When They Burned the Butterfly, page 22
“I didn’t kill your mother,” she said.
Adeline stared at her. Of all the things she’d expected her to say, after the conversation she’d just overheard, it hadn’t been that. There was never a moment with Pek Mun where she didn’t feel three steps behind, where Pek Mun didn’t find the singular scenario she hadn’t prepared to confront. Pek Mun’s mouth pursed. “I asked Tian to go to the White Orchid that night because I was going to see a Needle. That’s where I was, and if it will get you to get out of Tian’s head with this insane idea, then I can take you to ask him.”
“Why were you seeing a Needle?” Adeline challenged.
“My mother is dying,” Pek Mun said bluntly. “Slowly. I’m giving her blood.”
“I thought you weren’t on speaking terms.”
“That doesn’t mean I want her dead. I didn’t tell Tian because my mother didn’t treat her well. But she is my mother. And I didn’t kill yours. I had no reason to, which I’m sure you know somewhere in your head. What Tian doesn’t need is fewer people to trust.” Pek Mun had come within reach, looking down at Adeline. “I’ve taken care of her since she was thirteen. I’m the only person who can say that, now that your mother is dead. You can think what you want of me. But if you endanger her any more, I will string you up, and I don’t care about your choice.” She wasn’t even smug. “I’m going to see my mother tomorrow. I’m going to ask her about the list. You can come and see for yourself.”
“I will,” Adeline said, taken aback.
“Tian needs to sleep again. Don’t bother her.” Pek Mun made to leave, then stopped and clicked her tongue. “You should beg Christina to finish that tattoo. It’s embarrassing.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PEI PA ZAI
At half past eleven, the red-light district was still stirring. Laundry hung from the windows; girls with bare faces sat on the steps smoking and eating, laughing coarsely. They didn’t pay Pek Mun and Adeline much attention. Without the costumes, any of these houses could have been anything.
Pek Mun had set them off earlier with an emphatic instruction to keep her mouth shut. It had been entirely silent on the walk since, and it was a rather long walk. Grudgingly—between fantasies of tearing her hair out—Adeline respected the older girl a little bit more. No one had ever stood up for her the way Pek Mun had for Tian. It had surprised her, and surprise was enough for her to follow Pek Mun without a fuss through a street market and out to her mother’s brothel.
The market and the business of Chinatown in the daytime crossed dozens of languages through the ear like passing bees. Smattered English phrases, sprays of Chinese dialects, Pasar Malay and then Melayu proper; Tamil and Hindi and Punjab; the occasional bits of Tagalog and Thai and other regional visitors. The city had been woven from different directions for hundreds of years, full of worn holes as much as it was dense with threads. Adeline adored being between the seams where the loose ends all frayed, even if it was with Pek Mun. She felt like she could tug on any person they passed and unravel something entirely new. She had tugged on Tian and that had brought her to the Butterflies, and then following that line further there were more, other, girls with magic now somewhere in the web.
Despite the circumstances, the idea drew her in. Girls with strange new magic, enough to enchant some and scare others about how they might upset the local balance. Enough for Three Steel to want to control—if someone wanted to control something, then that something had power. Her new tattoo—Christina had grudgingly finished it—caught the sunlight as she walked and swung her arm. It fluttered in the corner of her eye and felt like a new piece of armor.
They were surreptitiously let into the brothel and to a private bedroom. Pek Mun had warned that her mother was in poor shape—lying in her room with the shutters closed until the sun went down, sickly, her hair falling out—and that Adeline was, once again, to shut her mouth and keep her hands to herself. Adeline had never actually seen anyone dying of sickness. It seemed slow for everyone involved. She’d rather someone just kill her.
Yet the woman occupying the room was not only up and about, poking at a caged songbird in the window while the television played, but also looked fresh as a new bride. She was dressed in a fantastic silk robe with a light blue dress beneath it, and her hair, very much not falling out, was curled under her ears. There was nothing dying about her. If anything, she was the most beautiful older woman Adeline had ever laid eyes on—regal like a portrait, an almost jarring youthfulness for someone who must have been almost fifty.
