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  For Paula, my mana and my aloha.

  A Glossary of Select Hawaiian Words and Phrases

  ’Awa – Hawai’ian name for the kava plant, the roots of which are used to make a drink with anesthetic and euphoriant properties

  Akua – A singular god or goddess (plural: nā akua)

  Ali‘i – The hereditary line of rulers; a king

  Aloha – Hello; goodbye; love and affection; the breath of life

  E kala mai ia’u – “I’m sorry.”

  Haole – Someone from the mainland United States, often interchangeable with “white person,” sometimes derogatory

  He akuahanai ka rama – “Rum is a poisonous god.”

  He mea ‘ole – “You’re welcome”; “Don’t mention it” (also: He mea iki)

  Ho‘okupu – A gift given in exchange for spiritual energy; can refer to the intention behind the gift as well

  Huaka’i pō – The Night Marchers, a legendary tribe of ghosts who were once ancient Hawaiian warriors who now roam the islands, searching for a way into the next life

  Hûpô – Ignorant or foolish; unintelligent

  Kö aloha lä ‘ea, kö aloha lä ‘ea – “Keep your love, keep your love.”

  Kohola – A whale

  Kupua – A group of trickster demigods

  Kupuna – A title of respect for a grandparent or an elder

  Mahalo – “Thank you.”

  Mahalo nui loa – “Thank you very much.”

  Mahina – The moon

  Makuakāne - Father

  Mana – Spiritual energy; a healing power

  Mo’o – Mythical shape-shifting lizards that are extremely powerful and can change their appearance at will; sometimes depicted as dragons

  Mo’olelo – A story or legend

  Mujina – In Japanese folklore, a badger demon, sometimes presented as a faceless ghost (or a “noppera-bō”); mujina sightings have been reported in Hawai’i since the 1950s

  ‘Ohana – Family; a notion often extended beyond blood relatives

  Pali – A cliff (plural: nā pali)

  Pelapela – Filthy; dirty (slang)

  Pili – A long, coarse Hawaiian grass

  Pua’a – A pig or boar

  Shaka – A hand gesture that means “hang loose,” which is formed by closing one’s fist and extending the thumb and the pinky finger (slang)

  Tūtū – A title of respect for a grandparent or an elder

  Chapter 1

  Grayson had been drunk before, but never in Hawai’i.

  It was a good place to be drunk—a very good place…much better than his hometown of St. Louis, in fact, because even though St. Louis was a perfectly respectable place to overindulge, Missouri didn’t smell like pineapple and plumeria blossoms, while Hawai’i most certainly did. The ever-present and heady aroma in the salty ocean air added a certain dizzying je ne sais quoi to Gray’s whole situation, making it depressing but invigorating instead of just plain old depressing.

  “I am going to bottle this smell,” Gray decided out loud, proclaiming it to the palm trees as they swayed delicately in the midnight breeze, “and I am going to get so, so rich.”

  Maui was breathtaking, and Gray wondered why he’d never visited Hawai’i before. He’d been to all sorts of exotic vacation islands in his life, but not a single one of them approached the incredible beauty of this Maui night. His resort sprawled along a quiet beach, and the view from his spot on the hotel’s expansive deck was snipped straight out of a postcard. The moon hovered in a Navy blue sky, floating high above the sloping, hulking form of the island Lāna’i that rose from the water on the horizon, solemn and peaceful and shaded dark gray by the night. Perfectly haphazard palm trees framed the image, lit from below by the resort’s gentle lights, and the aqua glow of the meandering hotel pool only served to make the ocean more stunning in its variegated ultramarine, with a rippling white ribbon of light trailing the moon and splashing quietly onto the sandy beach.

  “Come find me in Maui,” Gray whispered, imagining the postcard headline unfurling in delicate white script across the corner of the scene. Then he cried a little bit, even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t, because it was all just so stupid and sad.

  “Here’s to you, moon,” he said, hoisting his half-empty Mai Tai to the sky and giving the ice a little shake. “La luna,” he added, in case the moon spoke Spanish.

  There was a slice of pineapple squeezed onto the rim of the cup, and he pushed it to the side with his tongue, then managed to get his mouth around the straw on only the third try. The ice was well on its way past the point of melting, and his Mai Tai was now more water than rum. Gray made a sour face, then gave up on the straw and drank the rest down the old-fashioned way. He’d tossed out the last three Mai Tais when they’d gotten watery like this, but now he was drunk, and water was important at this stage; his instincts told him so…or maybe it wasn’t his instincts but the ever-present voice of his older sister, who was never game for letting Gray have too much fun, but maybe she wasn’t wrong, and water was a good thing, and he drank it down now, and so this rum-water was saving his life, and he needed it, and besides, the quicker he drank it, the quicker he could order another round, and he sensed he wasn’t too many more little pineapple slices away from forgetting the thing he’d been foolish enough to think he could get away from here, in this place, on his own, without her.

