Shadow Pavilion Read Online Free PDF Page B

jemmy. Together, he and Pa Chin wrenched the central floorboards loose and Chen peered in.
    â€œThere’s something there.”
    An empty space, much wider than the crack revealed by the boards. They pried enough away for Ma and Chen to drop down into the room that lay below.
    â€œWell,” Chen said. “There’s a door here, anyway.”
    This cellar room felt ancient, much older than the house that lay above it. Singapore Three was a recent city, but it had incorporated some very old villages and estates, including a couple of palaces, and Men Ling Street had been part of the small port area of one of these hamlets, situated on a harbor which had long since become silted up. The walls of the room were made of stone, rough and mossy and emanating a choking smell of damp.
    Chen put his ear to the door. He could hear nothing beyond it, but that meant nothing: the door might be very thick. His rosary was wrapped around his wrist: Kuan Yin might no longer be his patron, but the rosary was still Chen’s primary weapon, the focus of his power. Ma’s sword was drawn. Chen still couldn’t get used to that.
    â€œRight,” he mouthed. “ One … two … three …”
    He kicked the door, aiming at the lock, and the old wood was more fragile than it seemed, for the lock splintered and gave way. The door fell open with a crash and Chen and Ma were through.
    Looking back, he wondered that the smell had not been worse than it was. Even so, Ma gagged and Chen clapped a hasty hand over his mouth and nose, keeping the rosary hand free. Some of the bodies had been here for some time, but others looked quite fresh, recently butchered. A skinned torso twisted on a chain, boiled eyes gazing vacantly into Chen’s own. There were, perhaps, a dozen of them, in various states of dismemberment. The sound of sad spirits wailed briefly in his ears and then were gone.
    Chen brushed past the corpses to the end of the room. The floor beneath his feet was sticky with blood. It was a meat locker, nothing more. It ended in yet another blank wall, but looking up, Chen could see a hatch, half-buried in moss. Whoever, or whatever, had stashed the bodies here clearly had little interest in keeping their meat cold or fresh.
    â€œBetter ask Shao to bring up the missing persons file on the car computer,” Chen said. “I should imagine we’ve got a number of results in here.”
    Corpses, yes. But no sign of demon or badger.

8
    T o Go’s relief, he had managed to talk Beni into some sort of agreement.
    Sending Lara back was not the best thing to do, but the only thing. Having secured Beni’s concurrence, however, Go found himself faced with two further problems: Lara’s kindred did not want her back, and Lara herself did not want to go.
    Delicate negotiations were therefore called for. And probably a large bribe. It was not an issue that Go had anticipated when they first met Lara: kidnapping, yes, okay. That could be dealt with. He’d foreseen tears, threats, maybe even some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, but not quite the degree of enthusiasm that Lara had actually displayed. The idea of a ransom, which hadn’t even been in Go’s mind in the first place, was summarily dismissed when Go had had a visit from Lara’s sister.
    * * *
    At first, he’d thought it was Lara herself, standing in the window of his hotel room at midnight, and his heart had leaped and stuttered in his chest.
    â€œLara! I—”
    â€œI’m not Lara.” A long tail twitched, rustling the curtains. Yellow eyes glittered in candlelight. And he could see now that she was shorter, her long hair a slightly different shade to Lara’s jet black, a little russet.
    â€œThen who—”
    â€œI’m her sister. Askenjuri.” At least, that is what he thought she said. The name was a hiss and a sigh. She moved toward him and his knees buckled. The light of the candle illuminated