gasped as the weight of the bridge spirit’s presence suddenly intensified. A shock of cold swept through me, prickling my skin like a thousand tiny needles. My knees almost folded. Instead, I bent over, sucking air into my seizing lungs.

Zhong swayed on her feet and nearly fell into the stone tusks. “What is that?” she whispered, sounding horrified.

“She’s too strong.” Somehow, she’d grown even more powerful since leaving the mortal realm.

How was I going to beat this? For my brother’s sake and the sake of all the other kids she had stolen, I knew I’d have to try. But right now, as the spirit’s power tried to wrench me to my knees, I also knew I’d fail.

“Matt…”

Miv latched onto the hem of my cloak, digging his claws into the cloth to hang there like a scruffy Christmas ornament. “He still has time.”

“Less than three days,” I said through my teeth. I stabbed my sword into the ground to steady myself before I backed up through the tunnel. I could barely stand.

Things couldn’t get any worse. I scrubbed my hands through my hair. Then I winced, because even though it was mostly dry now, it was tangled and felt clumpy and sticky.

I needed Shee Yee’s lightning ax. It was my only chance. If I tried to face the bridge spirit now, it would be a massacre. Of me.

Suddenly, a blast of wind shot down the corridor. Zhong and I flinched and threw up our hands to shield our faces against the rock dust. I tugged my cloak over my nose and mouth, even though the sour, scummy pond-frog smell made me want to set it on fire.

A soft, girly voice echoed all around us. “Have you come to stay with me?”

“We need to get out of here,” Miv said.

Zhong’s voice shook. “No kidding.”

I sheathed my sword. Then we turned and rushed back the way we’d come.

“Where are you going?” the voice asked, pitched higher with what almost sounded like panic. A chorus of other childlike voices suddenly joined her, quieter but just as chilling. “Don’t leave us. Come back. Come back!”

I stumbled, my feet stalling. “Matt,” I whispered. I had begun to turn toward the voices when Miv yowled for me to keep moving. Gritting my teeth, I obeyed. Hold on, Matt. I promise I’ll come back for you.

The combined voices grew louder with each word. The tunnel began to rumble around us. “Stay with me,” the bridge spirit called. “Stay with me! Stay with me!”

The ground shook. I gasped as a stone tusk broke from the ceiling and impaled the exact spot where I’d been about to step. For a second, I could only stare at it, shocked at how close I’d come to losing my foot.

Then Miv detached himself from my cloak and shouted, “Keep going!”

Zhong grabbed my arm, and we started to run. More tusks fell, nearly spearing us.

“Come back!” wailed the bridge spirit. “Come back right now!”

I gasped as a tusk caught the tail of my cloak. It pinned the cloth to the ground like a thumbnail through paper, jerking me backward. For a heartbeat, I thought about throwing off the cloak and leaving it behind. But I couldn’t—my mom had made it for me. So I bunched my fingers around the cloth and ripped it free. The tearing sound was swallowed by the rumble of rocks and earth.

Soon, we reached the plain stone walls of the tunnel, and the bridge spirit’s voice faded. All around us, the earth went still.

With a deep breath, I collapsed against the wall. My hands trembled. I buried them in the cloak.

“Well,” Zhong said. She sounded unsteady, too. “At least we know where to find her once we’ve got that ax.”

I nodded. My stomach wanted to heave at the idea of my brother’s spirit stuck down here with her. But I couldn’t face her yet. If I tried, we would all die, and that wasn’t going to help anyone. “I’m ready to get out of here. Come on.”

We traveled the rest of the way back to the fork in silence, all of us caught up in our own dark thoughts.

“Please let this one lead us out,” I said as we squeezed single file into the smaller tunnel.

Within minutes, I knew we were on the right path. The roots over our heads grew thicker, crawling down the walls. They reminded me of snakes, but they were a lot better than sharp elephant tusks. After some time, the ground began to slope upward.

At last, light glimmered ahead. Even though I was exhausted, I picked up my pace.

“Finally,” Zhong murmured. “I’m pretty sure we’ve made it to the Spirit Realm.”

The sun had just set and was now only a distant golden glow. Still, the last light of day shining through the exit felt glorious. The opening was only wide enough for one of us to crawl through at a time, so Miv went first, then Zhong. I climbed out last onto thick green grass. We’d emerged at the edge of a lush forest, which explained why there’d been so many roots underground.

I shut my eyes and drew in a deep, calming breath. We’d escaped the tunnels, and now that we were safe, we could plan our next steps toward rescuing my brother.

Just as I was about to exhale, Zhong slapped her hand over my mouth. I tried to push her away—we both really needed a bar of soap—but her grip only tightened. Then she whirled me around and pointed.

It was a good thing she had me muffled; otherwise, when I saw what she was motioning to, I would have screamed.