Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (12 page)

"You can drop us off anywhere here."

The demon stepped out onto packed, peaty earth. His boots were soled with iron, but he could still feel the warmth of the world. He turned to Chen. "A protected place?"

Chen nodded. "Lao's. He takes precautions."

They were standing in front of a low house; its windows shuttered.
Bagua
mirrors hung from the eaves, deflecting ill magic and dark
ch'i
. Turning, the demon saw that a hazy azure strip of sea was visible, far away down the hillside. The house faced it; any negativity would be directed down the slope to be swallowed by the cleansing immensity of the South China Sea. Lao's house lay on the edge of the city; behind, Zhu Irzh could see the steep slope of the back territories, shadowy with trees. The hill seemed suddenly to darken. Light struck the distant surface of the water and Zhu Irzh stepped back with the force of being observed. Something was watching from the hillside, something old and implacable and indifferent to humanity's concerns, and even to those of Hell. He thought of dragon energy, coiling under the land. It made him shiver. The door of the house was opening.

"Well, well," said a very chilly voice. "You've outdone yourself this time, Wei Chen."

Five minutes later, Chen and the demon were sitting in Lao's parlor. The exorcist shuffled about, complaining of his bad back and the weather, and made tea.

"My wife's gone shopping, otherwise she'd do it. What do you want?" he asked the demon, summarily. "Green? Black?"

"Do you have any gunpowder oolong?"

"Somewhere," Lao said. He gave Zhu Irzh a look of deep distrust and pottered off in the direction of the kitchen. "Now," he said, when he returned. "You've lost a ghost, is that right?"

"Yes. Pearl Tang."

"The daughter of the woman I saw the other night? That's tricky. Do you know where the mother is now?"

"Her body's still in the departmental morgue. Apparently her spirit's waiting for an exit visa."

"Where's she bound for? Heaven or Hell?"

"I don't know yet."

"Will they let you into the Night Harbor to talk to her?"

"I've applied for temporary entry. I want to speak to Mrs Tang before she leaves the shores of Earth."

"Ask her to stick around," the exorcist said, with a stony glance in the direction of Zhu Irzh. "She can take her daughter with her. When we find her."

"Tell me," the demon said placatingly, in an effort to establish some rapport with this suspicious character, "how easy do you think it will be to find the ghost of the girl?"

"About as easy as finding a needle in a bloody haystack. You must know what this city's like. If we were in Beijing or Shanghai—somewhere ancient, where people understood about the maintenance of proper boundaries between this world and others, it wouldn't be so bad. But the planners had to go and throw this city up any old how, and of course they didn't consult the
feng shui
practitioners. It sometimes seems to me that any
gwei li jin
who pleases can just wander up from Hell and start making a nuisance of itself." He scowled at Zhu Irzh.

"Well, sorry," the demon said. "I know it must be difficult. But not impossible, surely? This ghost is a new ghost; it does not know how to protect itself, it does not know where to hide."

"That does make our task a little easier," the exorcist admitted, grudgingly. "Ghosts are drawn to temples and to séances, for example. We can make a start by ringing round the temples and seeing if any strays have come in overnight."

"You mentioned séances. Can't we simply summon her up?"

"We can try. I imagine that's what her dad will be doing right now."

"Not if I can help it," Chen said. "I phoned from the temple. Sergeant Ma's gone round with a long list of spurious enquiries, which should keep both of them busy."

"Do you have any personal items that she might have used?"

"Indeed," Zhu Irzh said, anxious to help. "We have this."

From the pocket of his coat, Chen took the wisp of scarf that the ghost had left behind at the temple. Now, fading fast in the morning light, it was no more than a shadow across his fingers. Lao sniffed disparagingly.

"I suppose it will have to do."

"If it doesn't, will you help us track her down?"

"With my back in the state it is? You must be joking. I can't walk to the bottom of the garden at the moment without seizing up, let alone traipse all over the city looking for stray spirits."

"I understand that," Chen said. "But I don't really have the nose for ghosts, and neither, it seems, does Zhu Irzh. We'll try a séance."

"We?" Lao asked, with a frosty glance at Zhu Irzh.

"You and I, then."

"Believe me," Zhu Irzh said hastily, "I have great experience with this kind of thing. You stand a far better chance of a successful séance with my help."

