Death of a Sorcerer by Jeannie Lin

Author:Jeannie Lin [Lin, Jeannie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jeannie Lin

Chapter 7

“Are you certain he was dead?” Wei-wei asked, incredulous.

Gao ducked beneath her parasol, a comical sight considering how tall he was.

“Let’s not start any rumors,” he warned quietly.

“You said the constables thought he had moved.”

Gao rolled his eyes. “I know dead, Wei-wei.”

“They say that Daoist masters when they meditate can become so still that it’s a state near death. Maybe that was what happened.”

Gao directed her out through the gates and onto the street.

“He wasn’t a Daoist master,” Gao reminded her, speaking more freely now that they were outside the compound. “He was an imposter and a fraud.”

Wei-wei took a deep breath and met Gao’s eyes. “What exactly happened?”

She could see how the problem vexed him.

“The door of the coffin house was chained and locked last night,” Gao reported. “This morning when the examiner came in, the body was gone. The chain was still on the door, nothing else had been disturbed.”

A cold chill went down her spine. “Are there windows in the coffin house?”

Wei-wei wanted to believe there was a reasonable explanation. She had seen the trick knife and the fire powder, but there were things that happened during Daoshi Yu’s presentation that she couldn’t explain. The way his eyes had suddenly flashed red at her and the strange reflection of the daoshi she’d seen across the street.

“The windows are small and barred shut,” Gao went on. “It’s possible someone could have entered through one of them, but taking the body out would have been difficult. Why all the trouble?”

“It sounds like the stories of wutong,” Wei-wei realized, heart pounding.

“Wutong?”

“Demons who prey on women.”

She’d read about wutong in one of her collections of strange tales. The fantastic stories were written by scholars as a diversion and were popular among the literati. She told Gao what she’d learned at the House of Heavenly Peaches from Song Yi. How the daoshi had shown up there, trying to seduce one of the girls into some lascivious ritual. “Wutong are one-legged demons who ravish men’s wives,” she elaborated. “And the daoshi specifically targeted Yue-ying and me during the street performance.”

Gao listened to the entire telling without comment. “That’s not possible, Wei-wei,” he replied finally and with extreme seriousness. “The daoshi had two legs.”

He couldn’t keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. Wei-wei narrowed her eyes sharply at him.

“I wasn’t saying Daoshi Yu was an actual demon,” she countered. “He, and now someone else, appears to be perpetuating an illusion of dark magic.”

“If a demon tried to harass my wife, I’d send him back to the eighteen hells two times,” Gao vowed with a grin. “Thirty-six hells.”

“You’re the demon,” she retorted grabbing hold of his chin which only caused his smile to widen.

Then he grew serious. “I do have work to do. Corpse-stealing is an abomination and Magistrate Li wants this case resolved before a panic spreads through the city. Apparently, rumors of sorcery and soul-stealing can quickly escalate.”

Wei-wei could see how that could happen. All of these mysterious occurrences had her grinding her teeth and looking around every corner.

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