Black Jade Page 24

  ‘Do you know how to seal buildings?’ she said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘No, I’m too small.’

  ‘If only Ronnie —’ She raised her head. ‘I’ll be right back.’ She disappeared.

  John? I said.

  There was no reply.

  20

  Simone returned five minutes later and crouched next to me. I didn’t look up.

  ‘Don’t you dare give up now,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’ve found us somewhere they won’t think to look — Ronnie’s old flat. They obviously can’t break in, because it’s never been touched. It’s sealed up tight. Emma!’

  I looked up from my knees.

  ‘Let’s go set ourselves up and start contacting everybody who escaped. The Demon King will be too busy to look for us — he probably doesn’t have any demons left after what Nu Wa did — so let’s take advantage of the breathing space and move.’

  ‘I promised the Demon King I’d take Frankie to Heaven for him,’ I said. ‘If he asks me to do it, I have to go.’

  ‘He won’t risk Frankie until the Heavens are secure. He’ll need to hatch a new demon army to do that — the Heavens are too large to hold with that human force. We have a while before he sees Greg in Hell and realises he isn’t you. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity.’ She patted my shoulder. ‘Up you get. You can’t stop now, Dark Lady, the Heavens still need you. Get to work.’

  I sighed, wiped my eyes, and rose, dusting my hands on the pants of my Mountain uniform. ‘Are Buffy and Leo okay?’

  ‘They’ll be in the US tomorrow.’

  She held her hand out to me and I took it. We landed across the road from the concrete apartment building. The block was from the fifties: five storeys high, stained with exhaust fumes, and with narrow windows overlooking the street. The three-metre-wide ground floor was taken up by Ronnie’s shop, with a small metal gated entrance at one side.

  I looked up and down the street while Simone concentrated, checking inside the building. Its walls glowed in shafts of sunlight that streamed across the road, bringing the bare ugly concrete into bright contrast.

  ‘What the hell,’ I said, and looked up. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky — and it was blue. ‘The sky’s clear. No pollution. I haven’t seen it like that in years.’

  Simone glanced up. ‘Oh, so that’s what’s different. I was wondering.’ We went across the road to the building. ‘The King’s taken all the demons to occupy Heaven. There’s hardly any left here except for the executive copies.’

  She stood in front of Ronnie’s shop and studied it. The roller door was closed and plastered with movie posters in a layer that was five centimetres thick and peeling at the corners. No ‘For Sale’ or ‘To Let’ signs though. Ronnie had owned the shop and the flat above it.

  ‘Everything’s still inside the shop,’ Simone said. We went to the barred steel gate that led to the stairs to the flats. ‘They really can’t get in.’

  ‘Or they just didn’t bother,’ I said.

  Six letterboxes sat on a piece of wood next to the door, with buttons for the apartment intercoms, which were black with dirt. Simone concentrated and the door unlocked. I pulled it open and we carefully walked up the stairs, both of us alert.

  We reached the first floor and stopped at Ronnie’s flat. Simone unlocked the gate and the door inside. Just as we were about to enter, a family came up the stairs and stopped on the landing: a couple, with a boy of about five and a two-year-old girl.

  Human, Simone said.

  ‘Call Aunty-la,’ the woman said, seeing me, a European.

  ‘Aunty,’ the children said loudly in unison.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. I gestured with my head towards Ronnie’s flat. ‘We’re friends of Ronnie’s.’

  ‘Wah, your Cantonese is very good,’ the man said. ‘We haven’t seen Ronnie in a while.’

  ‘He’s in China visiting his family,’ Simone said. ‘He said we could use his flat. We’re his relatives from Canada.’

  I glanced at her and she shrugged.

  ‘I know Ronnie has family in Canada,’ the man said. ‘It’s good you’re looking after it for him. We were worried.’

  ‘He’s caring for his sick mother, we don’t know how long he’ll be,’ I said.

  ‘Tell him we hope she’s better soon,’ the woman said. ‘We have his mail up at 5A. Come and collect it any time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  The man hefted the little girl in his arms. ‘Charlotte, Ricky, time to go.’

  ‘Goodbye, Aunty,’ the children said in unison, and the whole family cheerfully waved and went up the next flight of stairs. I watched the little girl cling to her father’s shoulder as he carried her, their blissful normality making my heart ache.

