The Girl with No Face Page 10

  “I could ask you where you’ve been all night,” she said. “Do you know how frightened my daughter has been?”

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Choy?”

  “Li-lin, there aren’t many girls in Chinatown. Xu Anjing was her friend.”

  It hit me like a blow, a punch that packed all my weariness and slammed into my gut. “Hua found out that her friend is dead,” I said flatly.

  “Yes, and then you were nowhere around. Li-lin, it’s your job to protect her. You’re supposed to keep her safe.”

  “And I will, Mrs. Choy. I will do my very best to make sure no harm comes to your daughter.”

  “Your ‘very best’? Will that be good enough?”

  “Mrs. Choy?”

  “What would happen if some of those evil flowers start to suffocate my daughter, Li-lin? Would your ‘very best’ be enough to save her then?”

  I leaned back against the uneven slats of my wooden wall, taking a deep breath. “Mrs. Choy, I would kill anyone who tried to harm your daughter. I would not hesitate to die for her.”

  “But would that be enough?” she said. Her voice sounded strained, as if she’d spent the evening keening for the dead.

  “Mrs. Choy, since I learned about Xu Anjing, I have spent every moment trying to learn what happened to her, so I can prevent it from happening to—” I paused—“anyone, ever again.”

  “You’ve been investigating what happened to Xu Anjing? That’s where you’ve been all night?”

  I nodded. A moment passed when we stood quiet in my tiny quarters, and then Mrs. Choy came at me.

  It was a rush, a grappling hold, and it took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t being attacked. For the second time tonight, I was being hugged.

  Her perfume was musky and sweet, and the physical sensation of her arms encircling me was not unpleasant, but I found the show of emotion embarrassing.

  I gently pushed my way out of Mrs. Choy’s embrace.

  High heels clattering on my wooden floor, she took a seat on my cot and gestured for me to sit beside her. It reminded me of being under my father’s roof, having someone take liberties with even my own small space and invite me into an area that I considered mine. Yet all of this, in reality, belonged to her husband. If she wanted to sit on my cot, then my cot would be her chair. I sat down next to her.

  “Call me Ginny,” she said.

  “Ji-Ni?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s an American name, short for ‘West Virginia.’”

  “Your name is West Virginia?”

  “My parents wanted me to be an American, so they named me after a state,” she said. “I go by Ginny.”

  “All right, Ginny,” I said. I started to ask a question but could not find a proper way to phrase it. My face must have hung there, stuck between expressions.

  “What is it, Li-lin?”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Xu Anjing?”

  At my nod, she said, “Not well. Mr. Xu brought her here sometimes to play with Hua, and sometimes I’d instruct the two of them about beauty, because Anjing had no mother to show her how to dress or style her hair. Why are you looking at me like that, Li-lin?”

  “It’s nothing, Ginny.” Her gaze stayed on me, so I relented. “Like Xu Anjing, I was raised without a mother, so I find it admirable that you are teaching Anjing things that no adult woman ever taught me.”

  “Ah,” she said. “That does explain some things, Li-lin.”

  I stiffened. “What things do you mean?”

  She stood, turned, took a deep breath. “Li-lin, do you ever look in a mirror? You look like a peasant. You could be the kind of woman men fight over.”

  “Why would I want that, Ginny? Men are always finding things to fight over.”

  “We are alike in many ways, Li-lin,” she said to me. “The world is not kind to people like us. We’re women so we can’t own land; we’re Chinese so we can’t open bank accounts; we’re Chinese immigrants so we have no path to citizenship. So many doors are closed to you and me. Youth and beauty can open some doors for us, but youth and beauty do not last; we must use them well before they’re gone.”

  I felt solemn, listening. Ginny was only six or seven years my senior, and I felt inclined to argue with her advice, but mere moments earlier I’d been wistful because no older woman had ever taken me under her wing.

  “Ginny, you have shared your wisdom with me, and I am left feeling incredible gratitude.” I bit my tongue for a long moment. “But if youth and beauty are so precious, I must wonder about what you bought with yours.”

