Chapter 36

Ning Shu stared at the three characters on the card for a long moment before it came back to her. She had met him.

Three years ago, in the city, when Ning Shu had set up a stall by the river telling fortunes, it was this boy Fu Nansheng who told her how to go about it and got her the first real money of her life. Then he told her to try streaming. If Fu Nansheng had not said what he said, there was no knowing how many wrong roads Ning Shu would have gone down.

But he had been small and thin then, shorter than she was, sallow and underfed and looking as though nothing had ever gone right for him.

And in the years since, the boy had grown up and turned out presentable, and she had not known him.

Fu Nansheng still had that unlucky look, though it did not spoil the face.

Which was neither here nor there.

Ning Shu remembered Fu Nansheng saying once that he had been born on a losing run, that his luck was bad and things always went wrong and he could do nothing well, so all he could be was a vine living off somebody else.

She wondered how he had got on since. By the sound of him today he knew something about feng shui.

Ning Shu wrote his number down. When she had time she would get him out for a talk about old days, and knock the price of the flat down while she was at it.

Her aunt rather liked the flat they had seen. If it could be managed, they would take it.

---

For the next few nights Gouwa stayed in his own room and went to sleep like a good boy and did not come and interrupt Ning Shu's rest.

It may have been what Ye Furong said about the two of them being grown and needing to keep their distance. It seemed to have got through to him that this was not how it had been when they were small, and he could not be as easy with her as he used to.

Ning Shu still saw nothing of the old woman all that week. Once, though, a stranger came to the house, looking like a delivery, and went straight to the little wooden door of the basement and knocked, and handed in a large black sack.

Ning Hengtao had asked the man about it, and got nothing. He dodged and would not say, and Ning Hengtao did not want to press him in case it angered his mother. The truth was that for all they lived under one roof, he had not seen his mother in a long while, and if it had not been for these deliveries and her coming to the door to take them, he might have believed she had died down there.

The old woman carried on like somebody cultivating to be an immortal. She would not come a step out of that basement and would see none of her family. She had shut herself away completely.

---

It happened at breakfast. Ning Xiaohu could not get his way over something, and the iPad in his hands went across the room and caught Gouwa on the temple, and it drew blood at once.

Her uncle and aunt could hardly say anything. Their faces were very bad, and they took Gouwa to the hospital to have it dressed.

Ye Furong said the boy was small and had only been playing, and the Nings would pay for everything, and bought Gouwa a pile of tonics good for the head.

That was what made Ning Shu angry. A brat who is never corrected has no idea how high the sky is. The blood went up over her head, and with the whole family standing there she went over, took Ning Xiaohu by the collar and hit him twice across the face.

Ning Shu had got herself fit these last two years. There was a little definition in her arms and across her stomach that did not show much but was there, so she lifted Ning Xiaohu off the ground easily, and the two slaps were not gentle either. The crack of them went round the whole house.

Two hand-prints came up on Ning Xiaohu's face at once.

His expression changed and his mouth opened and a howl that would shake the walls was on its way, and Ning Shu gave him one look and said, "Shut up."

The force of it stopped him where he stood. The tears stood in his eyes and would not fall, and he was so angry there was very nearly steam coming off him.

That did it. Ye Furong went up and came at Ning Shu with her hands ready. "Who do you think you are, raising a hand to your own brother? You…"

She had not finished when Ning Shu's eyes came round onto her.

"One more word out of you and I'll lay a curse on that precious son of yours that makes the rest of his life worse than dying."

Then Ning Shu walked over to Ning Xiaohu, took hold of a few hairs on his head and pulled them out, and closed her hand round them.

She looked at Ye Furong and said, taking her time, "I learned the proper arts from my grandmother, and what I cultivate is a decent heart. But I've read a good many crooked books over the years as well. Ruining somebody's luck and breaking their fortune is nothing at all to me."

Then she took a paper charm out of her bag, drew on it in cinnabar, and burned the hair and the charm together to ash.

Ye Furong was beside herself and pointed at her. "What. What are you doing?"

"If you don't want your son to fail at everything he touches, and the Ning line to end with him, you'll make him behave."

"I'll tell your grandmother."

"Go ahead." Ning Shu smiled coldly. "See whether she takes any notice of you."

Ye Furong got as far as the door, stood there a long moment, and then came back, hauled Ning Xiaohu up and dragged him in front of Ning Shu. "Go on. Apologise to your sister."

