Dim Sum Asylum(13)
The guy wasn’t young, not a starry-eyed, fresh-out-of-patrol newbie with milk still on his teeth. If anything, he might have been a year or two older than my own three decades, but it was sometimes hard for me to tell with humans. There were too many variables to their aging, from racial proclivities to diet, and since most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis lived hard and died young, I was shit at guessing ages.
The dark blue suit he wore was tailored to his bulk, fitted along his broad shoulders and cutting in slightly at the waist. Pity he hadn’t worn his shoulder harness when he’d gotten the navy blazer altered, because his rig ruined the line of the coat, rucking up across his back where a strap hung up on the back seam. He wasn’t short but definitely was more evenly proportioned than me, but being human could do that to a guy.
Still, he was good-looking in a fit, thunder God kind of way, and my unruly dick was more than happy to make his acquaintance. If there was any part of me I regretted having human blood, it was my libido. Faes had it easy: a pheromone or two caught their attention and it narrowed the field down. Instead I’d gotten a wider stream of lust and want. It was annoying. Especially when I found myself attracted to a man who looked like he’d rather be armed to the teeth and prowling war zones than be stuck in a car with me.
“Inspectors,” Gaines rumbled loudly. “I want to introduce you to Inspector Trent Leonard. He’ll be joining our little family as of today. MacCormick, he’s with you. I want the rest of you to make yourselves available to Leonard while he learns the ropes. He’s just come out of Street, so it’ll be up to all of you to mentor him during his transition.
“Leonard, that’s MacCormick,” my godfather said, pointing at me. Inspector Trent Leonard practically snapped to attention and clipped his heels together when Gaines barked his name. “Keep tight on his ass, ask questions, and you’ll learn the job.”
“Just don’t be in front of him if he’s got his gun out,” someone teased from behind me. I’d have guessed Yamada, but I was too engrossed in the whiff of musk kicking up out of Inspector Leonard’s skin. Something was cuing up his fight or flight responses, and only a dead skink wouldn’t know it was me.
I ate up the distance between us and tried not to let my metaphorical wings get ruffled when Leonard started, almost as if he was about to take a step back. Edging past Gaines, I stuck my hand out to my new partner and said, “Welcome to Dim Sum Asylum.”
Four
IT DIDN’T seem like San Francisco was ever going to dry out.
The after-work rush hour rain was a pour of silky dark sheets over the district when I drove through the lower reaches near the Bay. Damp rainy evenings and late afternoons were my favorite time in the city. The water spun out gossamer threads, misty batting thin enough to weave through the complicated loom of buildings set up on the city’s hills. Neon signs bled into the fog, daubing reds and yellows across the air, a whore’s lipstick smear after the end of a long night’s work.
Passing under the dragon squatting on the East Gate on Grant and Bush, I saw its eyes gleam gold as it caught a whiff of something in the air. Its finlike tail slapped at the green tiles on its long perch, rattling the chimes hanging from a broad support beam straddling the double-lane street. We had to stop for a minute as a car backed out of a spot, holding up traffic, and I made the mistake of looking around.
In the dark recesses below the prismatic reptile’s squat, an old balding nun in muddied orange robes shook fortune sticks out onto an old TV tray for a gaggle of Hawaiian shirt–wearing round men, either a tour group or rejects from a vintage Hilo Hattie advertisement.
A few feet away, her shaven fae apprentice fought to adjust her robes around her tiger-moth wings, the upper end of her right span dotted liberally with tiny glistening obsidian stars. I counted an easy seven, but it could have been more. After one or two, the count never really mattered, and her loss showed in the yellow weeping into her blue compound eyes. It was hard to catch a glimpse of her pain. I had my own, flickers of citrine at the edges of my irises when I thought of John and the girls, but the young fae’s tragedy went beyond my imagining, and I was grateful when traffic began to move again so I could pull away from her anguish.
Despite the rain, I’d left the driver’s-side window open a crack so I could feel the wind on my face and catch the scents of the streets we drove through. People were out in droves, both human and fae. Pedestrians strolled up Grant, stopping sidewalk traffic as they peered at the street’s storefronts. A red light brought me to a stop, and I watched a stream of tourists and locals hurry from one corner to the next. The meat and dumpling place across from the Old Grant hotel sizzled with aromas, and my stomach growled, reminding me the last time I’d seen fit to toss something down my gullet, it’d been a scoop of cafeteria congee leftovers from the depths of my fridge. That’d been hours ago, and the rows of suckling pig and tea-smoked duck hanging in the charcuterie’s window made my mouth water something fierce.
The case we’d pulled—a missing shrine god—was a simple one on the surface. But when all was said and done, anything in C-Town’s inner coil was complicated. Shrine gods were important—each with their own hidden meaning—and a missing one could mean either the start of a blood war or a meeting over tea between the two parties where the apologies were heartfelt and all was forgiven but not forgotten.