“Not close like you want. They only let brothers in there.”
“And the girls,” Adeline said. When they looked at her, she raised her eyebrows. “You just said they bring girls in.” How they were supposed to use that exactly, she hadn’t figured out, but Tian looked thoughtful.
“Anything else they bring in and out?”
The Nine Horse shrugged. “We don’t watch them all the time.”
Tian looked disappointed. “All right. It’s still helpful to know.” She hesitated. “Is your boss still friendly with White Bone?”
Tian had finally caved on contacting White Bone about people being infected with their magic. As she discussed getting a message to her brother, Adeline scanned the jungle. It had a certain aliveness to its density, as though it remembered it had once held tigers. The tigers had all been shot. But there was an oldness about the land that Adeline had never felt in the constant churn of Chinatown, where even the dead could hardly linger. Here, things might have been growing for centuries.
Between the rocks and trees, downslope, she caught sight of someone beckoning urgently. Hwee Min, at a closer look. That was worrying. The other girls had been told where to find them, in casethere was an emergency. It couldn’t be a good thing that Hwee Min had come all this way to fetch them.
Adeline treaded down the dirt track. “Tian needs a few minutes,” she called. “What’s going on?”
Hwee Min caught Adeline’s eye. Then she took off.
After a second’s startle, Adeline sprinted after her. Hwee Min swerved into the thick of the trees, down the bow of the hill’s forest. Adeline sped up, losing her breath and wishing for once her mother had been in Nine Horse instead, and swung into the path before she could lose sight of her again.
Too late. Hwee Min was gone, the path deserted. Where could she possibly have gone? And what was she up to?
Something slammed into Adeline’s skull.
In flashes, she was vaguely aware of rustling, of rough hands, of darkness and the smell of earth, of a different woman altogether. She flailed and there was a burst of light. “Tian,” she gasped, before something came down hard on her temple again, and it all went black.
Adeline jolted awake to a sharp smell and found Lilian Leong leaning over her with a pungent bottle. She jerked forward, only for ropes to bite into her wrists and ribs. She was tied to a chair, in an unfamiliar air-conditioned room. Her hands were swaddled in rough cloth and bound to the arms of the chair in front of her.
Panic shot through her. As Lilian leaned in, Adeline thrashed and snapped at her nose.
“Hey!” Salts scattered onto the floor. Water doused Adeline’s lap from the mug Lilian had been holding in her other hand.
The back of Adeline’s head throbbed, and her hair felt hard and crusted. She knew, somehow, from the smell or the oppressiveness of the windowless room, that they were in the hill. They were in the Blackhill house, the Three Steel house. But Lilian?
“Let me go.”
Lilian chewed her lip. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have come again. They saw the first Butterflies a few days ago.”
Hwee Min and Mavis. Hadn’t Adeline seen…? But her head was swimming and there was something she couldn’t remember. She did, however, remember running, remember being hit. There had been a chase? They hadn’t been alone. “Where’s Tian?”
“Got away. Nine Horse helped her.” Adeline’s relief didn’t last long, though. “They’re going to make her trade for you,” Lilian said.
It hadn’t been ten days, but Adeline knew it didn’t matter. They’d made the first move. “You shouldn’t have come,” Lilian repeated.
There was something loaded about the way she saidyouthat gave Adeline pause, like she meant Adeline specifically. She tilted her head, staring, and Lilian backed away. She was a babbler when she was stressed, Adeline remembered. “People have seen you together.” Lilian sneered a little, even as her voice thinned and her cheeks gained a creeping flush. “Peopleknow. Even when I worked with her, even when she was younger, everyoneknew.” Her mouth worked. “It’s not my fault.”
“Stop talking to her.” A man’s voice interrupted before Adeline could snarl. A stout Steel put a warning hand on Lilian’s shoulder. The Prince of Night had ranted about her going out with one of them.
People know.Adeline wanted to tear her pouty lips from her face.
Instead she said, “Why? You think I’m going to seduce her? You don’t make her happy? I can’t blame her. I’ve been told I’m pretty. You look like you got dragged out from the river. I wouldn’t mind. I think your girlfriend’s—”
The man cracked her across the face. Harder than she’d expected, if she was being honest, and she swallowed the sudden nausea that had sprung up with her already pounding head. “Mouthy bitch.” Behind him, Lilian averted her gaze. “Kee Hong! Where are you?”
A boy who couldn’t be older than fifteen rushed in with a pailof water. He stopped at the sight of Adeline, as though he hadn’t expected to see a girl, much less a girl close to his age.
She smiled at him, audacity the only thing keeping her together. “Never talked to a girl before?”
The boy glanced at Lilian’s boyfriend, clearly looking for instruction. The teen was wearing a singlet, but unlike Lilian’s boyfriend, who had both arms covered in white tattoos, his were bare save a sword running down his left bicep. He was new to the gang. If Adeline had to guess, he was still proving himself. When his gaze returned to her she met it with contempt. He saw it, flinched hard, and then swung the bucket.
