9
T he next morning, Simone woke, thought about her prospectus ... and couldn’t find the energy to go to Todai. The rest of the family weren’t home, but her father had left a note on the dining table saying he was back to work training his martial arts students on Celestial Wudang Mountain, and she could call him or Emma any time. Emma had taken Frankie to her parent’s house in the Northern Heavens to stay there for a few days—probably a good move since she seemed to be full-time arranging things for Michael’s new daughter.
She sat at the kitchen table for breakfast and checked her phone, hoping for a message from Graham. She choked with horror. Celestials ... so many people that she knew, or didn’t know ... had messaged her, on all her social media platforms as well as by email. She ran through the messages and saw their subjects with dismay.
Jade Girl: Ignore them, all your real friends know the truth.
Jade Flower: Is it true you’ll get together with Michael now?
Wide Eagle: Did you set it up? We all know you feel about Michael and wouldn’t blame you. You’re a much better fit for him than that weak human wife. You can tell me
Plum Blossom: You need to call me right now because people are saying the most insane things!
Precious: Me and Sylvie have a place in Shanghai if you want to hide. Plenty of room.
Virtuous Scholar: So the way’s clear for you to hook up with Michael now, right? I’m jealous, girl, that man is fire!
She ignored them, and opened the messenger app. It was full of similar distastefully gossipy requests. She denied them all, then composed a message to Graham.
Hi Graham, I hope my father and I didn’t scare you too much ...
She deleted it and started again.
Graham, I know it’s a lot to take in, but ...
She deleted that one too.
Graham, I meant what I said, before I probably exploded your world ...
Simone leaned back, ran both her hands down her face, deleted the message and tried again.
Hi Graham, I know what you saw was pretty awful, but please know that inside, I’m—
Simone’s phone pinged and she checked it, then sagged. It was the long-awaited message from Graham.
I thought about what your father said. You’re a hero, Simone, and I’m privileged to be with you.
Simone choked a short, sad laugh. She didn’t feel like a hero, but privileged? Maybe there was hope. Another message from him came through.
Would you like to meet up and try again? Battersea, at noon?
Simone’s heart lifted and the tears of pain turned to joy. He wanted to try again. He was so courageous and understanding, and she was lucky to have him. Her research was back on track, and she could spend the Christmas and New Year breaks with him. The future suddenly looked a great deal brighter.
She tapped on her phone to respond to Graham, agreeing to meet at the café in Western district at noon.
Simone didn’t bother driving the car, because Graham knew who she was. She simply teleported to the street where Battersea Café stood. It was one street back from the Harbour in Western District, below the Jockey Club Student Village and a popular meeting destination for HKU’s international students.
Western district had been one of the first areas occupied by the settlers escaping the Cultural Revolution and had always held tight to its working-class roots. The area was known for low-budget cramped apartment buildings and government-sponsored housing estates, like Kwun Lung Lau, strung with ad-hoc electrical wires; ancient, rusting window air conditioners; and bamboo poles holding wet laundry. Since the government had built a new MTR station in the middle of the district, it had become more modern, and the vintage apartment buildings were disappearing, replaced with tall towers of multiple smaller and more modern flats. Its ‘rejuvenation’ had attracted the Territory’s last remaining expatriates looking to find cheaper housing west of the luxury of Mid-levels, and a number of Western-style food places had sprung up to accommodate them.
The wealthier expatriates had mostly left the Territory, moving to new business hubs in Shanghai and Singapore, now that Hong Kong had lost its free-wheeling nature and become ‘just another Chinese city where you have to be careful what you say’. Political oppression was present in Singapore, but the police weren’t as brutal as Hong Kong’s roaming, menacing presence, who stopped and searched anyone they didn’t like the look of, taking them away and locking them up if they showed any resistance. Bookstores were closing, journalists and academics were in jail or overseas exile, and business was slow everywhere as the atmosphere was full of uncertainty about the Territory’s future.
Simone passed a group of police checking ID cards as she approached the café in Western. Her mixed-race appearance usually led her to be stopped and she already had her wallet out of her bag when they gestured towards her.
‘ID card,’ the hard-faced cop said, waving one hand at her. One of the other policemen leered.