  ‘Canada?’ I said as we went into the flat.

  ‘Always a fifty-fifty bet that anyone who’s lived overseas has been in Canada,’ Simone said.

  ‘The other fifty-fifty is Australia.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. She saw the state of the apartment, untouched for months. ‘Oh, dear.’

  Everything was covered in a thick layer of greasy dust. I ran one finger over the top of the television and it came away black.

  ‘No demons to clean up after you, Simone, we’ll have to do this ourselves,’ I said.

  ‘I’m no stranger to cleaning,’ she huffed. ‘I helped out at Sweetie Peachy in Spring Garden Lane, remember?’ Her voice went wistful. ‘God, I hope all the workers at Eighty-Eight are okay.’

  ‘We can sneak in and check on them later.’

  I went into the tiny kitchen, only two metres long and a metre wide, and looked around. The stove had a gas bottle under the ledge and I felt it — still nearly full. I went back into the living room, opened the fridge and instantly regretted it.

  ‘Can you yin this?’ I said.

  ‘I won’t yin anything unless it’s life or death,’ she said, wrinkling her nose at the smell. ‘Wow, science experiment — some of that stuff is completely unrecognisable. Wait, is that a pig’s head?’ She choked. ‘Yin’s too dangerous to use on a whim. We have to do this the old-fashioned way.’

  I went into the main bedroom. Ronnie had a double bed jammed against the wall with very little space around it. There was no bed linen. The other bedroom was even smaller, not even enough room for a double bed, and was piled to the ceiling with stock from the shop below: Hell money, incense, and paper offerings.

  ‘If the people upstairs knew all this death-related stuff was in here they’d have a fit,’ Simone said, picking up a plastic-wrapped wad of gold-painted paper that would be folded at a funeral into gold bars. ‘So much bad luck.’ She tossed it back onto the pile. ‘Is there any cleaning stuff anywhere?’

  I opened the accordion door to the bathroom, which was a metre and a half long and less than a metre wide. A cheap pink plastic showerhead hung on a string over the toilet. The ugly green tiles were black with dirt and mould.

  ‘There’s bleach and things stacked in the corner here,’ I said, ‘but we might need some heavy-duty stuff. I saw a supermarket down the street — I’ll go and buy some.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ she said over my shoulder. ‘You’ll stay here where it’s safe and I’ll steal them. It’s too dangerous for you to go alone. And besides, we don’t have any money.’

  I opened my mouth to argue and closed it again.

  ‘Ronnie’s seals were the best anywhere. You’re safe here,’ she said. ‘Yell if anything happens. I’ll be right back.’ She disappeared.

  I went into the living room and sat on the tired black leather couch facing the television. We didn’t have any extra clothes, and Ronnie obviously did his laundry somewhere else.

  I put my head in my hands. I couldn’t even talk to John. I had no idea what to do next, beyond cleaning the flat and making it liveable for Simone. I only had a short time before the Demon King demanded I honour my vow to him. I considered turning myself in to avoid any retaliation against my family, and decided th
at once Simone was settled, I’d sneak out, walk into a police station and surrender to the Superintendent Cheung copy.

  Emma, Michael’s here. Let him in.

  My head shot up and I raced to the door to open it.

  Michael’s white-haired head appeared on the stairs. He smiled when he saw me, gave me a quick hug, and pushed me into the apartment, closing the door behind us.

  ‘I can’t stay long, they’re on to me,’ he said. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they hunt me down.’

  ‘You’re Number One Son —’

  ‘Yeah, that doesn’t work any more,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘Dad’s fallen. I’m back to being just me, not Number anything. I’m powerful, but they’re stronger — really weird-looking demons with tiny faces that are impossible to fight.’

  ‘What about Clarissa?’

  ‘Can she stay with you?’

  ‘Of course she can! Where is she?’

  ‘She’s hiding on top of Tai Mo Shan. I just told Simone where she is so she can pick her up. Simone says you’re out of cash.’ He looked around. ‘We need to find something quickly.’

  ‘I have just the thing,’ I said, and showed him into the second bedroom.

  ‘Heh,’ he said, lifting one of the packets of paper clothing that would be burnt for relatives in Heaven, ‘this works.’

