"And why is that?"
Joseph sighed. "Because the man the vampires recruited wants me dead. And you're becoming one of them."
* * *
Chapter 3
When Six was only five years old, she remembered quite clearly being led into a small office that was extraordinary in its luxury. Two wooden chairs with patched cushions on the seat; a dark wide desk covered in pens and paper, one lamp; a small ink painting of a tea pot; and best of anything, a window with a view beyond the gray concrete walls of the gymnasium training center. She remembered caring more about that view than the people she had been brought to see.
There were three adults in the office. Two men. One woman. All wearing dark pants and dark jackets, buttoned just so with their short collars straight and pressed flat against their throats. The men wore caps. The woman had black hair shot with silver, cut to her chin. Six had never seen any of them before.
"That's the one," said the woman. "Her family?"
"None."
"Her name?"
"None. Our recruiter found her in Shandong Province a year ago. The village was feeding her. She wandered there from the hills. They called her Six, because that was the date they found her."
"Skills?"
"Some. No artistry. But she's fast."
The woman knelt in front of Six. She poked the girl's forehead with one hard finger. It hurt. She began to do it again. Six knocked her hand away. The woman tried once more time, faster. Six stepped out of reach, her hand raised again. The woman smiled.
"Good," she said. "We'll take her."
Six remembered the woman. She remembered that the woman never had a name. She was simply Aunt The Aunt who ran a small school for girls, where, in addition to being taught reading, math, and science, they were also educated in a variety of physical activities, many of which involved hurting people. Or at least, people wrapped in layers of protective padding. The real fighting came later. When she was thirteen.
But what struck Six, as she sat in the passenger seat of a strange car, beside a strange man with her hand pressed against a strange chest, was that for the first time in twenty years, she remembered what it felt like to be herself again. The self she had been as a child, hungering for more, knowing her place and dissatisfied with it, looking and looking for that high view of something beyond her life.
She had lost that. She had forgotten that. But now she remembered, and it was the only reason she did not subdue the man at her side. It would have been easy, despite his skills. She had a sense of him now. Somewhat ruthless, but not hard. Not toward her.
But she wanted more. More than answers. What she had stumbled upon was a mystery beyond that which she had set out to solve, and the outcome mattered. She had a chance to see over the wall. She had a view. But the view now was not enough.
Six studied the man. His face was full of planes and angles, shadows dancing over his skin as the lights of the shopping district flickered, burned. His expression was mildly stressed, his mouth set in a hard line. Six remembered the taste of his lips.
"You said earlier that I had been poisoned." Six touched her cheek. It hurt. The skin felt hot. She recalled the wet tip of a tongue, and suppressed a shudder. "Poisoned by a scratch?"
"That's all it takes," Joseph said.
"So you believe I will become… like them?" Six could not say the word. Not Jiangshi, not vampire.
Joseph looked at her. It was the compassion in his eyes, more than his words, which convinced her. She barely heard him as he said, "I can stop it. I can help your body stop it."
Six tried to see past the surface of his eyes, to something deeper, more full of truth. She imagined she caught a glimmer of something honest, but she did not know if she could trust it. "What are you?"
Joseph grimaced. She pressed her palm harder on his chest, warning him, but he surprised her. He took his hand off the wheel and covered her fingers, her wrist. He had a large hand. It felt strong. He did not try to pry away her fingers, and she did not move. Too much was at stake.
You could make him stop touching you.
But she did not. Other men had touched her hand, in a far more intimate manner, but this was different. This felt like he was offering comfort, and that was new.
"What I am is complicated," Joseph said quietly. "But the most accurate name is… necromancer."
Six stared. "You raise the dead?"
Joseph's hand tightened. "It's not so much a resurrection of the physical, but of the spiritual, the imprint of the soul. Which is not the soul, but just the memory of it. It's almost as good as the real thing, though. Especially if you want information."
"And you are being hunted because of this?"