by Jadie Jang
“Well, he got all freaked out and started blubbering and I couldn’t get any more out of him!”
She frowned. “Why did he get freaked out?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He said something about …” OMFG “Oh my god, Ayo, he said something about ‘Please don’t eat my soul’!”
In a moment of perfect understanding, Ayo and I looked at each other, then turned to look at the weretiger.
But when I turned back the moment was broken and Ayo was holding out her hand.
“Give him to me,” she said, now severe.
“No, Ayo! This is my first clue … ever!”
“Do you know how to interrogate a bajang?”
“I figured I’d rough him up a little.”
“They don’t experience much pain. They have to be otherwise motivated. Do you know how?”
I could feel my chin beginning to jut out.
“Give him to me,” she said again, then her voice softened a little, “and I promise I will squeeze every last mote of monkey info from him.”
My stubbornness warred with Monkey’s blood-thirstiness, both of which were fighting my pragmatism.
“And I’ll need to interrogate him for these guys over here,” she tipped her head backwards at the werecats. “If it’s related, they deserve to know.”
I couldn’t argue with that, although it was almost impossible to make my hands move. After another brief struggle, I pulled the bamboo tube out of my pocket and handed it to her.
“Be careful with him,” I said.
“And the stone.”
I pulled the magicked stone out of another pocket, hardly less reluctantly.
“Now go home and get some sleep. You’re working the cafe tomorrow.”
I went, but with a heavy heart and a heavy gut. I’d turned over responsibility, for now, but … that certainly didn’t mean I’d turned my back on it forever. In fact … I straightened my shoulders. In fact, with what I was doing tomorrow night, I’d have a chance to investigate without even going out of my way. I wasn’t gonna say so, but I was still on the case.
CHAPTER THREE
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Sanc-Ahh Café, Oakland
I slid impatiently into work the next morning, not looking forward to a whole day of slinging drinks before I could get back on the chase. I worked primarily as a barista for Ayo, although lately, those side gigs—like the one the previous night—had been creeping up on more and more of my spare time.
Cafe Sanc-ahh, my workplace, was three quarters full of human-looking supernats—half hipster, half demimonde—who stopped in briefly all morning to indulge in rumors about Wayland’s slaying. (I hadn’t heard a peep about Dalisay being missing, though. The aswangs were apparently keeping it quiet.) The killing of a supernat was unusual. Not that we didn’t fight amongst ourselves—a lot. It’s just that we all tended to be hard to kill; part of the reason we fought so much. And the consequences for killing one of us—a fatwa against you by every other supernat of that persuasion or cultural corner being out for your blood— made death matches a lot less fun. So a death like this, with no apparent cause and a hidden motive, was worth gossiping about. At length. I listened for a while, but didn’t hear anything apropos the werecats’ investigation—or my own curiosity.
Café Sanc-ahh was a play on words. Before there was decaf coffee, there was something called “Sanka” (from the French “sans caféine”): instant decaf that was the only choice you had if you wanted to sleep that night. Café Sanc-ahh served the most extensive menu of non-caffeinated brews, teas, tisanes, infusions, and … less commonly known drinks of less acceptable substance and provenance. This was, of course, owing to Sanc-ahh’s baseline mission as a sanctuary, i.e. a magically protected commons where all kinds of supernatural creatures could seek shelter and mingle without conflict or danger. If you want to keep a bunch of supernats from killing each other, the first step is not to wire them up on a stimulant; particularly a stimulant that struck some of the supes particularly hard, and some of them … shall we say … obliquely.
Most sanctuaries made sure to locate in out-of-the-way places, or “bad” neighborhoods, and set up aversion spells around themselves to discourage human curiosity. Some even put a glamour in the entryway to make the place look uninhabited, and closed, if a human dared enter. But Sanc-ahh was different: not only was the space open, full of windows and light, painted a soft ivory, decorated with a bright, multicultural collection of masks, kites, and dolls, and furnished with matching, mellow wood furniture—all to look as welcoming as possible—but Ayo even had an entire drinks menu posted specifically for humans. You had to ask for the supernat menu.
