You Must Fall In Love

Special Preview

Christine Lam Siew-Fong wasn't the most sensitive person in the world, but even she knew that things had changed for good.

"You're not going outside?" asked Jen. "It's springtime. Get out there. Enjoy the sun. The fresh air. The lack of snow."

A black-bibbed sparrow hopped along the balcony railing, as if to back up the truth of Jen's statement. Then he flew away.

They were both perched on the bridal bed in Christine's room. Jen Travers' feet hung over the edge, kicking, like they always did when she couldn't twirl a pen or turn a page. Christine had her legs crossed and her hands under her thighs, folded in creases of bright red. It was wedding-red, the same auspicious red of the bridal veil and the double happiness and the new-year firecrackers and everything she knew about China all rolled into one.

"Stop kicking," said Christine.

She was sure the bed was deeply symbolic in multiple ways, but over the past three months, Christine had found more pressing things to worry about than the color of her sheets.

For instance, she had agreed to marry one of the three guys on the top floor, none of whom she knew reasonably well.

Well, only one of whom.

But he didn't count.

"No," said Jen. "I'm your best friend, so I get best-friend leg-shaking rights."

And she was also on track to become a goddess, even though she still wasn't sure what the position actually entailed.

"Jen, come on. There's no such thing as best-friend leg-shaking rights."

And there were two very dangerous people, possibly three or more very dangerous people, who were perfectly ready to kill all her friends just to get their hands on her because of the goddess thing.

"C, I respect all opinions, but I have to tell you that yours seems awfully uninformed. The shivering of the leg is a time-honored right. A sign of great familiarity. A tradition with remarkable provenance."

Also, Mum wasn't talking to her at all, not since the day at the hospital when she'd hung up and left Christine in tears. The money still came in, but Christine was starting to get sick of the money. She'd much rather work than take an allowance from someone who treated her like a lifelong charity case.

Even though she'd never worked, but still. How hard could it be?

"You know what I think about traditions, Jen."

"That they're mostly a waste of time?"

"Yeah, but also that they get really, really annoying when people absolutely insist on doing them."

Jen spun around to point her feet at the desk. Her legs twisted together and, mercifully, stopped shaking.

"That's not what I see there."

Christine craned over, wondering if Jen had finally picked up on the fact that she had stolen one of her paperweights, the one that looked like a tiny hourglass. She had even taken care to hide it behind the three reindeer plushies she had gotten herself for Christmas.

"Jen, that's my desk. I don't see anything out of the ordinary."

"The amulets, silly. There's a lot more of them. I mean, I'm not complaining, it's really quite admirable, but still. What was that about not caring about tradition?"

The Sly Jen Grin was back on her face, the one that only showed up in rare situations and still made Christine feel like Jen had turned into an alien.

"I... I haven't even been spending that much time on them. Come on."

Not true. She could still remember the wrong stroke she had made this morning, and while she still didn't have the seals down by memory, she was becoming more and more annoyed by their encroachment on her mind. When she looked at the beat-up sign outside the Lodge, with its fading, cheerfully misleading Chinese characters, her brain superimposed brushstrokes over it, and when she closed her eyes each night, she swore she was transmogrifying into the tip of a Sharpie.

"Well, I guess that's true," shrugged Jen.

"Hey!" glared Christine.

Jen giggled.

"Relax, relax. Man, if I was the trickster type, I'd be all over you. Although I am curious — what brought on the change of heart?"

Christine pouted. She didn't like this new and improved, self-aware Jen. At this rate Christine wouldn't have a single thing to claim over her. She needed Jen's intelligence to be highly specific for the sake of all humanity.

"There wasn't any change of heart," she said.

"Sure."

This wasn't true, either. She had made a decision to save Rob, sworn to Ming to become the Hart Princess, because she didn't want him to die. And Ming had told her, in the very first dream-visit, that her heart had to bleed before she would begin to feel.

So either she had already had the change of heart, or a bigger one was coming. She didn't like the idea of a bigger one at all.

"Whenever I see the amulet paper, I think about what happened with... with Nimrod at the airport. And how I spent weeks writing those spells, and how in the end they didn't even matter. I couldn't even get them out of my pocket."

Jen nodded carefully, like she might pull the bedposts down if she did it wrong. It didn't feel right to bring it up, even after all this time — Christine was sure Jen had nightmares about that day, too. Sometimes she woke up in a cold sweat, feeling as if her hands were wet with blood and hearing the Hunter's tittering laughter in her ears. Loud noises in the shower still made her jump, and once she had screamed at the sound of a taxi horn. It was part of the reason she didn't really want to go outside anymore.

But Jen had asked, and she wouldn't have asked if she didn't want an honest answer.

"Of course it all came right in the end. With the Princess Power. But I don't know if I can ever rely on that to save me again. I mean, what if Nimrod had shot me instead of Rob? So I thought about what else I could have done, and then I remembered that one of my amulets could ward physical force. Maybe if I had used that, then I could have stopped Rob from getting hurt."

"I tried my spells too," said Jen. "There wasn't anything we could have done in that situation. If you hadn't been there, we would all have died."

"Maybe, but if I wasn't there, then Nimrod would have come after me, and you guys wouldn't have been anywhere near the prayer room. Four is more than one, you know."

"That's not how it works, C," said Jen. "It's never how it works."

Jen sounded so hurt that Christine felt even worse. She rolled over and patted her best friend on both shoulders, doing her best to impersonate a chunky Thai masseuse.

"Sorry. That's not what I meant. I'll shut up now, okay?"

"No, don't mind me," said Jen. "It's good that you weren't thinking of yourself, but you have to understand that we're all thinking of you. You're that important."

Christine laughed. There was a touch of bitterness in that laugh, despite herself.

"Why, because of what I'll become?"

Jen turned around and looked at her.

"Not to me," she said.

Christine sniffed and started patting extra-hard.