by Rhys Ford
“Did you ever think about the one person Jie is important to?” Trent asked. “Besides Ghost, that is.”
“She’s got no family. Hell, for all I know she made her mother up and was living in a catacomb growing up.” I frowned. “Other than Ghost, she’s maintained a distance. She’s had to. Kingfisher’s offers neutrality. Jie was harder to get close to than the damned white dragon at the North Gate.”
“For a detective, you’re pretty dense there, Tombo,” Ghost groused, slouching in his chair. “He’s talking about you, you fricking idiot. Jie isn’t the target here. You are.”
Sixteen
AFTER ARRANGING for Ghost to be dropped back off at Kingfisher’s, we’d once again dug into the case files and, unsurprisingly, came up as empty as we had before. Every call I made to spell casters dangling on the edge of criminal activity came back with the same answer: no, they had no idea who could pull off that powerful of a spell, and if they did, they sure as Hell weren’t going to tell me and put themselves right in that asshole’s crosshairs.
My headache flirted with me, but strong, wicked coffee and bottles of water surreptitiously iced by my partner’s fingers drove most of the throbbing back, and by the time we’d finally called it a day, only a thin metallic pulse along the roof of my mouth and sinuses remained. I needed to go home, shower, and probably sleep for two weeks, but the lingering press of Jie’s disappearance remained, sitting on my shoulder and whispering dark thoughts involving blood and carved bone.
Half an hour after leaving the station, I unlocked the door to my corner loft, unsurprised to find Bob the Cat passed out on the sectional I’d shoved up against the long wall. She opened one eye, exhaled deeply, then flipped over. I took that as a rousing huzzah that I’d come home to her.
“Hey, Bob.” I waited for a meep or a purr, but nothing. She remained a mostly white, orange, and black-splotched fur bump in the middle of the red cushions. “Bob. I’m home. Dude. Something? Anything?”
Bob the Cat and I owned the loft, a large rectangular space set at the top of an old Chinatown building I suspected was once owned by a tong. Its ceilings were high, stripped down to the rafters and left open. The space was bisected by a few eight-foot-tall cut-through shelving units I’d bribed a carpenter to assemble. It gave the illusion of separation but let me see through the whole space.
In a corner near the windows, Bob had an enormous cat post she never used in front of me, but I suspected there was lounging based on the peach-colored hair I found covering its stapled-down carpet. My bed sat against the solid short wall, the bathroom and closet built in behind it giving me a sound buffer between my place and the woman who owned half a dozen fluffy white yappy dogs with names like Reginald and Princess Poo. Bob wasn’t impressed by their existence and promptly served one up for slaughter when it accidently bolted into the loft when I’d opened my door. It’d been a bloodbath, tangled ruddy ivory furry patches strewn over the hall and foyer, and now every time Bob heard a muted bark, she headed to the door, eager to deliver another reckoning.
A few old area rugs and I’d called it done. I didn’t need much—not anymore—and the loft was close to the Chinatown station, so I could walk to work if I wanted to.
The sun was dropping from the horizon, staining the sky with orchids and pinks. Chinatown stretched out beyond the loft’s bank of windows, a confetti of lights and sounds spread out to the Four Point gates. The western dragon was awake, arching its wings in the failing light, the sun’s dying rays turning its iridescent membranes to a fiery opal. It stretched and yawned, sparking the air with light motes from its gaping maw. A flock of somethings shot by, but with their dark forms cast into silhouettes against the glass, I couldn’t figure out what they were.
A few cranks opened the window panels, letting the city bleed into my loft. Even five floors up, the clink of plates from nearby restaurants accented the indistinct murmurs of conversation and street noises slipping in. The fickle rain began again in earnest, and seconds later, the clouds swallowed the city, a torrent nearly obscuring the gate and its dragon. There was an odd calm to the shushing sound of water pouring from the building’s roof tiles. A carved gargoyle waterspout jutted out from under the eaves, its fins and tail wrapped around a thick pillar running up the side of the building.
