"It's not as though you don't
like
girls . . ." her mother mused, brutally. "But all the ones you choose seem so . . .so . . ."
"Poor?"
"Perhaps not very appropriate. But at least they were female. Not some unhuman gentleman from who knows where."
"One presumes that my father is out there somewhere."
Her mother bridled. "I chose very carefully from the implant clinic. Your grandmother and I went to the cache together, the most selective place. I was twenty-three, a very good age."
"I don't see why it was a better age than any other. I mean, I wasn't in you for long, was I? I was in some test tube!"
Her mother's artfully outlined lips compressed.
"Oh, look, I'm sorry." She put her arms around Opal's shoulders.
"I know." Opal's face became indulgent. "You want to enjoy yourself a little. Well, so did I." She kissed her daughter on the cheek. "Go on. Go and have fun. But be
careful."
Downstairs, Jhai called for a car, asking for the anonymous black Mercedes coupe, without a driver. She picked up the car on the Paugeng forecourt and took the coast road to the address that Ei had given her. She left the car at the side of the wharf.
The houseboat floated some distance away, and she would have to negotiate a series of pontoons to reach it. Jhai slipped off her heels and stepped gingerly off the wharf. The first pontoon rocked gently beneath her slight weight. The last of the sunlight sparked from the lapping water. The far islands were blocks of twilight shadow. With high heels in hand, Jhai took a deep breath, and clambered across the row of pontoons.
"Zhu Irzh?" she called when she reached the houseboat. There was no reply and she froze, thinking:
the bastard has stood me up
. Then a familiar voice came from below deck.
"Hello?"
"Zhu Irzh? It's Jhai."
There was an unnervingly long pause. "Come down."
When she reached the bottom of the steps she saw that the room was dark. After a moment's adjustment, she saw the demon sitting on the windowsill. She shut the door behind her.
"Turn the light on," he said mildly. He involuntarily ducked his head as the light went on and Jhai saw a dark membrane slide across his eyes and back, like an animal's eyes. Like her own. She went to stand by the window. Beyond, the harbor lay like a field of shadow, sparked with the lights of ships.
"Do you like sitting here?" she asked, and instantly regretted it. What a fatuous thing to say.
"I can watch the ships, sit in the breeze. You can see Lantern Island from here. Come here, I'll show you." Reaching out, he drew her close. Jhai stiffened for a moment, then relaxed against him. It felt alarmingly natural to be so close to him. His skin was smooth and cool, and the silk jacket was soft against her skin. Zhu Irzh bent his head, and kissed her. There was a familiar tightening deep within her; she stepped quickly back.
"Would you like a drink?" the demon asked, after a slightly bewildered pause.
"Yes." Jhai said shortly. She felt as though she'd been hit by a sledgehammer.
"Wine? Brandy?"
"Whatever." She leaned back against the windowsill.
Zhu Irzh came back with a bottle.
"It's brandy. Hell's own. A little rough, perhaps, but it grows on you. Here." He held out a generous measure.
Trying to get me drunk,
Jhai thought, but suddenly it seemed like an excellent idea.
"You look very nice," the demon said admiringly.
"Thanks." She took a large swallow of brandy and choked. Tears streamed down her face, so much for the make-up. She'd look like a panda.
"Are you all right?" Zhu Irzh asked, in some alarm. Jhai leaned against him, mastered the coughing with an effort, then reached up and pulled the demon's head down to kiss him. Zhu Irzh put the bottle on the windowsill and responded with enthusiasm. Then the tension was back, lust jerked into submission by the iron pull of the drug, and Jhai found herself struggling.
"We don't have to if you don't want to," said Zhu Irzh reproachfully.
"Don't we?"
"I mean, I may be from Hell, but I can still behave like a gentleman if the occasion demands it." He looked as though it had cost him quite a lot to say that. Doubt assailed Jhai. She used people so much that she wasn't sure anymore whether she'd know if they were using her: this is the trouble with power, the small voice said in the back of her mind. Zhu Irzh was watching her, his golden gaze shadowed, and it had been a bad idea to drink that brandy, because she wasn't sure what was real and what was not, and she had given him control. She turned away from him and stood looking into the room, and felt his hands take her by the shoulders and run lightly down to her waist, making her shiver. Then he turned her around again and drew her against him.
