Inked

say a word, though. He turned and ran down the street. I let him go, and then became aware of others watching me, both Chinese and European. Curious stares. Some calculating. I was a new face, and fresh meat.
    I melted back into the dark lane we had emerged from. It was still and empty, unlike the road; and I needed a moment. I needed more than a moment.
    “Zee.” I breathed, sliding down the wall into a crouch. I tugged at my collar, and then stripped off my leather gloves. Armor glinted along my fingers and the wrist cuff had grown in size, embedded now in my lower forearm with quicksilver tendrils. I would be lost to this metal one day. If I lived that long.
    Small clawed hands touched my knees, long fingers edged in flesh sharp and hard as obsidian. Zee whispered, “Maxine.”
    “Playing games with my life,” I murmured, listening to bells clang, and distant shouts in Chinese. I heard the echoing report of guns, very distant; synchronized single-shot blasts that made me imagine an execution. I smelled shit, and realized it was coming from my hair.
    “You want truth,” Zee rasped. “Give you truth.”
    I gritted my teeth. “I suppose we’re in Shanghai. When?”
    “Four-and-four.” He glanced over his shoulder as Raw and Aaz melted from the shadows, chattering at him in their native tongue—which I did not, and never would, understand. Zee stiffened, and then relaxed. I tapped his hand.
    “We know,” he said quietly, still watching his brothers. “We know we are here.”
    We. The other Zee and his brothers—who were in their right place, and right time. I was probably creating some kind of planet-wrecking paradox by having them in the same place, together, but hell if I knew what to do about it. The boys had brought me here. I had to assume they knew what they were doing in between the teddy bear decapitations and soft porn.
    “I need clothes,” I said. “I stand out too much.”
    Raw disappeared into the shadows, and emerged less than a minute later with a bundle of cotton that, when shook out, appeared to be a dark brown dress, loose and flowing. Simple cut, with long sleeves, mother of pearl buttons up the front, and a round collar. The hem came down to just below my knees. He also gave me a new matching pair of lambskin gloves.
    I moved away from the road into a nearby doorway, dressing quickly. I tossed my jeans and turtleneck to Aaz for disposal, and then reluctantly put aside my cowboy boots for a pair of brown shoes that had a hard, flat, sensible heel. Raw slid my other shoes into a cloth satchel the color of mushy peas. Inside, I glimpsed knives, and tins of food.
    I felt like a stranger to myself. I stood for a moment, sweating and weary, and tilted my face to the sky. No stars. Just clouds, bruised with the faint reflected light of the city.
    China, I thought. I was in Shanghai. And it was World War Two.

    I found my grandmother less than thirty minutes later, flirting with a drunk Nazi.
    I had been floating until that moment, drifting in a daze through the soup of the hot night and suffering a dreamlike schizophrenia; lost in the shadowed kiss of a European-flavored city, only to be torn sideways into Asian byways: meandering lanes and alleys no wider than the span of my shoulders. I passed elderly Chinese women perched on low wooden stools, playing mahjong while bickering at naked, shrieking children who played in the stifling darkness among piles of trash that had been swept into rotten heaps wet with water trickling down the narrow gutters.
    Most ignored my presence, but some of the children chased me with their hands outstretched, begging for money, trying to sink their small hands into my bag. Open sores covered their arms and legs. I could count their ribs. I gave them the tins of food.
    Zee led me; in snatches, glimpses. Dek and Mal were silent in my hair. I did not see Raw and Aaz, but knew they were close. I was comforted by that, but it was a painful, uneasy consolation. I was lost in time. What I did here would ripple into the future. It was not my first journey into the past, but I had never been set loose, faced with the potential cost of being that butterfly flapping her wings—and causing a thunderstorm on the other side of the world.
    Ernie’s young face filled my mind. Save him, whispered a small voice, but I could no longer blame the letter on the back of that photo for such urgency. You have to make sure he doesn’t die in your arms. Not murdered. Not