ELEVEN

The First Pillar

THE DOOR of the old church opened before Walker had fin­ished knocking. “My, my,” Basile Christophel drawled, leaning on the doorframe. “You have been busy, haven’t you?”

“Show us,” Walker said shortly.

“With pleasure. Come right in.”

In the basement room, the tallow-coated table shone like a starry sky. Clusters of glowing ash like nebulae had sprouted south of Brooklyn, with golden webbing reaching back to where the daemon Bios waded through the tallow with its hatpin and smoldering cheroot brain.

Christophel gestured at the two glowing clusters. “I presume these are the sites of whatever mayhem you undertook. You can likely disregard the activity there—people are talking locally. What you want to see are the conversations that aren’t just local concern and gossip.”

He pointed to a smaller cluster to the north. “This one, for instance. Now, it could be this is nothing more than a Brooklyn newspaper discussing yet another case of bad behavior in that wretched den of iniquity that is Coney Island . . . but news doesn’t usually travel that quickly. I think this is worth investigating.”

“How do we find it?”

Christophel produced a pincushion from one of the compartments in the letterbox cabinet and drove a pin through the center of the glowing ash to spear the map beneath it. The red-gold glow intensified to a cold white and burned away an irregular circle of tallow to reveal the place the pin had marked.

“Atlantic Avenue and Court Street,” Christophel remarked. “I can’t give you a more precise location than that, but somewhere right thereabouts, you should find one of your pillars.”

Bones had wandered to the other side of the table. “What about this one?” he asked, nodding at a cluster of cinders still farther north in New York.

Christophel grinned. “Ah. Yes. Now this one is very inter­esting.”

“Well, don’t keep us waiting,” Walker grumbled. “Do your pin trick, show us where it is.”

“I don’t have to do the pin trick to tell you where that is,” Christophel said with a smirk. But he pushed a second pin into the cluster anyway and the three of them watched the tallow melt away. “It’s Tammany Hall. Looks like one of your pillars is a Democrat.”

“Tammany Hall,” Bones mused. “All I know about Tammany is that it’s where that Tweed fellow had his headquarters.”

“Tweed’s in jail,” Christophel told him. “The current boss is Honest John Kelly. Probably no better or worse than Tweed, but for the moment playing it smarter.” He tapped the pin. “I think this ought to be your first stop. If you have any chance to, shall we say, win any of the pillars over to your cause, this one is your best bet. It takes a certain amount of . . . pragmatism . . . to work for Tammany. You may find you can do business with this fellow, whoever he is.”

“Two out of ten,” Bones murmured. “One from each city. That’s not bad for half a day’s work.”

“Especially if one of them can be convinced to help us find the rest,” Walker added.

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Christophel leaned back against the desk and folded his arms. “I don’t think you’re looking for ten. I think you’re looking for five.”

“Five per city,” Walker corrected.

“I understand that, but I also understand Brooklyn and New York.” Christophel nodded at the outlines drawn in the tallow. “You’re really not talking about two cities. You’re talking about one city cut in two by a river, and that river is about to be bridged. It’s only a matter of time before the two are consolidated.”

Walker and Bones exchanged a glance. “Are you saying this,” Walker said carefully, “because it’s logical, or because you know it to be true?”

Christophel grinned. “Both. Of course, anything is possible, and I can see all of those possibilities, but there just aren’t that many versions in which it doesn’t occur. The probability of your . . . experience . . . being one of the versions in which consolidation doesn’t happen . . .” His eyes glazed over.

Walker gave Bones a warning look. Bones put up a hand and waited.

“Oh . . . so very unlikely,” Christophel murmured. His expression sharpened, and he smiled at Walker. “No. You’re looking for five. I’m certain.”

“Well, that would make life easier,” Bones said. He looked at Walker, who still had a rigid expression on his face, and spoke with deliberate casualness. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Walker forced a twitch of a smile. “I’ll say it would.”

Bones nodded his head once. “Tammany Hall it is. Where do we go?”

“East Fourteenth Street. I’d get right on your way.” Christophel looked at the cinder stars glittering in the tallow. “The cluster’s still growing. Your man’s there, and talking. You could perhaps catch a couple birds in one stop.”

“It’ll take us hours to get there,” Walker protested. “Won’t the place be empty this late, anyhow?”