"What do you want me to do?" he whispered against her throat. "Tell me what you want."
Anything,
she wanted to say,
anything you want,
and shut out the voice inside her head and the insistent wire-taut singing of the drug. "Do you want to go and lie down?" he asked, and she nodded against his shoulder. Zhu Irzh put his arm around her waist and led her to the bed, where he sat beside her.
"What do
you
want?" she asked in a very small voice.
The demon considered this. "Apart from the obvious? I'd like you to enjoy yourself." He kissed her, and she put a hand over his. As she did so she felt the claws slide out from his fingertips. Her hand jerked.
"What's wrong?"
"Zhu Irzh, I'm afraid of you," Jhai said, horrifying herself.
There was the sudden glitter of teeth in the dimness.
"That," said Zhu Irzh softly, "is very wise. Now, will you let me make love to you?"
So she lay back and let him. He was very gentle, taking a lot of time, and eventually she was amazed to find that his hands and his mouth were drowning out the tug of the drug. Lost in desire, she ignored the fact that its control was slipping away until Zhu Irzh rolled over, pulling her with him so that they were both half-sitting. He cupped her breast in one long hand and reached behind her with the other, stroking her back.
"Well, well," the demon said softly. Jhai felt a twinge at the base of her spine, and then something . . .unrolled. It happened very fast, with a twinge not unlike neuralgia. Jhai and the demon looked down. A tail was coiling around the demon's wrist. It was not like Zhu Irzh's own whip-thin tail. It was sleek, and tiger-striped. Jhai glanced down. Her rib cage was banded with shadows. She opened her mouth and her incisors slid neatly down behind her upper lip.
"I must say," Zhu Irzh remarked, as if commenting on the weather. "This does explain a lot."
"Zhu Irzh—"
"You," said the demon reprovingly, nipping her throat, "are a
very
bad girl."
"Don't patronize me! I didn't mean—"
"I don't suppose you did." Zhu Irzh hissed. His erection slid along her thigh. A swift movement took her onto her back, tail lashing, and then the demon was hard inside her. She'd had no idea that demons would make so much noise, snarling and growling like that, but then Jhai glanced up into Zhu Irzh's abstracted face and realized that it wasn't him, it was her. And that was the last thought she had, for some time.
When it was over, she sat up and looked at him. Zhu Irzh was lying with one arm flung up over his head, staring at the ceiling. She ran her hands down his chest. His breathing began to deepen.
"Why do men always go to sleep?" She could feel his body starting to shake. It was a moment before she realized that he was laughing. He pulled her down beside him and stretched out. She thought he was watching her but his breathing slowed again and she realized that although his eyes were open and reflecting the starlight, he slept. And after a few moments, with her tail entwined with his, so did Jhai.
Robin must have fainted, because she could not remember leaving the cemetery. When at last she regained consciousness, she was lying on something soft that smelled familiar, a warm, reassuring smell, and the bags beneath her were full of something scratchy. She perceived that she was lying on a bag stuffed with hay, and the dusty darkness about her was a cattle shed of some kind. She could see the beasts themselves: horned, matted, with long, ruminative faces.
Someone came through into the stall and the cattle stamped nervously, tapping their hooves against the rough concrete. Someone murmured something. A calm blue gaze shone through the gloom.
"It's you," Robin said. Her victim had come back, free and predatory, and she was aware only of relief.
"I came back," Mhara agreed. The blue eyes were wells in the darkness, the color of the indigo washing powder that spilled across the market stalls.
"What happened to me?" Robin asked. He had bound up her knee, which was stiff and sore.
"I don't know. You were with—people, I think, but the dead. Ghosts." Mhara took her chin in his hand and turned her face to the light from the street that crept in between the slats of the go-down shed.
"Your face is burned. I don't know how it happened."
"It licked me," Robin whispered, remembering. She heaved herself to her elbows and looked at him. "Oh, Mhara," she said, before she could stop herself. "I'm so sorry. For what I did to you."
