Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters)

by Heather Heffner

  “I’m pooped. Think I’ll nap for a while.” I slid down the wall and shut my eyes.

  She flung out her hands, obviously irritated. “Then you must sleep in the Mirror Room.”

  “ ‘Must’ sleep there? That sounds a little suspicious.”

  “In the Mirror Room, you will be safe from unwanted attention. The Queen expects you to. Tonight.” Her eyes flashed black before she stumbled back, as if shocked by her involuntary storm of intensity.

  I understood perfectly well. Maya wanted me to sleep in the Mirror Room before Lunar New Year so she could steal my soul. Eat it for breakfast, hand it bow-tied to the Dark Spirits— Either way, she’d have no trouble from me.

  “Being threatened works up quite an appetite.” I shut my eyes. “Go bring me—two freshly cut watermelons. Three different kinds of kimchi. And, seriously, one teensy-weensy plate of bulgogi? I don’t exist on rabbit food, you know; I eat the rabbit.”

  She glared at me, and then stalked away. I gave her a five second head start, and then trailed her to the kitchens.

  “That greedy mutt!” I heard the predictable explosion from the chefs, as I crept past to the larders. “She should be licking up scraps with the rest of the dogs. We have little food as it is!”

  “She is a guest. And you will make the meal,” Raina’s strange, harsh voice rang out. Well, damn. Fighting back a smile, I combed the cellars for prayer wheels, finally nicking one from a dusty old closet.

  Tucking my knees against my chest, I scribbled out the message as fast as I could:

  R U at Daytime Position 1? –C

  The prayer wheel started to click and twirl. My trembling fingers helped pull the parchment along until I could read Raf’s reply:

  Yes. Goshawks found way to daytime nest. Which girl is VAMP QUEEN? –R

  Heart thumping in my throat, I wrote:

  Black ribbon. Wait. Death without soul = Dark Spirit

  A longer interval passed. Soft footsteps echoed in the corridor. I pulled farther back into the larder. Then—

  When do we meet?

  I wrote frantically now:

  Lunar New Year. We end this for good. I

  I stopped. “I” what? Missed you? Loved you?

  The door swung open, and I buried the prayer wheel in my jacket to keep it from clicking. A ghost chef bent not four feet away from me, rummaging for a spare candle.

  “Wants the prisoners to eat in total darkness,” he muttered to himself. “As if! Doesn’t the prince understand what a mess that will make? And who’ll have to clean it up? Yah!”

  He caught a passing server boy with long eyes that stretched down to his mouth. I hugged the star lantern and squeezed my eyes tight, trying to breathe as quietly as I could.

  “Take this to the boiler room. With eyes as big as those, you can see in the dark, can’t you?” The door slammed shut.

  I sent the message.

  Then, figuring Raina could use a break from babysitting, I stalked off after Long Eyes.

  The boiler room rumbled like a dark and angry animal in the deep recesses of the palace. The giant mouths huffed and puffed down gulps of coal as they channeled heat to the upper floors. I slipped down the iron staircase.

  Long Eyes’s voice echoed off the straining pipes: “Just eat it already!”

  Stubborn silence.

  “Come on, Old Man. It’s not my fault you pissed off the Queen.” Long Eyes’s voice squeaked higher than I could sing. “Fine. Starve for all I care. This place gives me the creeps.”

  I watched him dart past, while my nostrils savored the smell of smoldering brimstone. The boiler room was strangely deserted. I felt like the fires roared higher as I hurried past.

  “Zhi laoshi!”

  He sat unmoving on the floor. His eye sockets stared past the bowl of rice the boy had generously left.

  “Mmm…rice scrapped off the bottom of the cooker.” I lifted a couple grains with the chopsticks. “Please. Eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry for anything that will sustain my existence here.”

  “The heat’s making you cranky. Let’s get you out of here. Where’s Miguel?”

  One hand suddenly flung out and grabbed my wrist. “You should not have come.”

  I stared at him. “Laoshi, what’s wrong?”