Christophel shook his head. “It might take you an hour, but you can go to the docks right here in Red Hook and hire someone to ferry you across to New York. Tammany headquarters has restaurants and entertainment open every day till midnight. You have time.”

Bones slapped Walker on the shoulder, leaving a yellow-dust handprint on the gambler’s suit. “Let’s be off.”

Walker twisted his head to look at the print, sighed, and brushed at it in annoyance. “No rest for the wicked.”

 

Jin stopped at the wagon long enough to throw some things in her rucksack and hand a bicycle wheel and a metal stake out to Sam. Then she led him back down to the beach and eastward, beyond the two iron piers to an open stretch of sand mostly out of reach of the lights of the hotel.

Beside a huge piece of driftwood, she unslung her bag from her shoulder and began pulling what Sam assumed were explosives from it. “Go sit,” she said over her shoulder. “This will take me a minute to set up.”

Sam lowered himself onto the wood. He was just about to kick off his shoes when he spotted the lantern bobbing its way up the beach toward them.

“Who’s there?” called a voice.

Sam could just make out the dark shape of a man in the dim glow. “Who’s that?” he called back.

The man with the lantern stopped a few paces away. Now Sam could see that he was wearing one of the Broken Land’s red and silver uniforms. “Hotel staff,” he retorted, glaring from Sam to Jin and back. “And you? This is private property.”

Jin waved. “We’re with Fata Morgana, your fireworks purveyors. Just testing some things for tomorrow’s display.”

The uniformed man did not look impressed. “How do I know that? I warn you, this hotel does not tolerate trespassers.”

“I’m not a trespasser,” Jin said calmly. “And this is how you know I am who I say I am.” She reached into her bag, took out two small leather pouches, and poured a bit of powder from each onto her palm. Then she set the pouches aside and rubbed her palms together in fast circles. Golden-green sparks flew from between her hands.

Now he looked a little impressed. “That’s something,” the uniformed man said admiringly. “Doesn’t it burn?”

“Only a little,” Jin said, brushing off the remaining powder. “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to startle you. I just needed some open space to practice.”

“That’s all right. I won’t chase you off.” He gave Sam a big wink and went on his way.

Jin rolled her eyes at his back. “What’s he think he’s winking at?” she grumbled as she turned back to her bag and continued unpacking her gear.

“That didn’t really burn, did it?” Sam asked, forcing himself not to reach for her hands to look for himself. It had seemed pretty convincing.

“Only a little, just like I said,” she replied, not looking up. “You get used to it. It’s not so bad.”

She buried the stake in the sand and secured the bicycle wheel to the end that pointed skyward, then she took a length of fuse and a handful of little cylindrical explosive cases from her bag. With short, sure knots she ran the fuse around the rim and placed the rockets at precise intervals.

“How can you see to do that?” Sam asked. She made it look like instinct, even in the near-complete dark between the piers.

“I can do this with my eyes shut,” she said. “This is my favorite kind of firework.” A few more moments, and she stood back to examine her handiwork. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

She took from her pocket the same contraption she’d used that afternoon to light the fireball in Culver Plaza, flicked it to life, and touched its flame to the end of the fuse. The glowing end raced around the rim, touching off the fuses of each of the individual explosives one by one, and the wheel began to rotate, driven by the flaming rockets. It picked up speed until the rockets blended into a single hoop of golden flame.

“This is a simple one,” Jin said, backing away and lowering herself onto the log beside Sam. “I can do fancier versions.”

“It’s beautiful. What is it?”

“It’s a catherine wheel.”

“Who’s Catherine?”

“Saint Catherine,” Jin said. “She was martyred. Broken on the wheel.” Sam looked at her blankly. “You don’t know what that means? Not a very good Catholic, are you? Aren’t most Italians Catholic?”

“I never said I was.”

Jin watched the wheel spark as it turned. When she spoke again her voice was flat. “They strapped you to a wheel and hit you with cudgels. Beat you to death. It doesn’t sound like much, I guess, but it was bad enough that sometimes people were strangled out of mercy after the first two hits.”

Sam looked at the fiery wheel as it went on sputtering golden sparks. “Sounds dreadful.”