“Mother?” Pek Mun blurted, equally shocked.
Tiger Aw didn’t turn from her bird. “Who let you in here? I didn’t ask you to come.”
Pek Mun strode over to the television, picked up the remote, and switched it off. Her mother turned with the sort of idleness Adeline recognized immediately as coy.
“What did you do?” Pek Mun said roughly. “You miraculously recovered?”
“Don’t sound so happy.” Tiger Aw extended her hand. Pek Mun stared at her for a moment, then returned her the remote. She switched the television back on, some Taiwanese soap about an amnesiac wife, and turned up the volume. “Aren’t you glad you don’t have to give your mother anything anymore? I found someone more useful. My business is booming.”
Adeline was starting to see where Pek Mun got her personality. As the husband on-screen began an impassioned, melodramatic speech, the older girl picked the remote up again and switched it off with finality.
Tiger Aw slapped her. Not hard, but enough to make Pek Mun flinch. “I was watching that.” But she didn’t turn it back on. Instead she crossed over to a lacquer desk and arranged herself in the carved teak chair, turning a mirror and beginning to dust her face. Horribly, for a second she looked a little like Adeline’s mother. “So why are you here?”
“There’s girls dying on Desker Road. Girls with magic. We know your house is also on the list.” Pek Mun paused. “Is that your cure?”
“I don’t know about dying girls. Do I look like I’m dying to you?”
“You look beautiful,” Pek Mun said blandly.
“More than you do, that’s for sure. You must have loved seeing me fall apart.”
“I didn’t.”
“And what’s your name, little sister?”
It took Adeline a second to realize Tiger Aw had turned a beatific smile on her. The shift in tone was so abrupt it was hard to reconcile with the same mouth, but once Adeline had caught up she understood exactly what was happening, the exacting shifts of devotion and dismissal being wielded by a master. She understood, but was trapped regardless, until she caught a glance from Pek Mun that clearly shared the same understanding, and was letting her do it anyway.
“Adeline,” she finally responded.
“How pretty. Sounds so European. I should have one of my girls take it up; it’s easier for the ang mohs to pronounce. So, Ah Mun, I don’t see your suitors, all these other choices you said you had. You’re almost twenty-two, you think you have so much time?”
“Three Steel,” Pek Mun said coldly. “Where are they finding these girls? What treatments did they give you?”
“You won’t get the Kwong son back, but I’m sure there’s a man desperate enough to take you even with that shit on your skin.” Tiger Aw had a glint in her eye that Adeline thought might have inspired her nickname. She rattled an enameled tin on her desk; little things clattered inside it, like beads. “Three Steel makes medicine you can’t even dream of. This is what a visionary looks like. Not that good-for-nothing Crocodile.”
“Three Steel makes drugs.”
“They’re all the same thing. Just because you like to see me in the worst condition doesn’t mean that others are as selfish.”
Pek Mun didn’t respond. “I’m leaving.”
“And what did you get out of it?” Tiger Aw snorted. She returned to her powders. Pek Mun rolled her eyes and headed for the door.
Adeline followed, but behind them, Tiger Aw coughed. Adeline glanced over her shoulder in time to see the woman pull a bloodied handkerchief from her mouth.
Pek Mun shut the door. She pressed the tattoo on her throat, briefly, and Adeline suddenly understood it.
“Well, that was as helpful as I imagined her being. I hope you’re happy.”
Far be it from Adeline to have sympathy for Pek Mun, but there were several things that didn’t add up about this whole situation. “Why would Tian ask you to talk to her knowing what she’s like?”
“Tian doesn’t know. My mother was always good at doting on me in front of the other girls. Making everyone hate each other. Didn’t you hear the way she talked to you?”
“So you brought me because…”
“Because I need to make it very clear to you what Tian joined Red Butterfly for. Her father is an opium addict who’s been in and out of prison since she was born. Her mother sold her off because she owed the Crocodiles thousands in gambling debts and her brother had already joined another gang instead of trying to get a job. Now he’s sorry, of course, he even bought her that stupid motorbike, but she won’t talk to him otherwise and I hope she never has to. Red Butterfly is her family. Your mother took her in. I would never have killed her. I want what’s best for Tian. Always.”
