Necropolis

to turn up, and I just hope that we haven't been wasting our time. We have no idea at all what's been happening to Scarlett, whether she is even alive or dead. Harry Foster, the Australian newspaperman who was at the meeting of the Nexus, sent someone to meet her — an assistant from his office. Maybe he managed to track her down, but we never heard. The assistant went missing…presumed dead.
    The Old Ones are there, waiting for me to arrive. In a way, it's extraordinary that they've managed to keep themselves hidden, but that has always been their way. When I was in Yorkshire, they worked through Jayne Deverill and the villagers who lived at Lesser Mailing. In Peru, it was Diego Salamanda.
    Now it's Nightrise. They like people to do their dirty work for them, and when war finally breaks out, as I know it must, my guess is that they won't reveal themselves until the end. And by then it will be too late. They will have won.
    Maybe the five days we had in London were worth it after all. Jamie enjoyed himself, seeing all the sights, and in the end, I enjoyed being with him. Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Harrods, the London Dungeon. Richard kept us busy, maybe because he wanted to keep our minds off what lay ahead. We also spoke to Pedro and Scott in Vilcabamba, talking on the satellite phone. Pedro is worried about Scott. He still seems far away, as if he isn't even on our side. I know he's angry that I separated him from Jamie, but I still think it was a good idea. He isn't ready yet.
    And then the flight. London to Singapore, followed by Singapore to Macao. I'm too tired to sleep. When I've finished this, I'll have another shower. A cold one, this time. Maybe it will wake me up.
    I don't know what to make of Macao. If anyone had asked me about it six months ago, I wouldn't even have been able to point to it on a map. I hadn't heard of it. As it turns out, it's a chunk of land, just ten miles from one end to the other. And it's packed with some of the weirdest buildings I've ever seen. Take the ferry terminal. If you're coming in from Hong Kong on the Jetfoil, it's the first building you'll see, and you'd have thought they could have made it a bit welcoming. It's not. It's a slab of white concrete, surrounded by overpasses. It's drab and ugly.
    But then you come to the casinos, and you think you must have landed on another planet. Macao makes its money out of gambling…horse racing, greyhound racing, blackjack, and roulette. The casinos look like nothing I've ever seen before. One of them is all gold, like a piece of metal bent in the middle.
    There's another one like a sort of crazy birthday cake. The biggest and the most spectacular reminded me of a giant flower. It was five times taller than anything else in the city. I got a crick in my neck trying to see the top.
    The old part of Macao was better. Richard told me that it had once belonged to the Portuguese, and he pointed out their influence in some of the palaces with their pillars, arcades, and balconies jutting out over the street. But it was still a bit of a dog's dinner. The traffic and the crowds were Chinese. The older buildings seemed to be in better condition than the new ones, which were all dirty and falling down. The Portuguese had built pretty squares and fountains. Then the Chinese had come along and added casinos, shops, and apartment buildings, forty or fifty floors high. And now they were all stuck next to each other, like quarreling neighbors.
    Jamie was disappointed too. "I once read a book about China," he told me. "It was in the house when we were in Salt Lake City. I never read very much, but it had dragons and magicians, and I thought it must be a really cool place. I guess the book was wrong…"
    We were met at the airport by a young Chinese guy who was carrying a big bunch of white flowers. That was a bit weird, but it was the signal we had been given so we would recognize him. He dumped them straight away. There was a Rolls Royce parked outside, license plate HST 1. I noticed that it had been parked in a no-waiting zone, but nobody had given it a ticket. So that told me something about Han Shan-tung. He likes to show off.
    The journey from the airport took about half an hour. It was pouring with rain, which certainly didn't make Macao look any better. Fortunately, it eased off a little by the time we arrived here.
    And where are we now?
    The driver stopped in front of a wide flight of stairs that climbed up between two old-looking