I carefully passed the baby back. ‘It will take him years to come back, Louise. I’ll probably be too old.’
Louise leaned forward over the table, holding the baby in front of her. ‘Human Immortals can have children, Emma. The Jade Emperor has dozens.’
I silently shook my head. Then I snapped myself out of it and grabbed a menu. ‘I hope there’s something vegetarian for me.’
‘See?’ Louise said. ‘Vegetarian, looks young, not worried by anything. Immortal.’
‘Oh, cut it out.’
The baby started to squall and Louise handed her to the maid. ‘Beanie, I think she needs changing.’
‘Ma’am,’ the maid said, and took the baby into the corner of the tatami mats. ‘I’ll feed her as well, ma’am, I think she’s due.’
‘Beanie?’ I said.
‘Ma’am?’ the maid said, turning back to me.
‘Go and change her, Beanie,’ Louise said, and the maid turned away again. ‘It’s great I can put her onto the bottle now—I have a lot more freedom. The Tiger likes all the wives to feed the babies themselves for at least the first four months. That reminds me.’ She pulled out a notebook and flipped it open.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said. ‘We haven’t done that in ages.’
‘I have a bet with wife number One One Six and wife number One Two Zero,’ Louise said. ‘I have some questions for you, and you have to answer them truthfully for me.’
The waitress turned up and Louise dropped the notebook and grabbed the menu. ‘But let’s eat first, I’m starving.’
‘Why is the demon called Beanie?’ I said after we’d ordered.
‘What demon?’ Louise said.
I gestured towards the maid who was busy preparing a bottle. ‘Demon.’
Louise glanced sharply at her. ‘Are you a demon, Beanie?’
The maid bobbed her head. ‘Yes, ma’am, tamed by Lord Bai Hu’s Number One son himself.’
Louise turned back to me, grinning. ‘I didn’t know that; I thought she was a domestic helper. How about that? You could see she’s a demon?’
‘Of course I could,’ I said. ‘Why is her name Beanie?’
‘No idea,’ Louise said. ‘Beanie?’
‘I don’t know, ma’am,’ Beanie said. ‘When I was tamed, they opened a large book, crossed out a dark word and said that was my name.’
I collapsed forward over my knees laughing.
‘What?’ Louise said, bewildered.
‘Dictionary,’ I said. ‘They go through the words and use them as demon names.’
Louise’s face lit up with delight and she laughed as well.
A waitress passing our room closed the door to keep the noise level down. Matt opened it again slightly so that he could keep an eye on us.
‘How old are you, Beanie?’ I said.
‘About twenty years, ma’am,’ the demon said.
‘What?’ Louise said. ‘Only twenty years old? She looks mid-forties.’
‘They hatch as adults and don’t age,’ I said.
‘That’s incredible.’ Louise studied Beanie then turned back to me. ‘How come you know all this stuff? No, wait.’ She lifted the notebook and raised her hand. ‘I need a pen, Beanie.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t have one,’ the maid said.
I scrabbled through the mess in my bag and passed Louise a pen.
‘Okay,’ Louise said, flipping the notebook open again. ‘You have to answer these questions truthfully, okay?’
I shrugged. ‘Only if they’re not too personal.’
Louise grinned broadly. ‘What’s he like in bed?’
I reached over the table and pushed her. Her grin didn’t shift.
‘Okay.’ She looked down at the notebook then back at me. ‘Can you pick demons from a distance?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘How far?’
‘About twenty metres.’
She made a tick in the notebook. ‘Next. How much chi can you generate?’
‘A ball of about two metres across, at the moment, but I’m working on it,’ I said.
‘Whoa.’ She made another tick and glanced up at me. ‘Can you take out level forty demons with your bare hands?’
‘Yes,’ I said, pouring some green tea.
‘Wow,’ Louise said; another tick. ‘Can you take down Leo Alexander hand-to-hand?’
‘Yep,’ I said, sipping the tea. ‘I can take down both Leo and Michael at hand-to-hand.’
