“The venom,” she’d whispered. “Oh, Lord help us. Come on, get him inside. Put him in the guest room and meet me out in the garden.”
Zhai couldn’t imagine why Lily Rose would want to go for a stroll in her garden at a time like this, but he had followed her orders. He gently placed Chin on a neatly made antique twin bed, and then hurried down the hall, through the back door, and out into the yard. There he’d found Lily Rose already hard at work, her age-gnarled hands moving quickly and deftly, snapping off sprigs of herbs and flowers and placing them into a basket. She pointed to another basket and another set of clippers sitting on the stoop, then to a low green vine spilling from a ceramic pot.
“Get me twenty-five leaves from that plant,” she ordered, and Zhai had gotten to work. There was a moment when he wondered how Lily Rose could have so many flourishing plants in her garden only a few days after the last freeze of a harsh winter had subsided—but he didn’t bother to ask her. Such things didn’t matter now, with Master Chin’s life in danger. Besides, over the last few months, Zhai had come to accept the seemingly impossible with the calm acceptance of a battle-hardened veteran facing enemy fire.
Once Lily Rose was content with the array of herbs, flowers, and roots they’d collected, she led him inside to the kitchen. There she got a small cast-iron pot, filled it with water, and set it on the stove to boil. She took out a mortar and pestle made of what looked like white marble, placed all the plant parts inside the bowl, and ground them down until they were as fine as flour. Then she dumped them into the pot and allowed the mixture to simmer for a few moments before she poured it into a shallow bowl.
“Fetch me a piece of burlap from that drawer,” she commanded, pointing to the tallboy in the corner. “It’s the brown, coarse cloth.”
Zhai obeyed, and Lily Rose folded up the fabric and submerged it in the bowl, letting it soak. She placed the bowl onto a tray, along with a clean white dishtowel.
While she was working, Zhai’s phone beeped. It was a text message from Maggie, saying that she’d made it to Hilltop Haven safely. He breathed a mighty sigh of relief. More and more he was impressed by Maggie. He wondered how she could possibly have escaped the Obies. He would ask her next time they were together, but for now it was enough to know that she was okay and that she still had the shards.
Now finished in the kitchen, Lily Rose walked wordlessly down the hall and into the bedroom, and Zhai followed her as closely and silently as a shadow.
As the old woman placed the tray on the bedside table, Zhai looked at his teacher laid out on the bed and felt suddenly ill with fear. Master Chin already looked half dead. His skin had turned a frightening shade of pale, grayish blue, and his chest moved erratically in a series of shallow, staccato breaths.
With businesslike efficiency, Lily Rose took the burlap from the bowl, squeezed the excess liquid out of it, then wrapped it in the dishtowel, and placed the whole thing over the wounds on Master Chin’s neck. Instantly, a jet of steam rose from it, as if it had been placed on scorching metal. Chin bucked and a tortured groan escaped his lips, but his eyes did not open.
“It’s hurting him!” Zhai said, and he reached to take the towel from his sifu’s neck, but Lily Rose placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“Yes, it hurts,” she said. “But it’s also the only chance we have of saving his life. If we’re lucky, that poultice will pull the venom out.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” Zhai asked. He had seen Lily Rose’s miraculous healing powers at work when she’d helped Kate recover from her recent dagger wound, but even at her worst, Kate had never looked as bad as Chin did now.
“If we’re not lucky, it won’t work,” Lily Rose said. She sounded weary, Zhai thought. It was the first time he’d seen her be anything but cheerful, and that, too, filled him with fear.
“What else can we do?” he asked.
“Remember when you healed your sister?” Lily Rose asked, and Zhai remembered the extraordinary light of Shen that had filled him and helped him to rouse Li from her coma. “It will take much more faith than that to heal the wound your teacher has suffered.”
“But he can still live, right?” Zhai asked hopefully.
Lily Rose gazed down at Chin. “Within the All, everything is possible,” she said and left the room.
Immediately, Zhai stepped near his teacher’s bedside and took his hand. Master Chin’s callused palm felt like it was made of granite; his powerful fingers, as if they were carved of wood. Zhai had seen these hands punch through boards and blocks of solid concrete. It seemed impossible that the life could ever disappear from them—but if Lily Rose’s poultice didn’t succeed, that was exactly what would happen. Without wasting another moment, he closed his eyes and let the healing light of Shen fill him.
* * *
“I didn’t say I was mad at you—I said I was disappointed!” Dalton tossed over her shoulder as she stepped onto the front porch of her grandmother’s house.
“That’s what people say when they’re mad,” Nass replied, following her. “And I don’t think it’s fair. What did I do wrong? I got arrested for no reason. And my phone died, because I was texting you all day, so I couldn’t call. And I didn’t make it to school because I was at the hospital with Emory.”
“I know,” Dalton replied, relenting a little at the mention of Emory. “I’m not saying you did anything wrong—specifically. I’m just saying, you seem to have this uncanny knack of building up my expectations—and then somehow I end up feeling like crap.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Nass insisted. He was trying to stay calm, but the idea of Dalton being mad at him was excruciating, especially when so many other things were going wrong, too. She was the last person in the world he wanted to disappoint, but she was right. Somehow it kept happening—and it was so frustrating, it made him want to scream.
