Dim Sum Asylum(8)

I went in, carrying the funerary bouquet I’d bought at a flower stand near the end of the block. The roses were pink, the only bit of color left in the selection, so I’d guessed I hadn’t been the only one to do a quick stop to grab a bit of tribute. The inside of the church was enormous, a mellowed stone interior embellished with scrollwork and curlicues. Other than the stained glass windows ringing the nave, it was lean on the normal extraneous decoration, and the soft golden tones of the stonework provided a parchment-hued backdrop for the riot of explosive color faerie funerals were known for.

In death, Moira Gilley’s wings hung as a centerpiece above an altar weeping with broad ribbons of flower cascades and bouquets. The practice was an old one, something a lot of humans had a hard time getting past, but if there was any indication of how tightly the Gilley family clung to the traditional clan ways, it was the sight of their daughter’s detached wings spread out to their full span and reposed over a sea of blooms.

I stopped at the inner threshold, unable to force myself to go one more step. The other mourners flowed around me, a burbling brook of sorrow and whispers. Someone jabbed me in the ribs, a little too hard to be accidental, and I caught a heated mutter about cops and failure, then the glimpse of a red flare across a honeycombed copper gaze. It’d been too much to hope I could slip in unnoticed, unseen. My face was all over the local news, a random shot caught by a reporter in the crowd. I’d been standing in the light afternoon rain, hunched over Moira’s blurred-out body, defeated with my shoulders rolled down, while a few feet away, a pool of blood from Arnett’s claw-and-tooth-induced wounds turned the cobblestones pink, a trickle of darker red nearly running into one of her beautiful limp wings. Accompanying that picture was my official Chinatown Arcane Crimes Division photo and a lovely formal shot of Moira, probably for a graduation or life event. I’d grumbled about the lack of Arnett’s face being plastered all over the news right alongside mine, but life wasn’t ever fair. If it had been, I’d be attending Arnett’s wake instead of staring up at the altar set at the far end of the nave.

So any chance of the jab being accidental? Slim to none. The jabber knew exactly who I was and got a dig in for everyone who thought I should have shot Arnett long before he put a bullet into an intelligent fae’s pretty smiling face. The jabber ducked, unable or unwilling to hold my stare, but I didn’t need much more than the sour look on her face to know I wasn’t welcome.

“Son, can I speak to you for a bit?” A weathered human hand rested on my shoulder, and I turned to find a frocked priest standing next to me. Tall and serene, his clear blue eyes were troubled beneath a pair of bushy eyebrows as white as the snowy mane tumbling back from his pink-flushed face. “The family would like to ask you—”

“It’s okay, Father. I’m not staying. I just needed to send our department’s condolences.” I edged away, politely shaking him off without making a scene. Shoving the flowers I’d brought at him, I smiled as gently as I could. “Can you please make sure the card in there gets to the family? There’s donations from the squad in the envelope.”

“I’ll be sure of it.” His relief brightened the air between us, and his smile nearly cracked through the calm mask he’d put on before approaching me. “Thank you for your understanding. Perhaps later—”

“Just… tell them we’re sorry for their loss.” There was a lot more I’d wanted to say, but the truth was, I’d failed their daughter.

Even as Internal Affairs cleared me of any wrongdoing, I would still see Moira Gilley’s life leaving her face and the light in her eyes dim, the color bleeding from them until they turned ashen in death. I overestimated Arnett’s humanity, and Moira paid for it. There were no words I could say to soothe her family’s grief, and no amount of wishing could pull the clock back in time for me to shoot Arnett before he hit that full-out run on the piers.

“I’ll do that, son. And thank you.” An announcement rang out from by the door, calling everyone lingering outside to come in. “Ah, that’s my cue. The family’s ready to begin the star-striking. You’d best head on out before the doors close. I’ll take this to the family.”

Another jab, this time hard and nearly into my kidney. If I didn’t leave the vestibule soon, I was going to be pissing blood later. The inside of my wrist ached from the memory of needles jabbing in the three black stars I wore for my dead family, and sometimes the five-pointer I’d put on my shoulder for my murdered mother itched, a prickle to remind me of her pushing me to become a good cop. I didn’t have the right to wear one for Moira, not a true star, but she was definitely going to mark my skin along with the others I carried.

“Thanks, Father. I appreciate it.” I sidestepped to the right, making way for the grieving young man who held up the threshold and blindly provided the mourners with a family face to greet them. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”





Three


CHINATOWN IN the rain was often painted as a romantic mosaic of murmuring tires on wet streets and misty strings of neon dragons curling up around old-fashioned streetlamps shaped like ancient pagodas. In reality, the district becomes a tangled spiderweb of shadows and rank smells, the sewers thickened with washed-through debris, and the gōngyù bridging the district’s tight alleys turned the rooftop runoff into sticky foul waterfalls, making walking treacherous.