Page 48 of Between Ghosts and Gods

“The other half is in Lady Camellia’s chambers. If she comes back to clear away the glass and finds it, the mirror will lead her straight to us.” Arun didn’t trust their odds of surviving another confrontation with the demon lord.

“Then what do we do?” asked Kasu.

Arun lifted the memory bottle he had taken from Lady Camellia’s shelves. Giving it a little shake, the green smoke swirled before his eyes.

“That’s not what the Pale Lady asked for.”

“It will have to do. We’re not going back.”

It was not cowardice, no matter what the mumbling trees might claim.

Kasu sighed and rubbed her eyes. Arun couldn’t blame her. He was sure they both felt the same way.

Tonight had been an utter catastrophe.

Chapter Twenty-Four Kasu

A strange hush lay over the streets when Kasu and Arun, tired and disheartened by their failure, entered the western quarter. Musicians plucked the strings of their instruments to a markedly sombre tune. The booths putting on puppet plays seemed to have vanished overnight, the teahouses had shut their doors and the street performers had left to find other dingy corners to put on their shows. Kasu had never seen the theatre district so quiet before. The usual crowd of theatregoers was absent and the streets seemed so much more shabby and lifeless than usual.

“Closed until further notice?” Arun read the sign on the doors of the Grand Pavilion Theatre.

It was not just the Grand Pavilion; most of the theatres along the main street were shuttered, with rope barricades across the doors and signs that announced their temporary closure.

“What’s going on?” No one had told Kasu about this. Camellia House’s rumour mill had failed her. This was the kind of strange event that Banse and Manzu and other servants could normally never shut up about.

Perhaps she had been spending so much time with Arun that she hadn’t been around to listen to them. Maybe she had been so preoccupied with the mystery of his mother that she hadn’t paid attention to the usual stirrings around the gambling parlour.

“Did you have tickets for tonight’s show? It’s been cancelled, I’m afraid. There won’t be any more performances of General Shusa: Life and Love of a Loser God.” A young ghost woman in a simple cotton tunic was sweeping the road outside the theatre, brushing all the dirt into a cloth bag.

“Why is that?” asked Arun.

The girl studied them for a moment, then leaned on her broom. “There’s a curse on the prowl.”

“Curse?” Kasu immediately looked down to where Ruo would have been had the cat come with them. Except Ruo had disappeared, and there was nothing and no one there but the dirty road.

And I might never see Ruo again. She tried not to think about it. About how disappointed and frustrated the cat had seemed before they left. If she called for Ruo now, would they even answer her?

Kasu was too afraid to find out.

“A curse is striking down the Pale Lady’s actors. It’s already killed five of them! Well, three, actually. Two more tried to quit, so the Pale Lady ate them.” The girl’s face split into a ghoulish grin.

Kasu thought back to the white wolf they had seen before. She was certain that was the curse responsible for these deaths.

“Anyway, the theatres will open again soon. Once there’s a new schedule, you can get a refund.” The girl returned to her sweeping. Arun bowed his thanks and led Kasu away.

“So, what now? If we can’t find the Pale Lady at the theatre, where can we find her?” he asked.

Kasu pondered this while her feet carried her aimlessly through the streets. Though the western quarter was not as lively as usual, not everything was closed. Away from the Grand Pavilion, some of the teahouses were still open, and there were vendors set up on the street corners shouting about their wares. Musicians remained installed on the sloping rooftops, their soft notes drifting over her.

Kasu paused. All fortune tellers are performers and therefore they belong to me. I see what they see. Hear what they hear. “There is another way. One last way we can talk to the Pale Lady.”

They found a fortune teller’s tent on the edge of the western quarter, where the buildings grew sparse and the paved roads petered into simple dirt paths. Beyond the last of the ramshackle huts lay the rest of the under-realm, sprawling out beyond the reach of the city’s lanterns and into the shadowy horizon.

The fortune teller was a horned demon in muddied rags. She sat crouched in front of her table and moved empty tortoise shells around a chalk grid like they were pieces in a board game, looking up only when Kasu cleared her throat.

“Madam Pale Lady. You can see and hear us, can’t you? We have something to report. Can we please meet somewhere?”

A flash of fear passed through the demon’s six pitch-black eyes. Without warning, the fortune teller’s body split at the seams. “Holy Celestial—!” Kasu bit back a curse. Unclean words invite unclean thoughts, but she had not expected the demon lord to erupt out of the fortune teller like that.