I missed him so much it was a physical ache. His hands, his smile, the feel of his gaze against my skin. I needed him, and there was no use pretending otherwise.
Dawn was just a thought around the edges of the sky when I got up and got dressed. Or rather, I started to get dressed, then looked at the jumpsuit I’d worn since Alcatraz and wrinkled my nose.
“Clothes in the wardrobe.”
I jumped at the voice, then saw Chang standing in the doorway, holding a mug that smelled of coffee and regarding me. I pulled the blanket around myself.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“I’m quiet,” he said, and smiled at me. “They’re not girl’s clothes, but they smell better than what you showed up in.”
“Thank you,” I said, shutting the door on him while I got dressed. I thought about Chang while I put on trousers and a shirt and jacket with sleeves far too long for my arms.
Chang was charming, that much was sure, and handsome, but in the balance of things he had agreed to help me awfully easily, and I hadn’t survived by falling for every handsome face that offered me assistance without questioning the motive behind it. I’d made that mistake with Tremaine. It wasn’t happening again. When I was clothed, I went down to the main part of the shop.
“Why are you doing this?”
Chang was cooking eggs on a small burner on top of a potbellied woodstove in a corner, and he raised an eyebrow at me. “Doing what?”
“Helping me,” I said. “Really, you gave in with hardly any fight.” I looked around and saw all the sharp and heavy things I could use to defend myself. That and Cal being within screaming distance emboldened me. “Are you with them? The Brotherhood of Iron?”
“Brotherhood?” Chang looked genuinely confused, eyebrows drawn and mouth slack. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Aoife.”
“I know the Brotherhood can be persuasive when it wants something,” I said. “I know they keep tabs on people like you and the doctor. And I know that getting me to willingly put myself in a coma, ripe for capturing, would be just the sort of thing they’d pull.”
I picked up the knife sticking out of the cutting board at Chang’s elbow and ran the blade against my thumb. “It’s a simple question. Did they bribe or threaten you to get to me? I know they’re in San Francisco. Tell me the truth.”
Chang shook his head. “I don’t know where you’re getting this idea from, Aoife, but I’m just doing this because I can tell you’re going to keep trying with or without me. And next time, you might not run into someone who’s as nice as I am. You might run into someone who truly wants to hurt you and your friends. Someone this Brotherhood of yours has gotten to.”
He put the eggs on a plate and sat down to eat. “Desperation makes people stupid. I’ve seen that with the doctor, and I’d really prefer to keep others from that path, if I can.”
He gestured to a seat across from him. “Now can I have the knife back? I need it to cut my fruit.”
I took my seat, warily. Chang sighed when I handed over the blade. I still had misgivings, but he was so calm and open, so unruffled by my accusation, I had a hard time believing my own paranoia. The Brotherhood was sneaky, but they couldn’t be everywhere.
“You haven’t had many people be kind to you, have you?” Chang asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “Nobody, really, except Cal and Conrad. And Dean.”
“That explains it, then,” he said. “Why you want him back so badly. And I’m smart enough to know I can’t stop you. So why don’t you eat something, and I’ll see about getting the lab back to specs.”
A bell jangled from the back room where the doctor stayed, and Chang’s pleasant expression vanished. “I’ll be back,” he sighed. “Just have to go and see what he needs.”
As soon as Chang left, I got up and found a pad of receipts and a pen. I scribbled a note to Cal and Conrad so they wouldn’t worry about me, and then found a heavy rain jacket hanging by the back door. I had an idea of where I was going, and knew I wouldn’t get another chance before I had to tell Cal or Conrad where I was going and they tried to convince me otherwise.
They’d probably be able to talk me out of it—I knew even as I slipped out this was a bad idea, but I didn’t have a better one.
The way back to Madame Xiang’s wasn’t hard to figure out—we’d only made a few turns when she’d brought us to the Boneyard. The streets were quieter in the early morning, but not by much. Drunks were stumbling out of bars and laborers were crowding into round-the-clock diners. The smells and sounds were still persistent.
A Proctor airship hummed overhead, toward the bay, but it didn’t slow down or drop altitude. This place truly was closed off to the Proctors, and, I hoped, to the Brotherhood after we’d escaped them.
Fang from the night before opened Madame’s door with his same lack of expressiveness. I stood my ground.
“I need to see Madame,” I said.
“She’s asleep,” Fang grunted.
“It’s important,” I told him. “I’ll owe her a favor.”
Fang grinned. “I think you already owe her one, little girl. I doubt you want to owe her a second.”
“Fang, for goodness sake, stop letting all the warm air out.” Madame was wearing an impeccable silk robe printed with cherry blossoms, and her hair was wrapped in an orange scarf that set off her skin. If possible, she was even more gorgeous than before.
“Oh,” she said. “You again. I thought I’d shooed all the strays away from my doorstep.”
“I need something,” I said. Madame smiled, taking a cigarette from a small mesh purse and waiting for Fang to come light it. When he did, I moved inside and shut the door, which made him grunt with irritation. I hoped he didn’t take too much offense. I didn’t want to be on the bad side of somebody that large.
“I thought you needed something last night,” Madame said. “I was under the impression I’d already bargained with you.”
“I know, and I’ll still carry the message,” I said. “But in order to do that I need something, and I think you’re the only one who can help me.”
Madame sighed and stubbed out her cigarette in a nearby bowl. “Fine. What now?”
“I need something that will stop my heart,” I said. “Just for a few moments. I need to be dead, but I also need something that will let them bring me back.”
“So basically, you’re asking me to help you cheat,” Madame said. “Tsk, tsk.”
“Please,” I said. “It’s the only way this will work.”
“I didn’t say no,” Madame said. “I rather like cheating.” She drew close to me, and I could smell cold cream and a hint of old perfume rolling off her. “But you’re going to owe me a lot more than a little message to my brother. You do understand, yes? What it means to owe the tong a favor?”
“I’ve owed favors to people a lot worse than you,” I told Madame, and met her eyes.
She laughed. “All right. Come with me.”
I felt my body loosen, the tension I’d been holding inside running out of my skin and bones. “Thank you, Madame Xiang.”
“Call me Lei,” she said. “Close as we’ve become, it seems only fitting.”
She led me through the curtain, into the back room, which was a parlor and a small kitchen crammed together. Lei didn’t stop, though. She took me to a door that led to the first floor, a windowless room that couldn’t be seen from the street.
“I’d much rather do this in a basement,” she said, “but this place isn’t stable. Rat-infested mud hole that this city is. You know when they started the Engine under Alcatraz, it cracked the whole city in two? That there’s still wreckage under the streets they covered up and pretended wasn’t there? There’s a giant chasm in the basement. Under this whole section of the city, really. We use the tunnels for smuggling, when we have things we’d rather the Proctors not see.”