The only place I’d ever felt normal was in the back office of my family’s restaurant crammed in beside my grandmother as she prepared the day’s messages. By the time I was eight years old I could expertly slide them into fortune cookies. I loved those afternoons after school where I’d study her neat script as she put pen to slips of paper. She’d whispered stories all of my life about how our family had magic in our blood and it was our honor and our duty to use it to help people. I’d clung to those stories as a little girl, because it gave me hope that I would one day amount to more than being the disappointment I saw in my father’s eyes every day.
I’d fleetingly hoped when I turned thirteen that something would happen. That some power would manifest, but nothing had happened. I’d managed to hide my heartbreak from everyone and thrown myself into school, hoping excelling in academics would make up for my lack of magic. By the time I hit my freshman year of college, that belief in magic had died.
Summer had finally arrived, and I was on my way back home to see my grandmother. Our weekly phone calls weren’t enough. I might have outgrown my belief in the family magic, but that didn’t mean I didn’t treasure our time together. The scents of the city—car exhaust, smoke from the grates above the subway, and street food sizzling on carts—welcomed me home as I walked the three blocks from the nearest subway station to the restaurant. I could see the red awning with the name ‘Zhou’s’ emblazoned in gold script fluttering in the breeze. It brought a smile to my lips and a sense of peace washed over me. I was home. My feet carried me along the familiar path, bypassing the front of the establishment and ducking down the side street to the back of the building and the employee entrance.
The moment my fingers touched the cool metal of the door handle, my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t explain why, but something felt off. Normally, the ambiance of the restaurant filtered out even when the doors were closed. But it was eerily silent as I pulled the door outward.
“Hello?” I called, stepping into the short hall that led to the kitchen and the back office.
No response.
My stomach did a somersault as I realized none of the staff were there. I had been gone for months, but surely, they hadn’t changed the hours on me. There should have been a half dozen chefs and prep cooks flitting around the industrial-sized kitchen. Yet every stove top and oven sat cold and unused. I could see half-prepared food sitting on the counters. People had been here not long ago. There was no way in hell my father would let the staff leave their stations in such disarray. What’s going on?
“Nai-Nai, are you here?” My voice cracked on the last word, icy tendrils of unease crept down my back and coiled in my belly.
Above me, the lights blinked out and back on again, and it stopped me in my tracks. “Get a hold of yourself, Mae Lin,” I chided. Power flickered all the time. Still, the abandoned kitchen had to mean something.
Forcing myself onward, I stepped into the back office. I could see my grandmother’s organizational skills at play. She had neat little rows of fortunes ready to be slipped inside cookies for the day’s patrons. Nothing in the room suggested she’d left in a hurry.
The lighting sputtered overhead again, plunging the office into temporary darkness. As I waited for the power grid to reset itself, I caught the scent of something sharp and cloying, like the air after an electrical storm. The dining room was the only place left to check.
Part of me didn’t want to leave the safety of the office. Though if something was going on, I owed it to my family to do what I could to protect the restaurant. Swallowing the lump in my throat I reached out a hand, groping in the darkness until I made contact with the wall. Once I was in the space between the office and the kitchen, I pressed my body against the wall, inching forward step by step until I reached the deep mauve curtain separating the dining room from the kitchen.
“I told you not to come here,” Nai-Nai’s voice was sharp. In my nineteen years of life, I’d never heard her raise her voice with anyone.
“And you know I will do as I please,” a deep male voice responded.
“You have no reason to be here. We have nothing to discuss,” Nai-Nai responded. I heard fabric rustle and I peered through the curtain in spite of myself. I noticed as she gathered her skirt and turned away from whoever this strange man was.
“You think I came here to discuss anything?” The man’s voice slid into a sneer on the second to last word. “I came for what I’m owed.”
“I owe you nothing,” she answered.
Floorboards groaned beneath someone’s shifting weight and I heard my grandmother gasp. Breath caught in my throat, as if I, too, shared the pain I saw etched in her features. I knew she needed help, but I was powerless to intervene. My body had betrayed me and my fingers let the curtain flutter back into place. A different scent replaced the cloying ozone in my nose. Something spicy, but not anything my brain could identify in that moment. The sliver of floor visible beneath the curtain flashed bright and red. A flicker of something golden followed, only weaker.
The sound of weight hitting the floor spurred me forward and I burst through the curtain to find my grandmother laying on the floor, clutching at her chest. I could see a dribble of blood marring the corner of her mouth. A man I’d never seen before hovered over her and I could swear his entire aura glowed red. I tried to commit his image to memory. He had dark features and a slender build. If he’d been ten years younger, he might have been attractive.
I fell to my knees beside my grandmother, reaching for her hand. “Nai-Nai, I’m here,” I said, leaning in close so she could see and hear me.
“You were not supposed to be here,” she whispered, her voice suddenly hoarse.
“Shh, just rest. I’m going to call an ambulance,” I soothed. I had no idea what this man had done to her, but I knew she needed help.
I reached for my phone and dialed 9-1-1. As the line rang, I looked up, intent on telling the man to not move. Except he was gone. I hadn’t heard the bell above the front door ring to announce his exit.
“Where did he go?” I blurted as the line clicked over to an emergency operator.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“I need help. My grandmother, she’s been attacked. I need an ambulance.”
I rattled off the address as I crouched beside my grandmother. Trying to pull her head into my lap before realizing I had no idea what had happened and I could be making any injuries worse.
“Stay on the line until paramedics arrive. They are five minutes out,” the dispatcher said.
“Okay,” I answered, almost on autopilot.
I set the phone down and turned my attention to the woman beside me. “Who was that man? What did he want?”
What did he do to you?
