A teen unwittingly unleashes a demon during a trip in Vietnam...
We’re thrilled to share the cover and preview an excerpt from Trang Thanh Tran’s The Summoning of Tess Pham—a new YA horror novel available February 2, 2027 from Bloomsbury YA.
An ancient demon. Three best friends. Six hours until dawn.
Tess Phạm has always been a mess, especially the year after her brother died. Depression, grief, and a secret crush on her best friend have made the last year feel like hell.
This trip to Vietnam will change everything. Tess’s family plans to bury her brother’s ashes in their grandmother’s remote village, and her best friends, Nell and Evie, have come along for moral support. Tess is sure this will bring closure to all her overwhelming feelings.
But when Tess’s ailing grandmother vanishes, the girls discover deadly secrets that have haunted this place ever since the war… and the demon in the forest that hunts for a new host. With six hours until dawn, they must break the ritual—or decide who among them will be sacrificed.
Chapter One
These woods are no more ghostly than anywhere else, but I keep expecting to see Anh Hai and his wide-cut smile. He loved this place, and his ashes are here. Spilled from our sister’s backpack miles ago and stamped deep into muck, but still. He doesn’t grin from between tendrils of vine or tell me to get up.
If he was going to come back, he’d have done it already.
The flashlight flickers, real party-in-the-jungle vibes. Something laughs in the dark, like acid fizzing from a battery. Cold leeches off my bones. I think about these mountains sucking them clean one day, but that’s me being self-centered.
The body next to mine has no breath anymore. My aching hand finds hers through the wet dirt. I’m so sorry. There’s no reply.
I turn my head and wait for sunrise while her gushing blood keeps me warm.
13 HOURS EARLIER
My mom named me after a saint, and everything’s been wrong ever since. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux has a basilica in France dedicated to her famously chill worship and I, Tess Phạm, have an eighteen-year-old body devoted to stress-induced abdominal problems. In the age of Oregon Trail, I’d be dead. In modern times, I’m headfirst puking into a planter after mistaking it for a bucket.
Rest in peace, Grandma’s cilantro.
Hands gently sweep my hair back as a heavy weight dislodges from my chest. The bumpy ride into the countryside did my weak-ass stomach no favors. From how the hold twists away and tugs at my scalp, I know it’s Evie. She doesn’t want to look. She hates vomit. When I finish the graceless act, she deposits two TUMS into my palm. “Tropical fruit can fuck off, right?” Evie smiles.
I pop the antacids into my mouth. They’re berry flavored, my favorite. “As I and other people of taste can attest, yes, it deserves to fuck off.” We cackle. It feels nice after the long car ride. As cell service blips in, my phone pings from a pocket, probably with a message from my boyfriend. I don’t check. This trip is for family and friends.
“I didn’t realize your bà ngoại lives this far out in the boonies,” says Evie. Her eyes are like sunlit stones in a stream. From college, Evie sends me pictures of things I can’t see. Every text seemed to say, This is the sky I’m under and I’m thinking of you. I wonder what she thinks now that we’re in the same place again and whether our friendship can outlast the new ones she must be making.
“Same, honestly. I was six when my family visited last time. I think I slept the whole way here,” I say. The city had been chaotic, its veins clogged with motorbikes and tourists. After spending time with family in Sài Gòn, Evie had flown up to meet us in Đà Nẵng. She’s well-adjusted and moisturized compared to everyone else’s twenty-four-hour-flight dead look. We gobbled bowls of mì Quảng before heading straight here, a contender for where to bury my brother. Gram had insisted, right before her health deteriorated.
A squat, one-story house assembled from clay in many shades of brown is in front of us. Encroaching trees cast shadows over most of the property. Its roof is a crooked hat, patched up one too many times. The windows are dark holes over which moss and lichen grow. Only the shutters are new, painted a lively green. Attached to the house is the temple with its own entrance, far grander than its residential half.
Nell rounds the parked van, blond hair neat in a high ponytail but cheek still red from sleeping mashed against a window. “Damn right we’re in the boonies. It’s not even on Google.” Without fanfare, she slips a small trash bag on as a surgeon might a glove and scoops vomit from the planter. The plant (again, cilantro? baby peppers?) shakes in the breezy aftermath, dark soil disturbed. Nell ties off the bag, squeezes a ginormous glob of hand sanitizer, and claps her hands together. “So, that’s taken care of! Anything else?” Nell makes her bed in the morning, which is how I’ve always known she’s a true psychopath. Evie has physically recoiled.
Cornelia Walsh, the queen of overcommitment, and Evie Dang, perfect angel—my best friends whom I adore to pieces for being here when they don’t need to be. My eyes flick toward the house, where inside my sister Đào and Auntie speak in grumbling tones, probably about our parents’ absence. Our plans are constantly changing. Last summer, when we meant to bury Anh Hai, I couldn’t keep my shit together. The entire trip was canceled. Now, right after Christmas—which had the cheapest flights and when both Evie and Nell are free from college schedules—we will try again.
