“Ah… I’ve got a job for you. Not sure if you’d still take it?”
Her voice on the other end hesitated. From the sound of it my aunt was still uneasy about what happened at the Fan Mirror Villa last time.
“Of course I’ll take it!” I said without missing a beat. Money problems weren’t exactly in short supply: next semester’s tuition, living expenses, and the debt I owed Gu Fancheng all needed to be settled, down to the last yuan. “My father decided he won’t pay a single penny so I can keep studying.”
I’d always been blunt with my aunt.
“That’s good. It’s a high-end apartment. It was rented to a flight attendant who ran off without notice—didn’t even want her deposit back. The landlord rented it out again, and the new tenant complained the place was haunted: a woman walking back and forth in the middle of the night. Tenants kept changing, same story, and now the flat’s reputation is ruined. Nobody will buy it. The owner wants someone to test-sleep—stay a couple nights and see what’s really going on.”
She laid it out in a few brisk sentences, then rifled through her phone. “It’s at Windchime Court in Huadi Qiancheng. Two thousand a night, three thousand upfront as a deposit. Xixi, can you do it?”
“Huadi Qiancheng?” I blinked. Isn’t that the real estate company Jiang Yingsue’s father works for?
“Is that a problem?” my aunt asked.
“No, no problem. I can do Friday through Sunday.” Six thousand yuan would cover what I’d charged on Gu Fancheng’s black card.
“Then I’ll pick you up Friday afternoon.”
“Okay.” I agreed immediately.
After I hung up, Zhao Zifeng peered at me with curiosity. “Your aunt found you another gig?”
Zhao Zifeng was my good friend—of course she knew I worked as a haunted-house sitter. She’d even begged to come along once, but strict parents meant she couldn’t be out overnight.
“Can I come with you?” she tried again, tilting her head and batting her eyelashes. “I’m living at school now. Mom can’t watch me anymore!”
“No.” I refused without hesitation. If she’d nagged me like this before, I might have been glad for the company. Now I knew some of those haunted places might actually be...occupied. I didn’t want my friends dragged into whatever had latched onto me.
“Tch, stingy!” Zhao pouted. “I bet your boyfriend wouldn’t let you do this stuff.”
“Self-reliance is a blessing,” I teased, pinching her cheek. “What, you planning to be some pet canary fed by a man?”
“I could never be a canary!” She laughed and spread her arms like a bird, circling me. “Look at me—what a huge bird I am. I’d eat him out of house and home!” Then she flew back and leaned her head on my shoulder, and we both dissolved into laughter.
The cafeteria was packed at noon. We managed to snag a corner table on the second floor and I was hunched over my tray when I felt someone sit down opposite me without a sound.
There were people everywhere; I hadn’t even noticed. But this person hadn’t set a tray down, and I felt, rather than heard, their gaze fixed on me.
It prickled my skin. I lifted my head and my heart dropped into my stomach—the thing sitting across from me was the faceless grim messenger who’d earlier taken a bribe.
Up close, its featureless face was a pale slab ten inches from me, the dark mist around it thinner than before, as if it were drained of strength. For a heartbeat I only stared.
“You—how are you here again?” My voice was a tremor. Even daytime sightings of such things left me queasy.
“Ah… Mrs. Gu, I’ve come to beg for my life.” The voice wasn’t spoken aloud; it slid straight into my mind. “My corruption has been discovered!”
Of course—rumors always said the underworld’s messengers had been caught for taking bribes. I hadn’t expected to run into one.
“Why are you asking me?” I was half angry, half amused.
“That female spirit, Wang Anran, bribed me and found a substitute… but now I can’t find that substitute!” The faceless messenger’s shoulders sagged. Panic and shame roiled through it. Last night Li Shanshan had been trapped in a soul vial by Master Du—whoever the messenger had been using as a stand-in was gone.
“I couldn’t find him in the living realm, so I snuck back to the underworld—and of all times, Third Master caught me. He’d already brought Wang Anran back to the Purgatory Court, so he learned of my bribery. He’s ordered me to find the substitute and bring him back to close the case within today, or I’ll be bound to my post for five hundred years.”
The messenger seemed on the verge of tears.
“What can I do?” I said. Last night Gu Fancheng had put Master Du to rout; how was I supposed to know where Du was hiding?
“You’re the only one who can see me…” it pleaded, desperation sharpening its telepathic tone. In the next instant it bowed so low it felt like the air itself under it bowed—no visible motion, but it was prostrate at my feet.
“Xixi, are you okay?” Zhao Zifeng leaned forward, as if watching me perform in front of an empty chair.
“I—I’m fine.” My hands shook. “Just go away, please.”
I slapped at the dissipating black haze like shooing a fly. My movements were too big for a public dining room; several classmates glanced over in curiosity. I stuffed mouthfuls of food into my mouth and, with Zhao’s theatrically reluctant guidance, we left the busy cafeteria as if we’d simply decided to leave early.
“Xixi, you’ve been off lately,” Zhao said as we walked. She checked me out like a doctor checking a patient. “You look nervous all the time, not that cold, aloof beauty from high school. Love really does change a woman!”
She grabbed my waist and gushed like an unabashed fan. “See? You’ve got the perfect figure now—curves in all the right places. You’re a total knockout.”
“Shut up!” I blushed and shoved the last cream puff into her mouth.
Of course I was on edge—who wouldn’t be if a trailing wisp of a faceless messenger followed them around? To make the messenger back off, I decided to go to the lecture hall. If a crowded classroom didn’t scare a ghost, nothing would.
The auditorium was full that afternoon. The third-year mortuary science students were hosting a feng shui lecture by a much-talked-about visiting master—an elusive, reputedly powerful practitioner whose classes drew students from other departments and even some faculty. When I pushed into the five-hundred-seat hall, the faceless messenger visibly froze. The place was packed to the brim; even the aisles were filled with books and notebooks used to hold seats.
“Lu—Lu shimei, over here!” someone in the back—Senior Li Zhi—waved like mad, trying to get my attention.