Necropolis

said. "She may be able to tell me what's happened to my dad."
    'Your father will be home very soon, Scarlett."
    "All right, then. Love and marriage." Scarlett tapped the words on the card and thought briefly of Aidan.
    She wondered what he was doing right then.
    The fortune-teller took the card away and selected one of the piles of envelopes, which she had spread out in front of the three cages. Each cage had a door in the front, and she opened one of them. The little yellow bird hopped out as it had been trained to do, perched on the line of envelopes, then pulled one out with its beak. The old woman rewarded it with a couple of seeds, and the bird obediently hopped back in again. It was all over very quickly.
    The woman opened the envelope and handed Scarlett the slip of paper that had been inside.
    "Do you want me to translate it for you?" Mrs. Cheng asked.

    Scarlett glanced at the sheet. "No, it's okay," she replied. "It's in English."
    "Tell me what it says."
    '"Good news from Fortune Bird Two.'" Scarlett read out the words. '"You will find your true love in the month of April. Your marriage will be long and happy, and you will travel to many countries. When you are old, you will make a great sum of money. Spend it wisely.'" She folded the page in half. "That's it."
    "The note only tells you what you want to hear," Mrs. Cheng remarked.
    "The bird chose it for me." She held out the page so that Mrs. Cheng could see it. "There you are. You can see for yourself. I'm going to be rich."
    Mrs. Cheng nodded but said nothing. The two of them and Karl walked back to the car. And all the time, Scarlett's heart was racing as she kept the piece of paper close to her. She had folded it quite deliberately. She had only shown Mrs. Cheng half of what had been written.
    For underneath the printed fortune, there had been another message, written by hand: Scarlet
    You are in great danger. Do not let the woman read this. Come to The Peak tomorrow after. Follow the path from Lugard Road. We will be waiting.
    We are your friends. Trust us if you want to leave Hong Kong alive.
    NINETEEN
    The Peak
    Scarlett knew something was wrong the moment she opened her eyes.
    A glance at her bedside clock told her that it was eight o'clock in the morning, but for some reason the sun wasn't reaching her bedroom. It wasn't just cloudy. It was actually dark. What was going on? She turned over and looked at the window. At first she thought that someone had drawn a black curtain across the glass, but then she realized that it wasn't on the inside. It was outside. How was that possible, twelve floors up? She propped herself on one elbow, still half asleep, trying to work it out.
    And then the curtain moved. It seemed to fold in on itself, and at the same time Scarlett heard the beating of tiny wings and understood what she was looking at. It was a great swarm of insects, black flies. They had attached themselves to the window like a single living organism.

    She lay where she was, staring at them with complete disgust. She had never seen so many flies, not even in the heat of the summer. And this was a cold day in November! What had brought them here?
    How had they managed to fly across an entire city to come together on a single pane of glass? She could hear their buzzing and the soft tapping as they threw their bodies against the window. She could make out their legs, thousands of them, sticking to the glass. Their wings were blurring as they held themselves in place. Scarlett felt sick. She was suddenly terrified that they would find their way in. She could imagine them swirling around her head, a great black mass, crawling into her nostrils and mouth.
    On an impulse, she scooped up her pillow and threw it at the window. It worked. As one, the flies peeled away. For a moment they looked like a long silk scarf, hanging in the breeze. Then they were gone.
    For about twenty minutes, Scarlett stayed where she was, almost afraid to get up. She didn't like insects at the best of times, but this was something else again. She knew that what she had seen was completely impossible…just like the door in the church of St. Meredith's. And that told her what should have been obvious all along.
    She had thought that, at the very least, her sudden departure to Hong Kong would be an escape from what had been happening in London — the monastery, the sense of being followed, the restaurant that had blown up. But of course it wasn't. It was a continuation, part of