Dim Sum Asylum

by Rhys Ford

  I’d already lost too much to the Takahashi and their power struggles.

  I wasn’t going to lose myself too.

  “Is my grandfather already dead that you can cross him?” I cocked my head, replying in the same cant he’d flung at me. It was a crude hash of archaic words and vulgar nouns. “Are you speaking now over his ashes? Has the Takahashi fallen, and no one called me to help pick through the ashes for his bones?”

  He’d used an honorific for Uncle, a tradition-steeped phrase blackened and tarred with so many layers of meaning it could be scraped at for days and would never be clean. I, on the other hand, went for simple—Grandfather—a stark slap of a word that left no question of my connection to the old man. We were blood, a pure connection very few shared, and from what I’d heard about the family lately, getting fewer by the week.

  He sputtered. “Your cousin—”

  “My cousin might not live to see next week, and you’re picking a fight with the wrong bloodline, baka.” Anger threatened to overwhelm me, taking over the calm I was struggling to keep in front of my words. “I might be willing to walk away, but you think the men behind you are going to? Which one of them is going to reach my grandfather first? Or one of my cousins?

  “You so sure you know who lies with whom in the family that you can come poking at me? Are you so sure one of the family isn’t going to kill you just to look good for Grandfather? I don’t fear you. Chances are you’re going to be feeding the crabs in the Bay before the week’s out.” I dug one of Vice’s business cards out of my wallet, then tucked it into the thug’s jacket pocket. “Here. When you’re tired of running, someone there might help. That is, unless Grandfather gets to you first.”

  He flicked a glance behind him, and I had to give the group credit. They kept their expressions neutral, but there were definite gears churning behind their blank stares.

  “You done here, MacCormick?” Trent rumbled. “Because we’ve got work to do.”

  “Yeah, I’m done.” I turned my back on the asshole, and damned if my shoulder blades didn’t twitch in response. Even with Trent there to cover me if things went to shit, I was gambling on Kingfisher’s reputation to keep the thug from plunging a knife between where my wings should have been. “Come on. Let me introduce you to Jung Jie.”

  We got nearly all the way across the floor before Trent leaned over and whispered into my ear, his breath laving an erotic charge over my skin. “You and me? We’re going to have us a little talk when we get out of here, MacCormick. Because while I don’t know what the fuck happened back there, something tells me you just poked at a hornet’s nest, and since I’m now the one standing next to you, I want to know what’s going on when I get stung to shit.”

  JUNG JIE met us at the door to her office, her hands clenched in her skirts, lifting them so she could hurry down the narrow hallway. She looked aggrieved, a tall, slender wraith whose world I’d taken a stick to and beat until all of the fae and humans in it scurried about in confusion. Her full mouth was a stiff slash across her beautiful face, and her skin was gray, stretched tight over her impossibly high cheekbones. She’d gone full gisaeng that morning, her ink-black hair worked up into an elaborate chignon of braids and poufs. Gem-studded gold hairpins dangled stars and stylized hyacinth blooms around her face, ears, and neck, giving her an aloof elegance at odds with the red and black hanbok she wore, its collar artfully arranged to appear as if she were about to tumble out of its closings, baring her shoulders and hinting at the rounded plumps of her breasts.

  She was faerie. That much was clear, but I’d never pinned down which kind. Jie lacked wings—at least from what I could see. For all I knew she was like Goma and wore scars on her back where they used to anchor to her body.

  Jie was sophistication personified. Her easygoing manner and gentle hospitality were well-known to anyone who walked through Kingfisher’s doors, and her delicate silver-bell voice soothed the most screwed-up of negotiations. Soft-spoken yet firm, Jung Jie defined Kingfisher’s, a place of sometimes tense peace where one still could relax without fear of instant reprisal for an imagined slight or harsh word.

  None of that was evident here. Instead I got the Jie I knew and loved.

  “Get the Hell in here.” She grabbed me by the collar and hauled me off my feet, then tossed me through her opened office door. I bit back a pained moan, not wanting to give Jie the satisfaction of knowing I couldn’t handle her throwing me into her desk. Jie was strong, freakishly so, and I’d glanced off the doorknob coming in.

