The Silent Girl

aren’t doing your job. I could be that killer you’re searching for. Can’t you picture it, Detective? This middle-aged woman swinging a sword, leaping around on rooftops and cutting down enemies?” I laugh in his face and he flushes, as if I’ve slapped him. “Maybe you should search my house. There could be another sword hidden here somewhere, a weapon you don’t even know I have.”
    “Iris, please.”
    “Maybe you’ll report back to your colleagues that the suspect has turned hostile. That she’s not going to be charmed into giving away any more information.”
    “That’s not why I’m here! The night we had dinner, I wasn’t trying to interrogate you.”
    “What were you trying to do?”
    “Understand you, that’s all. Who you are, what you think.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you and I—because …” He gives a heavy sigh. “I felt like we both needed a friend, that’s all. I know I do.”
    I regard him for a moment. He is not looking at me; his gaze is focused somewhere beyond me, as if he can’t bring himself to look me in the eye. Not because he’s untruthful, but because he’s vulnerable. He may be a policeman, but he’s afraid of my opinion of him. There’s nothing I can offer him now, not comfort or friendship or even a touch on the arm.
    “You need a friend your own age, Detective Frost,” I say quietly. “Not someone like me.”
    “I don’t even see your age.”
    “I do. I feel it, too,” I add, massaging an imaginary kink in my neck. “And my illness.”
    “I see a woman who’ll never get old.”
    “Tell me that in twenty years.”
    He smiles. “Maybe I will.”
    The moment trembles with unsaid words, with feelings that make us both uncomfortable. He is a good man; I see that in his eyes. But it’s absurd to think we could ever be more than mere acquaintances. Not because I am nearly two decades older than he is, although that alone is a barrier. No, it’s because of the secrets that I can never share with him, secrets that place us on opposite sides of a chasm.
    As I walk him to the door, he says: “Tomorrow I’ll bring the sword back to you.”
    “And Bella?”
    “There’s a chance she’ll be released in the morning. We can’t hold her indefinitely, not without evidence.”
    “She’s done nothing wrong.”
    In the doorway he stops and looks straight at me. “It’s not always clear what’s right and what’s wrong. Is it?”
    I stare back at him, thinking: Could he know? Is he giving me permission for what I’m about to do? But he merely smiles and walks away.
    I lock the door behind him. The conversation has left me off balance, unable to focus. What to make of such a man, I wonder as I head up the stairs to change my clothes. Yet again, he makes me think of my husband. His kindness, his patience. His open mind, so ready to welcome possibilities. Am I a vain fool to entertain such an unlikely friendship? I am distracted, mulling over the conversation, and I miss the clues that should have warned me. The tremor in the air. The faint scent of unfamiliar flesh. Only when I flip my bedroom light switch and nothing happens do I suddenly realize I am not alone.
    The bedroom door slams shut behind me. In the darkness, I cannot see the blow hurtling toward my head, but my instincts spring to life. Something whooshes just above me as I duck and spin toward the bed, where my sword is concealed. Not the decoy reproduction that I surrendered to the police, but the real Zheng Yi. For five centuries she has been passed down from mothers to daughters, a legacy meant to protect us, defend us.
    Now, more than ever, I need her.
    My attacker lunges, but I slip away like water and roll to the floor. Reach under the box spring for the niche where Zheng Yi is hidden. She fits into my hand like an old friend and makes a musical sigh as she slides from her scabbard.
    In one fluid motion I rise and whirl to face the enemy. The creak of the floor announces his location, to my right. Just as I shift weight to attack, I hear the footfall, but this one is behind me.
    Two of them
.
    It’s the last thought I have before I fall.

J ANE CROUCHED DOWN BESIDE IRIS’S BED, READING THE EVIDENCE and not liking what it said to her. There were red splatters on the floor and on the edge of the sheets where a body had fallen. The blood loss was minimal, certainly not enough to be fatal. Rising to her feet, she stared down at smeared drops, across which a body had been dragged. She had