Adeline didn’t know how to respond. She was dizzy, couldn’t breathe. Surely they were meant to see things coming; surely they could not keep being upended with no warning. Fifteen years ago, some men had kidnapped another man and his wife had reached out to an old friend, and then that woman had died of her own hubris and now Adeline was paying her debts. Now Adeline wanted to hunt this mistress down and make another orphan out of her son, foist off this despair onto whatever soul was stupid and unlucky enough to stumble into it in another five, ten, fifteen years, when that boy was old enough to be an enemy.
And yet still none of that would free their friends.
“Guys.” Christina emerged from the back, a phone cradled to her chest. “Mavis has some of the girls at Ah Lang’s.”
Adeline didn’t know that she could hear anything else, but she wanted to hear Mavis’s voice and she wanted to know who else had made it. She felt unstable even taking steps, as if the ground were liable to shift, too, but she and Tian pulled themselves together enough to gather around the telephone. “It’s us,” Tian said hoarsely.
Mavis’s voice crackled through wet and thin. “Tian, we’re getting some of the girls here. Ah Lang’s not very happy, but we didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re doing fine, Mavis. Tell me what the fuck is going on. We heard about the raid.”
“Hwee Min should tell you—here—”
“Tian?” came Hwee Min’s higher voice. “It happened so fast. We heard the cars outside and we realized it was the police and then everyone was running.”
“How many of you are there?”
“There’s three of us plus Mavis and Jade here. I think a few more got away. But they caught a lot of them.”
“Her father and brothers were Blackhill,” Tian told the others. “Red Butterfly information had them executed. She must have been planning this the moment we broke into Fan Ge’s house. She must have been playing scared the whole time. But how she got the police—I don’t know.”
“Blackhill? Are you sure?”
Tian raked her hand through her hair. “Yeah, Min, I’m fucking sure.”
Muffled voices, then Hwee Min returning hesitantly. “This might sound crazy. But I thought I heard you on the telephone tonight. When I went to look, it was Vera standing there. I said she was supposed to be guarding the woman, and she said no one was coming, and we could take a break guarding for a while. She wanted a drink. She came and joined us for a while before going back upstairs. I don’t know—now, I think maybe—maybe she was the one that called them.”
“Why would she do that?” Christina started, but Ji Yen cut in.
“Vera was off the whole time she was drinking. She didn’t talk at all. Hwee Min might be right.”
“She wasn’t there when the police showed up,” Hwee Min said slowly. “She left early.”
“Vera hates the police,” Mavis said vehemently. “She wouldn’t do this. Tian—you know her. She wouldn’t do this.”
“Then someone give me a damn good second explanation,” Tiansaid quietly. “Because I know where her favorite aunt lives, and apparently I don’t have anywhere else to go tonight.”
“Tian,” Christina murmured in alarm. Tian waved her off, letting the silence mount. Mavis started and stopped a few sentences, defenses sputtering out each time. In the background, Jade was faintly audible.It doesn’t make sense, she kept arguing.It doesn’t make sense.
“If Vera was working with Su Han and Three Steel, why wouldn’t she just let her out?” Adeline said. “Why stage a whole raid?”
Before anyone could muster a response, however, there was a shuffling on the other end. Noises of alarm—Mavis shouting, “Stay there!” and thenVerashouting, “I can explain!”
“Put her on,” Tian said. “And don’t let her go anywhere.”
Vera came to the phone almost rambling. “Tian—it wasn’t me—I only just got away, I had to climb out the damn window. The mistress fucking attacked me.”
“Vera, what are youwearing?” Mavis said.
“Her clothes!” Vera spat. “She hit me in the head andtook my clothes. Shrinking, and everything—”
“You’re not making sense,” Tian snapped, but even as she said it, she went entirely still.
“She’s a shape-shifter, Tian. She’s fucking White Bone. I went in because the kid sounded really sick, she sounded really scared—then she hit me andchangedinto me. I saw her tattoos appear when she did it. By the time I woke up the police were downstairs. She was sitting there waiting for them to find her and the kid, telling me how we deserved this. I’m pretty sure she cut up her own arms to make it look like we beat her. I didn’t stick around to look closely.”
“Fuck.” Tian covered the mouthpiece, as though not trusting herself to be heard. Her other fingers clicked, sparking out furiously. “Fuck.”
“That’s where they’ve been getting all the blood,” Adeline said, thoughts racing ahead of her emotions, which had not yet consolidated themselves. “White Bone has women in it?”
