Shadow Pavilion Read Online Free PDF Page A

sack.

7
    C hen approached the car with a considerable degree of caution. There was no sign that he was being watched, but it seemed likely. He hoped Inari would see the sense of remaining in their own vehicle­; he refused to give her a direct order, she was not a sub­ordinate, and her sense of responsibility to the badger was legitimate. In addition to this, there had been a number of occasions of late in which Inari actually had stayed home in alleged safety, and had been attacked by demons, demon-hunters, and enforcement lords from Hell. She was probably better off in the car.
    He made his way along the back wall of the car park, keeping low. There was no one in either sight or sense, but the latter could be deceptive: goddess knew he’d been wrong before. When he reached Zhu Irzh’s vehicle, he crouched down before the bumper of the car next to it, and peered out.
    There was no indication that the doors had been forced, and no magic hovered about the car. Looking upward a little, Chen could see that the car was also locked. That suggested that the demon had left the car himself, and had voluntarily gone elsewhere.
    Chen took a small phial of powder from an inside pocket. This stuff was notoriously unreliable, but Exorcist Lao had been doing some work on it at the precinct lately and had insisted that Chen give it another try. An improved formula, apparently. Chen had no issue with experimentation, but not really under this kind of circumstance. He spoke the spell anyway, and breathed out. The tiny pinch of powder flew outward, spiraling into the night air like motes of jade dust. Soon, a faint sparkle betrayed the presence of footprints, and to Chen’s hopeful eye, at least, they looked like Zhu Irzh’s elegant pointed boots. Still keeping against the wall, he followed the footprints around to the edge of the parking lot and out into Men Ling Street.
    He must remember to congratulate Lao on the improved formula. The footprints glowed a clear, bright green, which Lao had assured him would have little magical footprint (pun intended) in that their glow would be invisible to anyone who had not personally used this consignment of powder. Chen hoped that this was indeed the case: otherwise he had just broadcast his presence to the entire district. He doubted that Men Ling Street was a particularly forgiving neighborhood.
    There was the house, the one to which he had dispatched the badger. There was the doorway, down a narrow side alley, and there was the hulking shadowy form, waiting behind a dumpster. Chen sidled up behind the form.
    â€œHi.”
    Before the words were even out of his mouth, he was confronted with a whirling silver blade, the sudden rush of a sword as it descended to point at his throat, the rictus face beyond.
    â€œMa,” said Chen, out of a dry mouth. “It’s me.”
    â€œSir!” The sword disappeared. “Sorry, sir. I thought you were a hostile.”
    â€œIf I had been,” Chen remarked, “it wouldn’t have been for very long.” Sergeant Ma had been put through basic martial arts and weapons training, like everyone else in the precinct, but this was something else. The sheer ferocity in Ma’s face was not something Chen had ever associated with his large, mild colleague.
    â€œI’ve been having lessons,” Ma explained in a whisper.
    â€œLessons? From whom?”
    â€œNo Ro Shi. The demon-hunter.”
    â€œOh,” Chen said. He had further problems envisaging Ma as the protégé of No Ro Shi, lately of Beijing; a man of such impeccably communist credentials that he made Chairman Mao look like a liberal. And one of the most celebrated hunters of demons ever to come out of China. No Ro Shi disapproved, ideologically, of demons. He considered them subversive. “Well, he’s certainly efficient.”
    Although now that Chen came to remember it, Inari and the badger had dumped No Ro Shi in the harbor. Good job No