“It used to be a torture device, and now it’s a beautiful flower of light.” She smiled a little. “A very religious woman once told me that it was wrong to name something so frivolous after the wheel Catherine was martyred on. That it was disrespectful to the memory of the saint. But I think that’s unfair to the wheel. It didn’t choose to be an instrument of pain. I think all things, if they could choose, would decide to be instruments of joy. But people put them to terrible uses, and then it’s a part of them forever.”

Sam watched the sparks flying from Jin’s beautiful flower of light, wondering how the heck he was supposed to respond. “Are you really looking at that and thinking of torture?” he asked quietly. “Why?”

“Because it’s part of the wheel,” Jin said. “Part of the past of every catherine wheel.” She turned and Sam felt her eyes pin him. “Because it’s been years since I saw a dead body, and today I saw two.”

The reflection of the golden sparks made her eyes look as if they were full of fire and pain at the same time. She held his gaze for a long time, and then she turned away.

“Sometimes it’s hard to forget those things, even in the face of beauty,” she said quietly. “I never do. Uncle Liao says that’s why I’m so good at fireworks. I know they grew out of violence and war. The first pyrotechnicians—many of them, anyway—were gunners. Believe it or not, that’s where Liao learned about explosives—aboard a ship. All fireworks, even ones like these . . . they are flowers grown on a battlefield. That’s where we got our slogan.”

“Arte et marte,” Sam murmured, remembering the phrase at the bottom of the handbill.

“Art and war.” Jin nodded fiercely. “And I want to do everything I can to help my works overcome the destruction in their past. Some people, like that woman I mentioned before, cannot see beyond the evils. But I want to make them so beautiful even someone like that can forget what they have done.”

She looked back at him, and her eyes were full of night and flame and the brightness of what he thought might’ve been tears. There was wariness there also, threatening to drop between them; that same wariness that he had seen her pull on like armor whenever there was any mention of her past.

To his shock, he knew exactly what he wanted to say to her, and he knew how he wanted to say it. “There is nothing that your past could have in it that would make you anything but lovely to me.” The words were awkward coming out, but for some reason that didn’t seem like a bad thing.

“You don’t know that,” Jin said savagely. Her gaze was utterly, inhumanly beautiful. Never before had he wanted to kiss a girl so badly. Of course, this had to be the worst time in the world to have those kinds of thoughts.

Now that he’d said the hardest words, the rest were easier. “You don’t ever have to tell me. I promise not to ask, Jin, but whatever it is, I promise you I wouldn’t care.”

Jin laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “Forgive me if I don’t sound impressed by your gentlemanly spirit. Anyone can curb their curiosity for a weekend, Sam. After that you’ll never see me again.”

“You don’t know that,” Sam retorted. “And I’m not a gentleman, I’m a card sharp. I’m not some sport who makes a habit of saying nice things to girls. In fact, this might be the longest conversation I’ve had with a girl who wasn’t a relative or a landlady, ever.”

Another moment of silence. A few yards away, the catherine wheel sputtered to stillness and left them in the dark.

Jin swiveled and reached for him. Sam’s chest clenched and he pulled her close without a second thought. It was then, as he felt her freeze in his arms, that he realized she’d only been reaching for the bag of explosives tucked behind the driftwood log they were sitting on.

“Cavolo,” Sam muttered, dropping his arms. “Sorry.”

“Fine.” Jin was already on her feet with the bag in her hands. She pulled on a pair of gloves, stilled the spinning bicycle wheel, and began stripping away the shredded remnants of the rockets with a pocketknife.

Sam watched her reset more explosives, stringing the fuse first, then selecting new rockets and attaching them to the rim. He decided this was a good sign. If he’d really fouled things up beyond repair, she certainly wouldn’t have wanted to stick around to set up another wheel.

It took longer this time. It was impossible to say whether she wanted to do something fancier or if she was avoiding returning to his side, but finally her blue-flamed lighter flared and fired the fuse.

“Watch,” she whispered as she backed toward the driftwood bench again. The glow raced around the wheel and sent it into motion. This time, the rockets erupted into blue and silver, and as the spinning accelerated, the sparks of four more fuses raced inward and a delicate filigree of sparkles burst to life at the center.

“I came to America, to San Francisco, when I was just a baby.” Jin stared at the wheel as she spoke. “I don’t know how it happened. I have no memory of it. I was maybe two years old.”

