The Red Heart of Jade (7 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wondering if you could help me. I need to buy a gift for my mother.”

He had a faint accent, the edge of something British. Miri waited for more, and he said, “I was hoping you could recommend something.”

“Sorry,” she said. “But I would say if you’re traveling somewhere, the chocolates are the best. They’ll keep better.”

Obviously. There was no reason he needed to ask. He was just looking for an excuse to talk to her.

He thinks you ‘re cute
, she told herself, but was not consoled. The man made her uneasy. His eyes were odd.

“Are you here on business?” He moved closer to the counter. “You have a very American accent.”

“Just wandering the city with some friends,” she lied. “I’m meeting them here. You?”

“I’m a journalist,” he said, and held out his hand. “My name is Robert.”

Miri did not let herself hesitate. She shook his hand, testing his grip. Firm, but not painful. “My name is Maxine. “ Another lie, all kinds of lies. She did not want to tell this man the truth.

“Very pretty,” he said, and Miri knew that was his own lie. His gaze never left her face. She did not blink. He smiled, and then made a great show of examining the chocolates in the glass counter.

Miri did not stick around to make a purchase, and Robert did not say a word or follow as she walked away. She glanced over her shoulder only once, and found him still engrossed by the bakery’s offerings. She was not reassured. She did not trust him.

And yet, no one tried to ride the hotel elevators with her. She walked alone down her quiet hall, stood alone outside her dark door, with no one stalking, no hunter on the trail.

But she still had a bad feeling about
something
.

Premonitions aside, the afternoon passed quickly. Miri took a shower. Ordered room service. Made some calls. She was scheduled to return to Palo Alto the day after tomorrow. Like that was going to happen now. She was glad it was summer and that most of her graduate students were gone, or independent enough to handle her long absences. E-mail was a godsend.

Miri kept her eye on the clock, and when the hour grew late enough to be morning in California, she called her parents. It was good daughterly duty, nothing more. And luckily, they were out. Probably for a power walk, their united team effort to stay fit, because everyone— the ubiquitous, mysterious “everyone “—said that was the right way to live.

Miri left a message. Simple, to the point. “Hi. Hope all is well. I may have to stay in Taiwan for another week or two, maybe longer. If we don’t get to talk, don’t worry. Take care. Bye.”

Easy. Anything else would be superfluous. Anything mushy or more affectionate, strange. Her parents, unlike her long-dead grandmother, believed themselves too intellectual for high emotion. All their passion, all the dreams that had led them to face an uncertain future in a foreign country were withered now and dead. It was the consequence of success, all those monetary and intellectual accomplishments that had demanded terrible sacrifice.

Like raising Miri. Severing the bond until she was more stranger than daughter. Reducing love to a concept, a fashionable exercise, and all in the name of making a better life—because college was difficult enough for a new immigrant, but saddled with a small child? Better to leave Miri behind in Philadelphia with her grandmother. Send for her later.

Miri supposed it made sense. Good intentions, and all that. Only, she had never lived with them again. It was always something: school, work, the neighborhood they were staying in. Not wanting to burden their professional lives with a child, a willful teenager, when things were going so well. Even the accident had not persuaded them. Nothing, nothing—not until it was too late and Miri was seventeen, almost full grown, mourning a heart twice broken. Her grandmother, dead. And the other, the boy...

Dean.

Miri closed her eyes. Past was past, nothing to change, nothing to do but let go, let go and move on. Twenty years and it was time to grow up, to leave behind those wicked lovely ghosts. Thirty-six years old, kicking the high road to forty. Not sixteen anymore. Not some kid with her heart full.

Still full
, she thought.
Ni-Ni never left you. And neither did Dean
.

Small comfort. Maybe no comfort at all. Everywhere she went, there were reminders, like the world was a decoder ring unraveling fragments of her past, sending them straight to her heart—her quiet practical little heart. And while the ache of her grandmother’s death had dulled, Dean’s still cut. He was too much a part of her. He was still a mystery. Dead, while she lived. Dead as she had died, with a bullet in the chest.

