Dim Sum Asylum(50)

“Your… ugly dog’s sliming my shoe, man.” Leaning over the counter, I tapped the bartender’s shoulder to get his attention. Sailor Jim’s wooden barstools were cobbled-together pieces of wood and steel, sturdy enough to carry the weight of a cop in full riot gear, though the one I sat on creaked alarmingly when I moved. I looked down at the snorklewhacker as it left a wad of viscous glob on my heel, then carpet-bombed the stall with a loud, smelly fart. “Jeez, what do you feed this thing? Cabbage and okra?”

“Don’t kick my dog,” he grunted at me, eyeing my glass. “You want another one?”

“No, he’s leaving.” A wide, long-fingered hand slapped a twenty on the counter in front of me, the booming sound startling the snorklewhacker into releasing another gaseous cloud. The bartender’s pet dashed under the swinging door, leaving a web of tacky saliva on my boot. “Come on, Roku. Let’s get you home.”

I followed the hand up the length of a muscular bare forearm dusted with faint golden hair, past a thick chest, and finally to the sculpted, rugged features of my new partner. Dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans, he looked dangerous and, sadly for me, fuckable. Trent was also wavering back and forth… but then, so was the stall.

“Shit, I think you’re drunk.” I slapped his chest, not surprised when my fingers started hurting.

“Well, one of us is,” he said, hooking his arm around my waist. “Let’s get you someplace you can puke.”

“Gotta tip the bartender something.” I looked down at my foot. “Although, to be fair, his dog-thing snorkel-spit up all over my foot.”

“Guy’s been tipped.” Oddly enough, despite being wasted, Trent maneuvered me off the stool with ease.

“How’d you find me?” The ground seemed so very close, and I tilted my head, trying to push it back into perspective.

“Gaines called me. Said I might as well start doing the traditional junior partner things. Didn’t think I’d ever be pulling you out of a dive bar, but—”

“Jie’s dead. I got her killed. Fucking stupid piece of shit spell caster murdered her,” I mumbled. “Seemed like a drowning-in-whiskey kind of moment.”

“Yeah, that’s why I told Gaines I’d come get you. He said you were probably here.” Trent needed help coming off the curb because he pulled me over the edge of the sidewalk and nearly into the street. “Some story about your mom used to take you along with her after shifts to go drink there with some of the detectives. I’m beginning to seriously worry about your childhood, Inspector.”

“You seriously cannot walk.” Offering my opinion on his navigating skills only earned me a derisive snort. “And there’s nothing wrong with my mother. Was wrong. She was a cop.”

“Yeah, I know. Roku, use your feet.” Trent swore when I stepped on his. “Okay, not like that. Come on. I’m trying to get you into bed.”

“That probably is the worst idea you’ve ever had in your life.” I caught my tongue against my teeth, entranced by the fullness of his lower lip. “But Hell, someone’s trying to kill me. I might as well fuck you before someone kills me, or I’ll be sitting at God’s feet with all kinds of regret and spit all over my shoe from that damned snorklewhacker.”





Thirteen


SUNLIGHT WOKE me.

Or rather, the invisible pixies the sunlight carried in its beam through the window so they could hammer at my face woke me.

The light was wrong. The air was wrong. I couldn’t get the world around me to fit. It was too tight, too constricting, and I couldn’t catch my breath around the press of my ribs into my lungs. The oppressive sensation wasn’t a new one. I’d felt it many times before. Death was squatting on my chest, a foul-breathed, venomous demon dripping its acidic, rank poison into my soul.

I blinked to find myself staring at a mica-flecked popcorn ceiling with an old water stain along one corner, a sepia-toned serpent shape mottling the fluff. There was something scratchy beneath me—a lumpy couch, from the feel of it against my left arm. My right hand was numb from being trapped under my waist, and when I pulled it free, the rush of blood into my fingers sparked a tingle nearly too painful to stand.

Sitting up didn’t dislodge Death’s weight. If anything, all it did was skirt down into my breastbone to hammer away at the space where I’d once kept my heart. The damned thing was refusing to stay in its stone tomb. Every single pebble I’d laid around its ashen corpse was falling away, and the mortar I’d used to fill up any cracks crumbled under the faint boom-boom of my pulse. I pressed my hand to my chest, willing the pain to stop, but the anguish I’d locked away once again refused to listen to reason, and it poured from me, jagged cries tearing out of my throat and staining my cheeks with a shameful heat.

“Fuck you all,” I muttered to no one in particular. “Gods damn everything.”

My tears weren’t helping the pain cracking my head open. I felt like if I moved too quickly, the water I’d stored in the shallow of my skull would slip out, and I’d be as belly up as a dried-out kappa. If I were lucky enough to die from the throb between my eyes.

I hurt too damned much to move, and as I blinked away the crusty water forming along my lashes, I realized I had no fucking clue where I was.