  “What were you thinking, Tombo?” she railed in a high-pitched hiss. “In my place? Now? Now you choose to slap some asshole down? And you… cop… get the Hell in too.” Trent she gave a hairy eyeball, lifting her brow when he didn’t move quickly enough for her liking as he hurried in after me. Stomping in, she took a long, shuddering breath and slammed the door behind her. She patted her hair, smoothed down the ornaments around her face, and glided over to a green velvet couch against the wall. “You are going to be the death of me, Roku. Are you trying to get yourself killed? And who’s this?”

  “Trent Leonard. He’s my new partner… to replace the last asshole the department hooked me up with. It’s like the world’s worst dating service. We never work out. I’m hoping Trent breaks that trend.” The couch was comfortable, and at eight feet long, should have been big enough for all three of us, but I wasn’t taking any chances. She looked ready to gut me, her eyes flashing yellow and red along the edges. “Got anything to drink? Coffee would be good.”

  “I sent Sarah to get some.” Patting the couch, she jerked her head to the side, motioning for me to sit down. “Heard you ran into some trouble over by one of the noodle factories. What happened? Slept with someone’s husband again?”

  “One time! And he swore he was single.” I took the couch. I needed it. There was too much rattling going on in my legs and spine for me to do anything but hobble over and wince when I eased myself down.

  Jie’s office wasn’t massive but definitely was large enough to hold an old-style black lacquer desk embellished with mother-of-pearl animals on the front and a few gentleman’s club wing chairs, as well as the couch I wanted to lie down on and forget about the rest of the day. It ran to the same black walls and lush carpet as the main room, but the resemblance ended there. The lighting was dimmer, and an eight-foot-tall round vintage vault door took up most of the wall opposite the couch. A soft blue gleam bled from the cracked-open vault, but I squelched my growing curiosity to see what was inside. Last time I stuck my head in there, I hadn’t liked what I found.

  Trent was fighting with himself. Even in our brief relationship, I found him easy to read on certain things, and right now he had questions but didn’t know where to start. I thought he’d begin with Jie since she was a lot more interesting, a confusing blend of gutter manners and upper-class charm, but instead he walked over to the couch and sat on the arm, then bent over to examine something on my face.

  “What?” I pulled back. He was too close, too warm for me to deal with, but his hand caught my chin before I could get away, pinching my lips together. It was hard to talk around his fingers, but I gave it my best shot. “Leter guh.”

  “I’m seeing if your pupils are square because I’m wondering if you have a concussion.” He ignored my outrage but finally released me. “Want to tell me what that was out there?”

  Jie snorted in disgust. “What that was is—”

  “I’ll talk about it later.” I cut into her sarcasm before it could take flight. She pouted at me, then kicked me with her bare foot. “Seriously, Jie. I need some help. Well, we need some help.”

  “We as in you and him?” Her eyebrow peaked again, and she studied Trent, who’d remained perched on the arm of the couch. “Or we as in the city’s parak?”

  “Hey, remember this parak’s saved your ass more than a couple of times.”

  “You’ve also almost gotten my ass grilled more than a couple of times too, so I’d call it even.
” She pulled a face at me. “What do you need?”

  “Information. I have several inert pieces of… statuary. All are earth-based, one porcelain and the others are a stone of some kind. I don’t have the particulars of that yet. Animated and—”

  “This is an ongoing investigation. The details of these cases haven’t been shared with the general public, MacCormick,” Trent interrupted. We both turned to look at him, and I was certain Jie and I shared the same disgusted expression on our faces because he frowned back. “Procedure—”

  “Procedure’s for guns and knives,” I pointed out. “Arcane Crimes’s got a different handbook, Leonard. One that says I can task a civilian for any information regarding the casting or creation of an article used in a crime. Jie here is a font of information—or at least can get her hands on it.”

  “It’ll cost you, though,” she purred, nestling into the couch’s corner. “Tell me the rest of it and we’ll see if I can help you boys out.”