  He put the clothes down and picked up a stack of Hell money in its plastic wrapper. He opened it and separated out a wad of notes a centimetre thick, then ripped it in half crosswise to make a square. He passed the rest to me, and I held them as he concentrated and changed the square to a bar of gold.

  He tossed it onto the bed. ‘Unfortunately I can’t do a hallmark on it, so it’s blank. A small family jeweller will buy it without asking too many questions, particularly if you offer it for less than the market price.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said as he reached for the rest of the notes. ‘If that’s the case, make it into a melted lump of gold that looks like it was in a house fire. Simone can take the form of an old lady and pretend it was all the jewellery she kept in a shoebox under her bed, and it was caught in the fire.’

  ‘Perfect.’ He picked up the bar he’d just made, softened it, and pulled at it like play-doh until it appeared to have melted. He made a few more and placed them on the bed. ‘That should keep you going for a while.’

  He put his arm around my shoulders and landed a quick kiss on my cheek. ‘Thanks for looking after Clarissa.’ He raised his head. ‘They’re close. I’ll lead them away.’

  He disappeared.

  Simone opened the apartment door and came in holding a couple of shopping bags. ‘Here’s all the cleaning stuff we need. Don’t do it all before I’m back with Clarissa.’ She went out again, closing both doors behind her.

  I took a plastic garbage bag and a pair of rubber gloves out of one of the shopping bags, ready to tackle the fridge.

  A couple of minutes later Simone returned with Clarissa, who’d obviously been crying; her eyes were red and swollen. I went to her and embraced her, and she sobbed into my shoulder. I didn’t join in her tears. Something inside me was blank and empty. Instead of grief I felt . . . nothing.

  ‘So what’s the plan now, Emma?’ Clarissa said when she’d calmed down. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Settle in, then decide. I never thought we’d end up like this.’ I looked around. ‘Simone?’ She was gone.

  ‘I hope she can find more people who escaped,’ Clarissa said. She sat on the couch. ‘I feel so guilty. Everybody else is held in the Heavens and I’m here.’

  ‘Don’t feel guilty,’ I said. ‘You can help us. We need to find everybody who escaped and start a network.’

  Simone reappeared fifteen minutes later with my carry-on suitcase. ‘Smally put together some clothes for you.’

  ‘You went back up there?’ I said. ‘How are they? What happened? Is everybody okay?’

  ‘Not much has happened,’ she said. ‘The Demon King’s establishing his control. All the Immortals have been executed, and since the Heavens belong to the demons, our side of Hell does as well.’ She nodded to Clarissa. ‘You’re not supposed to know about any of this.’

  ‘Too late,’ Clarissa said.

  ‘Anyway, all the Immortals have been executed and they’re in cells in Hell. The mortals are under curfew inside their homes while the King consolidates control. Anyone found out of doors without a really good reason is taken to the main square of the Celestial Palace and executed in front of a CCTV system that’s feeding through the entire Heavens.’

  ‘He’s executing mortals?’ I said, horrified. ‘I have to go back up and stop it!’

  ‘You’ll just be executed too,’ Simone said. ‘He’s using Hell as a prisoner-of-war camp for the Immortals — none of them can escape the cells.’

  ‘John can,’ I said.

  ‘Daddy . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘He and the Jade Emperor are in cells at the bottom of Level Nine where they keep the mad Kings. They can’t escape.’

  ‘How are my family holding up?’ I said.

  ‘Our family,’ Simone said. ‘The King hasn’t had time to do anything with them. He’s much too busy allocating living accommodation for his human soldiers in the Celestial Palace and arranging the guard rotations on the other Palaces. It’ll be a while before he’s secure enough to start experimenting again. We have time.’

  I leaned on the wall next to the fridge and stared out the window, feeling blank inside.

  Clarissa turned on the television.

  ‘After the coup, the new regime is consolidating its hold,’ the reporter said.

  ‘What?’ I said, and moved around to see.

  ‘The general in charge has called for calm, but pockets of protest against the takeover are still occurring. The military is using tear gas and rubber bullets to subdue the crowds —’

  ‘That’s happening in three or four Asian countries right now,’ Simone said. ‘Reflections on the Earthly of what’s happening in the Celestial. Demons are in control.’

