Chapter 6 The Councilwoman #3
“Small comfort to those who die for your desire to have triad jurisprudence,” Kit Ling said crisply.
“Look through the data and see for yourself.” The councilwoman held out the hefty binder.
“No, I insist, we have other copies. In the meantime, the demolition application will take a full week or more to process, before we begin the next stage. Come back to me with proof you have handled this drowning ghost, and dealt with the corruption in your ranks. If you do that, I will allow you to file an appeal.”
“… I see.” Cobra Lily rose slowly, adjusting the creases out of her clothes. “Chan, take the councilwoman’s ‘reports,’ please.” She flung down her own useless documents, brought so carefully all the way from Kowloon, then swept out of the room with a stiff spine and a face like granite.
Mercy picked up Kit Ling’s binder. “Goodbye,” she said, so awkwardly that it sounded ruder than silence would have been.
“Don’t worry,” Kit Ling said with an unpleasant smile. “We’ll meet again.”
Cobra Lily stormed out of the government offices, her expression like a thundercloud. Mercy hurried after her, the binder of death records clutched ineffectually in her arms. Neither of them spoke.
The enforcers stood up as Cobra Lily arrived back in the foyer, clearly alarmed and off-balance. The triad queen walked past without saying a word. Mercy caught their collective gazes and gestured surreptitiously for everyone to follow.
Ten minutes later, they were piled back into the same cars they’d arrived in, heading home in deafening silence. Cobra Lily sat like a carved statue, hands in lap and lips pressed together. Still not speaking, which was a very bad sign.
“Were you lying?” Cobra Lily’s curt, cold question cut across Mercy’s ruminations, pulling her abruptly from the depths of memory to the surface of the present.
“I’m … sorry, boss?” Wrong response; it sounded weak and feeble to stammer. But Mercy really was caught off guard.
Cobra Lily hissed an intake of breath. “About having met her, Chan. Did you know that Council bitch?”
“I’ve never seen her before. I would swear that by any grave, temple, or god,” Mercy said, and meant it. “Honestly, boss, I think she was making it up to try and put us off-balance.”
Cobra Lily said nothing, jaw clenched tight. Outside the car window, the city slid by in a blur of concrete and electric lights.
“The woman was barely thirty,” Mercy said. “Kit Ling was born at the end of the war, years after I was already in Kowloon. How could we have met? Unless she knows something I don’t.”
“She certainly knows more than you,” came the clipped reply. “How the fuck did you miss all those deaths? A mass-murdering ghost, demon, whatever it is, right under our noses? Your ignorance and failure have humiliated me.”
“We don’t even know if what she said was true.” Mercy was acutely aware of how unwise it was to argue with her boss, yet her mouth wouldn’t shut. “A folder of dead strangers. It could mean nothing. I need time to look through this first—”
“Time?” Cobra Lily hissed, eyes narrowing. “We have one week to find a monster which has eluded us for an entire year, and deal with it. Even then, the fate of Kowloon may still be sealed. You were in charge of handling ghosts for me, and this is entirely your failure!”
Mercy swallowed a comeback that would have got her shot, and instead bowed her head with a humility she didn’t feel. “Boss, I can fix this.”
“Can you? Can you?” Cobra Lily’s voice rose, far too loud for the small space in their little vehicle.
“You cannot even fix yourself. Hallucinations and panic attacks. A faulty memory that never healed. Now a prolific and dangerous ghost is found to be operating under your nose. I should have seen it sooner. You are a disaster, Mercy Chan, and your chaos threatens everything I have built!”
Mercy said nothing, holding her peace. It was best to let Cobra Lily’s fires burn themselves out.
After a few moments, her boss took a ragged breath and said, “Do you have any ideas or leads, at least?”
A good sign, if Cobra Lily was still asking for her advice.
“I do, actually,” Mercy said, because something had been niggling in her brain.
“Ghosts like this don’t come from nowhere.
If it is a ghost, sneaking into people’s bathrooms and drowning them, then I suspect someone dug the spirit up and inflicted it on Kowloon.
Kit Ling herself, maybe? Just to give her an excuse to demolish the neighborhood. ”
“I suppose that is possible,” Cobra Lily said, with grudging approval. “Where would she have found such a creature, though?”
Mercy tugged on a lip. “Kit Ling herself said there are many ghosts locked in specially built vaults beneath the Murray Building, which is what makes me suspicious. Sentient and nasty ones, who were used in the war. By her own admission, she has access to them.”
“That was years ago, Chan. Surely they’d have faded by now!”
“It only takes one,” Mercy said, shrugging. “A strong ghost will endure for as long as it remains angry. I’ve heard of stranger things.”
When her boss still frowned uncertainly, Mercy added, “Let me ask around. I have old friends who might know something. I’ll report to you tomorrow evening with what I’ve found.”
“You’d better,” her boss said, curtly.
The rest of their trip home passed in frigid silence.