Dim Sum Asylum(33)

He was throwing me an out, a way for me to save face, and we could go back to chasing our tails until we found something to latch onto and solve a case that gave us nothing to go on. I didn’t pull away. It seemed too… childish.

He nodded, and suddenly we were all good. Or at least he seemed to be. I was probably going to go home, fall facedown on my bed, and stress for hours after I got off work over Trent’s poking at me. Or get drunk and pass out. It all depended on how many dead bodies I stumbled over in the next fifteen hours. It was touchy some days.

“Yeah, we’re fine.” I nodded and patted him on his solid bicep, then stepped back.

We weren’t fine. Not yet. Maybe soon but not quite yet. We’d gone toe-to-toe, and neither one of us took a shot at each other. A good sign, all things considered. I took one good, long, hard look at him, fighting the turmoil inside of me. I’d gone from angry to hurt to needing him and everywhere in between. I wasn’t sure when fine was going to happen, but I was ready for it.

I was just scared fine wouldn’t be enough.

“Good.” A dimple showed in his cheek, and his eyes went molten silver. “Do we hug now?”

“No, we do not hug. No hugging on the job,” I groused, turning toward the alley. “Seriously, what are you? Five? We’re cops. We don’t hug.”

“You’d probably feel better,” he countered with an innocence I knew was about as fake as the gold watches in the jewelry store window across the street.

“How about if we go see what Peter Wong’s employees have to say about him? Doesn’t make sense for someone to off him. Wong didn’t have a family, pretty decent guy from what I was told. Hell, he owned a damned small noodle business in Chinatown. Not exactly a gold mine you’d kill someone for.”

“Not elaborately, anyway. Sounds kind of… expensive. Unless it’s personal for the witch doing the casting, wouldn’t this kind of thing cost a shit-ton of money?” Trent quirked his mouth. “How much do you think it would cost?”

“Shit-ton is about right.” The rain wasn’t showing any sign of letting the sky show its face, and I didn’t think Wong’s Luscious Noodles’ production manager was going to wait all day for us to show up. “See that red sign over there? The one with the flying chicken—phoenix—on it? That’s where we’re headed. Let’s just make a run for—”

Phoenix are supposed to rise from ashes, blooming into a firebird bright enough to rival the sun. The city had no sun that day, but that didn’t stop someone from making their own phoenix. The alleyway boomed, and the world shook around it. Something sharp hit my chin. Then I found myself facedown on the cement sidewalk with about two hundred pounds of solid muscle covering me. My mouth was full of grit, and silt from the runoff spout coated my right cheek. The muddy water was making it hard to breathe as it seeped into my smushed-in nostril. The heat was intense, and I was half-afraid for the miso vendor across the street. Alarms were booming, and somewhere close by, someone was screaming in shock or pain, perhaps both.

“Get off,” I burbled. Then the ache began along my spine and down my legs. The cold air was rushing through the rents in my clothes, and I was sticky wet in places I couldn’t blame on the rain. I blinked and found myself looking up at Trent, or at least three wobbly versions of him, as the edges of his face began to turn black.

“Roku, hold on.” His lips were moving. I heard him speaking, but he sounded far away, fading off into the rain. And every time I blinked, he moved, shooting in and out of my sightline. Still, his voice followed me, digging past the ringing in my ears.

Ringing. Blood. And the pain.

I never said I was the sharpest one in my family, and since I was pretty much the only one left besides Bob the Cat, that wasn’t saying much.

“Shit, Trent.” I tried to grab at his coat, but my fingers and arm weren’t working. Instead I flopped about like an oxygen-starved carp while my brain struggled to find the ends of my thoughts. Focusing on my partner’s handsome face, I slurred, needing him to hear me. “Trent, I think someone blew me up. If I die, make sure someone takes care of my cat.”





Nine


“I’M FINE,” I said for the thirtieth time in the last half hour. “Seriously, I only had the wind knocked out of me. Didn’t even bleed. Just a little bit dusty.”

It was the same response I’d given to everyone who asked. I was set to loop, or at least that’s what it felt like. After the fourth or fifth EMT poked at me, I was tired of answering questions, having lights shined in my eyes, and not coughing when someone thumped at my chest and ribs. The ringing stopped a few minutes after Trent got me to someplace warmer—a tea shop prepping for the early-dinner crowd. The owner was an enterprising young Coleopteran who’d taken one look at the emergency crews pulling up in the street and promptly began steeping stockpots full of black pekoe.

The short, squat Chinese fae urged his workers to give out as many cups as they could, ensuring the responders had something hot in their gullets when they took a moment to breathe. It was a good tactical move on his part. With the sidewalk closed down, he wouldn’t get much business, but cops and firefighters remembered who made their hard days a bit easier. Hell, I still went back to a Hawaiian food place on Third, not just because they made a mean lau lau, but also because they’d fired up their grills and made about a thousand teriyaki burgers and spam musubi for the crews working a double homicide at three in the morning.