Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (8 page)

The girl stood on tiptoe and he felt the sting of her teeth in his ear. His senses swam. His hands closed around the girl's waist: she was cool and hard and flexible. He thought with distaste of soft flesh and warm blood; eyes that saw so little. Some people might get off on ghosts and humans, but he wasn't one of them. The thought of sleeping with someone only recently mortal was less than appealing; at least he wouldn't actually have to go through with it and then, perhaps, he could return to this young lady. . . The visage of the First Lord of Banking swam, unwelcomed, before his mind's eye. Zhu Irzh reminded himself sternly that he had a job to do.

"Do you have such creatures?" he whispered. "Human ghosts?"

The girl gave a sniff of contempt. "Upstairs," she said, and taking him by the hand, led him up a narrow, turning staircase. Zhu Irzh could see his own face reflected in the metal panels along the walls: his features blurred to nothing more than a bright-eyed shadow. Something seemed to rustle and whisper, just beneath the edge of hearing. Zhu Irzh smiled. The girl stopped outside an iron door.

"In there." She tossed her elaborate, lacquered head. "Have fun."

Zhu Irzh stepped through the door and found himself in a narrow room lined with stifling velvet drapes. In the middle of the room stood a divan. The room was empty. Puzzled, Zhu Irzh looked about him. From the corner of his eye, he could see an unnatural shiver of the air. Zhu Irzh strolled across the room, as if heading for the divan, then turned and struck out. His taloned hand closed on a frail wrist. Something shrieked and squirmed.

"Hold still," Zhu Irzh said, irritated. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The ghost wailed aloud. Zhu Irzh could not see her very clearly; she seemed to merge with the shadows and the drifting dust.

"Stay
still
." Zhu Irzh hissed. The ghost became quiet and limp in his hands, and solidified a little further. Zhu Irzh saw a small, thin child, with wide eyes. He was not good at guessing the ages of humans; to him, they seemed to have such brief, dragonfly lives, but she was certainly very young.

"Listen, I'm not going to hurt you, I promise," Zhu Irzh repeated. "I just want to talk."

"Talk?" the ghost faltered. "What about?" The words were strangely accented; she spoke Gweilin falteringly, marking her as one who had only recently come from life. It always took a while before the language of the otherworld took root in what remained of their brains. Looking at her more closely, Zhu Irzh could tell that she retained a degree of her
hun
, her personality, but her
p'o
, her animating spirit, had entirely gone. He frowned. He wasn't entirely clear about human spiritual anatomy, but that didn't seem quite right.

"Come and sit down. There. That's right. Sit by me and we'll talk. Now, when you died, you were supposed to go to the Celestial Realms, is that right?" Mutely, the ghost nodded. "But something went wrong and you ended up here." Another nod. "Do you know why?"

The ghost burst into suddenly impassioned speech.

"No! No, I don't know why. I always tried to be good; I really did. I don't know why I'm in Hell. . ." Her face crumpled. Zhu Irzh almost felt sorry for her. This pale little thing ought to be skipping among the fragile peach blossoms of Heaven, not servicing demons in some netherworld seraglio. Some people certainly had weird tastes. Any sexual favors from this one would be subtle to the point of vapidity; one might as well not bother.

"Are you going to take me away?" The ghost faltered. Zhu Irzh looked at her. He could almost see straight through her. That uncomfortable, nagging sensation was back. He'd suffered from this on and off since childhood, like the prick of a pin inside his mind, and had even gone so far as to visit a remedy maker. What had the old man called it? Conscience, or some such—a human disease, anyway, and there was apparently nothing that could be done about it. It irritated Zhu Irzh. To make it go away, he said, "I'll see what I can do."

The ghost clutched at his arm like a moth. Zhu Irzh brushed her away.

"What's your name?"

"Xi Fu."

"Xi, have you ever met a young girl named Pearl Tang?"

"Yes," the ghost said, surprised. "We were in the same class at school; I used to go to her house. In fact—" her spectral brow furrowed with the effort of fading memory. "I think I might have
died
in her house. . .And I think she was here, but I don't know when. . ."

"Do you have any idea where she is now?"

"I thought she was still here. There were others, too, but they took them away. I saw them. Pearl wasn't one of them."

"They?"

"Some—some people. Like you, your kind. They came from the Ministry, someone said."

