“We don’t owe each other anything.” Once she’d started she couldn’t stop. “Was it eating you up inside, pretending to be friends with me? Did you like sweetening me up? Pek Mun warned me, you know.” That was the worst part, actually, as another memory returned. “She said you were charming and I shouldn’t listen to you.”
Tian’s lips parted. Adeline could see her scrambling to keep up, liked dragging her along in the dark for once. “Does this place look familiar? You were supposed to come here, weren’t you? But you decided to burn it down instead?”
Adeline’s heart was pounding again. She never seemed to be able to feel anything in moderation around Tian. Tian was kindling and gasoline; the very sight of her felt incandescent. Her reeling confusion now stoked a relentless fury in Adeline. “The day of the fire, my mother took a call. She asked a Butterfly to go to the White Orchid, then to come here, the next day, when I was away, to talk about something important. That was the night I met you at the White Orchid. So what were you and my mother going to talk about? And why did you decide to kill her instead?”
The fire in Tian’s hand wavered. “Mun took that call,” she said. “She asked me to go to the Orchid that night.”
“Oh,” Adeline said. Then, again, vindictive and with dawning realization: “Oh.”
“No,” Tian said sharply. She swiped tears from her face. “You’re not doing this again.”
“Doing what? You can feel it around you, can’t you? Our fire? A Butterfly burned this house down.”
“She wouldn’t. A conduit died here, all right?” Tian’s breath came fast, as though it were her mother who’d been killed, her house that had burned down. “Of course you feel the goddess—”
“Oh,the goddess. You want the goddess? Take her then.” Adeline thrust her arms at Tian, wrists up, skin pale and bare. Her veins seemed more visible than before, swollen like a river by her dead mother’s storm. “Where’s your knife? Take it.Take it.” She was nearly right up against Tian by then, her extended forearms the only barrier between them. “I don’t care. Take it. Take it. I fucking dare you.”
“Just come back with me,” Tian said desperately. “We can do this properly—”
“Take it now or you can all die out for all I care.” She didn’t mean that, not the first time she’d said it and not now, but she lifted one wrist, watched Tian’s eyes slide to it. “You.Onlyyou.”
She had never felt more powerful than here, bared, offering her blood and a god to a believer. She was used to taking, and inflicting. She had always understood winning as who could walk away possessing more. But here she realized in a remaking way that the capacity to give could be the ultimate leverage; that being taken from, too, could be a power, if it was something the other person wanted enough to follow that desire past their own senses. Tian was all fire and steel, and the way she was looking at Adeline—finally, wanting, and finally, furious—was more than anything Adeline had ever felt.
Tian’s hand curled around her offered wrist. She had to feel Adeline’s pulse hammering, evidence of the essence they’d done all this fighting over. Tian hesitated. Then, as her other hand moved, there was a splitting bang.
Adeline jumped as liquid sprayed. Her scrambling thoughts, only just now sputtering back to life, took too long to recognize the sound. By the time she realized it was a gunshot, Tian had looked down, found the blood pouring from her side, and crumpled to her knees.
Behind her stood a man with a gun. He looked shocked, as though he hadn’t expected to find Tian in the way. But quickly, he swung the pistol at Adeline.
“You! Come with me.”
She was frozen. Still pointing the gun at her, he marched around Tian, aiming to grab Adeline by the arm. Which was speckled with Tian’s blood, she realized. That had been the spray.
Wildness flared in her. Without exactly thinking, she threw up a fistful of fire, and instinctively the man’s eyes darted to the flame. As his gun wavered, Adeline’s other hand latched onto his and flared with a spurt of orange. He screamed. The gun dropped and went off at their feet, hitting the far wall with a splinter of blackened plaster.
Adeline registered a square cowl and an old broken nose as his fist swung wildly. She was only semi-conscious of catching his arm as it swung past, and of closing a grip around his throat as a bright flash went through her. White hot heat. Her vision fracturing into a hundred tiles.
Something surgingthroughher and coming to a slamming halt at her skin.
The man let out a guttural cry that rippled against her palm. Adeline wrapped her hands tighter, felt his skin heating and blistering beneath them. “Why did you come here?” she demanded. “Tell me!”
“Going—to give you—to Fan Ge,” the man rasped. “Spare—my life.”
“Who the hell are you?” But his eyes had rolled back, and she sprang away as he dropped like a stone.
There was silence. Then Tian croaked, “Adeline.”
Adeline came to her senses. She spun, dropping to the floor herself to press a hand against Tian’s side. Tian was still breathing, which seemed like a good sign, but Adeline could feel the ruptured flesh under the soaked shirt, expanding and contracting with every shuddering breath. “You—” Tian swallowed, a movement that prompted a fresh spurt of hot blood. “You were—”
“Shut up.” Adeline fought a losing battle with her own panic; she ripped free a dress from the closet that was only half burnt and bunched it up against the bullet wound like she’d seen in the movies, but she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t get back to the shophouse. The nearest phone was at a neighbor’s house.
“Fuck.” Tian’s breath was coming a little shorter now. She grabbed Adeline’s hand, their fingers both slick. “That hurts.”
“Tell me what to do.” The dress was soaking through now. She pressed harder, desperately, shoving away Tian’s attempts to make her ease up. “Some magic, or—”
“This isn’t the bleeding you had in mind?”
“Shut up.” Adeline scrabbled in her pocket and along the floor hopelessly, knowing there wasn’t anything in there but trying anyway. Tian’s eyes shut. When it stretched a moment too long Adeline dug her nails into her arm.
