by L G Rollins
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’ve talked to every one of my associates,” Brox said, setting his soup spoon down. “I’m afraid your original assumption was right. Without any kind of proof the ambassador of China broke into your home and threatened you, there’s no legal course open at this time.”
Jasper leaned back in his chair and allowed one of Brox’s maidservants to take his soup bowl and replace it with a steaming plate of meat and potatoes. “I had anticipated as much.”
Normally he was thrilled to be invited to eat at Tressa and Brox’s home, but tonight the well-cooked meal only reminded him of Mrs. Zhi. She’d been clearly disappointed when he’d turned her away this morning. But with the ambassador’s threats it wouldn’t be wise to take on help he didn’t implicitly trust.
That being said, he was finding it harder to believe she was associated with the ambassador. He’d found nothing to even hint at an association last night. The only reason Ambassador Leng was interested in Jasper was because of his tentative connection with Doctor Hopkins—and Zhi had first come knocking before Jasper’s art show.
“You haven’t had any more visits, have you?” Tressa asked from across the table, her tone wholly flat. “Any other messages?”
“You need to sound just a little more bored if you’re going to convince anyone you don’t care.” Jasper could tell his sister was concerned for him, though she hid it extremely well behind a scowl and monotone voice. He winked at his sister.
Tressa’s scowl deepened and her hand resting against the tabletop tightened into a fist. “This isn’t a game, Jasper.”
“It might as well be, as far as I’m concerned.” Jasper shrugged. “I’m not going to huddle in some corner waiting for the big bad ambassador to come back around.” He shoved a forkful of food into his mouth, ignoring the pang of guilt the memory of Mrs. Zhi brought with it. He’d followed her a few nights previous and found nothing incriminating—nothing against her anyways. That rat-rake had another thing coming if he ever crossed paths with Jasper again, though.
“Truly, Tressa,” he said. “After growing up in Westwood Orphanage, do you think I’d be stupid enough to fall for the man’s threats or promises? I know better than to be hoodwinked by either sticks or carrots.”
Though his words remained affixed to Ambassador Leng, his brainbox continued to wander. What was Zhi ju doing tonight? He’d returned today to the same building he’d followed Mrs. Zhi into. He’d brought a camera and an excuse, and luck had rewarded him. He’d been able to see Miss Zhi again. Ju, she’d said her name was. It was such a unique and beautiful name. It fit her well.
After snapping several pictures and even roping some young women into giving him a tour, he had almost left the dance school discouraged. Then, just before he gave up and left, he’d turned around and there she was. In the well-lit room she’d been even more stunning, more beautiful than when he’d happened upon her the other night.
More than beautiful, though. One look at her and Jasper had known she had fire inside. It was that fire that had caught his attention and held it so fiercely since. What he wouldn’t give to get to know her better.
She spoke her mind and stood up for her mother and he’d seen the way she fought off the rake’s attacks. Miss Zhi had done an amazing job defending herself. The rake had knocked her off balance enough to make her fall; it was an unlucky shot was all. If it hadn’t been for that, Jasper was confident she wouldn’t have needed his help.
Though, Jasper had been glad to find someone he could take his frustration out on.
“Jasper, pay attention.”
He glanced back up to find both his sister and her husband staring at him.
“What?” He shrugged again.
Tressa swore as she wadded her napkin up into a tiny, wrinkled ball. His sister may now live in one of the most impressive houses in town, associate with the upper echelon, and regularly have her name in the papers for the wondrous work she was accomplishing at Westwood Orphanage—but she was still his sister. She still swore. She still scowled. And, inevitably, she still tried to mother him.
This time, though, Brox spoke up. “We are just concerned you aren’t taking this as seriously as you ought.”
Miss Zhi flitted through his mind again, but he resisted the urge to follow the thought and instead remained in the present.
“This is the way I see it,” Jasper said, setting his fork down. “Ambassador Leng started with intimidation. I showed him that wasn’t going to work. Now, he’s trying bribery and flattery. I’ll be sure he understands that won’t work as well.”
