Page 20 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
“I’ve never seen her before. I would swear that by any grave, temple, or god,” Mercy said, and meant it. “Honestly, boss, I think she was making it up to try and put us off-balance.”
Cobra Lily said nothing, jaw clenched tight. Outside the car window, the city slid by in a blur of concrete and electric lights.
“The woman was barely thirty,” Mercy said. “Kit Ling was born at the end of the war, years after I was already in Kowloon. How could we have met? Unless she knows something I don’t.”
“She certainly knows more than you,” came the clipped reply. “How the fuck did you miss all those deaths? A mass-murdering ghost, demon, whatever it is, right under our noses? Your ignorance and failure have humiliated me.”
“We don’t even know if what she said was true.” Mercy was acutely aware of how unwise it was to argue with her boss, yet her mouth wouldn’t shut. “A folder of dead strangers. It could mean nothing. I need time to look through this first—”
“Time?” Cobra Lily hissed, eyes narrowing. “We haveone weekto find a monster which has eluded us for an entire year, and deal with it. Even then, the fate of Kowloon may still be sealed. You were in charge of handling ghosts for me, and this is entirely your failure!”
Mercy swallowed a comeback that would have got her shot, and instead bowed her head with a humility she didn’t feel. “Boss, I can fix this.”
“Can you?Can you?” Cobra Lily’s voice rose, far too loud for the small space in their little vehicle. “You cannot even fix yourself. Hallucinations and panic attacks. A faulty memory that never healed. Now a prolific and dangerous ghost is found to be operating under your nose. I should have seen it sooner. You are a disaster, Mercy Chan, and your chaos threatens everything I have built!”
Mercy said nothing, holding her peace. It was best to let Cobra Lily’s fires burn themselves out.
After a few moments, her boss took a ragged breath and said, “Do you have any ideas or leads, at least?”
A good sign, if Cobra Lily was still asking for her advice.
“I do, actually,” Mercy said, because something had been niggling in her brain. “Ghosts like this don’t come from nowhere. If it is a ghost, sneaking into people’s bathrooms and drowning them, then I suspect someone dug the spirit up and inflicted it on Kowloon. Kit Ling herself, maybe? Just to give her an excuse to demolish the neighborhood.”
“I suppose that is possible,” Cobra Lily said, with grudging approval. “Where would she have found such a creature, though?”
Mercy tugged on a lip. “Kit Ling herself said there are many ghosts locked in specially built vaults beneath the Murray Building, which is what makes me suspicious. Sentient and nasty ones, who were used in the war. By her own admission, she has access to them.”
“That was years ago, Chan. Surely they’d have faded by now!”
“It only takes one,” Mercy said, shrugging. “A strong ghost will endure for as long as it remains angry. I’ve heard of stranger things.”
When her boss still frowned uncertainly, Mercy added, “Let me ask around. I have old friends who might know something. I’ll report to you tomorrow evening with what I’ve found.”
“You’d better,” her boss said, curtly.
The rest of their trip home passed in frigid silence.
7THE MAN WHO KNOWS EVERYONE
Thirty-three years ago…
Kowloon Walled City is an experience.
Half an hour after Mei Chi arrives at the Walled City, someone tries to rob her, only to give up in disgust when they realize she has nothing at all to steal. Her bracelet is so small, so cheap, it doesn’t even register to a thief.
Later, two men try to drag her into an alley, pawing at her dress. The fact that she is covered in Li Fan’s blood doesn’t deter them. The first one she kicks so hard between the legs that he faints, the refrainCatch himrunning through her head. The other man rips out a fistful of her hair before she manages to escape.
After that, she lurks in open spaces, afraid of the side alleys and quiet streets. Afraid of every man or stranger.
A bad day, certainly.
Then nighttime comes, and that is worse.
At first, Mei Chi feels cautious relief at seeing the streets empty. Children dart indoors, called inside by uneasy parents. Adults run from work or errands, fleeing home. Even pickpockets and tough men and phoenix girls are nowhere to be seen, having disappeared to houses where they peer out anxiously from spirit-warded windows.
Before long, the only people left on the Walled City streets are the drunk, the opiate-fuddled, and the homeless. Alone in the quiet, she finds a doorway to crouch in, dirty and still famished, desperate enough to drink from a rancid puddle on the concrete steps. It tastes the way sewage smells, and upsets her belly.
By the time she looks up again, it is fully dark.
