Chapter 2

The investigation lasted three weeks. Three weeks of sweating through my shirts. Three weeks of chasing shadows in the Bamboo Sea.

The forest was a nightmare of vertical lines. The bamboo grew so thick it blocked out the sun, creating a perpetual twilight of green shadows. The air inside was ten degrees cooler but infinitely more oppressive. It felt like being inside a lung.

I found traces. Fur snagged on bark. Scat filled with bone fragments. Massive claw marks gouged into the earth.

But every time I got close, the trail vanished.

I sat in the corner of Old Mrs. Zhang’s noodle shop, nursing a bowl of *Dan Dan* noodles that were spicy enough to numb my lips. It was the only place in the village with a fan.

"Mind if I join?"

Lang slid into the plastic chair opposite me before I could refuse. He was wearing a loose tank top and shorts today, his feet bare and dusty. He smelled of peaches and rain.

"I am working," I said, staring at my notebook.

"You are sulking," Lang corrected. He signaled Mrs. Zhang for a beer. "You haven't caught him yet."

"It is a cunning creature," I said. "Demons usually are."

"Demons," Lang mused, popping the tab on his beer. "You use that word for everything. A wolf eats a sheep because its belly aches. Is that evil? Or is it just nature?"

"It is a disruption of order," I recited the Codex. "The human realm is for humans. When the wild encroaches, it must be pruned. If we allow chaos to take root, the garden dies."

"You talk like a textbook," Lang leaned across the sticky table. His knee brushed mine. I flinched, pulling back as if I’d been burned. The contact sent a jolt of electricity up my thigh that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the repression I had cultivated for twenty-four years.

Lang noticed. His eyes crinkled. "You're shaking, Wei."

"It's the chili," I lied.

"It's the heat," he murmured. "You're trapped in that stiff shirt, in that stiff mind. You think if you let go for one second, the darkness will get in."

"The darkness *is* waiting," I snapped. "You don't know what I deal with. You pick fruit. I hold back the night."

Lang stopped smiling. He took a long sip of beer, his throat working. "Maybe the night doesn't want to be held back. Maybe it just wants to coexist."

"There is no coexistence with monsters," I said softly. "There is only the hunter and the hunted."

Lang stared at me for a long time. The playfulness was gone, replaced by a sorrow that looked ancient.

"Then you better run faster, Hunter," he said quietly. "Because the Ghost Festival is coming. And the veil is getting thin."

He stood up and left. He didn't pay for his beer. I paid for it. I told myself it was charity. I told myself I wasn't captivated by the way his shoulder blades moved under his skin.

I went back to the bamboo that night. I found fresh tracks. I followed them deeper than I had ever gone, up the slopes of Mount Emei.

I heard the snap of a twig.

I spun around, my peach-wood sword drawn.

"Show yourself!" I commanded.

Silence. Then, a low chuckle echoed from the canopy.

*Go home, Wei. The storm is coming.*

It was Lang’s voice, but it didn't come from a human throat. It came from everywhere at once.

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