Dim Sum Asylum(40)

“You’re not going to be so tough when Uncle dies.” He took the first jab, a glancing blow meant to rattle me. “We’ll see how untouchable you are then, Tombo.”

It wasn’t the first time someone’d tossed that in my face, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. The uncle part. Not the Tombo. Everyone seemed to call me that. The uncle bit. It was a bit of trouble I couldn’t afford to borrow. Not now. Maybe not ever. There were too many factors—too many people—with a stake in that game, and I’d spent most of my life battling against becoming one of its pawns.

But here was this scraping of a street tough, someone without any weight to him, attempting to drag me into the family’s crap as if he could accomplish where the more powerful failed.

I’d already lost too much to the Takahashi and their power struggles.

I wasn’t going to lose myself too.

“Is my grandfather already dead that you can cross him?” I cocked my head, replying in the same cant he’d flung at me. It was a crude hash of archaic words and vulgar nouns. “Are you speaking now over his ashes? Has the Takahashi fallen, and no one called me to help pick through the ashes for his bones?”

He’d used an honorific for Uncle, a tradition-steeped phrase blackened and tarred with so many layers of meaning it could be scraped at for days and would never be clean. I, on the other hand, went for simple—Grandfather—a stark slap of a word that left no question of my connection to the old man. We were blood, a pure connection very few shared, and from what I’d heard about the family lately, getting fewer by the week.

He sputtered. “Your cousin—”

“My cousin might not live to see next week, and you’re picking a fight with the wrong bloodline, baka.” Anger threatened to overwhelm me, taking over the calm I was struggling to keep in front of my words. “I might be willing to walk away, but you think the men behind you are going to? Which one of them is going to reach my grandfather first? Or one of my cousins?

“You so sure you know who lies with whom in the family that you can come poking at me? Are you so sure one of the family isn’t going to kill you just to look good for Grandfather? I don’t fear you. Chances are you’re going to be feeding the crabs in the Bay before the week’s out.” I dug one of Vice’s business cards out of my wallet, then tucked it into the thug’s jacket pocket. “Here. When you’re tired of running, someone there might help. That is, unless Grandfather gets to you first.”

He flicked a glance behind him, and I had to give the group credit. They kept their expressions neutral, but there were definite gears churning behind their blank stares.

“You done here, MacCormick?” Trent rumbled. “Because we’ve got work to do.”

“Yeah, I’m done.” I turned my back on the asshole, and damned if my shoulder blades didn’t twitch in response. Even with Trent there to cover me if things went to shit, I was gambling on Kingfisher’s reputation to keep the thug from plunging a knife between where my wings should have been. “Come on. Let me introduce you to Jung Jie.”

We got nearly all the way across the floor before Trent leaned over and whispered into my ear, his breath laving an erotic charge over my skin. “You and me? We’re going to have us a little talk when we get out of here, MacCormick. Because while I don’t know what the fuck happened back there, something tells me you just poked at a hornet’s nest, and since I’m now the one standing next to you, I want to know what’s going on when I get stung to shit.”




JUNG JIE met us at the door to her office, her hands clenched in her skirts, lifting them so she could hurry down the narrow hallway. She looked aggrieved, a tall, slender wraith whose world I’d taken a stick to and beat until all of the fae and humans in it scurried about in confusion. Her full mouth was a stiff slash across her beautiful face, and her skin was gray, stretched tight over her impossibly high cheekbones. She’d gone full gisaeng that morning, her ink-black hair worked up into an elaborate chignon of braids and poufs. Gem-studded gold hairpins dangled stars and stylized hyacinth blooms around her face, ears, and neck, giving her an aloof elegance at odds with the red and black hanbok she wore, its collar artfully arranged to appear as if she were about to tumble out of its closings, baring her shoulders and hinting at the rounded plumps of her breasts.

She was faerie. That much was clear, but I’d never pinned down which kind. Jie lacked wings—at least from what I could see. For all I knew she was like Goma and wore scars on her back where they used to anchor to her body.

Jie was sophistication personified. Her easygoing manner and gentle hospitality were well-known to anyone who walked through Kingfisher’s doors, and her delicate silver-bell voice soothed the most screwed-up of negotiations. Soft-spoken yet firm, Jung Jie defined Kingfisher’s, a place of sometimes tense peace where one still could relax without fear of instant reprisal for an imagined slight or harsh word.

None of that was evident here. Instead I got the Jie I knew and loved.

“Get the Hell in here.” She grabbed me by the collar and hauled me off my feet, then tossed me through her opened office door. I bit back a pained moan, not wanting to give Jie the satisfaction of knowing I couldn’t handle her throwing me into her desk. Jie was strong, freakishly so, and I’d glanced off the doorknob coming in.