She took her ID card out of her wallet—she used to keep it in a windowed pocket where it was safe, but lately she’d been pulling it out of her wallet so often she’d started keeping it with her credit cards. The policeman took her card and studied it, then turned away and went to a small station they’d set up on a folding table under a portable gazebo, taking notes as he spoke on his mobile phone. He called her ID number in, and she felt the same bolt of anxiety she did every time they did this—would she be pulled into a station for interrogation this time? She seemed to be targeted more and more. The cop spoke on the phone for longer than she was comfortable with, then returned, still stony-faced.
‘Phone,’ he said.
Silently thanking the Blue Dragon’s technology expertise for the Celestial special phones, Simone made a performance of finding her phone at the bottom of her bag and pushed the power button four times as she wrestled it out. Its screen was still flashing with the wipe-and-replace app as she handed it to him. He took it with a satisfied grunt, then returned to the table and connected it to a laptop.
No nudes on it, asshole, she thought at him as he unlocked it with the override that was compulsory on all phones sold in the Territory and scanned the photo album contents. He didn’t find what he was looking for and disconnected it, obviously disappointed.
‘No more than two people in a gathering,’ he said in Cantonese as he gave her the phone and ID back. ‘Restrictions on gathering. For your own safety.’
She relaxed, relieved. She’d done this dance before. ‘I’m not in a gathering, I’m on my lunch break.’
‘Work where?’ he asked.
She pointed up the hill. ‘University.’
His Mainland accent started to come through his Cantonese as he spoke with distaste. ‘Pah. Bad foreign ideas up there. Not patriotic.’
‘I’m studying fish and turtles, not ideas,’ she said, attempting to placate him so he would let her go.
He cocked one eye at her. ‘Why? We catch them, we eat them. That’s all you need to know, isn’t it?’
‘I want to make sure there are always fish to eat,’ she said.
‘Of course there are. You just need to go out and catch them,’ he said, and waved her away. ‘Go back to America and study the dirty fish there. Polluted.’
She opened her mouth to tell him that she wasn’t American but closed it again. If she argued, he would hold her up even longer. Emma had been pulled in a couple of times for questioning, and Simone didn’t need the added complication of her relationship with the targeted Australian woman coming up. She nodded to the policeman. ‘Thank you.’
‘Got a boyfriend?’ he asked, eyeing her with the avarice of a man coveting an expensive car.
‘Yes, sorry,’ she said, smiling ruefully and hating every second of this game. She gestured with her head. ‘I can go? I’m meeting him for lunch.’
The cop pulled out his notebook and gave her his phone number. ‘If you get tired of him, or he cheats on you, call me and I’ll punish him. I’ll take him to the station and beat him up for you.’ He grinned. ‘I’m a good guy.’
She took his number, not wanting to touch his hand. ‘Thank you.’ She turned and walked quickly away, wiping her eyes with relief. It was only a matter of time before she would be pulled in for ‘a cup of tea’ with them. She checked her watch. The police had kept her for more than ten minutes and she was running late to meet Graham. She hoped he would wait for her.
Simone and Graham often shared meals at the Battersea Café. It was decorated in a modern style with dark timber tables and comfortable, teal-coloured chairs lined up along the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the street. It had a timber bar with a selection of specialty alcohol behind it and was lit with rustic industrial-style light globes. The head chef regularly travelled to London to discover the latest trendy dishes, and the menu was small, fresh and always being updated, with multiple vegetarian options for them.
The café next to Battersea also served Western food but was in the old-Hong Kong style—dingy Formica-topped tables, folding chairs, greasy walls and an enormous A3-sized laminated menu offering at least fifty different dishes, from pizza to spaghetti to thick-cut French toast with lashings of maple syrup and a card advertising the Borscht-derivative set lunch that had never been anywhere near Europe. There were no vegetarian options at all—if traditional Hong Kongers wanted vegetarian food, they went to a specialty restaurant that provided mock-meat dishes with thick, sweet sauces. Simone enjoyed both styles of Western food, but Graham was accustomed to the modern dishes, so they went to Battersea more often.
Simone stood, frozen, when she saw who was sitting across the table from Graham, and immediately knew why she’d been held up by the cops. It was the Demon King’s Number One Son, Edu, in her ten-year-old girl form. She had twin braided pigtails and was wearing a black gothic-style frilly dress, looking like something out of a horror movie. Graham sat across from her, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, riveted with horror as she spoke. He saw Simone through the window and jumped, and Edu turned to see Simone as well. She smiled and gave Simone a cheery wave, then disappeared.
Simone rushed in and sat across from him. ‘Everything she said is a lie!’
‘She warned me that you’d say that,’ he said, obviously distressed. ‘What the hell? She was so damn creepy ...’
