“Shadow?” she whispered. “It’s Yut Ying’s daughter. I’ve come to fetch you.”
She peered under the desk, behind the bookshelves, and in the closet. There was no shadow to be found. She checked thebed next, lifting the pink sheet covering the mattress. Something flickered behind the headboard—
Marigold froze. Footsteps were approaching, light yet unsteady.
She rolled under Lily’s bed, hiding behind the pink dust ruffle. And that was when she found Helen’s shadow.
It was dark against the wall, clinging to a broken porcelain doll that had fallen under the bed. Marigold reached to grab the doll by its tangled hair. The shadow darted away, slipping past her fingers.
What was she thinking? A shadow was light and darkness. It couldn’t be picked up. Yet as she’d brushed her fingers across it, she thought she felt a trace of longing. An ache that came from the shadow itself—for her mother.
Could that be possible?
Helen’s shadow returned to the doll, slipping under its cracks and casting over its broken face like an eclipse. The doll was her mother’s favorite toy, Marigold gleaned, one of the few possessions Yut Ying had brought from Tunglam.
Marigold reached for it again, only for the shadow to skitter away a second time.
She was scaring it.Ineed to persuade it to me,she thought.Ineed it to trust me.
The only thing she had of her mother’s was the wooden comb. Marigold put on her gloves, about to reach into her pocket—when the footsteps came to a halt. Right in front of Lily’s door.
“She went in there, ma’am,” Susu was saying from the hallway. The maid sounded spooked. “Yes,thatroom. The last time Madam Chan went inside, she... she...”
“Still afraid of ghosts, Susu?” Seet Ling laughed, her hand on the knob. Twisting. “I’ll deal with her. You take the rest of the day off. Go on, yes, yes, I’m sure,” she slurred. “Don’t forget to lock the gate on your way out.”
The door creaked open. Seet Ling stood at the threshold holding a candle from Lily’s altar. Its fire turned her dark eyes lambent.
“Marigold?” she called. “You really shouldn’t be up here, darling. There’s a reason this room is sealed off.”
Seet Ling opened the closet, tilted the candlelight inside. “Come out, come out,” she said, singsong. “Come out, little cat.”
Under the bed, Marigold pressed herself hard against the back wall as Seet Ling tottered to the window, looking behind the curtains. She was growing annoyed.
“I should’ve known you’d be a wily little minx,” she muttered, “just like your mother.”
Her voice turned hard. “All these years she’s prospered in America while I’ve been damned to this old house with only ghosts for company.” Seet Ling flung the curtains shut, choking off the sunlight.
“It’s still a mystery to me how she left,” she said. “My guard never saw her pass through the gate. We searched for her for months. All around the hills, even in the cemetery. But it turns out, Yut Ying was good at hiding.” Seet Ling turned from the window. Her candlelight fell upon Marigold’s backpack half concealed under a pile of white sheets. “Just like her daughter.”
Fuck,thought Marigold. She rose onto her elbows, inching out from under the bed when Seet Ling lifted the dust ruffle—
And let out a shriek.
It was the last sound Marigold expected her to make, and it startled her back under the bed. But as the old woman staggered, Marigold reached out and grabbed her by the ankle to steady her. It only alarmed her more. With a scream, Seet Ling stumbled back against the wall.
“Get back,” Seet Ling cried. The candle in her hand trembled violently. “Lily, I’m your mother, have you forgotten? Don’t hurt me.”
Lily?
It was the gloves, Marigold realized. They were Lily’s. Seet Ling must have seen them and thought she was Lily’s ghost!
She needed to explain. She started to crawl out from under the bed. “It’s me, Mari—”
“Get back!” Seet Ling lunged and swung the candle at the bed. “Don’t touch me!”
One careless brush against the cotton ruffles was all it took. Fire stole across the bed skirt, rushing across the pink sheet.
Marigold had never moved faster in her life. Heat flared in her face, fogging up her glasses. She could already smell her singed hair as she scrambled out. She grabbed a blanket and threw it over the bed to smother the flames. No use. The fire was racing up the wooden frame and starting to lick at the peeling varnish.
