It was then that I noticed that I was still holding his face in my hand, the new warmth of his skin seeping into my fingers. He’d been objectively handsome before, but with the fresh flush in his cheeks, he became even more attractive.
“Mistress Kang?” he said, breaking me from my thoughts.
I dropped my hand and reached for my staff. Then I quickly rang the bells, reciting the incantation to activate the talisman.
“Don’t remove it again without my permission,” I ordered, hiding my embarrassment.
“I don’t feel a difference, though.”
“Consider it a bandage sealing in your energy. It can only do so much, but it’ll suffice for now.”
He started to shrug, then winced again. “So what happened after you disappeared? And how did you exorcise the spirit?”
His questions reminded me of what I’d learned from Chunhua about her death. The terrible truth of why she’d become an evil spirit.
I couldn’t tell her parents. They’d already been hurt enough.
But maybe there was something I could do.
Before departing from Fuzhou, I left a letter at the town’s inspection bureau—a confession from an anonymous witness who’d seen Chunhua’s unconscious body being carried out of her husband’s family property the night of her alleged suicide.
It wasn’t much, but perhaps the letter would prompt officialsto search for the sleeping draught that Chunhua had been given and reopen the case of her strange death.
I also left a gift at her in-laws’ home, a corded rope hanging from the frame of their front gate.
I’d let their superstitions interpret that as they pleased.
CHAPTER 7
I dreamed that I was on a bridge with thick waves of fog curling around the stone. The bridge’s white-gray bricks ran like scales upon a serpent’s back, slithering far into the mist. Its base plunged into the valley below, promising an endless fall. The air was thin and barely chilled, as if I stood on the highest peak of Mount Long.
But I hardly noticed. Instead, my eyes latched on to a figure leaning against the crenellated parapet ahead of me.
“Baba?” I whispered.
My father turned at my voice and smiled. “Daughter.”
He was dressed in a simple gray tunic and jacket over matching trousers. A ribbon bound his peppered hair up into a neat bun, doubly secured by a wooden pin. His moon-pale face belied the warmth in his brown eyes, which settled on me with all the calmness of a star-specked sky.
“Baba!” I raced forward and flung my arms around his slender frame, breathing in his familiar scent—paper and incense and earth. “I’ve missed you so.”
“As I have you,” he replied, hand resting on my head. “I wish you hadn’t left.”
“I’ll be home soon,” I promised, content to be wrapped forever in his arms. My thoughts briefly flashed to Liu Chunhua and her parents, and I realized how that encounter had deepened my yearning for home, for family.
I continued, “Forgive me for leaving, but I had no choice. You must understand, Baba. Everything I do is for you. For our family.”
“Daughter…”
The hesitance in his tone prompted me to pull away so that I could see his face. It was then that I noticed the black veins peeking out from his crossed collar and crawling up the length of his neck, nearly brushing his jawline.
“What is that?” I hissed, reaching for the creeping lines before his hand stopped mine. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Everyone who walks this bridge bears the same mark.”
I leaned back to examine the bridge with new eyes. If I squinted, I could detect shadowy shapes walking distantly in the fog. “What is this place?”
“The path to the next world.”
