Chapter 16: The Reporter

Jiang Xue came back on Thursday, at ten in the morning, and this time she brought an audience.

Meiyin saw them from the bedroom window.

A black sedan, a white van with a satellite dish, and a man in a hard hat carrying a tripod.

Behind them stood a woman with a microphone, and a cameraman already filming the stone lions.

Bai Ling stood at Meiyin's shoulder in the grey sweater, with her bare arms crossed.

"She has brought many people."

"She's brought a surveyor and a reporter."

"To do what?"

"To make me look unstable on camera.

Crazy woman, new divorce, lives alone in a haunted lake house."

"That is what she means to say?"

"Yes."

Bai Ling's eyes went flat and cold.

The windowpane frosted at the edges.

"Stay inside the stone line," Meiyin said.

"I will stay behind the lions."

"Then you can watch."

Meiyin put on the charcoal jacket and the dark-red lipstick, and picked up the folder Tang Fei had left on the hall table at seven that morning.

She walked down the gravel drive at an easy pace.

At the gate Jiang Xue was already talking.

She wore a cream blazer and a lawyer's polite smile, and her chestnut waves had been set for the camera.

"Meiyin, I'm so sorry to do this in public.

We're all worried about you.

You've bought a property far below its market value, and the settlement..."

"Good morning, Jiang Xue."

Meiyin stopped on her side of the iron bars.

She looked at the microphone, then at the red light on the camera.

"Is that on?"

The reporter said, "We're live to the afternoon bulletin."

"Perfect.

Please keep it on."

She opened the gate herself and stepped out onto the road.

Jiang Xue's smile tightened.

"Meiyin, I don't think..."

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