"I know. It's all right."
"Why did you come back?" she asked in a small voice. "You should kill me, by rights. I tortured you."
"Do you think so? Not as much as you fear, perhaps. You don't know much about me, Robin, the kind of person I am." The predatory hand stroked her hair. "Do you want to rest some more?"
"No . . . I think we should make a move. Paugeng security will be looking for you. And me." She stood and the bound knee gave way. Mhara caught her arm.
"I'm sorry," Robin whispered. "It really hurts. I think you'd better leave me, Mhara." He gave her a long, contemplative look. She amplified: "I can't walk very far. And we can't take a taxi or a tram."
"Then we will take a boat."
"What?"
"We're at the back of the Shaopeng canal. Once we get on the canal, all we have to do is follow it until we reach—that is, until we find a place where I can return to where I belong."
Robin gritted her teeth. She was determined not to ask him to stay. She remained, nursing her knee, as he vanished. He was gone a long time. Robin was hot and every time she moved a burning ache ran along her shin. The stuffed sacking was making her nose run and her eyes itch. She had never known such a week for being ill. The beasts stamped in their stalls. Mhara was coming back, she thought with an uplift of hope, but they refused to settle down and he did not come into view. One of the cows kicked out, and the sound echoed around the stalls like a hammer blow.
"Robin? Where are you?" a soft, familiar voice said. Robin kept still. She could see it flickering against the wall of the shed, like a shadow, no shape or form, just movement. Then it collapsed back into its normal being, the powerful hindquarters swaying against the sacks. Wise, orange eyes looked at her.
"There you are."
"Go away," Robin cried.
"Oh no," the beast said.
Do not look at it,
she thought,
it is not real, it is not there, a spirit,
but she felt her head, suddenly bursting with pressure, turned around to meet its gaze.
"Well," Mhara said softly from the door, "whatever are you?"
The animal looked up at him and whined. It gave a little purring laugh.
"So you're the one," it said. "Have you told her yet? What you are, and what they made you?"
Mhara crouched down on his heels and regarded the beast with some interest. He was smiling his vague smile but Robin saw his fists clench slowly. His spine was taut.
"Not yet, no."
The animal laughed again, and scratched one ear with its heavy, hind foot.
"Better do so then," it said. Mhara growled. His thin, amiable mouth drew back from the long, sharp incisors and narrowed the blue eyes to a slit. The cows, fretful, shuffled in their stalls. The animal bounded forward and Mhara rose and stepped swiftly from its path. It bounded through the door and was gone. He looked after it.
"Found a boat," was all that he said.
He helped Robin through the door and down a small set of steps, strewn with dried grass, onto the street. They were, she saw now, outside a long range of warehouses. From here, the go-downs looked like separate buildings, when in fact they were a single long barn. The derelict lot to the side of the sheds was blowing with grass, a pale golden haze in the darkness, and the night air was filled with pollen and dust. This, presumably, was where the beasts were kept in their city pasture, contravening the zoning regulations.
Holding onto Mhara, Robin hopped the remaining few yards to the bank of the canal. This was not the main Shaopeng canal itself, but a narrow tributary. The boat was roped roughly to a post. It was a small, nondescript craft, barely big enough for two people, a flat raft rising slightly to a squared prow and half-covered by a semicircle of canvas. It was the boat of a poor person. Robin's liberated social conscience protested.
"We can't take
this
. This must be all someone's got."
"It's all right," Mhara soothed. His eyes were shadows under the single wharf light. "I paid for it. Fifteen hundred dollars in gold."
"How
much? Wherever did you get all that?"
"I don't think we should stand here, Robin. We should go."
Robin acquiesced as he jumped from the wharf and turned to lift her down. When he had untied the boat and had started its small inadequate engine, she said, "Who did you take the money from?"
Mhara squinted narrowly ahead. "I did not take it from anyone. I just happened to have it."
"What, you just 'happened to have' fifteen hundred bucks in gold?"
"Yes. When I found the boat, it was roped to another one, and I thought perhaps I shouldn't just take it, so I left the money in exchange. That's what you do, isn't it, with money? I don't understand it very well."