The prodigy son looked up at her through gold-rimmed glasses, one hand still rubbing slow circles over Pek Mun’s face. “I’m famous,” he deadpanned in English, with the faintest foreign accent. “They told me about you, too. I thought you were dead. I was going to come see you next.”
“They said you were studying in England.”
“It’s Michaelmas. Christmas break. I don’t like the cold,” he elaborated. “Did you know the sun sets there now by three in theafternoon? It’s like death without the death.” He was unexpectedly well-dressed for a local man, trim gray shirt with European tailoring and brown corduroy pants. Perhaps that was the foreign accent, too, all refined in that grand wintry place. Something else struck her, though, watching him mend Pek Mun. He started to look unsettled as Adeline’s eyes roamed over him.
“Stop that.”
“Where are your tattoos?”
“That’s a personal question.” But he sighed. “Since I was very young, my father believed I had the potential to do more than run death houses. He wouldn’t let me get my tattoos until I begged, and even then it couldn’t be like everyone else’s. It had to be discreet. Here,” he said, motioning down his spine, “the insides of my thighs, the soles of my feet. And he was right. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere if I had death marked on my wrists.”
“I didn’t realize the Sons were so modern.”
“Death is the most constant profit—until we crack immortality, at least. But in case we go obsolete, learning a bit more about the rest of the world isn’t a bad idea, is it?”
Unlike the Needles’ fingertips and straight lines, the Son worked in circular motions and pinches, massaging and molding. Under his hands, skin that should have stiffened and grayed was still almost supple, almost alive.
Adeline almost didn’t recognize Pek Mun at first. Her features had softened, as though, in death, she were finally at peace. Without the Butterfly tattoo, her throat was now bare. From the shoulders up, she looked like a girl asleep. But the closer Adeline looked, the blurrier the details seemed to get. Something too smooth about her skin, her mouth, something too even about her eyelashes. “That’s the magic,” Sze Feng said softly. “With damage so severe, it will never look completely natural. I had to stitch the hairs back in.”
“Severe.”
“I think she was the last one out. I hadn’t seen a burn victim likethat before. If it helps,” he added, “she probably passed out from the smoke.”
“I’m not the one you need to comfort.”Tian. Pek Mun dying alone, Pek Mun dying scorched, Tian running through Jenny’s even as the building burned down around her, Madam Butterfly parting the flames to find the sister she had left behind, only to find… Adeline knew what burnt flesh looked like. Could smell the singed hair from memory. She wondered, in the minutes it had taken Tian to carry the body out, whether the smell had embedded itself in her forever.
“She hasn’t been in here, you know. She was sitting by your bed for forty hours until her brother made her leave.”
“You seem powerful.”
Sze Feng brushed his palm over Pek Mun’s eyes and sat back, almost amused. “Thank you?”
“You just said you barely have any tattoos.”
“I’m very good at working within limitations.” Something sharp flashed across his eyes before diffusing again. “Do you know when I saw my first dead body? I was three. My parents took me into the morgue and taught me to hold their hands. I’m not afraid of the dead. Even without magic, I practiced dissecting animals and unclaimed bodies. But then when I was ten years old, my father called me in. I had never seen so many of the Sons working at the same time. We’d just had thirty-four bodies come in, killed by a Butterfly. They needed all the help they could get, even from a boy with one tattoo. In the past eleven years I’ve seen all kinds of bodies. Casualties or gang members killed in a fight. Magic is so creative in the ways it lets you hurt people. It makes you wonder when survival turns into power plays. But you know what my father said? If you all didn’t hurt each other, the Sons wouldn’t have a reason to exist. I’d always thought of what we did as beautiful, but what kind of beauty needs violence to have a purpose?”
“What’s your point?”
“I don’t know any of you. Well, I’d met Tian, briefly. But I think that what happens now depends on you. The way she was watching you—she may be Madam Butterfly, but I think she’ll go where you go.”
“What’s your point?” Adeline repeated, knowing it but wanting him to say it out loud.
“Make a good choice,” he said. “I won’t tell you what that is. But maybe I’d like not to see more bodies like this when it’s all done. If it’s ever done.”
She felt defensive. “Leave, then.”
“My father would like me to. My brother is taking over the Sons—I’m meant to take a different path. But I like this art. I was born into it and I claim it, no matter what others wish. Death can be beautiful. Just not when it’s so young all the time. I think it’s unfair.”
Adeline walked around the room just to see the other bodies: Ji Yen, Jade, and Vera, all quiet and smoothed out. Sze Feng, who seemed incapable of letting things be, gave his report from his seat. Vera and Jade had, like Pek Mun, died from the fire—first from the smoke and then the actual flames. Ji Yen, however, had been executed. Throat cut, then stabbed multiple times. The first cut was clean and sharp, Sze Feng said, but the stabbings were almost angry. It was likely there been a fight, although it was difficult to tell under the burns. He guessed that Ji Yen had encountered the arsonist while they were still starting the fire, and she’d possibly escaped and dragged herself to the elevator. She’d been trying to reach them, maybe. But that was lost now. Adeline’s resolve built as she skimmed the Butterflies’ hands, hardening her up again.Make a good choice.
Had there ever been a choice to begin with?
She went looking for Tian and found her in the kitchen with Khaw and Christina. Khaw was leaning against a shelf of milk tins, watching his sister sip water at the table. Khaw reached out after some hesitation and placed a hand on his sister’s back, which Tian didn’t react to. “We should talk about Su Han.”
“Only if you’re going to tell me where to find her.”
“Tell me about Su Han,” Adeline said from the door. Khaw startled, but Tian had sensed her coming. Adeline drew up the other chair and folded her arms expectantly. Khaw looked from her to Tian. It was still bizarre having him here. Having any man here, really, but this one in particular, when she had built up so many ideas of him. He wasn’t the monster he’d sounded like. Or maybe thirteen-year-old Tian just hadn’t met worse monsters yet.
“By the time I joined White Bone, Seetoh Su Han was this ghost story,” Khaw said finally, checking a shoulder against the cupboard. “She was one of Brother White Skull’s favorites—the previous Brother White Skull. Supposedly, she was one of the most gifted White Bones he had ever seen. Some can change their face, but they can’t act as someone else. She could become another person entirely. Some people say she could even become an animal.
