Aidan laughed along, shaking his shoulders to the music, until he noticed Ms. Cook watching with her arms folded and her body stiff. When he looked at her, he got a chill, like she was a black hole, sucking energy. If she hated all this so much, why was she here?

  The first band finished, and a gaggle of loose masqueraders came running toward the play area. Aidan braced for their arrival. Fortunately, his cousins were more than ready.

  A sparkly blue-and-white rain cloud with streamers of metallic rain falling from her arms was the first to come up to the table.

  “Is this candy?” she asked.

  “Sure is,” Brooke said. “What do you like?”

  She put her finger on her mouth as she considered. “All of it.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Brooke said. “But what would you like right now?”

  “Maybe you want to be a real cloud and drift in the sky,” Misty suggested.

  The girl smiled.

  Misty handed her one of the sticks of cotton candy. When the girl bit into it, she lifted a little off the ground. “Check you out,” Misty said. “Flying!”

  The girl flapped her arms and lifted a couple more inches off the ground. “I’m a real cloud!”

  “Ooh, don’t get me wet!” Misty said.

  The cloud giggled. When she settled back on the ground, she took another bite and went up again.

  The next kid was a small red-yellow-and-black something that might have been a snake before he’d torn off bits of the costume. There was a trail of color behind him from the candy table all the way to the entrance.

  “Hello,” Aidan said.

  The little snake looked sweaty.

  “Are you hot?” he asked. “How would you like to cool down?”

  The snake wiped his face with the back of his hand, and red, yellow, and brown scales smeared on his cheek.

  Aidan handed him a sparkly, sugarcoated tamarind ball. As the boy bit into it, he shivered. Crystals formed all over him, like he’d been dusted with frost. He shivered again, and they shook off his body in a shower of sparkles.

  “Try running,” Misty said. “I bet you’ll look like a comet.”

  He moved his feet, shaking off more crystals. “Oh yeah!” he said. “What if I jump?”

  “Try it!” Aidan said.

  The boy crouched down and jumped up. Sparkles fell off his body and bounced on the ground. “They have magic candy here!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  A few parents looked over and smiled in that way that adults do when they think kids are pretending.

  “The parents have got to notice something’s up, right?” Aidan said to Aunty Kamala.

  She winked. “I took some extra precautions.” She nodded at bowls of complimentary khurma that the parents were digging into. Aidan guessed it would work a lot like the cookies she’d given away at the courthouse after the town hall meeting.

  “Can your food make teachers not notice things, too?” he asked.

  Aunty Kamala looked at him with one eyebrow arched all the way up.

  As soon as the kids realized what the aziza candies could do, they kept coming back to try different ones.

  The sugar cake made them fast and sent them zooming around the area. Toolum made their voices deep. The little petal candies gave them coats of soft flowers so they looked like walking bouquets.

  “How come carnival was never like this for me?” Misty asked.

  “It was,” Aunty Kamala said. “You just don’t remember. And they won’t, either.”

  “Seems unfair,” Misty said.

  “Very,” Brooke said.

  “It has to be that way, to protect us,” Aunty Kamala said. “But their memories can be revived if they need them.”

  As the candy’s effects wore off and parents came to pick up the kids from Aidan’s dad, there was a lot of “I don’t know how you do all this every year! It’s amazing how he always thinks he’s running as fast as lightning.” And “Oh, so you roared like a lion, huh? Let me hear the biggest roar you have!”

  The park was littered with pieces of costume that had fallen off as kids played and candy wrappers that hadn’t quite made it into garbage cans.

  The last band of masqueraders was finishing up. It was almost time for the calypso competition. As Aidan suspected, he didn’t feel any better than he had when he’d woken up that morning.

  “You can always skip it,” Brooke said.

  Aidan shook his head.

  Aunty Kamala frowned. “Your cousin is right. There’s always next year.”

  “He wants to do it,” Misty said. “Don’t you, Aidan? He’s worked hard on his calypso.”

  The way Misty smiled at him, Aidan realized that she’d heard him practice. And she seemed to like the new calypso. He supposed a lot of what he was feeling was just nerves. Maybe he really could get up there and sing his heart out. But as he looked at her, her smile faded, and her eyes went vacant.

  “Misty?” He put his hand on her shoulder and felt a small electrical charge go through him to her. But it didn’t seem to make any difference in the way she looked. He closed his eyes and tried again.

  Misty’s face relaxed a little, but she still seemed a bit paler than usual. “Thanks,” she said.

  At the same time, Aidan felt a change in the air. His ears popped, and all the sounds around him dulled. It reminded him of the night before, the way the atmosphere had changed just before the storm.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked as a chill went through him.

  Misty took a jagged breath and nodded.

  “It’s going to happen again,” Aidan said. “The same storm.”

  Misty shook her head. “Not the same,” she said. “It’s going to be different this time.”

  “How do you know?” Aidan asked.

  “Because it’s been different every time,” Misty said. “Haven’t you noticed? It’s trying to—”

  Whatever else his cousin was going to say, she got cut off when she bent over and threw up.