The stone sentinel had kept me company through many a bottle of whiskey as I lay in my bed and watched the city slip into darkness.
I’d chosen the loft because of its view. It was also miles away from the home I’d shared with John and the girls. I’d needed distance from the suburbs, away from backyard barbecues and mowing lawns on my days off. I needed a space empty of school bus stops and hordes of power-walking moms with strollers. My life was different now, barren except for a cat named Bob and a quasi-uncle who was both my boss and my mentor.
But I still kept my family’s photos on the mantle, their smiling faces as bright and hopeful as the day I’d last seen them. I hated my cousin for taking them from me, but I hated my grandfather more for seeking retribution in my name. Donnie’s death made me a bigger target than I already was. The family knew then the old man was serious about having me stand at his side, intent on grooming me to take over the Takahashi and become something I’d never wanted to be. His promise to go legit was as thin as shoji screen paper. It would take a hundred years for the Takahashi to extract themselves from their spiderweb of illicit dealings and connections.
“Son of a bitch is trying to lead me by the nose there, Bob,” I told the cat, who, in typical feline fashion, ignored me without even so much as a flick of her tail. “He’s hoping I’ll say yes. Then he’ll edge me around to his way of thinking. Drug running isn’t too bad. We only hire assassins on a contractual basis. We hardly have any actually on the books for the family. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t say I’m too smart to be a cop, then think I’m too dumb to see what’s going on in the family.”
A shower revived my skin but energized me too much for me to collapse into the enormous bed shoved up against the north wall. After pulling on a pair of black sweats and a T-shirt and padding back into the living space, I debated checking my small kitchen for food, then settled on a cold bottle of beer. Bob came by once she heard the snick-whoosh of a cat food can being opened, but after I dumped the sickly pink-and-orange blob into her bowl, she lost interest in my existence. Popping off the bottle cap, I saluted my disinterested cat and took a deep swig.
Since I didn’t get many visitors other than the stray white fluffball with a death wish, I couldn’t have been more surprised by the knock on the door than if Bob suddenly began to sing a Korean opera for me.
I was wrong. I was definitely more shocked to find Trent Leonard standing on my doorstep.
And I choked on my beer.
If he was hot in his dark suit and loafers, he was deadly in old blue jeans and a tight white shirt. I couldn’t imagine him looking so… unkempt. The casual clothes I’d seen him in before were pressed and too clean to be called broken in, and even when things were exploding around us or engulfed in a raging firestorm, he’d looked aloofly perfect.
That distant perfection was not who was standing on my doorstep eying me with his stormy chopped-glacial-ice gaze. There was no mistaking why he was here. Need burned in his face, in his body, and I could smell the kiss of biting want rolling off his skin.
I liked that he was a bit bigger than me. It balanced out the sheer bulk of musculature perfection he’d worked himself into. His T-shirt was from an old tearoom up the street, a place I often hit up in the dead of night for xiao long bao and char siu, and so worn nearly to transparency his nipples were dark murmurs on his chest, their points pricked hard and firm. He’d left his shirt hem out, but it cut close to his body, fitting against his ribs, then tucking in toward his lean hips. His jeans had at some point objected to holding back his thigh muscles, because there were tiny rips through the pale denim, giving me peeks of tanned skin dusted with faint golden hair.
“Hey.
” Master of wit that I was, it was all I could say around the burn of beer in my throat.
“Can I come in?” Trent rumbled. “We need to talk. I think. I don’t know. What are you drinking?”
I stepped back, and he brushed against me to get by. The back of his hand barely skimmed my thigh, but it felt like my skin was on fire. I emptied my beer before closing the door behind him. He was a ripple I didn’t need in my life at the moment, but my brain and cock didn’t give two shits about listening to my common sense tolling its warning bell. I just wanted him, and I didn’t even care if it was because I was finally sick of being alone.
“Um… Tsingtao? It’s what I’ve got—” I stopped talking, leaving the fridge ajar, its bulb a dim wash of yellowed light in my eyes. “Fucking cat.”
