Chapter 3

Dad stood at the top of the stairs with a throw cushion in his hands, the one from the living room couch.

"Here. The basement gets cold."

He held it out, but his eyes went past my shoulder to the second floor.

From up there came Mom's voice, coaxing Flora to sleep in my room. He listened for a moment, then turned back. "Just get through one night. We'll switch you back tomorrow. When the scriptures are copied out, call for me. I'll come get them."

The basement stairs were steep.

Damp air pushed up from below, thick with the smell of moldy dust.

It was the Ghost Festival, so the yin energy was already heavy.

For someone like me, born under an all-yin fate, a basement was no different from a graveyard.

I set my phone alarm for ten-thirty. If I could just hold out until then, I'd leave for the train station.

The moment I sat down, laughter drifted from upstairs.

"Flora, touch your own forehead. It's not burning anymore, is it?"

"Mom, it really came down. I don't feel so bad now."

"It's down, it's down." Mom's voice carried a smile, clear even through the floor. "See, I told you the lamp would work."

Then my brother's excited voice. "It's gone, it's gone, the thermometer's only ninety-seven point seven. And look, your color's so much better than yesterday. You've got that flush back, pink and healthy."

Flora laughed, wheedling. "Mikey, take a picture of me so I can see."

I sat on the folding cot in the basement, listening to the cheer overhead, and closed my eyes, feeling the currents of energy move through the house.

The lamp really did work. The yin it drew in was smothering Flora's yang. That wasn't a fever breaking. That was her yang being devoured, bit by bit.

People in a false final rally look flushed and full of life too.

Ten-thirty.

I stood and walked to the disused vent window at the very back of the basement.

The frame was badly rusted. It took three hard shoves before it gave.

Outside was the back yard, connected to the old house next door where Grandma had lived.

I climbed out along the drainpipe.

Grandma's yard had gone wild in the two years since, the weeds up to my waist.

Under the pomegranate tree in the corner, third brick down and two feet under. I crouched and clawed the dirt open with my hands.

An oilcloth bundle. I opened it. Inside was a rolled scroll of yellowed, hand-copied scriptures.

Grandma's handwriting, neat and fine. In her lifetime she'd gone to the temple on the first and fifteenth of every month to copy scriptures and pray for me.

Before she died, she'd told me that if the lamp ever went wrong, I should come here for the scriptures, and hope that sincerity might move heaven.

I pressed the scriptures to my chest.

I stood, brushed the dirt off my hands, climbed over the low back wall, and walked out of the alley.

I took a cab to the train station.

At eleven I reached the station.

The temporary ID papers came through too.

While I was in line at security, my phone buzzed.

It was a photo from Michael.

In the picture, Flora lay on her side in my bed, a smile at her lips, sleeping peacefully.

The eternal lamp sat right there on the nightstand, its ghostly green light washing over the side of her face.

His caption read: "All settled. The lamp's steady, Flora's sleeping well. Thank you for giving her this."

I pinched the photo bigger with two fingers.

Behind Flora was the floor-to-ceiling window.

In the glass, the reflection wasn't the room's furnishings. It was faces, packed together.

Pale faces, features blurred, eyes sunk deep in their sockets, one pressed against the next, crowding up against the glass.