Chapter 27

God, the cat talked.

It's a voiceover, surely.

Don't know. Keep watching.

The black cat said, "This building stands exactly where the living and the dead meet."

Ning Shu had heard her grandmother talk about it. Where the two worlds run into each other is where strange things happen most easily.

Those places do not stay put. They shift with the three cycles and the nine stars, and with the turning of the earth's own field.

The black cat went on, slowly. "This plot became such a place three years ago to the day, counting to when the moon comes round tonight. I have kept it for three years."

Gouwa asked, curious, "You've kept it for three years. Kept it from what?"

"Where the two worlds meet, a person can walk onto the road of the dead. And of course things from the other side can come over here as well. I stay here and stop them slipping across and doing harm."

Ning Shu asked, "So this is a place you can go into and not come out of."

"Yes," the black cat said. "Last time you did not cross over, and that was luck. Now go, and quickly."

Gouwa said, "But my classmate went in. We have to bring him out."

"Nonsense. Nobody comes out of there."

Ning Shu said, "Wei Xiaotian's years aren't up. He took a wrong turning. Why can't he come out?"

"Once you are in there you are not a person any more," the black cat said. "And tonight, when the moon comes round, the three cycles and the nine stars move again and the crack in this place will close. Then my work is done and I go on to the Way. Don't stand in my road."

"If the crack closes, do the people who vanished never come back?"

"Of course."

Gouwa ran to the window. "Sis, the moon's nearly out from behind the cloud."

"I'm going in to bring Wei Xiaotian out," Ning Shu said, and would not move on it.

"This isn't yours to manage." The cat was agitated now. "You've less than an hour before it shuts, and that's leaving aside whether you could even find him once you were in. When the join goes, you stay on the other side for ever. Heavenly eye or no heavenly eye, and whatever you might have come to, you'd be nothing but another wandering ghost on that road."

Ning Shu knew the cat was not saying it to frighten her.

By now the room had gone up.

No. Ningning, don't go in.

Leave it. Get out of there.

This is horrible.

True or not, don't take the risk.

I still want to watch but staying safe matters more.

All of them were telling her not to go in.

Ning Shu counted it off on her fingers. Half a shichen was an hour. That was plenty. Find him and come straight out and it should be fine.

"I'm getting him out, whatever happens. I hope the Warden will make it easy for me."

Ning Shu said to the black cat, "And if I manage it, then any time the Warden is in trouble or in difficulty, come to Ning Shu and I won't refuse."

The black cat sighed. "You are not a creature of this small pond. There's no putting a limit on what you'll come to, and a favour owed by you is well worth having. But the crack is closing. Go in and you can't answer for yourself, and I haven't the power to pull you out."

"The Warden needn't trouble about that. Whatever comes of it is mine to carry."

The cat thought for a moment and gave way at last. "You have less than an hour. And I'll tell you this much more. Once you are in there, don't meddle in what isn't yours to meddle in, don't look at what you don't need to look at, and whatever you do, don't waste time."

"Thank you."

Ning Shu took a stub of white candle out of her bag, lit it and stood it on the basin in front of the mirror, and said to Gouwa, "Mind this candle. Whatever happens, don't let it go out. If it goes out, your own sister won't be able to find the road back."

"Sis, don't worry. While the candle's alive I'm alive, and if the candle dies Gouwa throws himself off the roof."

Then the black cat sprang away from the mirror, and the surface of it began to go cloudy, and a great many figures showed faintly in it.

The black cat said, "Those are the dead. You can go in now."

The whole room was stunned.

Mother of God.

This can't be real.

She's actually going in. That isn't an effect.

And at that moment what looked like hundreds of hands came out of the mirror and took hold of Ning Shu and pulled the whole of her through.

Gouwa panicked and shouted, "Sis!"

The black cat said, "Those are the dead. Nothing suits them better than dragging a living person in to keep them company. That's how the others were taken."

"Then what do we do?"

"You needn't worry. With a sister who can open the heavenly eye, those little ghosts are no match for her."

Sure enough, the moment Ning Shu was through, a crowd of wandering ghosts came round her meaning to strip her to the bone.

Ning Shu was hauled about by the ugly things with her stomach turning over, and she dug about in her bag and got the demon-subduing staff out.

The pack of them backed off at the sight of it, shaking at the four faces on the head of the staff.

Ning Shu swung it and swore. "Get off me. You're disgusting."

Once they had scattered she began to take a look at the world of the dead.