From her position on the floor, she shook her head and let out a cough. Blood dripped further down her cheek and I reached to wipe it away on instinct. “I am sorry, Mae Lin. I thought I could keep all of this away from you.”
“What are you talking about?” My voice cracked at the end without meaning to.
“You are so very important. More than you know. I wish I had time to explain,” she rasped, reaching her hands up to clasp mine.
“You’re not making sense, Nai-Nai. You’ll have plenty of time to tell me whatever it is. The ambulance is almost here.”
“You must learn to harness what is within you. You must learn to use our family’s gift. It is the only way …” she trailed off.
It had to be a trick of light, because I could swear her entire body glowed amber. Just like the man had cast a hazy red aura before he vanished. Her hands grew warm in mine and all at once, my body thrummed with energy. It was as if someone had dosed me with a caffeine drip, supercharging my senses. The feeling faded within seconds along with the glow.
It's just adrenaline.
In the distance, sirens wailed. She just had to hold on a little longer. Then they could get her to the hospital, and she would be fine. Brakes screeched outside the front of the restaurant. I heard the slam of doors and voices calling out.
“In here,” I yelled just as my grandmother’s breath rattled ominously in her chest.
The front door opened, the tiny bell announcing the paramedics arrival. They rushed in, ushering me out of the way as they examined her. A man with greying temples looked at me.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. There was a man. I think he hurt her. I didn’t see …” Tears burned the backs of my eyes as I watched them work.
Footsteps pounded on the pavement and my father appeared in the open doorway, his slender blue tie whipping in the wind. Even when he didn’t have to, he wore a suit and tie. No one expected him to dress up just to prove he was an entrepreneur. But today, in this moment, that constant was comforting.
“What happened?” he demanded.
I couldn’t answer. I just rushed over, throwing my arms around him. We stood there as the medics worked on my grandmother, hooking her up to a portable heart monitor. The high-pitched drone of a flatline buzzed like an angry insect in my ears.
She was gone.
* * *
The funeral had been well-attended a week after my grandmother’s death. The police had even come to take a statement about what I’d witnessed. I knew there was nothing they could do. We didn’t have cameras in the restaurant that could have shown what had happened. Nearly two months had passed without any viable leads. The police weren’t going to get justice for her. I had no idea how I was going to manage it, but I vowed to track down the man who’d taken her from us.
“We need to increase back to full dinner service, don’t you think?” my father said, pulling me from the darkness of my thoughts. He sat in the chair behind the desk in the restaurant’s back office. He’d been working late here every night for weeks, even though we were partially closed as a sign of mourning.
“Whatever you think is right, bàbā,” I answered. It mattered little to me. I’d be going back to college in a week and he’d never cared about my opinion before now.
“Mae Lin, I know you are grieving. But now that your grandmother is gone, I need you to step up and help.”
I glared at him. “You’re the one who’s run this business for the last twenty years. I have finished two semesters of college. And it’s not like you’ve ever cared about my opinion before,” I snapped.
On instinct, I bowed my head and averted my gaze. A daughter wasn’t supposed to argue with or contradict her parents. It was dishonorable. But with the way he’d gone about things like business as usual—with the restaurant being more important than the fact his own mother was dead—infuriated me.
I expected him to yell back at me; to tell me I had no right to speak to him in such a manner. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d scolded me for being disobedient. Instead, he set his pen and notepad down then pushed the chair away from the desk. He rose to his full height and pulled me into a hug. It was such an uncommon gesture, it caught me off guard and I tensed against the embrace.
“I miss her, too, you know. I am just trying to make her proud and do what I think she would want to keep this place alive in her memory.”
My shoulders sagged. “I understand. I’m sorry. I’m just angry. The police did nothing, and I feel like it’s all my fault. If I’d seen more or done something, maybe she’d still be alive.”
“You cannot blame yourself or change the past. I do not know the man you saw, but from what you described, we are lucky he didn’t hurt you. I am grateful that I didn’t lose you, too.”
I glanced around the office. There was more to running this place than I’d realized growing up. It had all looked so simple from a child’s perspective. “Maybe I should skip fall semester. So, I can help out around here. I’m sure I can convince the school to defer my enrollment until spring.”
“No. I will manage here. You need to go to school. Getting your degree is what she would have wanted.”
Somehow, I doubted that was true. She’d wanted me to be happy, yes. Only I think she’d known I had gone into my chosen field of study out of a sense of family obligation. “We should open up for full service. Take out, delivery, all of it,” I said, hoping agreeing with his plan would keep him in good spirits.
He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Good. I need to go do inventory.”
I watched him disappear toward the kitchen and sunk into the vacated chair. If I closed my eyes and sat still, I could almost feel my grandmother’s presence around me. It felt … restless.
I’m going to find you peace, Nai-Nai.
Out of the corner of my eye, something flashed golden by my left hand. The light shimmered, settling on the handle of the drawer. I blinked, expecting the light to die down. Though it only intensified, seeming to pull my hand toward it. I eased it open and stared at the contents—some spare pens and slips of paper for the fortune cookies. If this was my grandmother trying to nudge me in a direction, I was going to need more.
“What am I looking for?” I whispered to the stillness around me.
My left hand twitched of its own accord, disturbing the pens until the corner of a slim envelope appeared. I retrieved it to find my name on it in my grandmother’s neat handwriting on the front. I flipped it over and tried to slide my finger beneath the flap to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I rooted around in the drawer for a letter opener, but it was as if the envelope were made of metal itself. The tip of the opener dented.
What is going on?
Fresh tears pricked at my eyes as I stared at my name in her handwriting. I was meant to find this message, yet I couldn’t open it. How did that help anything?
“I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do now.”
“I think I may be able to help in that regard,” an accented male voice said from the doorway.