San Francisco. Of course. Sam’s heart sank. Why hadn’t he realized it before? That was why she had gone so strange and defensive when Ambrose had called her the girl from San Francisco. To be a Chinese girl growing up there . . . whatever she was about to tell him, it wasn’t going to be good.

It wasn’t going to be easy for her to say, either.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know.” Jin’s gloved fingers flexed by her side, and she continued. “I was raised in a house owned by one of the tongs. The tongs run San Francisco, at least as far as the Chinese are concerned.”

“It’s the same here,” Sam said quietly, but that wasn’t quite true. The tongs in New York were nowhere near as powerful as they were out West.

“And there aren’t many Chinese women in America.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You know that, too?”

Sam nodded without speaking. It was the way things often went with immigrants; fathers, sons, and brothers went first. His own grandfather had come to New York alone, then he had brought Sam’s grandmother over later, when he had saved up enough for the passage.

“Most of the Chinese women who make it here are smuggled in,” Jin said flatly, as if she was reciting something she didn’t want to have to think about. “They don’t always make it to their families, if there are families waiting for them at all. There are ways to make money off a cargo of people, especially girls, especially in a community where there are tens of thousands of males and only a few score of females. You understand what I mean?”

Sam looked down at his knees and nodded again. The tongs did this kind of business in New York, too.

“When I was eight,” Jin continued quietly, “they brought a woman to the house to bind my feet. The pain was . . .” She stopped talking for a moment and took a deep breath. “I had always planned to try and escape, but after that, I couldn’t do it by running or climbing.”

“I don’t really know what that means, actually.”

She glanced at his bare feet. “Curl your toes under, but not the big one.” He did. “Curl them further. Put some weight on the knuckles if you have to. The knuckles should be all the way out of sight.”

It was basically impossible for Sam to do as she asked, but he tried. “How’s that?”

“Dreadful, but I see you get the idea. You can relax your foot. What you just did can’t even approximate what binding is like. The foot is broken at the arch and pretty much folded in half. The idea is to get the length of the foot down to three inches from the toe to the heel.” She held up her forefinger and thumb a short distance apart. “That big.”

Sam stared. “How is that even possible?”

Jin shrugged. “Break the toes, break the arch, fold them where you want them, wrap them in wet cloth, tie them up. Then you have to stand up and walk around, because body weight helps the compression. When the cloth dries, it tightens. You rewrap the feet every few days or so. Or rather, someone else rewraps them, someone who isn’t bothered by screaming. The woman who first bound mine bragged that back in China she had been much sought after because she was basically deaf and there was no amount of screaming a girl could do that would make her show mercy.”

He swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”

Jin shrugged again. “It’s what’s done. It’s what has been done for centuries. It’s a mark of status, really, although it’s also . . . well, some men find it attractive. This is why it was done in the house where I lived. Someone got the idea that a few of us—the ones who weren’t as pretty as the others—would fetch higher prices with bound feet. And we wouldn’t be able to run away. So they made me a small-foot girl, along with a few others, even though I was eight then, which is older than usual and so it was . . .” She swallowed. “It was very bad. The pain, I mean.”

Another long silence stretched. Finally Jin spoke again. “I think perhaps if I had been a normal girl, if I could have run to my mother’s arms afterward and she could have told me all the reasons it was important, all the tradition and meaning, whatever had made her decide to put me through that pain . . . it might’ve been different. But it wasn’t like that, not in the house in San Francisco. It was done because someone thought the men who visited the house would like to see a girl tottering around on tiny lotus feet, and I didn’t have a mother to run to, and I couldn’t run anymore, anyhow.”

If it had been another boy talking about his awful past in the tenements, Sam would’ve tossed an arm over the kid’s shoulder or thumped him on the back, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do now. Also, he suspected that Jin might take a dim view of any fellow who put his hands on her uninvited for the second time in less than fifteen minutes.

“How did you get away?” he asked at last.

“There was a man who was a miner. He had an old . . . injury, and when he came to the house, he would talk, that’s all. So I asked him about explosives. I pretended to be amazed by them—I was much younger, a little girl. He would bring firecrackers and squibs, little things he could set off in the courtyard without burning the place down. I asked questions, and little by little I learned, and then I started stealing the powder and fuses.”

The catherine wheel had gone out some time ago. Jin began removing more supplies from her explosives bag as she continued.

