Three hours after he had set out from the houseboat, Chen sat wearily on the side of the dock, dangling his aching feet in the cool, oily waters of the harbor. The moon had long since set, but any stars there might have been were blurred by the neon glow of the city. He had found no sign of Inari—not a note, not a sign, not a scrap of cloth or a drop of blood—and he had run out of ideas. He felt almost too tired to move, but at last he rose from the dock and made his way back towards the houseboat. It was dark and silent. Chen paused for a moment, letting his ch'i senses run ahead of him. He could feel nothing. His own ch'i perceptions were hardly infallible, but combined with the personalized feng shui wards which guarded the houseboat, they were good enough to give him some warning if anything menacing—say, a Maoist demon-hunter or a vice squad operative from Hell—happened to be lurking behind the door. Chen stepped unscathed onto the deck of the houseboat and into the kitchen. Something rattled. Eyes glowed red in the faint gleam of sudden transformation, and Chen's heart leaped once, like a bird.
"Badger?" He fumbled for the kitchen light and switched it on. The badger was a mess. Sand and salt matted its fur into short, untidy dreadlocks and its nose looked cracked and dry. Chen hastened across the kitchen and reached out a hand.
"Do not!" the badger said irritably. "I will not be touched."
"Sorry. But where's Inari?"
The badger peered miserably up at him, and seemed to deflate. "It is I who should be sorry. I could not save her."
Chen felt as though the floor had fallen in. "Oh, goddess, is she—well, she can't be dead, since she's not really alive in the first place, unless that bloody demon-hunter has—oh, never mind. Tell me what happened."
"We were hiding. From the man with the sword. We did not come back in case he also had returned. We could not find you; we did not know where you might be and Inari did not have the speaking device. We left the boat too swiftly. It was my fault. I did not do enough to distract the hunter."
"It's all right," Chen said. "Don't reproach yourself. You can't think of everything, do everything."
"It is still my fault," the badger said. Chen studied it as it sat on the kitchen counter. Bedraggled as it was, it still retained that semblance of otherness; the darkness of a creature that walked between worlds. Its eyes, black once more now that its transformation was complete, were frosted with an icy haze, yet Chen could see the light of a different day within their depths. He said quietly, "You came from Hell with Inari when no one else would even look at her—not her mother, not her brothers, no one. And you have done your best for her this last year, in a place that is not your own and that has changed so greatly from the China you knew long ago that it might as well be another planet. It is not your fault. Now. What happened?"
"Something came. Something from Hell. It snatched her like a bird in a snare and took her with it. I ran from it, but I turned back and I saw it go. It turned the world to blood and then the air opened up. I saw Hell once more—its storms, its iron towers. And my mistress was gone."
Chen sank down onto the nearest chair and rubbed his palms across gritty eyes. "I was right, badger. It isn't your fault. It's mine. If Inari had stayed on the houseboat, Hell might not have been able to touch her. If I hadn't drawn attention to the Tang case, No Ro Shi wouldn't have come here. . ." He could not seem to think straight; thoughts whirled and would not settle.
"She could not have stayed caged like a cricket forever," the badger murmured in its dark voice. "You could not have done other than you did. I heard what you said about Tang."
"What we have to do now is figure out who's taken her, and why. The obvious candidates are her family, and whoever's been running Tang. And one other party."
"The wu'ei."
"I've been trying not to think about the wu'ei," Chen said, wincing from the thought.
"They will not give up. They are patient, relentless, eternal."
"They are also vindictive."
"What else could they be? They are the instruments of the Lords of Hell, its iron fist. You know as well as I that Hell is a matter of strict hierarchies. Violation of those hierarchies, that structure, results in the payment of a price. Inari violated that order when she came here, and so did I. The wu'ei answer only to the Imperial Court, and that Court is inflexible in its dictates—however long it may take to implement them."
"I'd noticed," Chen said. He felt hollow inside, like a reed with the pith sucked out. He had encountered the wu'ei only once before, and never wished to do so again. The wu'ei: more than demons, less than deities, but with all the infernal powers of the Imperial Court. It was their task to track down the wrongdoers of Hell, those who had violated the laws of the worlds beyond the world. The thought of Inari being back in Hell was bad enough, but contemplating her in the hands of the vast inimical presences of these underlords was little short of appalling. Rubbing his hands across his face, Chen tried to force his racing brain into considering his options. First thing tomorrow, he would go to the Night Harbor as planned, to see if he could find Pearl Tang, but he would not be coming out again. Instead, he would be traveling on to Hell. . . Beside him, the badger bristled.
"What—?"
"Be quiet," the badger murmured. "Something is coming."
Chen thrust thoughts of Inari from his mind with an effort and rose from the chair. Moving stealthily to the kitchen door, he peered through the crack. The badger dropped from the kitchen counter and whisked silently around the legs of the chair.
At first, Chen could see nothing except the deck of the houseboat and the ripple of the harbor lights on the water. Then, he noticed that something was coming across the surface of the water itself: a dark wake, bringing something behind it. The thing was no more than a faint glow, a miasma of shadow upon the heave of the sea. It disappeared beneath the houseboat, only to swarm up over the deck and pause, uncertainly. It was the missing, lobster-like ghost-tracker, and with it was the figure of a girl, dressed in the remnants of a funeral robe. The back of her head was missing. It was Pearl Tang.
Motioning the badger to stay in the kitchen, Chen stepped out onto the deck and held out his hand.
"Pearl?" he said, gently. The ghost-tracker scuttled forwards, its antennae swiveling. The ghost turned and he saw her face crumple with relief, only to smooth out moments later into a blank mask as the emotion drained away. Yet he could see fear in the lines of her insubstantial form: a quivering like heat that distorted her as he watched.
"Detective Chen?" Pearl's voice was no more than a shiver in the air.
"Come inside," Chen said. "Quickly, now. I don't know who might be watching."
Fearfully, the ghost glanced once over her shoulder, then brushed past him into the kitchen. Once inside, she was almost swallowed by the light: Chen had to look hard in order to see her at all. The ghost-tracker, finally relieved of its task, crawled beneath the warmth of the stove. The ghost whispered, "That—that person. He's gone, isn't he? The one who wanted to take me back?"
"Zhu Irzh? Yes, he's gone. I'm not quite sure where though." The possibility of Zhu Irzh and Inari both being in Hell produced a curious reaction in Chen: a lifting of the spirits, combined with a pang of sheer anxiety. He was not entirely certain how to account for either emotion.
"It's hard to remember," she said. "You were arguing, and the demon was going to take me, so I ran away. I don't know where I've been. I just drifted through places—I went to the pavilion in the park, but it didn't look like the place I knew anymore, it was full of strange people in the trees, like birds, and their eyes were bright, so I didn't stay. I went through the market, I think—I remember someone standing at the entrance with a sword, and he was all bloody, but he wasn't alive. . . I don't remember. It was evening, and I think I was going home, but before I could get there, this creature found me."
"Pearl, remember what you told us about your father, and the Ministry, and the person who stood by your bed and talked with your father about why he was doing these things? Do you remember anything else? Anything at all?"
The ghost looked utterly blank. She shook what remained of her head.
"You're quite sure?"
"I told you! I don't remember."
"All right," Chen said wearily. "Then we need to get you out of here and into Heaven where you belong."
"How can we do that?" Pearl asked, puzzled, and Chen replied, "Don't worry. I know someone who might be able to help."