‘Whoa, really?’ Her eyes were wide. ‘That’s Michael, the Tiger’s son? The good one? Really? You can take him down as well?’
‘The good one?’ I said, grinning. ‘I can take them down together.’ This was beginning to be fun.
‘Crikey, Emma,’ Louise said, and I giggled. ‘Can you generate black chi?’
‘How the hell do you know about that?’ I demanded loudly.
‘Oh, word gets around,’ she said. ‘Can I see?’
I held my hand out, generated a small ball of black chi, and reabsorbed it. Louise’s eyes were huge.
‘Your hand went black. Do that again.’
I did it again for her and she put down her tea and scribbled furiously in the notebook. ‘I’m going double or nothing on that one,’ she said. ‘I should have brought a video camera.’ She glanced up at me. ‘Can you tame demons?’
‘Yep,’ I said, and she ticked the book.
‘Oh, wait,’ I said. ‘I can’t complete the process; Xuan Wu needs to do it for me.’
‘Not important,’ she said. ‘Can you use your Inner Eye?’
‘Yep.’
‘What colour bra am I wearing?’ she said.
‘You’re not wearing one,’ I shot back, and we both laughed.
‘Can you do telepathy?’
‘No.’
‘Damn,’ she said, and made a cross in the notebook. She picked up her teacup and sighed.
‘Can you fly, Emma?’
‘No.’
‘Damn,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There was a lot riding on that one too. They said you can run and then lift yourself and float, and I believed them.’
‘Oh, I can do that,’ I said. ‘But I can’t fly like superman, that’s what I meant.’
‘Yes,’ Louise hissed, scribbling in the notebook. ‘Excellent.’ Her face changed and she looked at me more seriously. ‘Do you turn into a snake, Emma?’
I hesitated.
‘Tell me,’ she said softly.
I ran my hands through my hair and looked down. ‘Yes,’ I whispered.
‘Good,’ Louise said loudly, and put another tick in the notebook. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ I said quietly.
There was a tap on the door and it opened.
‘Okay,’ she said. She handed the baby sling to the demon. ‘Beanie, take the baby out for a walk, please.’
‘Oh shit, Louise, don’t do this to me, please,’ I said. ‘I won’t hurt your baby, I swear.’
Louise grinned. ‘I just want to eat in peace, Emma. The food’s here.’
‘Really?’ I said.
She reached across the table and gave me a push. ‘Sure. I’m not worried.’
‘I am.’
‘Don’t be, you’ll be fine.’
She waited until the plates had been placed on the table and the waitress and Beanie had gone, Beanie carefully closing the door behind her.
‘Matt, go with her,’ Louise called at the door. ‘I’ll be safe with the Dark Lady.’
‘Ma’am,’ Matt said from the other side of the door.
‘Does the ring talk?’ Louise said.
‘Yep.’
‘Show me.’
‘Oh, no, Louise, it’s asleep right now. Don’t wake it up, it’s a pain in the neck.’
‘The stone sleeps?’
‘It’s a Building Block of the World. It’s really old. Like an old man, it sleeps a lot.’
‘It’s a what?’
I sighed. ‘You know the story
of the Dark Goddess?’
‘Nope,’ she said, shaking her head over the udon.
‘Okay,’ I said, and took a deep breath. I tapped the stone.
‘Yes, Emma?’
‘Say hello to Louise,’ I said.
The stone didn’t say anything.
‘It’s really rude sometimes, don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘Okay. Anyway, a long time ago there was a battle between two elementals, or between a demon and an elemental.’
‘Two elementals,’ the stone said. ‘Thunder and water.’
‘Was that it?’ Louise said.
‘Yep.’
‘It sounds English.’
‘I know. Anyway, one of them knocked down one of the Four Pillars holding up the Heavens, so the Dark Goddess, Nu Wa, had to build it again. She collected stones, made a new pillar, destroyed all the monsters that had entered the world and were terrorising her children—’
‘Her children were humanity. She created humanity,’ the stone said. ‘She fashioned the human race from clay. But she became tired, and after a while simply dipped a rope in the mud and threw the clay to make people. Noble people are those she created directly. Common people are those from the rope.’