  A creak of chains on the top platform. My head swung up to see a familiar white-winged vampyre, his arms folded over the railing as he watched us squat among the boilers. He wore an immaculate white suit, and his golden hair framed empty teal eyes.

  “Citlalli Alvarez. I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.” The vampyre swung his legs over the railing. “Prince Donovan. Please don’t be offended if I don’t shake your hand; I truly detest fleas.”

  “I know who you are, you prissy-ass motherfucker.”

  “Careful.” Donovan raised a slender finger to his lips. “Raising the temperature in a place like this could be…dangerous.”

  I gave him my scariest glare. “I’ll raise the temperature as high as I like. I like my vampyres extra crispy.”

  “You really are enamored with your own wit as they say. You’d like me extra crispy, you say? And with what? A little human BBQ on the side?”

  He meant Old Man Zhi. I returned to glaring.

  Donovan gave a cruel grin. He amused himself by tight-rope walking across the rafters. “I had to wait until you would predictably run away from Raina. Can’t have my dearest watch her husband-to-be brutally murder her sister and a helpless senior citizen. I like my women young and innocent.”

  “Then you scored a home run with Amrit and Eva,” I muttered.

  “Did you know?” Donovan hopped off by the lone steel-enforced door. “Your sweet old grandfather here just happens to be imprisoned in one of our older, more volatile boiler rooms. Why, accidents occur all the time. If a little eruption happens every now and again, it’s no matter.” He shrugged, smiling. “The lovely ladies of the Concubine Quarters know my door is open whenever their heat goes out.”

  “Pervert!” I balled my hands into fists. “You won’t get away with this. Queen Maya wants us alive.”

  “Correction: she only wants you alive.” Donovan gave a mock sigh, plopping his head into his hands. “Regrettably, in her old age, Mother has the unfortunate habit of playing with her pets far longer than necessary. She doesn’t understand when they are broken, or in rare cases…dangerous enough to fight back.”

  He brushed soot off his wings with a disgusted look. “You killed my brother. You threaten my relationship with Raina.”

  “You had to strip my sister down until she was as soulless as you before she would even touch you.” My eyes grew big and lupine. “Your ‘relationship’ is as real as those wings on your back.”

  The vampyre took a sharp intake of breath. “You! Know!”

  Old Man Zhi sighed. “Wolf-girl, you do know we will go ten times more painfully now?”

  “Yeah…you really regret meeting me, don’t you?”

  “I’ll be back to enjoy my entrée of wolf à la croustillant!” Donovan wrenched the steel railing free and hurled it like a javelin. The nearest boiler began to hiss with steam. I dimly heard our only way out slam shut with a furious boom! We were locked inside.

  “I can fix this!”

  Within five minutes, I knew I couldn’t fix this. Hot coals spilled out from the boiler’s mouth, causing the temperature to skyrocket. Brushing sweaty hair from my eyes, I dashed to the top platform only to find the door wedged shut. And it grew worse. Donovan had yanked out a fistful of circuits from the control panel. The main thermostat for the boilers arched dangerously toward the red.

  “Citlalli.” Through the undulating heat waves, I spotted Old Man Zhi pressed up against the corner of the room; in the thick heat, it looked like he was melting.

  I staggered over to him. I put a cloth over his mouth, yet the old man began to cough violently.

  “What will happen if you die here?” I whispered.

&n
bsp; “I will be in pain. For a long, long time.” He hacked blood into the cloth. “Even worse: I will forget. All of this progress I have made, all of these memories uncovered— I will have to start the path all over again: the journey of how to move on.”

  “That’s not going to happen to you.” My salty tears mixed with the sweat dripping from my eyelashes. “I’m supposed to help you see again.”

  “Ah, Citlalli.” His weathered hand groped out to clutch mine. “Who knows how many others have promised that before you? I go gladly to my fate. Remember the life I led. This is what I deserve.”

  “Yeah, and who knows how many other times you’ve ‘gladly’ said just that? Zhi laoshi, please listen: Those others weren’t me. I got you into this. I will get you out. All that’s needed is the right motivation.” I tried to laugh, but it came out as a wheezy chuckle. “Look what wonders your brother created when he feared for your life.”

