Chapter 18 Rui
Rui
If Rui’s gut was right, Madam Meng would have a way of contacting Zizi. It didn’t take much to convince Ash to give her a
ride to the hotel. As he pulled the car to the curb, he lowered his sunglasses and peered dubiously out the window at the
grand mansion on top of the hill. The Reverie looked the same as before: old, magnificent, and mildly haunted even in daylight.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” he said.
“No, but I have to try.”
“But are you sure you want to do this alone? My presence offers the authority of the Exorcist Guild. We could use it to pressure
Madam Meng into spilling everything she knows.”
He’d been on board with this earlier. Why did he sound like he had cold feet now? “That’s very sweet of you, Ash,” she said
acerbically. “But if Madam Meng is who I think she is, then I highly doubt she’ll cave to any mortal authority.”
He grimaced. “Right. The underworld immortal thing.”
“Yes, that.”
“You’re sure you feel okay? The blue flames aren’t bothering you anymore?”
He was being such a nag that it got on her nerves. “Disappointed you can’t use me as a weapon in your Hybrid war?”
“Is it so difficult to accept that I care about the cadets I’m in charge of?” he snapped back.
Rui flinched. Not from his yelling, but from his expression. Her words had done something she’d never thought possible. They
had hurt him.
We know Ash trusts you with his life.
She couldn’t imagine the amount of stress he was under now.
Ash didn’t ask to be born to a dynastic family like the Songs and burdened with responsibility from the first breath he took.
He was probably one of the strongest living Exorcists, and it had to be lonely, watching his peers and subordinates and friends perish one by one.
Knowing that he could try his hardest, but he couldn’t save them all.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being a brat again.”
Ash sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Forget it. We’re all stressed out. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“I deserved it. And I can’t explain how, but I know Madam Meng will only talk to me. I’ll make my own way back to the Academy
when I’m done.”
“Or you could give me a call and I’ll come pick you up.” Ash restarted the engine. “Off you go, Cadet Lin. Shoo.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Rui caught his faint smile as she got out of the car. Steeling herself, she jogged up the stairs and through the moon gate
into The Reverie’s garden. It was starting to snow again. She paused at the front doors of the hotel, tipping her head up
at the sky.
Winter had always been her favorite season, but its icy kisses on her cheeks seemed to prickle with a sense of foreboding.
What was it about the snow that troubled her? She couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with her dreams.
As she stared at the snowflakes, a woozy feeling of being in between wakefulness and sleep struck her, and the garden seemed
to sway. She heard a soft voice whispering in her ear.
Wherever you go, to the ends of this world or the next, I will follow.
That phrase . . . She’d heard it before, but she couldn’t remember when or where. It dredged up an inexplicable feeling in
her that came from her very being. Words flowed from her lips like she was reciting a promise from memory.
“In all the worlds and all lifetimes, our souls are bound together.”
Rui clapped a hand over her mouth. What was that about? She had no idea why she’d said those words.
The door behind her creaked loudly, and she started with a yelp.
An elegant old lady dressed in a turquoise qipao and perfectly coiffed hair was staring at her.
Rui collected her wits. “Madam Meng.”
“May I help you, child?”
“Can I come in, please?”
Madam Meng pushed the door wide open with her walking cane. There was no one at the concierge desk, and the grand hall was
empty. The murals on the high ceilings shimmered sinisterly with depictions of monsters and violence.
Ten murals. Ten figures in black robes, one in each mural. The ten Kings of Hell.
Rui’s heart rattled. Zizi was one of them now. Emotions threatened to overwhelm her again, but she reined them in quickly.
The fate of her city was at stake. Taking a breath, she sat across from Madam Meng.
“What is the purpose of your visit?” The slight reverberation in Madam Meng’s voice was uncanny. It sounded as if she was
talking through or from someplace else, and the woman sitting there was a mirage. It hadn’t been this way the last time they’d
spoken.
Rui was also distracted by the edges of Madam Meng’s qipao and hair. They had lost their vibrancy and looked faded somehow.
The last time she had seen something like that was on Seven, during their brief interaction through Nikai’s mirror glass.
The little girl’s face appeared in Rui’s mind, her big brown eyes looking haunted.
The Nothing is coming. . . . If the underworld ceases to exist, there will be nowhere for the souls to go. . . . They will wander aimlessly in your realm, and the Blight will take them.
“Is something bad happening in the underworld?” Rui blurted, her heart beating fast.
Madam Meng sighed. “The Nothing continues to expand.”
