“Something like that. This isn’t a good area, you know. You stay in school, then you don’t get in trouble.” He jerked his chin. “Go on. And next time be more careful with where you’re going.”
“I will.” Adeline turned the corner in the direction he had pointed her, then doubled back along the parallel alley. She resisted the urge to grin. Even thrilled that she’d gotten away, it occurred to her that Tian couldn’t have gotten away with it, and that bothered her immensely.
As did her few seconds alone with Maggie, who’d suddenly reminded her of Tian. Had she hallucinated that? It had happened so quickly, and so unbelievably, that she couldn’t trust her own memory now. She was almost tempted to go back, now that she was clear, and look Maggie in the eyes again. But then she heard a second officer come calling for the first, saying they had caught a woman with the Red Butterfly tattoo.
Pek Mun.
Adeline stopped, disturbed by the genuine dilemma that came over her. She didn’t want to deliver Tian the news that Pek Mun had been arrested while Adeline had left her. The gods only knew howTian would react. At the very least Tian would never look at her the same way.
If you love her you can lie to her, Pek Mun had said. Adeline did consider turning right around and getting away scot-free. She would say they got separated, didn’t know what had happened until it was too late. It was barely even a lie. It would all be easily solved then; Tian would become Madam Butterfly, and they would consider the police the enemy they always had, and—well, and Tian would have one more family member gone.
All of two hours ago, Adeline would have said Pek Mun deserved it for abandoning her. But now Adeline found herself with the inconvenient burden of a conscience. She quietly stole after the two officers, at least planning to see what happened.
The policemen were gathered out in front of the building when Adeline snuck up from the opposite alley, crouching behind a pile of abandoned cartons. It seemed they’d checked all the girls’ papers and rounded up two of them—one looked underage, the other could have been arrested for anything from drug possession to illegal residence—who were now sitting in the back of an unmarked car. There was some arguing going on in the building itself. Adeline thought she heard Tiger Aw’s dulcet tones. But more importantly, against the second car, they were putting Pek Mun in handcuffs.
She wasn’t resisting, but she was attempting to protest. “I haven’t done anything. I was just passing by.”
Her tone—more docile and pleading than Adeline thought she was capable of—was surprising, but it was the fact that she was speaking in fluent English that really caught Adeline off guard. It might have been for the benefit of the officers who weren’t Chinese, but it was comfortable beyond mere practice. Pek Mun was fluent. Adeline had seen Pek Mun listening to English radio sometimes, and watching the programs, and of course reading her books with theblue-eyed illustrations on the covers, but the actual sound of it from her mouth was so alien that the alienness of the next words themselves took a moment to land:
“Call Inspector Liow at the Central Branch. Say you got Malory—he’ll know who I am.”
“The inspector doesn’t talk to the likes of you,” one of the officers snorted.
His superior, however, held up a hand. “You’reMalory? You tipped off last week’s raid?”
Even in handcuffs, Pek Mun had a look that could freeze. “He’ll know who I am.”
And Adeline knew who that inspector was. She backed away slowly. It had occurred to her to set the cartons on fire, create a distraction to give Pek Mun time to get away, but now she kept her hands to herself and watched and listened with a growing realization of what she was learning.
Though they still looked dubious, one of the policemen went to make the call. It seemed to go on forever, but eventually he returned and gave his colleagues a terse nod. “Inspector Liow wants to speak to you,” he said to Pek Mun. “You’ll have to come back to the station with us.”
“I can’t. I was with…” Adeline ducked out of sight as Pek Mun glanced around. “They’ll be suspicious if I disappear for too long. I can see him tomorrow. He knows the deal,” Pek Mun added forcefully. “I’mhelpingyou. I’ve been helping you for months.”
The police officers conferred with one another briefly. “Fine,” said the one who’d found Adeline earlier. “I’ll tell him to expect you tomorrow. But we need to fill out some paperwork.”
Adeline slipped away, making for home as rapidly as she could. Her heart pumped and pumped, running through the steps of what was to come: to tell Tian, to tell Christina,convincethem, because they would need convincing. They wouldn’t just believe her overPek Mun if it came to it. And then what would they do? She couldn’t tell. All she could do was light the fuse. The dark voice of her own instincts whispered,You see? You were right.
Why Pek Mun would do this, she didn’t know. There had to be some pragmatic calculation Pek Mun had made that summed it up as worthwhile; she had to have a longer goal in mind, she was not a rat for the sake of being a rat, that much Adeline was sure of. But a rat with a reason was still a rat, and Pek Mun had proven herself willing and capable of lying.
Adeline’s thoughts multiplied and crowded, and she felt absolutely pent up with them by the time the house was in sight. She opened the door and pushed through the curtain expecting to go straight to Tian.
Instead, Pek Mun was already in the living room, surrounded by Christina and the other Butterflies.
CHAPTER NINETEENDISCONTENT
“Thank heaven,” Christina exclaimed, as they caught sight of Adeline. “Pek Mun said there was a raid. We didn’t know what happened to you.”
Adeline met Pek Mun’s eyes. The police must have dropped her off somewhere, for her to get back so quickly. Pek Mun shifted just fractionally in her chair, a tension Adeline wouldn’t have spotted if she wasn’t looking for it, and perhaps not even then, if she hadn’t seen Pek Mun stripped down in the presence of her mother.
“Adeline—you were too fast, I couldn’t catch you.”
They were still watching each other. Pek Mun knew this game, Adeline thought. Was Adeline telling the truth, or setting her up? What did she play in turn?
“I doubled back for you. You must have gone another way.”
“I did. Out to the front. I saw the police. I saw you,” Adeline added.
Pek Mun frowned, glancing around as though making sure someone wasn’t playing a trick on her. She really was terrifyingly good. “I came right back. You must have seen someone else.”
