She's Alive, Isn't She?

Mo Fan and Lingling split up to cover more ground. Lingling headed to the police station to request the girl's death records and question the officers and doctors who had handled the case.

Mo Fan, meanwhile, went straight to the girl's home — he wanted to see how her family was dealing with it.

The incident had only been two months ago. He walked down an old street until he found a building that sat flush against a row of street-facing shops. To reach the front door, you had to squeeze through a narrow lane that wound its way around to the entrance.

The place was just two stories. The street-facing side housed a few small eateries and boutiques — the clothing shops had a warm, carefully put-together quality to them. The second floor was thick with potted flowers, ivy trailing along the walls and adding a touch of color to the aging structure. It seemed like a comfortable place to live.

Behind the building was a small courtyard with a grape trellis, the trailing vines swaying gently in the breeze.

It should have been an ideal little corner of the city for a quiet life — except that the courtyard and the second floor were still cluttered with remnants of a funeral. Items from the mourning rites, left exactly where they'd been placed, two months on and untouched. The sight transformed the whole space into something bleak.

"Excuse me — is this Liu Xian's home?" Mo Fan called out.

"Yes. Hello — and you are...?" A somewhat delicate-looking girl stepped out, her face carrying a polite smile, though a shadow of melancholy lingered in her eyes.

"I — you — *you*—!" The moment Mo Fan got a clear look at her, his mind went completely blank. He stood there pointing at her for a long moment, unable to get a single word out.

The girl stared at him in bafflement.

Mo Fan took a few steps back. The reason the color had drained from his face was simple: the girl standing in front of him was the very same person Huo Tuo had described as *dead*.

He had looked at photos before coming here. He *recognized her face*.

There was a death certificate. She had reportedly been cremated. And yet here she was, standing right in front of him, unmistakably alive.

*Don't tell me the rumors are true — that anyone drained dry by a vampire rises again on the first full moon after death and joins their ranks?!*

Her skin was pale, bloodless — but her lips were a vivid, dewy pink. And despite the fragile, vulnerable air about her that made you want to protect her, that could be the most convincing disguise imaginable. A female vampire would naturally be most drawn to someone of his own staggeringly supreme good looks.

"I'm Liu Xian's younger sister. Liu Ru. We're twins." The girl seemed to finally read the situation and spoke up quickly.

"Ah..." Mo Fan's eye twitched.

*Good God. My imagination is completely out of control. I seriously need to stop bingeing those American dramas.*

"Twins. Right. You nearly gave me a heart attack." He let out a long, slow breath.

The girl couldn't help laughing at his mortified expression. "You must be one of my sister's friends?"

"Yeah, yeah. I heard about what happened..." Mo Fan nodded.

He hadn't mentioned being a Hunter-mage. Most ordinary people — Mages included — had no idea that creatures beyond human existed within the city's borders. There was no reason to force that fear onto people who didn't need to carry it. Whenever their investigations brought them into contact with civilians, Mo Fan and Lingling always maintained a cover identity.

"It's a bit of a mess inside. Shall we go to the café next door?" Liu Ru didn't invite him in. She was home alone and didn't feel comfortable letting a stranger through the door.

Mo Fan nodded. He could tell Liu Ru was a sharp girl. He found himself wondering what her twin sister Liu Xian had been like — gone in the prime of her life.

At the small café next door, Mo Fan ordered a fruit juice for Liu Ru and grabbed something to eat for himself. In his rush to transform into the great detective, he'd skipped lunch entirely.

"I noticed the funeral things are still piled up at your place," he said. "Two months on — how come you haven't cleared any of it?"

"There's no one else in the family. My relatives helped with the funeral and then left. I spent this past month traveling, trying to clear my head — I only got back yesterday. Haven't had a chance to deal with any of it yet." A trace of sadness played at the corner of Liu Ru's mouth, her voice soft.

"Is it just the two of you? Your sister and you?"

"Yes. Our parents left us when we were very young. My sister dropped out of school early to find work, and everything she earned went toward my tuition..." Liu Ru's voice had begun to tremble faintly.

Mo Fan watched her. A few short sentences, and he could already picture it — two sisters with no one in the world but each other. Their bond must have run incredibly deep.

"Let me help you sort through everything," he offered. "You can't manage all of that alone."

Liu Ru shook her head, clearly not wanting to impose.

She glanced at Mo Fan. "I don't think I've seen you before. Were you a colleague of my sister's?"

Mo Fan had his cover story ready. "Not exactly a colleague — her workplace was right next door to mine, so we ended up chatting fairly often."

"Oh — *you're* the one," Liu Ru said. "My sister mentioned you. She said you always looked out for her."

Mo Fan knew she was thinking of someone else entirely, but the description fit well enough. He noted that while Liu Ru still carried a weight of sadness, she seemed to have moved past the sharpest edge of her grief. Time to steer things toward the point.

"Your sister — she died of heart disease, right?"

"That's what the doctors said."

"I heard from someone that she was seen being bitten by something before she died," Mo Fan said, "and that she was severely anemic when they brought her in."

"My sister's health was never great. She had anemia all the time — that wouldn't be anything unusual for her."

"I happened to run into the old man who took her to the hospital." Mo Fan leaned in slightly. "He kept insisting he'd seen *something*. And honestly, I've been wondering about it myself. She always seemed fine, and then suddenly — heart disease. In the few days before she passed, I noticed she seemed on edge. When I asked her about it, she told me she thought someone had been following her. Did she ever mention anything like that to you?"

Liu Ru pressed her lips together, searching her memory. After a moment, she looked at Mo Fan with those clear eyes of hers, her voice dropping. "She never mentioned a stalker to me. But you're right that she was acting unusually guarded those days. About two months ago, when the weather was still warm, I came home from school and went to open a window. My sister panicked and shut it immediately."

"So something really did happen during those few days." Mo Fan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

In the interest of looking more the part of the great detective, he had even gone out and purchased the glasses as a prop.