ELSI E CHA PM A N

Scholastic Press New York

 Copyright © 2020 by Elsie Chapman

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN 978-1-338-58951-1

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1   20 21 22 23 24

Printed in the U.S.A.  23

First edition, October 2020

Book design by Maeve Norton

 J ESS E , M AT T H E W, GILLIA N —­
YO U A R E E V ERY ­T HIN G
 ONE

The inside of the bar is dim. Shapes of black-painted furniture

form within the gloom, and there’s the dull glow of unpolished fix-
tures. A thick gray haze fills the air, and through my mask comes
the bitter hint of tobacco. I smell more, something sweeter—the
scent of tea, floral and grasslike.
Chang’s is inside the Tea Sector but located close enough to
Tobacco that people come to the tea bar also looking to smoke.
Customers hover around bar tables crowded with ceramic teacups
and metal ashtrays. Classical music plays over the speakers, strains
of violin strings mixing with the low rumbles of conversation.
A headache teases, and unease blooms, even though I haven’t
cast yet.
I know I’ll have to. The inevitability hangs over me, as dense
and suffocating as the smoke in the bar. It’s how I’m paying for
what I’ve done.
Old Chang knows of my parents, just like they know of him.
Both his bar and Wu Teas are longtime establishments, though
each place started out differently. My family’s legacy traces back to
the days of serving the finest teas to empresses and emperors,
while the Chang business goes back to the pubs and taverns of old,
to being barkeep to the staff of that same royalty.
When tea slowly fell out of favor, the entire sector fell into
decline—it didn’t matter who your clients once were. Wu Teas

1
would still be just one more struggling business if I ­hadn’t paid off
all we owed.
On the surface, it’s easy to see how fi­nally being freed of debt
gave us the chance to prosper again.
But Chang’s fallen ­behind on his payments owed to my boss.
Saint Willow is why I’m h
­ ere.
I let the front door of the tea bar fall shut. The sliver of pale
sunlight dis­appears, returning the place to near darkness. The
few ­faces that turn to look at Jihen and me glance away, already
bored. In the back corner of the room is a shadowed pocket of an
entrance—­the own­er’s office.
Guilt comes at having to do this, anger at being cornered. Shame,
too. It ­wasn’t long ago that my parents ­were in the same position as
old Chang is now.
Beside me, Jihen slicks back his waxed black hair and tries to
look cool. “­Shall we?”
I shake my head. “I can do Chang alone. Just wait for me over
by the bar.”
He gives me his greasy smile. “Now, Aza, you know the rules.
Saint wants me to keep a close eye on you. Make sure you do what
you need to do.”
“I’m the caster, not you. And I know business ­owners. You ­don’t.”
My tone is rude and I d
­ on’t care, just as Jihen’s is smug and he
­doesn’t care. We still hate each other, even though we both work
for Saint Willow. ­We’re stuck h
­ ere together.
Jihen is the gang leader’s cousin, and while f­amily goes deep
when it comes to gang membership in Lotusland, she h
­ asn’t been
happy with him lately. I’m not ­here by choice, ­either, and he knows

2
it. Right now, his only enjoyment comes from my being a prisoner
who is forced to cast magic on demand.
“­Doesn’t ­matter what you know,” he says, “if you ­don’t do as
ordered.”
“Getting the marks is the order.”
“Getting the marks using magic is the order. Saint wants you
back to casting the way you always have, and that’s it.” A snort of
derision. “Ai-ya, squeezing without magic—­anyone can do that.
Even l­ ittle beebees—­screaming brats that they are—­can find a way
to do that. Even I can do that.”
I nearly laugh at his clumsy attempt to insult me. Still, my pulse
starts to race, dread growing along with it.
“I need more time.” I’m still trying to get used to casting again.
I’m beginning to doubt it’ll ever happen.
“Yeah? Well, y­ou’re not getting more time. This is your third
squeeze, and while I might be your babysitter, Saint says no more
hand-­holding. I’ve got my o
­ rders, same as you.” With a leer, Jihen
slides his eyes over my face. “So go in ­there and cast. And do it right.”
Not wrong like my first squeeze job, when I refused to use magic
at all. Facing Saint Willow’s fury afterward left me cold for hours.
Or the second, when I did use magic, and half the roof fell in on
us. At least the place was nearly empty, as most businesses in Tea
tend to be nowadays.
Getting full magic back—­magic that’s not mine—­hasn’t been
easy. In the month that I’ve been living with this strange and ugly
new power in my blood, casting’s become unpredictable. E
­ very spell
feels dif­fer­ent. All the control I’ve ever learned is gone. Nothing
but chaos remains, like I’m at war with myself.

