The Misfortune Cookie

“Oh. I don’t know. We didn’t get that far.” He looked at his mother. “Mom?”

Lily wiped her runny nose with her sleeve. Breathing hard, still on her knees, she thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. The workshop should be destroyed. She will kill again.”

“She?” I said.

“Susan.” Max looked at Lily. “It was Susan who augmented the attacks, wasn’t it?”

“I urged patience,” Lily sobbed. “There was no need to kill. The white girl was out of the movie. Benny was losing money everywhere and couldn’t keep funding the film. We only needed to wait . . . But Susan is too American.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said, offended.

“For her, everything must be now, now, now.”

“Oh, that’s not because she’s American, you manipulative, curse-inflicting witch,” I snapped. “It’s because she’s a homicidal maniac!” Then I blinked in surprise and looked at Max. “It’s Susan, then?”

“It’s both of them,” Ted said in disgust. “Mom, I am so leaving home. For good, this time.”

Max said, “Lily had the gift and taught it to her daughter—who has, I believe, a very great talent?”

Lily nodded and then let out another keening wail, rocking back and forth on her knees.

“You suspected this?” I said to Max.

“Not until you told me about poor Mary Fox on the way here,” he said. “That’s when I realized the approach to sabotaging Ted’s film had changed a great deal, though the methodology had remained the same. I suspected a devious, amoral mother may have started the plot, and then been superseded by a very talented and murderous daughter.”

“Susan killed Benny and Uncle Six?” Then I realized something else. “Susan tried to kill Lopez!”

“She wanted to kill John, too,” said Ted in outrage. “Because he came up with a plan to help me get investors.”

“She was beside herself about that,” Lily said, wiping her eyes. “The loss of face, the shame—Ted publicly begging strangers for money for his ‘piece of crap’ movie. It was even worse, Susan said, than taking money from gangsters like Benny and Uncle Six.”

“So she planned to kill John?” I said in horror.

“Where is the cookie?” Max said urgently. “She must have made one for John.”

“I destroyed it this morning,” Lily said. “John is a good boy. I told her she couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t allow it.” Lily’s face crumpled again. “We fought terribly. She has gone insane. I cannot control her.”

“Did she make another cookie after that?”

“No, there was no time.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said.

“But she will try again. She will never stop. I see that now. The workshop,” Lily said to Max, taking deep gulps of air. “It must be destroyed. The whole thing. And the wards must be eliminated.”

“Susan established the wards, didn’t she?” said Max.

“Yes.”

“Of course,” he said. “A talented sorceress of Chinese heritage, studying architecture in the mundane world. What would be more natural than for her to experiment with the most esoteric aspects of feng shui in order to conceal the powerful fatal magics being created in this building?”

So Susan had lied about not being interested in feng shui. I realized now that Max had suspected something of the sort—though he had been distracted by the ghost of Li Xiuying in the face of Lily Yee.

I turned to help Max as he started struggling out of the old daypack he had donned over his heavy coat. Once the pack was removed, he reached inside it and pulled out . . .

“A hammer?” I said. “What are you going to do with a hammer?” It seemed a rather mundane thing for Max, of all people, to carry around.

“Susan is very powerful,” he said. “Very talented. But not original or creative. And she’s inexperienced. I believe that destroying the wards which have made this building such a peculiar place to visit will be almost childishly simple.”

He walked over to the mirror that faced the door. Although he had commented on it during our first visit here, I’d barely noticed it. It was just an ordinary red-framed mirror hanging on the wall. It faced the door and, like that structure, was tilted at a slight angle.

Max said a few words in Chinese—I had no idea whether he was speaking Mandarin or Cantonese—then smashed the mirror with his hammer.

The whole building seemed to inhale, quiver, and then scream. As the floor beneath my feet heaved and gave way, I fell down. Ted shouted and flew across the room, as if thrown by a giant unseen hand. Mystical wind whipped through the store, blowing Lily’s long hair wildly around her head. Max, who somehow stayed upright, continued smashing the mirror with his hammer. Then he began pulverizing the broken pieces that lay on the heaving floor. From my prone position, I saw Ted fly back in the other direction, screaming in panic, his eyes wide with shocked fear.

When I heard a horrible screeching behind me, I rolled over, expecting to see the building collapsing on top of me or something. Instead, I saw the slightly tilted doorway straighten itself out, realigning until it was perfectly perpendicular to the floor, undulating and shuddering with the effort. As soon as it finished this transformation and went still . . . All the heaving, shrieking, screeching, and blowing stopped.

I lay there on the solid, unmoving floor, breathing heavily. Ted promptly fell on top of me, as if dropped by the unseen hand that had been flinging him around the room. He apologized to me, sounding winded, then rolled away.

“Is everyone all right?” Max asked, breathing hard. “I realized only after the event commenced that I should have warned you there would be some dramatic effects.”

“Oh, y’think?” I said.

“Whoa!” said Ted. “That was like a religious experience!”

Still breathing hard in reaction, I sat up and looked around. The store looked different now. Not unrecognizable—the style of the building and basic decor were the same. But everything was lined up in a visibly more rational pattern now. I could see the back of the store, a flight of stairs, neatly-aligned shelves, straight walls . . . Although I had no interest in venturing upstairs here ever again, I had a feeling that if I did so, the layout would be perfectly self-explanatory now, rather than a mystifying maze from which it seemed impossible to escape.

Max looked at Lily. “The workshop?”

“Downstairs,” she said. “I will show you.”

“What about John?” said Ted. “Someone’s got to help him!”

I looked at Lily. “I thought you said you destroyed the cookie that Susan created to kill John?”

“I did, but Susan is . . . demented,” Lily said in a tragic tone. “Determined to kill him. To stop him from helping Ted.”

“And?” I prodded, worried about John.

Ted said, “She got a gun from Danny Teng. She’s planning to shoot John.”

Lily added, “She’s out looking for him right now.”

I glared at Lily. “You realize, don’t you, that you’ve raised a ruthless, obsessive killer?”

“And a bitch,” Ted grumbled.

“She is too American,” Lily said again, which made me want to slap her.

“We must divide forces!” Max declared. “Lily and I shall destroy the workshop and eliminate all remaining mystical influences from this edifice.”

I nodded. “Ted and I will stop Susan from shooting John.”

“Whoa. We will?”

“I will stop Susan from shooting John,” I amended.

“Well, I could try to help . . .”

I asked, “What does John’s lion look like, and where is it?”