Bad Bloods

by Shannon A. Thompson

  “But it’s too late for someone else,” Kuthun said.

  “Who?”

  He sighed. “Madam Jia-Li.”

  The owner of the bordel. The woman who raised Caleb, Nuo, and many of the herd members. The criminal who taught kids to play music and sell their bodies at the same time.

  I got a bad taste in my mouth. “She’s…”

  “Dying,” Kuthun finished. “Like Caleb.”

  Unlike me, Kuthun could be honest about Caleb’s condition. He could face it, see it, explain it, and stand by it. While the thought of Caleb’s reality made me shake, Kuthun seemed grounded by it. He was braver because of it.

  “She needs treatment today,” he said, and since Britney wouldn’t go anywhere without Caleb—and taking Caleb in the shadows was a risk to his health—Jia-Li would die. Today. “Even if you went to Britney, Nuo would stop it anyway.” She wanted to see Jia-Li dead more than anything. “But stopping it…”

  “No one needs to stop it,” Caleb spoke before his eyes cracked open. He blinked several times, groaned, and sat up. Kuthun immediately went to his side.

  “You need to rest.”

  “I need to speak,” he said, then met my eyes over Kuthun’s shoulders. “Will you stay with her?”

  “Wha—?” I tried to find my voice but failed.

  Caleb, however, remained vocal even in his illness. “Will you go to her deathbed, Violet?” he asked. “Please?”

  “You don’t owe her anything.”

  “I owe her my life,” Caleb countered, though he was in the process of dying himself. That only deepened my sympathy for him. “Will you?” he asked again. “For me?”

  In case he died, too.

  “Will you hold on?” I asked, my voice as unsteady as my swirling shadows.

  Caleb smiled, nodded, then passed out.

  Kuthun caught him from falling off the bed, his own hands shaking as he propped Caleb back up. When his hand wrapped around Caleb’s, all I saw was the night I realized what Britney was capable of—how Kuthun realized I had seen him kiss Caleb on the cheek—and now, the secret stayed between us like the string tying us together.

  “Have you told him yet?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I asked a different question. “Is it because we’re tied together?”

  Kuthun stared at Caleb, and without asking if I meant Caleb and me, Kuthun nodded.

  I had guessed as much after he showed me the strings. Whether he could see his own fate or not, Kuthun could see Caleb’s and how Caleb’s was shrouded by darkness. Mine, the sea. How they intertwined, I had yet to find out, but I’d seen them cross more than once. I’d also seen how they went on forever.

  Kuthun may not have had a fate, but he clearly believed in one ultimatum that Caleb and I didn’t have to live by.

  Kuthun would die one day.

  And somewhere in time, his invisible thread would be severed.

  “I’ll watch him, Violet,” Kuthun whispered. “I promise.”

  At that, I walked across the room, grateful for my fixed knee, and leaned over Kuthun to kiss Caleb on the cheek. I kissed Kuthun on the cheek, too. The strings shot out, just as beautiful as they were before, but this time, my heart felt as empty as Kuthun’s appeared to be.

  “I’ll see you both when I come back,” I said, then disappeared before I could change my mind.

  ***

  Finding blackness to blend with in the red velvet of the bordel was easier than I wanted to admit. The wall felt like silk. The floor, like satin. Every inch of the rickety, creaking, boarded-up shack full of sin was, beyond anything else, inviting.

  I slipped out into my human form effortlessly. Tonight, the summer air creeping in through the broken windows was clean and refreshing.

  Instinctually, I wanted to stay. Logically, I needed to leave. But love—if love was the right word for how I felt about Caleb and the herd in general—was both instinctual and illogical. I would stay with her if he asked me to, but I had to find her first.

  Then, my first step proved more problematic than I initially thought it would be.

  Below my feet stood the sea.

  The floodwaters had deepened. Now, they threatened to bring down the bordel.