"That is as may be," Lao remarked. "However, I also stand a far better chance of losing my soul. I've no intention of undergoing supernatural procedures in your presence."

Zhu Irzh shrugged. "Fair enough." If Lao didn't trust him, he thought, mildly and irrationally hurt, then Lao would just have to do without his assistance. Leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes and felt himself become as still as stone.

After Chen's phone call informing her that he would not be back that night, Inari went back into the bedroom of the houseboat and sat flatly down on the bed. Such dependency on her husband was both foolish and unfair, but it was a hard habit to break. She knew very well that because he had saved her once, it did not mean that he could do so again. She thought back to the sinister figure she had seen on the dock, and to the anxious days of her betrothal in Hell.

She had been affianced to Dao Yi for seventy years, ever since they were children. Although she had never met her fiancé, in keeping with polite custom, she had grown up in the expectation of the marriage, like any typical scion of the underworld bourgeoisie. Her father was wealthy; her mother was beautiful, with only the vestiges of old scandal hanging about her head to sour the marriage. Inari had never known what this scandal was, only that her parents never spoke about it. She learned of it from overhearing fragments of sentences in half-whispers from older cousins:

"It's lucky that Dao Yi doesn't know. . .if he did, he'd never take her. . ."

"Explains a lot about her, don't you think? Not really quite the thing. . ."

"Always been a bit of a peculiar family . . ."

So from an early age, Inari had grown up with the ominous expectation that some day, something terrible would happen: she and her family would be disgraced, her father summarily dispatched from his solid job in the Ministry of Wealth and sent with his children scurrying at his heels to some lower echelon of Hell. Inari had heard stories about such places: the worlds of ice, the iron lands where souls do not possess bodies but run shrieking from torment to torment. But scandal did not break, and her family was not sent into exile, and at last the day came when Inari was presented to the fiancé to whom she had been engaged for so long.

And it had been the worst moment of her life. From the days of her childhood she had been hearing stories about Dao Yi: his subtlety; his intelligence; the cruelty which Inari, as demonkind, had been brought up to admire and yet somehow never could. Dao Yi would be different, she told herself, lying to herself with such conviction as only the young can muster; his cruelty was just a front, hiding a heart as gentle as her own. He had a good job, too: he was a well-respected official in the Ministry of Epidemics. Inari had been in love with this illusion for years; she longed to meet him. And when at last that meeting came, she learned what no one had bothered to mention: that her fiancé was a walking hive of disease, his flesh liquid with gangrene and mottled with hemorrhage. She still remembered that moment of revelation: like black lightning through her veins. After a single look, Inari had gathered the skirts of her robe and fled from the room.

Her revulsion was, moreover, all her own fault. Her family was astounded that she found her fiancé so repulsive. Where could she have inherited such fastidiousness from? they asked with mocking irony, darting cold, reptilian glances towards Inari's mother, who sat with her head bowed in the corner of the room. Any demon worthy of a place in Hell would surely have been thrilled rather than revolted. Inari's response was almost as weak and spineless as a lesser being's would have been. . .a human, perhaps. And at this Inari's mother let fall a single tear, that lay in her lap like a bright coral coal, and Inari had learned the truth. Her mother's father had not been a demon at all, but a human. A courtier in the house of the Han Emperor, who had one day seen a spirit walking along the shores of an ornamental lake, and been seduced.

"The family's blood is tainted," Inari's mother said, twitching her tail in anguished mortification. "Who knows what weaknesses we have inherited? Your father was good enough to ignore it, but of course we kept it as quiet as we could, for your sake. Dao Yi's mother would never have agreed to the marriage if she'd known."

"Pity she didn't," Inari had replied, weeping hot tears of her own.

Pity indeed. Dao had not taken his rejection lightly. He promptly sued for false engagement, citing Inari's human blood. The judge, an old family friend of the Yi's, was sympathetic. Inari's father lost much of his wealth paying off the promised dowry, her mother lost her looks, and it had only been with the help of her brother Tso that Inari had been able to run away, stumbling through the streets of Hell until she blundered through a door and found herself in the courtyard of the temple of Kuan Yin. And there, she had found someone waiting: Chen Wei.