  His face lifted to study mine. “One last mercy. In these bright flames, I can almost…see your face.”

  I waved a hand back and forth, and watched as his empty sockets followed the movement. “You make lanterns so you can see the shadows of things,” I whispered, “but, the problem is, I don’t think you can see fully by light anymore.”

  Gusts of sparks followed us, but I led Old Man Zhi away from the light, beneath the iron staircase, and between broken blocks of machinery, to the darkest corner I could find. Then I covered my star lantern. We were engulfed in shadows, except for the barest hints of fire creeping around the corner.

  “What can you see?”

  He sighed impatiently. “I see nothing, Citlalli Alvarez.”

  “Really? I mean, sure, you can’t see as well, but darkness isn’t nothing.”

  He began trembling at the knees. “It is unknown.”

  I waited. Old Man Zhi stared around us, for some respite of light, but blackness pressed down on all sides, suffocating us with ash and smoke.

  “How will I find him? There’s nothing there! It just goes on and on!” The old man seized his head in grief.

  I carefully slid the shielding star lantern off my neck. I had no idea what would happen to me without it. Perhaps that’s what gave me the courage to do so—not knowing.

  “Then it’s up to you to light it.”

  “No, my child—” The protests stopped as soon as the lantern touched his hands. Old Man Zhi gazed and gazed into the darkness, heedless of the heat licking up our backs, and when he turned back to me, eyes, actual eyes, looked through me. He had no irises, however. He had no need for them.

  “I can see.”

  “What is it?”

  “The way. On.” Still staring heavenward, Old Man Zhi placed a necklace key into my hand.

  “Wolf-girl. You live, okay? Someone must look after my lantern shop.”

  My eyes were red from the smoke. “I would be honored.”

  “Truly you have power like the stars. Come find me again, someday. But you must be careful. I can see your soul, Citlalli Alvarez, and it is no longer split in two. It has broken into three.”

  I froze. I felt his papery lips press a goodbye kiss to my cheek, and then he was gone.

  “Go well,” I whispered, and then turned to face the explosion from the cisterns, as the temperature reached its boiling peak. I’d felt the demon fire of the kumiho steadily building in my chest after removing the one safekeeping barrier against it. Now, in the star lantern’s absence, flame burst out to meet flame.

  ***

  The world is painted in shades of black and gray. Frightened shapes, the ones who opened the door, flee before my smoking paws, leaving tails of white. I stalk them hungrily, my tongue lolling from my blackened jaw.

  I can’t hear their screams. The fire that engulfs my body roars pleasantly, contentedly, filling my ears with delicious pops and hisses. I shake some ash free from my massive coat. I take my time. Their fear leaves a trail straight to them.

  When I round the corner, I can see my massive shadow steal over the wall. They can see it, too. They hop around like panicked rabbits. I put on a sudden burst of speed—an explosion of black smoke—and my jaws lock around the bigger one’s neck. Most go after the weakest first, but a creature like me has no need to chase handicaps. I go after the biggest challenge.

  Molten liquid drips from my jaws into the creature’s ears, and it screams. My flames roar even higher.

  Then the Dead One drops silently from above. My fire burns her, but she is Old; she throws her head back in laughter, as if rejoicing in the alien sensation of pain. Then she sticks her fingers in my eyes, and I can’t see anything.

  I smell another Dead One behind me, and in their combined presence, my fires flicker. I stumble, for an instant.

  Water splashes me. The white creatures. I can hear them dragging pot after pot of ice-cold water, feel the quivering chill shoot like an arrow through my being, down to the bone. The creatures continue to throw water at me. Trying to put out the Demon Wolf.

  Chapter 32: The Triad

  They dragged the wild girl to the Mirror Room immediately. I followed a good twenty steps behind, half-expecting her to spontaneously combust into that devil wolf again: fur shimmering in waves of ruby-red, orange, and evening blue; jaws as blackened as embers. I’d known Weres were evil, but I’d never seen anything this savage. The Dark Dogs, at least, were mindless. This ‘fire wolf’ had golden eyes that reflected the knowing intensity of the moon.

