This great story starts out with Shori at her weakest. She is hungry, injured, blinded, and has no idea where she is. Later, she starts to become stronger when she is picked up by Wright Hamlin, who allows Shori to drink his blood after she bites his hand. She soon learns that biting a human places that human at her mercy—which proves to be a major strength later on, as it obliges any human to tell Shori anything she wants to know.

The potential for weakness in Shori is explained after she is reunited with her father, Iosif. Iosif explains that Shori is an Ina, and Inas and humans create symbiotic relationships. Shori needs to drink the blood of a symbiont in order to keep weakness and starvation at bay. In a nutshell, an Ina cannot live with his/her symbiont, and the symbiont cannot live with Ina.

Additional weakness becomes apparent after Shori, Wright, Brooke, and Celia have taken off for Iosif's remote cabin after realizing that the latest burning of the Ina community was an attack aimed at Shori.

After Shori joins the Gordon family in Northern California, we are made aware that her list of strengths includes superior hearing and smell, which gives her advance warning of an attack.

When Theodora is murdered, we get a true picture of Shori's reliance on her symbionts. Ultimately, however, she is strong enough to withstand prejudice and a trial.