Wild Hunt Read Free Page B

thing to do is clean up after them.”
    He regarded the photo a moment longer, and I noticed that there were two pages stuck to its back, tacked there with rusting staples. They looked handwritten, but carefully so, as if they’d been copied out by someone not entirely familiar with English letters. A faint scent of rot clung to them, maybe one that had seeped out from the jar, but with a heavier touch to it, like spoiled meat.
    As if in rebuke for my scrutiny, Yuen flipped the frame around. “We clean up after them,” he repeated. “Because only the dead can kill the dead.” He handed the frame to his daughter—Elizabeth, though I’d never heard her name till now—then put his arm around her shoulders, pressing her forehead to his. “Take care of those,” he said, and more, too soft for me to hear. Ilooked away and thought of my mother, and a woman not my mother, gone for not so long but in too similar a way. When I looked back, Yuen had that limp stillness that nothing alive can replicate. Even though I’d known it was coming, the shock of it still hit me like ice water to the chest.
    Elizabeth, though, moved quickly, cracking a vial of what smelled like blood against the jar and using the broken ends to pry away the wax seal. She pressed the opened jar against her father’s throat as if applying a salve and muttered a phrase that I couldn’t quite hear. A gunpowder stink billowed through the room. My ears popped, and through that pressure came a faint gibbering, a babble that not only didn’t make sense but had been far away from sense for a long time. Then Yuen and his daughter together—don’t ask me how, since at this point Yuen was definitely dead—spoke the last word, and, like the stilling of a bell, the magic was complete and ended.
    Elizabeth caught her breath in something not quite a sob, then let it out slowly. Without looking at me, she held out the jar. I couldn’t see her face, but I had a guess as to what it had cost her to spend that last moment carrying out that ritual instead of saying goodbye.
    I took the jar from her and sniffed. There was a remnant of the putrid, corrupt smell, but no more than that, like a footprint that the tide has washed. No ghost, though what had been in there had not technically been a ghost, at least not as I understood it. The only trace of rot now in the room came from the pages on the back of the photo. “It’s clean,” I said. “Empty. Uninhabited.”
    She drew a ragged breath, then turned away from me and took the blindfold from the statue of Guanyin. “You’ll be compensated for your time,” she said briskly, her tone high with suppressed shock but still somehow different now that she was speaking for herself. “I’ll send a deposit to your account.” She wadded up the white silk and placed it in the offering bowl.
    I looked around for a place to set down the jar. “There’s no need—”
    “There is. I intend to discharge my father’s debts, and this is one of them. You’re also overdue to come in for some of your armaments work—” so that was how Yuen referred to the bullets he cast for me, “—so I’ll put you in touch with someone who can handle that aspect of our business.” She took the jar from my hands and placed it on top of a cabinet, among the receipts to be filed. Her movements were brisk and efficient, and I thought of Yuen’s words about cleaning up after one’s parents.
    Taking a long kitchen match from the stand by Guanyin’s feet, she struck it and touched flame to silk. “Don’t get me wrong, Miss Scelan. This wasn’t charity on your part, and it isn’t on ours.” She was still a moment longer, gazing at the flames. Then, moving like a spring uncoiling, she tore the hidden pages from the back of the photograph and chucked them into the fire. The flames blazed up brilliant green, turning Guanyin’s serene expression into a scowl.
    “Wait!” I took a step forward, then stopped as she turned to look at me.