He stole a single drop of blood from her every morning.

But this morning, Matiko didn’t take one drop of blood. He took two.

Kita tensed as he pushed her hair aside and pierced the base of her neck with the sharpened bone of a sea bird. Not once, but twice.

She bit back a scream. Though she wanted to stick out her foot and send him sprawling in his belt of paka leaves, she resisted. Instead, she stayed as still as she could and listened to the shush-shush of his slippers on the grass mats as he left her room. When she was younger, she’d fought him...and suffered for it. Now, a grown woman of sixteen, she knew better. She knew his power, that he could hold her with unseen hands. One time, he’d even stolen her breath, so she clenched her teeth and let the scream fill her up on the inside.

As she stared out her open door, Matiko disappeared into the room where he worked his terrible black magic and slid the panel shut. Soon she heard his ugly chanting.

He’d taken two drops today. Two. When would he take three, then four...

And on what day would he decide he wanted it all?

Her body began to tremble and she couldn’t seem to get it to stop. She’d always been afraid of him, but...but she’d never thought he’d kill her, not as long as she stayed with him. Now she wasn’t so sure. It was just one more drop of blood, she told herself. But it changed everything. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she was dreaming, but knowing she wasn’t. If only the village could see Matiko for who he really was. He wasn’t a good medicine man. He was evil, a sorcerer who inflicted wasting diseases on his enemies. His eyes flashed fire. His voice cracked against the head like a club. His heart was as hard and empty as a dead man’s skull. He was bones and blood and awful chants. He wanted everything—and all for himself. But they couldn’t see that. He cast a spell over them and they were blind, seeing only what he wanted them to see.

Kita wanted him gone. Gone, as in dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Forever dead.

Never to come back and bother the living dead.

Dead.

But if he couldn’t be dead, she wished she could fly away.

With a sigh, she pried her fingernails from her palms and crawled to her feet. When she slid open the carved wooden screen that covered her window, the early morning light spilled over her. She stuck her nose outside and breathed in the salty scent of the sea. Today there was no smell of rotting fish, only the faint hint of seaweed. The sky above the island was bright. She frowned, wondering how the spirits could let it be so bright, so impossibly blue, while Matiko was chanting in his secret room. In the distance, Mount Tul stood smoking against the horizon, so perhaps the spirit of the mountain objected to the sound of evil.... She peered at the forest around the mountain’s waist, which formed a belt of the deepest darkest green, as if to give a warning: stay away. Maybe someday, if she was brave enough, she’d run there and hide. And Matiko would never ever find her.

She sighed, knowing it was an impossible dream.

Matiko’s magic would snap around her so quickly she’d never have a chance to take a single breath.