  Something in Jie’s face and body language shifted, and the polite, brittle carapace of Kingfisher’s hostess rose up to engulf her whimsy. Gone was the guttersnipe I knew and loved. She’d shaken the street off a long time ago, and the slang and curses she flung at me most of the time were much more like a comfortable, ugly bathrobe she put on when no one was looking. She’d grown, turning into a woman I hardly recognized at times, and I’d often wondered if the Jie I knew even existed anymore or if the polished, hard creature she’d turned into snuffed out the girl I’d shared onigiri with while watching the sea lions loll about the pier.

  I told her everything I knew, clinically stripping down the case until all I had left were the base details. She stopped me periodically, backing me up to ask or probe at a point, but for the most part, Jie sat behind her mask and listened intently, her sunset-hued eyes roiling with golden waves. When I was done, she stared off at the seamed ebony walls for a moment. Then her eyebrows drew in, creasing her forehead.

  “I know a couple of people powerful enough to do that kind of thing without having a host to draw energy from, but none of them would waste their time doing it for money. That level of magic costs more than energy. That much drive would suck the life from a person.” She shook her head, and the ornamentation in her coif jingled when their edges struck one another. “I’m going to need some time.”

  “Of course you are,” I replied, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Trent leaned in, brushing my shoulder, and I had a hard time focusing until Jie smirked at me. “Let me guess, your time—”

  “Doesn’t come cheap.” She delivered, as usual. “You know how this works, Roku. Nothing comes free or cheap. I provide a service, and you provide payment for that service.”

  “All I’m asking you is to see if there’s someone putting themselves on the market. The people I know aren’t packing this kind of skill, and the ones that do are either dead or sitting behind bars weaving macramé planters out of jute.” Leaning forward was a mistake, my back told me, but I did it anyway, trying to reach some kind of empathetic connection with the little girl I hoped was still somewhere inside this beautiful woman playing me like a fiddle. “As for time, I’ve got the feeling we don’t have a lot of it. I don’t know why this caster killed those people or what the shrine god was meant to do. Or even where it started. It could have killed someone we haven’t found yet. And Shelly Chan could be someone who was conned into giving away her chi to fuel something this caster is going to use to kill someone else. It could all be related, Jie, or all of these bits could have nothing to do with one another, but I can’t take that chance. So yeah, whatever you need to get me a name, I’m willing to pony up.”

  “Even if it means getting me in front of your grandfather?” Her slithering request dug fangs into my soul, and I bled someplace deep and dark inside. “If I wanted an audience with him, you’d make it happen? For this name?”

  “Why do you want that, Jie?” I didn’t want to put her in front of the old man. It would be a favor I wouldn’t be able to repay with anything other than chipping away at my freedom from his stranglehold. She was asking me for more than the information was worth. Jie knew that, but she was angling for something, something I couldn’t put my finger on. “What do you really want, honey? If I do that, if I put you in front of him, you become something he can use… something anyone in the family will use to force me into things, and I don’t want to have to choose between saving you or keeping me alive.”

  She studied me, dissecting me with her eyes and probably sifting through every bit of knowledge she had of me. Jie had quite a lot. She knew me probably better than anyone else except perhaps Bob the Cat. We shared life experiences John never would have been able to comprehend, much less embrace. We’d lived in a world I’d never wanted my daughters to know, and when they died, I’d fallen right back into it, bathing in the filthy gutter until I choked on its familiar mud.

  “Don’t ask that of me, Jie. I’ll find the name some other way because, even if you don’t deliver, I’m still going to hunt this guy down. It just might take me a little longer to do so,” I said. “But see, he’s going to keep killing, and the longer I take, the more people die. Do you want that on you, Jie? Do you want those people’s blood on your hands?”

  “We already have blood on our hands, Roku,” she countered. “Or have you forgotten that?”

