by Rhys Ford
“You can’t create magic out of nothing, son. It’s energy. That’s got to come from somewhere,” Gaines explained softly. “Someone can enhance it by certain rituals or elements, but when it’s all said and done, magic’s something that comes from inside of the caster. It’s like a spiritual bond. Use too much of it and you die from its loss.”
“Everything I’ve ever studied said it was impossible to die from using magic. Now you’re telling me that’s wrong?” My partner scoffed, but there was a glimmer of something in his eyes, a bit of distrust of the knowledge he’d gleaned before joining the Asylum. “I mean, I don’t know all of the ways to cancel out a spell—I’ll admit to that—but it’s supposed to be like holding your breath. You pass out if you get too close to the edge.”
“There’s other ways of stealing magic, Trent.” I didn’t want to say it, but the truth was staring me in the face. There’d been way too much juju in that ceramic god. “Its face didn’t move like the rest of it did. Something’s been bugging me the whole time about that thing. Everything else was like… it was almost human. Its legs, arms, and Hell, even its clothing moved, but its face was comical, leering. More theatre.”
“Why do you think that’s important?” Gaines leaned back in his chair, twisting a pen between his fingers.
It hadn’t been that long since he’d been out in the streets, but Arcane Crimes was a relatively recent division, and he was learning its tricks and ropes pretty much alongside his squad. Magic was tricky, and even though people had been killing each other with it for centuries, it took my mother’s death and the metaphysical explosion that caused it for the city to take a good hard look at how it dealt with those crimes.
Now with more than a few years under his belt and a high solve rate, a stupid fertility statue pretty much handed the squad its ass, and I’d been the one to deliver it up with a pretty red bow.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It just hit me. The statue was too animated. A lot more than any other kind of mobility spell I’ve ever seen. We were too busy chasing the damned thing down for me to assess it, but the thing had juice. I knew that if it got away, things would go very bad really quickly.”
Admitting that was hard, but I wasn’t a mage or witch. What magic I did know about was secondhand, much to the MacCormick clan’s disgust. My mother’s magic use had been minimal, mostly turning lights on and off with the occasional blowout of a light bulb or five because she touched a switch wrong. I could pop a light bulb accidentally, but that was pretty much the extent of my alleged magical legacy, and I actually doubted it was little more than me building up static when I walked.
“Things went bad anyway,” Gaines reminded us. “Luckily it could be contained pretty easily, but I’ve got an overtime bill for nearly every Chinatown medic working the district and the mayor’s office hounding my ass for tranquilizing law-abiding citizens.”
“We had an eight-foot-tall Tongan guy in a tupenu humping a fire hydrant.” It was as much of a defense as I could muster. “Did he want us to just let them screw their ways out of it? Because that was our only option. This thing’s magic was that strong, and it wasn’t looking pretty. I had one guy eyeing up one of the roast pigs hanging in Ling’s window.”
While the rain took most of the statue’s granular remains down into the sewage system, a few of the large pieces scattered to the winds, causing a block-wide lust-driven sex party to break out. So while we probably would have a bumper crop of Dungeness crabs in a few months, the on-call medical staff pretty much wiped out its sedative supply trying to get a flock of horny tourists under control and off one another before someone decided no meant yes.
“Was the old man affected?” Gaines chewed on his upper lip. “The one who threatened you?”
“Didn’t seem like it, but maybe he gets sexual pleasure from killing?” I tossed that theory into the water to see how it floated. It bobbed along but didn’t sink when I poked at it in my mind. “There wasn’t any reason for him to come after me, but he did. Threatened Leonard, but mostly to use him to hurt me. Sadistic tendencies.”
“Maybe the statue didn’t get close enough to him or it went by too fast. I’m worried he’s connected to your dad’s family or maybe against them.” My godfather turned his attention toward Trent. “What’s your take on the old man? Did it seem personal? Him coming after Roku?”
“Let’s keep focused on the fertility thing, Captain,” I jumped in before we wandered into places I’d rather not go to quite yet with a new partner. “My gut tells me this mage isn’t done sowing chaos, and he or she crossed a few lines to get that statue going.”
