Dim Sum Asylum(54)
“Okay, small confession.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and his fingers made shadow puppets on the pale sand-hued rug under our feet when he played with the plain silver watch he wore on his left wrist. “When I joined the force, they asked me where I wanted to work and… fucking Hell, this is going to sound creepy… just hear me out, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. You cleaned puke off of me. Least I can do is listen to you. Can’t say I won’t shoot you, but I’ll definitely listen.”
“I… don’t know much about the fae because, well, my life was a little bit weird up until about three months ago. I’ve spent my entire life being trained to—Hell, I can’t get into that, but the bottom line is, when my… unit was shut down, they suggested I become a cop, and I jumped at it because doing nothing was driving me crazy. There’s only so much a man can read and work out before his brain turns to goo.” He bit his lower lip, and I could see him trying to knit together his words in his head before he said them. “I’m good at hunting things… people… down. And well, it gave me something to do. Something I can do. So I did some research, stumbled across Arcane Crimes, and read up on the department. That’s when I found you.”
“You’re right. Sounds a bit creepy,” I admitted softly. “So you rolled the dice and you got in. Right after I shot Arnett.”
“Arnett wasn’t going to last as your partner. You were carrying him in more ways than one, and well, they—I was told I got to pick and choose what I wanted to do when I got out, so I asked for the Chinatown detail. I asked for you. Only you. And they—the state—agreed because… they owed me. Still owe me.
“I knew who you were. I studied up on you. What you were. Your arrests and investigations. Your life. Everything I could get my hands on. And yeah, it sounds creepy, I get that, and at first it was the job, but then it became… more. I needed to find someone who was kind of like me. Caught halfway between human and fae and maybe—just maybe—you’d help me understand how to fit in that in-between.” The blue in his eyes caught fire and burned hot when he looked up through his lashes at me. “I like you, Roku. Look, you drive me insane, and it’s as if you have a death wish I don’t understand. I don’t know what I want to do more, punch you or fuck you. But I do know you wouldn’t murder someone in cold blood. If you could, you’d be standing at the Takahashi’s side and my mission would be taking you out instead of that bastard you call your grandfather.”
Fourteen
“WAIT….” I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him right, and I shook out the words I’d caught a few seconds ago. “You’re on a mission? To kill my grandfather?”
“Were. And it wasn’t here.” Trent shrugged as if where he popped my dad’s father made any difference. “It also wasn’t necessarily him, just… I can’t get into it—”
“You’d better fucking get into it because you rolled me right up into that mess like I was a piece of marinated kampyo for his damned furomaki.” The couch wasn’t letting me go, or rather, Trent wasn’t, because as soon as I fought my way clear of the rough tweed womb I was trapped in, he put his hands on my thighs to hold me still. “Dude, if you don’t want to lose your fingers, let me up.”
“You promised you’d hear me out,” he reminded me, a gruff roll of affection in his bemused voice. “Let me explain.”
“Look, I don’t like the old man. You get that, right?” I stabbed his chest with my finger and instantly regretted it when it felt like I was poking a brick. “But do you have any idea the kind of fucking Hell San Francisco’s going to be when he dies? The power vacuum… shit, me! He’s got me strung up like one of those damned Peking ducks at a noodle shop, and there’s people waiting to see if he’s going to eat me alive or if I’m going to get torn apart by the damned Takahashi to make soup once he keels over.”
“I get all of that. I do.” As reassurances went, Trent’s sucked donkey balls, mostly because of the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Not a laughing matter, Leonard.”
“I’m not… your eyes go copper around the edges when you’re angry. It’s… pretty. And distracting. Don’t punch me.” His left hand covered the fist I made at my side while I silently debated slugging him. “Your grandfather wasn’t… when I was assigned to that job, we were a contingency plan. We weren’t even told his name. Just the key players in a compound and who our main targets were going to be.
“About six months into the op, it was called off and my unit was being… retired. Just like that. No warning. No nothing. Then as we were evacuating out, something in the compound went wrong and we had to go in. We pulled everyone out, put them on a chopper, and that was it. Last I saw of the place, and well, a week later, my unit was broken up.” He ran his thumb over the back of my hand. “Your grandfather was one of the players on the board, and you were listed as an estranged associate. It was the first time I saw your face, and when your name came up as a possible partnership, I got curious.”
“Lots of holes in your story. Ones you aren’t filling in.” He was rigid with discipline but oddly disconnected from how the world worked. “Who spliced you? Your organization or your family?”