Adeline wrapped her arms around Tian’s waist, resting on the hard lines of her hips. She could feel Tian’s stomach rising and falling, a warm, living thing. She hadn’t been this close to someone her age in years.
The bike roared to life.
It was certainly no Roman holiday. They sped through the bluish cones of scattered streetlights, weaving against the few cars still out at night. The ride looked like a flickering projector of the cityand smelled like river refuse and exhaust and the slight smoke of Tian’s hair. This world hummed in raw oil and metal, was rough like cracked leather against her thighs.
They headed first to Sago Lane, where the Butterflies sat vigil for their dead friend, and where the Sons of Sago Lane had held territory for almost a century. The street, known as Sei Yan Kai in their native tongue, had once held actual death houses, where coolies and other poor would lie on cots and wait for death to come—largely those Cantonese who had first occupied this enclave, but then gradually all the other groups as well. It was costly for the poor to exorcise the haunts of death from their homes. Better to send the haunting elsewhere. The street constantly smelled sweet of burning chrysanthemums.
The death houses had been banned a few years ago, however, after mutterings both domestic and abroad about the incivility, and the buildings had been converted into proper funeral parlors instead. It was these that Tian stopped at. There was nothing to see but a few food stalls open late, and the familiar phantom of a sleeping crane extending over the roofs from a construction site beyond. There had been cholera outbreaks here recently, but it didn’t seem to have gripped the actual place in any sense of urgency. The clacking of mahjong tiles emanated from within the parlor. The dead girl, Bee Hwa, had been estranged from her family. The wake was being attended only by Red Butterfly.
Compared to the parlor Adeline’s mother had, this room fit only the coffin dais and four tables squeezed together, two of which were occupied by nine girls playing mahjong and Four Color to last out the night. There were no bouquets, and only the simplest drapes. There wasn’t even a photograph.
“You’re back,” Christina said from the mahjong table, only sparing a glance as she examined her tiles. Then, after a sharper look: “What happened to your hand?”
Pek Mun cut in from beside her, already having zeroed in on Adeline. “Andwheredid you go?”
“I had a flare-up, just like Bee,” Tian said, so immediately and firmly Adeline didn’t have a chance to doubt her. “Adeline stopped it.”
One of the other girls piped up. “What do you mean she stopped it?”
“She touched me and it stopped.” Tian turned to Adeline for more explanation, even as Pek Mun asked, “Why would she do that?”
She had been answering Tian, but she was looking at Adeline. Adeline despised that this was the girl who would apparently be succeeding her mother. Unlike with Tian, the fact that Adeline shared her former boss’s blood didn’t seem to hold any sway for Pek Mun. Adeline may as well have been a stray animal brought in off the street.
And yet—the fact that Pek Mun was asking at all was a test. Tian had staked a play. Pek Mun was not rejecting it outright. So Adeline simply said, “It was spreading. It felt like the right thing to do.”
The games had stopped, even on the other table. Adeline wouldn’t have been surprised if the dead girl sat up from the coffin to observe.
Pek Mun pushed back her stool. “Tian,” she commanded, and walked out the parlor. Tian shook her head and went after her.
Christina offered Adeline a bottle of Green Spot, a momentary distraction from Adeline’s simmering doubt and the fear that she’d be thrown out again after all of this. “You know how to make an entrance.”
Adeline had never been allowed many soft drinks; now she was two for two on them coffin-side. She took the orange bottle with a nod of thanks. It felt like Christina wanted to be decent, at least, and she seemed important in the group. Anyway, it was bad form to remove someone from a funeral, when they were paying respects.
“May I?” she asked, indicating the coffin.
“Of course.”
Adeline had braced herself for the body. It was easier to see asecond time, and also when it was a stranger. The difference the Sons’ magic made from regular undertakers was obvious—there was no evidence of burns at all, nor the usual waxiness. Bee Hwa looked about Tian’s age, one or two years older than Adeline. She was dressed in a worn green cheongsam, and pins had been put in her hair.
Because Adeline had no relatives, funerals had never been a part of her childhood. Instead, she had observed them in the void deck of their old flats, coming to associate death with strangers. This time, though, she was forced to wonder if she would have saved Bee Hwa. She’d never had to think about saving people before. It unsettled her, but it meant there was something they needed her for.
If only Tian could convince Pek Mun of that fact.
The altar was at the foot of the coffin. The holder was already feathered with joss sticks, creating a wispy cloud of smoke before the small selection of cakes, fruits, and—bizarrely—lollipops. Adeline lit a stick and meditated in the sweetness for a moment. She bowed slightly to the dead Butterfly and added her own stick to the pot.
Tian and Pek Mun were back by the time Adeline finished.
“You can stay,” Pek Mun said coolly, to Adeline’s surprise. Adeline glanced at Tian, who spared the smallest smile behind her sister’s back. Pek Mun nodded at Christina, already treating the matter done. “Tell her your theory.”
And just like that, Adeline had been let in. She did her best to conceal her shock as Christina began speaking plainly.
“Red Butterfly shouldn’t exist anymore. Every kongsi needs a living conduit—that’s why Three Steel is going after the tang ki ko. When your mother died, we should have lost our fire. We couldn’t understand why that didn’t happen, or how you had the fire without a tattoo. It should be impossible. That’s what I’ve known since I started inking. All kongsi power flows through blood. It requires anchors—the conduit, the markings. But—”
“No other society has had a female conduit but us,” Tian said.“And no other Madam Butterfly has ever had a child. You were made in your mother’s blood. Since your mother died, Lady Butterfly must be coming through you, now.”
“It’s imperfect,” Christina clarified, “hence the flare-ups.”
Adeline looked between them. Thought now of the times the fire had seemed to overcome her—burning away her mother’s tattoo, extinguishing Tian’s flames. Hadn’t she felt then she was guided by an instinct that wasn’t hers? “It’s possible,” she admitted. “If you say it’s the only way. But surely I can’t hold it forever.” She hesitated, still testing her luck. “When do you raise the next Madam Butterfly?”
