Chapter 34

Driving into the Yunshui villas, Ning Shu felt as though a whole age had passed. She had lived here three years in the last life, on other people's charity, and nobody had wanted her.

Coming back now, she had none of the old unease, none of that feeling of not knowing what was coming.

Every step she took now was steady and sure and her own.

The car stopped at the door of the Ning house, and Ning Hengtao had the servants carry the luggage up to the rooms.

Her uncle looked the place over. "Sister, your house is enormous. It's bigger than the Zhu place, and they're the richest family in our village."

Her aunt dug him with her elbow to stop him showing them up, and said under her breath, "There's no comparing them."

Ning Hengtao did not mind, and took them all inside.

The moment Ning Shu came through the door, a baby's crying broke out in her ears, hard enough to tear something.

Her feet stopped where they were, and at the same moment Gouwa shivered all over and said, "It's cold."

It was the hottest part of the summer, the air conditioning was on, and Gouwa had gooseflesh everywhere.

Ning Hengtao told the housekeeper at once to turn the temperature up, and Ning Xiaohu, who had been on the sofa with a game and a bag of snacks, came running over and snatched the remote out of her hand and shouted, "It's boiling. You're not turning it off."

Ning Hengtao said, "Be good. Your brother's cold. Put it up a little."

"I won't. I won't."

Ning Xiaohu had started middle school too, and in the years since she had seen him he had got a great deal worse.

"It doesn't matter," Gouwa said, being decent about it. "I'm not cold."

Ning Xiaohu lay back down across the sofa, round all over, with the fat of his cheeks very nearly closing his eyes.

Set against Ning Xiaohu, who had to win and had to have his way, Ning Shu was far closer to Gouwa than to the brother she shared blood with. They had grown up together, and that counted.

Gouwa might make mischief and mess about sometimes, but where Ning Shu was concerned he had meant what he said. He treated her as his own sister, saved anything good to share with her on the quiet, and put her first in everything.

At dinner Ning Xiaohu seemed to have taken against Gouwa particularly. Whatever Gouwa reached for, Ning Xiaohu went for the same dish.

"Xiaohu. Mind your manners," Ning Hengtao said sharply.

Ye Furong stroked his head, doting on him. "Don't mind him, Brother. His grandmother's spoiled him."

Her uncle said at once, "It's nothing. He's only a child."

Her aunt asked, "Where's Ningning's grandmother? We haven't seen her."

Ning Hengtao explained. "Mother eats in the shrine downstairs in the evenings. She doesn't come to the table with us."

Ning Hengtao had told Ning Shu about it on the way. For three years the old woman had been hunting out masters everywhere and spending whatever it took to find a way to live longer and put off the year of her death.

Lately she had brought a god into the house and set it up in the basement, and the basement had become a shrine. The old woman had gone very strange with it. She ate and slept down there and would not let anyone in, and nobody knew what she did all day.

Ning Shu thought that as long as she stayed quietly in the basement and did not come up and make trouble, it suited everyone.

She turned her head and saw Gouwa staring hard at the braised chicken necks on the dish. He had always loved chicken necks, and there was hardly a braised-meat shop in the town he had not been round.

Chicken necks are not easy to come by, though. It is mostly duck necks the shops sell, and Gouwa could not get any flavour out of a duck neck. There was no accounting for it.

Her grandmother used to say that a liking for chicken necks was a good sign. A cock crowing means the light is coming, and ghosts fear the living warmth that comes with the sun, so the moment they hear a cock they run. A cock is the thing they fear most.

There might be something in Gouwa's odd taste after all.

So Ning Shu put the last chicken neck on the dish into his bowl.

Ning Xiaohu's chopsticks came across at the same moment to lift it out of Gouwa's bowl, and Ning Shu blocked him.

"Eat it." Ning Shu gave Gouwa a look, and Gouwa grinned and set to with enjoyment, and did not forget to pull a face at Ning Xiaohu while he did it.

That was more than Ning Xiaohu would take. He threw his chopsticks down, put his bowl down and started howling. "I want a chicken neck. I want a chicken neck."

Ye Furong said, "You don't like chicken necks."

"Don't care. Don't care. I want one."

"I'll have Auntie Zhang make you chicken necks tomorrow." Ye Furong stroked his head.

"No. I want one now." Ning Xiaohu was shouting the house down. "That country boy ate my chicken neck. Throw him out. Throw him out."

"Where are your manners?" Ning Hengtao was angry. "Stop that crying."

But the father carried no weight at all, and Ning Xiaohu only cried harder, and Ye Furong gave Ning Hengtao a push and said crossly, "Don't shout at Huhu."

Ning Xiaohu went on and on until Ning Shu could not stand the noise.

And then Ning Shu saw a little girl in red come skipping over to the table and put both hands over her own ears.

Ning Yuanzi.

She mouthed at Ning Shu, So noisy.

Ning Shu pulled a face at her, and Ning Yuanzi understood her, went up to Ning Xiaohu and pinched his mouth shut.

Ning Xiaohu stopped at once, with a noise still working away in his throat, and when Ning Yuanzi let go his mouth might have been glued shut. Nothing came out of it but that noise.

"Xiaohu. Xiaohu, what's the matter? Don't frighten Mummy."

Ning Xiaohu had both hands at his own throat, trying with everything he had to speak, and nothing came, and his face went red.