The phone rang. It was Owen.

“I considered your suggestion,” he said, without preamble. “I agree. Tea is good.”

“Wonderful,” Miri said, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt. “Are you still at the university?”

“Of course. I’ll be leaving soon, though. It’s already seven o’clock and I haven’t yet... cleaned up.”

“Wear the red tie,” Miri said, and then, quieter, “Maybe I should sit this one out. You and Wendy could make a night of it. At the very least, have her all to yourself.”

“Absolutely not. All feelings aside, this is still a business meeting.”

“Business isn’t everything, Owen.”

“Then humor me. You need to be there. I insist. You are my partner in this, Miri. You are the only person I trust.”

“You trust Wendy.”

“Trust, maybe. But verify, always.”

“Fine. I’ll be there. Where are we meeting?”

“At your hotel. The walls are too thin in the lab, and I want no chance of spies.”

“And the jade? Wendy will want to see it. The bodies, too.”

Owen hesitated. “Let me worry about that. I have... special precautions in mind.”

“Special precautions?”

“Intuition, my dear. Ever since you left me I have had the most uncomfortable feeling.”

“Really?” Miri’s shoulders prickled.

“Quite. “ His voice dropped to a whisper. “I am carrying the jade on my body at this very moment. The lab vault is not safe, Miri.”

“Jesus, Owen. Someone could accuse you of stealing that thing. “

“Then better I steal it than someone else. You know how artifacts disappear in this part of the world. People walk right in off the street and remove the most precious items imaginable, only to disappear without a trace. Inside jobs, Miri, all of them, and I
refuse
to see this new discovery follow its brethren to the black market and some idiot collector with more money than honor.”

“Good intentions won’t save you if Kevin finds out.”

Owen said nothing. Miri let him have his silence. She did not trust the vault, either, but his alternative did not inspire much confidence. Forget the potential legal trouble. Carrying around a four-thousand-year-old artifact was not exactly high-tech protection—and Owen was no Bruce Lee.

No other option, though. And if you’re both having bad feelings...

“I hope you’re prepared to return to Yushan,” he said.

“I assume that will be tomorrow?”

“Perhaps even tonight.”

Which Miri had expected all along. “Kevin?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said. “Really. The man is a turd.”

And with that, after a short reminder to meet in the lobby at nine, they said their good-byes. Miri put down the phone and lay back on the bed. She stared at the ceiling, trying not to think too hard, but the life of that woman in the lab continued to haunt her. Why would she inflict that kind of pain on herself? Ritual? Religion? Neither was comforting, but that was only because part of her thought it made sense. People could—and did—do incredibly mystifying things to themselves and others, all in the name of religion. Gods and legends.

Either way, it was just something more or less to prove, another shade to the theory; an equation missing parts, bricks and crumbles. And one day, Miri thought, one day in the far future, another woman would likely rest in another bed, also thinking about the past, with some enigmatic clue in her hand, dreaming questions, wondering. Maybe she would feel her own body weighed down with the monumental task of uncovering half-truths, conjecture, poor shadows of a past holding true meaning and significance only to the dead.

Nothing lasts forever
, Miri reminded herself.
All this around you, already dead. You, Owen, gone. Ni-Ni and Dean and everyone you love, dead to nothing, except to you. Only to you
.

Miri closed her eyes. She did not want to think about mortality. Flesh was worthless. It was the mind that mattered. All those thoughts and dreams, every little hurt and triumph, the trivialities and epics of a single life, fading into nothing. Human hearts left no records.

Maybe the jade was a record, a book of a heart. It was there, ready to be read, perhaps in the afterlife, perhaps by those left behind.

A nice thought. Miri preferred it to the self-mutilating idolatry of mysterious gods—enjoyed the poetry, the idea of some woman, millennia dead, realizing the significance of her life and taking immortality into her own hands, into her body, replacing jade with bone.