  “I...should slow down,” he said, as his thoughts railroaded themselves off the tracks of his mind. Then he waved his arms to catch the attention of the pool bartender below, raised the glass, and rattled the ice to signal for another. The bartender frowned and made a big show of looking at his watch, which was sort of insulting, really, because Gray knew the bar didn’t close for another twenty minutes, and hadn’t he left that ungrateful jerk fifteen dollars in tips already that night? He shook his glass harder, and the bartender frowned harder, then Gray frowned as hard as he could, then the bartender frowned as hard as he could, but in the end, there could be only one victor, and the bartender, with no other real option, caved. He gave Gray an annoyed little wave of acquiescence and went to work fixing another rummy delight.

  “I am the master of my glass,” Gray said proudly, admiring the moon through the curved sides of his cup, “and I will not be denied.”

  He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the deck’s slim iron railing. The breeze stiffened, and he closed his eyes as the salty pineapple-and-plumeria wind rushed against his skin. This is good, he thought. This is what forgetting smells like. And he wondered if it was true.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Gray was so startled by the sound of another voice that he squeezed his glass right out of his own hands. He grasped for it as it bobbled for a few seconds, but the glass was sweating, and his hands were clumsy, and ultimately it went spinning out of reach, its wet, sickly ice raining down on a pair of midnight lovers strolling along the pool below. The woman shrieked; the man brushed off his shirt and scowled up at the drunk guy above. Gray just shrugged and smiled a bit, and he hoped it was enough.

  The new voice at his side laughed. It was a sweet laugh, cheerful and easy and decidedly female. When she spoke, the sound was fine crystal in the moonlight: “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. I was done with that one,” Gray said, working hard to keep the slur out
of his voice. “I threw it over on purpose.” He stared straight ahead at the ocean, focusing on the thin white lines that appeared along the tops of the cresting waves in the deep blue darkness. This was something else he was determined to do: avoid all women for the entire trip, and maybe for the rest of his life. He wasn’t doing a very good job of it so far. He’d spoken to three female flight attendants, a female car rental agent, a female check-in employee, and two female housekeepers since leaving St. Louis. But, hey—it was never too late to start doing better. So he kept staring at the waves and not at the woman who had sidled up next to him, and who smelled like vanilla and coconut oil and…something else he couldn’t place. But it made his toes tingle in the strangest and most extraordinary way.

  “It makes you wonder why they ever bothered inventing trash cans.” She had a soft Hawai’ian lilt, which made each word sound painfully hand-crafted.

  “I’ve never used one in my life,” he replied.

  “Are you here with the insurance group?” she asked.

  Gray’s elbows slipped on the railing, and his arms shot forward, slamming his armpits down on the iron edge. He grunted and tried to roll with it, spreading his arms and pressing his chest against the rail. “The who-what?” he asked.

  He refused to look at her, but from the corner of his eye, he saw a sun-kissed arm reach up and point over at a group of middle-aged men on the pool deck below. They all wore polos tucked into khakis that were held up by glaringly black belts, and each one was trying his best to laugh louder than the others. “Oof. No,” he soured.

  “No, I didn’t think so,” the voice said, honey dripping down its crystal edges. “You don’t have the insurance look.”

  Gray snorted. “What look do I have?”

  “Hmmm.” The woman twirled around and propped her elbows against the railing. “If I had to guess, I’d say...part-time vagrant.”

  Gray laughed, a loud explosion of scorn and amusement wrapped up into one big bundle of noise. “It’s an option,” he admitted. “I might stay in Hawai’i and never work again and be homeless and catch fish by hand and light some fires and be king of the sea.” His words were actually making a surprising amount of sense, all things considered, and he mentally congratulated himself.

  He swore he could hear the woman smile. “So,” she said. “Can I ask what you are looking at?”

  Gray raised an eyebrow at the ocean. “Looking at?” he said.

  “Well, we’re talking, but you’re not looking at me, so you must be looking at something worthwhile.”

  Gray bit his bottom lip and resolved to just stop talking.

  It worked for several seconds, until the woman prodded, “Are you not?”

  Why couldn’t anything be easy? Gray sighed. “I am looking at something, and that something is…nothing.”

  “You’re looking at nothing?”

  “Correct.”

  “And that nothing is better than looking at, say…the waves crashing on the beach? Or the moon? Or me?” Gray could sense her moving closer. He cleared his throat and focused even harder on nothing at all. “Or maybe,” the woman continued, because she was obviously a terrible brute who refused to take a hint, “at this kind-looking man who is offering you a drink?”