  ‘Will it happen in China?’ Clarissa said.

  ‘It happened a long time ago,’ Simone said. ‘So what now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I need time to think.’

  ‘Get in touch with your inner Xuan Wu,’ she said.

  I rested my head in my hands. ‘I’d rather be in touch with the outside one.’

  Clarissa came to me and put her arm around my shoulders. ‘I know how you feel, Emma. I’m lost without Michael.’

  ‘Pathetic,’ Simone said with scorn from the other side of the room. ‘Your man isn’t around so you shut down.’

  Both Clarissa and I stared at her, dumbfounded, then something snapped inside my head and everything came into cold focus.

  ‘All right,’ I said, turning the television off with the remote. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. For now, we’ll find all the free Celestials and make a refuge for them somewhere remote on the Earthly. After that, we’ll start playing the long game — we’re all Immortal after all.’ I paced the tiny living room. ‘When the Manchu invaded the Ming, they were set on conquest and brutally subjugated the population. But five hundred years later they were almost indistinguishable in culture and philosophy from the Hans they’d conquered.’

  ‘These conquerors aren’t Manchurians, they’re demons,’ Simone said.

  ‘So was your father,’ I said. ‘So was your sister. So am I. We will work like water, slowly and softly, shaping them in our image.’

  ‘You’re a demon?’ Clarissa asked me.

  ‘All of us are,’ Simone said. ‘That’s the point. Demons can turn to the Celestial. So that’s Emma’s . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she realised. ‘You’ll be Frankie’s nanny. You’ll teach Frankie when he takes the throne.’

  ‘You work from the outside while I work from the inside,’ I said.

  ‘I’m lost,’ Clarissa said. ‘Ming and Qing? I never studied that.’ She went into the kitchen and collected the rubber gloves. ‘So
you do your political stuff while I clean out the fridge.’

  * * *

  It was a quiet and morose meal. We sat around a folding table, covered in a thin disposable cloth, and ate a simple meal of soup noodles with disposable chopsticks from plastic bowls that Simone had picked up at the wet market. There was hardly any crockery in the kitchen — Ronnie’s diet had obviously been far from human.

  The light outside the windows grew dim, and the neon from the dried seafood shops across the road lit up, filling the flat with an eerie pink and purple glow. I sat and looked at my noodles, then mechanically ate them. They didn’t taste of anything. Nothing felt of anything.

  ‘I need a shopping list for tomorrow,’ Simone said.

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you shower in the morning or evening?’ Simone asked Clarissa.

  ‘How much hot water do we have?’

  ‘It’s a flow-through one,’ Simone said. ‘Unlimited but the pressure is terrible.’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ I said, and rose without waiting for a reply.

  I went into the bedroom and grabbed a change of clothes from the bag Smally had packed for me. She’d put in all new clothes and hadn’t included any of my old tatty ones. I appreciated that she was trying to make me dress better, but what she’d given me wasn’t nearly as comforting as my old T-shirts. I didn’t have a single item of clothing that had been near John.

  I closed the thin accordion door separating the bathroom from the living room — it didn’t provide much in the way of privacy — and hung my clothes on hooks on the wall. I pulled off my Mountain uniform and the cherry blossom petal fell out of the pocket onto the floor. I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand, and it broke me. Its soft silken touch was agony. The edges were already going brown and by the next day it would be gone.

  I slid down the wall to sit on the green tiles and let the misery out as quietly as I could so the others wouldn’t hear me. I shook with great gasping sobs that wanted to tear my throat out and collapse my chest. I put my hands over my face, and the pain and despair flooded out of me and onto the ugly green tiles.

  I would never see those trees bloom again in the Mountain’s regal beauty. The ancient forge with its mismatched bricks had survived the first attack, and now it would be destroyed. I remembered the barracks, with the Turtle’s Folly sign proudly over the entrance. The Golden Temple on top of the highest of the seven peaks, glowing in the afternoon sun to remind everybody of the true nature of the Master of Wudang. The three halls edging the main court — True Way, Yuzhengong — that had been destroyed before and which I had carefully rebuilt. Dragon Tiger, with its ancient bronze Buddha statue. Purple Mist, with its beautiful carvings in the ceiling overseeing each student’s pledge of allegiance to the Dark Lord.