“Somewhere along the way I think he figured out what I was up to. I think he might even have brought certain things just so I could take them. Perhaps I could’ve told him, but I thought if I let him help me escape he might expect me to leave with him. Then, when I had saved up enough and thought I knew enough to try, I set the explosives off. I blew up half the house and left in the chaos.”

“You blew up the house to escape?” Sam didn’t even try to keep the admiration out of his voice. “When you were eight?”

“I was nine by then.” But she smiled just a little as she corrected him. “Blowing it up wasn’t hard. The hard bit was getting everyone out of the part I wanted to demolish.”

“Still.”

“I managed to hobble three blocks from the house before a wagon pulled up in front of me. It was Liao and Mr. Burns, of course.” Jin pulled a pair of jars from her bag, unscrewed the caps, and sifted the contents together in a metal pan. “They’d been passing through San Francisco, and they happened to have been close enough to see the explosion I’d set. Liao jumped down and chased after me and of course I couldn’t run. He took one look at my hands and knew I’d been messing around with powders.”

She turned and held out one hand to Sam so that he could see. Her gloved fingers were touched with dark smudges of ash. Then she pulled off the gloves and held out her hand again. It bore the marks of old and still-healing burns: shiny skin on the knuckle of her index finger and the end of her thumb, and a scar near her wrist that stood out pinkish against the golden tone of the rest of her hand. She rose, set the pan a few feet from them, and poured a few drops of oil over the powder mixture. A sharp waft of cinnamon drifted up.

“I thought for certain they would take me to the police, but Uncle Liao said if I could do that with stolen firecrackers, I might be worth teaching. The explosion had particularly difficult-to-achieve shades of crimson and gold, you see. I had somehow managed to blow up my prison with flair. And that’s how I got my names: Jin means ‘gold,’ and my stage name, Xiaoming, was the name of an emperor’s daughter from old myth. It means ‘shines in the night.’”

She shook the concoction gently, like a prospector panning for precious metals, and placed it carefully on a flat stretch of sand. “The first thing he did was cut the binding off. He said a proper fireworker has to be able to run if things go wrong. You can imagine I didn’t argue. Of course, some of the damage was already done. We discovered we had to wrap them up again and allow my feet to adjust to looser and looser bindings, a bit at a time. We let my feet out like that, little by little. It took years before I could teach myself how to run again.”

Jin lit the mixture in the pan with her pocket lighter, and it flared into a neat little blaze. “Instant bonfire,” Sam said with a smile.

Jin nodded and sat beside him again, arranging the cuffs of her trousers so they covered her shoes. She didn’t say anything more.

The bonfire had a silvery tone to it, and the smell of cinnamon still hung in the air. Sam’s chest was tight with a dull ache.

Somewhere across the lawns behind them, despite the horror that had just been discovered on the hotel grounds, an orchestra at the Broken Land was playing a waltz. The sound carried through the night as clearly as if they were only a few yards away from the bandstand.

“I know how this is going to sound,” Sam said at last, “and I’m sorry for it, but I think I’m right.” He took a deep breath. “I think you should take off your shoes.”

She glared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

He hadn’t suggested she shuck off her clothes, but it wasn’t all that far off. “I know this is an utterly inappropriate thing for me to say, but you should do it. Everyone should feel the sand between their toes when they can.”

For a long moment he watched her debate it, the glare firmly ensconced on her face all the while. In the end, though, the frown between her eyes faded. “All right.”

She reached down, fumbled under the wide cuffs of her cotton trousers, and produced a pair of embroidered red shoes with pointed toes, which she set neatly to one side.

Sam waited. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“How is it?”

She considered. “Very nice, actually.”

“You can’t tell just from sitting there like that. Get up, walk around. And would you quit worrying?” he added as she shifted her weight awkwardly. “I didn’t suggest it so I could try and sneak a look.”

She muttered something in Chinese, stood, squared her shoulders, and took a few steps. Despite what he’d just said, Sam wondered whether she would notice if he tried to catch a glimpse of the feet she was so worried about. It was dark, after all . . . but somehow, he managed to keep his eyes away from the ground.

“It’s nice,” Jin said again, and this time her voice was softer. She walked farther. “Feels good, actually. You’re right.”

