Downpour

EIGHT

I gave up on the day earlier than I’d intended, returning to the hotel to check the ferret out more thoroughly—she was fine, naturally—and put her down to romp somewhere safe. Then I sat down on the bed for a few minutes, which turned into falling asleep for a couple of hours. I woke up with every muscle in my chest and abdomen protesting as if I’d been the one to haul the car out of the lake myself and my stomach rumbling hunger even louder.

Clouds had rolled in once again while I slept, and getting food meant a trip in the downpour. It was cold rain that sliced in on the wind through the Strait of Juan de Fuca like a million tiny daggers. By the time I was back in my room after dinner and some quick shopping, I was feeling as miserable as Chaos had looked coming out of the lake. The already-wet velvet scarf had been useless, and even the baseball cap I’d snatched out of the Rover had only slowed the penetration of water to my head. I took a hot shower and lurked under the duvet to save my toes from predation by ferret while I made another phone call to the Danzigers.

Ben answered the phone. “Danzigers’ House of Paranormal Pancakes.” I could hear Brian chanting in the background, “Ghost, ghost, ghost! ”

“What?”

“Oh, hi, Harper. We’re having potato pancakes with dinner and the boy wants them ghost shaped. We’re having some trouble disambiguating latkes from flapjacks.”

It took me a second to puzzle out “disambiguate” before I could reply. “At least you aren’t trying to explain the difference between blintzes and the Blitz.”

“Oh God, I fear the cream-cheese-filled barrage balloons. . . .”

I laughed. “So, did Mara ask you about monsters?”

“Oh, your elemental white apes? Yeah, but I haven’t had a lot of luck narrowing that down. Technically a lot of things fall into the ‘elemental’ category, from brownies to the yan-gant-y-tan.”

“A what?”

“It’s a Breton creature of evil omen—it has candles instead of fingers. Your monsters didn’t have waxy hands, did they?”

“No, they had black claws. But I have another clue. I met another . . . thing that seems to be related, same kind of coloring and horns, but no fur. It’s an intelligent monster, essentially human in shape and size, male, but it can project a human form over its own. This one looks Asian when he’s pretending to be human, has red hair on his head, and he called the other ones—the smaller, dumber ones—‘gwhy’ or a word that sounds like that. Any bells?”

“Gwhy . . .” he repeated. I could imagine him staring at the kitchen ceiling and thinking, going through his mental catalog of monsters until he asked, “Could that word be . . . guai?” His tone had the same odd rise that Jin’s had had.

“Yes! That’s what he called them.”

Ben paused. “Ah. That’s Chinese. I’m not so good with Chinese—I don’t read either of the text forms, so what I know comes from translations and broad-stroke references. And the Chinese myths got around along with the rest of Chinese influence and conquest. For instance, a lot of Korean and Japanese demonology is based on the Chinese legends and myths that came with Buddhism—though of course it’s impolitic to say that in some company. They have a bunch of demons and ghosts in common but for the name-change, such as the kitsune, the kumiho, and the huli-jing, which are all the same shape-shifting fox-demon, essentially. The three mythologies get tumbled together a lot, and it’s sometimes kind of hard to pick out which version is which.”

“Hey, Ben,” I suggested, “could we just go back to ‘guai’ ? What’s that? Because that seems to be what I saw, if Jin was speaking truthfully.”

“A djinn?”

“No. The articulate, manipulative one calls himself ‘Jin.’ He’s also vain and kind of greedy.”

“Oh . . . Interesting . . . I think that’s the word for ‘effort’ or maybe for ‘gold’. . . . I should learn some Chinese. . . .”

“Getting off track here, Ben.”