“So what are you saying? Essence magic? Blood, even?” Gaines growled under his breath, then pushed himself away from the desk. The chair scooted back enough for him to stand up, and his shoulders rolled as he contemplated what I was saying. “You think whoever created this thing used someone else to fuel it? We’d be finding bodies soon, then, if that’s the case. It’ll be like the Tokyo Line murders all over again.”
“That’s….” Trent trailed off, then gulped. “Gods, you can’t be serious. That goes beyond criminal.”
“It makes the most sense. This piece was powerful, Captain. Worse the closer you got to it, but it was smooth, no hesitation, and it didn’t care about anything but cutting through as many people as it could until we started chasing it.” I hated bringing it up, but nothing else made sense. To give an inanimate object as much mobility and drive as that fertility statue had, the magic would have been enormous, beyond what a single human or faerie possessed. “It had a single purpose. No deviation. There wasn’t any sign of conflicting purposes. Even twins can’t achieve that kind of locked casting. There’s always some stray thought or desire to pull an animation astray.”
“So that leaves out a dual casting. That usually tears an animation apart after a while. This one lasted for over two hours. Maybe even more,” the Captain murmured, pulling up the blinds hanging across a picture window on the office’s long wall.
The window faced the Bay, and since the station was built on one of C-Town’s steep hills, it overlooked a lot of the surrounding district. I coveted that window. The only place with a better view than Gaines’s office was the evidence morgue below, and if it hadn’t been for the parade of ghostly Chinese prostitutes walking the half floor’s halls every night, I would have begged, borrowed, and stolen that space for Arcane Crimes.
Chinatown didn’t look like it’d just survived a lust-fueled mob of matching T-shirt–wearing tourists. It fended off the darkness as it usually did, with bright lights and a bit of dirt smeared on its face just to keep things interesting. People catching ferries to the other side of the Bay packed the wharf, while the piers’ restaurants and clubs appeared to be doing steady business drawing in customers. If I strained my neck, I would have been able to watch the lingering shoppers along C-Town’s main strip, everyone looking for a bargain from businesses unwilling to give even an inch on their prices. It was all very normal, especially when a swarm of rainbow-horned narwhals cut through the dark waters of the Bay, their spires glittering in a passing ferry’s lights.
Except now we suspected there was someone out there in our city, someone powerful and with an agenda.
“Someone’s using people, Captain. That’s my takeaway on this. Last night, someone asked me to put a bug in Missing Persons’ ear about a woman who’d gone missing from a temple event. I didn’t think anything about it, but now I’ve got to wonder.” I stood up as well, needing to stretch my legs. “Are they connected? She went to get a token, a luck charm, and vanished. Suppose she met someone who convinced her they could sell her something stronger? Something to make her prayers resonate more?”
“Would someone be that gullible?” Trent asked. “They’d believe someone could infuse enough magic into a piece of pottery, and poof? Everything’s better?”
“You’d be surprised at how easy it is to get desperate people to believe you can fix their lives, Leonard.
” Gaines turned, watching me with hooded eyes, and Trent shifted in his chair, probably unsure if he should join the sentinel party or just sit tight while we mulled over what could be borrowed trouble. “Walk me through the basics, Roku. How bad can this get? How is this magic angled?”
“The only way essence theft supposedly works is if the other person has faith in whatever token the mage is using. A crucifix or prayer beads… Hell, even if they believed a damned teapot makes the best jasmine tea ever, it’s still a belief,” I explained, running through my knowledge of essence magic. It was normally benign, but like all things, it could be subverted. “It’s how fortunetelling works. Just not as… dangerous. The caster and the subject both have to believe the sticks or stones will tell them what they want to know.”
“So if the spell caster were using someone to animate that statue, it would have to be someone who believed it could bring them love.” Trent tapped at the chair arm, then shook his head. “But why animate it?”
