The door opened. She braced herself for another thug with another pill, but it was just one slim man with a goatee and black lines down his fingers. They had sent a Needle to her? Then he asked, “How do you feel?” and she recognized the voice that had come with every pill, the man who’d watched keenly as gods raged within her.
She jerked at him, even that knocking the wind out of her. She would have begged for fire if there were a goddess to beg. The Needle approached her cautiously and tried to tip her chin. She snapped at his hand, and he darted back.
“Huh,” he said, but nonetheless didn’t try to touch her again. “I would treat a doctor better, you know. Your tang ki chi still hasn’t replied. They might start sending you back in pieces soon.”
The next time a Steel entered the room, she was determined to kill him. She didn’t think she’d seen this one before, but he was moving fast and quiet, shutting the door behind him and heading swiftly over to her with purpose in his eyes.
When he grabbed her from behind, she threw her head back into his face. He swore. “Listen to me,” he hissed thickly. She’d broken something. He grasped the back of her neck in a vise and leaned over her, breath hot on her cheek. Blood dripped onto her shoulder and down over the bare skin where her blouse had been ripped.
She almost headbutted him again. Then she realized he was shaking, too.
“Her name was Lina Yan,” he whispered urgently. “She was seventeen. The bookkeeper was a regular customer who said he would buy out her contract. She came here to work one night a few months ago, and he and his friends brought her to this room, but they wenttoo far with her. They were high, and they made her take the pills, and they lost control. When they realized she wasn’t moving, they dumped her body in the river. The Eyes helped wash it out to sea. The police have never found it. They brought her in through the tunnels down here and brought her back out again, dead.”
Adeline had gone rigid with confusion. That many words had barely made it through her fog. “What?” she croaked.
“Listen to me. Her name was Lina Yan. She was seventeen. The bookkeeper was a regular customer who said he would buy out her contract. She came here to work one night a few months ago, and he and his friends brought her to this house, but they went too far with her. They were high, and they made her take the pills, and they lost control. When they realized she wasn’t moving, they dumped her body in the river. The Eyes helped wash it out to sea. The police have never found it. They brought her in through the tunnels down here and brought her back out again, dead.”
Meaning was flickering in her. She was breathing. She was listening. She was taking in the room: raw concrete walls, piled boxes—a trailing current of energy.
I think that house was where one of my friends was killed. Three Steel’s bookkeeper really liked her. She went to see him one night—
—and he and his friends brought her to this house, but they went too far with her—
“Damn it. This is what she told me to do. Is it working? Should I—fuck it. Fuck it.” Something slid out of a case. A knife cut her arm.
Distantly, Adeline heard a scream.
The specter of the dead girl slipped through the offering, reawakening every frozen muscle in her body. Emotions more than images blurred through her mind. Unlike the ghosts of other places she’d been, this imprint was fresh and searing, blazing out from behind locked doors and dark rivers and vast lost oceans, stretching toward its willing recipient. The shadows pooled in the corners shifted and darkened until they looked almost like blood.
Too far—
Too many—
Too much—
You’re hurting me—
I see a god—
Oh god oh god oh god.
Adeline gasped as heat shot through her. The man’s knife was traveling down, cutting her bonds, shaking her cramped fingers free. “That’s all I can do,” he said rapidly. “Take the tunnels. You’re on your own.” He fled out the door, leaving it ajar.
Adeline couldn’t move. Part of her couldn’t understand what had just happened. The other was preoccupied with the echoes, still. Lina’s voice, the flare of her death, the exact pitch of her scream burned into her memory. Nausea and fury churned, and she drank it into her limbs. Sensation returned to her fingers. She clenched and unclenched her fists, and on the third time her fingers unfurled, they were trailing fire. Tian was alive. Lady Butterfly had returned.
Take the tunnels. Of course—Genevieve’s husband had told her as much, at that dinner so long ago. Adeline knew she should be running before another Steel or that Needle returned and found her freed, but now that her fire was back, the pit of fear in her was turning rapidly to fury. She was hollowed out otherwise—had not eaten or drunk in who knew how long, hadn’t seen light—and all that filled her as she rose slowly from the chair was the intent of burning the house down as she left it.
But even as she settled her weight back onto her feet, clenching and unclenching warmth off her fists, she heard the noises from outside. Faint clashes, faint thuds. The sounds of a fight. Through the crack of the door she saw a Steel running up a flight of stairs, wielding a large parang. There was a yell. She recognized Mavis’s voice.
Adeline suddenly found the energy to run. She got to the foot of the stairs just in time for the man to come crashing back down. His head hit the edge of the last stair and he sprawled on the groundunmoving, flushed up the neck to his temples, where warmth proceeded to seep out of him.
He radiated so much heat she could feel it off his skin. Within her, there came a responding flutter.
She looked up to find Mavis at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed with triumph that rapidly switched to shock. “Adeline.” Mavis ran down two steps at a time to hop over the Steel and throw her arms around Adeline with such force Adeline staggered. “Shit. Sorry.” Mavis stepped back and took her in from the feet up: wrists, shoulder—she paused at Adeline’s face. It felt swollen to hell and her mouth still tasted like blood; she must have looked a sight. Mavis sucked in her bottom lip.
“How are you here?” Adeline demanded. “And—” She gestured to the man. “Did you just—”
“We figured it out.” Mavis gleamed. “How hard to push.”