“That just means you would have killed her, if you thought it would have benefit.”
“But it didn’t,” Pek Mun said plainly. “So I didn’t.”
“What am I supposed to tell Tian?”
“You don’t. If you love her you can lie to her.”
Adeline said, “I don’t—”
Pek Mun turned on her heel. “This way.”
* * *
This brothel was one of the nicer ones, the wider hallways and more sensuous decor clearly catering to a slightly wealthier clientele. Still, there were only dim lights in the interior corridors, and it smelled distinctively of bodies and perfume. They passed several girls with laundry baskets, one of whom registered Pek Mun with faint surprise. Outside of work hours, without the makeup and costumes, they were indistinguishable from any other boarders.
“What happened in there?” Adeline asked as they passed a room that flared particularly harshly in her.
“A girl got killed by the john. The Sons had to fix her face. Worst I’ve seen in this house.”
“How old were you?”
Pek Mun gave her a look, as though that had been both the right and wrong question to ask. “Nine.”
“What happened to the john?”
“The Butterflies.”
“They used to come here?”
“How do you think Tian got recruited?”
“Did anything like this happen while Tian was here?”
“How do you think Tian got recruited?” Pek Mun repeated. “You’ve felt it by now—there isn’t a brothel that isn’t bloodstained. It all just blurs together. Men don’t need magic to think they’re gods.”
She stopped and rapped on a closed door. “Maggie.”
It opened. “What are you doing here?” came the wary Cantonese reply.
Adeline lost her train of thought. Maggie, a slight woman in a loose cotton dress and gently mussed hair, looked exactly like Madam Aw and then did not, and Adeline couldn’t have explained where the immediate recognition had come from. Her cheeks were full and round where Madam Aw’s were sharp and cantilevered, nose long and elegant and lips rosebud where the Madam’s was more carved. Beauty, perhaps, as the only real comparison, in the way that beautiful people might band together away from the ugly masses, beauty so defining that it transcended all other differences. More beautiful than mercy, Adeline thought. She could see why it might compel, but not to the extent that it had swept over Desker Road’s customers. There was something unsettlingly brittle about Maggie and Madam Aw both, a thinness to the surreal beauty that didn’t seem like it would hold up to real weight.
Maggie yelped as Pek Mun grabbed her face, studying her intently. For a moment Adeline had the bizarre thought that she might kiss her. “Did Three Steel make you look like this?” Pek Mun demanded, switching dialects fluently.
“I’m earning more money than I ever have,” Maggie gasped. “Get your hands off me, or I really will call Three Steel.” Adeline’s Cantonese was rusty, but she followed enough to understand. Crucially—Maggie was no foreign girl; this was no foreign magic. There was something happening here that they didn’t quite understand.
Pek Mun let go, but palmed against the door with enough pressure to lever it open.
If Adeline squinted, she could see how Maggie’s room might look at work: in low light, perfumed, with the right drapes. Off the clock, however, both it and Maggie didn’t quite seem to fit, her veneered face at odds with the stray crockery and drying laundry, the peels in the old plaster.
“They shot Tian for asking the wrong questions,” Pek Mun said. “So you are going to tell me what I want to know.”
Maggie was pale and went paler. There, the porcelain almost fissuring along her lips. “Tian’s dead?”
Pek Mun pursed her mouth. Her voice was thin as paper. “We burned her yesterday.”
It took Adeline almost everything she had not to react. It was the most bald-faced, audacious thing she had ever heard out of anyone’s mouth. Pek Mun held the lie of Tian’s death on her tongue like she was the king of the underworld herself and could simply resurrect her from the blasphemy at any turn—like she alone held the doors between Tian still sleeping in bed and Tian sleeping forever, and had nothing but brazen confidence of keeping it that way. Adeline swung between awe and deep, deep unsettlement as Maggie pressed a hand to her pretty mouth as though pressing the edges back together and sank onto her settee, spidering fingers through her tangled curls. “She was just a little girl.”
