In the hollow below, an areito let loose in full rhythm. People stamped out a dance in lines of men or of women. Revelers stared as we descended into the hollow. A few offered drink or food as if to see if we were solid. I tested several smiles, trying to seem friendly and harmless. We made our way around the edge beneath the gleam of gas lamps. The hollow had once been a cavern, but its roof had long since collapsed. We struggled through the crowded celebration. I grabbed hold of Rory’s jacket and tugged him to a halt as I searched for a route up the other side.

Away across the crowd, I saw the man wearing a terribly dashing dash jacket in a gold-and-orange brick pattern. He smiled in that aggravating way that made my heart melt, the way he’d smiled when he had said, “How could you not want me, Catherine?”

My limbs turned to stone as he arrowed toward me. Even when a surge of laughing people cut off my view, freeing me from the chain that linked our gazes, I could not move.

Then there he was, standing right in front of me, looking exactly like Vai except that he was not wearing shoes or even sandals. The bare feet were a dead giveaway.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

11

“Rory, is that our sire?” I asked.

“Our sire?” Rory took several deep sniffs. All I could smell was the bloom of ripe guava and a whiff of tobacco. “No. That’s not his smell. It couldn’t be him anyway. Our sire can only cross into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night.”

The opia’s lips quirked up. “Yee’s caused a deal of trouble for me, gal. I know what yee carry in that basket. I shall make it worth yee while if yee don’ deliver the head of the cacica to the Honored Caonabo, he who is now cacique over all the Taino people.”

“Caonabo is cacique already?”

“This is his coronation areito, here and everywhere in Taino land.”

“But I promised I would deliver her head to her son.”

“So yee shall. Yee shall deliver her head to Haübey, not to Caonabo.”

“Haübey was exiled after he was bitten by a salter. He can never return to the Taino kingdom.”

“Yee don’ know everything.” He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. Cursedly, he felt exactly like Vai as he murmured in my ear, “Nevertheless, I’s willing to make yee a deal. For ’tis certain Haübey is gone over the ocean where I cannot reach him.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

“How long ago did the general and his army leave?” I cried with alarm. “How long have we been in the spirit world?”

“The reckoning of days and months mean little enough to me.”

“Cat,” said Rory.