‘That was a senior demon,’ Simone said. ‘The “little girl” thing is just a facade. She’s a really nasty piece of work.’
‘That was a demon? She looked human!’ He cast around with alarm. ‘There are demons everywhere? How many are there? Will they hurt us?’ He looked on the verge of another panic attack.
‘Relax.’ She put her hand on his and clutched it. ‘They have a treaty with us. They won’t hurt any humans. They can only come out of ...’ She didn’t continue with the concept of Hell, that would freak him out even more. She could explain it all later. ‘You’re safe. As long as you’re with me, you’re safe.’
‘And when I’m not with you?’ Graham took a sip of water with a shaking hand. ‘She said some things. Some really nasty things.’
‘It was all a lie.’
‘She said ask you some questions and make you promise to tell the truth. Will you promise to tell me the truth?’
Simone’s heart plummeted again, and she squeezed his hand. ‘Ask me anything. I will never lie to you. I promise.’
‘Your mother was human?’
She nodded a reply.
‘She’s dead. What happened to her?’
Simone hesitated, then said, ‘Demons kidnapped her and ...’ She sighed. ‘Murdered her.’
‘So much for the treaty. They killed her because she was married to your father?’
Simone nodded and looked away. ‘I was two years old. They were planning to hold her to control my father, but they killed her ...’ She knew how bad this would sound but told him the truth anyway. ‘By mistake when they tortured her too hard.’
Graham didn’t lose his intensity. ‘Was your human housekeeper—a helpless British woman, who wasn’t involved in anything—did she have her head chopped off by the same demon for no reason whatsoever?’
‘Yes, but that demon is dead. I destroyed it.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be terribly grateful if that happens to me and you kill the demon after I’m dead,’ he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. She tried to speak, and he waved her down, his voice fierce. ‘How many innocent people have died, just because they were close to your family?’
She stopped and tried to work it out. Did the war count? So many innocent refugees ...
‘The fact that you have to stop and think about this is worse than you knowing the number off the top of your head,’ he said.
‘We were at war—’
‘The man we met the night I went to your house. Michael MacLaren. His wife’s hands were broken and twisted, and she looked so frail. The little girl said that demons did that to her—they tortured her for no reason other than they enjoyed it. It was a random act of violence, that happened because she married into the family. Yes?’
Simone hesitated, looking him in the eye, then her heart broke as she said, ‘Yes.’
‘She said that you and Michael grew up together? He’s a demigod who was a trainee bodyguard for you? He lived in the same house as you for years?’
‘Yes. I turned out stronger than him, and I didn’t need a bodyguard.’
‘But he’s not a blood relation, is he?’
‘Uh ... no? More like a really good friend.’
He took a deep breath and studied her carefully. ‘Are you destined to be with him?’
Her throat thickened, then she answered bluntly and truthfully. ‘Eventually, yes. We both know that. We try to work around it.’
‘Why aren’t you together, then? Why is he married to someone else, and you’re dating me? Why don’t you just give in to this and stop hurting other people?’
She choked at the thought of poor, tortured Clarissa, who had known about it and loved Michael anyway. ‘We didn’t know until it was too late. He’s ten years older than me, and I was only fifteen when he proposed to Clarissa. I was too young to be in a relationship, and he had too much integrity to pursue anything with me. He went to America, made a life for himself there and met Clarissa.’ She shook her head gently. ‘He adores her. Like I adore you.’
‘But do you love him?’
She was taken aback at the question and quivered with the effort to lie to him. She wanted to reassure him, to bring everything back to what they had before she exploded the relationship. ‘I ...’ She lowered her head and whispered the answer. ‘Yes.’
‘I think you should stop dragging us helpless mortals into your dangerous world, Simone.’
‘I don’t want to live in that world anymore!’
‘But you can’t avoid it, can you? It follows you around. And if I stay with you, I’m going to end up either tortured like that poor woman or killed. I can’t live like that—watching my back all the time.’
‘I will protect you.’
‘Like your father protected your mother? Your housekeeper? Michael’s wife? All those people who died?’
She choked on the truth of his words. ‘What we have is so good, don’t throw it away.’