  Misty

  Misty felt someone’s arms around her body and cold water splashing her face. She had no idea who was helping her. She wanted to tell them to run, but she couldn’t get any words out. A swarm of adorable little bees in sparkly yellow-and-black T-shirts and bobbing antennae surrounded her.

  “I sting you!” one bee said.

  Misty wanted to tell the bee to go and find their parent, but instead, she was pulled away. The bees formed a hive around the candy table. She tried to follow them, but everything was strange. She was looking at them, but she was also looking at herself. It was Aunty Kamala who was holding her, and Brooke who was spraying water in her face from a bottle. But how could Misty see that? She felt her body go numb, as if it wasn’t hers, as if she had no control over it, and saw herself hit the ground.

  “Oh no!”

  “What happened?”

  “She faint?”

  “Anybody here a doctor?”

  Finally, Misty managed to get out a few words. “It’s coming,” she whispered. “It’s coming.”

  “What is she talking about?”

  “What’s wrong with her eyes?”

  “Do you think it’s heatstroke?”

  “The thing…” Misty said. “It’s going to get all of us.”

  “What thing?” Aunty Kamala asked.

  Misty was still nauseated. It was odd, feeling herself where she was but seeing herself as if she were standing off in the distance. It made her dizzy and disoriented. She took a deep breath and tried to explain what she knew. What was happening to her was only the beginning. “The same thing from the museum last night.”

  “She’s delirious,” someone said.

  “That freak storm? Nah, that can’t happen again.”

  Misty cried, “Please listen!” But no one heard her.

  “Where did that wind come from?”

  From Misty’s other point of view, she saw the wind pick up all around the park. She saw the little bees’ antennae bounce in the current and the sparkles on their costumes catch the waning gray light. She even saw her own braids blow back from her face. “It’s here,” Misty said. “The creature.”

  The crowd reacted quickly to the sudden change in weather. Parents scooped up their toddlers. Older kids ran away laughing, thinking it was a game at first…until they saw the worry on the adults’ faces. Signs flew away. Tablecloths in the booths blew out like curtains. Dolls, instruments, accessories, and all the aziza candy tumbled into the dirt. The banner over the masquerade ground undulated like a dragon, and as it all went down, Misty stared with horror.

  Uncle Andrew picked up Misty and carried her. She watched him do it. Then she saw herself turning her head this way and that as she tried to figure out whose eyes she was observing the whole thing from.

  The effort brought on another wave of nausea, and she saw herself lurch in her uncle’s arms. He put her down while she threw up again.

  “Uncle Andrew,” she said, “it’s getting stronger.”

  “Okay, Misty, okay,” he said.

  Misty didn’t understand the physics of how she was seeing from a different perspective while all her other senses were inside her own body. It was like being torn apart, but without the pain you’d expect from that ordeal. All she knew was that she needed to get as far away from there as quickly as possible. Maybe once she was away, she would be inside her own head again. “We have to go.”

  “We’re going. We’re going!” Uncle Andrew said.

  She saw herself disappear behind the food truck and felt when Uncle Andrew lifted her into it. Misty tried to see from her own point of view, but she couldn’t break the connection between herself and whoever was using her. She tried to force the eyes to look around so she could identify where exactly she was seeing from, to look down so she could see who she was seeing from, but Misty was not in control of this viewpoint.

  What she did see was parents scrambling away with their kids, little ones crying as treats and balloons were whisked out of their hands by the wind, all the vendors frantically trying to retrieve and pack up their things, and the entire area being trashed by a whipping wind.

  The air wasn’t as vile smelling as it had been the night before, and this time it didn’t come with the rain that fell like saliva from a watering mouth. The gust was sharper and covered a wider area. It was almost like it was feeling out its own perimeters, seeing how far it could stretch.

  Then Misty’s vision zeroed in on a woman who was packing up her traditional dolls. Misty’s eyes zoomed in close enough to see the vendor’s face turn from worry to horror. Then she was staring right back toward Misty with a frozen expression of terror.

  Misty squeezed her lids shut and tried to shake the vision away, but no matter what she did, it was all she saw, whether her eyes were open or closed. She yelled, “Stop, stop, stop!” and shook her head again. But nothing changed.

  Eventually the woman’s eyes went blank, and she slumped to the ground. Then Misty’s sight shifted again. Whatever body Misty was occupying, it was now looking for someone else.

  The view panned over the scrambling crowd. It moved toward the children’s area, where Aunty Kamala, Brooke, and Aidan were dragging the aziza candies away on a wheeled cart.

  The eyes looked at Aunty Kamala, then at Brooke and Aidan, and kept bouncing from one to the other as if trying to decide who to attack next.

  Misty screamed.

  Aunty Kamala’s head went up when the sound reached her. But her searching eyes never locked on whoever or whatever Misty was seeing from.

  Invisible, Uncle Andrew had said. What if it was? The wind whipped up a little faster.

  What if it wasn’t a creature that caused strong winds? What if it was entirely made of wind?

  Of course Aunty Kamala couldn’t see it!

  Aunty Kamala called to Brooke and Aidan. They abandoned what they were carrying and ran faster.