  A long moment passed while she unraveled the implications of my sentence, and then she began to laugh, a warm and throaty sound. “You wonder why I married a man several inches shorter than I am, who is skinny as a toothpick? Why I chose a clown and a murderer as my husband?”

  I said nothing, not wanting to insult my employer any further than I already had.

  “Let me ask you a question, Li-lin. Have you ever seen a father so devoted to his daughter?”

  Hua. Of course. Ginny was gorgeous, but Bok Choy had a dozen prostitutes in his employ; yet the man showered love and affection upon his daughter more than I’d ever seen any parent care for a girl.

  “My husband is twitchy, comical, and short,” she said, “and he has murdered half a dozen men. But I married him because he will do anything to keep his family safe, including murder. He will move the heavens to make sure Hua has a good life.”

  For a moment I wondered what that would be like. How would it feel if my father cherished me like that? My father had always been remote, his mind walking among the stars rather than paying attention to the female child in his home.

  A part of me envied Hua for her home, being raised by two parents who both loved her fiercely. And yet, when I imagined my own father treating me the way Bok Choy treated his daughter—cuddling me, kissing my cheek, stroking my hair, and cooing over me—the thought made me squeamish.

  I did want my relationship with my father to improve. But I did not want to be that close.

  “Ginny,” I said, “is there nothing more you can tell me about Xu Anjing?”

  She focused. “The girl was always reserved, Li-lin. The men would gamble, while the girls spent time together.”

  “Could you ever tell how Anjing felt about her husband?”

  “She was besotted with him, Li-lin. She loved the man as if he were both her father and her betrothed.”

  “Betrothed? Not husband, Ginny?”

  “They were officially married, Li-lin, but the way she looked at him . . . her eyes were adoring. They had a paper marriage, but to hear her talk, what she wanted more than anything was to grow up and become his real wife.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “My daughter adores him too, Li-lin. All the girls think he’s wonderful.” After a moment, she said, “I would bet even you considered it.”

  I did not deny it. “The ‘Gambling God’ is generous, handsome, encouraging, and flirtatious; his good luck is a sign of a positive relationship with his ancestors and strength of character; I have never seen anything but kindness from him, and no one has ever said a negative word about the man. And yet . . . .”

  “Yet his wife died in an unexplained manner, and you think he may have had something to do with it.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve always liked Mr. Xu,” she said. “But he was here this evening. He brought my husband a Coca-Cola,” she rolled her eyes, “and the two of them gambled a bit, and . . .”

  “And what, Ginny?”

  “Hua came out to see him. He patted her head and gave her some candy and peanuts, and I just kept on thinking, his wife wasn’t much older than my daughter, and she died today, horribly, and no one knows why or how, and here’s Xu Shengdian with my daughter who thinks he’s wonderful.”

  She was silent.

  “Ginny,” I said, “do you know where Mr. Xu’s accent is from?”

  She seemed surprised. �
�He grew up in Peru, Li-lin.”

  “Peru?”

  “You didn’t know? Li-lin, Xu Shengdian was a coolie. One of the diverted.”

  The breath left my lungs in a startled huff. I had not thought about the diverted in a long time. Decades ago, the gleaming hopes of Gold Mountain had been sung all across China. Men left their homes in droves, seeking America. Some fled the civil war in Taiping; others came driven by a promise of opportunity. They came in waves, a few thousand here, a few thousand there. No one knew how many. Perhaps a quarter million.

  But not all of them reached California’s shores. Thousands of men unknowingly boarded slave ships, unaware they were being rerouted to Cuba or Peru, where they were enslaved and sold. They were locked in chains, trapped in cages, and beaten with corded whips. Forced to labor all day, shoveling guano, breaking stones, building roads, or toiling at sugar plantations, they were never paid or rewarded for their work. Even food, in the hands of their owners, was an instrument of control: be good, obey, and work hard, or you will starve.

  When the government of Peru abolished the institution of slavery, the emancipated Chinese scattered. Most returned home to China, where they tried to rebuild their lives; many settled in Peru. And a few adventurous freedmen made their way to other shores.