“Because once you’ve got someone to buy in on a ritual, you’ve got a free line into their chi.” Rocking back on my heels, I ran through several scenarios in my head. “The caster could pull out nearly all of a person’s life force and push it into one or fifty statues. They’d have to do it carefully or it would burn them out. And the commands couldn’t be complicated. The sex command makes sense. It was a love token, meant to fuel desire.”
“Do you think it was powerful enough to be…? Would animating that thing kill the caster’s victim?” Gaines asked sharply. “What are we looking at here?”
“I don’t know. I’d say no because it didn’t have another purpose other than to induce sex, but we don’t know if the caster stole bits of chi to do other things. It’s the whole one broom carrying a bucket of water turning into an army of brooms emptying an ocean. Control keeps it to one broom, but that’s not to say the army can’t be created.” I wished I could give Gaines more, but I didn’t have anything other than my gut instinct. “The fertility statue was simple. The caster could have bled power into something else with a more directed purpose, or he could have just stopped at the statue. I can’t tell you which.”
“Okay. We’re going to have to get someone from Pagan Studies to consult. I want someone who knows how essence magic works to get on this. And yeah, I know Forensics won’t like it, but tough shit. I need a handle on what to expect.” The Captain shifted his feet and stared out into the city. His reflection was fierce, anger mottling his flesh and a flush pinking his ears. “What’d you do about the missing woman? Did you tap CAP and follow up?”
“I just talked to my contact there this morning. She took down the info and said she’d chase it down. After that… well, you pulled me into the statue thing.” I shoved my hands into my pockets, and a flash of white-hot pain reminded me my shoulder wasn’t in the best of shape. “I wanted to talk to the person who bought the fertility god. See who they got it from and chase it down there. If it wasn’t their chi driving the thing, then whoever sold it will know who made it.”
“Fine. Get Medical to give you the okay and go home. Don’t give me any shit on this, Roku,” Gaines cut me off before I could protest. “Get checked out, and chase down your leads tomorrow. Follow up on the missing woman yourself and find out where that statue came from. After that—”
“Captain?” Yamada opened the office door without a knock, and the strain on his round face bled him nearly white. “We’ve got a problem. UCSF Medical just called. They’ve got a couple of DOAs—”
“And?” Gaines swiveled around, and Yamada gulped. “Spit it out, son.”
“They both choked to death,” the inspector stammered out, quivering in the Captain’s doorway. “The medics found netsuke in their throats. They died choking on a carved tanuki, and one of the stones was still moving when they cut the guy open.”
Eight
AFTER GAINES cut us loose, I’d gone home to feed Bob the Cat and get a few hours in, tossing about in my bed before I finally drifted off to sleep. When I finally pulled myself out of my nightmares, I slapped more wet food into my ungrateful pet’s dish and met Trent at Medical’s Emergency Room.
It was about three in the afternoon—nearly five minutes after I’d walked through the front door—when one of the techs on duty gave me a bottle of painkillers and clearance to work. Most of the conversation between me and the tech involved a twenty dollar bill and a promise to get a seat at Goma’s counter at 1:00 a.m. I dropped a call to the ramen shop and found out Goma’d taken the night off, but the chair was secured after a short chat with the line cook. Trent listened to the exchanges with a disapproving sneer, but I didn’t have time to educate him on the ways of lubricating a process to make life go smoother. Either he learned how to do business in Chinatown or he’d wash out before his badge got dirt on it.
Most cops hated hospitals. They equated them with death, sorrow, and pain. I didn’t have that hang-up. All of my losses were out in the open. Violence gave mine from me. Death hunted them down and sucked their lives out of their bones, cracked open and scraped dry. So hospitals? Nothing more than a place with walls, tired people fighting to keep the living alive and death from taking what it came to reap.
Still, painkillers.
I stashed those in the unmarked’s glove compartment and went back to sipping the horrific healing concoction Mrs. Sun-Ye, my favorite apothecary and hedge witch, whipped up for me before Trent dragged me through Medical’s doors.
“That smells like you scraped the hair off a gorilla, burnt it, then made tea out of the ashes,” Trent grumbled.