After my family lay the dead to rest, this is supposed to be a best friends’ backpacking trip to take on the universe, just like old times. A two-month trip folded into three weeks, only north to southern Vietnam. The plan is to start near Hà Nội, then head downward. There are caves to explore in Phong Nha, lanterns to light in the Old City of Hội An, piping hot bún to slurp in Huế, flowers to sniff in Đà Lạt. Not far from here, central Vietnam’s jungles await us with all their natural beauty. I will go places where my Vietnamese mother has never been. My white friend will be places where my Vietnamese mother has never been. We were fulfilling a dumb promise made in middle school, probably after one of those camp days that ended in sheer exhilaration and exhaustion. Let’s climb all the mountains in the world together, when we’re old. Old isn’t eighteen or nineteen, but it may as well be. Only I lag behind. I missed prom and graduation, all the parties we wouldn’t have gone to anyway. They are freshman; I am an eighteen-year-old kid. They should be sleeping Christmas off at home. They are buying me time, reviving this promise. Neither of their parents are happy. At the cusp of disappearing, my friends have always brought me back.
How does the world keep moving? How can it be allowed to change after Anh Hai passed away in the first snatches of cold? October, my favorite month. No apple cider boiled on stovetops last or this year. No tags ripped off costumes and then mourned when we changed our minds. No sleepovers at all.
“Hey.” Evie touches my elbow, her brows soft over concerned brown eyes.
“Hi. Yes, I’m here.” I smile. The antidepressants deal with the worst symptoms but sometimes my mind floats away. There’s a loaded spring in my body. I know if I get back in to the dance studio, or even on my own, I’ll feel better. I can work off some of this anxiety, but I don’t deserve to. Before, Mom let me take dance lessons if I kept my grades up. These days, I’m lying around my bedroom wondering if my friends have replaced me with some easier-going girl. I have to find my rhythm again.
Nell charges on. “I think it’s time.” She pulls her backpack from the van and rummages around. A familiar swath of fabric is yanked out from the bottom. Underwear and deodorant spill on the ground.
“You were actually serious,” I deadpan as Nell shoulders on her Girl Scouts vest.
“One thousand percent yes, babes,” Nell says, her expression angelic as she tosses vests at us.
Evie pinches hers at the shoulders. “How’d you even get these?”
“Easy,” Nell replies. “I called your moms.” We make simultaneous noises of disgust, which makes Nell grin wider as she smooths her vest down. Dusty black singes the one spot left badge-less, where I once threw a flaming marshmallow at her. Over three years have passed since Evie and I wore ours at the ceremony bridging us from Junior to Cadette. Nell continued, earning a slew of Outdoors badges and Leadership pins. Nell actually would call our moms. She has no fears like that. She regularly attended Mass with her own mother, and accompanied mine too. She was everyone’s favorite white girl at the Vietnamese service. “Let’s kick the trip off with the Scout pledge.”
Laughing, we pull the khaki vests on. Instantly, I’m transformed into a cookie-cutter version of myself, a Pavlovian response through many years of American tradition. I can barely reconcile that I am in Vietnam, outside my grandmother’s house, under the watchful eyes of her gods.
“You guys are so extra.” My sister stands at the entryway, a cut of shadow until she shifts into sparse sunbeam on the stone steps. At twenty-four, Đào is the de facto leader of our newly adult statuses for an extended trip she knew she would hate. Short hair mussed in all kinds of directions, dark circles deepening just by looking at us, Đào is responsible for Mom’s role too until our parents get on another flight to Đà Nẵng.
I hug the flimsy fabric closer. “It’s tradition.” Đào knows this; she’d been a scout herself until it wasn’t cool anymore.
“Hey, D-ao,” Nell calls out. “Come join us.” All this time, and she’s still getting Đào’s name wrong. From her mouth, my sister is either dao (a knife) or đau (pain). Tonal marks get Viet American kids messed up too, but you can’t tell a white person that.
“Nah.”
“Please,” Evie says nicely.
“Seriously, sis,” I say. “Get in the circle or we’ll be here all day waiting.” Play stupid games, win stupid games, as she likes to remind me.
Sighing, Đào walks into our circle. Triumphant, Nell says, “We remixed the pledge.”
From my other side, Evie adds, “The original has too much to do with respect and authority.”
“Let’s hurry it up.” Đào pins a glance on me. “Auntie is waiting for Tess to greet her properly.” Though we’re the same height, she always tips her head back to look down at me. I squash the urge to shrivel up.
Our clammy hands clasp together. The raw skin under my rings burns but I don’t pull away. The three of us breathe in as the moment—full of birdsong, and swishing branches, and loud heartbeats—swells around us. In us. They are a balm for my hurts. Even with Đào there, it feels like we’re waiting for a school bus to pull up and take us to our next camping trip. It is us standing on a cliff top over water, stealing last breaths before a steep drop. Dancing in a fairy circle of our own making. Nothing matters but the words that spring from our lips.
I will do my best to be
An honest nightmare
Loyal and helpful
Aware and caring
Brave even when you’re wrong
Responsible for my mistakes
Use your toothbrush only if I’ve lost mine
Make the world a kinder place and—
Only this last bit we keep mostly the same: “Be a sister to every Scout.” We pull closer as if an incantation has been spoken, the world lost beyond the joining of our hands. As though I will never have to learn how to live without them too, one day. My phone pings again. I focus on the safety of these hands never letting me go. Evie holds on to me tight, body shifted my way.
I look into the eyes of the girl I love—my boyfriend’s twin.
So, there I am: the Saint of Mess.
Buy the Book
The Summoning of Tess Pham
Trang Thanh Tran is a New York Times and Indie bestselling author based in the South. Their debut She Is a Haunting was a William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist and won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a YA Novel. Their second book They Bloom at Night was winner of the Indies Choice Book Award for YA and nominated for a Lodestar Award and Locus Award. They adore all things strange and, of course, their geriatric cats. Find them on Instagram @nvtran_ and their website.
