I flinch back, my foot cracking a twig, and they turn to us with hungry eyes. Nons pulls me away, toward a path blanketed with wet leaves and fallen branches. A chill runs along my arms as I turn back to see if they’re following us, but their attention’s back on the car.

This parking lot reminds me of the one in Not Another Girl of Ice, and if I squint I can pretend I see Mama walking into the forest, bloodstained.

“What’s that?” Noni whispers, pointing at something flashing red behind the trees. I bound forward and find a huge sign that reads, BABA YUKI’S FOREST HUT: FLOWERS, FORTUNES, LEGEND BOOKS, MAPS, FOREST GUIDES, AND MORE.

“Thank fuck,” I exhale, as we round the bend, arm in arm again.

The house is a run-down cabin eaten by vines—a shabbier version of the one we played in as kids. Gnomelike cartoon characters with evil-looking faces dot the garden, alongside posters reading, I WENT TO DELIRIUM FOREST AND ALL I CAME HOME WITH WAS MY LIFE. Noni clenches her jaw.

Phantom piano music mushrooms as we approach the door. We knock on the creaking wood—it’s open just an inch. A whiff of the potent combination of rose and musk pushes through the crack, and when I open it wide, plumes of incense envelope us. Nons starts coughing. Inside, it’s a black boudoir, a Gothic burlesque haven. Moody piano music bursts from speakers hidden in the walls. The room could have been a still life painting, a study of the darkest, most sinister color, but then a slice of the panorama quivers. Light glints off a commanding figure wrapped in black silk and draped across a long chair in a far corner of the room. A thick white paste is smeared on her face (reminding me of a K-Beauty ghost mask I have), encircling closed eyes doused in glittery black eye makeup. Yes, queen. All about that midday masking lunch break, I think, shivering with adrenaline.

“Well, don’t just leave the door open,” the figure says, in a deep drawl. The lids rise, irritation wrinkling the brow. Her bone structure is surreal, maybe (okay, probably), the product of extensive plastic surgery: an underlying jaggedness defines her potent beauty, an incongruous texture here, an unnatural angle there. She’s breathing art, blurring the line between the human and the otherworldly. Baba Yuki’s eyes—because it could only be her—flicker over us with only the mildest curiosity, as her long, matte black fingernails, filed into points, scrape the velvet seat.

“Let me guess. Tentative young lovers, eager to find out whether your dream of love should be a reality.” Fine bones act as tent poles for her skin, staking out a smile as she chuckles drily.

“Not quite,” I say.