Kylie Chan - Hell to Heaven

‘Something new,’ Yue Gui said. ‘Always a bad thing.’

After the Sang Shen and Blue Dragon hearing I headed out from the main administrative building to one of the smaller buildings skirting the large courtyard. The building was a row of rooms all opening onto the terrace overlooking the courtyard; it reminded me of an Australian motel — all it needed was the cars parked out the front. The room at the far north end of the structure, closest to the residential part of the complex, was my office; and instead of bumping up the stairs, I gripped the balustrade and slithered up it.

Firebrand, the other administrator, and Lily were there already, going through the massive piles of documents related to the cases I’d heard over the past three days, deciding which needed to go down to the Earthly for future reference and which didn’t. There was a pile on the desk at least twenty centimetres tall.

‘That’s not the papers going down with me, is it?’ I said.

Lily and Firebrand shared a look, then both pointedly ignored me and continued shuffling through the transcripts.

Simone and Leo appeared at the door, Simone holding the handles of Leo’s wheelchair.

‘Ready to go yet?’ she said.

‘It’s only three o’clock, you haven’t finished school yet,’ I said. ‘What are you doing back here?’

Leo glared up at her. ‘You’re ditching school to take us? You should go right back down there, missy.’

‘Okay,’ Simone said, and disappeared. She reappeared a moment later. ‘But it looks like you’re ready to go and I’m the only one who can take you.’

I sighed with resignation. ‘Okay, but just this once.’

‘Sure thing, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Just this once, until next time.’

We landed outside my parents’ house in the Western Heavens. Simone guided Leo’s wheelchair to the front door, then pressed the doorbell. We heard footsteps and Simone grinned and yelled, ‘Nanna! Pop! We’re here!’

My mother opened the door and hugged and kissed Simone, then crouched to kiss Leo on the cheek. ‘Here’s our beautiful girls and our handsome man. We’ve been waiting for you.’

My father came up behind her and Simone hugged and kissed him too. He held his hand out to shake Leo’s. ‘Leo, mate, good to see you.’ He squeezed Simone around the waist. ‘How’s my little girl?’

Simone jiggled with excitement. ‘I just got a new horse! He’s only a baby and he talks !’

‘A talking horse, eh,’ my father said, bemused. ‘Come inside and tell us all about it.’

My mother reached one hand towards me. ‘Come on, Emma, don’t hang back. You’re part of this family too, so come on in.’

I took the smallest serpent form I could and followed Leo’s chair inside.

‘So you’re Immortal now, eh?’ my father said to Leo as he handed him a large mug of instant coffee. ‘But you’re still paraplegic. How does that work? I thought Immortals were like gods or something, all perfect.’

‘Emma can tell you how it works,’ Leo said. ‘She knows more about it than I do.’

‘They remain in the form they were in at the moment they were Raised,’ I said. ‘That’s why John’s hair’s always coming out — he was Raised straight after a big battle and his hair was a mess.’

‘Why Chinese men — particularly warriors — choose to have long hair is completely beyond me,’ my father said, shaking his head. ‘It’s always coming out — must be a damn nuisance.’

‘You can ask John about that when he returns,’ I said with humour. ‘He’d occasionally lose his temper about it and have something of a rant.’

‘I can’t imagine John losing his temper, he was the coolest man I’ve ever met,’ my mother said.

‘ Is , Nanna,’ Simone corrected her. ‘He’s not a was , he’s an is. He’s out there somewhere, and he’s going to come back for us.’

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ my mother said, and patted her arm. ‘You know what I mean.’

Simone gave her a friendly squeeze. ‘Yeah, Nanna, I know.’

Everyone sat at the dining table, and I took a larger serpent form and rested my coils on the floor. My mother put a bowl of tea in front of me and I sipped it, enjoying the fine flavour of the Tiger’s best tea.

‘Can you do Immortal stuff, Leo?’ my father said.

Leo grinned, then his wheelchair rose about five centimetres above the floor, hovered and dropped with a rattle. ‘I’m getting there. I can walk if I need to, but it takes a lot of effort. It’s easier to do the black lion thing. I occasionally change into a lion at the Academy so I can get around easier. It’s fun — it freaks everybody out.’

‘A black lion,’ my father said with wonder. ‘I saw you at Rhonda’s wedding, you were huge. Congratulations, mate, it was a sight to see when you were Raised.’

‘And then poor Rhonda exploded everywhere,’ Leo said, his face falling. ‘Michael’s still getting over that. He’s refusing to believe it was his mother; he won’t give up searching for her. Kwan Yin even told him it was really her, but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘I hope it works out all right for him,’ my father said.

‘Your brother was here,’ my mother said to Simone. ‘He said we have to move to the Northern Heavens. Something about Celestial Harmony.’

‘You don’t have to move there unless you want to,’ I said. ‘Martin’s just being old-fashioned.’

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ my father said. ‘Because we’re happy and settled here; we have a lot of friends in the Tiger’s family and we really would prefer not to move.’

My mother flipped open her mobile phone and texted someone. ‘Just telling Jen you’re here, Emma, she wants to see you.’

I shrank my serpent form slightly smaller so I could only just see over the table.

My mother glared at me. ‘Don’t be like that, Jen’s as proud of you as we all are. Look at you, some sort of general, and Regent, whatever that is. Everybody talks about you in the same sort of voice they used to talk about John.’

‘What, you mean scared?’ Leo said with amusement.

My father pointed at Leo with triumph. ‘Damn straight.’

My mother tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Brendan! It’s rude to point.’

‘And bad luck,’ he added, still amused. He leaned on the arm of his chair to speak conspiratorially to Leo. ‘Did you know that this is villa number four? It has 3A on the letterbox, but everybody knows it’s number four. Nobody would live here until we arrived.’

‘We Aussies don’t care about silly things like bad luck numbers,’ my mother said, busying herself making more tea and pulling out a packet of Australian biscuits. ‘The Tiger’s pleased he finally has someone living here.’ She waved the biscuits at Simone. ‘Tim Tam?’

Simone jiggled with delight. ‘I haven’t had one of those in ages .’

‘Oh, those evil things,’ Leo said. He raised one hand. ‘A couple over here too, ma’am, if you please.’

‘Emma?’ my mother said.

‘Oh, Emma doesn’t eat in snake form,’ Simone said dismissively.

‘Good. More for us,’ my father said with a wink.

‘Why not? That means you never eat while you’re up here in Shangri-La,’ my mother said. ‘That’s just silly, Emma.’

‘Yeah, she goes for days at a time without eating,’ Simone said through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit. ‘She’s probably starving right now; she’s been up on the Celestial for three days and hasn’t eaten a thing.’

‘So go find me a live rat or a bird,’ I said softly.

They were all silent at that.

The doorbell rang and my mother’s face lit up. ‘There’s Jen now.’