‘I was an idiot,’ he said. ‘Mya tried to tell me.’
‘Are you sure? I was kind of hoping none of this was real,’ I said.
‘Jade. You don’t belong here.’
‘I could say the same to you.’
We stared into each other’s unearthly eyes. It was happening again. Just like that night we’d spent together. I’d seen through the surface of him and glimpsed something on the other side of Shea. Something that I knew, something that knew me.
I was looking at that Shea now. It was a beautiful feeling, the best feeling ever. And for a second I felt like myself again. The old Jade. The real me, just for a moment.
Just long enough for my heart to break.
Below, the great black lion prowled. It was huge, even bigger than it had been that morning I’d woken up with it in my bed. As big as a horse, at least. It had long legs and huge paws, and an elegant tail with a tuft at the end. Its eyes blinked slowly. It sniffed Shea’s body. Oh, no. No, no, no...
‘You got my call?’ I said, trying to lighten things up. I wanted to cry but it’s hard to cry without a body. It was getting harder to hold on to myself. Parts of my smoky cartoon self were starting to drift away and blend with the trees.
He tilted his head and his brown eyes softened. ‘I just got here. Parawat, my contact in the police, has been watching the house. Nothing seemed to be happening, but when I got that call I just knew. She told me to wait until she could put together her team, but I didn’t listen to her. Guess I cocked it up, eh?’
He touched the pinprick mark in his neck where the needle had gone in.
‘You came just in time,’ I said. ‘If you had waited even a minute longer, it would have been too late. But how did you convince the police?’
‘I gave them the information Mya gave me, about the safe. They’ll be going through that evidence right now.’
‘So can they prosecute him, or not?’
‘Because it’s international, it’s complicated. He’s part of a larger ring. They have evidence for kidnapping of children, but they can’t get him for murder when they have no bodies.’
His frown lifted as he thought of something.
‘Of course, there’s my murder now, I suppose...’
Like that was supposed to be a good thing.
‘Jade, listen. Mya needs help,’ Shea said. ‘You have to look out for her and her sister.’
I didn’t even know where Mya was. The police hadn’t spotted her. The strangest thing about this scene was how the police were talking on their radios and securing the building even as Shea and I hovered in the trees. The woman called Ploy had come in the room and was now berating the handcuffed old man, accusing him of perversity and drug use and bribery and cheating on his taxes.
‘You have to go back, Jade,’ Shea said.
‘We both have to go back.’ But even as I said it I knew I was too feeble to go anywhere. I saw Kala Sriha lie down beside Shea’s body. More police were here. They were taking photographs and writing down notes while Shea lay there, not breathing.
This couldn’t be happening, but it was. The darkness was coming at me like the end of time.
I heard Mya’s voice. Where had she gone? The sound was very faint.
‘Jade! Jade, where are you? Come back!’
I watched as Kala Sriha covered Shea’s body entirely in shadow.
‘How am I supposed to help Mya? She isn’t like a regular kid. Shea, tell Kala Sriha to help her.’
His image smiled a little in that dry British way.
‘Kala Sriha is a god, Jade. I don’t give orders to Kala Sriha.’
‘But Shea... what’s happening? Where are you going?’
He was starting to fade. He was slipping back to his body, into the great blackness of Kala Sriha with his golden cat eyes, and I could hear an ominous rumbling sound. Purring.
‘I’m supposed to be here now,’ Shea whispered. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his breath in my ear. ‘Kala Sriha saved me the first time for a reason. Mya was the reason. I have to go now.’
‘Shea, wait! Kala Sriha has to make you live! Because I can’t hold on, and without you and me she’s alone.’
I couldn’t see him anymore.
‘Jade? Jade!’ Mya was calling me. ‘Jade, come back to your body now.’
No. It was too far to travel. Shea’s ghost was gone, and Kala Sriha’s great warm shadow moved away from his corpse. The corpse was empty, but now the lion’s black pelt sparkled with the light of a thousand stars.
My thinking was starting to melt, like when you fall asleep. Everything was running together making its own kind of untraceable sense, as if I were breaking into pieces and drifting away from myself. And if I’d been hoping for a real goodbye—some final moment to bring closure to my life—it didn’t happen. I couldn’t even hear Mya’s voice anymore. I was disintegrating and there could be no going back. The sky was pulling me up and away.
