Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(94)

“It’s a fine trick, luring them with the coins and buttons,” she said.

“I knew it! You can send them back. Is this a skill you’ve been taught?”

She didn’t understand why he was so excited, and she wasn’t going to admit that she hadn’t been able to send them back—at least not when she tried it on the bloated ghost in the tunnel under the street. “So you basically channel spirits into dead things instead of yourself.”

“Yes,” Doctor Yip said, throwing his handkerchief aside. “It is one difference between us. I can call them and give them life again. Command them. You can call them into you temporarily. You cannot command them.”

“I can send them back.”

He smiled at her, as if this was the best news he’d ever received, then cleared his throat. “Yes, yes. And you can speak with them. I cannot. They will follow my commands, but they will not talk to me. And someone with your particular talent might be helpful in obtaining information from the dead. Not this plebeian work you’ve been doing, but real information from important spirits.”

“Why in God’s name would I want to help you with that?”

“I know you are sympathetic to the Chinese people—”

“I’m sympathetic to most people, as long as they aren’t trying to kill me.”

He made an impatient noise. “What I’m offering is a chance to use your abilities for a greater cause. You will be given a place of honor in this organization.”

“And live on a rotting boat like a rat?”

“Live wherever you’d like. I will pay you a salary that will allow you a luxurious lifestyle, if that is important to you.”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe that. You did try to burn me alive in my old apartment.”

He idly brushed the front of his vest. “I was only thinking of you as a problem then. I’ve been doing a lot of consideration and prayer, and I see now that I was wrong. You’re much more useful to me alive.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“You are suspicious. Very smart. And we can talk about this for hours, but you will not be convinced until you can see what I’m capable of. Action will convince you where words fail. And I truly believe that something in you will understand better.”

He cracked open the lid of the coffin.

Aida recognized the moment for what it was: an opportunity. She should stab him now, while he was weak, while his goon stood across the room. She could kill him, or injure him badly enough to escape. But how loyal was the big man, Tai? Would he stop her at the door?

Her mind whirled.

“Like speaks to like,” Doctor Yip said as he stood the lid open on its hinges. “We are the same, you and I. No one can truly understand who you are like I can.”

The stench worsened considerably.

Yip leaned over the open coffin and chanted something she didn’t understand several times. “Hay-sun-la, hay-sun-la . . .”

Aida’s breath turned white.

She scanned the coffin for a ghost and saw nothing.

Yip’s shoulders drooped. His breath wasn’t like Aida’s—no ghostly fog billowed from his mouth. His breathing was, however, strained. He gulped air like he was drowning and made a crude hacking noise.

Aida’s focus splintered when something thudded from inside the coffin.

He’d called something over the veil, her breath told her that. And she expected it to look much like the ghosts he’d sent after Winter.

It didn’t.

A decomposing corpse came into view as it sat upright in the coffin. Half bone, half decayed, rotting flesh, it turned its head toward Yip. It was hard to tell if it was male or female, as most of the hair and flesh was missing from the back of its skull. It was wearing clothing, but it was soiled beyond recognition with decomposition, its chest sunken. Shriveled lips remained, sutured closed. The eye sockets were filled with dark sludge.

“You channeled the spirit into the corpse,” Aida whispered.

He coughed and placed a hand on his vest, as if to steady his laboring lungs. “Yes. I don’t use memento mori, as you say in your show. I use their bones as a beacon.” He mumbled incoherent words to the corpse, which promptly lay back down in the coffin. But he didn’t send her back over the veil, because Aida’s breath was still cold.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Westerners would call her a revenant.”

“Animated corpse.”

“If I command her to seek a person, she will walk for miles until her legs fall apart—and when that happens, she’ll crawl. Her hands will scrabble across dry desert, long after her head has fallen in a ditch. I bound her spirit to her bones, and she can do nothing but obey my commands.”

She. That thing was a she.

“Behold,” he said with breathless excitement. “This is the kind of power I wield.”

Aida stared at the corpse in horror. “Put her to rest, for the love of God. You’ve proven your point, and I can’t stand the sight of her.”

“She is alive now. I can’t kill her.”

“You’ve created an immortal creature?”

“I didn’t say immortal. She can die again, in a manner of speaking.”

“How?”

He inhaled deeply, ignoring her question. “Besides, this girl is special. Today I will pack her up and let her loose on her husband.”