by Rhys Ford
There was little benevolence to be found there behind the watermelon-painted doors, but it looked like we were going to have to take that chance, because one of the door’s lower right-hand panels had a suspicious hole in it.
My partner spotted the hole about a second after I did. Sighing heavily, he rubbed at his face, then said, “Well, shit.”
A badge could only get a cop so far through a door, and I didn’t have a lot of hope the Wang Shi Benevolent Society would throw open their pink-and-green portal and let us in. An aged fae glowered at me from his doorway perch in the noodle shop across the way, but other than the rumble of traffic, the street was silent. No one came to the door when Leonard pounded on the frame, and he frowned at me, shaking his head as he pulled his weapon.
“We’re going to have to go in,” he grunted.
“Yeah, but not with guns out. How long have you lived in the city? Anyone tell you about places like this?” Leonard shook his head, and I suppressed a sigh. “Some of these societies—like this one—are kind of like a den of thieves. Not all of them, just… some. This one’s older. A lot of these guys are more into bouncing grandkids on their knees than breaking open heads, but they’ve still got a rep to maintain. We can’t just bust in here. You’ve got a gun out and we’re in civilian clothes, anyone in here is going to shoot first, then ask questions. And that’s if they don’t rinse and repeat the shoot first part.”
As odd as it might sound, the older triads fostered good relationships with the cops, especially as their criminal empires began to dissolve around them and meetings became less about territory and more about whiskey, hanafuda, and mahjong. It took me a while to work the door open, an exercise in milking the latch apart and praying they didn’t have an extensive arcane alarm system.
“Okay. I’ve almost got this open. Write an apology note on the back of a department card. Say we’re sorry for entering, but we’ll pay for the door.” The flip lock was a hairsbreadth too far from my fingers, and I was straining to reach it through the now partially open door. “Put my name down. They won’t know you.”
I heard him scratching out the message and finally got ahold of the ball end of the lock. I slid the hook free, pushed the door open with my shoulder, and shook the blood back down into my hand.
“Where do I put this?” He held up the card.
“Just tuck it into the trim on the door.” Leonard gave me a skeptical look. “Trust me. No one’s going to fuck with it. And the lao over there at the noodle shop is paid to watch the place. Chances are the head guy here is going to know we’re inside before we even find the damned statue. Keep your eyes open, and whatever you do, don’t shoot at the thing. Who the Hell knows what’ll happen then.”
Trent Leonard was a big boy. His mass pressed against the back of my senses, and while I had faith in Gaines’s ability to pick me out a good partner—my brain hiccupped when I realized my godfather’d been the one who’d passed me Arnett. That had been a game of hot potato. No one’d wanted to work with Arnett, and I’d been the only other single in the department. Leonard was another thing entirely. Trained, focused, and ready. Primed to work Arcane Crimes and selectively culled from a stack of applicants.
But I didn’t know him. Not really. And I wasn’t willing to put him behind me and let him have a gun in his hand.
I also didn’t want him to take point. Not on his first case out, and certainly not when we didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. I hadn’t been kidding about the shoot first thing. The society’s cramped interior wasn’t where I’d want a gunfight.
The narrow rowhouse was an echo of a time when architecture ran to East Coast aesthetic instead of adobe. As a result, the spaces were tight and dark, heavy with wood paneling and the stink of old men. A layer of antiseptic soap lingered in the air, thick enough to battle off decades of incense, cigarette smoke, and a slight whiff of old blood.
Someone—maybe a lot of someones—had died in this place, and the smell of death clung to the building, sinking its nails into the wood. My fae blood ran thin, but I could still feel the ripple of loss under my skin. The kill wasn’t recent, but it was violent and personal, leaving an echo residing in the walls. Death echoes were the reason most fae avoided cop work. Not every murder left the aftershock of its event, but when it did, the echo was like a hard blow to the nuts.
For me, it was more of a tickle. From a really ugly woman with sharp nails.
Something about the front room felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it didn’t seem right. The room was a long shotgun space, leading to a hallway dimly lit by the occasional sconce. Folding chairs and three card tables kept a small shrine company, a memorial space with a bowl of overripe tangerines and a handful of half-burned incense. The Formica-topped tables were tired, their corners worn down to the pressboard, and the inset cushions on the chairs were faded and stained. At least two ashtrays sat on each table, a few overflowing with butts and soot, and on the table farthest from us, a beer bottle lay on its side, a yeasty liquid grave for a dead, floating cockroach nearly the length of my thumb.