“Oh. Sorry. Chinese is tough. It’s contextual and tonal and it’s easy to mistake one word for another—it’s a great language for puns and jokes and embarrassment—but in this case, I’d think he meant it as a bit of an insult. See, the word I think he said can mean ‘ghost’ ”—the word brought on a new spate of chanting from Brian in the background until the noise stopped with an abrupt yelp—“or ‘spirit’ or ‘demon’ or ‘freak’ or ‘monster.’ Probably a few other words as well . . . You get the picture. But I think what you’ve seen is a couple of different types of Chinese demons, since these plainly aren’t ghosts. They’d be ‘yaoguai’ or ‘yaomo,’ depending on which shade of meaning you intend. If your big guy is smarter and more sophisticated, he’d naturally look down on the smaller, dumber ones, so calling them ‘freak’ would be about right.”

“OK. So, what’s the skinny on these yaoguai?”

Ben sighed. “Unfortunately, I really don’t know. They are elemental in nature—or at least a lot of them are. The Buddhist legends say the smart ones used to be humans who died in some particular sinful way and became demons when they descended to hell. I’m not sure how they get to be demons, but they do, and then they sort of embody their sin, and their way out of hell is to acquire the power of a very magical or truly enlightened man—to the Taoists and Buddhists, enlightenment and magic are closely related. Anyway, the demons acquire this power by literally consuming it—they eat the power, usually by eating the man who has it. The demons trick people by using illusions and making bargains, because these are both considered degraded uses of the powers that lead to enlightenment. They get more sophisticated and powerful as they consume more, but they always remain tricksters at heart until they can devour a truly enlightened man. You see the general trend?”

“What happens after the demon eats the Buddha or whatever?”

“I’m not sure. I think they become humans again, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense that they’d get to go straight to heaven after eating people. I’m going to have to look this up. . . .”

I had to say his name twice to get his attention back. “It’s OK for now. I get the general gist of the thing. Is there a way to destroy these demons?”

“Oh, you can’t really kill them—they’re already dead. You can banish them back to Diyu—that’s the Chinese underworld—though, if you know the right spell. You write it on a piece of yellow paper and . . . I think you make the demon eat it. I think—”

“Yellow paper?”

“Or silk I think will work, too. Yellow is the Buddhist color of sanctity and enlightenment. Red for happiness and luck, white for death.”

“What about green?”

“Not sure on that one, either, but I’d make a guess at the earth or living things.”

I humphed, trying to absorb all the information, match it up with what I’d seen and heard in the past two days, and let my mind look for connections to other magical things I was more familiar with. I’d stand a better chance of using this information to my advantage if I could relate it to things I already had some facility with.

“OK,” I said, “I think I have a general idea about this. I’d like to know more, but I think that’s all I can take in right now. Can I drop in on Monday and pick your brains some more?”

“Sure. Oh! And I have some great news! But I won’t tell you now. I’ll tell you on Monday.”

“Tease.”

Ben laughed. “Mara says that, too. Do you want to come for dinner?”

“No, I need to get back out here to Port Angeles as quickly as I can turn it around, so I hope not to be in town late enough. And if I ruin one more meal at your house with some problem of mine, I don’t think Mara will forgive me.”

“She’s had to forgive me and Brian.”

“With an emphasis on had to, Ben.”

“Well, yes. . . .”

I smiled. “Can I call you before I come over?”

“Sure. Brian should be at day—um . . . play care until two, so if you come before that, we won’t have to chase him.”

“All right. I’ll see you before then.”

We disconnected and I leaned back into the pillows, still remarkably tired and sore, and turned on the TV, looking for something mindless. I wished Quinton was with me; we still didn’t live together or spend all our free time together, but I realized I’d become used to his being around. It had been a while since I’d had to run a case completely alone and I missed his input. I also just missed him. Snuggling Chaos wasn’t as satisfying, besides being a bit smellier.

After an hour of animal shows interrupted by explosions of ferret dancing, Chaos wound down and curled up next to my knees for some sleep. I stared at the screen until my brain went mushy. Then I put her back in her cage and went to sleep myself, wondering what, if anything, we’d find when the car finally came up from the lake.