To Hell and Back (Mel Goes to Hell Series Book 4) (16 page)

"How was London, Mere-san?" Koyane asked as he poured the tea.

"Fun, but also a waste of time," Mel said, looking longingly at the cakes. "We knew Persi had gone to Ireland, but the trail came to a dead end. Patrick tracked her to one of his favourite haunts and then she disappeared. But I did learn something useful – I discovered that Luce here is quite the karaoke king." She beamed at Luce.

"He's not a king, he's a dick. He's all show and seduction with no substance. He's not even all that good-looking. And he's wearing my brother's slippers."

Three pairs of eyes zeroed in on the doorway and a pouting Japanese girl dressed entirely in red to match her flaming hair.

"He tried to sell his shoddy company's services to the Japanese government so he could replace thousands of salaried Japanese people with his own imported workers. Now, no one in Japan's buying what he's selling." She sashayed into the room and knelt smoothly. "But this must be the beautiful Murielle-sama I've heard paeans of praise about. They fell woefully short of reality. I am honoured to finally meet you, Murielle-sama." She bowed so low, her forehead almost touched the mat.

Koyane coughed uncomfortably. "Ah, Keiko, this is Murielle-sama, and I believe you already know Luce Iblis? Keiko is caught up in this island business, too, so I asked her to join us. This is Keiko Taniwha."

Luce wasn't sure which of them hated the other more – the girl's vitriol made it clear she couldn't stand him, and he was rapidly making plans for her place in Hell after she was dead. Sooner rather than later, if he had any say in it.

"One of the Pacific people – the first I have met. The honour is mine, Keiko-san," Mel said, bowing. "I think you will find that Luce has changed much since you last met him. He is here at my invitation, because I desire his assistance."

Keiko burst into high-pitched giggles, reminding Luce painfully of Persephone. It seemed to have the same effect on Koyane, too.

"I was just about to tell Mere-san about her cousin Persephone's visit, so your timing is perfect, Keiko," Koyane said, sipping his tea. He set the cup down with a tiny clink. "Persephone arrived here just over a week ago. She came straight to me, asking for assistance in finding accommodation near Beppu as she was fascinated by the jigoku near there. She said she was investigating something for you, Mere-san, so I sent her to Homusubi, one of the present Dynameis in our region. He knows more about the jigoku than I ever will."

Luce raised his hand. "Can I have an interpreter, please? Not all of us speak Japanese."

Mel held up her hand in response. "How about me? Beppu is a city on the island of Kyushu to the south of here. Homusubi is one of the Dynameis. His speciality is volcanoes and vents and he's particularly proud of the jigoku, which roughly translates to hells. The jigoku are volcanic hot springs near Beppu. The colours are really quite beautiful, or so I have heard." She smiled. "Does that cover it, my love?"

Keiko snorted and started tapping her teeth with one ruby-tinted fingernail.

Luce nodded.

"Just let me know if you need the background on anything else," she whispered, then raised her voice again. "So she's in Beppu?"

"I don't know," Koyane admitted. "Since she left, I've heard nothing from her. I mentioned it to Keiko yesterday and she offered to make some enquiries. Can you offer Mere-san anything further, Keiko?"

Keiko shrugged. "Nothing. No one seems to have seen her since the day she arrived. Your friend Homusubi met her and answered a number of questions, but she never returned." She laughed. "Good riddance, I say. That girl is trouble. I'm surprised you'd trust her out on her own, Murielle-sama. She couldn't get a coffee from a vending machine, much less find any information of value to you. Maybe the kappa got her."

"Uh, kappa?" Luce interjected.

This time Keiko grinned. "A kappa is a scaly, colour-changing monster of myth that lives underwater in the region around Beppu. They like to prey on women. Actually, the kappa at Beppu is my grandfather on my mother's side, so I spoke to him, too. He said she was too skinny and whiny for his taste. And he prefers girls who wear underwear."

Luce laughed so hard he nearly choked. Maybe Keiko wasn't so bad, after all. Her perceptions of Persephone were pretty close to his own. But if she was the granddaughter of a monster, what did that make her? An underwater creature that preyed on men?

Mel caught his eye and nodded silently.

Damn. Maybe Keiko wasn't going to Hell, either. Pity. She'd have made a good harpy.

"So Persi was here in Japan a week ago, but now she's gone? Oh well, thank you. At least we're one step closer to finding her, even if I have no idea what she was doing here. I certainly didn't send her, so whatever mission she's on is one of her own making." Mel lifted her cup in both hands and inhaled deeply before sipping at the contents. Her happy smile told Luce he needed to drink some, too.

The tea was so bitter that Luce choked on his first mouthful. How could Mel tolerate the horrible stuff?

Still smiling, she sank her teeth into one of the pink, round cakes, revealing a darker pink interior. Mel offered the cake to Luce. "Take a bite of this; then, with the sweetness still on your tongue, taste the tea."

Luce hesitated. Koyane seemed intent on his own tea, but Keiko was watching him as if she was just waiting for him to make a fool out of himself. Mel wouldn't give him bad advice, would she?

"They're my favourite, so if you don't take it, I'll happily eat the whole thing myself. Maybe even the whole plate," Mel said. Her eyes danced with restrained laughter.

Luce leaned forward and nibbled on the edge of the cake. It tasted of sugar with a faint hint of flowers and fruit, so he took a bigger bite. With his mouth full of the sticky stuff – what had Mel called it? Oh, that's right, a manju – Luce slurped his tea. His eyes widened in surprise. Of course, Mel was right.

"I could live on these," Mel said, then laughed. "Well, if I could live on cake and tea." She straightened and her smile faded. "Okay, you've well and truly sweetened me up. Time to hit me with the bad news, Koyane."