3
 Casting pain starts early. Sometimes while I’m still casting,
making it harder to focus.
Recovery takes longer—­bruises that stay u
­ ntil morning, head-
aches that follow me into dreams.
And then ­there’s the planet. I’m destroying it more than ever.
The consequences are adding up, and I ­can’t help but wonder
about payment. The same way I c­ an’t ever forget how I got magic
back, no ­matter how much I try to avoid the memory. I do my best
to keep those thoughts away, but I still keep tripping over them.
Falling in. Getting stuck in the past u
­ ntil I can crawl back out.
I’m s­ ilent for too long, and Jihen gives an impatient tsk. “Listen,
beauty—”
“You r­ eally need to stop calling me that.”
“Then cast.” He clucks his tongue. The complaint takes shape
on his lips: mah-­fung. High maintenance.
I make myself nod. He’s right—­I ­will have to cast. What I did
was terrible, but it’s also in the past. Unchangeable and useless to
me. Saint Willow is my now, wholly in my face and with the power
to make every­thing even worse.
Still, it d
­ oesn’t mean Jihen gets to watch again.
“I’ll use magic,” I say, “just like I’m supposed to. But I’m g­ oing
in alone. It’ll be easier for Chang to accept my coming ­here with
less witnesses.”
Jihen knows I’m talking about saving face. He might be a gang
member, but he’s also Chinese, same as me, same as Chang. Some
concepts c­ an’t be shaken. They run deeper and longer than any
gang rule.
He grunts, considering, and lets his gaze drift ­toward the bowls

4
of ­f ree nuts on the bar. He takes out a shred of tree bark from
the chest pocket of his suit jacket and casts. Just leftover magic, the
only kind he—­and most ­people of the world—­can cast. The kind
where t­ here’s no pain as a cost, no damage to the earth.
The shoulders of his black suit lift and neaten themselves,
the lapels pressing smooth. His pinkie curls as he flicks away the
depleted starter of the bark. It’s the fin­ger I broke last month, now
completely better.
I had to cast with the new magic to heal it. ­There was a brief
second when I hoped it would all go wrong—­more pain for Jihen.
It ended up hurting me more than him, but it was still worth it,
since it fi­nally got Jihen to stop whining about how I broke it in the
first place.
“Make it fast,” he says now as he heads t­ oward the food. “We ­can’t
return to headquarters empty-­handed.”
I turn away, too, annoyed at his use of the word we. It’s his way
of telling himself he’s still necessary and more than just my baby-
sitter. I even go along with it when Jihen reports back the overblown
version of his effectiveness. What do I care? Saint Willow is never
­going to let me go. Having me at her disposal is how she gets to control
full magic.
It’s why she forced this unknown magic inside me.
Why I’m no longer sure who I am.

5
 TWO

I weave my way around tables until I get to the shadowed corridor

in the back. A long drape of dark red silk is the door.
A guy—tall, run-of-the-mill face, arms too thick for the size of the
rest of his body—steps out from the side to block my way. “Sorry,
staff only.”
“Saint Willow business,” I say, meeting his suspicious gaze.
He hesitates.
Don’t make me cast to get through, I think. My starter bag lies
across my chest, messenger style, and I place a hand on it. Please.
It’ll hurt me, but it will also hurt you, and this place. More than you can
imagine.
His eyes move to my starter bag. There’s another beat of hesita-
tion, and then he steps back.
I shove the silk drape to the side and walk inside.
It’s a closet of an office. The walls are covered in faded blue
paper where they aren’t obscured by wooden shelving stuffed
with yellowing file folders. The air is just as hazy in here, but
the smoke comes from the burning of cheap incense and nothing
else. Its scent is heavy enough that I know my smog mask will
carry it all day. I’d have taken it off by now since I’m indoors, but
this is a squeeze job—staying undercover helps keep this version
of myself separate. She’s a version of Aza I don’t really want
to know.

6
 The song from out in the bar is also playing in here—straining
violins.
Chang is seated at a tiny table at the other end of the room. His
expression is grim, a blend of terror and resignation. He must be
expecting this—he can’t have lived in Lotusland this long to not
know the price for holding out. The question, then, isn’t why Chang
is late—no reason has ever mattered—but what I’m going to have
to do to make him pay.
He’s older than I thought.
Cold sweat rises on my skin. Elderly people are frail, particu-
larly vulnerable. They make my current level of control over
magic—magic that won’t listen to how I want to cast—especially
dangerous.
“Who are you?” Chang’s voice is a creak through the haze,
snapping my mind free.
I take three steps until I’m standing in front of him. The incense
burner is right on the desk, and the smell rising off it makes my
head swim. “Your honor marks for the bar. I’m here to remind you
that this month’s payment is now overdue. Do you have them for
me right here, today, to bring back to Saint Willow?”
He looks me up and down. Scorn dawns. It forms a shine in his
eyes, sharp and cunning. “You work for Saint Willow? How old
are you?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Do you under-
stand? If you don’t have the marks right now, we’ll have no choice
but to look into stronger . . . techniques of encouraging you to pay.
Trust me, you don’t want that—”
Chang laughs. “Trust you? You?” He makes a show of trying to