Sam watched her circle back around the fire. He had begun to suspect that the awkward gait he’d noticed on Culver Plaza was something that she fell into when she, herself, felt awkward. She’d had it again when they’d crossed the hotel’s atrium, but earlier, just after the fireworks when she’d been so happy, it was as if she’d forgotten all about her damaged feet, and her body had forgotten along with her. He watched for the awkwardness now, but her steps merely looked deliberate as she strode across the sand toward him again.

The faraway waltz drifted in the air, and the breeze made her clothes ripple and her hair catch brief glimmers of light from the fire. The ache in his chest was threatening to make him say something stupid. But then, he wondered, how would he feel if he didn’t say anything at all? What was the worst that could happen?

So he said it. “Would you dance with me?”

Jin stopped walking. “I can’t dance, Sam.” No wariness this time, and no coyness either. She spoke as if she thought she was saying something obvious.

“Because of the binding or because you never learned?”

“Both.”

“But you can run.”

“Yes, but it hurts. It always hurts.”

“Then I have another suggestion.” He got to his feet and held out his arms. “Trust me. Think how well the last one turned out.”

She looked at him for a long time. “I came out here with you, and we sat here in the dark, alone. I told you things I never tell anyone. I took off my shoes. I know how this must appear. You might be thinking . . . but please don’t get the wrong idea. I couldn’t bear it.”

The ache twisted. There it was, exactly what he’d been afraid of. What had she said earlier? I want to know if you’re going to mistake that for an invitation.

“I don’t think that,” Sam protested. “You know I don’t think that, don’t you?”

“Then why are you here?” she asked wildly. “And you want to dance? White boys don’t dance with girls who look like me.”

“That’s only because there are about five girls in the country who look like you,” Sam retorted. “And because people are stupid.” He dropped his arms. “I don’t know what to say to you. I’m not good at talking to people, not like this. But I know how to dance, and it makes me sad to see you sad. Please dance with me.”

She looked back at the fire, as if it had advice to offer. Then she nodded once and stepped closer.

Sam put an arm lightly around her waist. “You know what a waltz is?”

“That’s the one that goes one, two, three, one, two, three?”

“That’s the one. Now, about the part where it hurts your feet. Do you trust me?”

Jin gave him a wary glance. “Not remotely.”

Sam smiled. “I don’t think that’s true.” And I hope I’m right about that. “This is how we get around the pain.” He stepped closer still and tightened his arm, bringing her body right up against his and lifting her almost, but not quite, off her feet.

Jin’s eyes snapped wide. “What are you doing?”

“Just reducing the weight you’re putting on your feet, that’s all.” Of course, that wasn’t all. They were nose-to-nose now, and he could feel her heart hammering against his chest. “Put your hand back on my shoulder, like this. Ready? And—”

“Sam.”

“Yes?”

“If you put one finger out of line, I will kill you. You believe that?”

“Yes, actually, I do. Now, one . . . two . . . three . . .”

It didn’t happen easily, but he managed to get them waltzing.

Somewhere on their second turn around the bonfire, the tension began to melt out of her. Not long after that, Sam realized the hand she’d rested on his shoulder had crept around his neck to hold on to him. She smelled like gunpowder and cinnamon, and he couldn’t breathe in the scent deeply enough. He kept on counting steps, whispering numbers as the silver-and-red bonfire threw wild reflections into the eyes that looked past his shoulder into the night.

They danced until the faraway music faded, leaving them standing beside the fire, arms wrapped around each other. Jin had never looked up at him, had never met his eyes, but her head rested on his shoulder now. Sam turned just enough to see the plane of her face and felt her cheek against his chin.

They danced until the faraway music faded. 

“Jin . . .” he said quietly. “How are your feet?”

She smiled and spoke against his neck. “I feel as light as a spark.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

From somewhere in the dark, a barking explosion sounded, followed by a loud whining whistle. A shaft of white light shot heavenward and exploded into a shower of pink stars overhead.

Jin looked to the sky. “That’s Uncle Liao’s signal.”

“I’ll take you back.”

She turned in his arms to watch the last of the pink sparks fall, and he watched her with his heart in his throat. Then she nodded once, slid out of his grasp, and returned to the driftwood and her rucksack. Sam stood awkwardly by the fire in its pan, unsure whether he ought to say something now or not.

Jin took her little knife from the bag and pulled the gloves back on. Then she stripped the darkened catherine wheel and returned to the fire just long enough to drown it in sand. While she slid her feet back into her shoes, Sam dug the pan out. This, of course, was a stupid thing to do.