“Nass, I know. I’m not saying it’s your fault,” Dalton returned. “All I’m saying is that it keeps happening, and it’s not making me happy.”
Sitting down heavily on the porch swing Nass rolled his eyes. “Okay, so now I don’t make you happy?” he said. “I mean, our friend is lying in the hospital in a coma, my family is about to be evicted, I get detained by the police because they can’t figure out what happened to Raph and that stupid crystal ring—and I’m not making you happy? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.”
Just then, the door swung open, and Nass instantly felt bad for fighting on Lily Rose’s porch. But it wasn’t Dalton’s grandma who emerged from the doorway; it was Zhai Shao. For a moment, the surprise left both him and Dalton speechless.
“Oh—hey, Zhai,” Dalton said. “You get Kate settled? Did she forget something?”
Zhai shook his head. “No, I’m—it’s Master Chin. He’s hurt.” And then he told them what had happened when the Obies attacked. Nass rose from the porch swing.
“So you still have the shards?” he asked.
“Yes. Maggie took them,” Zhai answered. “They’re safe.”
Nass paused for a second, trying to decide if he should trust Zhai with the information he’d picked up at the police station or not. Finally, he decided he had no choice. Besides, even though Raphael had a problem with Zhai, he definitely would have put their differences aside with their sifu’s life on the line.
“I was hauled down to the police station for questioning yesterday,” Nass said. “There’s this government agent in town named Hackett. He’s looking for that guy you were talking about—the leader of the Obies, Feng Xu. I guess they must have known that he came into the country somehow and tracked him here.”
Zhai seemed to consider this. “It makes sense,” he said.
“If Feng Xu came to town after the ring was destroyed, that must mean he thinks it still has some power,” Nass continued. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe it does.”
>
Zhai nodded eagerly. “Master Chin thought so, too. That’s why we were in the tunnels—we were using the broken pieces to try to activate the Wheel and get Raphael back. It sparked a little, but not enough.”
“So . . . we have to get all the shards,” Dalton guessed. “We have to put the ring back together for it to work.”
Nass and Zhai both nodded.
“It won’t be easy,” Zhai said. “Not with the Obies looking for it. And if these government guys are trying to track Feng Xu, that probably means they’re looking for it, too.”
“Well,” Nass said. “We know all the people who picked up the pieces. All we have to do is get everyone to give them back to us, so we can put the ring back together. How hard can that be?”
But the minute the words left his mouth, Nass knew it wouldn’t be so easy. He didn’t think Zhai could get the Toppers to cooperate—he wasn’t hanging with them much anymore. And after what had happened to Emory, getting the Flatliners to cooperate with Zhai might not be so easy, either.
“I’ll talk to the Toppers,” Zhai promised.
“I’ll call a meeting of the Flatliners, too, and fill them in on the plan.”
Somehow, Nass felt that if they could just get Raphael back to Middleburg, everything would be okay. But the more he thought about getting the two gangs to cooperate, the more worried he got.
* * *
On Saturday afternoon, Li Shao sat at the kitchen table at her friend Weston Darling’s house, her math homework laid out in front of her, along with a glass of untouched milk and a plate of uneaten cookies. It was impossible for Li to understand why his mom insisted on serving them such unhealthy snacks day after day, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Li never so much as nibbled on them. She only ate food that her mother’s kitchen staff prepared for her—fare that was perfectly nutritionally balanced. But whenever Mrs. Darling appeared with that big Stepford-Wife smile and asked, “How about a little study snack, you two?” Li always smiled back and said, “Sure, that would be great.”
The studying was also a charade. Neither Li nor Weston needed any help on their homework—not in any subject. In fact, Li was certain they were probably the two smartest kids in the school. Li knew Weston believed that she came over on the pretext of doing homework together because she had a romantic interest in him. In fact, the idea almost made her laugh. Although not entirely without charm, Weston was a skinny, ineffectual pretty boy with shiny, blond hair and glasses that seemed to swallow up his face, and he dressed like a sixty-year-old college professor. If Li could have chosen, she would have much preferred spending her evenings with someone hot—like Raphael Kain. Too bad he’d up and disappeared like that. Bran Goheen didn’t come up quite as far as Raph on the heat scale, but he was a pretty close second. But Li was not at liberty to choose who she spent her time with; she was here for a purpose. And today, it looked like that purpose might soon be fulfilled.
“That guy my dad’s talking to,” Weston mused, causing Li to glance up from her schoolbook. “I wonder who he is.”
“Why?”
“Dad used to have to meet all the time with guys who looked like that, when we were living back in D.C. He called them spooks—they were government agents. I wonder if that guy is a spook.”
