She was unimpressed in turn. “Will your tang ki ko come?”
“He will,” Khaw said. “He’s heard what I had to say. I’m acting in his stead in the meantime.”
“You’re the second-in-command?”
“The White Spine, to be formal.”
“So you’ll replace him eventually.”
“That’s the intention.” He grimaced. “Madam Butterfly and Brother White Skull,” he mused, his half-wry expression reminding Adeline of Tian. They were undeniably siblings now, the sort that made the other make sense once you put them side by side. “What would our family think of us?”
When Tian didn’t return for hours, Adeline went out to track her down, but must have just missed her. She found her back at the house instead, kneeling at the altar with her eyes shut, wrapping and unwrapping the bandages around her right hand. When she breathed, the incense in the censer brightened.
Adeline could feel the heat coming off her from the doorway. In the shimmering mirage of it, she thought she could almost see the goddess looming over Tian, inflaming, fueling, taking nothing.
“Give it to me,” Adeline said. “You’re burning up.”
Tian looked up and seemed to understand what she meant. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“I’m the only one you can ask. Lady Butterfly knows damn well where she stands with me.” Adeline knelt before her and took both her wrists, where nearly every inch of skin was now covered in ink. It had not quelled a thing, only amplified her. She was a sun in the shape of a girl these days. She was so much and so much. When she walked through a room and sometimes paper hissed in her wake, Adeline understood what the Bukit Ho Swee rumors had meant by a woman whose very presence burned walls.
They could not afford another fire like that. Adeline took her hands and squeezed and said, “Give it to me.” Then: “What, you think I can’t handle it?”
Tian gripped her wrists in turn and yanked her in. Stared at her, dark and intent, as the fire started spreading. It took to Adeline like a lover. Inside, outside, the skin of both their arms glowing the faintest translucent gold.
It didn’t hurt, but it did fill her, and it ate ravenously at her air. She couldn’t tell if it was Tian or Lady Butterfly or if they were both feeding each other. She had guessed but hadn’t known how much fire was sitting in Tian’s veins these days. She was more than willing to take some of it, though. If not for the fire itself, then for the way that sharing it loosened the tension in Tian’s body, softened her shoulders so they weren’t as liable to snap.
Adeline understood something as she siphoned Tian’s fever. Tian had brought her into this world of blood and gods, but Adeline was the worse person—she and Pek Mun might have been more alike in that way. It surprised her not to revel in it, not to find Tian’s goodness weak. Instead she felt a deep ache, and then an unassailable fear, and then an unshakeable determination to keep this girl sacred, to let her not be changed by the ongoing assault of fate.
But she didn’t know how to do that, so for now she focused on making sure Tian didn’t burn herself to pieces before they could figure it out. She had tipped over into Tian when her mother died; now it was the reverse, they had that.
By the end Tian was breathing more heavily than Adeline was, like she’d just remembered how to. “Better?” Adeline said.
They were nestled knee by knee; Tian kissed her. Adeline ended up on Tian’s lap, legs coiled around her waist. “Brother White Skull made it past the border,” Adeline told her. “Khaw said earlier while you were away. The meeting is tomorrow morning.”
Tian smiled cryptically. “You’re getting friendly with my brother.”
Adeline wouldn’t have called itfriendly, but there was an implicit understanding between her and Ang Khaw. Almost like there might have been between her and Pek Mun, before what had happened had happened. “He’s a lot like you.”
“I always envied him. Now I think I could forgive him.” Tian looked contemplative. Healthier, too, clearer eyed. “I want you and Christina to come to the meeting.”
“I’m tired of old men,” Adeline said, but she said it as a yes.
“They get us what we want,” Tian teased, but she said it like a promise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURSHIFTING FACES, SHAPING BONES
Brother White Skull had requested the meeting in a market on Margaret Drive. It was quiet at this time of day. Most stalls were draped in tarp, preserving their goods for sunset, but Khaw led them to a clearing where a little outdoor coffee shop had been set up. Of the six rickety tables, only one was occupied, by a woman in a button-down shirt and a short ponytail. She sat back in her chair as they approached.
“Prove it’s you,” Tian said.
The woman rolled her eyes. Then her face began to jerk beneath the skin. Adeline watched with horror and fascination: it was as though the bones were breaking and resetting themselves into new configurations, ridges pushing up and sinking as the gangster’s skull quite literally changed its shape. Somewhere between all that—a process that took less than a minute—the features on the skin had transformed, too, so that they were now facing a clean-shaven man with a stylized skull’s mouth tattooed across his lower jaw.
After Three-Legged Lee and Fan Ge, Brother White Skull was closer to the typical age of aggressive tang ki kos. He was no older than thirty-five, on the shorter side and persistently average-looking. It was hard to pin him as the most wanted man in the country. For an international fugitive, he seemed nonchalant.
“Happy?” Tian had called him a true shape-shifter, and not justin his powers. Lim Kian Yit slouched in his chair like any neighborhood uncle, but he spoke English with a smooth untraceable veneer, like a news presenter. He’d been hiding out abroad for years, some of it apparently in Europe. Adeline could imagine, with a tweak in his posture and attire, that he could pass easily for an English-educated businessman. The only thing to watch out for was the concealed pistols they had been warned Brother White Skull kept on his person at all times. He was supposedly a legendary gunman, who could fire equally well with both hands.
Tian nodded shortly. She, Christina, and Adeline took seats. The White Bone leader sipped his kopi thoughtfully as he appraised the Butterflies. Khaw, who’d shortened his hair to the chin to avoid extra attention, sat between them and his boss, looking apprehensive.