“Holy Mary, Mother of—” The metal, naturally enough, was searing hot from the fire. He flung it away and jammed his burned fingers in his mouth. Jin appeared at his side, yanked his hand away from his face, and examined the red marks already coming up on his fingertips. She sighed.

So the evening ended with Sam back outside the Fata Morgana wagon, looking stupid while Jin coated his hand in burn cream and her uncle watched with his arms folded and his eyebrows raised, muttering something about what had possessed him to send Jin away in the company of this idiot boy.

At that, she raised her eyes to Sam’s and gave him the slightest, smallest conspiratorial smile, which sent a blush over his face that he could only hope the old man would interpret as appropriate shame for being a stupid boy who burned himself on obviously hot pans.

“If you can, put ice on it when you get home,” she told him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Take the jar with you,” Liao instructed. “Use more tomorrow.”

“I’ll bring it back,” Sam promised. Liao waved his hand dismissively and disappeared into the wagon.

“Can you come find me tomorrow?” Sam asked Jin the second her uncle was out of earshot.

“On the plaza, same as today?”

“Yes.”

She gave him one of her long, thoughtful looks. Then her face broke into a grin that made his stomach flip. “Yes, I think so.”

And then she was gone, up the stairs and into the wagon, and despite the pain in his hand and the horrible things that had happened earlier, Sam spent the long trek back to West Brighton feeling as though he were walking on air.

He let himself into Mrs. Ponzi’s house and found Constantine playing solitaire on the parlor floor. Ilana was stretched out on the sofa, asleep.

“We tried to wait up for you,” Con said quietly, throwing down a five of clubs. “Some of us failed.”

“What time is it?” Sam squinted at the clock on the mantelpiece.

“It’s one in the morning,” the other boy told him. “Where the heck have you been?”

“You waited up this late? What’s wrong with you?”

Constantine stretched. “Nothing’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with you?” He jabbed a finger at Sam. “You owe me some information. What’s this I hear about you and a Chinese girl?”

On the couch, Ilana stretched and rubbed her eyes. “Is that Sam?”

“More important,” Con continued, “what’s this I hear about you getting invited to watch fireworks at the Broken Land Hotel and you didn’t take us?”

Sam glared at Ilana. “You.”

“Was it a secret?” she asked sleepily.

“I only told you so you’d tell your ma not to expect me for supper.”

“You didn’t say I couldn’t tell Con.” She sat up and brightened. “How were the fireworks? Did you see—what’s her name —Jin?”

“Who’s Jin, and why does Ilana know so much that I don’t?” Constantine grumbled.

“Jin’s the Chinese girl,” Ilana supplied, “the one who made the air explode when the horrible boys were bothering her. Sam, how were the fireworks?”

Sam ignored her question. “Something happened.” He hesitated, not sure he wanted to talk about it. “Illy, maybe you should go up to bed.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open with such a show of indignation that Sam actually flinched. “I beg your pardon,” she said icily. “But this is my house.”

“It’s your mama’s house,” Constantine pointed out mildly.

“That’s right, which makes it my house, too.”

“All right, all right,” Sam cut in. He told them about the body behind the hotel, which then prompted him to tell them about the body Jin had found near Mammon’s Alley earlier, a detail he’d neglected to mention when he’d told Ilana he wouldn’t be home for supper. Then he told them about Jack.

“That sounds like a folktale,” Con said.

Sam nodded. “That’s what I said.”

“But you think this is real?”

“Well, I think someone killed two people because of that story, whether it’s real or not.” He sighed. “Yes, I think it’s real. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Ilana tugged her sweater closer around her. “So . . . what are you going to do?”

“I have no idea.”

The three of them sat silently for a moment. “How were Jin’s fireworks?” Ilana asked again at last.

Sam closed his eyes for a minute and pictured the sinking castle and the spinning catherine wheel. “I wish you could’ve seen them,” he said. “She’s amazing.”

Ilana gave a happy sigh. Constantine flicked a card at her and hit her square on the forehead. “Sappy little fool.”

“Hey,” she said, fumbling for the card, “I’ve been practicing that, too. Watch. I can hit Sam from here. Sam, hold still.”

Cards flew, some more accurately than others, and another night came to an end.