Dim Sum Asylum(43)

I ignored him, just motioned for Trent to follow me and hoped the headache threatening to blind me would wait until I was safely inside the car.

The rain was a persistent aggressor, at times flirtatious, but mostly it catcalled from the haze winding through the city streets, a ripe promise of slap and a tickle but never really following through. Today, however, was different, because we emerged from the depths of Kingfisher’s Chinese-influenced elegance right into a downpour heavy enough to make me want to gather animals up by the pairs and toss them in the unmarked for a long journey to Mount Ararat.

In the depths of the warren, it was relatively easy to get from place to place and stay mostly dry, but when we hurried past the scramble of doorways and awnings to get to the outer spirals, not getting wet wasn’t an option. I dodged most of the spurting filth of a downspout only to end up walking through a grime-steeped waterfall from tiers of an iron-grate fire escape. The metallic stink of the water washed away the sour fear lingering in my senses, and the world snapped out of the gray frizz I’d been wallowing in since we’d left Jie’s office.

I’d been concerned about Trent coming into the crazy-quilt neighborhood, but my gut was telling me he could take care of himself. The numbness I’d wrapped around myself since shooting Arnett thinned with each breath I took, and the sting of cold air in my lungs held more than ice crystals.

There was an uneasiness playing with my nerves, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of someone’s eyes burning a hole into the back of my head. I’d thought it was Trent, but other than a flash of annoyance in his stormy glare, there wasn’t anything malevolent lurking in his face. No, this was urging me to get out of the open, to burrow under a blanket and wait out a predator. But I couldn’t see what was after me, so I hurried, hoping Trent could keep up.

I shouldn’t have been worried. He moved sleekly through the tight, wet serpentine paths. Too sleek. Too smooth. There was something off about him, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Two days of having him as a shadow and the only thing I could say about him was he was strong enough to yank me up over the edge of a building and he had the social skills of a stoned wombat. It was like he’d been born… maybe not yesterday, but within the last month, and was only given a rudimentary manual on how to dress, eat, and act like a human being.

Not like I could talk.

There was movement in the warrens, typical stuff I normally wouldn’t have blinked an eye at, but my nerves were raw, and everything seemed to rub me the wrong way. I flashed my badge at a guy hustling passersby to buy unlocked phones whose guts were more often than not cannibalized from cheaper knockoffs. He swore at my back using one of the few Mandarin phrases I knew by heart, then hurriedly packed up the side table he’d put out under a stationary store’s wooden porch. The hustle didn’t bug me as much as him squatting on the porch, blocking the store’s entrance.

“I swear to God,” Trent grumbled at my back. “No wonder all of your partners hated your guts. Answer me.”

“Low blow, Leonard,” I muttered. “Let’s just get to the car, okay?”

“What’s the hurry?” A challenging note crept into his low, husky voice, and oddly enough, it was a turn-on. “Talk to me about those guys. The ones we’re running from. Are they connected to your father’s family? Or to you somehow?”

“We’re not running from anyone.” We weren’t. Not really. I didn’t think anyone would move against me that quickly. I’d left the shock troops in a bit of a muddle, and while I didn’t know who they answered to, I hadn’t been bluffing about the one idiot’s shortened lifespan. Depending on whom he worked for, he’d either earned brownie points or a one-way ticket to a pig farm. “Just… move.”

For all my faerie blood, I ran pretty human. My mother had passed on very little of her innate powers to me. I healed quickly—always a plus since I had a habit of leaping before looking—but other than a few genetic quirks, I was pretty much magic-dead except for one misfiring stupid parlor trick: I sometimes could sort of tell when something or someone was trying to kill me.

More than usual.

It never was warning bells and klaxons. Most of the time I could be ready to step out in front of an out-of-control bus and I wouldn’t have a clue. But sometimes—very rarely—the teeny bit of fae instincts left in my stew kicked in and I knew something was about to go sideways for me.

We turned a corner shared by a produce wagon and a takuan merchant, and that elusive prickle was there, a half-sensed uneasy twitch in my belly and gut I could never explain as anything more scientific than a feeling. It struck at the oddest times, and never when it could be any more useful than seeing the rock I was going to stub my toe on. My mother thought it was a draught of snake oil I’d sold myself to connect to my fae blood. Nothing I’d said could convince her otherwise, and most of the time, I’d agreed with her.

This wasn’t one of those times. But then again, I did just poke a hornet’s nest with a lighted torch, so it all could have been in my head.

I wasn’t taking any chances.

“We didn’t learn anything new back there.” Trent continued to dog my steps. “To tell the truth, we’re further behind in the investigation because we took this side trip into… wherever this place is called.”

“North Point,” I supplied. “And Jie’s our best bet on finding a caster who’s selling their craft to kill. If anyone can ferret that out, it’ll be her. As for the rest of it, you’re just going to have to trust me.”