Where is the Love?
S
OMETHING HAD BITTEN
me in the stomach. No, stung me. A needle as long as a screwdriver had gone in and stayed there much too long. Then came the burn as venom slid into my blood.
My body convulsed. The pain was back, wringing and grinding and pulling at me no matter how I moved or didn’t move. I writhed uncontrollably and that made it worse. I tried to lie still and every breath felt like getting hit by a bus.
But I was breathing.
My eyes were open.
The locker room got bigger and smaller. I was lying on a physical therapy table in one of the side rooms.
Mya was holding my hand. The forest was there, in the smell and the flowers and the green light, and my bed seemed to be tilting downhill. I glimpsed the giant baby face of Lek; then the huge naga’s body was sliding past me like a moving wall.
Mya whispered something in Thai to me, and it was no longer easy to understand her. I struggled.
I think she said, ‘Don’t tell them it hurts or they’ll give you the wrong drugs.’
Or maybe she said, ‘They put handcuffs on Mr. Richard and he couldn’t stop them.’
Or maybe, ‘There’s a naga under your bed.’
Then the room seemed to expand to become a vast, green hall, and Baby Lek slid under the massage table and vanished into a large tree. The room snapped back to normal and I heard the guttural noise of Khari screaming and yelling. He vaulted over the bottom of the table and stood on a bench, pointing at the floor. Spit flew as he gabbled, ‘Snake! Snakes! Snakes on a plane!’
I licked my lips. Wanted to speak. Hurt to breathe, to blink, to squeeze blood through the heart, but these had to be done. Mustn’t show pain. Needed to know I was alive.
Closed my eyes. Little rest. Please. Just a tiny one.
A doctor came in with Mr Big and Tommy Zhang. The doctor asked Khari to climb down off the bench and Mr. Big confirmed that there was no snake under the massage table.
Khari’s voice was ragged. ‘But Jade... she disappeared... how did she get here? And who’s the kid?’
I half-opened my eyes, saw Mr Big pat Khari gently on the shoulder.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ said Mr. B. ‘You got confused, I know, you’re fond of Jade. It’s OK, man.’
‘No, she was gone, like not there,’ Khari was saying as Mr. B led him away.
Then the doctor broke out his stethoscope and I felt cold metal on my chest. Why do they have to make them things so cold?
‘Am I alive?’ My words didn’t sound, but I must have done something because I felt Mya’s hand squeeze mine.
‘Jade?’ the doctor said urgently. ‘Jade, can you hear me?’
He was shining a light in my eyes. I started blinking, squeezing Mya’s hand. Pretty soon there were a whole bunch of people around me. I grabbed the doctor’s flashlight and shoved it away violently. Then I shut my eyes.
‘We think you had some kind of rare allergic reaction to the synthetic material in your opponent’s gloves,’ the doctor said. ‘The ambulance is waiting.’
‘Shea...? Mya, where’s Shea?’
Mya held my hand in both of hers. ‘He is gone,’ she whispered in Thai.
I shook my head.
‘He can’t be.’
‘I’m sorry, Jade.’
She slipped a brown envelope into my hand. ‘It’s the photographs. Don’t let anyone take them. I must go now.’
The doctor spoke right over Mya as if she wasn’t there. Maybe she wasn’t.
‘Are you in pain now, Jade?’
Yeah, pain would be one word to describe it, but the word ‘pain’ wouldn’t be painful enough. Then I remembered me what Mya had said about the drugs.
‘It don’t hurt,’ I whispered, though it hurt worse than any person could ever hurt me. ‘Don’t give me no drugs, ’cos it don’t hurt at all.’
I
HAD A
private room in the hospital, but it wasn’t private for long. Tommy Zhang came sailing in, literally smelling like success. He was probably still using Fuller’s charisma drugs.
‘What the hell happened to you?’ he said. ‘I thought you were gone.’
‘I know you did,’ I whispered. ‘I know everything.’
His face hardened. Defensive, he talked even faster than usual.
‘You disappeared. The doctor tried to help you but you were gone. You weren’t even really sick. You faked everything.’
‘I didn’t fake beating Gretchen,’ I retorted.
He bent down close and in my ear he said,
‘You got nothing on me, Jade. I made sure. You got nothing.’