  It was a horrible fate, which I would wish on no one. Yet I found myself thinking of the vampire tree my father had encountered years ago, in Beijing; it had been a gift for a princess, sent from South America. Had it come from Peru?

  “It might be for the best,” I said, “if Xu Shengdian is kept away from your daughter until we’re certain he means no harm.”

  “Li-lin,” Ginny said. “When you find out who murdered that little girl, what do you intend to do?”

  “Avenge her,” I said without hesitating.

  She hugged me again. “Please let me go,” I said.

  She released me and gave me a warm smile. “I should say good night.”

  “Wait,” I said, “before you go, let me make a protective talisman for your daughter.”

  “What kind of talisman?”

  “A simple effigy, a paper figure resembling her, with her Eight Details, so any hex aimed at her will mistake the paper for your daughter.”

  Ginny stiffened, and looked at me with fear in her eyes. “You want the details of my daughter’s name and birth,” she said.

  I nodded. “To keep her safe, Ginny.”

  She gazed at me, her eyes flitting around, yet always settling back on me. I could not understand the emotions, decisions, and fears that seemed to afflict her. What did she have to be afraid of? “Ginny, I will protect Hua, not endanger her.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Li-lin,” she said. “Perhaps later.”

  “Ginny, it’s a simple spell. It will help keep her safe.”

  Without another word, my boss’s wife stood up. “Ginny, please,” I said, “I just want to protect your daughter.” She did not acknowledge me at all. She just walked to the door, and left me alone in my dim chamber. I could find no logic behind her refusing the protection spell. What was Ginny hiding?

  Changing into a simple cotton nightgown, I performed a quick abbreviated version of my nightly prayers and qigong exercises, then lay down on my cot. The straw stuffing had picked up a slight musty smell, thanks to San Francisco’s damp air. I’d need to replace the straw soon. Buy some straw soon, I told myself, but then I forgot what I’d been thinking and heard the whisper-rasp of my own breathing. I slept.

  In dreams I walked through the woods at night. I knew it was a dream, and I strode confidently, sword in hand. My husband carved the peachwood and gave me the sword, and it made me strong; holding it in my dream I felt invincible. With it I could dismember giant snakes, decapitate demons, and impale—

  I slipped. Tried to balance myself, but my feet slid forward, an oily substance beneath my shoes. Discombobulated, I bent forward, but that led me to nearly topple face-first to the ground. I lurched back, flailing my arms in stupid panic. I twisted to the side, trying to right myself, to arrest the momentum that started me falling first one way then another, then another, flopping about awkwardly as striped bass on the dry land. It was ridiculous but in my dream I could not regain my centerline. I teetered to one side, overcompensated, floundered to the other. I could find no firm footing with the liquid smeared on the ground beneath my feet.

  In my dream the smell of iron hit me while I bobbed and wobbled. Blood. My feet were sliding because the ground was awash with warm blood. I tripped forward, tried to straighten out, stumbled back, staggered forward again. The greasy blood-puddle beneath my feet was too slippery. Even as my spine drew upright, I slid to the side. Skated involuntarily straight at the outstretched branch of a tree. Ducked under it, but ducking made me bend forward, lose my footing further. I tried, tried, tried, tried to regain my balance, but the wet blood flowing beneath me kept me swaying, off-center, desperately struggling for equilibrium.

  My dream was turning red. Blood everywhere. Where had all this blood come from? Whose blood was it? The answer was obvious: it was my mother’s blood, rivering out of her body once again, the blood that had spilled on my hands when I tried to force her life – and her insides – back inside her. It was the blood that filled a sea in Hell. It was my husband’s blood, spilling out onto the street as he died once again. It was my father’s blood, streaming from the socket of the eye he’d sacrificed for me as if he was weeping viscous red tears.

  Blood consumed my dream, and the Blood Dream overwhelmed me. As it had so often before. How bold I might be, how strong, if only I had somewhere I could stand, a place to plant my feet without the open wounds of my life’s traumas oozing wetly beneath my feet. Instead, in my dream, all I could do was lurch one way and then another, forever losing my footing, always off-balance, my feet splashing and sliding through the spillage of all my history’s losses.

