Page 1 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
PROLOGUE
Do you like ghost stories, little sister?
Sit down, get comfortable. You haven’t heard this one before.
PART
ONE
1MADAM GHOST TALKER
August 20, 1975
Late afternoon, and the Walled City was a fleshy soup. Human pedestrians slicked past each other in narrow alleys, bodies filmed with sweat. Sad-faced ghosts peered out from corners or hovered on filthy eaves. Steam rose from mildewed gutters, suffusing both living and dead alike.
In among the shifting crowd, Mercy Chan paused at a crossroads, peering down the different alleys and struggling to recall the directions that her boss had given her not an hour before. The district was a maze, even for those who knew it well.
Should have written the directions down, she thought sourly. It was too hot to remember things that weren’t written down.
Every part of Kowloon was layered in shade, but the lack of sunlight brought no relief. The lower levels in particular were full of machineries and factories; they built up heat, like an oven. Mercy was trying not to bake in that dark oven. She tugged at the soggy neck of her plain linen shirt, peeling it from her skin in an attempt to create a little air circulation. But there was no air to circulate, only humidity.
She was supposed to be wearing a triad jacket—white and green, Cobra Lily’s colors, patterned in a snakeskin brocade—but shecould notbe bothered with long sleeves in this heat. Besides, Bao didn’t like her jacket, wouldn’t sit on her shoulder when she wore it. Even less incentive to ever put it on.
Since she’d chosen a regular sleeveless vest, the ghost cat had deigned to accompany her, compacting himself into a white, fluffy-looking bundle of fur. He nestled between the crook of her neck and shoulder, emanating a tiny radius of chilly air. A long tail curled over her upper arm in languid rest. It was a good, safe comfort to know he was there.
Bao opened one bright-red eye, stretched out a claw, and raked her collarbone lightly.
“Stop that!” Clearly, she’d stood in one place too long for his liking. “If you get bored so easily, why do you come with me?”
The ghost cat yawned.
“Some use you are,” she said, affectionate. “Be a good little hunter and find this rogue spirit for me, since you’re in such a hurry.”
Nose twitching, he leaped from her shoulder and began drifting serenely above the sweat-soaked masses. A few people flinched, but most ignored him, recognizing that he was no threat. Main streets like this one were guarded carefully by triad exorcists, and the only ghosts who traveled along it openly were those—like Bao—who had special exemption.
Mercy, who could not float eerily through the air, began shoving her way through the crowd after him. The sooner she got this done, the sooner she could get back to the fan-cooled bliss of her own flat. And have a damn bath.
Kowloon was as much vertical as it was horizontal. She was currently about three levels up on the east side, walking through a warren of noodle-thin “roads” made of metal sheets laid across pipes and struts. Five-foot-nothing and she still had to duck in places beneath low-hanging signs or protruding construction.
Directly beneath her sandaled feet was another street, or possibly the interior of someone’s house. She could hear people moving about on all sides: above, below, around her, for several streets up and down and extending to the sides, pierced with loud clangs from the metalworking shops on the ground level.
Bao appeared to be heading for a particular flat one level up. She could just see it from here. The windows were boarded but an unearthly light seeped from the cracks, visible in the city’s perpetual semidarkness.
“Good job,” she said.
Bao flicked his tail and darted ahead of her. He led her off the main road, up a rickety staircase and down a short alleyway that was devoid of light. Garbage crusted the gutters while rusted, irregularly spaced doorframes sank into the surrounding concrete. Her job never took her to friendly places.
He floated across a narrow gap between buildings; Mercy jumped it with practiced ease. At the end of the alleyway was a pair of doors, almost next to each other. Judging by the number etched into its frame and the eerie light seeping through the cracks, the left door was the one she wanted.
Unfortunately, someone had secured it shut with a chain and a padlock.
“No easy way through there,” she said to the cat. “Perhaps the neighbors can be of help.”
Bao leaped up to sit on her shoulder and curled into an indifferent lump, as if to reply,I did my bit; the rest is your problem now. Which was perfectly true.
She approached the unlocked door. Nobody answered her knock, so she simply pushed it open.
Dilapidation greeted her. A stove, a couch, a folding table, two plastic stools, and a broken TV all crowded for space against one wall, while a narrow pallet took up the opposite side. There was no toilet, no closet, just a few unwashed dishes, and clothes of dubious hygiene in a pile. Like most homes, this one sat in semidarkness; electricity was expensive in Kowloon, and unreliable.
