Dim Sum Asylum(23)

“Leonard! It’s headed your way!” I dropped the towel, exchanging it for a plastic tote bag lying nearby. It was big enough to hold the statue and a damned sight better than my jacket. Besides, the cold air was beginning to hit the city, and it found every inch of my overheated skin through the shanty’s walls.

I watched the door, stepping around more books and papers to get to the front of the shack. Pulling my jacket on, I juggled the bag and peered around a long kitchen cabinet the couple somehow shoehorned into the space. Part of a door served as a countertop, and it was relatively stable, barely rocking when I put my hand on it to steady myself.

The damned statue exploded out of its hiding place and rushed past me. I made a grab for it. Its hat broke off in my hand, a long chunk of black-painted porcelain embellished with gold ribbons and red mesh. The ceramic was oddly fragile, crumbling on my palm, and I was careful to shake as much of the dust into the bag as I could. I needed to dig out the salt packets in my jacket or at least plunge my hand into a puddle before the damned lust spell did a number on me.

I lost sight of the statue, then saw its head bobbing past a stack of magazines. It rounded the corner of the cabinet, and the damned thing bolted out the door.

Shoving the bag under my arm, I was as hot on its trail as I could be, but a small fight near the shack’s door was difficult to negotiate, especially since it looked like my new partner let the old man keep his mallet. Their grumbling was loud, pitched up into a hot fury, but their anger quickly turned to a simmer once the statue wove around their legs.

The shrine god was leaking its magic, bleeding it off into any fae and human around it, probably because I’d given it the booster shot it needed to keep going.

“Get back into your homes! There is a police investigation in—”

Leonard let out an outraged yelp as a dreadlocked young woman grabbed his crotch. “Hey!”

“Leonard, quit fucking around and come on!” I yelled over my shoulder. “It’s heading to the edge!”

Magic wasn’t the only thing the statue was leaking. A wide trail of fine specks splotched the crisscrossed paths along the society’s roof. There wasn’t going to be enough salt or tea leaves in the city to de-hex the gōngyù, and short of making it rain black tea and shoyu, SFPD was going to have to call in a few witches or there was going to be a rooftop orgy before the hour bled away.

Moving carefully, I kept my eye out for the statue, drawn to the side by a rustling pot of rosemary. A one-eared cat popped its head out of the greenery and hissed at me as I spotted the shrine god dragging its fracturing body up the length of the gōngyù’s sole bridge.

Leaving the cat behind, I bolted toward the arch.

Like all gōngyù construction, the bridge leading to the next building was held together by a hope, a prayer, and a lot of duct tape. In some cases, there was actual engineering, but oftentimes, the residents struck up a mostly illegal deal with whoever owned the base structure and built a way across from another gōngyù. Some bridges were broad, wide enough to stack one-room hovels on either side, while others were barely wide enough for a single person to scurry across while holding their arms out for balance.

This particular gōngyù bridge was more hope and prayer than engineering.

It was old, so at least it’d been there for a while. It had that much going for it, but still it swayed slightly when I put a foot on it. Made up of old ladders and plywood, it rocked and bounced, tilting alarmingly, forcing me to come to a complete stop before I was tossed from the bridge onto the street more than two stories below. Like the headless chicken it was, the statue continued to clump-stomp across.

“Damn it, could the asshole who made that thing have at least not let it have a death wish?” I skittered forward another step, not liking the rocking under my feet.

Whoever cursed the statue was intelligent enough to cast a powerful, probably custom-made spell but lacked the common sense to hobble the magic’s inherent need to survive. Magic, a force like water and fire, often looked for any means to continue forward. The statue was no exception, and its owner infused it not only with a fertility spell but also a drive more ferocious than a forest fire. It was going to take any path offered to it to spread its arcane seed.

It reached the other side, where the bridge’s supports had been lashed to a fire escape trellis, creating an eight-inch jog from the bridge’s landing to the next building’s parapet. Most people living on a gōngyù liked uneven bridges. They were nearly impossible for the average rat to traverse but easily navigated by an able-bodied human or fae.

The statue fell into the rat category, especially since it appeared it was missing both of its hands and part of one leg.

Unfortunately, the statue thought any kind of movement was forward.

And that included down.

“Oh, come on!” I cried out when the statue inched closer to the edge of the bridge.

The arch bucked under me, and I flailed, trying to keep my balance. Not for the first time in my life I wished for my mother’s blood to have given me a set of wings. Even if they were useless for flying, they did a kickass job at providing balance. As graceful as I was, gravity still wasn’t my friend.

Around us, the city continued on. Ferries lit up the water, carrying people across the Bay and beyond to homes tucked into the hills. The Golden Gate sparkled, a jeweled string of steel bands and beams. Chinatown was in full swing, its mysterious lure too great for many a tourist to resist and a comfortable den of depravity and security for those who liked to live in the shadows. I could see my own building off in the distance. A few blocks away, the mangy calico kitten-something I’d pulled out of a dog-bait pen five years ago was waiting for me to return.