Li had caught a glimpse of the mysterious visitor when he’d arrived earlier, and she thought Weston was dead on—the cheap black suit, the crew cut, the humorless face—all of it screamed clandestine operations. But instead of agreeing, she said, “What would a government agent be doing in Middleburg?” Her tone was musical, innocent—and perfectly controlled.
“I don’t know,” Weston confessed, lowering his voice. “But I always wondered why we moved here of all places when my dad’s job at the White House was over. I always thought there had to be a reason.”
“Huh,” Li said and shrugged, feigning a lack of interest. This was a game she enjoyed very much. Her brother Zhai played the violin, but Li’s instrument was people—and she played them like a virtuoso. After all, she’d learned from the best. She had learned from her mother.
Footsteps sounded, coming down the hallway, and Weston’s father appeared in the kitchen. He was a heavyset man with thinning gray hair and thick glasses, and like Weston, he was wearing a sweater vest. Despite his stout physique, his deportment was that of a military man; he stood straight, with his shoulders back.
“Weston, can I have a word with you, please?” he said calmly, and then turned to Li. “Would you excuse him for a moment, Li? Our guest is an old friend of mine and I’d like him to meet Wes.”
Li smiled. “No problem, Mr. Darling.”
Weston gave Li an apologetic shrug and went with his father down the hall.
Li waited for a count of three before she followed. A cat could not have moved as silently as she did. It took her only a few moments to track the sounds of muffled voices to the room Weston and his father had entered. Silently, she pressed her ear to the door.
“Wade, this is my son Weston.” She recognized Weston’s father’s voice. “Wes, this is Agent Hackett.”
“Weston, good to meet you,” the voice that belonged to Agent Hackett said. “Listen, son, your father and I go way back—to the first Gulf war, isn’t that right, Charlie?”
“Right,” Mr. Darling agreed. “Back to the good old days of George Bush Senior!”
“We’re all friends here, Weston, so I’m going to be blunt with you,” Hackett said. “But everything I’m telling you is confidential. I need your help, but you can’t repeat what I’m about to tell you, understand? You can’t tell anyone.”
“Yes, sir,” Weston said quietly.
Li pressed her ear more tightly to the door. If she missed even a word of this exchange, her mother would be very displeased.
“My men and I have come to town looking for a man by the name of Feng Xu. He’s an agent of the Chinese government and a very dangerous person. We believe he’s come to town searching for some kind of treasure, an energy-generating ring. Have you heard anything about an item like that?”
“Yes, sir,” Weston replied, and he related the story, which everyone in school had heard by now, of Raphael Kain’s disappearance.
“Here’s the thing,” Hackett’s voice replied. “From what I’ve heard so far, the ring was destroyed in the explosion. But the man I’m after wouldn’t have come here all the way from China unless he thought there was still something important he could get his hands on—you follow me, Weston? What I’m trying to figure out is if there might be a part of the ring—or some of its technology—still floating around Middleburg somewhere. If we could locate it, we could use it as bait. Do you have any idea where it is—or who’s got the pieces?”
“No,” Weston said. “I mean—not really.”
There was a pause, then Li heard Hackett say, “What do you mean?”
“Well, I saw some of the pieces—a while back. Some of the Topper kids were showing them around in the lunchroom one day. There were probably a dozen of them, at least. But no one’s mentioned them lately.”
“And the names?” Hackett pressed.
“What?” Weston asked, and Li had to stifle a giggle. He sounded so nervous, like he was a fugitive being questioned by the FBI.
“The kids who had the pieces—what are their names?”
Weston proceeded to rattle off the names of all the Toppers and the Flatliners, and Li could hear the faint scratching of a pen as the man—Agent Hackett—wrote them down.
“Listen to me very closely, Weston,” Agent Hackett said. “We have to get all the pieces of the ring—but we have to be subtle about it, you understand? You willing to work with me here?”
“Yes, sir. I guess so.”
“Okay—here’s what I need you to do. I’m going to give you my card. If any pieces of that ring turn up—if any of
the kids mention that they still have them—I want you to call me. If you can manage to get your hands on any of them and bring them to me, that’s even better. Can you do that, Weston? If you could, your country will be grateful—and I’m sure your father will be very proud.”
“Absolutely,” Weston’s dad agreed.
“I’ll do my best, sir,” Weston said. His voice was naturally quiet and timid-sounding, but there was an unusual hint of determination in it that Li found admirable.
“You’ll have to be careful, Weston. Feng Xu and his men are extremely dangerous.”
As Agent Hackett launched into his warning, Li slipped back down the hallway. She’d heard enough.
A few minutes later, the agent departed. She only saw him for a moment, as he peeked into the kitchen to wave goodbye to Mrs. Darling, but Li made a mental note of his every feature.
When their schoolwork was done, Weston invited Li to go up to his room to play video games. Li knew that was just an excuse—he spent these video-game sessions trying to work up the nerve to kiss her, and she found it quite amusing to watch him squirm. This time, however, he didn’t even bother to turn on his Xbox. Instead, he immediately confided everything that Agent Hackett had just told him, putting special emphasis on how important and dangerous the mission was. As usual, he was trying desperately to impress her.
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