  I swallowed the information and forced myself forward. Within minutes, I found the room everyone crowded in. Young girls, grown boys, wary women, and tired men of all shapes and sizes circled around the alcove bed near an open window. A cool draft drifted in and over my skin, but the chilliest part of the space came from the workers’ stares. The youngest of kids clutched their instruments against their hearts. A few looked like Nuo. I wondered how many of them had similar stories, if they all hated and adored Jia-Li. As much as I regretted to admit it, even to myself, a bordel was often the only option for a bad-blooded kid on the streets. Flocks—and herds—weren’t always around to take them in, and most didn’t survive the Pits for longer than five years.

  The truth was I had been lucky to be in the Northern Flock, massacre or not.

  At the least, I knew family, I knew freedom, and now, I knew what lay between the two—the color gray.

  As a shadow, my world stayed black, and I assumed that was where I belonged—in a black-and-white world. But the more I grew, the more shades I saw. The more complications I acknowledged. The more hints of color and hue and depth I wanted to work with.

  Strangely enough, as I stood in a room full of strangers living in a different reality from my own, I recalled my mother—the one who died decades ago.

  She painted, and I recalled every painting she ever hung up in her library at home.

  Where the colors changed from purple to black to pink to white again seemed flawless. Rather than an obvious change, it became one color full of different viewpoints. Like a diamond, she once explained. Each face was different, but each face made up a larger picture. And every one of Jia-Li’s workers—every unknown story, voice, and expression—created a precious jewel. One that had to be handled with care.

  I held up my hands, palms out, and took one step closer to them. “Caleb sent me.”

  Two up front flinched at the sound, reminding me that my voice—like my face—didn’t seem human at all. Caleb once told me I sounded like the wind. Others said I sounded far away. Most sounded like they were telling me the same thing. Ghost Girl. The nickname was suiting.

  “Oh, my little shuǐ guǐ,” Jia-Li croaked, but I recognized it just the same. When the crowd parted, however, her face appeared much different than before.

  Where she’d once had wrinkles, now stood pivots. Her cheeks sank in. Her eyes already seemed empty.

  Would Caleb look like this too one day? Were they even dying from the same thing?

  So many questions stayed on the tip of my tongue, but Jia-Li had to speak first. “Let us be,” she said, then waved her right hand before letting it dangling helplessly against her bedside.

  A few kids cried, but the older ones dragged everyone out. The dynamic was disturbing, yet familiar.

  My flock used the same hierarchy.

  Among this crowd stood someone like Daniel, Michele, or Ami.

  I shook the thought off as the last person exited. “He couldn’t come,” I said, choosing to leave out the fact that he waited in jail himself.

  Jia-Li looked up at the ceiling. “And I suppose you couldn’t bring her either.”

  Even though Caleb warned me, I had rebelled a bit by visiting Nuo. I begged—no, simply asked—to take Britney with me, but Nuo refused with a smile. Caleb was right. This was Nuo’s moment. And I let her have it. Besides, Britney’s life was hers to live, and when the little girl stood by Nuo’s side with similar determination, I left.

  I wouldn’t mind seeing Jia-Li die myself.

  “Or,” Jia-Li continued, “did you choose not to bring her?”

  “You don’t deserve her.”

  The old woman took too long to fold her hands over her stomach. “You hate me so?” she asked as she curled up on her side. For a moment, she lo
oked like a child, and I recalled what little info Caleb shared about her. The daughter of a trapped family. A child stuck in a country she was not a citizen of. Someone who had to fight for her right to live as much as I did. But she found her strength in the perils of others. In the same peril criminals put her in once, long ago. I could not imagine doing the same thing to bad bloods that others did to me, just to survive. I could not imagine a lot.

  “Ah,” Jia-Li hummed to herself. “Of course you hate me.” Then, a crooked smile. “Your hatred is the strongest kind. The kind that stems from love.”

  “I don’t love—”

  “Lying is pointless, girl,” she interrupted. “I know love when I see it. That’s why I sell it.”

  “Love?” I repeated, angry at myself for responding, angry at Caleb for asking me to come, angry at Vendona for creating so many unruly creatures. “You raise prostitutes. You give them diseases.”