  “I can’t change the past, Jie. Only the future.” It was a good knife to the ribs, but I’d been bleeding since I’d walked through the door, so I shrugged, feeling Trent stiffen on the couch’s arm. “Get me a name and help me put an end to this before it goes really bad for a lot of people. This guy’s not going to stop, because I don’t think it’s about being paid for his casting. I think this is personal. Let me know if you find anything. Trent and I are going to pick up where we left off. Call if you can help me.”

  I stood shakily and was more than a little bit grateful for Trent’s hand discreetly sliding under my elbow when I got to my feet. It wasn’t the way I’d wanted his hands on me, but at the moment, it was probably for the best. As much as I hated to admit it, I probably needed another dose of painkillers and maybe some food, but the last thing I wanted was to grab something to eat on the main floor where I’d left a sticky mess of politics and old grudges.

  “Go out the back way. You’ve caused enough shit for one day, Roku.” Jie must have read my mind. She jerked her head toward the north side of the building and pulled her mouth into a curl. “If I find anything, I’ll call, but just so you know, this is going to cost you something big. You’re asking for a snitching, and I don’t do those, honey. Not unless I know for sure it can’t come back to bite me on the ass.”

  “No ass biting,” I promised and kissed her on the cheek. “Farthest thing from my mind, and tell Sarah she can skip the coffee. I’m not sure I can afford it.”

  Eleven

  “ARE WE going to talk about this? What happened back there? In that club,” Trent barked at my back. It wasn’t really a question. More of a command. Like he was used to ordering people around and expected them to stop in their tracks to immediately do what they were told. “MacCormick! Are you listening to me?”

  I ignored him, just motioned for Trent to follow me and hoped the headache threatening to blind me would wait until I was safely inside the car.

  The rain was a persistent aggressor, at times flirtatious, but mostly it catcalled from the haze winding through the city streets, a ripe promise of slap and a tickle but never really following through. Today, however, was different, because we emerged from the depths of Kingfisher’s Chinese-influenced elegance right into a downpour heavy enough to make me want to gather animals up by the pairs and toss them in the unmarked for a long journey to Mount Ararat.

  In the depths of the warren, it was relatively easy to get from place to place and stay mostly dry, but when we hurried past the scramble of doorways and awnings to get to the outer spirals, not getting wet wasn’t an option. I dodged most of the spurting filth of a do
wnspout only to end up walking through a grime-steeped waterfall from tiers of an iron-grate fire escape. The metallic stink of the water washed away the sour fear lingering in my senses, and the world snapped out of the gray frizz I’d been wallowing in since we’d left Jie’s office.

  I’d been concerned about Trent coming into the crazy-quilt neighborhood, but my gut was telling me he could take care of himself. The numbness I’d wrapped around myself since shooting Arnett thinned with each breath I took, and the sting of cold air in my lungs held more than ice crystals.

  There was an uneasiness playing with my nerves, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of someone’s eyes burning a hole into the back of my head. I’d thought it was Trent, but other than a flash of annoyance in his stormy glare, there wasn’t anything malevolent lurking in his face. No, this was urging me to get out of the open, to burrow under a blanket and wait out a predator. But I couldn’t see what was after me, so I hurried, hoping Trent could keep up.

  I shouldn’t have been worried. He moved sleekly through the tight, wet serpentine paths. Too sleek. Too smooth. There was something off about him, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Two days of having him as a shadow and the only thing I could say about him was he was strong enough to yank me up over the edge of a building and he had the social skills of a stoned wombat. It was like he’d been born… maybe not yesterday, but within the last month, and was only given a rudimentary manual on how to dress, eat, and act like a human being.

  Not like I could talk.

  There was movement in the warrens, typical stuff I normally wouldn’t have blinked an eye at, but my nerves were raw, and everything seemed to rub me the wrong way. I flashed my badge at a guy hustling passersby to buy unlocked phones whose guts were more often than not cannibalized from cheaper knockoffs. He swore at my back using one of the few Mandarin phrases I knew by heart, then hurriedly packed up the side table he’d put out under a stationary store’s wooden porch. The hustle didn’t bug me as much as him squatting on the porch, blocking the store’s entrance.