  “She should be put down immediately!” One of Donovan’s white wings curled around my shoulder protectively.

  My mother watched the trembling ghosts lay the girl down on the bed. “No. She has something I need. Do not worry, my favorite son. I will remove the threat. Then she will be useful to us.”

  “H-how was she able to do that?” I ventured. “S-she was on fire!”

  My mother and Donovan exchanged long glances. Donovan broke off first with a mirthless laugh. “Ask the fox.”

  “Indeed. He torched her here in Eve, where she had her wolf spirit willing to throw itself in the way. If it had happened in the sunshine earth, she’d have been incinerated. Poor child.” The Queen ran a black-nailed finger down the wolf-girl’s cheek. “None among your kind have been able to endure a soul cracked in two. How do you propose to survive a soul divided into three? One part human, one part beast, one part demon… All I need to do is push the right…point…and you’ll descend into madness forever.”

  The girl shuddered at her touch. Then her eyes snapped open, and she backed up against the headboard. I admired her despite myself. The fire had burned an impressive path up the side of her head. Her curls waved like a tattered surrender flag, but her eyes still glittered with fight.

  “No!” she gasped. “I won’t stay here! I know what this room does!”

  “Citlalli, you suffered an unfortunate accident in the boiler room. It’s time for you to rest.” Maya kissed her forehead. The girl shoved her back viciously, but Maya pressed a hand to her throat. The imparting black handprint bound the bitter creature to the bed no matter how hard she struggled.

  “Do try to get some sleep, dear,” Maya called, beckoning us out the door. “Tomorrow is a big day for us all.”

  “I know what this room does!” Her screams peppered our backs. “You think I can’t see? Look at you all! You have no reflection!”

  My breath caught. As my eyes wandered from mirror to mirror, I realized that the room did look completely empty—except for the wolf-girl. An unexplainable surge of dread clenched my stomach, and I hurried out before I became sick.

  Donovan’s marble lips pressed to mine, silencing my fears. “Why don’t you retire for the night, ma mademoiselle?” he murmured. “I’ll join you shortly.”

  “But Prince!” I protested, eyes downcast and lips pouted in the way he liked. “I’d like to witness the wolf-girl’s defeat. You know. To bring me peace of mind.”

  He smirked. “How…fitting.”

  Shadows carpeted the room, pinpr
icked by the glint of mirrors. My Mother sat glued to the viewing port, almost bouncing on the balls of her feet. I curled up safe and secure in Donovan’s arms. He sighed, stirring his glass of wine. He was bored. I obediently let him lean in and nip my neck.

  “How many times have you watched this, my Queen?” Donovan demanded. “Nothing new and exciting here. You may as well take a seat.”

  “But I truly hate this child.” Maya’s black eyes looked like they could burn holes through the glass. I shrank back. I hoped she wouldn’t change to Friend. Friend was wild and spontaneous; there was no predicting what she might do.

  The Queen sensed my discomfort and glanced toward me, smiling. “One day, when you are as old as me, Raina, you’ll understand how difficult emotion is to come by. It makes you latch onto it that much stronger.”

  I sat bolt upright in my chair. A soul. The wild girl had finally fallen into the deepest of sleeps, when her soul felt safe enough to come out and play. But this soul looked…different. Fiery flames chased golden light chased black earth. They slipped in and out of one another seamlessly, and each time, the gray matter between them lengthened.

  “It looks different than the others,” I said.

  Both vampyres stiffened, and I realized I’d said something wrong.

  “What ‘others,’ Raina?” Donovan’s lips brushed against my neck. His teal eyes widened hypnotically, urging me to spill.

  I couldn’t remember. Where had that come from?

  “I…don’t know. I feel like…I’ve seen other souls before.”

  “I imagine you have.” Maya stroked my head. She thought I couldn’t see the words she mouthed to Donovan: It’s him. Donovan’s hands suddenly felt like manacles, pinning me to his side.

  “Not that it matters. Nothing shall interrupt this!” Maya returned to gripping the viewing screen glass. “Choose, you little wolf bitch! Hurry up and choose!”