Page 115 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
All in a day’s work, she muttered.What happens after I succeed?
“In what sense?”
I’m still dead, I’m still a ghost. I have no body to return to; I can’t claim my niece’s body again.
“Walk this path one step at a time.” My voice grew soft, my form fading to mist in front of her eyes; the manifestation was dissipating. “You will know what is right, when you see it in front of you.”
Are you sure about that?she said, alarmed.I think you might have too much faith in me for that one, goddess.
No answer. She would have to do without me, for a little while.
Shit, she said.
Grimly, Mercy looked upward at the grate. She rose from the water, reaching up with cautious fingers. It burned with heat, and she winced, withdrawing her hand to a safe distance.
Corporeality was a double-edged sword for ghosts; Mercy had a form that could touch, hold, push, interact. That also meant she had a form which could be trapped or held, as she had been in the barrel. Or in this room.
Her only exit was the grate, on which a talisman of warding had been thickly painted. The fu talisman was on the inside of the cover, so there was no getting around it. If it were on the top, she could perhaps simply have lifted it away.
Mercy ground her teeth in frustration.
In her human skin, fu talismans did nothing against her. As a ghost without a shell, it burned if she came too close. The glyphs were well-formed, large, and painted with a mixture made from blood and sacred ash. Priest-made, andglazed in protective paint, to keep it safe from the damp and humidity. No amateur job.
Even if she could somehow force this grate open through sheer effort, time, and will, the fu talisman would keep her prisoner.
THUNK.
Mercy jerked back.What in heaven…
THUNK.
Another strike. Someone or something was whacking the manhole cover. Another loud clang and then, impossibly, a pair of red maogui eyes peered at her through the small patch of grating in its center.
Bao!she cried out, and he growled in recognition. His claws found their grip in the grating, and with roaring effort, the ghost cat began to lift the cover.
Mercy burst out laughing. The fu talisman had been painted on the underside of the grate, but nobody had painted it on the topside. The fu talisman could keep her in, but it could not keep Bao out.
Siu Yin, or possibly her minions, hadn’t prepared for another ghost coming to help.
Mercy scooped up the wretched shell of her old body with one arm and held it close. Then she jumped, catching the edge with clawed fingers, and hoisted herself like a greased serpent out of the cesspit.
36THE PRICE OF PEACE
August 21, 1975 (Yesterday)
Up. Out. Through. Dragging the battered corpse with her.
Clawing forth onto solid concrete, and out of the pit at last. If she were still human, she’d have been gasping from relief. The best she could manage was a damp wheeze, soggy lungs compressing painfully.
Almost straightaway, she recognized her surroundings: she was in the basement underneath the main triad building. Exposed electrical wires snaked across the low ceiling. Boxes, crates, and other discarded junk cluttered the concrete floor, which was riddled with stagnant puddles. Darkness sat like a heavy cloud, and what wasn’t damp was dusty. Hardly anyone came down here, unless they had to.
But the important thing was that she could see exits. There was a door, albeit locked, and a basement window, the glass smashed in from where Bao entered. Outside, it was raining heavily, water already trickling into the basement window and staining down the walls.
Bao himself was drifting, light and ephemeral, above the filthy floor. He licked her forehead with a chilly tongue, and seemed pleased at having found and rescued her. Again.
Look at you.Mercy reached over and gave the spectral ears a gentle scratch.Following me through hell and back, from one life to the next, one mistake after another. Saving me after I called you a bastard. What did I do to deserve such a friend?
The ghost cat regarded her loftily, as if to suggest there was no answer he could give that she would ever understand. And he was probably right.