“But there are ten Kings present in the underworld now. Shouldn’t that set things right?”
“Unfortunately, the boy has not assimilated. He fights against it. While that fight continues, there can be no balance.”
Rui remembered the way Zizi’s eyes had changed from black to pale blue in the tunnels that day, and how it had looked like
he was suppressing something inside him, as though an internal battle was going on. Her heartbeat tripped. “Why would he fight
the assimilation if he’s Four? Are you saying that he’s not—”
“His mortal body will fail unless he embraces everything it means to be a King of Hell,” Madam Meng interrupted.
Rui slumped in her chair. It didn’t make sense. Ten had led her to believe that Zizi and Four were one and the same. But if
the Nothing was still causing trouble in the underworld, did that mean the Fourth King was an impostor? What if Zizi was a
vessel for Four’s soul, the way she had been a vessel for Four’s power? Did it mean she had sent him—a human boy—to his death?
Madam Meng’s owlish gaze fell upon the red string tied around Rui’s wrist. For a few seconds, the old lady’s irises turned
a milky gray, like eerie clouds.
“What do you see?” Rui whispered, even though she wasn’t quite sure what her question meant or why she was whispering.
“That is the question you should be asking yourself. You are having visions.”
“No, I’m not.”
“They may sometimes manifest as dreams that feel very real.”
There was an abrupt chime from the grandfather clock in the corner, and Rui jumped in her seat. “How—how did you know?”
Madam Meng nodded slowly. “Tell me about them.”
Reluctantly, Rui shared what she could remember of her dreams about meeting the Fourth King.
“The dreams and nightmares are pretty muddled. But I always start off happy in them, and then”—she shivered suddenly, recalling that feeling of dread—“then something awful happens. I’m not sure what, but I think I’ve been dreaming of death.
” She swallowed. “Sometimes I think I’m dreaming of my own death, and I think the Fourth King was there. ”
Madam Meng’s eyes glinted, as if she had discovered something interesting. “It is believed that sometimes, when a mortal has
a stronger than normal connection to their past life or lives, visions may occur periodically.”
“Past lives? Like the cycle of reincarnation and all that?” Rui said, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it. “Are you
saying I’m dreaming about my past life? But I’m dreaming about Four. Why would he be in my past life?”
Her brain must be conflating things, she rationalized to herself. The Fourth King did save her mother all those years ago.
Maybe that was why she was having weird dreams about him.
“Your lack of belief is not proof of something’s lack of existence,” Madam Meng said. “What is real and what is myth? You
will often find the truth somewhere in between.”
Rui didn’t like Madam Meng’s all-knowing tone. Madam Meng’s gaze lowered once more to the red string.
“Why do you keep looking at it?”
“Because the thread is giving off a vibration. How did you obtain it?”
“Zizi gave it to me . . . I think.” Rui realized she wasn’t entirely sure. She’d woken up with it after he left her dorm room.
The string looked similar to the one he always had around his wrist, so she had assumed he’d cut off a section for her. She didn’t feel a magical vibration though, and as a trained Exorcist
cadet, she was supposed to sense these things. It felt like a normal thread, but it was unusual that she couldn’t remove it or cut it.
Madam Meng pursed her lips. “Was it the dreams that brought you here or something else?”
Rui wanted to pursue the mystery of the red thread, but she’d been tasked with something more important.
“I need to talk to Zizi,” she stated firmly.
Madam Meng didn’t seem surprised. “You wish to commune with the underworld?”
Rui nodded. “Ten forced him to create a talisman with underworld magic before he . . .” She trailed off, not wanting to say
the words. “That talisman is in the hands of the Hybrid Revenants, and they’re using it to harm innocent people. I need to
know how to find it and destroy it. I want to talk to Zizi—or Four, whatever the heck his name is—about the spell. Can you
contact him?”
There was a long pause as Madam Meng stared at her in that uncanny manner again. Rui did her best not to squirm in her seat.
After an uncomfortable minute, the old lady spoke. “I could assist you in conjuring a vision of the boy, but it will only
work if you have a true connection to him, for it is your soul that will be searching for his in the underworld. There is
also a price.”
“I’ll do anything,” Rui said at once.
“I would not be so quick to decide. The price is an offering.”
“An offering? Like money? Ash has plenty of money. I’ll call him—”
“You misunderstand, child,” Madam Meng said, her voice deeply serious. “An offering is a sacrifice to the divine universe,
and more specifically, it must be a sacrifice from you.”
The grandfather clock ticked in Rui’s ears. “What will be asked of me?”
“A memory.”