Ding.The little bell rang once more, softly, and then the shop below went quiet.Nobody in the room moved. Helen was still holding the edge of the table. Old Lu was frozen on the bed with his hands on his knees. Adrian stood in the middle of the floor with the fallen chair behind him, and he could hear only one thing in the whole world.A footstep. Downstairs. Slow and careful, like someone trying not to be heard.Then another.Old Lu reached over and turned the oil lamp all the way down. The room went dark. Only a thin line of moonlight came in around the edge of the blanket on the window."Did you lock the door?" Adrian whispered."Yes," Old Lu whispered back. "I always lock it.""Then who has a key?"The old man did not answer. That was the answer.Adrian looked around the dark room. There was nothing to fight with. No pole, no bucket, nothing like the garden at the Feng house. Then his eyes found something on the small table by the door. A bookbinder's needle. Long and thick, mad

Adrian could not stop looking at the dried flower.It lay on the counter between them, small and brown and flat, in the first gold light of morning. Such a little thing. A child could crush it between two fingers. And yet it felt heavier than the gun lying beside it.Victor Han. Eighteen years old. Standing at the top of a dark staircase in the rain.Adrian thought about the man in the white suit holding out his hand in the Feng garden last night. I have heard so much about you. Smiling. Warm. And all that time, he had known. All that time, he had been looking at the grandson of the man he had killed, and smiling.Something in Adrian's chest turned hot and hard, like iron in a fire."Adrian." Helen's hand touched his arm. "Look at me."He looked at her."I know what you are feeling," she said quietly. "I can see it on your face. But if you go into that clinic thinking about revenge, you will make a mistake. And my father will pay for it." Her eyes were red, but steady. "Please. First