Chapter 35

"Let me out. Let me go."

"Where is this? It's so dark."

"Mummy. I want my mummy."

Any number of girls' voices crying at once, wound in together, and on a night with no moon and a high wind there was nothing worse.

And all of it, every sob and every wail, stopped the instant the joyful face on Ning Shu's demon-subduing staff threw out its gold light.

"Ha ha ha ha ha."

The great laugh off the joyful face drove the whole howling lot of them away at a stroke.

Ning Shu pushed the door open. The room beyond was perfectly quiet, as though nothing had happened at all and everything she had seen and heard was something she had imagined.

Gouwa, one metre eighty of him, had a hand on the shoulder of Ning Shu, who came up to his chin, and stayed behind her with his face white.

"You see I wasn't lying? There really were a lot of girls. They were lying in wait in my room."

Ning Shu said, "That's what comes of eating all those chicken necks. Now the girl ghosts have come looking for you."

Gouwa was annoyed. "This is no time for jokes."

Ning Shu took no notice of him and walked to the head of the stairs, and the first thing she saw was the little wooden door to the basement, over by the wall.

In the dark, that little door was shut fast.

Something in Ning Shu was uneasy about it, as though there were something behind it that she would not want to meet.

In the end she let Gouwa make up a bed on her floor that night. For all that he was one metre eighty and built like a wall, the boy had less nerve than a mouse. All that muscle wasted.

"Sis, are you asleep?"

"Yes."

"Sis, why is your house haunted?"

"This isn't my house."

"Don't pick at words. What I don't understand is, one or two little ghosts is rare enough, and four or five turn up at once. Did you hear what they said? They said don't eat me. What does that mean?"

"Little brother."

"Mm?"

"Your sister is very tired, and if you don't shut up I'll…"

Ning Shu had not finished the word before Gouwa rolled smartly over. "Night!"

Ning Shu slept well enough that night, and nothing else came looking for her. It most likely did not dare.

---

In the morning Ning Shu washed and went down, and passing the courtyard she heard Ye Furong talking to her aunt.

"Sister-in-law, did Ningning and Yingjun sleep in the same room in the village?"

Her aunt said quickly, "Of course not. Gouwa was in the front house and Ningning in the back."

Ye Furong went on clipping at a potted shrub, as though it were nothing much. "They were in the same room last night."

Her aunt said, "Gouwa told me. He had a nightmare and went and made up a bed on his sister's floor."

"You want to keep an eye on it. They're both grown now, and they're not really brother and sister."

"Gouwa's been close to his sister since they were small. They grew up together. They're closer than any brother and sister."

Ye Furong said, "They aren't even cousins, properly speaking. And even if they were cousins, you'd still want to watch it."

Her aunt's face changed a little, and she said quickly, "Gouwa doesn't know any of it. Don't you bring that up."

"I know. I only care about the children."

Her aunt sighed. "When his grandmother brought him home she said he was some sort of gifted child and he'd come to something. All these years and there's no sign of any gift. He's a daft thing and he's got no nerve. I lost my own baby, and I've raised Gouwa as my own son. He can come to nothing at all and he's still my boy."

Ye Furong saw the subject going somewhere else and said, "Just keep an eye on it. I mean to make Ningning a good match one day, and I don't want any awkwardness."

Her aunt said yes to it, and her face was plainly unhappy.

Ning Shu had heard the talk in the village before, that Gouwa was not her uncle and aunt's own. They said her grandmother had brought him back from a job in Hong Kong.

About where Gouwa came from, her grandmother would say nothing at all. Not if you killed her.

Ning Shu had filled it in for herself. Perhaps Gouwa was the posthumous child of some great family, and because of plots nobody could speak of he had been handed quietly to her grandmother to raise, and one day he would go back and inherit an empire.

All of it was her own invention and she never said any of it aloud. Gouwa did not know, and her uncle and aunt treated him as their own.

Ning Shu came into the sitting room and found Gouwa with a boiled egg, who came up and put a big arm round her shoulders and said, all attention, "Sis, have an egg. I boiled it specially for you."

"Not tonight," Ning Shu said, with no expression.

Gouwa pulled a face. "I haven't said anything yet."

"You stick your backside out and I know…"

He cut her off before she got it out. "Listen to you. A girl, talking like that. The city isn't the village, you know. Boys in the city like a girl to be gentle. You'll never get married."

"Oh, you're advising me now?" Ning Shu sat down on the sofa.

"Sis." Gouwa came up wheedling again. "Sis, your house has got ghosts in it."

"Never mind sis. Your aunt was saying just now that we're too old to sleep in the same room."

Gouwa blinked those dark bright eyes and stared at her for several seconds, then said, "Oh my God."

He went off like a rocket. "What are you thinking? What are you thinking? That's revolting."

Just then her aunt came back from the courtyard. "Furong's put me on to an estate agent. We're going to look at a flat in a while. Do you two want to come?"

