The Girl with Ghost Eyes (11 page)

“Trapping it with all its hunger and madness,” I said in a soft voice. I sat in a flood of emotions.
That
had been the monster that tried to kill us? I had destroyed the spirit of a tortured animal.

Father spoke again. “A quanshen isn’t a spirit, Ah Li. It’s a weapon. Somewhere out there, someone is practicing bad magic. Someone took that dog’s blood and wrote my name in ghostscript. I don’t know how long ago that dog was killed. It could have been yesterday, and it could have been twenty years ago. Today someone burned the quanshen’s talisman and unleashed the monster, with all its madness and rage. It came here today to kill me, but my talismans destroyed it.”

His talismans? It seemed I would gain no face from destroying the monster, because I had used my father’s talismans to do it. I sighed.

Father heard, and gave me a penetrating look. He was quiet for a few moments. “When I am well,” he said, “I will perform the ritual of Third Ordination.”

My eyes went wide with surprise, and my jaw may have dropped. I was so excited that I had to look down, to avoid embarrassment. “Thank you, Father,” I said, “I will endeavor to honor the Maoshan lineage.”

“You had better,” he said.

I nodded, proud and grateful. “Father, I will find out what Liu Qiang is planning, and put a stop to his plans.”

“Plans?” Father asked.

“You think a sorcerer is helping him,” I said. “They must be trying to get you out of the way in order to work some powerful magic.”

His gaze was stern. “Of course,” he said, looking away and blinking too fast, as he always does when he’s lying. “I had thought of that.” I lowered my head so he would not see me smiling. “Something greater is taking place. Nothing has been right in Chinatown since I returned from the gold mine and found you out of body.”

“You were coming home from a gold mine?”

“Yes,” he said. “Mr. Wong is working on an auspicious project. There is an old gold mine in Sacramento. Twenty years ago the mine caved in and trapped thirty Chinese miners. They died there. Now Mr. Wong is exhuming their corpses and sending their bones to be buried in China.”

“Buried with their ancestors.”

He nodded. “They were exhuming the corpses when a monster attacked them in the dark.”

“What sort of monster?”

“A jiangshi,” he said. “Power flowing through the minerals in the ore must have touched the final breath of one of the corpses, sparking it into undeath.”

“Father, you do not mean—a gan jizi?”

“No, Ah-Li, not a plague-carrier. Simply a walking corpse, mindless and blind.”

I shuddered. Dead men walk stiffly, and they compensate for their blind eyes by sensing the energy in your breath. I could hardly imagine how it must have been for Father, down there in the dark, holding his breath while hunting the dead man.

“I do not imagine it was too much trouble for you, Father, a single jiangshi.”

“It was not,” he said.

“The corpses have been down there for decades,” I said. “Did Mr. Wong tell you why he decided to undertake this now?”

Father lowered his eyes. “Mr. Wong did not tell me himself,” he said. “His son gave me the assignment.”

I stared. “Tom Wong sent you to Sacramento to fight a monster? On the same day that he came to the temple with Liu Qiang?”

Father tried to shrug, but the brace interfered. “Mr. Wong is doing an auspicious deed, Ah Li,” he said. “Can you imagine these dead men? Their corpses have been neglected for far too long. Mr. Wong is a great man, to care for them now.”

“But why now, Father?”

“It does not matter.”

“Why would Tom Wong send you on a mission to help dead men, and then send me on a mission to the world of spirits?” I stopped speaking for a few moments. “What if Tom is gathering these corpses for his own purposes?”

Father’s frown had deepened while I spoke. “What could it mean, Father?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Why would Liu Qiang’s ambush be timed so that you wouldn’t be there to protect me? What could he and Tom want with thirty corpses?”

Father huffed and grunted. “You do not understand these matters, Ah Li,” he said. “No sworn brother of the Ansheng tong would point his sword in my direction.”

I started to speak, but he raised a finger. “Respect your elders, Ah Li,” he said, “and be silent.”

I endured Mrs. Wei’s glare and Dr. Wei’s exasperation as I made my way out of the infirmary and onto Dupont Street, where horse-drawn carriages clopped and clattered down the wide road. My next stop would be Bai Gui Jiang Lane. I needed to speak with Mr. Wong.

13

“Li-lin! Are you all right? How is your father?” The eyeball spirit came after me, running on his tiny milk-white legs.