Ning Shu enjoyed it enormously. Still making trouble in front of me. That'll teach you.

She hid her mouth and laughed, and Gouwa laughed with her until her aunt gave him a look and he stopped.

He caught Ning Shu's eye, and neither of them needed to say anything.

Ye Furong panicked and told Ning Hengtao to ring for an ambulance.

Ning Xiaohu kept pointing at his own mouth, frantic, and could not get a word out.

The ambulance came at last, there was a great deal of running about, and Ning Hengtao and Ye Furong went off to the hospital with Ning Xiaohu, and the house finally went quiet.

Even the servants looked pleased about it.

So Ning Xiaohu was not popular here either.

---

Ning Shu finished her dinner at her leisure and went up to her room, and Gouwa came slipping in after her. "Sis, that little girl in red. What is she to you? I've seen her in this house a few times now, and she smiles at me."

Ning Shu was about to say that strictly speaking the girl was his niece, and took it back before it was out. Say that, and knowing Gouwa he would not leave it alone until he had the whole of it.

"She's a little ghost. We get on."

Gouwa nodded, thinking about it. "What she did just now was very satisfying."

Ning Shu touched the black drop at her neck. It was nearly three years since she had seen Ning Tuanzi, and there was no knowing when he would wake.

She missed him, in fact.

For three years she had fed the black stone a drop of blood from her fingertip every day, and little by little it had gone blacker all through, and the shine on it was better than it had been.

Ning Shu had a feeling it would not be long now.

By her grandmother's account Ning Shu was the phoenix of the ninth heaven, and a phoenix's blood is a precious thing. Fed on a drop of it a day, there was no telling what Ning Tuanzi would be when he woke.

---

That night her uncle and aunt got Gouwa and Ning Shu together to talk it over. They would go and look at flats tomorrow, and the moment they had one and had it straight, they would move out.

Ning Shu nodded, and said to her aunt, "I'd like to board at school for the first term. Then you and my uncle can find work without having to think about looking after me."

Gouwa said at once, "I'll board as well."

"That's not a bad idea," her uncle said. "Board for a term, and once the flat and the work are settled you can move back in."

Ning Shu went on, "And we don't want to rent. We should buy. I've got enough saved for the deposit on a big flat near the school, and the payments every month won't be a problem either."

Ning Shu also told her uncle and aunt not to look for anything too hard on them. She had savings now, a good deal of them, and enough to keep the whole family in the city.

Her uncle and aunt knew Ning Shu had learned her grandmother's trade and would come to something, so they agreed to it.

That was the first night in the city, and Ning Shu slept surprisingly well.

The things she had set herself were coming true one piece at a time, and nothing ahead of her was going to get in the way.

She was going to be a great master and make a great deal of money, and give her own people and everyone she cared about a better life, and keep them safe from anyone who might push them about.

And just as Ning Shu was drifting off, the bedroom door went click and opened.

Ning Shu was still half under when a low voice came at her ear. "Sis."

Ning Shu jerked awake and found Gouwa standing bolt upright in front of her.

"What?"

Gouwa looked out of the door, shivered, shut it, and said in her ear with great mystery, "I've seen a ghost."

Said to anybody else that would have stood the hair up on their arms. Ning Shu did not move. She knew Gouwa's constitution was peculiar and that he saw these things often.

Ning Shu rolled over and said lazily, "So you've seen one. Take no notice. With all the chicken necks you've eaten there's nothing a ghost can do to you."

"That's not it." Gouwa showed no sign of going. He sat down on the edge of her bed. "It's a girl, and she was crying her heart out right in front of me."

"Then comfort her."

Gouwa lost patience and hauled Ning Shu up. "I'm not joking. She really was crying, and there's more than one of them. Several. One under the bed, one squatting on the wardrobe, and one lying on my bed."

"I'm telling you something serious here."

"Listen to the mouth on you." Ning Shu caught him by the ear. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

Gouwa pulled a face and yelped. "You. You're the boss, Boss Ning. All right?"

"Hm."

"Boss, can I make up a bed on your floor tonight?"

Gouwa had driven off whatever sleep Ning Shu had left, and she said, with no sweetness in it, "It isn't as if you've never seen a ghost. What are you frightened of?"

Gouwa scratched the back of his head. "The ones I've seen before were on their own, and I could look at them and act as though I hadn't. But just now. God. Four or five of them, all crying. I couldn't sleep through that."

Ning Shu gave him a look of distaste and lay back down. "You're how old, and you still want to sleep in your sister's room? Go on, off with you. Don't interrupt my body clearing itself out."

"Sis." Gouwa's voice had begun to shake, and Ning Shu would not open her eyes, so he pulled her quilt off. "Sis."

Ning Shu sat straight up. "Ye Yingjun, I'm warning you…"

She did not finish. Following where Gouwa was looking, she saw that the bedroom door, which had been shut, had opened a crack.

Outside it was black and formless, and in the dark, in that crack, something seemed to be crouching. And then the small sound of crying came through.

"Mother of God." Gouwa jumped straight onto Ning Shu's bed and got behind her, the way he had when he was small.

Ning Shu did not hesitate. She caught up the demon-subduing staff from the bedside table and roared, "Tired of living, are you, making trouble in front of Ning Shu?"