  Nothing could wash all that blood away. It flooded my world. The Blood Dream even stained the sky. Somehow I remembered the Great Yu, who managed to put his world back together after floods had destroyed it. How had he done that? What power allowed him to bring back a world after its loss? Was such a thing even possible? All I could do was succumb to the flood, fall and drown in the rising sea of blood.

  Waking in my cot, alone in the dark, I could not breathe, because a sinewy, spidery, skeletal creature had wrapped its thin bones around my face and was sucking my life away.

  THIRTEEN

  A bony creature the size of a small animal clamped down on my face. For an itchy, confining, terrified instant, I stiffened into a paralysis of shock and horror, but an instant later this same fear drove my fingers to clutch at the skeletal thing. My fingers gripped around its spine and between its ribs, ripped it off my face, leaving scratches, and hurled it to shatter against the hard wooden wall of my bedchamber.

  There were others. Clicks and clacks accompanied their motions in the darkness, and for a moment I thought of a dining table where human corpses feasted in silence, the only sound the clatter of their chopsticks as they closed around eyeballs, worms, and insects.

  I wanted to scream, but instead I drew myself to a crouching position, staying careful to keep the grotesque moving shadows in front of me. A few thin scrapes along my face stung, but had not bled. I rolled off my cot and allowed my momentum to spring me up toward my makeshift altar, where I grabbed a red candle and quickly lit it so I could see my surroundings.

  The bone-cats pawed in, through my window, moving in rickety pairs. They were jagged, asymmetrical things, misshapen skeletons missing parts. Their bones had been reassembled, twined together with red strings to approximate cats, but it was clear their maker was no expert in anatomy; legs bent the wrong way, and some of the skeletons had more than four legs. One bone-cat had two heads mounted to the same body, their fanged jaws snapping shut in sync, while another had a skull in front and a second neck and skull protruded from its hindquarters, where a tail should have gone. Another
was far too long, its ribcage seemingly unending, with a second pair of hindlegs behind the normal pair, and a third pair after that, giving the whole creature a sinuous, serpentine appearance as it skittered across my floor, staggering on four mismatched pairs of legs. The brokenness of their movement reminded me of cockroaches, and I shuddered.

  These undead cats clearly were following some kind of command; they proceeded in orderly pairs in a manner which would be alien to any feline in control of its own actions.

  They’d climbed in through my window. Outside the entire building, a fringe of my talismans surrounded us with protective spells, yet these undead cats did not collapse into heaps of disenchanted bone. The magic that made them move was stronger than mine.

  My instinct was to flee, escape the room, but I wasn’t sure what other harm these undead creatures might do. Was my boss in danger? His wife? His little daughter?

  Along the wall I had mounted a rectangular piece of black iron, about two feet long and four inches high, which I used in hand-hardening, iron-palm exercises. I grabbed the iron and swung it low, at the nearest bone-cat, smashing it to limbs and vertebrae. Its scattering of bones continued to twitch.

  That meant the magic that animated them was preserving them in their current state, not alive, not dead, even after the bones had been beaten apart.

  I wished I could see better, but even the one candle-flame created a hazard; any lit lamp or candle could get knocked over, sending fire raging through the wooden sleeping quarters.

  Click. Crawl. Clack. Skitter. Wrench. Twitch. The bone-cats clambered toward me, their neat pairs closing in, a semicircle around me.

  Pairings and circles . . . . I imagined what they would look like from above, arrayed around me in an arc; the counterattack was clear. I needed a weapon that swung in a circle. My rope dart would suffice.

  I dropped the iron bar, retrieved my rope dart from the hook I’d hung it from, and hurled it forward once with a snap of my wrist. It speared straight between the empty eye sockets of one bone-cat, knocking the skull from its neck, and I yanked the weight back toward me and used its momentum to set it spinning, faster and faster, a whirl in the dim chamber.