“What she said,” Ji Yen said. “Also—”
Understanding had dawned on Tian’s face. She shook Henry. “How much does she know?”
He glared, panting, one hand still pressed to his side. “Nine Horse told her.”
“And she told you—to what?”
The other Butterflies looked just as perplexed as Adeline felt. Was this the mysterious brother? But he and Tian looked nothing alike. “She just told me what to say when I found her. I was supposed to free her and show her the tunnels. I owed her. Now we’re even.”
“Who is this?” Adeline demanded.
“This is Henry Kwong,” Tian said. She said his name the way one might speak of a disgraced relative. “Pek Mun was supposed to marry him.”
In the light, with Tiger Aw’s stray jabs floating back to her, Adeline could now make the man out properly. Pek Mun’s supposed betrothed was indeed more well-groomed than most Steels, the kind of man who might have been a decent matchmaking prospect for a mamasan’s daughter. Madam Aw had clearly thought it was the best her daughter could achieve. Adeline could not imagine Pek Mun marrying anyone, though. Not in the way she couldn’t imagine Tian marrying anyone, but simply that Pek Mun seemed far too sharp for what marriage seemed to require of its wives. In hindsight, it had been difficult for Adeline to realize she didn’t want to be with a man when some level of misery looked like the built-in expectation.
Tian radiated an unexplainable fury, as though Henry’s very presence offended her to her core. “What did she tell you to say? Don’t look at her,” Tian said, when Henry glanced at Adeline. “What did Mun tell you to say?”
“She found out about this prostitute that we accidentally killed.She told me to tell Adeline what had happened, if she needed her fire.” He repeated the speech he’d murmured in Adeline’s ear.
Adeline felt the spirit of Lina Yan stir again, distorted and anguished, angry at being used, even now. Did the dead want to be turned to power? Well, they didn’t have a choice. Tian listened with the same look of fire stirring in her. “What does that have to do with you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” he croaked.
Tian cupped the side of his neck, pressed her thumb into the divot of his throat. He swallowed, glanced around at the dead men. “You don’t love Pek Mun like that,” Tian said. “Not enough to betrayFan Ge. So what is it? Why did you help Adeline?”
Henry’s gaze returned to Adeline despite the warning, as though seeking solidarity—or absolution. His chest heaved. “I wasn’t one of the ones who did it. But I helped them get rid of the body. I wrapped it and put it in the river. That will always haunt me.”
He looked almost relieved to have gotten it off his chest; he looked almost thankful, crying. Adeline could only feel disgust. He was pitiful, sure. It did not mean she found any pity to spare him. She almost wished Pek Mun’s mother could look at him now, see the man she’d wanted her daughter to marry. Even at her most vile, Pek Mun had ten times his conviction.
The same ghost flickered across Tian’s face. “Where is she, Henry?”
He looked at her darkly, with the sudden strength of someone who realized he still had some leverage. He opened his mouth.
There was a bang.
Tian jumped away as a red eye opened in the center of Henry’s chest, splattering the wall behind him with viscera. A third eye; wisdoms and visions of torn skin and shattered bone. Three weeping rivulets ran down his body now.
As Henry lifted his hand to the sudden stream of blood, uncomprehending, Adeline turned to find Christina standing to the sidewith a smoking pistol still extended. “We found Lina’s body, you know.” She hadn’t lowered her arm. Her whole body was shaking. “Paid a price, needed help, but Mun and I found it. We just didn’t tell anyone, because we didn’t want them to know what she looked like in the end. I see her body every day in my dreams. She was still naked. And her face was all wrong.”
Tian walked over and wrapped one arm around Christina. Her other hand prized out the gun. She lifted it. She hesitated. Then she shot twice. At the first, Henry’s shuddering body collapsed. Under the second he seized and went still. Mavis, taking a cue, walked over to the second bound man, yanking back his head and finding a place on his throat to slide the blade home.
The room fell silent. The Butterflies looked a little worse for the wear, but they were all alive, and all—stunningly, for this moment—triumphant. It was almost unbelievable that they had come here, for Adeline, and they were her home.
Geok Ning ran in then, ruining it with urgency and looking all a mess. “Tian. We found the mistress.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENIN BED WITH GODS
It was the woman from Fan Ge’s car, outside the restaurant. She looked much plainer now, darker circles under her frightened eyes, a younger woman than Adeline would have guessed then. She must have been a teenager when she was pregnant with that nine- or ten-year-old boy in her arms on the settee. “Please let my son go,” she said. “You can kill me.”
“I’m not trying to kill innocent people,” Tian replied shortly. But of course innocence was all relative. The woman lived in a house where other girls had died; she was the mother to Fan Ge’s son; perhaps she didn’t have tattoos, perhaps she couldn’t leave her son’s father without consequence, but when did one start being complicit? Tian was obviously weighing the same calculations. Adeline didn’t think she would kill them, or that any of them would. Not a child, and not a mother in front of her child.
The room was well-appointed, with a carved four-poster bed and a delicate silk folding screen. The sofa was mahogany in the colonial style, the wardrobe and sideboard rosewood. A child’s toys were scattered in a corner. The vanity had only some loose powders and lipsticks, surprisingly little for the made-up woman Adeline knew she could be, but also several brown pill bottles. Adeline emptied them out, heartbeat picking up, but they were flat and white, not the ones that had been forced down her throat.
“I get dizzy often,” the mistress said warily. “Please—there’s nothing here.”
Something had occurred to Adeline, though. “Does Fan Ge’s Needle give you these?”
“Ruyi? Yes. He’s treated me for years.”