It was much like the world of the living. There were streets and street lights, and even the way it was put together was the same. Ning Shu had just come out of the same building, and if it had not been for the souls drifting about everywhere she would have taken it for the ordinary world.

It was not.

Looking at the world of the living from inside it was like looking through a film of ash. It was grey for ever, and no sun came into it.

Walking the street she could see the ghosts going along on their own, and she could see living people too. She could see them and not touch them. They were solid.

Ghosts are not.

It came back to her then that when she had just died and was walking along the street, the people and the cars had gone straight through her body. So that was what had happened. She had been walking the road of the dead.

Ning Shu went looking for Wei Xiaotian, and the road of the dead was wide and long. There was no telling where the boy had drifted off to.

Ning Shu walked the streets without a plan, and the things around her changed fast, so fast that she did not know where she was.

Then she came to a big house with every light in it burning.

The house looked very familiar.

Ning Shu rubbed her head and thought about it for a long time, and then it came to her. It was Lu Zheng's house.

Only the Lu family had money enough to put a two-thousand-square-metre house in the middle of Jiangcheng, where land costs what it costs.

Ning Shu went in, curious.

A middle-aged woman was sitting in the drawing room, dressed well and plainly, her hair up in a neat coil, turning a teacup in her fingers. "Then I'll trouble you, Master."

Ning Shu knew her. It was Lu Zheng's mother, Jiang Ruxin. Across from her sat a middle-aged man in a suit.

One look and Ning Shu could tell he was in the trade too.

There was something in the way he held himself.

The man said, "Don't worry. What I've done will keep the young master safe for ten years at least."

"And after ten years?" Jiang Ruxin asked quickly.

"After ten years." Master Fang thought a moment and said, "You'd need the blood of a qilin and the tears of a phoenix. Only then will the transfer go on working and the young master live out his life with nothing against him."

Jiang Ruxin frowned slightly. "The blood of a qilin, the tears of a phoenix. What are those?"

Master Fang said, "They're only figures of speech. The qilin's blood is the heart's blood of the boy the harm was transferred onto. That's easy enough. I'll have him found and take it. It's the phoenix's tears that are hard to come by."

Jiang Ruxin said, "And what are the phoenix's tears?"

"A woman's tears. One will do, mixed with the blood and given to the young master to drink."

Jiang Ruxin let her breath out. "That's easy. Find any girl and make her cry."

Master Fang shook his head. "An ordinary woman can't stand in for a phoenix."

"Then."

"The qilin's blood is the most living thing there is, and the phoenix's tears are its opposite, so the woman has to be of that nature herself, and gifted past the common run. The heavenly eye open, able to see gods and ghosts and look into the dark. A woman like that is hard to find in this world."

He went on. "And that isn't all of it. She has to love the young master, and belong to him, and he to her."

Jiang Ruxin was taken aback. "It has to go as far as that?"

"Of course. A phoenix weeps only for love. The phoenix's tears are a lover's tears, and nothing else will shelter him. Her heart has to be given, and given to him, or the tears are only water."

Jiang Ruxin's face went dark. "A woman like that will not be easy to find."

Master Fang said, "Hard, but not impossible. With what the Lu family can command, finding one such woman in the whole country is difficult, and it's a long way short of climbing to heaven."

Jiang Ruxin thought, and then said, hard, "To save my son's life I'll find her, whatever it takes."

Master Fang said, "The transfer is a wicked thing and it does great harm. The young master was born with a short life and I've kept him safe by a wicked art, and the truth is it eats into what I've laid up."

Jiang Ruxin took a cheque out of her bag at once and held it out to him. "There's no repaying what you've done for us. This is a small token from the Lu family."

Master Fang took the cheque and glanced at it, and a satisfied look came over his face. "In that case I'll take my leave. I'll ask about the phoenix's tears among my friends as well."

"Thank you, Master."

Ning Shu did not stay to hear the end of it. She had heard that Lu Zheng was seriously ill, and she went straight upstairs to his room.

There was very little light in it. Lu Zheng lay in the middle of the big blue bed, out cold, his small face white.

"Little Lu Zheng, what's all this? Are you ill? You look properly ill."

Ning Shu sat down on the edge of the bed to enjoy it and patted his solid little cheek. "So this happens to you as well."

She warmed to it and took hold of his cheek and pinched it. "That'll teach you. Shutting me up, bullying me. I'll tell you something. Whoever lives longest laughs last, and that's the truth of it."

"Right, I'll be off."

Ning Shu dusted her hands, thoroughly pleased with herself, and got up to go.

And out of the Lu house she smacked her own forehead.

"God. I nearly forgot what I came for."