My name is Ma Jiu. I put makeup on the dead at a funeral home.
As my father lay dying, he clutched my hand and left me with just one sentence: After midnight, don't answer calls from strangers.
Seven years later, at midnight, that call with no caller ID rang.
"Ma Jiu, welcome to Return of the Evil Spirit. There are three rules to the game."
A mirror as tall as a person appeared out of nowhere in the mortuary. The corpse beneath the white sheet began to breathe, and I gripped the heavily rusted copper coin my father had left behind. For the first time, I learned that the Ma family of the north and the Mao Mountain sect of the south had been bound by a blood feud for three generations. My family's blood could subdue ghosts, but we also owed Mao Mountain a debt that could only be repaid with our lives.
Worse still, the one who sealed away the spirit enshrined by my family was none other than my father. Until his dying breath, he kept repeating: Don't let yourself follow the same path I did.
But that night, I had no other way to survive.
