They Stole My Life to Save Their Favorite,Now They're Begging

My birth chart is four pillars of pure yin, an all-yin fate that comes once in a hundred years. I am half a step into the land of the dead already.

At the Ghost Festival blessing rite, the young acolyte carried out the life-sustaining eternal lamp I had fed with my own blood for seventeen years.

All I had to do was sign my name in blood and light the wick, and I would live through the death-fate waiting for me at twenty-six.

A breath before my pen touched the paper, my mother, who had come to pray beside me, slipped into the lotus pond.

Weak as I was, I didn't stop to think. I jumped in after her and rushed her to the emergency room.

I paid the fees, pushed open the door to her room, and heard my father's voice coming from her phone.

"Good thing you drew her away. When the acolyte asked for the name, I just told him she couldn't bear to see her adopted sister Flora suffer, so she gave the lamp up herself."

Then my brother, quick and excited: "The ritual's working. Flora's fever has come down a little."

I was stunned. "You swapped my life-sustaining lamp over to your adopted daughter. Did you ever think about what that would do?"

My mother had been lying in that bed looking so weak. Now she dropped the act.

"Flora's fever won't break, and you've lived safe for seventeen years off that lamp. What's the harm in letting her borrow it to hold off the yin for one night? We're all family. Can you really stand to watch her suffer?"

I coughed up a mouthful of blood and water and stopped arguing.

They thought that by fooling the acolyte and changing the name, they could take my life-sustaining lamp.

What they didn't know was that seventeen years ago, the acolyte's master had bound me to it with a blood-pact. The lamp and my fate were already tied together.

The master had passed into stillness two years ago. They could change the name carved on the lamp's base, but they could not change the blood-pact in the wick.

Since they were bent on stealing my fate for their adopted daughter, then tonight, when the hundred ghosts walk, I hoped the girl the whole family adored could bear it.

1.

I wiped the blood from my mouth, water still dripping from my hair.

My mother glanced at me. Not one word of concern. Instead she went right back to blaming me.

"If you hadn't been dragging those filthy things around since you were little, Flora wouldn't be running a fever because of you. Even the doctors can't find a cause."

She slapped the blood-draw needle into my palm.

"Your father and brother have already brought the lamp back."

"The acolyte said the lamp needs blood to draw it out. Fill a vial, quickly, so I can take it back with me."

I looked down at the needle. "Mom, that lamp's wick has been bound to my blood for seventeen years. It knows its owner. Flora's body isn't like mine. If you force it"

"Don't feed me that nonsense."

She cut me off, out of patience.

"So what you're saying is, Flora deserves to burn to death, and nobody's allowed to touch that lamp of yours?"

"That's not what I meant."

"That's exactly what you meant." She turned her face away. "You'd hoard that life-sustaining lamp for yourself and let your own sister die. That's a cold heart, all right."

I gripped the needle. Something rose in my throat that I could neither swallow down nor spit out.

My mother took out her phone and started a video call.

My father, Lance Henson, stood by Flora's bed, my brother Michael Henson beside him.

The lamp sat on the nightstand. The spot on the side of the base where my name used to be carved now read Flora Henson.

"Laura." Michael leaned in toward the camera. "Look, Flora's at a hundred and three, and the hospital's out of options. The lamp's already here. Just help out. One vial of blood, that's all."

I stared at my own brother on the screen.

Five years ago, when he gave me the warm-jade pendant to ward off evil, he had leaned in from that same distance.

"Mikey, you know full well that lamp is what keeps me alive."

My brother's lips moved. Before he could get a sound out, the image swung, and my father's face filled the screen.

"Laura, you're perfectly fine right now, aren't you? Let Flora borrow the lamp for the emergency. We're not keeping it from you. Once her fever breaks, we'll give it back."

"Oh, and the acolyte said the scriptures have to be copied eighty-one times before the lamp will settle. Isn't that your specialty? Finish copying them at the hospital before you come home. Don't bring the bad luck in with you. It's no good for Flora's condition."

The call cut off. My mother had ended it. She tucked the phone into her pocket.

