‘That may have something to do with it,’ I said. ‘What did Meredith do?’
‘I have only recently made Master Liu’s acquaintance, I’m afraid. You should probably ask her. I’d venture a guess that she was assisted by her husband.’
I nodded; that made sense.
‘Leo must start to take his place among us, Lady Emma. He should be at your side when you are undertaking your official duties in the Northern Heavens. He is the Retainer of the First Heavenly General now, not a simple human bodyguard.’
‘Try telling him that,’ I said. ‘And good luck.’
The waiter approached us, ready to take our order, and I opened the menu and pointed. ‘Vegetarian pasta.’
‘Hainan chicken,’ Venus said, and I choked with laughter. He looked at me. ‘What?’
‘Very good,’ the waiter said, and took our menus. ‘Wine?’
‘No, thank you,’ we said together, and the waiter nodded and left.
‘What’s so funny about Hainan chicken?’ Venus said.
‘Do you know what steak frites is?’
‘It’s a restaurant in New York.’
‘No, the dish itself.’
Venus nodded. ‘Steak and chips. Horrible Western meal.’
‘Well, Western restaurants all over the world do steak and chips, from the most down-market greasy-spoon diner to the top five-star hotel restaurant. It’s everywhere, they just make it with less or more expensive ingredients and trimmings.’
‘And this has to do with Hainan chicken how?’ Venus said, then his face cleared. ‘It’s the same, isn’t it. You can go get Hainan chicken from one of those chain cafeterias, or from a noodle shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, or from a top-class hotel like this. It’s the same dish, just with different trimmings.’
‘And everybody orders it!’
‘Well, it’s good,’ Venus said.
‘Not when the chicken’s so underdone that the bones are red,’ I grumbled quietly.
‘Chicken is best underdone, it is tough when overcooked,’ Venus protested. ‘You are with a Celestial, you have no health risk!’ He realised he had been speaking too loudly and dropped his voice, his face alight with mirth. ‘The best chicken is done so that the meat is just cooked and the bones are still raw. It is a shame that in the last ten years or so they have become concerned about things like bird flu and have started cooking the chicken all the way through. Terrible waste.’
Our dishes arrived; mine was a monstrous plate of ribbon pasta with a thick creamy cheese sauce and large pieces of broccoli, carrot and mushroom. Venus’s Hainan chicken was presented on an elegant platter, with one dish holding the gently boiled and cut-up chicken; three small sauce bowls; a bowl of rice that had been steamed in chicken stock; and a bowl of the stock as a soup.
He gestured dismissively towards the meat. ‘See? Overdone. Cooked all the way through. At least they have chilled the skin so that it has become jelly — white chicken.’
‘You do realise that if they roasted the chicken, the skin would become crisp and juicy?’ I said.
‘I have had Western chicken before,’ Venus said. ‘It is good, but different. This,’ he waved his chopsticks over his food, ‘is the way chicken should be done.’
We ate in silence for a while, the waiters occasionally topping up our water glasses. Venus raised his head, his face blank, then returned to his chicken.
‘They’re checking on me,’ he said. ‘I am never left to my own devices for even two seconds.’
‘I know the feeling!’
‘At least you’re not telepathic,’ he said with humour.
‘No, so when they contact me with an emergency, I have to call them back on my mobile, or wake up this goddamn cranky stone.’
‘I resemble that remark,’ the stone said.
‘Isn’t the correct term “resent that remark”?’ Venus said.
‘It’s a lame Western joke,’ the stone said. ‘Emma uses it all the time.’
‘So my Western lameness is rubbing off on you,’ I said. ‘Compounding your Eastern lameness, making you even more lame.’
‘I have never heard anybody speak to a Building Block like that before,’ Venus said with wonder. ‘Or a Heavenly General, for that matter.’
‘Get used to it,’ the stone grumbled. ‘She’s so blunt sometimes I wince.’
‘That’s you rubbing off on me,’ I said.
‘Conceded,’ the stone said.
Venus shook his head over his rice.
We didn’t get down to business until the coffee and cheesecake, but Venus was such a charming companion that I didn’t mind the wait.
‘Generally the news is good,’ he said. ‘The residents of the Northern Heavens have made their feelings known about your solution to the energy problem; you have gained a great deal of political mileage with this one.’
‘It had nothing to do with me,’ I said. ‘It’s the Xuan Wu’s children who have made it happen.’
‘Regardless, you are the one who brought them together,’ Venus said.
‘I’ve established a small team of Celestials to search all the nearby oceans for any other children of the Xuan Wu who may have been enslaved by Six,’ I said. ‘We found one turtle and three snakes. I hope we find them all; but they themselves say that when their father is back, he’ll be able to find them quickly.’
‘That is good news. Any reports on the locations of the other two demons in that group?’
‘I have people in Thailand working together with the Phoenix’s people to search for the Death Mother,’ I said. ‘It appears that both she and the Geek have gone to ground.’
‘The Geek is somewhere in Shenzhen, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know which is worse: the urban jungle of Shenzhen, or the tropical jungle of Thailand.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Anything else major happening that I need to know about?’
‘Not really. Simone is settling nicely into her new school. Leo is learning very quickly; only yesterday he started using telepathy.’
‘Really?’ Venus’s face went slack for a moment, then he snapped back and grinned. ‘He told me he’d come have lunch with us next time, but only if I’m buying and I wear something … to quote him … “really cute”.’
‘Stone, tell Leo that he is such a man-whore,’ I said.
Venus’s eyes went wide.
Oh snap, Leo said. Can you do me a favour and come up to the bank when you’re done there and scare the living daylights out of these assholes for me? I need backup!
Venus obviously heard it too. ‘He did not just ask you to go rescue him?’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘Apparently I do “angry gweipoh” extremely well.’
‘What is that? Angry “foreign grandmother”?’
‘You