A servant, tall and stiff, walked through the door and addressed Brox. “A letter for Mr. Wimple, sir.”
No one was surprised, not even the stiff manservant. Jasper had, without exactly asking permission first, told more than one person to send correspondences to his brother-in-law’s house. It was all part of him liking his townhouse to be his own and not a place for would-be-solicitations.
Brox waved a hand toward Jasper and the man servant hurried to his side. Jasper picked up the letter and flipped it over. His agent. He grimaced. He’d hoped that after the success of his last gallery, he’d be given some bit of respite. Apparently not.
Jasper dropped it, unopened, onto the table. He knew what was inside. In only the past two days, she’d taken to hounding him for another art gallery. But she demanded it contained all new art—nothing from the gallery he’d just spent the past year preparing for. Oh, and she not so kindly told him he had to have it ready in no more than a month. Jasper rested his elbows on the table and placed his chin in his hands.
With a sigh he glanced up. And found both his dinner companions watching him quite carefully.
Jasper’s hands came up in submission. “It’s not from the ambassador.”
Both Tressa and Brox seemed to breathe again.
“It’s just my agent. She wants another art gallery—of all new art—in a month’s time. It’s flattering, but a little unrealistic.” It wasn’t often Jasper found things he didn’t like about Mrs. Hedgecock, but sometimes he wondered if she didn’t forget what it was like to be the one making the art, instead of being the one to critique and market the art.
She wanted something new . . .
He could do new. New was one thing Jasper was always up for.
“You will be sure to let us know immediately if the ambassador contacts you again?” Brox asked. “In any form?”
Jasper nodded absently. Could the ambassador make an interesting art gallery? What angle could Jasper take on that jack-a-napes? No. Jasper dismissed the idea. He couldn’t do such a thing without it appearing as though Jasper was making a political statement. Gads, he hated that audiences always jumped to such conclusions. Jasper picked up his glass and took a long drink.
He needed something radically new, something he’d never made art around before if he was going to get an entire gallery’s worth in a few weeks.
Miss Zhi danced across his mind.
Jasper paused, drink still pressed to his lips. Thoughts of her moved to memories of the building, the clothing of the other women he’d met that day, their accents and eye shape. There might just be enough there. He already had a few interesting images.
“He’s gone again,” Tressa muttered.
Jasper’s lips twitched as he placed his drink back on the table. Tressa was forever making jabs over his tendency to let his brainbox wander. He didn’t have a problem with it, though. He did some of his best creative work when others were busy being social.
“I think I might know what to do my next gallery on.” Jasper pushed away from the table and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d best be about it at once.” He snatched up the letter and was halfway across the room, but then he paused and turned back.
Two of the best people the world over sat at that singular table. Gears above only knew what he would do if the ambassador went after them. “The only thing that has me concerned are you two.”
Tr
essa and Brox stared at him. They were probably unimpressed with his abrupt, uncouth departure. Or the way he jumped from one topic to another.
Jasper shook his agent’s letter their direction. “I’m serious. You watch yourselves.” If the ambassador ever tried to come after his sister and her husband, Jasper would do far more than plant his fist in the man’s face. He would see the man hang.
***
Jasper checked his gun—fully loaded—and snapped the barrel closed. He slipped it under his pillow and began undressing for the night.
After supper with Tressa and Brox, Jasper had hurried home and spent far more hours than he should have sketching out concept after concept for photographs, sculptures, paintings, and more. The ideas had flown from him like they hadn’t in ages.
It was refreshing. It was exhausting.
Jasper removed the strip of fabric which held his dreadlocks out of his eyes and dropped it onto his bedside table. Lying back in his bed, the gun pressed uncomfortably against the back of his head, even through the pillow. After two event-filled nights during the past week—the first including a visit from the Chinese ambassador and the most recent requiring Jasper use his street-fighting skills—all Jasper wanted now as a peaceful night’s sleep.