"Laura, just think of it as paying your father and me back for raising you all these years. Help your sister. Blood first? Or the scriptures first?"

I said nothing.

When I didn't answer, my mother's voice climbed. "Laura Henson, do you really have no feeling left for your own sister after all these years? How can you be so selfish?"

Selfish.

Of everything my mother had said to me in twenty-six years, that was the word she used most.

My fate runs to yin by birth. When I was small, my parents were forced to see spirit-things again and again because of me.

They couldn't stand the bad luck I carried, so they turned around and adopted an ordinary girl from an orphanage and named her Flora Henson.

For as long as I can remember, anything of mine that Flora wanted, I had to give up. If I didn't, I was a big sister who didn't know better. Selfish.

The year I turned nine, my first death-fate came for me. It was my grandmother who carried me up the mountain on her back, three kneelings and nine bows, and begged the master for the method of lamp-offering life extension.

The master said there was one more death-fate waiting for me, the year I turned twenty-six.

I would have to sign my name in blood, light the wick, then hand-copy the warding scriptures eighty-one times for all living beings, and I could make it through.

But now they had taken away the lamp that kept me alive.

They cared nothing for whether I lived or died, and still called me selfish.

I lowered my head and opened my backpack. Inside was a thick stack of paper.

I had copied them out before I set off this morning, to hold off tonight's midnight death-fate. Eighty rounds in all, one short of the last.

My mother stared at the stack, her mouth working, but she said nothing.

I tucked the scriptures under my arm and walked out of the room.

"Mom, you go on ahead. I'll settle your hospital paperwork and then come home."

She shot me a sidelong look, snatched up her bag, and headed for the door.

A few steps out she turned back. "Don't forget the blood and the scriptures."

After she left, I went out to an empty stretch of ground at the hospital.

I took out a lighter and the eighty rounds of scripture I'd copied so carefully.

The flame touched the corner of the paper. The orange edge crept inward, the lines of writing blackening one row at a time, curling upward, crumbling into ash.

The smoke drifted off into the air.

Three hours to midnight.

No life-sustaining lamp, no scriptures. I didn't know whether I could hold out.

But if I was fated not to live past twenty-six, then Flora wasn't going to have an easy night of it either.

"Sis, you're back?"

Flora's voice drifted over from the couch.

She was wrapped in the handmade shawl Grandma had left me, and a piece of jade hung at her throat.

My feet stopped.

That was the warm-jade pendant Michael had given me five years ago. Top-grade stone, made specifically to suppress yin energy.

He'd told me back then that if I kept it under my pillow, I'd stop having nightmares.

"What are you looking at, Sis?" Flora followed my gaze and touched the jade, smiling like she'd done nothing wrong.

"Mikey said I just used your lamp, that I'm run-down, so he told me to wear it for a few days."

She said it so lightly. All her life she'd taken my things, and never once thought she had to give them back.

Michael came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of herbal medicine. When he saw me, his brow creased.

"Why are you back so late? Did you bring the blood? Did you finish copying the scriptures?"

"No."

His face darkened. His mouth opened like he had more to say.

Then Flora shrank into her shoulders. "Sis, why is the lamp burning that eerie green? It's so cold. It's making my skin crawl."

Dad walked out of the study, and the moment he heard that, his brow knotted.

"Laura, go see what's wrong. Is it because it hasn't been fed blood? Is the lamp unstable?"

Of course I knew what was wrong.

The wick was flickering wildly, flaring and dimming. The lamp was searching for its true owner.

The blood-pact was bound to my life chart. When it couldn't find me, it would pull in every scrap of yin energy for ten miles around to fill the gap.

Flora was an ordinary person. Sitting in front of that lamp, she was a slab of meat set down in front of starving wraiths.

"Just drip some blood in already." Mom's voice was impatient. "Quit dragging your feet. Look how scared you've made your sister."

Michael had already gone to the kitchen for the fruit knife, and he held it out to me.

"Just one cut. A small one."

I looked at the knife in his hand.

The silver blade caught the lamp's eerie green light.