  The wind creature followed a few paces behind, showing Misty everything it saw in real time. It seemed to move slowly as people rushed away, as if it had all the time in the world. It zeroed in on Aunty Kamala again. She turned and seemed to find the creature’s eyes. But Misty was the one looking directly at her.

  “Run, Aunty!” Misty yelled, but Kamala could not hear her. Misty didn’t have any control over what the creature said. She stared as her aunt’s face paled and then froze, terrified.

  Brooke pulled at Kamala, who finally tore her gaze away. They started to run again, slower this time. Aunty Kamala seemed unable to keep up with Misty’s cousins. The creature’s sight flashed to Brooke next. Misty got a sense of rising anger from the body she was possessing.

  Brooke stopped and turned to face their invisible pursuer. Aidan yanked his cousin along until she snapped out of it. Misty felt the creature’s anger sharpen like a lightning strike in the middle of a storm. This time its ire was directed at Aidan. It stopped him dead in his tracks and he turned, just like Brooke had a moment before. But unlike with Brooke, no one saw him stop.

  Misty felt the sensation of gulping, like she was pulling on a straw in long, slow drags. Aidan leaned into every pull of air. The creature’s vision focused entirely on Aidan’s face, as if there were nothing else in the world. Then, suddenly, Uncle Andrew appeared. He got between Aidan and whatever was sucking the life out of him. Uncle Andrew slipped Aidan under his arm and ran away with him as best as he could, catching up to Brooke and Aunty Kamala.

  The air was split by an angry roar.

  Bits of debris swirled above people’s heads. Micro tornadoes tore at everyone nearby, slowing their steps, but never stopping anyone completely. Misty felt rising exhaustion, and then the wind began to die down.

  She realized that the food truck was moving, bumping over the park’s uneven ground as it sped off with her body inside.

  She blinked, and her own vision returned to her slowly. Uncle Stanley had managed to maneuver the truck out of the area.

  Misty was chilled to the bone. But she was sweating at the same time, and even though she was back to seeing things from her own eyes, the nausea of being split between two bodies had not subsided. Plus, the memories of every face she had stared into when she was inside the creature would not leave her mind. Each victim had looked like their very life was being extracted from their body. There was nothing Misty could’ve done to stop it. She could only watch it happen.

  Swirling bits of street rubble smacked the side of the truck and hit the windshield as the wind continued to pick up. It roared, loud enough that they all cringed. A stone hit the passenger side window, making a circular web of cracked glass. Uncle Stanley gripped the wheel and put his whole body into driving.

  Misty had the feeling she was being watched, but not by anyone in the truck. Uncle Stanley’s and Aunty Trish’s attention was focused on where they were heading. But someone or something else was with her. Misty could feel it. A hot, damp, plaque-scented breath swirled around her. The scent got stronger and wetter and tighter, until her breath was slowly being squeezed out of her body. She tried to call for help but didn’t have enough strength to do it. Her vision began to dim at the edges, growing darker as she lost more oxygen. Misty felt lightheaded and unfocused. Her field of vision was a closing circle that ended in a pinpoint of light.

  Then she realized it wasn’t that her vision had narrowed down to a circle—it was that something was shutting around her and blocking out all the light. She was inside a closing mouth. She was being swallowed whole! It was just like Crawford had said. Misty had noticed that every time something happened, it got worse, and bigger. This wasn’t an accident. It was a calculation. The creature was trying to get a feel for the things and people in its path by spreading out farther each time. It was getting a taste for everything.

  Tasting for magic.

  Then the mouth closed, and Misty was gone.

  Aidan

  Aidan gasped. A moment before, he’d felt like he was being choked, but the sight of his dad had somehow clipped that feeling, allowing him to breathe again. He was sweaty, disoriented, and couldn’t get his bearings as he was carried under his father’s arm up a small grassy hill, heading for the street. Around them, people were running, and bits of leaves, dust, and torn-off costumes swirled in the air. He blinked at a bit of colorful fluff high up in a tree that seemed weirdly steady in the midst of the chaos.

  By the time they reached the road, the air had stopped whirling around them. Tornadoes, Aidan knew, could be very quick things, and plenty destructive. He found his equilibrium again, and his dad set him back on his feet. He followed his father, Brooke, and Aunty Kamala back to her car.

  Aidan’s head felt buzzy, like it had been squeezed in a vise and then released. When they got inside the car, he spotted the green Caribbean Bites truck up ahead.

  “Aunty, look!” Aidan said.

  “I see them,” Aunty Kamala said.

  She pulled out into traffic fast and cut around several knots of cars to get immediately behind the food truck.

  “We’ll follow them home.” She sounded relieved when she asked Aidan’s dad, “The storm is over, right?”

  He leaned a bit out the window and looked up at the sky. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Please let that be it,” she said.

  Aidan noticed how pale and quiet Brooke was. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded the slightest of nods.

  Brooke always had something to say. Always. If she couldn’t muster words, that was bad. Really bad.

  The wind outside the car picked up again.

  “Oh no,” Aidan’s dad said.

  “What is this nonsense?” Aunty Kamala wondered aloud. She stayed close behind the food truck.

 

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