“San Francisco PD! Entering the premises!” I called out, but other than my voice bouncing off the buckling drop-in tiles above us, there wasn’t so much as a cricket chirping in the place. It felt empty—except for the crawling dead tickle—but I wasn’t taking any chances. “Police! We are entering the building!”
“Nice place,” Leonard muttered from behind me. “Can we find that damned thing now?”
“We don’t even know where it is. Let’s hope there isn’t a back door. Or it doesn’t make its own back door.” I couldn’t see a staircase leading to the upper floors, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. “Cover me. I’m going to upend one of the tables to block the hole it made. If you see it, bag it.”
I liked the silence behind me even less than I liked the one filling the building. I turned and caught my partner’s sheepish grimace.
“Um….” Leonard scratched the back of his head. “Shit. Want me to go back and grab a bag?”
“No, I’ll use my jacket.” I eyed his suit. “Or yours. Let me guess—you didn’t bring salt or black tea leaves either.”
“I didn’t know I was going to be in the field. First day and everything. Hell, I wasn’t even expecting to get a partner yet. I thought it was just a meet-and-greet with Gaines, then paperwork until IA cut you loose.” He shrugged off his jacket as I maneuvered the table into place. “I fucked up.”
It took a steady soul to admit he’d screwed up, and an even bigger swallow of pride to sacrifice what looked like a custom-tailored job because of it. I nodded to one of the chairs. “Leave that there. We’ll use mine. It’s old leather and can take more of a beating. And for all we know, the statue’s going to spurt ectoplasm all over the place if we break its curse. Better something we can wipe off.”
I dug the salt and tea packets out of my jacket pockets and handed half to Leonard. Locking the door behind us, I motioned for him to stay behind me, and from the ruffle on his forehead, bringing up the back wasn’t in Leonard’s behavioral profile.
“I’ve never de-cursed something before.” He ground his words out. “But I read up on it.”
I was trying not to resent Leonard’s lack of arcane knowledge, his shiny loafers, and even the massive gun he had tucked under his armpit in the shoulder holster fitted tight against his back and side. With his jacket off, Leonard was even more massive. I wasn’t certain the seams of his dress shirt were strong enough to hold in his breadth, and for some reason, I was fascinated by him unknotting his tie. His jacket’s hem had been covering a taut, firm ass, his round cheeks filling out his pants nicely. Leonard was human, built, a little bit seasoned, and had a touch of stern authority on his strong, handsome face. He was like a marked-off checklist of everything I liked in a guy.
Except I wasn’t getting the vibe I was anywhere near the type on his checklist if I put aside the overt flirting he’d tossed my way in the car.
&n
bsp; When we got back to the station house, I was going to have a serious talk with my godfather about giving me a partner I wanted to lick chocolate off of.
“I’d feel better if we went in armed.” His holster creaked a little as he walked, so maybe it was newer than I thought. My own rig was old, darkened by sweat and warped to fit my body, smelling a bit of gun oil and coffee. “I’ve got a gun and a penlight. I’d like to use more than the penlight.”
“You are armed,” I corrected. “I gave you salt and tea leaves. Watch our six.”
Five feet in, a hallway jogged off to a tighter corridor, a dark thin space I had doubts my partner’s shoulders could fit through. Since none of the main hallway doors were punched through or open, we were looking for our cursed prey somewhere down the building’s side corridor. A door set into the end of the side hall was ajar, so it was probably our best bet.
And there were other clues the damned thing fled through the cramped hall. The paneling bore signs of the statue’s pinball-frenzied flight, long chalky scrapes and digs marking the thin wood veneer. Leonard’s light flashed on something white near the second door, and I stopped before I stepped on the writhing object, angling my shoulder so I could see what it was.
“It’s lost a hand.” I had to step back quickly, because the wriggling fingers hooked into the rough industrial carpet to work its way toward my foot.
As tempting as it was to step on the damned thing, it looked to be porcelain, and all I’d end up doing would be grinding sex spell–cursed powder into the carpet. If shooting a society member was bad public relations, leaving a lust curse behind so its elderly patrons would be driven to hump themselves raw probably wasn’t the best course of action.
It was a toss-up between the salt and the tea leaves. I didn’t know if the statue’s owner was human or fae, or even if they leaned Asian or Western in their beliefs. Since the statue was Chinese, I was going for the leaves. I grabbed a pinch and muttered a standard remove curse at the wiggling hand as I sprinkled.
It continued to wiggle for a moment, then went inert, stiffening back into what probably was its original position, a curled-in meditation pose of fat fingers and paint. Picking it up was a bit difficult. I had to work the thing loose from the carpet, and when I got it free, I passed it to Leonard.