7
peer around me. “Bring me someone who is impor­tant, and then
I’ll negotiate.”
I sigh through my teeth, wishing I had some way of avoiding
this and knowing I d
­ on’t. I take out a slip of paper from my starter
bag. I draw a six-­pointed star on my palm and place the paper in its
­middle.
“What are you d
­ oing?” Chang is sputtering. “Stop wasting my
time and leave before I call the police.”
A flesh spell, I decide; a relatively small one to suit his aged heart,
and hopefully it w
­ on’t leave the gang with a body to bury.
“Saint Willow ­doesn’t negotiate,” I say quietly, “and neither do I.”
I take a deep breath and imagine the red cloud of magic in my
brain into a shape. A fist around a ripe peach.
I cast.
The floor ­trembles. Heat spears its way from my feet to my chest.
From my arms to my hands. It builds in my one palm. Loose papers
drift from the shelves as the incense burner clatters and jumps
along the top of the desk.
A deep whooshing sound fills my ears. The taste of the incense
smoke in my mouth intensifies, is acrid on the back of my tongue.
I imagine the pictured fist clenching just the slightest bit. The
ripe fruit denting from the pressure.
And Chang’s throat denting the same way.
The shop owner grabs at his neck, trying to breathe. His gaze is
full of panic and disbelief. Shock at what I can do. Full magic, ­here?
Cast on me, and by you?
My own shock is nearly as g­ reat. The correct spells a­ ren’t guar-
anteed anymore when I cast. Relief swirls in.

8
 “I told you I ­didn’t want to hurt you,” I say even as casting pain
finds me, thin whispers of it ebbing from b
­ ehind my eyes, swallow-
ing up any relief that had just been t­ here. I let the depleted starter—­
the paper gone lacy and ash-­like—­fall to the floor. “Are you ready
to talk about your late honor marks now?”
He nods so vigorously I’m worried about his old heart again.
I wait for the spell to run out. Six points—it should be any second
now, and then h
­ e’ll be fine.
Except the spell keeps ­going. My palm starts burning, the sensa-
tion so hot it’s nearly icy. The pain ­behind my eyes bursts into a wide
web of agony. Invisible fin­gers wrap around my skull and dig in.
Chang shoves his chair back—it leaves a gouge in the wall—­and
staggers to his feet. He begins clawing at his throat. The skin of his
face goes mottled, the red parts as dark as the silk drape door to
this office. His panic is frenzied. He knows he is d
­ ying.
No. No! Not again!
I lean across the desk, hands out. I want to shake him, like such
a gesture is anything but useless.
The magic inside me, this terrible power I’ve accepted—­I hate it
the way I hate Saint Willow. I hate myself for ever thinking I
deserved to have full magic again just ­because I once did. When
I gave it away in the first place just to keep from ever having to use
it to serve her.
Chang’s eyes are wild and searching, full of his desperation to
breathe. His fin­gers dig in harder.
Then he begins to cough, fi­nally drawing in huge, hoarse gulps
of air. I stumble back, the pain b
­ ehind my eyes thickening even as
the pounding of my pulse deep in my ears begins to let up. Over

9
the sound system, the violins have morphed into flutes. I c­ an’t
place the song, only that it’s cheery and light and the very opposite
of this moment.
“You”—­he’s gasping—­“you—”
He stares at me like any second I might choose to cast once
more. His terror is back, all signs of resignation and scorn gone.
“I do not have the honor marks,” he wheezes. “Business has not
been very good. But I’ll get them soon, I promise.”
“Promises of soon ­aren’t enough.” I strug­gle to speak above a
whisper, pain coming in slaps. “­Until you find a way to pay, the bar’s
­going to start failing health inspections, your suppliers ­will cancel
contracts, loyal customers w
­ ill stop coming. Do you understand?”
Chang nods, still pale in his cheeks. At least he’s not ­dying
anymore.
“This place has a safe.” I hold out my hand. The stink of incense
turns my stomach and makes the room tilt again. “Empty it of marks.
And if ­there’s nothing inside, then empty your wallet.”
“My wallet? But—” Every­thing about him seems to shrink.
“­There’s nothing ­else.”
“And still it’s Saint Willow’s,” I say. Then I make myself shrug, as
though I d
­ on’t care at all about his situation. But r­ eally, I understand
every­thing about his despair. Saint Willow has me trapped by my
­family’s legacy, too.
Wu Teas, always within her reach if I ­don’t obey.

10
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