That Which Feeds Us: Chapters 8–13

She didn’t know what situation she’d gotten mired in, but she needed to move smarter with the guests if she was going to find out anything about why Ohia left.

There was a furtive look in his sunken eyes, full of undisguised scorn; and his gaze followed her over the rim of his glass topped with a twisted fruit peel.

Crimped waves hung around her pale face, pert mouth, and azure eyes, floating like windblown dandelion seeds.

Oliver gave her a lazy perusal, and Lehua bristled.

If it were any other night or place, Lehua would’ve closed the distance, Sacha’s cloying perfume leading them to her room, their mouths melting together.

Lehua hesitated, taking in Melia and her disarming ease.

She just swung rhythmically, sliding the hooked blade of her cane knife through the stalks, singing sotto voce: “Isogu pau hana / Mibi no ha ga karamu / Korobya mi o sasu / Kibi no iga.”

Oliver lowered his camera and offered her a wry smile.

There was something provocative about the photo, what Oliver was saying, and how close he was.

Lehua had tilted her head back, trying to ease the sour taste coating her throat, when she saw a figure on the spiral staircase, limned in darkness.

“After his fields spoiled for the first time, Horace stopped hiring servants for the house to save money and retrenched his staff.”

His wrinkled face was gaunt and solemn, his light-colored eyes shockingly white against the photograph’s backdrop, and his mouth was like a wizened fruit peel.

You don’t believe that, do you? she almost asked, but Melia’s belief shone in her tawny eyes like amber in petrified wood, and Lehua remembered the man on the stairs and how his gaze had shone, piercing the dusty gloom of the house.

“Our ancestors hid their families’ remains to prevent desecration, so when developers break ground to build more hotels and high rises, they sometimes uncover bones in old caves and sand dunes.”

The quarters were tidy and practically empty, but unlike the grandeur of the beautiful hotel up the hill, mold crept down the walls like ink and the lightbulbs hung from the ceiling on twine.