“That’s never stopped anyone before.” Pek Mun had something almost real glistening in her eye; she blinked it away. “Please. My mother won’t say. Tell us what’s happening.”
“I remember she used to cry about her brother, when she first came,” Maggie was still saying. “Does he know?”
“I wouldn’t know how to find him.” Pek Mun perched on the edge of the settee and gently touched Maggie’s shoulder. Maggie tilted her head back to blink the tears out the corners of her eyes. Unnoticed, Adeline looked over the things on top of Maggie’s chest of drawers, opening and closing a compact, rolling a string of false pearls and a blue-stone ring that might in turn have been real, perhaps an heirloom. She felt a little sick.
“Gods,” Maggie was saying. “Three Steel started coming around a few weeks ago. We’d heard that the Crocodiles knelt to them, and Madam Aw didn’t care either way. They said we were under their protection now, and they had some pills to help us. You know, there’s always someone around here selling some supplement for thicker hair or bigger breasts or what have you, but this really works. They take a bigger cut, of course.”
“Supplements,” Pek Mun said. “Like medicine?”
“Pills.” Adeline glanced back over at the sound of rustling and metal tinkling. Maggie had produced a dented old powder tin. Small green spheres rolled around inside.
“Is my mother taking these, too?”
Maggie chewed on her lip. “We think so,” she whispered. “She’s only supposed to give them to us, when Three Steel delivers it every week. But I think there’s always extra, for her.”
“They’ve healed her.”
“Outside, but she vomits often, and it comes out black.” Maggie picked at her nail, chipping the white polish. “And her breath smells like rot.”
When Pek Mun tried to take the tin, Maggie clamped her hand around it. Surprisingly, Pek Mun relented. “All of you are taking this?”
Maggie nodded. “She beat Sherry, for saying no. But it works. I like taking it. Well, I don’t sleep as well, but I wake up just fine.”
“You don’t feel sick at all?” Adeline interjected, stumbling through the less familiar language. If it was Tiger Aw’s miracle cure, it shouldn’t be killing anyone. Perhaps the dead girls hadn’t gotten medicine in time.
“Only when I stop. Then I feel like my head could split. But I’m taking it fine,” Maggie repeated.
“And no one’s told you what’s in them.” It wasn’t a question. Still, Pek Mun was looking at Adeline as if to say I told you this was a waste of time. Maggie was right; supplements weren’t by any means out of the ordinary, and she didn’t seem to be harmed or in pain.
“Something is still killing those girls,” Adeline reminded her. So this strange new magic wasn’t abilities the girls had brought in. Perhaps it had still been imported somehow, or else simply dug up. The island had once teemed with magic—practitioners from all sorts of faiths from across all sorts of seas—and there were still other fragments of it. Mediums, shamans, bomohs, other wranglers of the native supernatural. It wasn’t impossible that Three Steel had found a new use for one of them.
“What’s killing girls?” Maggie asked.
Before either of them could respond, however, they were cut off by the sound of a woman shouting downstairs—and men shouting back in return.
Pek Mun swore. “Police raid? During the day?”
Maggie looked just as shocked. Pek Mun pointed at her tin of pills. “Hide that. Adeline. We need to go.” And then, like she’d already prepared for this exact scenario, she had moved swiftly across the room, pushed open the windows, and vaulted over the side.
Adeline, startled, took a moment to realize what was happening. Maggie grabbed her arm. “What was she talking about? What girls?”
Adeline startled again. Maggie suddenly looked different now that they were alone and the full force of her was focused on Adeline. Her features were less demure, less soft—in fact, she was looking increasingly like Tian. A bolder, more luminous version. Adeline blinked rapidly, even as Maggie hissed, “What were you talking about?”
Her teeth, Adeline thought bizarrely. They were too straight, too white. No one around here could afford teeth like that. Yet she found herself leaning closer. Leaning in.
