Dim Sum Asylum(27)

“You can’t create magic out of nothing, son. It’s energy. That’s got to come from somewhere,” Gaines explained softly. “Someone can enhance it by certain rituals or elements, but when it’s all said and done, magic’s something that comes from inside of the caster. It’s like a spiritual bond. Use too much of it and you die from its loss.”

“Everything I’ve ever studied said it was impossible to die from using magic. Now you’re telling me that’s wrong?” My partner scoffed, but there was a glimmer of something in his eyes, a bit of distrust of the knowledge he’d gleaned before joining the Asylum. “I mean, I don’t know all of the ways to cancel out a spell—I’ll admit to that—but it’s supposed to be like holding your breath. You pass out if you get too close to the edge.”

“There’s other ways of stealing magic, Trent.” I didn’t want to say it, but the truth was staring me in the face. There’d been way too much juju in that ceramic god. “Its face didn’t move like the rest of it did. Something’s been bugging me the whole time about that thing. Everything else was like… it was almost human. Its legs, arms, and Hell, even its clothing moved, but its face was comical, leering. More theatre.”

“Why do you think that’s important?” Gaines leaned back in his chair, twisting a pen between his fingers.

It hadn’t been that long since he’d been out in the streets, but Arcane Crimes was a relatively recent division, and he was learning its tricks and ropes pretty much alongside his squad. Magic was tricky, and even though people had been killing each other with it for centuries, it took my mother’s death and the metaphysical explosion that caused it for the city to take a good hard look at how it dealt with those crimes.

Now with more than a few years under his belt and a high solve rate, a stupid fertility statue pretty much handed the squad its ass, and I’d been the one to deliver it up with a pretty red bow.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “It just hit me. The statue was too animated. A lot more than any other kind of mobility spell I’ve ever seen. We were too busy chasing the damned thing down for me to assess it, but the thing had juice. I knew that if it got away, things would go very bad really quickly.”

Admitting that was hard, but I wasn’t a mage or witch. What magic I did know about was secondhand, much to the MacCormick clan’s disgust. My mother’s magic use had been minimal, mostly turning lights on and off with the occasional blowout of a light bulb or five because she touched a switch wrong. I could pop a light bulb accidentally, but that was pretty much the extent of my alleged magical legacy, and I actually doubted it was little more than me building up static when I walked.

“Things went bad anyway,” Gaines reminded us. “Luckily it could be contained pretty easily, but I’ve got an overtime bill for nearly every Chinatown medic working the district and the mayor’s office hounding my ass for tranquilizing law-abiding citizens.”

“We had an eight-foot-tall Tongan guy in a tupenu humping a fire hydrant.” It was as much of a defense as I could muster. “Did he want us to just let them screw their ways out of it? Because that was our only option. This thing’s magic was that strong, and it wasn’t looking pretty. I had one guy eyeing up one of the roast pigs hanging in Ling’s window.”

While the rain took most of the statue’s granular remains down into the sewage system, a few of the large pieces scattered to the winds, causing a block-wide lust-driven sex party to break out. So while we probably would have a bumper crop of Dungeness crabs in a few months, the on-call medical staff pretty much wiped out its sedative supply trying to get a flock of horny tourists under control and off one another before someone decided no meant yes.

“Was the old man affected?” Gaines chewed on his upper lip. “The one who threatened you?”

“Didn’t seem like it, but maybe he gets sexual pleasure from killing?” I tossed that theory into the water to see how it floated. It bobbed along but didn’t sink when I poked at it in my mind. “There wasn’t any reason for him to come after me, but he did. Threatened Leonard, but mostly to use him to hurt me. Sadistic tendencies.”

“Maybe the statue didn’t get close enough to him or it went by too fast. I’m worried he’s connected to your dad’s family or maybe against them.” My godfather turned his attention toward Trent. “What’s your take on the old man? Did it seem personal? Him coming after Roku?”

“Let’s keep focused on the fertility thing, Captain,” I jumped in before we wandered into places I’d rather not go to quite yet with a new partner. “My gut tells me this mage isn’t done sowing chaos, and he or she crossed a few lines to get that statue going.”

“So what are you saying? Essence magic? Blood, even?” Gaines growled under his breath, then pushed himself away from the desk. The chair scooted back enough for him to stand up, and his shoulders rolled as he contemplated what I was saying. “You think whoever created this thing used someone else to fuel it? We’d be finding bodies soon, then, if that’s the case. It’ll be like the Tokyo Line murders all over again.”

“That’s….” Trent trailed off, then gulped. “Gods, you can’t be serious. That goes beyond criminal.”

“It makes the most sense. This piece was powerful, Captain. Worse the closer you got to it, but it was smooth, no hesitation, and it didn’t care about anything but cutting through as many people as it could until we started chasing it.” I hated bringing it up, but nothing else made sense. To give an inanimate object as much mobility and drive as that fertility statue had, the magic would have been enormous, beyond what a single human or faerie possessed. “It had a single purpose. No deviation. There wasn’t any sign of conflicting purposes. Even twins can’t achieve that kind of locked casting. There’s always some stray thought or desire to pull an animation astray.”