Chapter 4

The agent at the security checkpoint called out, "Next."

I put my phone away, picked up my bag, and stepped forward.

"Welcome aboard. Follow the yellow line on the floor to find your car number."

The attendant pointed the way, and I found my seat and sat down.

Eleven-fifty. The chime sounded as the doors sealed.

The train pulled slowly away.

I held the scriptures Grandma had copied out for me tight against my chest. The pages were warm, like her hands, and the fear drained out of me.

Outside the window the moon hung murky and red at the edge of the city skyline, sliding inch by inch behind the train.

Leaning back against my seat, I felt something strange begin. The yin chill that had pressed into my bones for twenty-six years seemed to be pulling loose, thread by thread, drawn out of my body.

The direction was the city behind me.

I focused, and I could almost feel it. It was the lamp in the house. The lamp was looking for me.

And when it couldn't find me, it would pour all the death and yin that had been meant for me into the person whose name was carved on its base.

As the train passed through the first tunnel, my phone screen lit up.

My phone was linked to the security camera in the living room back home, and a faint creaking sound came through the feed.

The Henson living room. Eleven fifty-six.

My mother patted my father on the shoulder. "Go check Laura's scriptures. See if she's finished copying them."

Then she turned and smiled at my brother. "Mikey, look. I told you this lamp works. Back when Laura was nine, the hospital told us to start planning her funeral. It was her grandmother who knelt and begged for this lamp, three bows and nine kowtows, and that's what saved her life."

My brother, Michael, stood by the balcony door with a glass of water, smiling too.

"Good thing Laura finally knew her place this time. No scene."

As he said it, a layer of white frost crept without a sound across the lower right corner of the living room's floor-to-ceiling window.

The ice crystals started from the sealant along the frame and spread across the glass fast enough to watch.

None of them noticed.

Out in the yard, the three chained dogs lifted their heads at the same moment.

Not barking. A whine forced up from deep in the throat, short and thin, like a pup with its tail crushed underfoot.

My mother frowned.

"What's gotten into these dogs, howling like that in the middle of the night?"

Before she finished, all three fell silent at once.

Limbs stiff, they toppled sideways and hit the ground, eyes rolled back, bellies no longer rising.

Michael set down his glass and walked to the window. He touched the glass and yanked his hand back.

"This window... is it frozen over?"

My mother leaned in, and her breath fogged white the moment it left her lips.

The seventh lunar month, thirty-four degrees outside, and the living room was dropping below freezing.

The clock in the living room struck the hour. Midnight.

Midnight had come.

A scream too shrill to be human tore out of the master bedroom on the second floor!

The next second, a sharp crack, and the glass dome of the life-lamp they had kept for seventeen years shattered!

"Flora!"