Chapter 6 The Councilwoman #2
“What is this?” Cobra Lily pointedly did not reply in English. “Are you speaking to me?”
The gray suited-woman inclined her head; not quite a real bow, but not quite disrespectful, either.
“I’m Miss Tsang Kit Ling, a senior member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council, and I’m overseeing the demolition application for Kowloon Walled City,” she continued, still in English.
“Thank you for bringing in your written concerns. I’ll take a copy and make sure the Council reviews it. ”
Cobra Lily bristled, her hands tightening around the bundle of documents. “I was invited to speak to the Council directly, as a landlord with a vested interest. Are you now disallowing me entry?”
“Ms. Wong,” Kit Ling said, finally switching back to Cantonese, “I don’t know if you are aware, but this building is more than just a civic government office.
There are highly dangerous spirits contained in the lower levels, with significant security procedures in place.
I cannot allow regular citizens, let alone a known triad leader, to simply walk around with her violent thugs.
We are, of course, willing to read any documentation you provide, but this is as far as you’ll go. ”
There was a collective mutter of shock from the enforcers, and Cobra Lily herself had gone pale with fury the moment Kit Ling said Ms. Wong. No one in Kowloon knew the triad queen’s real name. Or if they did, they were smart enough not to use it publicly.
Mercy stepped in front of her boss. “We are not thugs,” she said, as much to save face as to prevent Cobra Lily from starting a massacre.
“The Snakeskins manage crime when your police force does not dare enter Kowloon. We run schools. We look after the elderly. We protect women. Even the girls who work in opium dens. Yes, there are drugs, but you have that, too, out here! As for the ghosts, we have long managed their infestation, without government support. The Walled City is our home, and you do not have the right to destroy it, when you have done nothing to help it!”
“Well-spoken,” Kit Ling said, turning toward Mercy. “And who are…”
Her words died away as their eyes locked. The councilwoman stood frozen, lips parted and eyes so wide the whites were visible. As if she’d seen a ghost.
Mercy stared back, feeling a strange buzz that ran from her belly to her fingertips. She would swear, on her life, that she’d never glimpsed this person before. Yet that did nothing to dispel the niggling feeling of familiarity.
“This is Mercy Chan,” Cobra Lily said, poise recovered, her gesture imperious. “A trusted aide, and best of my exorcists. It is with her work that we successfully contain the ghost problem in Kowloon.”
“I see.” Kit Ling’s nostrils flared. “Who gave you that scar?”
“Huh?” Mercy glanced down at the red scar that peeped out from the sleeve of her shirt, livid streaks running from wrist to shoulder and along the collarbone. “Nobody gave it to me.”
“Nonsense,” Kit Ling said flatly. “That’s not a birthmark, it’s a scar. How did you get it?”
“Not that it is any of your business, Miss Tsang,” Mercy said, stiffly, “but I have had this scar for as long as I can remember. A doctor told me it is probably from a lightning strike.”
Of all the things she had expected from today’s confrontation, being quizzed about her scar was not one of them.
“What is this rude questioning?” Cobra Lily said, almost swelling with indignation at being first insulted, then so rudely ignored. “We are here to—”
“I know why you are here, and I want to be sure your exorcist is a reliable person,” Kit Ling retorted, without even turning around. “What do you mean, as long as I can remember?”
Everyone in the room was staring at Mercy: the guards and enforcers in suspicious confusion; the staffers with nervous attention; Cobra Lily, with furious indignation at being left out. And Kit Ling, with a powerful, single-minded intensity, as if the whole world rested on the answer.
Mercy found herself saying, “I don’t remember my life before 1942. I arrived in Kowloon in the middle of the war, without family or memories.” She added, “That’s a little before your time, Miss Tsang, unless you are much older than you look.”
A muscle twitched in Kit Ling’s cheek. “A little, yes. I was born in 1945.”
“Then why does it matter? Am I offensive to look at?”
“No. But your face, and that scar, are extremely familiar to me. I could have sworn…” A strained pause. “Are you sure, completely sure, we have not met before?”
“Never that I remember,” Mercy said, coolly. “In another life, maybe.”
“In … another life.” A light tremor ran through the other woman. For a second, Mercy had a strong sense that the councilwoman was about to lunge forward and grab her.
But Kit Ling only put on a polite smile, as if their conversation had been entirely ordinary, and said mildly, “My mistake. You are quite right, I am too young to remember the war years.” She angled her gray-suited form back toward Cobra Lily.