Bob—my Bob—who couldn’t be bothered to come see me when I came home and left hairballs the size of Chihuahuas on my pillows, was cuddling up to my partner, rubbing her tiny triangular face against his fingers as he stood by the back of the couch.
“What’s her name?” He scritched under her chin, and Bob began to chirrup her pleasure.
“Bob,” I replied, wondering what’d happened to my cat. “The Cat.”
“But she’s a girl.”
“It’s short for Kate.” I studied Bob. Yep, it was definitely the animal I’d paid thousands of dollars for the disbarred vet to open her up after she’d eaten the buttons off the television remote and refused to pass any of them. It’d been hard to find someone who’d do the surgery, but I’d been pushy, wanting it done that night because… well, it was Bob.
“What happened to her tail?” It was a stubby thing, cut to half the natural length of a tail, and it shivered erratically when Leonard stroked her back.
“Don’t know. Seemed impolite to ask. I figured when she was ready to talk about it, she’d tell me.” I grabbed another beer and twisted it open. I held it up for him to see, but Trent shook his head. Taking a quick sip, I swallowed carefully when he left off adoring Bob and turned his attention toward me. “She’s shy, you know. So, what’s up with you?”
“I was going to lie and make something up about being worried about how you were doing after Jie, but….” He stepped away from Bob, crossing the floor over to me in a few strides. “I need to say a few things to you, to talk to you about… before.” He looked away for a moment, the conflict raging in him flitting over his face before settling down to a firm resolve. “I wanted to shove all of it under a rock. My life before becoming a cop, being a splice, all of it doesn’t matter anymore. But I stood there today, watching you peel your life back in front of me, and I realized I can’t run from what’s behind me any more than you can.”
“Oh, I try,” I muttered. “You have no idea how damned hard I am trying to run from what’s behind me. And what’s in front of me too. I’ve had too many people die on me. I’m tired of digging black stars into my skin, Trent. Honestly, I think if you’re around me much longer, you’re going to join everyone I wear right now. People I keep close tend to end up as tattoos, if you hadn’t noticed. You share what you want to. I don’t need it, but you might.”
My mother’d been many things—not a very maternal woman—but a fierce advocate with strong ethics, a fairly decent moral compass, and a capacity for whiskey only rivaled by Fionn himself. She’d done her best by me, a surprise fluke of genetic stew she’d served up while screwing my artistic, scatter-brained human father senseless. Ailith MacCormick took me in stride, continuing to live her life as hard and fast as she’d done before, and along the way carved a few truths into my bones in the hopes I’d turn out at least halfway decent.
One day after coming through the doors of my elementary school in full uniform and wings furled, she’d told me a truth so strong it’d changed my life’s course. I’d been in a fight, one of many in my illustrious educational career, and most of the time I’d let my fists think for me, something my mother was all too familiar with. She’d taken one look at my bloodied face, picked up my school bag, and told the nun in charge they were seeing the back of me for the very last time. Then she’d taken me home and sat me down for a talk. I’d expected to have my ass blistered or at least a few strips of skin taken off my hide, but instead she sat down on the couch next to me and said something I’d never forgotten.
“I know you beat tha’ boy because he was bothering your friend, and I can respect tha’ loyalty. I do. But you can’t be leading with your fists all the time, little man. Talk less with your fists and listen more with your heart,” she’d told me, still dressed in her uniform, bars polished, and smelling of gunpowder and shoe wax. “Most people, they want to be talking ’bout themselves all the time but hardly e’er close their mouths long enough to listen to those who really need listening to. Those people who are hurting inside are the ones who can’t find their tongues, and it’s up to us to stop and listen to their rage, to their pain. That’s what you have to fight first, to heal first. Not the body, but the heart and mind. You learn how to listen, how to care, and you’ll become a man people run to, not away from. And that’s the man I’m looking forward to meeting one day. That’s the man I’ll be proud to call my son.”
I still got into fights after that. Fewer but more vicious. But I’d learned, or at least I’d tried to listen more to the anger inside of people, and right in front of me at that moment, Trent held a maelstrom of cataclysmic rage.
