Chapter 1

My junior sister and I are the last two heirs of the Southern School of yin-yang embroidery.

I embroider the dead with a bone needle, stitching souls back for those who cannot close their eyes; she embroiders the living with living thread, changing people's fortunes.

Three years ago, one accident after another struck the coal mine of Mr. Dickerson from the county town, and his cash flow was about to snap.

Maxine Pruitt embroidered a mountain-warding beast charm into his back, and the mine turned safe overnight.

He came to ask for her hand with eight hundred and eighty thousand and three pounds of gold jewelry, and their first pregnancy gave him triplet sons.

Yesterday Mr. Dickerson delivered his daughter's hundred-day invitation himself: "She'll only take the sect's needle. The tiger-head cap will have to trouble her sister-embroiderer."

I remembered how Maxine had once taken the backlash of yin embroidery for me, so I stitched through the night and went to the celebration, setting the cap on the child with my own hands.

While the toasts went around, Maxine bent down to ladle soup, and the child tugged her cheongsam collar open.

I meant only to see whether the peach-blossom-and-koi charm she had embroidered before her wedding had grown in, but instead I saw the koi belly-up and the blossoms weeping blood.

That was the death-stitch that shows only after a corpse's soul has scattered.

The glass slipped from my hand.

If Maxine's soul had left this body long ago, then who was this woman on Mr. Dickerson's arm, smiling and calling me sister?

1

"Sister, what's wrong?"

The woman in front of me tilted her head slightly.

Her voice was the same as three years ago, soft with the lilt of the southern waterlands.

I looked down at the shards of glass by my feet.

"My hand slipped."

I bent to pick up the broken pieces.

The moment my fingertips touched a shard, a pale hand pressed down over the back of mine.

"Don't. You'll cut yourself."

She turned to the waiter beside us.

"Could you bring a broom, and a fresh glass for my sister?"

I stared at the hand pressed over the back of mine.

It was Maxine's hand.

There was a faint red mole on the back of it.

But in the instant she touched me, what I felt wasn't a living person.

Under the warm skin lay a knot of dead air.

Clement Dickerson came over from another table, drink in hand.

"Sis, how'd the glass get knocked over? Is the wine not to your liking?"

He called me sis.

Because Maxine had always called me sister.

I stood up, and used the motion to draw my hand back.

"No. I was up late finishing the tiger-head cap. I didn't sleep well."

Clement broke into a grin so wide his eyes vanished.

"Thank you for all your trouble, sis. Maxie's been going on about it for days, saying the hundred-day gift for her daughter had to be made by your own hands."

He reached out and slid an arm around Maxine's shoulder.

Maxine leaned into him and looked at me, gentle.

"There's no one I trust more than my sister's hands."

The collar of the cheongsam had closed again.

That belly-up dead koi was covered once more.

The peach-blossom-and-koi charm was a soul-guarding brocade the Master had embroidered for Maxine with his own hands.

Koi belly-up, blossoms weeping blood.

The deadliest death-trap in all of yin embroidery.

The soul gone, only the shell left.

I took out the tiger-head cap I had embroidered through the night.

"The cap's done. Let me put it on the baby and see how it fits."

Clement quickly had the nanny bring the child over.

I took the baby, pinched the brim of the tiger-head cap between my fingers, and eased it down over her head.

Using the motion of straightening the brim, I let my left hand slip aside and brush across "Maxine's" wrist pulse.

The bone needle tucked in my nail bed pricked a bit of her skin.

The bone needle brought back no warmth of a living meridian.

I drew my hand back into my sleeve.

"It fits well."

Maxine smiled and stroked her daughter's cheek.

"Thank you, sister. Stay here at the house tonight. I've already made up the guest room for you."

I looked into her eyes.

"There's still work waiting at the shop. The dead keep to their own hours, and those can't be put off. I have to get back."

Clement smoothed things over from the side.

"Sis is busy. We won't press you to stay. In a few days I'll send a car to bring you over, and the whole family can have a proper get-together."

After the banquet broke up, "Maxine" walked me all the way to the hotel door.

The wind came up, and she reached over to tuck my collar closed.

"Sister, when will you come see me again?"

Her fingers were warm, the pressure just as it had always been.

But I knew the thing inside the shell had already been swapped out.

"Once the shop clears up in a few days, I'll come."

Her eyes curved with her smile.

"Good. I'll be waiting."

I turned and got into the taxi.

The moment the door shut, I pushed my hands into my pockets.

My fingertips were still trembling.

Back at the shop, I didn't turn on the lights.

I went straight to the inner room, moved the incense burner in front of the shrine, and took a yellowed journal out of the hidden compartment.

The Master had left it to me before he died.