  Jia-Li cackled, then drowned in a coughing fit. When she managed to wheeze in a breath, she faced me fully. “Is that what you think?” she asked. “Is that what he’s convinced you of?” Caleb. “Oh, that stupid boy. My bǎo bèi.” At this, her bony fingers tapped up and down her arm. For a moment, I pictured her as she played piano, a clarinet, or the harp when she worked under the same roof she would die under. “He’s always been skilled in the art of deception. Or should I say the lack of correction?”

  “What are you talking about?” I snapped. “He has stilts. He’s—” Dying, too.

  Jia-Li squinted, as if hearing my words, but her frowned remained. “And you think I let him catch that here?” she asked, then shook her head. “No, silly girl.” She whispered a secret worthy of shattering reality. “He was born with it.”

  My heart pounded. “But…”

  I’d stood in his working room. I saw him unbutton his shirt. I watched him tuck away the money and heard him ask what I wanted.

  All the history Caleb and I had accumulated stood between Jia-Li and me.

  “He couldn’t have,” I argued.

  “Why not?” she asked. “Because it didn’t show up until his teens? If you were educated on stilts at all, you’d know that isn’t rare,” she said. “It hides in your blood. Sometimes, if one is very lucky, it never even comes out. A lot like bad blood, actually.” The reason he felt connected. “But it hit Caleb earlier than you think,” she said. “He was thirteen when he started limping. Such a beautiful boy already.” Her weathered fingers shook. “When he got so sick, I thought I’d lost him.” I tried to imagine Connelly entering everyone’s lives seven years ago, but failed. “When he came back to me, he didn’t seem like himself. He seemed…” Like death, still. “I tried to put him out of his misery.”

  At that, she told me a familiar story. One Caleb had told as Kuthun sewed and books surrounded us.

  Caleb, on his thirteenth birthday, had almost drowned in the sunken bay. A shuǐ guǐ had spared him, and Jia-Li had saved him. It was one of the reasons he stayed by her side. But Jia-Li had her own tale to tell.

  “He didn’t tell you the truthful beginning, did he? How I pushed him into the sea?” she asked.

  My heart stopped beating.

  “He couldn’t swim, especially not with his leg pain,” she continued, “but he didn’t drown.”

  I shook my head. “He said he fell in.”

  “He says a lot of things he doesn’t mean,” she said. “It’s the superstitions in him.” She explained. “If you speak ill will of the dead, they come and get you. If you speak of the demons that save you, they’ll take away the life they gave you. Or don’t you know how that’s come true?”

  I froze.

  “You don’t remember?” she asked, though of course I did. “The boy you saved?”

  On my seventh birthday, I discovered how my powers worked in the sea. I shattered into a million pieces. The story stayed with me to this day, but mostly my fear remained. It was why I buried the memory as much as I could. It was why I ignored the details—like the face of the boy I’d saved from drowning.

  Caleb.

  It couldn’t be.

  “I saw you, you know,” she said. “Although, it wasn’t exactly you.”

  It was my shadows.

  “A shuǐ guǐ.” A drowning spirit, a water demon. “After that, I couldn’t show him affection,” she said. “I couldn’t feel a thing, even when I wanted to.”

  I had both saved him and ruined him for Jia-Li.

  “If a demon—no, you—saved him… and I hurt him, what could I be to him?” she asked, and only then did her skin begin to pale.

  Tonight, she was drowning. Unlike Caleb, I would not—and could not—pull her to the surface.

  Her death wasn’t far.

  “So I left him to the doctors.” To monsters like Connelly. “And she did a good enough job at keeping him comfortable for a while.” Only to study him. “But Britney was the best find. The daughter of a worker here. The mother died in childbirth, but everyone who held the baby stayed young forever. When she cried on his deathbed, he never died.” Tears brought immortality. “So, when my stilts began to take me, Caleb agreed to help so long as he was allowed to leave my side.”

  The herd. He’d built the herd.

  “It’s no wonder I’m alone today,” she finished.

  “I’m here,” I said, though I wished I wasn’t. No matter how much I despised the woman, though, I could not bring myself to tell her of my disdain now. Not when she only wanted to speak of everything she wished to say to Caleb. Even evil had the right to repent. Just as Hanna said.

