“Tian?”
Tian was frozen by the window, curtain crumpled in her hand, and both she and the cloth were burning. “Tian?”
Flashes of her mother staggering, the house burning, butterfly turning to ash. “Tian!” Adeline seized Tian’s arm, above the fire licking at her wrist, and yanked. Tian’s head jerked up. Her eyes were yellow and empty. Without thinking, Adeline slapped her across the face.
There was a pause. Then Tian tackled her to the ground.
Adeline screamed and kneed Tian in the stomach as her ownside erupted with searing heat. She rolled away from Tian, who had curled up motionless on the floor with her lit palm pressed against the tiles. Thankfully, that would not catch. But without an outlet, the fire was beginning to crawl up Tian instead, racing for her elbow.
The dead Butterfly had lost control of her fire, too.
Suddenly Adeline knew that this was no regular fire. This did not burn the same way. This was Butterfly fire, this washerfire. She turned this flame on and off like breathing, could make it turn and dance at will. Besides her mother, perhaps, it was the thing she had studied closest in her life. It didn’t matter if this one belonged to someone else. She decided it would simply listen.
Almost in a trance of her own, Adeline knelt over Tian, placed both hands over the fire, and squeezed.
It didn’t burn like it should have. Instead, Adeline felt her own warmth boil up under the skin to meet it. A response came through her veins—indestructible, undeniable, inevitable. Adeline was intimately familiar with fire, but she had never thought of it as truly alive.Thisfire felt old and primal. It felt gleeful, like something escaped. It felt urgent. It sang with the reunion Adeline had thus far been robbed of. She met Tian’s fire with her own will and finally, after breathless seconds, the flames went out.
Struck by sudden cold, Adeline pulled back her hands. Her palms were pink but unscathed.
Before she could marvel at herself, the corona in the corner of her eye reminded her that the curtain was still burning. Adeline scrambled up and threw open the cabinets until she found the extinguisher her mother kept without fail. She pointed it at the window and pulled the pin. The burst of white foam nearly knocked her backward.
Smothered, the fire hissed to its death. She’d put it out, just pulling a trigger. And before that, by just laying her hands on Tian. Overwhelmed by a sense of alarming power, Adeline tossed the extinguisher aside.
The loud clanging woke Tian. She rolled onto her back, staringup at Adeline and then at her own hand, which was an ugly red up to the wrist. “What did you do?”
“You were burning. Like the girl you were telling me about.”
The yellow in Tian’s eyes had faded, returning to deep, terrified brown. She cast over to the curtain, blackened beneath the foam, and then at her arm again. “You stopped it?”
“You’re welcome.” Still, Adeline couldn’t deny how rattled she was. She had knelt over her mother, too. Should she have been able to put out that fire? Or had this only come to her after that night? She didn’t remember anything that had happened in the moment, only the smells and swallowing brightness and the butterfly.
But this meant that Adeline didn’t just summon fire. She could put it out without being hurt herself. And more importantly—she could save others.
Tian sat up slowly. “Come back with me,” she said. “You can stay with us.”
She did not have to ask if it was what Adeline wanted. Hadn’t Adeline already asked, that first day, when Tian had saidof course? It was only propriety and other obligations that had got in the way, until now. Until it was undeniable that Adeline had nowhere else to go, and that Tian had no one else to turn to, with this vengeance.
Tian cleared her throat and stood, pushing back her tangled hair with her uninjured hand. “My bike’s downstairs,” she said, the deal done. “We can—” Her gaze dropped downward and grew deep. “Did I hurt you?”
Adeline actually looked down at her side for the first time, remembering where Tian had tackled her. Slowly, she peeled up her blouse to see the hot skin under the singed fabric. Why had she been hurt there but not on her hands? Why wasn’t Tian impervious to her own fire like she usually was? “It’s fine.” With Tian’s offer finally extended, she hadn’t honestly been thinking of anything else.
“It’s not.” Tian almost reached for her, then curled her fingers back. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“It’sfine.You’re more hurt than I am.” Adeline rummaged in the cabinets until she found the first aid kit. Her mother had evidently not been diligent in stocking it; there was only some cream, dried-up iodine, and a roll of slightly yellowed gauze, which she tossed at Tian and wouldn’t accept back.
Tian clicked her tongue but wrapped her hand rather haphazardly, flexed her fingers, and shrugged. “Just till we get back to the house.”
The night air had thickened with oncoming rain when they slipped back outside and locked the door behind them. The first rain since the fire; soon the ashes would be washed away. Adeline’s hair whipped around her as she followed Tian down the road to a motorbike left in an alley, the smell of gasoline faint around it. She didn’t even get to hesitate before Tian said, “Get on.” She swung one leg over the seat, offering the helmet to Adeline. “You need it more than I do, princess.”
“I’m not a—”
“My mother owns this shop—”
“Shut up.” Adeline took the helmet, and after some effort put it on. She looked at Tian. Tian looked at her.
“What are you waiting for?”
Adeline got on. She’d never been on a bike before; the engine was startlingly close, making the whole machine vibrate. “You’re going to have to hang on tighter than that,” Tian said.
