Dim Sum Asylum(17)
The shrine god had definitely kicked up its juice. Gone were the smirks. Instead there were wing frills, furtive glances, and even bolder touches scattered through the crowd. Heading up Sacramento in a full pound, I left Leonard behind and could only hope he’d catch up. The statue was moving quickly, driven by its curse, but I had no idea what it was chasing.
The people thinned out, and I found myself at Waverly, staring down the slender lane and peering off the lantern-lit street in the hopes of spotting my tiny prey. Leonard jogged over me, slightly winded but not blowing air. The hill was steep. I had to give him credit for taking it as fast as he did in his loafers. There were reasons I wore Converse and jeans to work. I never knew when I’d have to chase down something or someone through crowded or tight streets.
Waverly, unlike Sacramento, was a locals-only street. Only a few yards away from the main corners, it offered very little to the casual traveler. A church took up residence in an old brick building that once housed a triad’s headquarters. The Triad itself was still around, moved to a more discreet location a few doors down and marked as a benevolent society.
There was little benevolence to be found there behind the watermelon-painted doors, but it looked like we were going to have to take that chance, because one of the door’s lower right-hand panels had a suspicious hole in it.
My partner spotted the hole about a second after I did. Sighing heavily, he rubbed at his face, then said, “Well, shit.”
A badge could only get a cop so far through a door, and I didn’t have a lot of hope the Wang Shi Benevolent Society would throw open their pink-and-green portal and let us in. An aged fae glowered at me from his doorway perch in the noodle shop across the way, but other than the rumble of traffic, the street was silent. No one came to the door when Leonard pounded on the frame, and he frowned at me, shaking his head as he pulled his weapon.
“We’re going to have to go in,” he grunted.
“Yeah, but not with guns out. How long have you lived in the city? Anyone tell you about places like this?” Leonard shook his head, and I suppressed a sigh. “Some of these societies—like this one—are kind of like a den of thieves. Not all of them, just… some. This one’s older. A lot of these guys are more into bouncing grandkids on their knees than breaking open heads, but they’ve still got a rep to maintain. We can’t just bust in here. You’ve got a gun out and we’re in civilian clothes, anyone in here is going to shoot first, then ask questions. And that’s if they don’t rinse and repeat the shoot first part.”
As odd as it might sound, the older triads fostered good relationships with the cops, especially as their criminal empires began to dissolve around them and meetings became less about territory and more about whiskey, hanafuda, and mahjong. It took me a while to work the door open, an exercise in milking the latch apart and praying they didn’t have an extensive arcane alarm system.
“Okay. I’ve almost got this open. Write an apology note on the back of a department card. Say we’re sorry for entering, but we’ll pay for the door.” The flip lock was a hairsbreadth too far from my fingers, and I was straining to reach it through the now partially open door. “Put my name down. They won’t know you.”
I heard him scratching out the message and finally got ahold of the ball end of the lock. I slid the hook free, pushed the door open with my shoulder, and shook the blood back down into my hand.
“Where do I put this?” He held up the card.
“Just tuck it into the trim on the door.” Leonard gave me a skeptical look. “Trust me. No one’s going to fuck with it. And the lao over there at the noodle shop is paid to watch the place. Chances are the head guy here is going to know we’re inside before we even find the damned statue. Keep your eyes open, and whatever you do, don’t shoot at the thing. Who the Hell knows what’ll happen then.”
Trent Leonard was a big boy. His mass pressed against the back of my senses, and while I had faith in Gaines’s ability to pick me out a good partner—my brain hiccupped when I realized my godfather’d been the one who’d passed me Arnett. That had been a game of hot potato. No one’d wanted to work with Arnett, and I’d been the only other single in the department. Leonard was another thing entirely. Trained, focused, and ready. Primed to work Arcane Crimes and selectively culled from a stack of applicants.
But I didn’t know him. Not really. And I wasn’t willing to put him behind me and let him have a gun in his hand.
I also didn’t want him to take point. Not on his first case out, and certainly not when we didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. I hadn’t been kidding about the shoot first thing. The society’s cramped interior wasn’t where I’d want a gunfight.
The narrow rowhouse was an echo of a time when architecture ran to East Coast aesthetic instead of adobe. As a result, the spaces were tight and dark, heavy with wood paneling and the stink of old men. A layer of antiseptic soap lingered in the air, thick enough to battle off decades of incense, cigarette smoke, and a slight whiff of old blood.
Someone—maybe a lot of someones—had died in this place, and the smell of death clung to the building, sinking its nails into the wood. My fae blood ran thin, but I could still feel the ripple of loss under my skin. The kill wasn’t recent, but it was violent and personal, leaving an echo residing in the walls. Death echoes were the reason most fae avoided cop work. Not every murder left the aftershock of its event, but when it did, the echo was like a hard blow to the nuts.