“Please accept my apologies for my confusion, Ms. Wong. As I was saying … your whole entourage cannot come into the building. Perhaps I can suggest a compromise? You are welcome to come to my office, where we can speak in private.”
Mercy blinked furiously, still reeling from the strange confrontation that had been so hastily abandoned.
“Alone?” Cobra Lily’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t go places alone.”
“This is an official government building.” Kit Ling spread her hands to include the air-conditioned luxury around them, in all its beige concrete glory.
“You are safe here, as any citizen would be. Our concern is for our own safety, not yours.” She added, “And you won’t be alone. Ms. Chan may come with you.”
“Boss,” Mercy said, in low tones, “I don’t think—”
“I don’t pay you to think,” the triad queen snapped.
Mercy held her tongue diplomatically. Her boss was nettled and embarrassed by the whole encounter, which she understood, but she still didn’t appreciate having to bear the brunt of someone else’s loss of face.
“I’m glad we could come to a compromise.” Kit Ling inclined her head in another borderline disdainful bow. “Your assistants can wait in the lobby.”
Assistants? Don’t you mean “violent thugs”? Mercy thought, but she was old enough and wise enough not to say so out loud.
Kit Ling gestured and stepped aside, allowing Cobra Lily to walk ahead of her. The triad queen led the way, folder of documents tucked under one arm, though she could not have possibly known where they were going.
Mercy followed after them, a sinking feeling in her belly.
The journey was short, and anticlimactic. Kit Ling simply guided them up a floor via some stairs, and into a gray, overly tidy office. The colors were so muted that Mercy felt for a moment as if she’d stepped into a black-and-white television broadcast.
“Please sit,” Kit Ling said, and took her own seat behind the desk.
There was only one chair. Cobra Lily perched on it while Mercy, naturally, stood at ease behind her.
“I will get straight to the point,” Kit Ling said. “Kowloon has a ghost problem, and it is very serious. I am aware of your neighborhood’s unfortunate history and how Japan treated it, but we live in the present now, and cannot always look back at the past.”
“We have many ghosts, yes,” Cobra Lily said, coolly. Her index finger tapped rapidly against the armrest: a sign of fury, in her. “Which, as I said downstairs, my organization is adept at managing.”
Technically, it was Mercy that had said that, but she didn’t quibble with her boss’s version of events.
“Are you, though?” Kit Ling lifted out a thick binder and began laying papers, one at a time, across her desk. “Please ask your exorcist to examine these reports.”
Mercy glanced at Cobra Lily, who gave her a nod, before stepping forward and peering over. The documents detailed a slew of deaths, with fuzzy photographs clipped to the top. Names, times, dates, and locations; all of them in Kowloon.
“These are reports of dead bodies,” Mercy said, after a moment. “Strangling victims, it would seem.”
“Multiple strangling victims over the past year,” Kit Ling corrected.
“I don’t have enough space to lay them all out, but rest assured we have gathered records on dozens.
And many more civilians who have been reported missing, lately.
” She waved the thick binder like a flag.
“We believe they’ve all been killed by some sort of demon.
It seems to attack when people are alone, often bathing. ”
The demon who killed me wanted me to ask you a question.
Just a coincidence, Mercy told herself, yet a shiver ran through her. The inclusion of water was another uneasy clue she couldn’t ignore. What the hell was going on in her district? Maybe she’d been too quick to dismiss the encounter with the water fetcher.
Cobra Lily said firmly, “That can’t be. We would have noticed—”
“Or maybe, you are not as on top of the ghost problem as you believe,” the councilwoman said. “How many other ‘problems’ are slipping by unnoticed? Can you be sure you are tracking everything?”
Cobra Lily stared, apparently speechless.
Mercy found herself saying, “We hear your criticisms, Miss Tsang. But how will demolishing Kowloon solve any of those problems?”
“That’s easy. With the walls down, the fengshui of the neighborhood can be realigned.
Streets can be straightened, widened, and cleaned.
Buildings can be rebuilt to have proper space and light, sewer and electrical systems integrated with the rest of Hong Kong.
And appropriate warding can be constructed. Ghosts will have nowhere to hide.”
“It is better to talk to ghosts than to banish them, surely!”
“Not when they reach a certain threshold, I’m afraid. Government guidelines are quite clear.”
“But it is our home. Our property.” Mercy spread her hands. “We have a right to our existence.”