Of course, there were limitations on human entry. Sanc-Ahh was a sanctuary after all, so during demon-hunting sweeps (when the various parochial and secular demon-hunting organizations got antsy and came after us in an organized throng) the cafe was locked down to humans. Any who came looking for Sanc-Ahh would get the distinct impression that they’d passed it already—where was it again?—and oh, by the way, they had an urgent personal errand to run elsewhere. And the sanctuary’s protections always sent away humans who came with ill intent. But humans who came with goodwill—or even humans who came in absentmindedly—were welcome the rest of the time.
This was, very definitely, an Ayo thing. She was always saying that humans and supernats were bound together in all sorts of weird ways, and that the world was as out of balance as it was because the natural and supernatural had rejected each other during the Enlightenment and blah blah blah. It made working here more complicated than at other sanctuaries, because we all had to be careful about displaying powers and strange appearances in front of the borings.
I hadn’t yet identified an upside, but I loved Sanc-Ahh like I’d never loved any sanctuaries I’d haunted before.
I’d started working at Cafe Sanc-Ahh at the beginning of my junior year at UC Berkeley, after I’d finally decided to use university resources to investigate what kind of creature I was. I bounced from department to department, with no one willing to take the time to help me, until someone finally gave me a name: Ayo Espinosa, who’d been a brilliant interdisciplinary folklore enfant terrible, with extra PhDs in anthropology and comp lit. She’d lectured savagely, armored herself with an entourage of enamored students a handful of years younger than she, refused departmental allegiance, and bullied tenure out of the university through sheer, hard-assed publication. Her star rose and fell precipitously. She started to talk about the fairy stories she studied as if they were systems of fact. Her fascinating topical mash-ups in class became simply bizarre, class attendance dropped, and it soon became necessary to avoid her at parties. When a dean approached her about “seeking help,” she quit and disappeared. Ten years later, Café Sanc-ahh opened, quietly, a few miles down Telegraph Avenue, and her former colleagues—detractors and admirers alike—pretended not to know that it was Prof. Ayo flying her freak flag in Oakland.
I thought I knew what all of this meant: one of us had revealed themselves to her. I’d seen it before. They usually went a little crazy, the rationalist humans, when they found out about supernats. So I was expecting something else entirely when I stepped into the near-empty cafe one afternoon with my story already somewhat polished from use: I was working on a piece of creative writing; I had made up a supernatural creature with a set of powers and I really wanted to find out if there was an actual fairytale or myth of a creature with exactly this set of powers or something similar; have you ever heard of such a creature? I didn’t even get the first word out before Ayo accosted me.
“I like the way you look. What are you?”
This was familiar, if somewhat blunt.
“Uh, I’m adopted, so I’m not sure, but I seem to be East Asian and white. Probably Chinese and European mutt. You know, hapa.”
“No, no,” she said impatiently. “What kind of supernatural creature are you? Some kind of nature demon? Hungry ancestor? Shapeshifter? Th
at’s it, isn’t it? You’re a shapeshifter aren’t you?”
Shit, I thought, she’s really persistent. But I knew the rules.
I looked around anxiously, but none of the handful of patrons seemed to be paying attention. I decided to play dumb.
“Uh, Dr. Espinosa?”
“My mother is Dr. Espinosa. I’m Ayo.” She snapped her fingers at me when I looked around again. “Pay attention, kid! What kind of creature are you? Lord, maybe she’s a really cute troll.”
“Uh … they told me you believed in all this fairy tale stuff, but I thought they were exaggerating.”
Her clear, dark eyes narrowed at me. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, baby girl. You’re wearing expensive, matching, new clothes two sizes too large, an elastic belt, and cheap flip-flops in January. Dead giveaway for someone who changes size and shape quickly.” This was long before Ayo helped me figure out that I could make clothes out of my hairs that would shapeshift with me. “Besides, you’re blaring supernatural energy like a loudspeaker. You should learn to tone it down.”