None of them knew that a single drop of blood would fully activate the blood-pact inside the wick.

The lamp would become a signal tower, pulling every wandering wraith drifting through the city on this Ghost Festival night straight toward it.

And the name carved on the lamp base was: Flora Henson.

I took the knife and cut a line across my index finger.

The instant the drop of blood fell into the wick, the green flame shot up three inches, then snapped back down into a quiet, eerie glow.

"There, there, see? It's steady now."

Dad let out a breath and patted Flora's head. "It's fine, baby. Just sleep it off."

Flora leaned back against the couch and smiled at me. "Thank you, Sis."

I didn't answer. I turned and went upstairs.

I was going to grab my ID and the bankbook Grandma had left me. I didn't want to stay in this house one more minute.

I pushed open my bedroom door. The drawer had been pried open, and it was empty.

My ID was gone. The bankbook was gone. Even the string of cinnabar prayer beads Grandma left me was gone.

"Looking for your documents? I put them away. Don't worry."

Mom stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest.

"It's the Ghost Festival. Don't go out. Stay home and behave, don't go wandering around and pick something up."

Then Dad came too.

"Flora can sleep in your room tonight. It faces the sun, good feng shui. You make do in the guest room for one night."

But Mom said, "The guest room's too close. Go sleep in the basement. Don't let your yin energy knock into Flora. And have you finished copying the scriptures? When you're done, bring them to me."

"There were no brushes or ink at the hospital. I couldn't copy anything."

"Then take a brush and ink and go copy in the basement. When you're finished, I'll come collect them."

Mom closed the door and left.

I let out a bitter laugh. It had always been this way. In their eyes there was only ever Flora.

On Flora's birthday, the whole family went to the amusement park, and I was locked at home, in case I saw something unclean and cried, and brought bad luck.

At Flora's piano recital, the whole family was in the audience. Not one person came to my speech competition.

When she got sick, the whole family circled around her.

When I ran a fever, Mom said don't be so delicate, drink some hot water and you'll be fine.

I wiped away the tears that hadn't yet fallen and opened my phone to the ticketing app.

I didn't have my ID, but I could book the ticket first and get a temporary ID certificate at the station.

There were still over two hours until midnight.

I stared at the screen and pressed the button to confirm the bullet-train ticket.

Dad stood at the top of the stairs with a throw cushion in his hands, the one from the living room couch.

"Here. The basement gets cold."

He held it out, but his eyes went past my shoulder to the second floor.

From up there came Mom's voice, coaxing Flora to sleep in my room. He listened for a moment, then turned back. "Just get through one night. We'll switch you back tomorrow. When the scriptures are copied out, call for me. I'll come get them."

The basement stairs were steep.

Damp air pushed up from below, thick with the smell of moldy dust.

It was the Ghost Festival, so the yin energy was already heavy.

For someone like me, born under an all-yin fate, a basement was no different from a graveyard.

I set my phone alarm for ten-thirty. If I could just hold out until then, I'd leave for the train station.

The moment I sat down, laughter drifted from upstairs.

"Flora, touch your own forehead. It's not burning anymore, is it?"

"Mom, it really came down. I don't feel so bad now."

"It's down, it's down." Mom's voice carried a smile, clear even through the floor. "See, I told you the lamp would work."

Then my brother's excited voice. "It's gone, it's gone, the thermometer's only ninety-seven point seven. And look, your color's so much better than yesterday. You've got that flush back, pink and healthy."

Flora laughed, wheedling. "Mikey, take a picture of me so I can see."

I sat on the folding cot in the basement, listening to the cheer overhead, and closed my eyes, feeling the currents of energy move through the house.

The lamp really did work. The yin it drew in was smothering Flora's yang. That wasn't a fever breaking. That was her yang being devoured, bit by bit.

People in a false final rally look flushed and full of life too.

Ten-thirty.

I stood and walked to the disused vent window at the very back of the basement.

The frame was badly rusted. It took three hard shoves before it gave.

Outside was the back yard, connected to the old house next door where Grandma had lived.

I climbed out along the drainpipe.