‘It’s hard to tell what’s true and what isn’t with this stuff,’ I said. ‘And there are so many different versions—’
‘She also started the Shang-Zhou wars because the Shang King insulted her,’ the stone said. ‘She was mortally offended by his disgraceful behaviour, and sent a fox spirit to take over the body of his favourite concubine and lead him into performing such atrocities that his own generals rebelled and toppled him. It led to a civil war so vast that the whole country was plunged into anarchy. Many, many people died. At the end of the war, the mightiest and most courageous warriors were all Raised.’
‘Xuan Wu was one of them, wasn’t he,’ I said.
‘Yep,’ the stone said. ‘In human form. The White Tiger too. A lot of them had their human forms Raised because of their noble deeds.’
‘Was the fox spirit called Daji?’ I said quickly.
‘Yes, she was. But back to me, I’m the important one,’ the stone said, and Louise snorted.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘when the sky fell down, the Dark Goddess built a pillar to hold it up. She had some stones left over from building the pillar, and they are old and powerful and extremely annoying.’
‘How did you come by this one?’ Louise said.
‘I think Xuan Wu’s had it for a very long time,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ the stone said. ‘A very, very long time.’
‘Go back to sleep,’ I said.
‘I certainly will,’ the stone said. ‘I was in the middle of a lovely dream: I was a mighty snow-capped peak with the frozen corpses of failed mountaineers adorning my slopes.’
‘Is it useful for anything?’ Louise said. ‘Or is it just annoying?’
‘It can come in handy, but I really wonder sometimes whether it’s worth the suffering.’ I shrugged. ‘Enough.’
‘Yeah, that was the last one,’ Louise said. ‘I thought you could do all of those things, so I mostly win. But some of the stories they tell about you are obviously ridiculous. Like, they say that you took out a level fifty demon with your bare hands—’
‘Yep,’ I said through the udon.
‘Damn,’ she said softly, ‘I really should have brought a video camera. They say you told the King of the Demons to his face to piss off—’
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘You should have seen the look on John’s face.’
‘John? You call the Emperor John?’ she said, incredulous.
‘It’s his English name. Sounds like Xuan. Xuan Wu.’
‘Oh, that makes sense.’
‘That’s not the only thing I call him,’ I said into the udon, and Louise giggled.
‘They say that you can jump off high places and float down without getting hurt—’
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Just learned that one not long ago.’
‘Geez, Emma,’ Louise said. ‘I really should have brought a video camera. If I could get a video of this I’d be in the Tiger’s bed every night for six weeks.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t think we bet for money, do you?’ Louise said with a grin. ‘We bet nights with Tigger.’
I couldn’t hold back the laughter. ‘Tigger?’
‘He’s very bouncy,’ Louise said, her eyes sparkling. She glanced down at her notebook. ‘Damn. I really should have brought a video camera. They won’t believe me without proof on those last ones.’
I pulled out my mobile phone and called home.
‘Wei?’
‘Ah Yat,’ I said, ‘could you grab the video camera and bring it to the Tokyo private room in the Japanese restaurant in the hotel in Sha Tin?’
‘Ma’am,’ Ah Yat said. ‘Give me about five minutes, I need to find it.’
‘Okay, no rush,’ I said, and hung up.
‘Thanks, Emma,’ Louise said. ‘You’re great, you know.’
I shrugged.
‘Did you really tame a level seventy demon?’ Louise said.
I nodded, sipping some miso soup.
‘Tell your helper to hurry with the video camera,’ she said.
I studied her. All of my exceptional abilities didn’t seem to have fazed her at all.
‘Louise,’ I said.
‘Hm?’
‘None of this stuff I can do seems to worry you at all. You don’t seem to be jealous, or bothered by it, or anything.’
‘Jealous?’ she said with a grin. ‘I’m privileged. Do you have any idea how impressed people are when I say that you’re my friend, and that we shared a flat for a couple of years? You’re a legend in your own lifetime.’
