The Broken Lands by Kate Milford Page A

knew where to look for them.” Jin nodded at Liao and Mr. Burns.
    â€œWell, yes, you did, but I already knew.” He gave her a sheepish smile and pulled a folded page from his pocket. Jin recognized it immediately as one of Fata Morgana’s handbills. “I was at the hotel this morning when your wagon arrived. I saw you when you were . . . Actually,” he admitted, “I have no idea what you were doing. You looked like you were trying not to set yourself on fire.”
    â€œClose. I was trying to keep
him
from setting me on fire,” Jin said, jerking her head at Mr. Burns. The motion made it throb all over again. “Oh, that is not going to feel good tonight.” She closed her eyes against the pain and immediately the image of the body swam into view. She felt herself starting to shake, and forced herself to open her eyes, even though she knew the shaking meant she might cry.
    The boy named Sam was hovering, all concern and awkwardness. She couldn’t bear it. “Did you see?” she whispered harshly, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve.
    He shook his head. “I didn’t see it. Mr. Mapp was the only one who went.”
    â€œDid he
tell
you?”
    He hesitated and glanced over at the huddled men, plainly willing them to finish their conversation and come to his rescue.
    â€œIt’s no good, dwelling on it.”
    â€œI can’t get it out of my head anyhow. At least help me make sense of it. What could . . .” Jin took a deep breath. “What could
do
that to someone?”
    He looked like he was trying to figure out something comforting to say. Jin put on her most forbidding face and stared him down. There was no comfort for this. There was only the hope of making sense of it. That’s how it felt, at least.
    â€œIt was pretty bad, huh?” he said at last.
    She sighed and took another little sip from her glass. There was no way to answer that. No way that would convey what she had seen, anyhow.
    â€œWalt didn’t say anything about what he thought happened,” Sam said quietly. “But he told me about the body, and the writing.”
    This was new. “What writing?”
    â€œYou didn’t see it? It was on the wall, where the—where it was lying. Let me remember and get it right. It said—”
    â€œThat’s enough talk of this wretchedness.” Uncle Liao swooped in, waving his hands like a man trying to stop a fight. He pointed a finger at Jin’s mostly untouched glass. “Little sips, I said!”
    Jin ignored him. “What was the writing?”
    â€œXiao Jin!” Liao thundered.
    â€œZhe shi shenme yisi?”
Jin shouted back, astounded by her own anger. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what this means!”
    â€œIt means that a creature may walk like a man and still have a beast’s heart, Xiao Jin,” Liao retorted. “That’s all it means. No more.”
    â€œThat isn’t enough! If you had seen it, what I saw . . . If you knew what I have caught behind my eyes—” She banged a fist against her forehead. “If you did, you’d do whatever it took to give me some kind of peace!”
    â€œHow will knowing what a murderer wrote on a wall give you peace?” Sam asked softly.
    Jin shrugged, suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know. I only know I’m going to be thinking about it every moment of the day and night no matter what.”
    Everyone in the room turned to Liao. He gave her a long look, then turned to where Walter Mapp leaned on the back of the piano and gave him a curt nod.
    Mapp tapped the fingers of one hand on the piano. “It said,
Claimed by blood for Jack Hellcoal.
”
    Jin began to shake again. Tears pricked at her eyes for the third time in a single day. It was absurd. The words clarified nothing for her. Why, why the tears again?
    â€œWhat does it mean?” she whispered.
    Mapp shrugged.