Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)

by Fonda Lee

“I need to stop by the bank,” she said. Maik said, “I’m supposed to take you straight home.” “It’s important. Hilo will understand.” Maik nodded and pulled the car away from the curb. She gave him directions to the bank, and when they arrived, he parked and got out of the car with her. He was loaded with weaponry—moon blade, talon knife, two handguns. “You can’t come into the bank like that,” she said. “I’ll wait outside the door.” The bank had just opened. Shae went in and requested access to her safe deposit box. The manager said, “Of course, Miss Kaul, come with me,” and showed Shae into the back room with its wall of small steel doors, then left her alone. Shae had not unlocked her safe in two and a half years. When she turned the key and opened the box, irrational fear gripped her for an instant. What if it was not there? But it was—her jade. All of it. Even before she reached inside, she felt the tug of its power setting off a tide in her blood like the moon’s gravity pulling on the ocean. She counted every stone as she put on the earrings, the bracelets up both her forearms, anklets, choker. Then she closed the safe deposit box door and sat down on the ground, her back to the wall, and hugged her knees to her chest. It had been so long since she’d worn jade that she felt the rush coming like the wave of a tsunami looming before it engulfs the beach. She did not tense or cringe from it. She raced alongside and let it sweep her up in its inexorable path. She rode it h...