Chapter Eight. Oil and Steel #2
“Are you going to waste my time?” Her mother had died inexplicably—no suspects, no evidence, no witnesses but Adeline.
She didn’t even know what questions to begin asking.
But Bee, who’d died in a similar enough way, had details to question and someone to interrogate.
This, something could be done about. Perhaps this was her way through, to find answers to that first, more abstract mystery.
But she couldn’t do it alone, and so she had tested the weight of we, concealing how it turned her throat dry.
Tian shrugged. “We’ll talk to the dolls, beg for favors.
Someone will know something. You’d be surprised how much a girl on the street sees when no one remembers she’s looking, and the kind of things a man will admit to a stranger he’s just fucked.
But take it easy tonight,” she said, not remarking on the way Adeline had flushed.
“You should sleep.” She paused as she withdrew, drinking Adeline in as though she’d disappear the moment she took her eyes away.
“You can stay here as long as you want.”
The next morning, a disoriented Adeline was woken and swept into Tian’s motions: borrowing a gray dress from Vera for her, pushing red bean buns and coffee for breakfast upon her, introducing her to the other girls she hadn’t met.
Perhaps she’d had to bargain with Pek Mun harder than Adeline had thought.
Tian never quite lost her cool exterior, but underneath she seemed absolutely anxious that Adeline feel comfortable enough to stay.
No one had ever been anxious to keep her before.
They were due for the closure of the wake, where Pek Mun and two others had remained.
There was only one priest and one Son; the chants and rites were brief, and with no family hierarchy to order themselves in, they all trooped after the departing hearse together, walking it to the far end of the street, where the Sons conducted rudimentary cremations.
Adeline remembered almost nothing of her mother’s cremation.
She only remembered going back for the urn, the blackened bone fragments that the attendant placed into the jar before burying them with the remaining ashes.
Like her mother’s actual death, the occasion had mostly removed itself from her memory.
But she did recall there being glass separating them, then, and doors behind which the coffin vanished.
With burials still the most preferred method of rest, the Sons did not have the same extensive columbarium. Instead, they had a hall with open rafters, a deep pit, and kindling. Just for Red Butterfly, they were invited each to light a stick, and throw it onto the base.
Adeline watched this cremation anew. The fire licking up the sides of the thin coffin, slowly filling it. The lid had been closed, but as the flames enveloped the casket, it jumped.
A shriek was stifled somewhere from the group. It happened a second time, the heat contorting last bouts of life into the decomposing body.
“She’s angry,” someone whispered. Adeline didn’t know if she was just imagining it, or if it was the roar of the fire and the heat getting to her head, but she thought she felt that anger in her chest, soaking into her muscles, winding them tight.
On her right, Wai Lan leaned into the next girl.
“I want to cut the steel from that man’s bones,” she murmured.
The man known to his few friends as Skinny Steel Weng was a Three Steel in his early twenties referred to by his many dislikers as the Oily Man—a skeevy aggressive lout who, like the kampong superstition, had a reputation for roughing up the girls he bought and greasing the table at cards.
It was quite a reliable reputation, which also meant they knew exactly where he would be on days of the week.
He had a favorite gambling den, a favorite brothel, and a favorite coffee shop at which he drank beer afterward.
While they waited for him to be brought their way, the girls whispered and kicked at things in the alley, made finger shadows with their fires.
Tian and Pek Mun were having a hushed argument again, this time about debts incurred from the funeral.
Little surprise that they were so divided, if Tian couldn’t agree with her, and yet evidently looked up to her.
Presently, Mavis gave a low whistle, and they all quieted.
A moment later, Hsien backed into the alleyway, tipsy-tottering in her heels, giggling and beckoning for her partner to follow.
A former dancer who’d been injured by a rival and turned to the Butterflies for revenge, she was among several whose family had no idea that when their daughter stayed out for the night, it was no longer to dance.
Tonight she’d done herself up, skirt stopping just where the butterfly was inked on her thigh.
All she’d had to do was approach. Skinny Steel Weng had snapped at the bait—he appeared at the mouth of the alley now, drinking her in lasciviously, unable to believe his luck.