I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to hear his voice. He was sort of a friend of mine, but he was still a monstrous thing, and it was my duty to destroy him.

“What’s wrong?” he called. “Can’t you hear me?”

I turned to face him. “I hear you, monster,” I said. “And I will exorcise or destroy you. But not today.”

He took a step back, looking shocked. “Very well,” he said. “I am to be destroyed. So where are we going now?”

I just stared at him, baffled. “Don’t you want to live, Mr. Yanqiu?”

“Well, yes,” he said, “of course. But fulfilling my duty is more important than living. I thought you would understand that.”

“And what is your duty?”

“To save you.”

The words struck like rain, profound and unexpected. To save me. That had been Father’s command, the writing immutable on his talisman. He made this spirit from his eye, and he gave it one overwhelming drive.
Save Xian Li-lin.
Nothing else would ever be so important to the eyeball spirit as that simple command. So he saved me when I was trapped in the world of spirits, and as long as he existed he would go on trying to fulfill that duty, again and again.

Saving me was the sole purpose of Mr. Yanqiu’s life.

The notion made me dizzy. In my life, no one had wanted to protect me, except my husband. After he died, there was no one who would protect me anymore. He was a man who protected everyone. It became my duty to protect them in his stead.

And here was this little monster, the spirit of my father’s eyeball. He was small and prissy and ridiculous. He had no power to speak of. But it didn’t matter. Because nothing mattered to him, except keeping me safe.

“Come on,” I said, and held out my hand to lift Mr. Yanqiu to my shoulder.

Mr. Wong had his headquarters in the back room of a restaurant on Bai Gui Jiang Lane. The alley got its name because there was a white grocer there who could speak Chinese. The name meant White Devil Speaks.

I was walking to Bai Gui Jiang Lane when two constables approached me. The first was a young man with short hair the color of straw, and he carried himself with a pitying demeanor: he felt sorry for me. “You contract girl?” he asked in English.

Anger washed over me, a feeling cold and sharp as a dagger in the gut. He thought I was a whore. I wanted to correct him, demand respect, and make sure he never assumed such a thing about a Chinese woman again. I felt my mouth begin to contort into a snarl, but there were more important matters than my loss of face. I stopped myself from lashing out. I had no time for this.

“Velly solly,” I said. “No speakee Engrish.”

He gave a grim smile. “Y’unnerstood me,” he said. “So? Areya or aintcha?”

“Bobby,” said the other constable, in a serious tone. He was older, and he had a red-brown mustache that matched his red-brown mutton-chop sideburns. “Bobby, that’s Lily Chan.”

I stiffened in surprise at the name the English-language papers gave me after my husband’s death. I looked at the older man, examining his features carefully. I didn’t know him.

“Oh, g’day, Miss Chan,” the younger constable said, tipping his round cap. His face betrayed all the predictable feelings; he looked respectful, apologetic, and very uncomfortable. “I heard. About what happened. I, um, I’m sorry. Ya know, sorry, uh, for your loss.”

“Thank you,” I said in English, “and good day to you, Officers.” I turned and walked away.

A few minutes later I joined the line to wait outside Hung Sing Restaurant and Boarding House. Workers joined the boarders at Hung Sing to eat together at long tables. A poor substitute for having a family, but still far better than eating alone.

Mr. Wong owned Hung Sing, of course. He owned my father’s temple and Dr. Wei’s infirmary. He owned apartment buildings that would accept tenants without family connections. He bankrolled his philanthropy by running gambling halls, opium dens, and brothels, but the tong’s good works more than made up for it. The unimportant people, the outsiders, looked to the Ansheng tong for protection, and for community. There were a lot of us, and the Ansheng’s community mattered more than its illicit activities.

Father had told me that Mr. Wong spent his days in a room at the back of Hung Sing, meeting with his 438s. The 438s are the officials of the Ansheng, the men who run specialized branches of the larger organization. Father had been invited to the back room a number of times, and still boasted about it.

Delicious smells came from the restaurant. Fish fried in sesame oil. Pork and onions grilled in a plum sauce. I could almost taste the anise and cloves in the five-spice powder. The aroma of steamed rice made me hungry. I had to abstain from rice and other grains if I wanted my magic to function at its best. But the smell still made my mouth water.

“Will I be able to go in?” my father’s eye asked me.