I gave her my best shocked look, but the effect was ruined by the entrance of an extremely unkempt naga, who immediately started hissing at me, and kept it up for a good half-minute before she got herself under control. I completely destroyed my innocent act with a threat display: baring my teeth and hunching my shoulders. In such moments, Monkey was not to be denied.
“Now, now,” Ayo said, “This is a sanctuary. You both know the rules.”
A sanctuary? Run by a human? My shocked look was genuine this time.
I took a little more coaxing (mixed with her characteristic gentle bullying) but she eventually got my story (my real story) out of me. Whereupon she explained the nature of her business and offered me a job. I was a little nonplussed.
“But … do you know what I am?” I asked, bewildered.
“Not a clue. Unless you’re indigenous American—are you sure you’re not indigenous? There’s a Meso-American howler monkey god and there are lots of African monkey gods and spirits— but no, you’re a rhesus macaque, you said. That’s Asian. Asian stuff isn’t my speciality. I do comparative stuff with folk tales from Africa, Europe, and the Americas. What about that job?”
“What? … Why?”
“I said already: I like the way you look. And I have an opening. Plus, you’re blaring supernatural energy like I’ve never seen: that means strength, which will come in handy keeping the peace around here. A sanctuary doesn’t keep itself. Besides, this is your best way to find someone who might know what you are. Oakland’s the fourth busiest port in the US, and we get creatures from a hundred different cultures coming through here monthly. I used to travel to find them, but I’ve discovered that if I sit here, they’ll come to me. … What do you say?”
Two birds; one stone? What could I say?
I hadn’t known where the local sanctuary was until I met Ayo. Demon hunters avoided the ivory tower (I’m pretty sure it’s just class snobbery,) so on campus I only had to watch out for government recruiters: spooks and crypto-military types who were always looking to weaponize supernatural powers, but had learned, over the centuries, that trying to force themselves on supernats always—sooner or later—ended in disaster for everyone.
Working at Sanc-Ahh had plunged me squarely back into contact with both the supernatural and the human underground. But working with Ayo was … different, from what I’d previously experienced. Ayo saw the complexities in everything, and helped me to see them, too. The underground wasn’t as one-sidedly wicked—or attractive—as I’d thought as a teenager. And my place in the world might have broader horizons than I’d originally feared.
After several excruciating hours, during which I nerve-ate an entire nylon string bag full of mandarins, Ayo swept in and headed for her office, completely ignoring me. She was probably just spacing out, but it piqued me. I went invisible and flew to the office door, quickly taking on the door’s shape and becoming visible again.
Ayo waved her hand at the latch and I made an unlocking sound, then she turned my handle, pulled me open, and, per her usual habit, looked around the room behind her as she went in. I don’t know why she made this paranoid gesture every time she entered her office, but it made it easy for me to—
She banged her shoulder unexpectedly hard on the actual office door, which was still shut.
“Puñeta!” she cried. “Maya!”
In an instant, she was holding my hand, which had been the door handle, while I stood before her, guffawing.
“Don’t do that!” she cried, shaking my hand off like a bug.
She unlocked the real office door and opened it carefully, checking to make sure the office was actually behind it. I looked around the cafe but the dampening spell she kept around her office door had held, and no one had noticed my little prank.
“What did Bu Bu say?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The bajang.”
She sighed and pulled me by the arm into her office. She took her damn time going behind her desk and putting her bag away. As she did it, my eyes wandered over to the door in the back of the office, which looked like the door to a closet. A warm feeling infused me, and I felt a mild yearning toward the door, even as I felt both those feelings blocked, as if hitting a wall. I sighed.
“Maya,” Ayo said. She’d been talking.
“What?”
“I said I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, but I got very little out of the bajang.”
My heart dropped. “Nothing at all?”