Then he straightened, but when I looked at him all I could see was scared. Scared, scared, scared.
Man, I was so tired of having to always fight. I didn’t want to hate Tommy. Too many bad things had happened. When I thought of Shea I felt like someone had reached inside me and scooped out all the good feelings forever. I thought: where is the love?
I reached over to the bedside cabinet and passed him the brown envelope. Scowling, he opened it. When he saw the photographs inside his eyes widened. He seriously looked like he was going to shit himself.
‘Richard Fuller is in police custody,’ I blurted. ‘As far as I know, those are the only copies. They’re yours.’
He stiffened.
‘What do you want?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not like that. Tommy, I had no idea what you were going through. And just so we’re clear: I didn’t know about that video Eva took of, you know, the thing that happened behind the gym.’
Tommy wasn’t the greatest actor in the world, but he had a mobile face and I could see the nuances of emotion passing across his perfect features as he took in the news. I realized all of a sudden that not only was he scared now, but he’d been scared before, too. For years, maybe for all his life, he’d been scared. His whole persona was a front.
It had to be, didn’t it? What choice did he have?
‘He gave me medicines,’ Tommy said softly. ‘To get me parts. I don’t mean physical beauty. I already had that.’ And he tossed his head a little, like a diva. ‘The medicine made people love me, admire me. But it was always at a price. I had to do what he wanted. And I’m not a violent person. I think you know that.’
‘I don’t see why you couldn’t be a ladyboy
and
an action star,’ I said. ‘But that’s coming from me. You know:
the Beast
.’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘OK. Maybe I don’t. Your past is your business. Bottom line? Richard Fuller is going to jail. He can’t do jack to you.’
Suddenly I was feeling much stronger than usual. I added, ‘Sorry I lost it and smashed up your face. I guess I over-reacted. I got a little bit of a temper.’
Tommy laughed at my understatement but his eyes were filling with tears. Now I could see the girl in him, the delicate beauty that must have been even more stunning fifteen years ago when all this started.
He whispered, ‘For real, Mr. Richard is going to prison?’
I nodded. ‘The police came for him. The international media are on to him. The evidence is there. He’s going down for a long, long time.’
Tommy sniffed and blotted his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
‘Good,’ he said, and stood up. He twitched a little in his own skin, like he was shaking something off. Then he said,
‘Gretchen said it was a good fight, she hopes you are OK. She didn’t know nothing, so don’t blame her. The TV crew is still waiting to interview you.’
I didn’t say nothing, so he kept talking. ‘You’ll be eighteen in a few months. You can turn pro. I want you to come fight on my circuit, Jade. What do you say?’
A lot had changed since the day Tommy’s bodyguards didn’t want to let me in my own gym. I must be moving up in the world. I remembered the roar of the crowd. I remembered sitting up on that cage, arms over my head.
It would be such a feeling of power to tell him no. Screw you. And I could. With TV crews outside it was clear I had other options.
But sometimes fate works through us. And there was this thought running around in my mind like a gecko on energy juice. About Mya. About her animal friends. About Pook.
I could feel my ass getting ready to make a speech.
I painted on a smile and said, ‘It kind of depends on how you want to play things from here on out.’
He tilted his head, puzzled.
‘Richard Fuller may be in jail, but there are children he left behind. They’re only half in this world.’
Tommy nodded. ‘Richard’s estranged wife has already stepped in and taken over the orphanage. She’s trying to work with the police to make amends.’
‘It’s not the orphanage I was thinking of,’ I said. ‘I want you to get behind a relative of Mr. B’s so she can start a boxing camp in the North. She has the land. She just needs help getting it off the ground. It would be right up your street. In the long term you’d be investing in legitimate fighters.’
He looked confused. ‘Most fighters ask for a car when they sign with me! Why do you want this?’
‘For the kids he stole. The farm is close to the forest. They are... you know. Half-animal.’
Tommy closed his eyes.
‘I don’t want to talk about the forest, Jade. I’m not ever going there.’
‘Nobody’s asking you to. But if you want me to fight for you, here’s my condition. If I can arrange it with Pook, then I want you to help her get started.’
He let out a sigh and nodded. I folded my hands to
wai
to him, and he moved to shake my hand at the same time. There was an awkward in-between moment of hesitation. Then we shook hands. And we
wai
’d. We laughed nervously.