‘I’m not throwing anything away, I’m running.’ He took a big gulp of water. ‘Because I’m scared. I’m a coward. I’ll never be a fraction of what you are or what you need. I’ll never be your equal, and I can’t live like that.’ He rose and placed the turtle necklace on the table in front of her. ‘Keep the necklace, eh? And friends. Best friends. But please, Simone ...’ He touched her hand. ‘Stop dragging us poor humans into loving you, because your life is way to terrifying for someone as ordinary as me.’ He bent and kissed the top of her head where she sat hunched over the table with misery. ‘I’ll give the restaurant some money for sitting here without ordering, so leave when you feel like it, and I do love you, but you scare me to death.’
‘I love you,’ she said to table, but he’d already gone to the cash register to give them some money. He negotiated with them to pay for a small cover charge, nodded to Simone and left.
After ten minutes of paralysing misery, she teleported straight to her room at the Peak, fell onto the bed, buried her head in her pillow and cried.
Her father came into the room without knocking. He sat on the bed, pulled her into his lap and held her as she wept.
‘He broke up with you?’ he asked, his voice rumbling through his chest.
She nodded into him.
‘Do you want to talk to Emma?’
She shook her head and clutched him, wordless.
‘Okay,’ he said, and held her.
*
W hen her sobs had petered out into gasps she spoke without looking up from his soaked black T-shirt. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Keep Emma around. Without freaking her out. Graham broke up with me because he’s scared to death. He thinks the demons will get him ...’ She shook her head on him. ‘He’s terrified of the life we lead. How did you get Emma to stay? When I was a child, it was a hundred times scarier than it is now. There were demons after us all the time, and she seemed to ignore the danger.’
‘It’s her heritage. Emma, your mother and Michael’s mother, Rhonda—they all had that Celtic extraction. They were Celtic serpent people.’
‘Oh.’ She rested her head on his chest again. ‘The gods of Europe were so damn stupid. They created people who were a human-demon-serpent mix as an enhanced army—then killed themselves, leaving these poor people with this streak of savagery and no way to control it. So of course, Emma was never an ordinary human, and you didn’t freak her out. I see.’ She smiled up at him, with her chin on his chest. ‘Maybe I should head over to Europe and check out these Celtic serpent people that can handle the violent life we lead.’
‘That’s actually a very good idea, because Graham is correct about us forming relationships with ordinary humans.’ He squeezed his arms around her. ‘Better now?’
She nodded into his chest again. ‘Thanks, Daddy.’
‘We’re right on top of the Christmas break, and we Chinese don’t do much for it, so there’s no “family commitments” involved like the Westerners have. If you want to go to a resort somewhere with some of your friends, like Jackie or Eva, let me know and I’ll arrange it for you. The Blue Dragon’s place in Kota Kinabalu, or the Phoenix’s place in Phuket, or a ski resort in Japan—just say the word.’
‘Thanks, Daddy, but I’d prefer that nobody knew about me breaking up with my boyfriend the day after Michael’s wife died.’
‘Oh.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Point taken. I won’t tell anyone.’
She smiled through the misery. ‘Except Emma.’
‘Always.’
‘I think I’ll go back to Todai and check out one of the apartments that the Blue Dragon offered me in Ueno. It’s as good a time as any to make a fresh start—and maybe try living out there on my own.’
‘That’s my girl.’ He pulled back and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. ‘I am immensely proud of you. Every day. And all you have to do is call, and I’ll be here.’
She kissed him on the cheek, making him smile. ‘How many people are yelling at you to go do things for them?’
‘Right now?’ He cocked his head to listen. ‘Six, but Er Lang doesn’t count, he never stops yelling at me.’
She hopped off his lap. ‘Go and do your stuff, First Heavenly General.’
‘At least the Jade Emperor didn’t make me ask you to go kill demons,’ he grumbled quietly as he went to the door. ‘I am so tired of that bullshit, and we have a standing appointment with him to tell him to cut it out.’ He straightened. ‘Dammit!’ He looked her in the eye. ‘The First Heavenly General reminds the Princess Simone that she is summoned to the Jade Emperor’s presence to receive orders. The demon threat at the top levels of the human administration must be removed.’ He sagged. ‘I am so sorry, and we will talk to him about this. It’s harassment.’
She waved one hand at the red lacquer box on her desk. ‘Two at the same time. New record. Don’t worry, Dad, it’s at the stage now that it would feel weird if you didn’t do it.’
He pulled her back in for a hug, kissed the top of her head, and went out.
*
S he came out of her little ensuite later that evening to find Michael sitting on her bed, looking shattered. His blond hair had come out of its tie and fell around his face in a wispy tangle, his face was as swollen as hers was, and his eyes were red. He was wearing his signature white jeans and gold-and-white-striped sweater, but his clothes were crumpled and looked like he’d slept in them.
