Dim Sum Asylum(41)

“What were you thinking, Tombo?” she railed in a high-pitched hiss. “In my place? Now? Now you choose to slap some asshole down? And you… cop… get the Hell in too.” Trent she gave a hairy eyeball, lifting her brow when he didn’t move quickly enough for her liking as he hurried in after me. Stomping in, she took a long, shuddering breath and slammed the door behind her. She patted her hair, smoothed down the ornaments around her face, and glided over to a green velvet couch against the wall. “You are going to be the death of me, Roku. Are you trying to get yourself killed? And who’s this?”

“Trent Leonard. He’s my new partner… to replace the last asshole the department hooked me up with. It’s like the world’s worst dating service. We never work out. I’m hoping Trent breaks that trend.” The couch was comfortable, and at eight feet long, should have been big enough for all three of us, but I wasn’t taking any chances. She looked ready to gut me, her eyes flashing yellow and red along the edges. “Got anything to drink? Coffee would be good.”

“I sent Sarah to get some.” Patting the couch, she jerked her head to the side, motioning for me to sit down. “Heard you ran into some trouble over by one of the noodle factories. What happened? Slept with someone’s husband again?”

“One time! And he swore he was single.” I took the couch. I needed it. There was too much rattling going on in my legs and spine for me to do anything but hobble over and wince when I eased myself down.

Jie’s office wasn’t massive but definitely was large enough to hold an old-style black lacquer desk embellished with mother-of-pearl animals on the front and a few gentleman’s club wing chairs, as well as the couch I wanted to lie down on and forget about the rest of the day. It ran to the same black walls and lush carpet as the main room, but the resemblance ended there. The lighting was dimmer, and an eight-foot-tall round vintage vault door took up most of the wall opposite the couch. A soft blue gleam bled from the cracked-open vault, but I squelched my growing curiosity to see what was inside. Last time I stuck my head in there, I hadn’t liked what I found.

Trent was fighting with himself. Even in our brief relationship, I found him easy to read on certain things, and right now he had questions but didn’t know where to start. I thought he’d begin with Jie since she was a lot more interesting, a confusing blend of gutter manners and upper-class charm, but instead he walked over to the couch and sat on the arm, then bent over to examine something on my face.

“What?” I pulled back. He was too close, too warm for me to deal with, but his hand caught my chin before I could get away, pinching my lips together. It was hard to talk around his fingers, but I gave it my best shot. “Leter guh.”

“I’m seeing if your pupils are square because I’m wondering if you have a concussion.” He ignored my outrage but finally released me. “Want to tell me what that was out there?”

Jie snorted in disgust. “What that was is—”

“I’ll talk about it later.” I cut into her sarcasm before it could take flight. She pouted at me, then kicked me with her bare foot. “Seriously, Jie. I need some help. Well, we need some help.”

“We as in you and him?” Her eyebrow peaked again, and she studied Trent, who’d remained perched on the arm of the couch. “Or we as in the city’s parak?”

“Hey, remember this parak’s saved your ass more than a couple of times.”

“You’ve also almost gotten my ass grilled more than a couple of times too, so I’d call it even.” She pulled a face at me. “What do you need?”

“Information. I have several inert pieces of… statuary. All are earth-based, one porcelain and the others are a stone of some kind. I don’t have the particulars of that yet. Animated and—”

“This is an ongoing investigation. The details of these cases haven’t been shared with the general public, MacCormick,” Trent interrupted. We both turned to look at him, and I was certain Jie and I shared the same disgusted expression on our faces because he frowned back. “Procedure—”

“Procedure’s for guns and knives,” I pointed out. “Arcane Crimes’s got a different handbook, Leonard. One that says I can task a civilian for any information regarding the casting or creation of an article used in a crime. Jie here is a font of information—or at least can get her hands on it.”

“It’ll cost you, though,” she purred, nestling into the couch’s corner. “Tell me the rest of it and we’ll see if I can help you boys out.”

Something in Jie’s face and body language shifted, and the polite, brittle carapace of Kingfisher’s hostess rose up to engulf her whimsy. Gone was the guttersnipe I knew and loved. She’d shaken the street off a long time ago, and the slang and curses she flung at me most of the time were much more like a comfortable, ugly bathrobe she put on when no one was looking. She’d grown, turning into a woman I hardly recognized at times, and I’d often wondered if the Jie I knew even existed anymore or if the polished, hard creature she’d turned into snuffed out the girl I’d shared onigiri with while watching the sea lions loll about the pier.

I told her everything I knew, clinically stripping down the case until all I had left were the base details. She stopped me periodically, backing me up to ask or probe at a point, but for the most part, Jie sat behind her mask and listened intently, her sunset-hued eyes roiling with golden waves. When I was done, she stared off at the seamed ebony walls for a moment. Then her eyebrows drew in, creasing her forehead.