“Move!” came Pek Mun’s voice, as someone slammed hard into Adeline’s shoulder, almost knocking her to the ground. She couldn’t light a fire to see without potentially setting someone aflame. She’d never heard a gunshot before outside the cinema. This did not feel like cinema. She stumbled directly into one of the ghosts and of course it wasn’t a ghost at all, but a woman who grasped Adeline’s arms in a sweating panic as they collided. Whatever Long Night magic had worked in the hall had dissolved: the congealed smell of oils and fats and cooked things was thick in the panic, stamping, crunching, squelching underfoot.
With no other direction to be seized by, Adeline’s eyes latched onto the fire still flaring like a beacon in the direction of the gunshots. She started pushing against the crowd.
“Lights!” People were still shouting. “Lights!”
Someone had gotten to the door, someone had opened the door, it was a rectangle of weak moonlight that nonetheless carved itself starkly against the black. The surge of the crowd turned abruptly, almost knocking Adeline under them. She managed to shoulder through, slip past. Until finally the proper lights came on with an electric buzz, startling everyone so much that they stopped in their tracks.
They blinked around as though trying to remember what they had been running from in the first place. With the lights, the fire was barely visible. There must have been over a hundred people at this party.
But Adeline was now close enough to see it for herself. Shouldering past one last stupefied man, she came to the dais where the Prince of Night had been holding court. He was no longer glamorous: gripping at the railings, a smoking pistol in his loose hand, hair disheveled and shirt half-unbuttoned. The bare skin of his chest was an angry red. Adeline followed the angle of his barrel to the ground. There, Hsien shuddered at his feet with two gushing wounds in her chest and an arm still on fire.
“Kwek Luo Man!” Christina shouted, coming up behind Adeline as the Prince raised the pistol again. He spun wildly, found Christina and Pek Mun beneath the railings.
“What are you doing?” he bellowed. “You sent her to kill me?”
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Pek Mun snapped back.
Hsien was struggling to get up. Her lit arm scrabbled for purchase. Adeline saw it before it could happen: her fingers closing around the tablecloth, yanking it down and taking the wine bottles with it, liquor splashing, catching… “Hsien!” She thrust her hand through the railing. “Hey!”
She didn’t know at first if Hsien could hear anything. But with a terrible gasp, Hsien grabbed her arm instead.
The fire stung but didn’t take. Adeline grasped Hsien’s wrist and willed it away. Yellow danced in the corners of her eyes. She watchedthe fire subside, and then she watched Hsien die, and then Tian was there, running up the back of the dais with a dancer on her heels, staring in horror at what she’d missed.
“You too!” the Prince raged. “Did Tiger Aw send you both? She trying to take out the competition?”
“You’re ill in the head if you think my mother has anything to do with me.” Pek Mun had made her way up the other side of the dais. She and Tian were cagily boxing him in now, him and the gun he was now gripping with both hands. “Put the gun down, Luo Man. You’ve already killed someone.”
Strangely, Adeline found herself clinging to Pek Mun’s cold authority. The Prince had killed Hsien—the charge laid out simply and unquestionably, with none of the blanketing horror that was taking Adeline over. She was still grappling with the fact that Hsien wasn’t breathing, was motionless with two holes in her chest. Meanwhile Pek Mun had already taken its gravity, cataloged it, and was surging ahead.
“She attacked me!” Unfortunately, judging by the blistering skin on his chest, the Prince didn’t seem to be lying. “I knew there was a reason she was suddenly all sweet, wanting to see a show, not throwing my shit out the window, huh? Huh?” Adeline could have believed Hsien’s fire had caught onto him instead. He clearly wasn’t sober, either. “And you!” Suddenly he was pointing the gun at the dancer on the dais. He seemed to forget he was even holding it, but Tian stepped sharply in front of the woman anyway, hands held up.
“Calm down.”
“You’re helping them?” He was still fixated on the dancer, craning to see her behind Tian. This must be Lilian. “How many societies are you entertaining, huh? I know you’re fucking that Three Steel.” This apparently was a surprise to Tian, who glanced at the woman.
“Come on, Luo Luo,” the dancer wheedled anxiously. “I’m your best dancer, what would you do without me?”
“Keep my life, apparently! Out! You’re out!”
Lilian’s pretty heart-shaped face flickered with something ugly. “You don’t mean that.”
“She didn’t do anything,” Tian insisted, voice ragged. “I came to find her. She didn’t know about it.”
The Prince’s lip curled. “And what did you come to find her for?”
“She owes someone money. We’re in the business of collecting, remember?”
“Then collect the bitch and go. I can find dancers in my sleep.” Petulantly spent, the Prince tossed the gun suddenly across the table. It slid off the other side, where it was caught by one of his lackeys. He dropped back down into his chair and grabbed the nearest bottle. “What are you still doing here? I said go! Before I get my guys to remove you.”
Adeline realized she was still holding Hsien’s hand. It had gone stiff. Adeline shuddered and extricated herself, withdrawing through the railing and leaving Hsien on the other side. Tian and Pek Mun scooped Hsien up wordlessly, supporting her dead weight between them. The gunshot wounds were still soaking through her dress.
Ning clung to Adeline’s arm as they made their way out of the tent. Another time she might have shaken her off, but she let the girl cling as they were ushered out.
Somehow, it was daylight. Adeline blinked away another shudder, thought to check her watch, and then realized she wasn’t wearing one. She could have sworn they were only in there an hour, and yet it was a new morning—so new it was unrecognizable. Adeline clasped and unclasped her fists, trying to swallow the roar within her enough to focus on the others moving. Christina went to find a phone booth to call the Sons and the rest of them gathered under an overhang with Hsien slumped between them, still trickling blood onto her shoes. “Hsien’s dead,” Mavis kept saying. “Hsien’sdead.”
“We know, Mavis,” Tian snapped. She almost swung towardLilian, who jolted. The dancer was still dressed in her sheer suit and stars. Tian shrugged off her own overshirt and thrust it at Lilian to cover herself. “You owe the Needle Anggor Neo money.”
“That’s what this is about?” Lilian’s voice came through high and tinny. In the daylight she looked much less ethereal, wrapping the unbuttoned sides of the shirt over each other like a kimono to swaddle herself. “Shit. Shit. I needed that job.”
