A man pressed against the door. He had Vai’s face and he wore a magnificent dash jacket printed with fishes spilling out of gourds.

“We shall find a way in,” he said in a low, sweet voice. The scent of guava penetrated the glass separating us. I wanted to kiss him to taste the fruit, but I knew better. “Yee cannot escape us. We know yee killed her.”

The latch turned but caught because it was locked. The key shuddered in a gust of wind.

“You can’t come in,” I whispered.

It was impossible to stare into those brown eyes and not be drawn closer; his lips tempted me; his hands reminded me of the kind of work they could do. But he was not Vai. He was an opia, the spirit of a dead man.

“Open the door,” he whispered, “and yee shall have what yee so badly desire.”

The hot look in his eyes drowned me. Next thing I knew, my hand was touching the key. I jerked away my hand and fixed it around the hilt of my sword.

“Cat?” The drape rustled away from me.

I jolted back as Kofi joined me. He looked into the courtyard with its dense shadows and a night wind trawling through the branches of the ceiba tree. The nearest branches of the tree waved twenty strides or more from the glass-paned doors. Of branch, bat, or male figure I saw no sign, although a small frog hopped along the paving stones along the side of the building.

“I reckon yee shall step back from there,” Kofi said. “That tree have a powerful spirit.”

Shapes were climbing in the tree, some grappling up and some slipping down. The movement made me dizzy.

“Do you see them?” I whispered.

Instead of answering, Kofi pulled me back, let the drapes cover the view, and settled me on the blankets beside Luce. I dozed off.

A mosquito buzzed by my ear, and I kept swatting it away and it kept coming back, until I opened my eyes. Both Luce and Kofi slept soundly. But Rory was gone.

One of the glass doors was open, its key fallen to the floor.

With my ghost-sword in hand, I ran out into the courtyard. It was so late I heard not a breath of sound from anyone living.

The soporific aroma of overripe guava drenched the air. As on a gust of wind, a cloud of bats poured down over the roofs that surrounded the courtyard. Their tiny bodies battered me. I drew my sword out of the spirit world where the blade resided and slashed at them, but they darted past into the shadow of the ceiba tree. A hundred ratlike rodents were hauling Rory up the trunk of the ceiba tree, calling to each other with whistling chirps and chortling barks.

I sheathed my sword and ran back into the chamber.