He shifted around so that his head wasn’t directly atop the gun and tried to get comfortable.
More thoughts regarding Chinatown—textures, colors, and compositions—bumped around inside his brainbox. He scowled hard and willed the thoughts to leave.
They didn’t. Jasper laid an arm across his eyes, blocking out any remaining moonlight which slithered into his room from between the shutters on his window—shut and locked. Still, ideas pressed against him, keeping him from sleep.
Jasper shook his head, pulling his arm away. He’d return to his art tomorrow, but without a good night’s sleep he’d be far less productive. Art required a well-rested mind and he’d already stayed up later than he ought. Jasper cursed the thoughts keeping him awake.
Blue moonlight flitted across his shut eyelids. A lot of blue light. Blast—had his window come open somehow? He didn’t want to get up and deal with it; he truly was exhausted even if his brainbox hadn’t figured that much out yet.
Jasper tried to roll over and get comfortable but the light wouldn’t let him rest. Cursing, Jasper threw the covers off and sat up.
A single figure stood at the foot of his bed, staring down at him.
Jasper’s hand shot under his pillow, pulled out the gun, aimed and fired—all before the stranger could move. The bullet roared through the room, black tendrils of smoke twirled away in its wake. It shot across the length of Jasper’s bed and passed directly through the stranger’s shoulder.
The stranger didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flinch at the impact.
The bullet embedded itself in the wall behind the stranger. Jasper blinked—not only was the stranger wholly unaffected by the gunshot, but Jasper could see through the stranger’s shoulder to where the bullet had left a black mark on his wall.
Jasper could see through every inch of the stranger. Moreover, the blue light wasn’t coming from his window; that was still shut tight. The stranger himself was emanating a soft blue light.
“It is foolish to shoot one who is already dead,” the stranger said.
Jasper cursed again, pushing himself fully to his feet and leveling the gun at the ghost. Not that a second gunshot was going to do any more than the first. But, hang it all, Jasper had nothing else to protect himself with.
“What do you want?” Jasper demanded. What was it about people threatening him in his bedchamber that was suddenly so en vogue now?
“I have come to enlist your help.”
Unsure what to say to such a statement, Jasper eyed the ghost, his gun still aimed at the stranger’s chest. He wore a long robe, one that reached nearly to his feet. The ghost held his hands in front of him in a stiff pose and the sleeves of his robe covered his hands. They even belled out near the wrist so that the cuff of his sleeves dipped low. It was certainly a style Jasper hadn’t seen before on the streets of London. Did all ghost wear such long, flowing robes?
“Be assured that I am as reluctant to be seen with you as you are to see me at all.” The ghost sighed. “But it seems destiny is determined that you and I should work together.” The ghost gave his head a gentle shake.
His dark hair was pulled up tight atop his head and a small circlet of metal wrapped around the bun. His eyes were almond shaped, too. It had not been immediately obvious, since the ghost was blue-hued and unnervingly see-through, but the more Jasper looked the more it became clear the ghost was from Asia.
When Jasper had first decided to create art based on Chinese patterns, colors, and culture, a visiting ghost was not what he had been vying for. “Why do you think I’d help you?” Jasper slowly lowered the gun. The ghost didn’t seem to want to do him harm.
“Honor dictates that you shall.” The ghost began to stride about Jasper’s room, looking over Jasper’s clothes, splayed out about the floor, and his sketches, scattered over a nearby tabletop. “Though I struggle to believe that honor is much of a priority to you.”
“Excuse me, but a messy room has nothing to do with honor.” Not that he needed to justify his living habits to someone who was dead and of no relation to him—wait, was this ghost a relation to him? Jasper, with dark black skin, had never once thought he might have oriental blood in him. Then again, what did he know? He only had his father’s last name and not an ounce of history more.
The ghost faced him, his hands hidden in the iridescent folds of his robe. “You, boy, are impertinent and rash. That I have seen in you more than once. That is why I doubt you value honor.”