At this, Zhu Irzh frowned. The message that Pearl Tang had smuggled out to the First Lord of Banking had mentioned a Ministry. The ghost went on: "I overheard them in the hall. They came and looked at me, and made me open my mouth so they could inspect me, and then one of them said something like: I'd do for the next batch but they wanted the stronger ones first."

"And you say they came from the 'Ministry.' Did anyone say which one?"

"No. But they had badges on their coats."

"What sort of badges?"

"I don't know," the ghost said.

"What would any of the Ministries want with the ghosts of the virtuous?" Zhu Irzh wondered aloud. The girl stared at him vacantly.

"I don't know."

"No," said Zhu Irzh with a sigh. "No, I don't suppose you do. All right. Thank you."

"Are you going now?" the ghost asked, with unflattering eagerness.

"Yes." Zhu Irzh turned and took her fragile chin in his hand. "Now, stay still." He could see the memories of life chasing around in her translucent skull like tiny sparks. It would be doing her a favor, really, if they were no longer there to torment her. He reached through and snuffed them out between the claws of finger and thumb. The ghost's face grew utterly blank. "Goodbye," Zhu Irzh murmured, and left the room, leaving the ghost sitting numbly on the divan.

Once outside in the corridor, Zhu Irzh looked about him. There was no one in sight. He sidled up to a neighboring door and opened it, cautiously. The room was similar to the one he had just left. Quietly, Zhu Irzh closed the door and tried another. This one was occupied. He could see the elegant curve of a scaly shoulder and the long arch of spine, tapering down to a coiling tail. As he stared, the girl mumbled something in her sleep and rolled over to reveal a pretty, Pekinese face and small breasts. One hand plucked fretfully at the fallen cover with claws that were long and spiraled like a mandarin's nails. Zhu Irzh backed quietly out of the doorway and at the sudden movement the girl awoke. She uncurled sinuously up from the couch and gave him an inviting smile. Her small mouth parted and the tip of a dark tongue protruded for a moment. Then, before Zhu Irzh could move, the tongue uncoiled, flicked out and licked him wetly in the ear. Zhu Irzh leaped back and slammed the door shut. From inside the room, someone gave a silvery laugh. Exasperated, he hastened to the top of the stairs and stopped. In the hallway stood a short, squat woman, overbalanced by a towering coil of hair. Zhu Irzh could not see her face, but her rigid back was eloquent of disapproval. Before her stood the black-toothed receptionist.

". . .seems to have come looking for one of the little ones, the fresh spirits. . ." the squat person was saying, in a voice like the sound of a wasp buzzing in the rafters.

"He asked for one of the new ghosts," the receptionist replied, in evident bewilderment. "They've been very popular, and—"

"What has happened to the ghost of Pearl Tang? Is she safely returned to Earth?"

"Her father came for her this evening."

"To the counterpart of this establishment?"

"No, it was done through the ministrations of the
gwei s'sa.
Tang's father did not deem it wise to return to the funeral parlor; there was trouble, he said. He planned to take her back to Earth and hide her there. He was angry about her collusion with that client, the one who was carrying messages from her. He said if we couldn't guard her properly then he wouldn't have bothered sending her here in the first place."

"Trouble? From humans? Or Hell-kind?"

"From both."

"It is not good news," the squat woman said, "when humans and Hell-kind begin working together. It betokens a lack of harmony in the universe. Now. Where is the young gentleman who showed such interest in fresh ghosts?"

"Upstairs," the receptionist said. "Room three—I'll show you." Hoisting the heavy skirts of her robe, the squat woman turned to the stairs, accompanied by the receptionist. Zhu Irzh melted back among the draperies until he was no more than a shadow against black velvet. He listened to the wheezing breath and heavy tread of the squat woman; peering out, he saw that she had a wide, flat face, as though something large had sat on it, and eyes like small black seeds. Someone from a lower level of Hell than himself, Zhu Irzh thought. That was not encouraging. He waited until they had passed his hiding place. He could hear them knocking on the metal door of the ghost's room, a harsh, tinny sound, and then the soft click as the door opened. Zhu Irzh slipped from behind the draperies and slunk down the stairs. He recalled the little ghost upstairs, with her missing
p'o,
and bit his lip, wondering what it might mean. If he had not exactly found the missing spirit of Pearl Tang, at least he knew where she might be. Her father had taken her back to Earth, it seemed, and it would be a simple enough matter to locate the father's house. He hoped the First Lord of Banking would be sufficiently pleased to grant him authorization for an exit visa. He had taken rather a fancy to the world above. And it would be most interesting to see what it looked like at night.