He saw her, bounced to his feet and ran to her, enfolding her in a huge embrace. She fell into his arms and held him, relishing the feeling of his strength and integrity and the pain they both felt. His Shen energy glowed in her inner vision, and it thrummed against hers in perfect harmony with her own—even though hers was tainted with demon essence. His essence was nearly as powerful as hers, and she didn’t need to diminish her brilliance in his presence—he would never be afraid of what she was, because he was a match for her.
They held the embrace for a long time, then he pulled back and gazed into her eyes, his tawny ones full of pain.
She wanted to lose herself in those eyes so much that it hurt. She realised with a jolt of dismay that Graham had looked a lot like Michael—the resemblance was so obvious that she wondered how she’d missed it. She resisted the urge to kiss those lush lips. Instead, she pushed him gently away and guided him back to sit on her bed. She sat next to him and put her arm around him, trying not to savour his unique, musky scent. He leaned his head on her shoulder and they sat without speaking as she waited for him to tell her without pushing him.
‘This is wrong,’ he eventually said, his voice hoarse.
‘We’re not doing anything,’ she said. ‘Friends. Sharing our grief.’ She pulled back to see his pain-filled eyes. ‘Don’t feel guilty, Mikey, I’m here for you. Whatever you need.’
‘I can’t help but feel guilty when my ...’ He choked out the word. ‘Wife isn’t even cold yet, and here I am. This future we have together, you and me? It sits like a doom over us. Everything I do to try and live my own life, yet there’s a voice in the back of my head saying, “You will end up with Simone. Stop trying to love anyone else”.’
‘How’s your daughter?’ she asked, hoping to change the subject to something less hopeless. ‘Is she okay?’
‘Emma and Christine are looking after her.’
‘Christine?’ Simone asked, then, ‘Oh. Clarissa’s mother.’
‘Christine’s locked me out because ...’ He barked a short laugh. ‘I’ve gone crazy and I’m not safe with the baby.’ He released himself from Simone’s arm and bent to put his head in his hands. ‘I had a big, loud mental breakdown in the hospital, and I’m supposed to be in the mental health ward under heavy sedation, but of course that doesn’t work with us, does it? I wish ...’ His voice thickened and he curled up further. ‘I wish it did.’
‘Why are you here and not in your father’s palace in the Western Heavens?’ she asked gently. ‘He has people there who can help you.’
He dropped his hands and studied her. ‘I came here looking for ... I don’t know why I came to you. Solace? I don’t know.’
She put her arm around his shoulders again and tried to ignore the feeling of the sculpted muscles of his back and shoulder moving beneath her hands. Inappropriate for the grieving widower, Simone.
‘I thought if I came to see you, it would make the pain go away. “Here’s the woman who loves you, who’s destined to be with you ...”’ He looked away. ‘I thought it would help to see you. Instead, here I am, running to you the minute Clarissa’s gone. I reassured her so many times that she had nothing to fear from ...’ He waved one hand towards Simone. ‘Us. And she trusted me. I never gave her a reason to be jealous. And ...’ His voice broke. ‘She’s been gone for less than a day? And here I am. I’m scum .’
Simone sat silently, letting him get it out. They never talked about their joint fate and how it affected their lives, they just tried to live around it and avoided each other while Michael was married to someone else. To hear him talk about it so openly—and so full of bitterness about its effect on him—broke her heart.
‘I understand you’re hurting,’ she said. ‘But I think you need to go find help that I can’t give you.’
‘Yeah, I shouldn’t be here, if your boyfriend finds out—Graham, was it? He’ll break up with you and it’s bad enough that one of us has to be alone.’ He rose. ‘I’m sorry, Simone, I shouldn’t have come. You’re right, I’ll go to the Western Heavens and leave you to your life, the way you want to live it, without this ... fate ... hanging over us.’
She had to warn him. ‘That’s a good idea, because the gossip mill in the Celestial is already spinning our stories out of control, and if anyone discovers that you were here so soon after ... losing Clarissa ...’
‘Oh god,’ he said, and dropped to sit on the bed with his head in his hands again. He sat silently and it took her a while to realise that he was weeping into his hands. The sobs came harder, and his shoulders shook. ‘What am I doing here?’ he asked through the gasps. ‘The last place I should be. Am I completely stupid? This is so wrong—’
He disappeared.