‘Oh, great,’ I said, lifting the last piece of yam tempura with my chopsticks. ‘That’s all I need.’
‘Can I come to the wedding?’
‘Do Chinese weddings have matrons of honour? ’Cause that’s what I want you to be.’
‘Who cares whether they do or they don’t,’ Louise said. ‘’Cause I’m coming, and I’m wearing something frilly and awful in pink with a dreadful cocktail hat.’
‘You’d better be careful what you wish for, mate,’ I said. ‘’Cause it could very well come true.’
‘Coronation too,’ she said. ‘My roommate, Empress of the North. Do you get a crown?’
I thumped my chopsticks on the table with mock fury.
She grinned and her eyes sparkled. ‘Have you heard from April?’ She saw my face and the grin disappeared. ‘Is she okay?’
I sighed and dropped my head. Then I pulled myself together. April was Louise’s friend too. She had a right to know.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You know this demon bastard who’s after us? After my family?’
‘Yeah,’ Louise said softly. ‘It once broke into the stables in Ireland and did some really bad stuff to the wives who were managing there. One of them’ll never walk again, and the other was horribly disfigured.’ She bent over the table to confide in me. ‘And the Tiger still sees them both, you know. He loves us all.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Well, that particular demon is the head of all the underworld activity in Hong Kong…’
Louise inhaled sharply, eyes wide.
‘…and Kitty Kwok was helping the demon to launder its dirty money through the kindergartens—’
‘Holy shit, Emma. Kitty Kwok? The woman you worked for?’
I continued. ‘And Kitty Kwok’s been building demon hybrids for him, and taking samples from the children in the kindergartens—blood and tissue samples—’
‘No,’ Louise said. ‘No.’
‘Kitty Kwok has labs in Dongguan where they’re building the demon hybrids—’
‘Hybrids?’
‘And Andy, April’s husband, was involved in triad activity—’
‘I knew there was something wrong with that guy,’ Louise interrupted again. ‘He was a total creep to her. He was in leag
ue with the demons?’
‘I think he is a demon. He just married April to get her pregnant. So that they could…’ I stopped.
‘What, Emma?’ Louise whispered.
I dropped my head. ‘Kitty sent April to Dongguan to have a caesarean delivery,’ I whispered.
‘She got the baby!’ Louise shouted, furious. ‘She killed April! No!’
‘I saw April last week,’ I said, and Louise relaxed. ‘She doesn’t remember anything—her marriage or her pregnancy. She told me her family were all killed in a car accident in Australia, and Kitty is looking after her.’
Louise straightened. ‘Okay, Superwoman, go in and get her and her baby out.’
‘I wish I could,’ I moaned. ‘But I have no idea where she is, and nobody else does either. All we know is that she’s in Causeway Bay somewhere.’
‘What about Xuan Wu?’
‘He won’t leave Simone,’ I said. ‘And neither will I.’
‘That makes sense.’ Louise smiled. ‘I’ll talk to Tigger about it. See if we can’t send some Horsemen in and get April out.’
‘I doubt very much that the Tiger will send his sons to certain death,’ I said. ‘That demon is incredibly powerful, and it would be on his own turf.’
Ah Yat appeared in the corner with the video camera and Louise jumped. ‘I still have to get used to that,’ she said.
Ah Yat handed me the video camera, and I set it up to record, then passed it to Louise. ‘What were those questions you wanted to ask me?’
‘We will get April out, Emma,’ Louise said as she pressed the button. ‘Now, generate some black chi first—that was great.’
I sighed and put my hands out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Itaught a first-year energy-work class straight after lunch. Everybody froze when Monique managed to generate chi.
‘Hold it carefully, Monique,’ I said softly, moving the other students away so that I could sit in front of her. ‘Concentrate. Everybody else, to one side, silence. Don’t move.’
Monique’s face was a mask of concentration. She hadn’t generated much chi, only about a golf ball’s worth, but it was an achievement for someone from a Western background to be able to do it at all. Her mother had studied in China and learned Tai Chi and had taught Monique from an early age.
‘Do you have it?’ I said.