White Tiger

energy.’
    ‘So that’s what the chi’s good for,’ I said. ‘I feel great.’
    ‘We all need to go back to the house and dry off,’ Mr Chen said. ‘Leo, I need your help. I’m very drained.’ Leo put Mr Chen’s arm around his shoulder. ‘Will you be okay?’ I said.
    ‘I’ll be fine. I just need to go back and sleep for a week.’
    I had a sudden wonderful idea. ‘Stop, Leo.’ ‘What?’
    I generated a ball of chi and held it in front of me. ‘Take it.’
    Mr Chen glared at me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Take that back immediately.’
    I moved the chi closer to him and his eyes widened. ‘No, Emma! Take it back! Quickly! No !’
    Leo dragged Mr Chen a few steps away from me. I understood, and reabsorbed the energy.
    Mr Chen sighed. ‘That was an extremely foolish thing to do near me in this state. Never, ever try anything like that again, Emma.’
    ‘Sorry,’ I whispered.
    ‘You’re a damn fool sometimes, Emma,’ Leo said. He helped Mr Chen towards the house.
    I followed them, head bowed, Simone alongside me.
    ‘What was all that about, Emma?’ she said.
    ‘That was just me being a complete idiot, Simone.’
    Ah Yat met us in the doorway with a pile of towels and scolded us all for getting the carpet wet.
    ‘You lot all go outside and do something quietly this afternoon,’ Mr Chen moaned. ‘I need to sleep.’
    Leo and I took Simone outside to play. She chatted to her stuffed toys and we sat on the grass and watched her little tea party.
    ‘So dog demon stuff is more poisonous, Leo?’ I said.
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘And you’d be poisoned if you had it in your mouth?’
    ‘I should have told you,’ he said, sheepish.
    ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘I knew that the black stuff has to come off, but he didn’t tell me that dog demons were worse. How long can you have it on your skin before it kills you? I know it starts to burn after only a few minutes.’
    ‘Three, four hours completely covered in it like I was and you’re dead,’ Leo said. ‘That was great what you did with the energy.’
    ‘No, it wasn’t, it was stupid.’
    ‘I mean destroying the demon. That was great. It was a good idea to try to give him your energy too, but you know he can’t take it.’
    ‘It was probably only a tiny amount for him anyway. He must have thousands of times the energy store that I do.’
    ‘Sixty thousand,’ Simone said without looking around. ‘That’s what Daddy says anyway.’
    ‘Sixty thousand? Most of the time he seems to have a similar amount to me when I look at him.’
    ‘He is running on empty all the time,’ Leo said. ‘He’s completely crazy.’
    ‘Sixty thousand times mine,’ I said. ‘I wonder what he could do with his chi.’
    ‘He uses shen and ching energy sometimes too,’ Simone said. ‘But he hasn’t done any of that in a long time, he’s really drained.’ She turned to us and glared. ‘He won’t tell me about ching. He says I have to wait until I’m bigger.’
    Leo glanced at me. I tried to describe ching without giving too much away in front of Simone. I pointed at my head. ‘Shen. Spirit.’
    He nodded.
    I pointed at my abdomen. ‘Chi. Breath of life.’ He nodded again.
    I indicated lower. ‘Ching. Essence of life. Grown-up stuff.’
    His eyes widened.
    ‘That’s what Daddy says,’ Simone said, irritated. ‘He says I have to wait until I’m grown up.’
    ‘Well, you do.’ I grabbed her and tickled her until she begged me to stop. She leapt to her feet and ran away, then came back and ran in circles around us, yelling her little lungs out. Neither of us stopped her. She didn’t have space to run around like that back in Hong Kong.
    ‘An expert energy practitioner can convert one type of energy to another,’ I said. ‘In ordinary people, the ching is a limited amount, and as you run out you grow old and die. If you can generate chi and convert it to ching, you will continually replenish your ching, never grow old and never die.’ I realised the implication for Leo and opened my mouth to apologise.
    ‘And I’ll never be able to do that,’ Leo said. ‘Good.’
    I stared at him. ‘Good?’
    ‘Yep.’

CHAPTER FORTY
    M r Chen, Simone and I sat around the large dining table having breakfast. Leo had already finished and gone out. Both Simone and Mr Chen went rigid, their eyes unfocused.
    ‘Is everything okay?’ I said.
    Mr Chen raised his hand, then he snapped back.
    Simone squealed, hopped out of her chair and raced out of the room. I heard