  “What?” Gray said with a start. He jerked up from the deck railing and became suddenly aware of the bartender from the deck below, who had brought his fresh Mai Tai up to the deck and was impatiently shoving it into Gray’s chest. “Oh! Thank you. This is...okay, this is great.” He took the drink in both hands and cradled it gently to his mouth. He sipped. Then he spat. “Did you put any rum in this at all?!” he cried, but the bartender, who was already retreating back down to the pool bar, gave a curt flick of his hand, and their conversation was apparently done. Gray guffawed as hard as he could. “Well,” he said, in his most affronted voice, “how do you like that? I just charged my room for the world’s most expensive pineapple juice.”

  “You know, the Mai Tai was originally made with lime juice,” the woman said.

  Gray buried his face in his hand. “Oh, come on,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “It’s just...it’s very, very hard to not look at you when you say such attractive things.”

  The woman coughed. “You’re...attracted to lime juice?”

  “What? That is…that is not what I meant at all!” Gray closed his eyes and finally turned to face his companion. “Cocktail knowledge is an excruciatingly attractive trait, and I’m sure you know that absolutely completely.” He let his eyes open slowly, and the second he saw her, his heart sank.

  Because of course this woman was exotic.

  Of course this woman was entrancing.

  Of course this woman, whom he shouldn’t even have looked at in the first place, was more beautiful than even the moon, now slowly sinking toward Lāna’i and dazzling the ocean with its elegance and charm.

  “Are you a witch?” he heard himself whisper.

  The woman laughed, a symphony of wind chimes in the warm summer breeze. She shook out her long, black hair; it cascaded down the back of her red silk floral dress, which clung gently to the curves of her, with a long tail fluttering out behind her in the wind, a flag marking the place where the proud form of female perfection stood. She wore a large flower tucked behind her ear, one unlike any Gray had ever seen. Instead of petals, the blossom bore a fist of deep red spikes, which made it look more like a sea urchin than a flower, aside from the dark green stem that anchored it in her hair. But even the color of the prickly red spires paled in comparison to her pomegranate lips, and her dark, acorn eyes blazed in the moonlight. “Not that I am aware of,” she confided, leaning in close, “though to be honest, I would be surprised if you found any witches here at all. They aren’t really a Hawai’ian thing.”

  Gray blinked. Then he blinked again. “You’re so beautiful, I hate it,” he said.

  The woman coughed hard, like she was choking on something, and for a second, Gray thought maybe he’d killed her with his awkwardness. But she pressed her brown hand to her chest and cleared her delicate throat, and the fit passed. “I guess I will take that as a compliment,” she said with a smile that must have made even la luna dizzy with its gentle grace.

  “I meant it as one,” Gray sighed, disappointed. He’d hoped she’d be wrecked, unsightly, ruined, scarred—maybe a disfigured burn victim or a horribly malformed abomination of natural cause. But instead, she was flawless in a way that redefined the word in his brain, and he was all the more depressed for it.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  He took a long sip from his Mai Tai. He thought about going to bed.

  “Well, it’s an incredibly nice thing to say, even if it causes you such discomfort,” she said, and Gray swore he saw a slight blush bloom to life beneath her cheeks…but her Hawai’ian skin was so perfectly chestnut, it was impossible to tell. “Especially if it causes you such discomfort,” she corrected herself, and Gray decided to maybe just throw himself over the deck because he wasn’t sure he could handle such sweetness from a beautiful, mysterious, suddenly-materializing woman. She had apparated out of nowhere, and just like that, his heart was spinning again, reeling off a course that had already sent it hurtling out in the wrong direction, and was “apparate” even a real word, or did J. K. Rowling just invent it and make him believe it was an acceptable thing to think?

  Life was hard when the rum was flowing, and at that moment, Gray knew it better than anyone.

  “It’s not you,” he said sadly, resuming his slumped perch on the railing of the patio and running his thumb against the sweating glass. “It is infinitely me.”

  The woman nodded slowly and tapped her fingers against the railing. “So,” she said. Gray wondered desperately what it would take to just make her go away. “You’re a part-time vagrant
and a full-time romantic. What brings you to Kā’anapali?”

  “What…is Kā’anapali?” asked Gray. He was certain that he’d seen the moniker on a Google Map or two but he’d disregarded it in the interest of the much-easier-to-pinpoint “Maui.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “This beach?” she said. Something about her tone suggested that she might suspect Gray of being not just a drunken fool, but a habitual drunken fool. “The beach that we’re looking at right now?”

  “Oh.” Gray shuffled his feet and sipped casually from his drink. “That Kā’anapali.”

  “Yes.” The woman smiled again. “What brings you to that Kā’anapali?”

  Gray sighed. His head drooped down between his elbows, and he turned the Mai Tai around nervously between his hands. “Honestly?” he said, his voice muffled by the railing.

  The woman gave another laugh. “I don’t see why not,” she said, and it was such a sincere way of phrasing things that Gray just wanted to die.

  He took a deep breath and thought maybe if he just held it in, he could quietly asphyxiate here on the patio, and that would be all right. But physiology kicked in a few seconds later, and he exhaled. “I’m on my honeymoon.”