Shrieking and chittering, the animal spirits swarmed up the side of the building and vanished sullenly into the hanging mass of the vine. Beneath the verandah, Chen gaped at Zhu Irzh as though he'd never seen him before. The demon's hot golden gaze seemed to burn even more brightly, fierce as fever, and the skin of his face was tight and damp. He was holding one hand close to his body, cradling it protectively.
"Zhu Irzh?" Chen said. "Are you all right?"
The demon spoke quickly, the words running together.
"No. No, I'm not. I had a most unwelcome visitor, a salamander creature—I touched its tail and it poisoned me. I was on my way to an alchemist's when I saw it again, or something like it, that lizard thing, it was sliding under that gate, so I followed it to order it to tell me who'd sent it, and I found you. What are you doing here, Chen?" he added, as if in afterthought.
"I came after our mutual friend," Chen said, with a warning glance upwards. "Did you get my e-mail?"
"Yes. I took it to the—the proper authorities, I didn't tell them where it came from."
"Which authorities? Did they believe you?" Chen asked, taking the demon by his uninjured arm and steering him through the gate. The demon's arm was radiantly hot beneath his hand, as though he was holding his palm above a stove. Zhu Irzh nodded.
"My employer. And yes. Yes, he did." He stumbled as they stepped through the gate and leaned back against the wall.
"Where's the alchemist?" Chen asked urgently. The demon was obviously not in a very good way.
"That's the fucking problem, I don't know," Zhu Irzh said wildly. "I went to some apothecary, some quack, and he refused to treat me. I'm damn sure the thing that attacked me was sent by Epidemics, and all the doctors here are under license to them. The whole medical profession has probably been ordered to give me the runaround until I fall down dead and end up Imperial Majesty knows where in some horrible lower level for the next few hundred years."
"That's not going to happen," Chen told him.
Zhu Irzh snorted. "So you say. I don't know how long I've got. Not long, probably."
Looking at him, and allowing for the usual hyperbole of the supernatural, Chen was inclined to agree. The demon's hand was so swollen that his talons protruded from his fingertips like pins from a pincushion, and the flesh was shiny and cracked.
"Look," Chen said, taking a deep breath as he made his decision. The goddess wouldn't approve, but then Kuan Yin hadn't approved of anything he'd done in the last year, so what else was new? He'd just have to square it with her on some yet-to-be-determined day of reckoning, along with everything else. One thing was certain, however: Kuan Yin wouldn't like it. Healing demons was definitely not within his job remit. He glanced quickly around him. Twilight was falling fast, and the glowing red lamps of Hell were casting bloody shadows around them. Squalid buildings lined the street, and across the way Chen glimpsed the neon sign of a demon lounge.
"Have you got any money?" he asked Zhu Irzh.
"Some," the demon replied.
"Go over there and hire us a room."
Even in his anguished state, Zhu Irzh's mouth twitched in a smile.
"Detective Chen. I'd no idea you thought of me like that."
"I don't think of—oh, never mind. Make sure you get a room facing the street, on the ground floor. Tell them you're on your own; show them your badge if you have to. Then open the window."
Zhu Irzh stared at him for a moment, then apparently decided that trust might be an appropriate emotion. "All right," he said. Wincing with pain, he ran across the street and hammered on the door of the demon lounge with his good hand. The door opened. Chen saw the demon speaking to someone within, then reaching awkwardly into his pocket and extracting a handful of notes. He vanished inside. A few minutes later, a window just above the street flew open.
Chen sprinted over the road and, followed by the badger, hauled himself across the sill. The room was a standard one, bare except for a wide couch and soft rugs. For Hell, it was almost salubrious.
"Now," Chen said, rolling up his sleeves. "Sit down."
Obediently, the demon did so. Chen crouched beside him and lightly touched the injured hand, which Zhu Irzh snatched hastily away.
"Okay, okay," Chen said soothingly, as if to a wounded animal. "All right. I know it hurts. I'm going to have to cut your sleeve off, I'm afraid."
"You seem literally hell-bent on ruining my entire wardrobe," Zhu Irzh said bitterly.
Chen smiled. "Vanity's a sin, you know. Not that it matters here. . . I'll do this quickly. I warn you, it's going to hurt."
Taking a small, folding pair of crane scissors from the pocket of his jacket, he slit Zhu Irzh's sleeve as far as the elbow. The demon made no sound, but he grew as still and stiff as stone.
"I wouldn't worry about being brave," Chen murmured. "It's a bit late for face now."
"It's not a matter of honor," Zhu Irzh said through gritted teeth. "Someone might come in if I start screaming the place down."
As gently as he could, Chen examined the injured hand. Despite the swelling, and the darkness of the demon's skin, he could tell where the spines had gone in. A series of little holes marched in regular array across Zhu Irzh's palm.
"Have you done this before?" the demon asked nervously. "Whatever it is you're going to do, that is?"
Chen nodded.
"Yes. Once or twice, and not under similar circumstances, but I have done it." And with the goddess' protection and favor, both times, he thought. He drew a flat packet of acupuncture needles from his pocket and opened it.
"I think perhaps I ought to tell you," the demon said rather weakly, "that I don't like needles very much."
"Don't look, then," Chen said. There were five holes in the demon's palm. Chen took five slender needles out of the case and laid them carefully across the top of the box. The kit contained a minute autoclave, and he didn't want to run the risk of the needles touching anything that might contaminate them. "You won't feel a thing," he told Zhu Irzh encouragingly. The demon sniffed in disbelief. Taking Zhu Irzh's arm, Chen placed it across his own knee, then took the longest of the needles and inserted it into the first hole in Zhu Irzh's hand. The demon's swollen fingers curled slightly, but he made no sound. Taking the rest of the needles, Chen placed them in the holes, working fast and murmuring the shortest and most potent of the Healing Mantras as he did so. Once all the needles stood quivering in Zhu Irzh's wounded hand, Chen took a box of spirit-matches from his pocket and lit one. Breathing across the demon's hand, he lit his own human breath so that the needles were ringed in fire. Then he resumed the mantra: holding Zhu Irzh's wrist lightly between his fingers and concentrating ferociously on healing. Not having the rosary was a blow, and he was painfully conscious of the goddess' absence, but as he came to the end of the fifteenth recitation of the mantra he was suddenly aware of a minute stirring at the edges of the universe: a note plucked in the eternal strings of the Tao. It did not have the familiar warm presence of Kuan Yin's favor; it was nothing more than a quirk of interest on the part of the Tao itself, but the needles flamed up into five thin columns of golden fire and fell away, consumed to ash. There was nothing left except Zhu Irzh's smooth, long-fingered hand, patterned by five tiny holes which, as Chen watched in fascination, closed like flowers in the cold, leaving only the smallest frost-scars in their wake. Zhu Irzh opened his eyes and stared down at his healed hand.
"Thank you, Detective Inspector. I think you've just saved my life. In a manner of speaking."
"As you saved mine," Chen said, with a smile. "Are you keeping track? Because I've lost count."
Graciously, the demon inclined his head. His hand curled around Chen's wrist for a moment, and then he rose and crossed to the window. "Well," he said. "Time to pay a visit to the Ministry."