"As long as there's still a breath," Ethan said, "I can cure it."Samantha looked at him briefly."I hope so," she said. Her voice had dropped the edge it usually carried. "These are my people. They face this kind of thing every day, life and death, every shift. They all have families. Parents. Kids." She looked back at the road. "If something happens to them because of a case, that's one thing. But to collapse on a scene with no explanation, no injury, nothing the hospital can find, that's a different kind of hard."Ethan said nothing. He listened."Just cure them," she said. "Please."Samantha's car pulled into the parking lot of the Manhattan Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, a mid-sized facility on the west side that had been operating for thirty years and had built a quiet reputation in the city's TCM community without ever quite breaking into the mainstream.Ethan looked at the building."You sent them here?" he said."Western medicine found nothing," Samantha said, scannin

"Wonderful!"Dean Xie Donglin looked genuinely pleased, the expression of a man who has just solved a problem he didn't know how to solve ten minutes ago.Dr. Vale will help us select excellent candidates for our internship program." He turned to Zhang Bai. "Dr. Zhang, you'll join Dr. Vale and Dr. Caldwell on the assessment panel, along with our two existing evaluators. The five of you will conduct the assessments together.""Understood, Dean," Zhang Bai said.His voice was professional. His expression was also professional. Whatever was happening underneath both of those things was visible only in the very slight tightening around his eyes.He had been running the hospital's intern assessment for four years. He was, by his own confident estimate, the most appropriate person in this building to evaluate candidates. He had already, through the quiet operation of professional relationships, indicated to several candidates that their applications looked favorable.And now, in the space o

Dean Xie Donglin's face had gone cold in the specific way of a man who runs an institution and has just watched someone question the institution's decisions in the institution's own conference room."Dr. Vale," he said, "is the Legacy holder of the Revival Nine Needles technique, the Honorary Dean of this hospital, and the Senior Brother of Dr. George Caldwell one of the most respected traditional medicine practitioners in this city." He looked at Marcus. "Do you consider those qualifications sufficient?"Marcus opened his mouth.Closed it.He had never heard of the Revival Nine Needles. It meant nothing to him. But Honorary Dean of the Manhattan Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital was a title he understood clearly enough, and Caldwell's Senior Brother was a relationship he had just watched confirmed in front of twenty people including Dean Xie himself.A student who had not yet graduated from NYU Medical was the honorary dean of a major hospital and the senior lineage member of a m

Samantha's long legs were wrapped around his waist. Both arms locked around his neck. Her face was buried in his chest and her eyes were shut with the committed intensity of someone who has decided they are not opening again under any circumstances.Ethan looked at his situation.A woman who had, approximately six minutes ago, tried to kick him in a location that would have ended all future conversations, was now clinging to him with the grip of someone who had found the only solid surface in a collapsing world and intended to stay there.She was also, objectively, extraordinarily beautiful, and the posture was not one that a twenty-three-year-old man could be entirely neutral about.He was doing his best."Alright," he said. "Come down. I can't move properly with you like this.""No.""Samantha""No. It's too scary. I'm not letting go."He had no good counter-argument for it's too scary. He had opened her Sky Eye. He had shown her the things. That had been his decision and he was liv

Early the next morning, after breakfast with Clara at Hargrove's Table, Ethan went out to buy what he needed for the talisman work.Cinnabar. Yellow paper. Specific inks and brushes of the right quality. The raw materials that the Ashford Medical Order's records specified for the formation-breaking preparation.None of these were easy to find in a modern city. He visited four shops before a calligraphy and painting supply store near Canal Street finally had everything on the list. He paid, gathered his purchases, and stepped back outside.Directly across the street, a crowd surged along a block he had not intended to visit.He had wandered, without quite realizing it, into the vicinity of Treasure Court, Manhattan's largest antique market, a sprawling collection of shops and stalls that occupied a full city block and drew, on any given morning, a mixture of serious collectors, optimistic amateurs, and dealers with a professional relationship with the truth.He looked at it.To break t