“Just be glad I took a shower.” I took another sip of the hot liquid I’d poured into a thermos before heading out to face the day. It was rank. I couldn’t argue that point, especially after Bob sniffed the pungent steam coming out of the pot I’d used to steep the packet of leaves and fungi, and peed on my shoe in retaliation. Fun cat, that Bob. “And we’ve got to get those jeans of yours broken in. They look like you just stopped in at Woolworths and pulled on the first pair you saw.”
His jaw went granite, and a tic formed along his temple, telling me either that was exactly what he’d done or he didn’t appreciate my commentary on the cotton button-up plaid shirt and stiff dark blue jeans he wore with a pair of much too white sneakers.
“Find a spot and pull over. We’re going to need to walk in.” I tapped the central console to tell Dispatch we were leaving the car. The crackle I got from the woman sitting in a tiny room back at the Asylum pretty much confirmed she not only didn’t care but that she’d appreciate it if we didn’t get ourselves killed because she didn’t want to have to fill out any more paperwork where I was concerned. Thanking her for her distress over my well-being, I ended the call and caught Trent giving me a strange look. “What? That’s Marcy. I’ve known her for years.”
“Your relationships with people are very complicated,” he said softly. “I’m never sure if people like you or hate your guts.”
“Always assume the latter. That way you’re surprised when it’s the former,” I counseled. “Now find us someplace to park. Yellow or white zone if you’ve got to. We’ve got a do-not-tow placard on us.”
The shift from dark to light was never going to happen today. Storm clouds shoved themselves between the sun and the city, drenching us in water and black. Lightning played grab-ass above the Bay, splashing the deserted prison and the bridge in flowing white streams. Thunder boomed hot on the light’s fade, rattling windows and setting off alarms. Parts of the city flickered, transformers cringing beneath the electrical storm, and then the skies cracked open, pounding the streets in sheets of icy, sharp rain.
Trent did as I asked, pulling into a loading zone on Jackson, turning the car’s wheels to the curb to prevent it from rolling. We were facing downhill, and the river coursing the street was going to make getting out difficult, but there was no helping it. Nothing we did was going to help us stay dry, not today. Maybe not even this whole week. I flipped up the hoodie I
’d put on under my black leather jacket and prepared myself for the cold.
The cold laughed its ass off at me and then began to peel the skin from my face with gusty kisses of wind.
“Go!” I shouted at Trent while I splashed my way through the downpour. “Get under the awning.”
Trent was going to have the worst of it. Jackson was a one-way street, and he’d parked on the right, closer to where we needed to go but leaving the driver’s side on the road. He swore when the wind caught his jacket. Then another molten pour of anger—in Polish, I thought—followed when he tried to dash around the car only to stumble over the curb.
It was like trying to herd drunken turkeys.
Chinatown was built for the rain and fog, a perpetual grayness San Francisco liked to cover itself in nearly every month of the year. Summers were a shock test of boiling and ice, while winters were simply a glacial wonderland of sludge and bad traffic. It’s what I loved the most about Chinatown. I didn’t have to drive if I didn’t want to, and there were nooks and crannies full of dangerous, glorious things. And now one was full of a tall, broad-shouldered blond man who didn’t have the sense to get out of the rain.
The Southern Pier Gate dragon was already awake—or at least grumbling about the weather. She was a cranky lizard, and her sonorous rumbles rolled through the streets, a somber bass auditory fog deepening with every angry cough. Her mood ruffled a pleasure of mock-pixies nesting under the eave of a shop front. They took off, tiny balls of gold and fury dodging the raindrops in a metallic ribbon of chitters and spits. They curved over a lit billboard at the end of the block, wreathing the illuminated geisha trying to sell me a bowl of what looked like squid ink ice cream, and a piece of the building moved. The gargoyle’s stony beak and a quick flash of its red eyes, and a triangular chunk of the ribbon was gone. A few yards away, the remaining bugs reformed into a protective swarm, then winked out, burrowing into a crack in a wall.