"We must watch him. We must protect him. But we cannot trust him. He cannot help us."
Sue switched positions, unbent her knee, and sat flat on the floor, stretching her legs out in front of her. "Can the cup hugirngsi be stopped?"
"I do not know."
"But there are ways to protect ourselves. The white jade .. ."
"Yes. The jade will protect you. The tse m0r cannot bite a person wearing the jade. But .. ." Her grandmother grew thoughtful. "But the creature exerts a larger influence than that. It kills its victims, but it also affects others who see it, who are near it, even those who are not directly attacked. It twists their minds. The cup hugirngsi is not alive, but it is not dead. It is worse than dead, and it is like a magnet, attracting some people, repelling others, warping both. The jade will protect you from that. But the jade will not protect you from those other people, those who are changed by the cup hugirngsi.
Sue understood. The monster could convince people to do its bidding, convert them. It was a defense mechanism for the cup hug/rngs/, a survival mechanism, a shield for its weak spot. "We can get people to wear white jade, then."
"White jade? Do you know how rare that is?"
"Is it the only jade that will work?"
Her grandmother shook her head slowly. "It is the strongest, it is the most effective, but even green jade will offer some protection."
"We'll make sure everyone wears some kind of jade, then."
I "Not everyone will want to wear jade. Not everyone will believe. And those people will be as lights to a moth for the cup hugirngsi.
Besides, I do not think that even in the jewelry stores there is much jade in this town."
"What else can we do? What else is good? In American movies, vampires are afraid of crosses and garlic."
"Willow," her grandmother said;
"Willow?"
The old woman nodded.
Sue suddenly understood. "Is that why Father planted those willows in front of the house? For protection?"
"Yes."
"You told him to plant them, didn't you?"
Her grandmother only smiled.
"Father used to tell me about fung shui. He said that fung shui was harmony between building and land, and I could never understand how he could think that our yard and house were in harmony with this desert.
"Tung shui means not only balance between buildings and nature but balance between the material and the spirit worlds. Bad lung shui can bring disaster." She shrugged. "Our home is not completely harmonious with the land, but it is harmonious in the most important way.
I have made sure that it is safe."
"What else?"
"Running water. The cup hugirngsi cannot cross running water." "
Sue was silent for a moment. "But those two teenagers were killed in the river. The cup hugirngsi killed them in running water."
They were both silent now. For the first time, Sue saw doubt on her grandmother's face, and she realized that all of this was academic to her grandmother too. She had learned of these things secondhand--she had never tried them out herself.
All of asudden, Sue felt much less confident.
Maybe this wasn't a cup hugirngsi. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was something that none of them knew anything about, something that no one knew how to right.
"It is the cup hugirngsi," her grandmother said as if reading h.e'Lind"
Sue pulled her legs next aroind-h/lnes, and lobkel.
-She felt vulnerable, helpless and that something had to be done but not knowing what it was or how to go about it. "So what are we going to do?" Her grandmother did not answer.
"I write for the newspaper now. I can warn people. The editor's brother is the police chief. I'm sure he can help
US."
The old woman bent forward, reached down, and put her hand on Sue's.
The movement was difficult for her, painful, but when she spoke there was renewed strength in her voice. "What do you want to do? What does your heart tell you to do?"
Sue looked into those eyes that were so like her own. "You mean my D/Lo Ling Gum ? .... Her grandmother smiled, nodded. "Yes."
She felt none of the power within her, but she held her grandmother's gaze. "It tells me to hunt it down and destroy it.
"Then we will." The strength that had temporarily invigorated the old woman disappeared, seemed to visibly seep out of her face, and, grimacing, she leaned back on the bed and lay down again.
"But... what do we do? How do we start?"
"We wait. We can do nothing right now. I need to know more. For now, we wait."
"But .. ." Her voice trailed off. People were dying; trees and animals were being killed. A moment ago, her grandmother had admitted that the situation was urgent, had said that they had to act quickly.
Now she wanted to lie here and do nothing?
"We are not the architects of events," her grandmother said. "We are merely the construction workers."
What kind of KungFu crap was that? Sue wondered. "I have to warn people," she said. "Tell them about the cup hugirngsi."
"You can try." But the tone in her grandmother's voice made it clear that she did not think anyone would listen. She sighed. "I am tired.
I must rest."
Sue leave. "What does
Di Lo stood, preparing to your
Ling Gum say?"
The old woman shook her head, put her arm over her eyes, refusing to look at her granddaughter, refusing to answer. "I must rest," she repeated.
Sue left the the door behind silently, room closing her, feeling far more frightened than she had before she'd come.
The Indian summer came to an abrupt end. The temperature dropped sometime after midnight, shifting from summer to winter without even pausing at the intermediate stage of fall.
In the morning, it was cold, and when Robert awoke and walked out to the kitchen, the floorboards beneath his feet felt like frozen steel.
He dumped some grounds in his old drip pot, turned on the black-and-white television on the counter, and sat down at the table waiting. There had never before been an Indian summer in Rio Verde that had lasted this long, and that made him uncomfortable. The cold, too, seemed to be a bad omen, a portent of things to come, and he found himself wondering if anyone had died during the night.
He stared for a moment at the dull gray metal of the coffeepot, then forced himself to stand up and walk out to the living room. He dialed the station, asked Ted if everything was all right, was gratified to hear that it was. But he still felt uneasy.
He stopped by Rich's house on the way to work, dropping in unannounced.
Corrie was already gone, and Rich was in the bathroom shaving, but Anna opened the door and greeted him enthusiastically. "Uncle Robert!" she cried, throwing her arms around him.
Grinning, he picked her up and gave her a loud kiss on the forehead.
She giggled, wiping her forehead with one hand while using the other to check inside his shirt pocket. "Where's my present?" she asked.
He looked puzzled. "Present? What present?" Anna laughed, hitting his shoulder. "Come onI" "Hmmm. Let me think." He withdrew a stick of Juicy Fruit from his left front pants pocket, snaked his arm around her head, and pretended to pull the gum from behind her ear. "Why, here's a piece of gum!"
He put her down on the floor, and she ran back through the house toward her bedroom. "Thank you, Uncle Robert!"
He followed her into the hallway. "Rich! You home?" His brother stuck his head out of the bathroom, small flecks of white shaving cream around his neck. "Yeah. What is it?"
"You busy today?"
"Maybe. Why? "
"I thought I'd go out and-see Pee Wee. You want to come along?"
Rich off the with a towel. wiped excess shaving cream
"Are you going to be talking about the FBI or vampires?"
"Both."