“Ruth,” En Yi murmured.
“It’s Adeline.”
“I’ve been baptized. I’m Ruth now.”
“Okay, Ruth. Let go of the damn blanket.”
Finally, En Yi—Ruth—let Adeline push aside the blanket and lay hands on her.
Though Adeline was sapped, the motions had gotten progressivelyeasier, her ability to flow with the surging and dampening sharpening. She watched her own breathing as she brought Ruth down, staring out the window into the city to try to drown out the white starbursts. She was going to faint if she did one more. She might faint now. She was scoured and white-hot, as though all her own fire had been emptied from her in revenge, and Ruth’s fever just kept rebuilding.
Cold sweats broke out on Adeline’s brow. Ruth was not fucking worth this, she thought, none of them was fucking worth doing this to herself, but she was doing it anyway, and now she was filled with spite to get it done. Who she was spiting wasn’t clear. The goddess, maybe. Oh, Tian, definitely, whom the Needle had wanted in the first place. Who had her power frankly only because Adeline had given it to her, and so, well, fuck her, and Adeline would be heading back victorious and accomplished and with key information on top of all that.
Pushing wasn’t working. A flip of a switch in her mind, a little desperate: Adeline stopped trying to push, and pulled the fire toward herself. Her thumb moved almost instinctively along Ruth’s arm, searching out and then latching onto the point where the meridian opened more readily. Ruth lurched as the heat raced through her. This—this was easier. It was easier to give fire another path to run than it was to extinguish it. Adeline let it run into her almost greedily, taking back from it.
And then, just when she’d about siphoned all the fever off, she went cold.
It was such an abrupt change of state that she staggered, flexing her fingers, which had gone suddenly numb. They still moved, though, as did all her limbs. She still felt swelled with pent-up energy. But something had gone wrong; something within her had shut off. Her fire, usually within reach of a thought, was now… absent. A cool emptiness swam inside her. Adeline fought to control her own panic. Had she gone over an edge with this new ability? Demanded too much, exhausted all her reserves?
Master Gan opened the door. “It’s done,” he said, with a glance at Ruth. “Time for you to go.”
He was a healer. For a moment Adeline considered demanding that he examine her, tell her what was wrong. But something told her that this wasn’t something he could fix, and that this weakness wasn’t something he should learn. Rearranging her composure, she nodded and followed him back to the waiting car. The driver dropped her off on a vaguely specified corner near the Butterfly house. She walked the rest of the way fighting emptiness and fear—she wanted Tian. She didn’t care anymore that they’d been fighting. She needed Tian to have answers—she neededMadam Butterflyto have answers.
It was late even for the Butterflies. Yet the lights on the ground floor were still on, and when Adeline pushed through the tailor shop curtain, wary, she registered Geok Ning at the dining table.
“Adeline!” Ning cried, springing up. “Have you seen Tian?”
“No,” Adeline said, her dread racketing up several notches as she registered Ning’s panic. “I was going to look for her. Why?”
“You haven’t noticed? Your fire?”
“You too?”
“All of us. Everyone’s out looking for her. I’ve called everywhere.” Ning’s breath was quickening; she looked like she was going to cry. “I didn’t mean it when I said she was going to die.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEBLOOD OF THE BUTTERFLY
“You are fucking kidding me,” Christina shouted. “You are out of your fucking mind.”
“You sound like Pek Mun.”
“Good. She would tell you to get it the fuck together!”
“How did you even find me?”
“I introduced you, jackass.”
“You called them?” Tian asked in disbelief, swiveling her head off to the side. The motion seemed too much for her; she had to shut her eyes instantly, sweat breaking out fresh on her forehead.
“I haven’t sworn anything to you,” said the waitress Wan Shin blithely from the corner. “I wasn’t going to deal with you when I saw the state you were in.” Adeline hadn’t thought about Wan Shin since their run-in with the Steels demanding her protection fee, but it appeared Tian had. It had been three hours of frantic searching for Tian before Shin’s phone call—and yet that panic had quickly muddied the realization that Tian and this woman were not just old friends.
“It worked, though. Someone just needs to call Fan Ge and tell him problem solved.”
“Fuck you,” Christina said. “Who did you even go to? How did you find them?”
“An Chee,” Tian murmured. “Guy who does the blocking.”
“Chee the maniac? Chee the blood broker?” Adeline had never seen Christina so livid. A string of expletives in several different languages followed, and then Christina dropped into the rocking chair and began smoking mutinously, first fumbling to light the stick with Wan Shin’s lighter.