“He indicated he’d seen some creature like you, only male, but his description was confusing, like it was two creatures, and one was a shadow—”
“I was in the form of a shadow for part of the time he saw me. Maybe the other one did that, too, or maybe he could have made a hair clone.” (I can also make clones of myself out of my hairs. I know, it’s weird.)
“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced. “What he said didn’t make sense otherwise. He said it was two creatures, then one creature, then the shadow was a soul-sucking demon, and then he shut down and wouldn’t say anything else.”
“So it could be a creature like me that made a hair clone and turned into a shadow and … sucks souls … which I’m pretty sure I can’t do, because BLEAGGHH … or it’s something like me—”
“—Connected to some shadowy soul-sucking creature. Which is what I’m thinking. If there’s another creature like you, it’s unlikely to have a major ability that you don’t have. And soul-sucking is a major ability.”
I tended to agree. “And that’s it? Nothing about what killed Wayland? Did the shadow suck another soul?”
She shook her head. “Believe me, I tried.”
“Well, give him back to me. I’ll try.” I said it through gritted teeth.
“Well, he’s gone.”
“What?”
Ayo sighed. “Maya, he asked to go and you know I couldn’t hold him after that. He hasn’t done anything, and we’re not in the business of kidnapping.”
Maybe she wasn’t. “Where did he go?”
“I honestly don’t know. The moment I released him, he jumped out the window and disappeared around a corner, and that was it.” This meant she’d questioned him at home. She lived in an old warehouse in Jingletown and he wouldn’t have stuck around in that neighborhood.
Dead end.
She looked at me expressionlessly and I glared back. That didn’t mean this was over, though. Just because Ayo couldn’t tell me where Bu Bu had gone didn’t mean I couldn’t find out on my own. And believe me, I was going to find out. One way or another, this soul-sucking creature was connected to something … to someone, like me. And the bajang knew something about it. Damned if I wasn’t going to squeeze it out of him.
I waved it away. “Whatever.” Her eyebrows went up. She knew me better than to think I’d truly let this drop. “How’s the investigation into Wayland Soh going?”
She shrugged and said pointedly, “
I don’t know because I haven’t asked. Not my business.” A patent lie, although she believed it as she said it. Ayo was too nosy to stay out of anything in the supernat community. She was just trying to put me in my place.
“Well, it’s my business! I knew the guy! He was part of my community! And he was probably there in the first place because I’d invited him! So …” I trailed off, not sure where I was going with my indignation. So I was going to ask about the investigation, that’s what! Monkey supplied, internally. “Can’t you … I dunno, ask around your Afro-Caribbean mafia or something?”
“Maya,” she said crisply, “please don’t call my community a ‘mafia.’”
“Well, you know what I mean. The gossip network. The grapevine.”
“And what, exactly, do you want me to ask the Bay Area’s African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans about the death of a Singaporean harimau jadian?”
I huffed, frustrated. She was being obstructive today. She usually had about ten different avenues of gossip and information to go down at any given moment, and many of them started with her own communities, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to how she’d just laid it out. I got up to go.
Oh yeah: “About Dalisay, I have a Chinatown contact I’m going to hit up tonight. They’re connected to the Hung For Tong, I think. They may have info about Wayland, too.”
Her eyebrows went up, again, but she didn’t say what she was thinking, which was, patently, Why didn’t you mention them before? Ayo hadn’t stopped being frustrated by my inability to trust people with my secrets—despite the fact that Ayo knew more of my secrets than anyone—but she had learned to stop bitching about it.
“Well,” she said, with studied casualness, “Let me know if that turns up anything.”
With a last, yearning glance at the inner door, I stepped over a pile of unsaid things, and went back to work.
Soon after, I was facing the counter, wiping off the front side, when I felt a kind of displacement of air, or maybe a displacement of energy. Something that told me someone had entered the shop. But it was strange as well: mostly I didn’t feel customers’ entrances with my whole body.