Dim Sum Asylum(19)

It was a toss-up between the salt and the tea leaves. I didn’t know if the statue’s owner was human or fae, or even if they leaned Asian or Western in their beliefs. Since the statue was Chinese, I was going for the leaves. I grabbed a pinch and muttered a standard remove curse at the wiggling hand as I sprinkled.

It continued to wiggle for a moment, then went inert, stiffening back into what probably was its original position, a curled-in meditation pose of fat fingers and paint. Picking it up was a bit difficult. I had to work the thing loose from the carpet, and when I got it free, I passed it to Leonard.

“What do you want me to do with that?” He recoiled slightly as I held it out.

“Put it in your pocket. I’m in jeans. You’re wearing slacks. They’ve got more of a give and won’t smash the thing.” I shoved it into his hand. “Besides, you’re the one who forgot the bag.”

“I am never going to live that down, am I.” It was a grumble, but he tucked the hand into his pocket.

“Not as long as we’re partners, no.”

He looked skeptical but resigned. “Okay, so, leaves, then?”

“Yeah, leaves.” I checked my supply as I headed to the open door. “Hope we’ve got enough.”

Leonard was right up against my back, a long hot presence in the hallway’s murky air. His breath ghosted over my neck. The death tickle was gone, replaced by another, deeper kind of caress. My balls were growing tight, roiling about from Leonard’s proximity. I wasn’t liking the dark, and I sure as Pele’s breath wasn’t fond of what my partner was doing to me.

I didn’t know what pissed me off more, wanting Leonard or him not reacting to me in the same way.

“Don’t go borrowing trouble, Roku.” I kept my muttering to myself and took another step. More crunching, and this time the ground buckled under my foot. “You’ve got enough already.”

The silence should have warned me. I laid the blame on the death echoes, but I should have known better. The building was too quiet, too still, but my nerves were already on edge with Leonard’s presence and my first day back on the job after a long stint of regret and second-guessing. We made it another foot into the thin hall when the walls fell back and an old, violence-scented fae exploded from a false panel near my elbow. The ceiling bristled with lights, drowning my vision out in a startling white wave, and I blinked furiously to see beyond the flares spangling my eyesight.

It was an old trick, one I’d known since I was knee-high to my grasshopper-winged neighbor. The door should have been a clue since the walls were up tight against its frame and bowed slightly at the ceiling. At one point someone—maybe even the ancient fae frilling in front of me—built out false walls and placed them on tracks to keep any intruders in a tight line, making them easier to attack.

That knowledge did me no good now, but my gun did, and I ached to draw it before the fae could take another step. But bringing a gun to a knife fight was only going to escalate things, and something about the old fae assured me that I’d not win.

Barely coming up to my shoulders, the fae was ancient, his dove-gray papery skin stretched tight over his skeletal frame, and his once flame-red hair turned to a ginger and cloud skullcap above his nearly white thin eyebrows. He led with his enormous hooked nose, and his still vivid green-purple compound eyes twirled, catching every single movement we made. The hall was now wide enough for him to spread his wings, and they ruffled out behind him. Monarch dappled and tailed, their long trailing tattered ends waved when he moved. Dressed in simple cotton pants and a button-up shirt, he would have fallen away from my attention if I’d passed him on the street—if it weren’t for the sea of faceted red stone stars set into the uppermost black swatches of his wings.

They glistened, a death wink gleaming from each one. Leonard had his gun out. In the ripe panic of peeling walls, old fae, and bright lights, my senses kicked up, and I could smell everything from the oil Leonard used to clean his Glock to the faint sticky copper of blood under the ancient fae’s long fingernails. I left my gun where it was, focused on the bloodied knife the fae held in his hand. I was too busy fighting the urge to shoot the fae in front of me, the hunting instinct in my bloodline ramping up until my head swam with hunger. There might have been a Glock in my holster, but the crimson universe marbling the fae’s wings reassured me my bullets would probably be wasted. He was a lifelong killer, wearing his victims in a brazen display of disregard for any law of the land.

“Shit, it’s just an old man,” Leonard muttered, putting away his gun. The fae caught Leonard’s murmur and smiled, a peek of tool-sharpened teeth hiding a sharkish maw behind his thin lips.

I wasn’t going to correct my partner. The old fae probably encouraged people to view him as harmless, and tipping him off that I knew better wasn’t going to help us. I couldn’t be sure our badges would do anything other than incite him to add cop killing to his long career of sowing murder and mayhem.

Most humans didn’t know the subtleties of fae culture. Hells, most fae had shed customary formalities in the past few decades as our species integrated, but standing in front of us was an Ancient, a sentinel of traditions and old ways. I estimated probably more than thirty death markers on his wings, but it was hard to get an accurate count as his wings shifted and danced. I was also more interested in keeping track of the chef’s knife he gripped in his left hand.