Grandma's yard had gone wild in the two years since, the weeds up to my waist.

Under the pomegranate tree in the corner, third brick down and two feet under. I crouched and clawed the dirt open with my hands.

An oilcloth bundle. I opened it. Inside was a rolled scroll of yellowed, hand-copied scriptures.

Grandma's handwriting, neat and fine. In her lifetime she'd gone to the temple on the first and fifteenth of every month to copy scriptures and pray for me.

Before she died, she'd told me that if the lamp ever went wrong, I should come here for the scriptures, and hope that sincerity might move heaven.

I pressed the scriptures to my chest.

I stood, brushed the dirt off my hands, climbed over the low back wall, and walked out of the alley.

I took a cab to the train station.

At eleven I reached the station.

The temporary ID papers came through too.

While I was in line at security, my phone buzzed.

It was a photo from Michael.

In the picture, Flora lay on her side in my bed, a smile at her lips, sleeping peacefully.

The eternal lamp sat right there on the nightstand, its ghostly green light washing over the side of her face.

His caption read: "All settled. The lamp's steady, Flora's sleeping well. Thank you for giving her this."

I pinched the photo bigger with two fingers.

Behind Flora was the floor-to-ceiling window.

In the glass, the reflection wasn't the room's furnishings. It was faces, packed together.

Pale faces, features blurred, eyes sunk deep in their sockets, one pressed against the next, crowding up against the glass.

The agent at the security checkpoint called out, "Next."

I put my phone away, picked up my bag, and stepped forward.

"Welcome aboard. Follow the yellow line on the floor to find your car number."

The attendant pointed the way, and I found my seat and sat down.

Eleven-fifty. The chime sounded as the doors sealed.

The train pulled slowly away.

I held the scriptures Grandma had copied out for me tight against my chest. The pages were warm, like her hands, and the fear drained out of me.

Outside the window the moon hung murky and red at the edge of the city skyline, sliding inch by inch behind the train.

Leaning back against my seat, I felt something strange begin. The yin chill that had pressed into my bones for twenty-six years seemed to be pulling loose, thread by thread, drawn out of my body.

The direction was the city behind me.

I focused, and I could almost feel it. It was the lamp in the house. The lamp was looking for me.

And when it couldn't find me, it would pour all the death and yin that had been meant for me into the person whose name was carved on its base.

As the train passed through the first tunnel, my phone screen lit up.

My phone was linked to the security camera in the living room back home, and a faint creaking sound came through the feed.

The Henson living room. Eleven fifty-six.

My mother patted my father on the shoulder. "Go check Laura's scriptures. See if she's finished copying them."

Then she turned and smiled at my brother. "Mikey, look. I told you this lamp works. Back when Laura was nine, the hospital told us to start planning her funeral. It was her grandmother who knelt and begged for this lamp, three bows and nine kowtows, and that's what saved her life."

My brother, Michael, stood by the balcony door with a glass of water, smiling too.

"Good thing Laura finally knew her place this time. No scene."

As he said it, a layer of white frost crept without a sound across the lower right corner of the living room's floor-to-ceiling window.

The ice crystals started from the sealant along the frame and spread across the glass fast enough to watch.

None of them noticed.

Out in the yard, the three chained dogs lifted their heads at the same moment.

Not barking. A whine forced up from deep in the throat, short and thin, like a pup with its tail crushed underfoot.

My mother frowned.

"What's gotten into these dogs, howling like that in the middle of the night?"

Before she finished, all three fell silent at once.

Limbs stiff, they toppled sideways and hit the ground, eyes rolled back, bellies no longer rising.

Michael set down his glass and walked to the window. He touched the glass and yanked his hand back.

"This window... is it frozen over?"

My mother leaned in, and her breath fogged white the moment it left her lips.

The seventh lunar month, thirty-four degrees outside, and the living room was dropping below freezing.

The clock in the living room struck the hour. Midnight.

Midnight had come.

A scream too shrill to be human tore out of the master bedroom on the second floor!

The next second, a sharp crack, and the glass dome of the life-lamp they had kept for seventeen years shattered!

"Flora!"