“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” I said softly, keeping a soothe in my voice. It was a cop voice, one learned on the job when there was nothing you could do but comfort. “I’m not going to tell you to hug something out or how sharing your feelings is going to make everything better. I can’t. I don’t know, but if you came here to work some shit out in your head, I’m here. Got it. That said, do you want the beer?”
“Gods, yes, but it’s probably not a good idea.” Trent paced closer, then stopped as if he needed distance between us. “I think I came here because… shit, I don’t know. I went home, stared at the damned walls, and wondered how the Hell you keep going. My life went to shit one day, and now I’m drifting around, looking for someplace to be… someone to be.”
“I’d like to tell you one day doesn’t make or break who you are, but I know that’s bullshit.” I had my own bruises, my own wounds dug down into the meat of my being, and they’d never heal. It took me a long time to reconcile myself with that. Parts of me would always bleed, raw and weeping gouges, but the pain of it all did lessen. “It’ll feel better someday. I can promise you that much.”
“When, though? I lost everyone I knew that day. A lot of them died, and the others… we were all given new lives, new names. I’m probably never going to see anyone from my unit ever again, and that pisses me off, Roku,” he growled. “Pisses me off in ways you can’t even imagine, because as fucked-up as we were… are… they were still all I had in my life.”
He raked his hands over his short hair, the golden strands going bronze under the loft’s bare Edison bulbs. Trent reached out, grabbed my waistband, then jerked me closer, until our hips touched. I didn’t fight the pull, but I should have. The pain on his face twisted my soul, barbing the sorrow I already had living there.
“I was with you—what? For one damned day?—but when you went over that building’s edge, I felt like my spine was being ripped out through my chest. I don’t have anyone but you, Roku, and you were going to die right in front of me before I got to taste that damned smart-assed mouth of yours.”
It was hard to focus on Trent’s face when he was inches away, but I gave it my best shot. Sadly, my eyes seemed to find my new partner’s lips, and my crotch murmured its approval. Shifting back onto my heels, I said, “Yeah, well, I kind of scared the shit out of me too. Thanks for pulling me back up.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” He cocked his head, the scruff of dark blond hair on his jaw nearly as long as the fade along the back of his skull. “I worked so fucking hard to get here… to be your partner.
I spent every waking moment I had studying your case… studying you—”
“You’re drifting into stalker territory again there, Leonard.” I needed to use his last name. Needed some sort of distance between us, but he wasn’t going to let it go.
“Yeah, in the beginning, it was about transferring to Arcane Crimes, but then… I saw you, going into IA after they’d taken your badge, and….” He exhaled hard, blowing out his cheeks. “Gaines was bringing me in for my second interview, and all I could think was… shit, I wanted you. Sure, I knew who you were, but I hadn’t planned on… you making my skin crawl up tight and my balls ache. A guy doesn’t plan for that kind of reaction, and now here I am wanting you, but you—”
“I think it’s a bad idea,” I finished for him. “This… you… me… it’s not going to go well. You know that, right? We’re partners. Our first case pretty much blew up in our faces and—”
“I’m always going to be a step behind you. I know that. You’ve got rank, and well, you’re all cop. You went in today like there wasn’t any damned choice.”
“There wasn’t. It’s the job, Leonard—”
“Trent. For fuck’s sake, call me Trent.” He leaned in, putting his hands on either side of my hips. “I’ve got to get you out from under my skin, Roku. I don’t know if that thing made things worse or what, but there’s something about you I need. I want to get it out of my system, and you can’t tell me you weren’t as jacked up on me as I was on you outside of Kingfisher’s. I felt you get hard when I touched you. And it couldn’t have all been that fucking statue.”
There were times to be honest and times to lie. When my youngest daughter asked me if there was a Santa, I’d lied and said yes because little girls needed to know there was a mythical happy man who only wanted to bring her joy, especially after the shit life she’d started off with. I’d been honest with Gaines when I told him I didn’t care if Arnett called me names. I’d have shot him more than once that day if only I hadn’t been afraid of hitting the damned federally protected flying lizards.