I shook my head. “Father has hung his talismans over the door of every Ansheng tong building, Mr. Yanqiu. That’s part of what Father does. He keeps people safe from spirits.”

“He keeps the Ansheng tong safe from spirits, you mean,” the eye on my shoulder said.

I shrugged, just to watch him wobble.

A few minutes later I had advanced to the front of the line. Leaving Mr. Yanqiu behind, I entered Hung Sing.

The men in the dining area seemed so happy, gathered in crowds. They were strangers who came here from all over China. They came without families; they came without influence. If they had hailed from a respectable region, they would be eating with the Six Companies, not the Ansheng, but that’s what a tong is for. It’s a community of people who have no one.

I looked around the room for a moment, taking in the aromas of food. The men sat in simple wooden chairs, eating boiled alfalfa and duck soup with glassy noodles. They talked and laughed together. Hung Sing was bustling with the noise of happiness. I felt an old, sad longing. I wanted to be part of it, to participate in their family, but I couldn’t. Those who were superstitious would fear me. The others would see me as an available woman, and pursue me. No one would welcome me, a friend at their table.

Even here, in Hung Sing, I was an outsider.

I strode through the restaurant and went into the hallway in back.

The hallway was not what I expected. It was dim in the hall, hot and damp. A stale smell of sweat and musk clung to the air. There were narrow doors on each side. Some of the doors were closed, and some were ajar. From the closed rooms I heard animal sounds, grunts and moans.

I looked into an open door. Inside was a narrow room, with a bamboo chair, a washbowl, and a matted bed. A woman stood at the room’s wicket window, wearing a plain peasant blouse and skirt. I noticed that she was barefoot. There was an odor of staleness and salt in the air. She called out to the alley in a tired voice. “Two bits to look, four bits to feel, six bits to do,” she said.

Twenty-five cents, fifty cents, or seventy-five cents toward paying off her contract with Mr. Wong.

I shuddered. I would not be able to bear that woman’s life.

I raced down the hall and burst through the door at the other end.

Mr. Wong stood at the back of a large room, flanked by a pair of bodyguards. He was feeding a parrot in a cage, and the two bodyguards stepped in between him and me, drawing their weapons.

Pistols.

On the street, tong warriors carry nothing that constables could definitely identify as a weapon. A gangster caught with a hatchet will claim he cuts wood for a living, and a woodcutter will support his claim. A gangster caught with a knife will claim he’s a cook, and a restaurant owner will vouch for him. None of the Chinese would carry guns in the street.

But here, in the privacy of Mr. Wong’s chamber behind Hung Sing, two men pointed their guns at me.

I hate guns. Seeing them pointed at me made me afraid, the way a small child might be afraid. I wanted to mewl and beg for protection. I wanted to cower and hide under a table until the guns were gone.

Mr. Wong was wearing a bulky black shirt with a silver badge shining on the lapel. He had thin lips and a heavy face, but more than that, Mr. Wong had gravity, like a planet. Little people, people like me, like bodyguards, had a choice: we could enter Mr. Wong’s orbit, or we could crash against him.

“Step aside, little brothers,” said Mr. Wong. “Let me get a look at her.”

Still cautious, still aiming their pistols at me, Mr. Wong’s bodyguards stepped aside, and then he looked me up and down.
Mr. Wong’s lips twitched when his eyes reached my feet. “Big,” he said simply, and somehow I felt repulsive.

I started to speak, but the younger bodyguard caught my eye. Recognition dawned on me. I knew the bodyguard. Hong Xiaohao and I had learned English together, at the Mission. Later, after my husband died, Xiaohao wanted to court me, but I was determined to remain a chaste widow. It had cost me much to choose a life of loneliness. Xiaohao had been one of the few who looked past my odd eyebrows and big feet; when he looked at me, he saw more than the exorcist’s daughter, more than the young widow. And I had rejected him.

Xiaohao’s eyes were always relentlessly bland, but his mouth revealed all those things other men express with their eyes. If he curled the edges of his lips one way, it meant he was feeling haughty; a slight difference in the lip-curl meant he was feeling shy. And right now, his lips were giving me a warning.

“Have a contract drawn up,” Mr. Wong told his older bodyguard, and turned back to his parrot. Facing the bird, he said, “Three years. Thirty percent less than usual on account of the feet.”