Miri touched her chest, imagining once again stone instead of flesh. Warm and red. She traced the lines in her mind, feeling them on her fingertips. She tasted them on her tongue, heavier than air, sweet and close as song. In her heart, familiar as English, Chinese; a dead language resurrected. It did not make sense, but Miri was suddenly too tired to care. Overwhelmingly weary, with weight bearing on her body and mind. Holding her down with sleep.

Butterflies
, she thought, drifting.
Open your mouth and let them out
.

She almost did, almost said the words floating on her tongue—because this was dreamtime, fantasy, all reason cast to wayside—but at the last moment her body jerked, flung down hard with the sensation of falling, and she snapped out of the hazy daze. Awake, awake. The sensation, the
knowing
in her mouth, disappeared. Butterflies, scattered.

Miri touched her lips. She remembered something alive, beating fierce inside her mouth. Ghost words.

Or just ghosts.

She sat up, uneasy, and forced herself from the bed. Standing was a mistake; she swayed, putting a hand to her head as pain struck; an ice pick through her temple. She was light-headed, too. Miri closed her eyes, but the sensation did not pass. She walked to the bathroom, stumbling as her bare feet hit the cold marble. The world spun; she steadied herself against the counter, fighting to stay upright, glancing at herself in the mirror. No treat, there—not with the hard set of her mouth, the crease between her eyes that refused to disappear. A low ache spread through her muscles, accompanied by a prickled flush, like the onset of fever. The crease deepened.

Miri stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. She did not wait for the water to warm, but turned it on, full-blast and cold. It felt good. She did not shiver. Her skin ate up the water, the unrelenting bitterness; she felt like she was on fire. Her heart hurt, too, the skin over her left breast tender to touch. She tried to ignore the burning, but the heat was too much. She could not breathe. She could not breathe enough to fill her lungs, and it was too much, too crazy. She never got sick. Never, and not like this. This was too fast.

She shut down the water and fled naked and dizzy from the bathroom. Cool air hit her wet skin; she collapsed on the bed, drawing her knees to her chest, fighting to slow her hammering heart. She wanted to vomit, she wanted to scream, she wanted to disappear into the covers like a ghost and never feel again—to give up the flesh, the body, this inexplicable misery with her skin hot to the touch, burning and burning. Darkness flickered in her vision. Shutting her eyes only made it worse; she wondered if she was dying. Wondered, too, why the hell she wasn’t already calling the front desk and screaming for a doctor.

She flung out her hand toward the phone—got as far as dragging the receiver to her ear—when all that discomfort, the fire skimming her skin, cut away. Severed so sharply, at such contrast, that the air against her skin felt like pure ice, cold as the frigid water she had been standing under only minutes before. Miri
sucked in her breath, holding it, holding everything inside so tight. She did not try to stand. She did not try to move. She did not take anything for granted. Her body felt too tender; the heat, the illness, might return. Miri lay very still with her eyes closed, sinking deep into the quiet. Exhausted, frightened. Breathless.

Her mind floated. She fell asleep. She dreamed of fire, and from the fire a shadow crawling from mind to heart, sucking on shades of red: pink for love, pink for death.

She dreamed she ate death.

The next time she opened her eyes, the room was dark. She thought that was strange; she remembered the lights being on. There was also a cover draped over her body, which was a little less odd, but also not something she recalled.

Miri rolled on her side. The clock blinked. It was almost nine thirty.

Nine thirty. Oh God. Owen is going to kill me.

The air was colder than she remembered; Miri dragged the cover with her as she scrambled off the bed, all twisted up, staggering. Her head felt fine—no pain, no dizziness, no unnatural fever, no words on her lips—but just as she regained her balance, still moving, still trying to run to her luggage for clothes, she heard an odd click. Sharp, loud, with a faintly metallic edge.