Thomas sighed. “Look, Wang, it’s not as though we had a choice. The Agency has spent thousands of dollars dredging that site to recover every last fragment of Flood Rock. There was no chance they were going to let it go.”
Mr. Wang said something bone-dry in Chinese.
Thomas blinked. “Well, I hardly think that’s called for.”
Mei cleared her throat awkwardly. “Would anyone like tea?”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Mr. Burrows said, making no attempt to hide his amusement.
“We really are very sorry, Mr. Wang,” I said. “Of course Mr. Wiltshire and I know you wouldn’t have sold it to just anyone, but we couldn’t convince Chicago. They don’t know you like we do. It’s terribly unfair, but we were under direct orders.” More or less.
That seemed to appease him a little. He picked up the purse, hefting it experimentally. Then he grunted and tossed it back down.
With another sigh, Thomas reached into his jacket once more. “You drive a hard bargain, Wang. There now, can we consider the matter settled?”
Mr. Wang glanced down at the stack of bills on the counter. “Settled,” he said grudgingly. “But not happy.”
“That will have to do, I’m afraid. Miss Gallagher and I are on a very tight schedule. We’re headed out west, and we’ve a list of supplies we need to procure. In addition to which, I’d be grateful for your thoughts on a rather fascinating tale we’ve just heard.”
That piqued Mr. Wang’s interest. He cocked his head.
“What kind of tale?” Mei asked, reappearing with the tea.
“Three sorts, actually,” Thomas said, with the bright-eyed look of an intrigued detective. “A murder, a monster, and magic.”
CHAPTER 4
AN ELEMENTARY THEORY—THE LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE—A NEW HABIT
Mr. Wang took a long, meditative sip of tea. Then he asked a question in Chinese.
Thomas shook his head. “I’m afraid not. From what our client told us, it doesn’t sound as though anyone has actually seen the beast.”
Mr. Wang hummed a skeptical-sounding note and said something else.
“A fair question,” Thomas said. “Mr. Roosevelt did mention that frontiersmen are a superstitious lot, and given to tall tales. It’s possible, even likely, that some of the details have been exaggerated. On the other hand, Roosevelt saw some of the carcasses himself, and he was quite insistent that the predator responsible had to be as strong as a grizzly, if not stronger.”
Mei Wang shuddered as she poured her father another cup. “This is very hard to imagine. I saw a stuffed grizzly bear at the museum once. It was the size of an ox.”
“An ox with four-inch claws, and it’s preying on humans,” Mr. Burrows said, eying his own tea as though he wished it were something stronger.
We’d decamped to one of the dozens of rooms behind the store, the better to keep our discussion private. Mei had left a boy in charge of the counter so she could join us, and I was happy to have her there. Aside from acting as a translator for her father, she had a way of asking the right questions, and today was no exception. “Do you believe these things are related? The ghost, the creature, and the winter?”
“Mr. Roosevelt seemed to think so,” I said. “But if there’s a connection, I’m not seeing it. Could any of it be explained by magic?”
Mei considered that. In practice, she was only an amateur witch, but her knowledge of lore ran deep. “I have heard of magical experiments on animals from ancient times. They say Empress Wu Zetian kept a tiger with fangs as long as swords, but this is probably legend.”
“What about the winter?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No magic is that powerful. Not mortal magic, anyway.”
Mr. Wang narrowed his eyes. He said something to Mei, and she fetched a map from the back of the room and spread it out before us. Crudely drawn and smudged in places, it depicted the North American continent as it might have looked before the arrival of Europeans. There were mountains and rivers and lakes, but not much else. No state lines or borders or even cities. Instead, a single Chinese character appeared at a handful of sites across the continent, and they didn’t match any place I could name. None, that is, except one: Mr. Wang took a pencil and drew the same character over the familiar shape of New York, in the place where Long Island meets the rest of the state.
That’s when I understood. “These are portals, aren’t they?” The one he’d just drawn was Hell Gate, the portal in the East River we’d discovered last year.
“Those we know of, at least,” Thomas said. “As Hell Gate proved, there are almost certainly others that have disappeared from modern memory. But this will be the lion’s share, and as you can see, they are thankfully few and far between.”
I counted seven, three of which looked to be in Canada, and another that might have been in Mexico, or maybe Texas. “This one,” I said, dropping my finger near the middle of the map. “Where exactly—?”
“Dakota,” said Mr. Wang. “Bad lands.”
I groaned. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“It could be,” Thomas said, but his tone was more than a little skeptical.
“I don’t understand,” Mr. Burrows said. “Portals lead to the realm of the dead. It would explain the ghost, but what does it have to do with monstrous predators or a freakishly harsh winter?”
Thomas and Mr. Wang exchanged a look. The latter said something in Chinese, and his daughter gasped.
Dread prickled along my skin. Mei Wang was not easily alarmed. “What is it?”
“I … I don’t know the word in English.”
Thomas sighed. “The word is elemental, and I had very much hoped I was being fanciful in considering it. But if you’re having the same thought, Wang…”
I wracked my brain for any mention of elementals in Pullman’s Guide to the Paranormal, but came up empty. “Is that some kind of fae?”
“Not exactly,” Thomas said, “but neither is it a mortal being. They dwell in the otherworld, past the realms of the dead but before the realms of the fae.”
“But what are they?” Mr. Burrows asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, and I thought myself relatively conversant in the paranormal.”
“Their exact nature is a source of much debate. The ancient Greeks thought of them as embodying the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water.”
“But they forgot wood,” Mei put in, “and metal, which are also part of the wu xing.”
Thomas nodded. “Perhaps. The Hindus and the Japanese add æther. Where all the major traditions agree is that elementals command tremendous power over the earth’s great forces. You can be forgiven for not having heard of them, Burrows. They haven’t been encountered since the Great Hurricane of 1780. Conventional wisdom has it that elementals disappeared from the earth along with the fae when the portals were sealed centuries ago. The incident in 1780 was the result of a breach in the Matawi portal in Venezuela.”
“Does that mean we have another leaking portal on our hands?” The thought made me ill.