Glances darted between Koyane and Keiko until Luce wanted to smash their heads together. "Just spit it out," Luce snapped. "We didn't fly halfway around the world to watch you two make goo-goo eyes at each other."

Koyane sighed. "The difficulty lies in Keiko's secrets, which are not mine to tell."

Mel gave a tiny smile. "Would it be enough to say that she, like the rest of us, isn't human, and leave it at that?"

Keiko nodded gratefully. "The problem is the Liancourt Rocks. People here call them Takeshima and Koreans call them Dokdo, but neither can agree on who owns them. They're rocks in the middle of the East Sea – the people here call it the Sea of Japan. So many names, it's hard to keep track. And that's what makes it worse. Both countries claim them and they were brilliant for fishing. But with both countries fishing around them, that's no longer the case. Some species haven't been seen there for over fifty years – it's not just overfishing, it's extinction."

Who'd have guessed? The girl was an environmentalist at heart. Or was the little sea monster just protecting her own food supply?

"To force a solution, my people decided the best way to do this was to propose a business arrangement that benefited both countries."

There was a whole society of sea monsters? Luce tried not to grin. He wondered if the men found prickly Keiko attractive.

"The proposal is an abalone farm, where the shellfish is processed on-site into a superior dried product, though we'll be using traditional recipes." Keiko grinned. "My grandmother's secret recipe, in fact.

"Now, in order to protect our stocks and sea cages, we require assurances that no Japanese, Korean or foreign fishing activities occur within our little fish farm, and either the authority to police it, or assistance from both countries. The price we pay for this will be in the form of concessions to both Japan and Korea in pricing our product. We sell it to them cheaply, up to a particular quota. I have investors from both countries backing this project, so it's an international company, neither Korean nor Japanese."

"How do they feel about a Japanese girl in charge, or were you thinking of letting someone else manage your farm?" Luce asked. Being the devil had its high points – you never played the devil's advocate when you worked on your own behalf. It was cheaper, too.

Keiko shot him a withering glance. "I am a citizen of New Zealand, where I was born." She cleared her throat and continued, "Everything was going swimmingly, with both Japanese and South Korean authorities willing to come to some sort of terms. Until they set a date for formal discussions to take place and decided that they needed a North Korean delegate present. North Korea engaged a consultant to represent them – Han Dong-Suk."

Luce burst out laughing. "You're kidding me, right? That can't be a real name!"

"Mr Han is a businessman whose main business interests involve the facility management of nuclear power plants," Mel said softly. "He most certainly is real, and even more real is the lesser-known fact that he has access to North Korea's nuclear arsenal because of his experience with radiation containment. And with his political contacts in North Korea, he's usually a stabilising element, not a disruptive one." Mel turned shrewd eyes on Koyane and Keiko. "What's changed for Mr Han?"

Keiko giggled. "He acquired a new asset. Her name is Sun-Hee and she's quite the little socialite. And now Mr Han is hell-bent on destroying my islands as a token of his love for his bride."

Nothing expressed his power and virility like vaporising entire islands with a nuclear arsenal, Luce guessed. Humans could be so stupid sometimes. He bet the man couldn't satisfy his wife – that'd be why he felt the need to nuke things instead.

"Why?" Mel asked.

Luce opened his mouth to tell her his idea, then closed it to glare at Keiko, who was still giggling.

"Apparently it's a doomed wartime romance," Keiko cooed. "Sun-Hee's grandmother or great-grandmother was in love with a man who came home safe from the Second World War, only to take up fishing. Because that was much safer. The Americans used the Rocks as a bombing range after the war, but the Korean fishermen didn't know that, so they were out fishing in the waters around the Rocks when some US planes flew in from the east and bombs rained from the sky. The woman's sweetheart was one of the unlucky ones – his boat got hit and he didn't come home. Sun-Hee was named for the old lady, who told her the tale when she was a little girl. To hear the grandmother tell it, those islands are a blight on the world. If they hadn't existed, then she wouldn't have lost the love of her life and been forced to marry her worthless husband, Sun-Hee's grandfather. Great-grandfather? Whatever. She told the story to Han once and he swore to level the islands to the ground before he lets anyone else bomb them."

"Vaporising them before someone else can? That makes sense," Luce joked.

"No it doesn't, stupid. Or not to anyone who isn't thinking with his dick, anyway." Keiko eyed his pants with a disdainful sniff. "Destroying the islands above the waterline will kill fish locally and pollute water and air for miles around, making the present situation even worse. At least with the islands there, contested between two countries, no one else is going to bomb them."

Luce opened his mouth to respond, but Mel's calming hand over his distracted him.

"I believe Luce was joking, Keiko-san," she said. "I'm sure he understands the gravity of the situation as clearly as any of us. You're planning a business venture at these islands and you'd like it to succeed for both personal and professional reasons; the Korean and Japanese governments, despite a long history of disagreement over the islands' ownership, are willing to reach some sort of compromise because they support what could be a highly lucrative business; yet Mr Han has brought all this cooperation to a standstill by his desire to please his wife by making a statement of power and military might." She scanned their faces. "So, it's simple. The key is Mrs Han. We need to get her to call off her husband."

"We've tried that," Keiko said glumly. "She's told him many times she doesn't care about the islands and she wouldn't notice if he giftwrapped them or bombed them out of existence. And her husband won't budge." She stared intently at Mel. "Murielle-san, I've heard that you're a miracle worker. We'll need one of your miracles now. I've secured invitations to a private party the Hans are holding so you can meet them tonight."

Mel beamed. "A party sounds lovely. Luce, you did bring a suit, didn't you?"