"Yes," Ning Shu said. "Of course."

They could hardly look at a flat without a feng shui master.

Gouwa said at once, "I'm coming too."

With Ning Shu gone, he was not staying in that house alone.

He was low the whole way, though, and said nothing, most likely because of what Ye Furong had said. It had got under his skin.

Ning Shu understood it. The two of them had been close since they were small and there had never been a crack in it, and having Ye Furong put a question mark over it like that was bound to sit badly with him.

---

That afternoon the two of them went with her aunt to see the flat.

The agency had given her aunt a good-looking young salesman to show them round.

Ning Shu's eye went to him at once, and not because he was fine-featured and fair. It was that he was fair past what was healthy. He looked faintly ill with it.

A run of bad luck on him.

Though he was genuinely good-looking.

The block was near Jiangcheng Number One, down by the river, and it was a pleasant place, quiet and well planted.

The flat was ready to move into. Somebody had done it up simply and never lived in it, and had put it with the agency to sell.

Four bedrooms and two reception rooms, a big place, done plainly with none of the fuss.

"Now, if you take this flat at two million, in this position, you're getting more than your money's worth. Think about it. City centre, and in the school catchment. Two li east and you're at Jiangcheng Number One. Half an hour south and you're at Jiangcheng Primary. Your son's schooling and your grandson's are both settled. If the seller weren't in a hurry for the money he'd never let it go this cheap."

None of that silver tongue moved her aunt. What did it was being called sister in every other sentence, which settled her very comfortably and put a smile all over her face.

The man looked young. Twenty at the outside. Ning Shu put him at about eighteen, and possibly less.

At first Ning Shu paid no attention to the sales talk. What caught her was what he said next. "The mountain sits north and the door opens south, and the block runs to four floors. The third is the Greedy Wolf, which makes a lucky house, and this flat is on the third. It's a very fortunate place."

Her aunt said, "You read feng shui as well?"

The salesman gave her a good-looking smile. "A little. Small tricks. It helps me scrape a living in this line."

Her aunt said, "Is the flat really as good as that? Ningning, shall we settle on this one?"

Ning Shu thought, my aunt is far too easily led. The man calls her sister a few times warmly and flatters her, and she's ready to sign.

Ning Shu was not so easy. She looked out of the window. There was another block out there.

"There's a tall building to the west, and the Five Ghosts break the Greedy Wolf. The lucky star can't run the house and doesn't come to much."

And at that the salesman finally took notice of her. He looked up, and those black eyes stayed on her.

Ning Shu said, "This flat isn't worth that price. Take another hundred thousand off and you'd still not be losing."

The middlemen who live off the margin are black-hearted about it. There was no knowing how far he had pushed the price up.

The salesman laughed lightly, went to the window and pointed southeast. "This house has no lucky star of its own, but another house has a tall building standing in the southeast and shining on it, and that star is the Heavenly Doctor, which breeds the Military Star. Metal gets its earth, and the shining is better for it. It's a lucky light from outside. Move into this flat and I won't promise you wealth and honours, but a family living safely and smoothly, yes, that I will."

Ning Shu put her head out and looked, and sure enough there was another tall block to the southeast, standing exactly right against this one and answering it.

Her brows drew in slightly. She had meant to show off a little, and instead she had missed something and been laughed at for it.

Were city people all this sharp now? Even the man selling the flat read feng shui?

Better left alone.

And the way the salesman was looking at her had gone deeper, which she did not like.

"All right. Sister, if you genuinely want it, I can take a little more off for you," he said.

Her aunt turned to look at Ning Shu, as though she were the one who decided.

"We'll go away and think about it."

Ning Shu felt rather small, and even Gouwa could not help saying quietly in her ear, "Sis, let's go. This is embarrassing. Whatever you do, don't tell him you're Aunt Hu Ying's granddaughter."

"Aunt Hu Ying?" The salesman's voice went up. "I've long admired Aunt Hu Ying. I'd heard her granddaughter had the heavenly eye open, that the demon-subduing staff had owned her for its master and a judge had cleared the road for her. So that's you."

Ning Shu said, "Damn."

There are only so many people in this world who can open the heavenly eye, and her name had gone round the trade long ago. Everybody knew the Hu family had a granddaughter who would carry on the work.

Any other day Ning Shu might have enjoyed that a little. Just now she could hardly bear to own it.

The salesman looked at her and smiled. "Well, since it's the famous Master Ning, I'll take another twenty thousand off. I can't go lower."

Whichever way Ning Shu heard it, it sounded as though he were laughing at her.

"We'll go home and talk it over." Her aunt rather liked the flat, and rather liked the young man as well.

"Ring me when you've decided." He gave her aunt his card.

On the way back Ning Shu took the card out of her hand. Three characters were printed on it.

Fu Nansheng.