Now, just over a year later, the sea slapped against the sides of the houseboat, and a single footstep echoed across the deck like a gunshot. Jolted from her humiliating reverie, Inari started, then rose swiftly from the bed and crept to the window, standing a little back, so that she could not easily be seen.

She could hear someone moving across the deck of the boat. The footsteps were stealthy; the person was walking slowly, and with an irregular rhythm. It was this last thing that unnerved Inari: those who knew demons walked thus, because an enemy may be recognized by the pattern of their tread. Inari held her breath. Behind her, under the stove, the teakettle bristled into animal life. There was a tiny movement at the door of the houseboat and Inari's skin prickled. Someone had placed a charm across the lintel. She glided backwards, toward the opposite window, but the stalker was coming around the deck. That left the stairs that led onto the roof. Silently, step by step, Inari climbed the steps to the hatch, and paused. The visitor was still below, moving around the deck, perhaps peering in. As quietly as she could, Inari lifted the hatch and slid out onto the roof. Edging to the side of the roof, she glanced down.

The man was standing with his back to her. She could see the long coat, and the iron-gray hair caught back in a thin ponytail. And then he turned and sprang, all in one quick, rushing movement. He landed beside her. The sword trailed fire as it came down; Inari heard it hiss through the air, but she was no longer there. She was running swiftly backwards, to the far end of the roof. The assassin leaped again, springing the length of the deck. Inari somersaulted backwards and landed lightly on the lower deck.

"Run," the badger whistled behind her. "Inari,
run
—" but she did not. This man was human. She could smell him, and that made her suddenly angry. She might have fled from Hell, she might have spent the past year licking her wounds on the houseboat and relying on Chen to provide for her, but despite her human blood she was still demon enough for instinct to take over under threat. The sword was a blur in the darkness but she twisted beneath it and struck out. Her long claws raked the assassin's shin. He gave a hiss of pain and sprang backwards, out of her reach. Inari rushed forwards in a scuttling crouch, avoiding the lashing blade. The assassin cut down; she leaped up and over the sword, kicking out wildly. The hard sole of her foot connected with the assassin's cheek, and he staggered against the railing. Inari rolled out of reach. She glimpsed a shadow of black and white fur, moving fast. The badger wove between the assassin's ankles and she saw the glint of teeth. The assassin cried out and flailed backwards against the rail. The badger's eyes were red sparks in the darkness, and Inari could trace the passage of both protector and assailant as they went over the rail and down. There was a distant, muffled splash.

Inari ran to the side of the deck and looked over. There was no sign of anything: the water had swallowed them both. Then, far across the harbor, she saw a narrow wake, heading for shore. It was too small for a human being; it swam too swiftly. Inari leaped down from the houseboat, landing on one of the pontoons. Hopping from deck to deck, she made her way to shore. It was only when she got there that she realized that she was bleeding from a shallow cut in her forearm. Her blood hissed and spat as it reached the salt sand. She was, Inari also realized, still wearing her dressing gown. The badger staggered onto the sand and shook itself like a dog. Inari ran across and dropped to her knees to take it in her arms.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

"No," the badger said, sneezing seawater. A paw clawed the side of its nose. "Must go. Must hide."

The urgency in its voice lit Inari's panic like a flame to kindling. She picked up the badger, which sagged in a heavy, wet bundle in her arms, and ran, sprinting down the harbor wall as the rain once more began. She did not dare look back.

Forty minutes after the séance had begun, a frustrated Chen was prepared to admit defeat. Lao had prepared the séance with his customary meticulousness. The protective circle had been drawn seven times with a stick of crimson incense, the guardians of the cardinal directions had been summoned, and the room was now thick with the bitter smoke of nineteen herbs, but the dim, dark circle that formed the channel between the worlds was notable principally for the absence of Pearl Tang. This was not to say that it was entirely silent. Other things kept trying to break through: the shadowy, contorted faces of spirits lost in the depths of the city, but Pearl was not among them. Chen glanced uneasily towards the door, wondering whether involving the demon might not have been worth the risk, after all. At least Zhu Irzh was fixed in one spot, always assuming he had not managed to break free of the subtle restraints that Lao had covertly imposed upon him immediately prior to the séance.