as a demon . . .she'd heard stories, erotic and disturbing. A policeman, Jhai thought, shaking her head. How in all the worlds did someone like that get to be a policeman? He looked as though he should be propping up a couch in some seraglio. Her thoughts drifted away into uncharted territory. She took some trouble over her make-up.
When she had finished, Jhai looked at herself and abandoned all pretence that she had any intention of working. Before she left, she looked in on her mother, dressing for the opera.
"You're dressed very smartly tonight," Opal had replied, without even looking round. How did she do that? It unnerved Jhai.
"I've got a meeting with someone. Anyway, I think it's good for company morale if I dress for the evening." It was a pathetic excuse, an attempt to stave off the lecture which inevitably followed.
"This is foolish! He is a demon, like—well, anyway, not a stupid man, even if he is not on our level, Jhai. He knows what you are doing."
Her daughter took a deep breath. Once again, her mother, who had been nowhere near recent events at Paugeng, had proved that she knew exactly what Jhai was up to. "I know what I'm doing."
"There is nothing there for you—just lust. It is not clever." Opal segued into the wider argument, a hardy perennial these days. "You should find a nice girl and settle down."
"Oh, for God's sake, Mother!"
"You're twenty-nine years old."
"I'm sorry, Opal, who did you say was primitive?"
"I am talking about a political connection."
"I know what you're talking about. You want to fix me up with Aily Pardua. Last year, I seem to recall, it was Beth Murriday from that oil company, and look what happened to that. I'm not going to be a laughingstock just because you start parading every available young woman in town in front of me."
"It's not as though you don't like girls . . ." her mother mused, brutally. "But all the ones you choose seem so . . .so . . ."
"Poor?"
"Perhaps not very appropriate. But at least they were female. Not some unhuman gentleman from who knows where."
"One presumes that my father is out there somewhere."
Her mother bridled. "I chose very carefully from the implant clinic. Your grandmother and I went to the cache together, the most selective place. I was twenty-three, a very good age."
"I don't see why it was a better age than any other. I mean, I wasn't in you for long, was I? I was in some test tube!"
Her mother's artfully outlined lips compressed.
"Oh, look, I'm sorry." She put her arms around Opal's shoulders.
"I know." Opal's face became indulgent. "You want to enjoy yourself a little. Well, so did I." She kissed her daughter on the cheek. "Go on. Go and have fun. But be careful."
Downstairs, Jhai called for a car, asking for the anonymous black Mercedes coupe, without a driver. She picked up the car on the Paugeng forecourt and took the coast road to the address that Ei had given her. She left the car at the side of the wharf.
The houseboat floated some distance away, and she would have to negotiate a series of pontoons to reach it. Jhai slipped off her heels and stepped gingerly off the wharf. The first pontoon rocked gently beneath her slight weight. The last of the sunlight sparked from the lapping water. The far islands were blocks of twilight shadow. With high heels in hand, Jhai took a deep breath, and clambered across the row of pontoons.
"Zhu Irzh?" she called when she reached the houseboat. There was no reply and she froze, thinking: the bastard has stood me up. Then a familiar voice came from below deck.
"Hello?"
"Zhu Irzh? It's Jhai."
There was an unnervingly long pause. "Come down."
When she reached the bottom of the steps she saw that the room was dark. After a moment's adjustment, she saw the demon sitting on the windowsill. She shut the door behind her.
"Turn the light on," he said mildly. He involuntarily ducked his head as the light went on and Jhai saw a dark membrane slide across his eyes and back, like an animal's eyes. Like her own. She went to stand by the window. Beyond, the harbor lay like a field of shadow, sparked with the lights of ships.
"Do you like sitting here?" she asked, and instantly regretted it. What a fatuous thing to say.
"I can watch the ships, sit in the breeze. You can see Lantern Island from here. Come