  “Will he be okay?” she asked, but every word took her ten seconds too long to say.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

  “But he’s met Calhoun?”

  At that, my shadows danced.

  Jia-Li’s eyes flicked around, watching the darkness move along the walls. She smiled as if looking upon artwork. “Don’t you see?” she asked before confessing one last time. “He’s my son, too.”

  Caleb had never been a worker to her. Only a boy with a love for music. A child who needed a roof over his head, even if it was a bordel. And someone who might break at any moment.

  “There’s one truth a mother always knows,” Jia-Li said, but I hadn’t known my own for long. I only had the flock. I only had memories.

  “And what’s that?” I asked anyway.

  Jia-Li smiled wider, her eyes filling with a fiery light. “My death is only the beginning, my little shuǐ guǐ,” she said. “I should’ve let him drown.”

  Then, she died.

  On my sixth birthday, the sun shone through the windows of my dad’s apartment, and I made shadow puppets dance on the floor by my cousin’s feet. With a single adjustment of my hands, I could create wolves, birds, and horses. Sometimes, they would gallop away. Other times, they would linger and speak. Jia-Li had taught me to manipulate the darkness—during those rare moments she stayed up with me at night when I couldn’t sleep. Now that I knew the dark could be used to comfort and entertain, I used it whenever I could. I loved the dark. And today, Adam did, too.

  No matter what shape I created or destroyed, Adam giggled, and the world warmed me with a single moment.

  It was the day I fell in love with music.

  Before that, I had heard music all around me, but I had never felt it.

  Madam Jia-Li trained us that way, after all. In fact, I’d already mastered the basics of a piano—her favorite instrument, and one she kept in a private room in the back. She broke it the day I should’ve died in a fit of rage, and I imagined that was why she never forgave me—why she only taught music meant for entertainment rather than celebration.

  But today was different.

  Today, my father sang Happy Birthday.

  He didn’t have a single musical note in his body, but the words brought laughter to my soul, and everyone around me sang them as if they were meant for me.

  It was then I realized they were for me.

  My birthd
ay.

  They sang and sang and sang, until their voices became one, and the day melted into night.

  Even then, the song continued. The melody grew. The words changed. The voices, too.

  My father no longer sang. Nor did Adam, his parents, or Jia-Li.

  No.

  This voice was familiar.

  This voice belonged to Britney.

  I woke to music and Kuthun holding my hand—both equally beautiful acts in an ugly world—but Britney stopped singing the moment I opened my eyes.

  I was alive.

  “How long has it been?” I managed to speak, but I couldn’t quite sit up.

  Considering the raging ache in my bones, I estimated I had another hour of life left before Britney brought me back to immortal time. If I could’ve died, then Jia-Li was already gone.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Kuthun asked. In the process of ignoring my question, he confirmed my fears.

  Madam Jia-Li—Mom—was dead.

  Somewhere deep down inside me, a piece of my existence broke. Beside me, though, Britney beamed at my speedy recovery.

  “A really big man brought me,” she said, stretching her arms way up over her head of curls. Whipping her right arm behind her back, she whispered, “He looks like this.”

  Calhoun.

  My heart might as well have stopped. But Kuthun played it cool.

  “Don’t mimic people like that,” he lectured the girl, and told her to stop hiding her arm—the same one Cal was missing.

  She pouted, but listened. Kuthun helped me sit up.

  Leaning against the far wall was a shadow of a girl and the man who adopted her—two people related to me in ways I wished they weren’t. A biological, but absent father and an adopted sister I didn’t want related to me at all. Yet, neither paid much attention to me. Instead, they focused on Adam as a familiar blonde kneeled next to him, dabbing his bruised eye with a wet rag.

  “I’m fine, Catelyn—er, I mean, Stephanie.” Adam blundered over the slip of her real name, quickly correcting himself. “I promise.”

  She dabbed his cheek before tilting his head up by placing her thumb under his chin. “I’d prefer Catelyn when it comes to you.”