Boy? Jasper folded his arms, but didn’t put down the gun, worthless though it was in this situation. “At least I don’t break into the homes of strangers in the middle of the night and demand they serve me. Now that would be extremely impertinent and rash.”
The ghost’s nostrils flared and his brow dropped into a hard line. “I don’t have time for your flippancy.”
“And I don’t have time for you, at all.” Jasper motioned toward his bed. “If you do recall, I was in the middle of something rather important.”
“As important as saving two lives?”
Jasper rocked back slightly. Despite what the ghost assumed about him, Jasper was no coldhearted blackguard. If someone’s life was on the line, he would do the right thing. “Whose lives?”
The ghost’s tone softened. “My wife and daughter.” Those few words were filled with anguish and deep love. If only Jasper could someday find a way to make his art speak with so much emotion.
Jasper half-sat atop his bedside table. “I’m listening.”
The ghost strode over toward him until he was only an arm’s length away. Jasper could see wrinkles by the man’s eyes, but he wasn’t particularly old. Probably only a few years older than Tressa or Brox. That seemed a frightfully young age to die.
“The man you call Ambassador Leng has long wanted to silence my wife, Zhi liling.”
“Hold on”—Jasper stopped the ghost with a raised hand—“your wife is Mrs. Zhi?” And his daughter would be the fiery Miss Zhi. So that was his connection with the ghost. That would mean, the dead man before him was Mr. Zhi, then?
The ghost nodded slowly, a movement that seemed to require most of his upper body and not just his head. “Leng dashi murdered me many years ago necessitating Liling’s flight to your country. Now, Leng dashi—”
“Leng dashi?” Jasper could have sworn he heard Mr. Zhi’s teeth grind at the interruption.
“Dashi is his title in China,” Mr. Zhi explained through clenched teeth. “The imbecile thrust a knife in me two decades ago. As I was dying, he used a forbidden talisman to cast a spell on me, preventing me from ever drawing close to him, or my family. He successfully truncated any method I might have otherwise employed to protect those I love. However, for a few weeks every year during Ghos
t Month, the talisman’s power grows weaker, allowing me to visit. Though I still cannot approach Leng or my family.”
Nearly twenty years this man had been forced to watch his family from afar. Watch them struggle, no doubt, and not be able to help. That was purgatory if Jasper had ever heard it. “So, you are asking me to do what you cannot?”
The ghost nodded again. “Every year, for the few weeks I am allowed to appear, I do all I can. But this year, my family is in far worse danger than ever.” He pulled in a deep breath and stood up straighter before continuing. “Leng dashi has learned that my wife is still alive and here in London. He has chosen to leave off convincing you to help him and is instead bent on silencing her.”
Jasper’s stomach twisted. That sweet, hunched-over lady certainly would not stand a chance if the ambassador employed the same tactics on her that he had tried on Jasper two nights previous. “How did he know she was here?”
Mr. Zhi’s gaze didn’t leave Jasper, but his voice turned pained once more. “It is my fault,” he admitted without hesitancy but with obvious regret. “She has been beseeching for my help in finding employ. I watched many of the residents along this side of town as it is within walking distance of her and Ju’s home. You appeared in the most need. I directed her to come back here and try a second time.”
“Wait—you’re the reason she made herself at home yesterday and insisted on cooking me breakfast?”
Another bow.
Jasper ran a hand down his face. Well, now he didn’t have to worry she’d been sent by Ambassador Leng. “So, wait, how did that result in Leng learning she was in London?”
“Leng dashi is interested in you because of your distant connection to one, Doctor Hopkins.”
Jasper crossed one leg over the other. “He wants me to steal some of her research for him.”
“Exactly. You are close enough to know her and to get close to her, without being so close that she would notice if you were suddenly acting strange or for a friendship between you both to get in the way of your actions.”
No doubt, in the ambassador’s mind, Jasper’s less than posh past had added validity to pressuring him into such an act.