"I won't. I won't." Ning Xiaohu stamped with rage. "She hit me. Mummy, kill her. Kill her for me."

Ye Furong was genuinely frightened now. She took Ning Xiaohu by the collar and hit him twice across the face herself and said, hard, "Apologise to your sister."

Ning Xiaohu could not take it in at all. He held his scarlet face and howled, "I want Grandma. You're all hitting me. I want Grandma to throw the lot of you out."

Ning Xiaohu ran to the basement door and beat on the wood with both hands. "Grandma. Grandma, they're hitting me. Grandma, come out and throw them all out."

He hammered at it for a long time, and the wooden door did not move, and there was not a sound from the basement.

Which was strange. There was nothing the old woman could bear less than her precious grandson being pushed about, and she was sitting through this.

Ye Furong took Ning Xiaohu's wrist and dragged him in front of Ning Shu and shouted, "Apologise to your sister, or I'll beat you."

Ye Furong was properly afraid. Ning Shu had not looked as though she were playing, and if Ning Xiaohu really were to be unlucky and short-lived and the last of the line, how was she supposed to live?

When Ning Xiaohu saw that even his grandmother would not answer him, it got through to him that he had nothing behind him any more. The fight went out of him all at once and he said, sullenly, "Sorry."

Ye Furong put a false smile on with some effort. "He's apologised. Can you lift the curse now?"

Ning Shu said, "Why apologise to me? If he's apologising, he can apologise to my cousin."

A muscle went at the corner of Ye Furong's eye, and she dropped her voice. "Ning Shu, get this straight. This is your own brother. Ye Yingjun isn't even your cousin. He's some stray nobody knows the parents of, and you'd take an outsider's side against your own flesh and blood. Are you even human?"

She said it so low that her uncle and aunt did not hear it, or it would very likely have killed them.

Ning Shu said coldly, "I'm perfectly clear. Ning Xiaohu is your son and he is not my brother. Gouwa isn't related to me by blood, and I treat him as my own brother, and I'll stand in front of him as long as I live."

Ye Furong took hold of Ning Xiaohu in the end. "Come on. We're going to the hospital to apologise to your cousin."

---

After that Ning Xiaohu went quiet for good. He looked at Ning Shu the way a mouse looks at a cat and never tried anything again.

Brats need treatment.

The cut on Gouwa's head was only skin and nothing serious, and when he came out of hospital Ning Shu bought him an iPad, the newest Pro. Ning Xiaohu saw it and wanted one, and Ye Furong had no time for him. Gouwa made the most of this, going about with the iPad in front of Ning Xiaohu all day until the boy's eyes went red with it.

Ning Shu made her opinion of this clear. "You're how old, and you're playing I've-got-one-and-you-haven't with a small child?"

Gouwa lay on his front on Ning Shu's bed playing a game. "I want him furious. I like watching him stare. My sister's a wonder, though."

"Listen to you crowing."

Gouwa rolled off the bed, pulled a chair over and sat down in front of her, and said seriously, "Sis, I'm going to go with you from now on. All right?"

"Go with me doing what?"

"Being a master."

Ning Shu gave him a look of distaste. "You wouldn't learn properly from Grandma when you had the chance, and now you want to be a master?"

"You're my sister. I'm not taking the bread out of your mouth." Gouwa waved it off. "I was thinking I'd be your hands. You read feng shui, I carry the case. You catch ghosts, I hold the ground. What do you think?"

"With the nerve you've got, you'll hold the ground for me? You'd be the first one out of the door."

"Never. And if I ran I'd carry my sister out on my back."

"All right, you little wretch, stop daydreaming and do your schoolwork. Your mother's still hoping you'll be a great lawyer."

---

That night Ning Shu was half asleep when Gouwa slipped into her room again and shook her. "Sis. Wake up."

"Get out." Ning Shu was well under, and threw a cushion in his face. "Interrupting people's sleep is horrible."

"Sis, I had a dream." Gouwa sounded tense. "A bad one."

Ning Shu sat up and looked at him with no patience. "Do you still think you're a child?"

"No, listen. Sis, do you remember the time I dreamed I saw Grandma following the paper men, and that was how we found the ghost baby?"

Ning Shu thought back to three years ago and came properly awake. "What did you dream this time?"

"I dreamed about that basement, and I saw Ning Xiaohu's grandmother. Guess what she was doing?"

"What?"

Gouwa climbed onto the bed and said to her, tense and full of it, "She was smoking opium."