Chen was just in time. As he reached Tang's mansion, the Mercedes turned the corner of the street. Concealing himself in the neighboring bushes, Chen waited until the car swung into the driveway. The house defenses hummed down and Chen hopped across the now-deactivated tripwire running into the flowerbeds. Through a gap in the oleander, he could see Tang reaching into the back seat of the car. From it, Tang removed a large jar. Under the house lights, Chen could see that it was filled with some cloudy substance, which seemed to swirl like smoke within the glass walls of the jar. Tang carried it carefully inside and shut the door behind him. Chen crept around the corner of the house, keeping to the shadows. The mansion was dark and silent. Even if he was fortunate enough to find an open window, the defenses would be up and the house might be armed: he would have to resort to other methods. He reached in his pocket for the scalpel.

The action that had so appalled Sergeant Ma had long been a routine matter to Chen, but it still hurt. Gritting his teeth, he rolled up his sleeve and swiftly carved the spell sign on his palm. These days, the palms of his hands were so callused by scar tissue that it was difficult to find sufficiently thin skin to cut; he reminded himself of a junkie, probing for a vein. It was not a reassuring comparison. There was only a faint smear of blood, but it would be enough to satisfy the goddess. He could hear Kuan Yin's voice in his mind, saying the words that she had used so many years before.
Every time you use magic, Chen, there is a price to pay
. Her gentleness and her implacability had impressed him deeply then, and perhaps still did, but he found himself growing increasingly weary of this razor line between the worlds. Still, he reflected, it had brought him Inari, and that was worth a little pain now and again. Holding his bleeding palm before him, he watched as part of the wall vanished into smoke. There was no one on the other side. Chen stepped through. The wall returned to opacity behind him.

He was standing in a study. A roll-top desk was lined with an expensive battery of computer equipment; Chen could see the fluid gleam of a biolife flatscreen spread out across the desk. It gleamed gold: a later and more expensive model than his own. Books lined the walls, but when Chen, unable to resist the habit of a lifetime, went over to investigate he realized that all but a few were fakes: welded together into a single indigestible mass of artificial leather and plastic. He wondered fleetingly what possible satisfaction could be gleaned from such fraudulent erudition. Voices were coming from the hall and Chen stepped quickly back behind the door. He could hear the slurred, roller-coaster speech of Beijing. Chen put an eye to the crack of the door and glimpsed two retreating backs clad in short, black uniforms: servants. He waited until they had turned the corner, then slipped from the study and into the hall. There was no way of getting a fix on Tang; he would just have to search the mansion until he found him. Uttering a heartfelt, but not particularly hopeful, prayer to the goddess, Chen began a methodical, surreptitious investigation.

Apart from the maids, and a young man in a waistcoat who was reading a pornographic comic in the kitchen, the mansion seemed to be deserted. Chen made his way through the dark and silent upper floor, then went back down to ground level, expecting discovery at any moment. When he got to the main hallway, he saw that there was a second small door beyond the one that led to the parlor. This one was ajar. Chen slipped down the hall and peered through the door. It was black as pitch. Chen thought for a moment, then stepped around the door. He found himself standing on a small landing. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that a staircase led down towards a dim source of light. Feeling his way forwards, Chen made his way downstairs. He held the scalpel in front of him; the goddess had forbidden him to carry weapons, but the scalpel was an essential piece of spell-casting equipment (Chen held the thought firmly in the front of his mind, just in case). Someone was muttering. Remaining perfectly still, Chen traced the sound to the dimness ahead. He thought he recognized the voice of H'suen Tang, but he wasn't sure. He had come to the bottom of the staircase. He took a single step forwards, just as a smooth hand clamped itself around his mouth. Chen was lifted, with apparent ease, by means of an arm around his waist. Talons grazed his cheek. Chen kicked swiftly backwards and encountered only air. He was carried, rapidly and in silence, to what appeared to be an alcove in the cellar wall, where he was deposited unceremoniously upon the floor. The hand remained across his mouth, clasped as tightly as an iron band. His arms were pinned to his body. Chen rolled a frantic eye and encountered a slanted, golden gaze, lit by amusement.