He was so fixated on Hsien that he didn’t notice the five girls emerging from the alley’s deep shadows. He also didn’t notice Wai Lan coming up behind him until she smashed a copper pipe into the backs of his knees.
As he bellowed and staggered, Hsien yanked his shirt and sent him skidding forward.
Talking would come later. For now they set upon him with blunt things and feet and fists, not knives, because they did intend for there to be talking.
Adeline joined in enthusiastically, knowing she couldn’t demonstrate anything less.
Her acceptance into the group still felt insecure.
Tian’s word clearly held a lot of weight, and her parentage brought her the rest of the way.
She’d stopped another flare-up, too, and wouldn’t easily forget the reverence with which the girls looked at her after seeing it for themselves.
Her qualification was not in question—but her longevity was.
Pek Mun was clearly waiting for her to cave, and even the friendlier girls kept an awkward polite distance, seemingly unsure how to treat her.
Adeline gladly took her frustrations out on the man beneath them, at least until Pek Mun said, “Enough!”
The other girls backed away, so Adeline went with them, flushed. Skinny Steel Weng was perfectly alive and even conscious, groaning softly and bleeding at their feet.
“Hi, minyak,” Tian said, taking the Malay epithet. “Long time no see.”
He really was oily, Adeline thought. Even before it had been smeared in the dirt, his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.
Tian knelt, dragging her fingers through said hair to grip it in a vise.
He had puncture wounds in various places from her spiked ring already, and it must have been pressing against his scalp now by the way he winced.
“We have some questions for you,” Tian said. “Why did you kill our girl?”
Weng panted and spat blood. “I didn’t kill her.”
Mavis kicked his knee. “Well, she’s fucking dead, and our friends said you were the one who put the bullet in her chest.”
“I didn’t set either of them on fire, did I? Crazy bitch did it to herself—”
“What do you mean either of them?” Tian demanded. “There was someone else there?”
Weng grimaced, silent. Lan started forward, but Tian motioned her away.
She lit a couple fingers on fire instead, bringing it just under the Steel’s chin like sensual candlelight.
“Oil tends to burn quickly, you know. I’ve always wondered if Steel tattoos would protect from fire or cook you inside.
” Weng’s bloodshot eyes tracked her fingers like a moth, but he didn’t say a thing. Tian glanced around. “Hwee Min.”
Hwee Min twirled her hair. “Left arm.” To Adeline’s surprise, the girl next to her, Mavis, propped her elbow jauntily on Adeline’s shoulder to watch.
Tian jabbed her fingers into Weng’s left arm like putting out a cigarette. He did scream, now, or would have, if she hadn’t clapped her other hand over his mouth. A moment later, there was a blistering spot on his arm. “Hsien,” Tian said next, settling into it.
“Wait!” Weng seethed, but he was eyeing her flame with open fear. “It was one of our prostitutes, okay?” he spat. “She saw your girl, went crazy, and then suddenly your girl is burning everything around her. I needed to stop them both. I’m lucky to have gotten out alive.”
“So now you’re the hero,” Lan said sarcastically.
“Why would the girl go crazy?” Tian pressed. “What does that even mean?”
“She just attacked,” Weng sneered. “How should I know?”
“Tian,” Pek Mun said, glancing out at the road. “Let’s get this over with.”
Annoyance flickered over Tian’s face. “Where did this happen?” she demanded.
Weng pursed his lips. Tian shifted the flame closer to his face. “You want to see crazy?” she said softly.
The Steel worked his jaw, straining away. “Desker Road. It’s ours. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Go to hell,” Lan snapped. Pek Mun’s warning about their ticking clock seemed to have put everyone on edge, but they weren’t willing to leave without the exchange they’d come for. Tian stared at the Steel, then cast around in her pocket, flipped out a knife, and stabbed him in the gut.
The girls ransacked his pockets, not caring if he lived or died.
Adeline found it almost reassuring that everything rested on such a simple calculus.
If it were Butterflies, like them, then every slight should be avenged.
If not, and if they were an enemy, he could die without anything on their conscience, and they would merely argue about identifying the pills he was carrying.
“What is that?” someone was asking. “MX?”