“What do you want me to do with that?” He recoiled slightly as I held it out.
“Put it in your pocket. I’m in jeans. You’re wearing slacks. They’ve got more of a give and won’t smash the thing.” I shoved it into his hand. “Besides, you’re the one who forgot the bag.”
“I am never going to live that down, am I.” It was a grumble, but he tucked the hand into his pocket.
“Not as long as we’re partners, no.”
He looked skeptical but resigned. “Okay, so, leaves, then?”
“Yeah, leaves.” I checked my supply as I headed to the open door. “Hope we’ve got enough.”
Leonard was right up against my back, a long hot presence in the hallway’s murky air. His breath ghosted over my neck. The death tickle was gone, replaced by another, deeper kind of caress. My balls were growing tight, roiling about from Leonard’s proximity. I wasn’t liking the dark, and I sure as Pele’s breath wasn’t fond of what my partner was doing to me.
I didn’t know what pissed me off more, wanting Leonard or him not reacting to me in the same way.
“Don’t go borrowing trouble, Roku.” I kept my muttering to myself and took another step. More crunching, and this time the ground buckled under my foot. “You’ve got enough already.”
The silence should have warned me. I laid the blame on the death echoes, but I should have known better. The building was too quiet, too still, but my nerves were already on edge with Leonard’s presence and my first day back on the job after a long stint of regret and second-guessing. We made it another foot into the thin hall when the walls fell back and an old, violence-scented fae exploded from a false panel near my elbow. The ceiling bristled with lights, drowning my vision out in a startling white wave, and I blinked furiously to see beyond the flares spangling my eyesight.
It was an old trick, one I’d known since I was knee-high to my grasshopper-winged neighbor. The door should have been a clue since the walls were up tight against its frame and bowed slightly at the ceiling. At one point someone—maybe even the ancient fae frilling in front of me—built out false walls and placed them on tracks to keep any intruders in a tight line, making them easier to attack.
That knowledge did me no good now, but my gun did, and I ached to draw it before the fae could take another step. But bringing a gun to a knife fight was only going to escalate things, and something about the old fae assured me that I’d not win.
Barely coming up to my shoulders, the fae was ancient, his dove-gray papery skin stretched tight over his skeletal frame, and his once flame-red hair turned to a ginger and cloud skullcap above his nearly white thin eyebrows. He led with his enormous hooked nose, and his still vivid green-purple compound eyes twirled, catching every single movement we made. The hall was now wide enough for him to spread his wings, and they ruffled out behind him. Monarch dappled and tailed, their long trailing tattered ends waved when he moved. Dressed in simple cotton pants and a button-up shirt, he would have fallen away from my attention if I’d passed him on the street—if it weren’t for the sea of faceted red stone stars set into the uppermost black swatches of his wings.
They glistened, a death wink gleaming from each one. Leonard had his gun out. In the ripe panic of peeling walls, old fae, and bright lights, my senses kicked up, and I could smell everything from the oil Leonard used to clean his Glock to the faint sticky copper of blood under the ancient fae’s long fingernails. I left my gun where it was, focused on the bloodied knife the fae held in his hand. I was too busy fighting the urge to shoot the fae in front of me, the hunting instinct in my bloodline ramping up until my head swam with hunger. There might have been a Glock in my holster, but the crimson universe marbling the fae’s wings reassured me my bullets would probably be wasted. He was a lifelong killer, wearing his victims in a brazen display of disregard for any law of the land.
“Shit, it’s just an old man,” Leonard muttered, putting away his gun. The fae caught Leonard’s murmur and smiled, a peek of tool-sharpened teeth hiding a sharkish maw behind his thin lips.
I wasn’t going to correct my partner. The old fae probably encouraged people to view him as harmless, and tipping him off that I knew better wasn’t going to help us. I couldn’t be sure our badges would do anything other than incite him to add cop killing to his long career of sowing murder and mayhem.
Most humans didn’t know the subtleties of fae culture. Hells, most fae had shed customary formalities in the past few decades as our species integrated, but standing in front of us was an Ancient, a sentinel of traditions and old ways. I estimated probably more than thirty death markers on his wings, but it was hard to get an accurate count as his wings shifted and danced. I was also more interested in keeping track of the chef’s knife he gripped in his left hand.
“Did you bring that wūgòu into my house?” His chin lifted, challenging me to deny it.
“It escaped the one who made it. We’re sent to contain it.” I kept Leonard back with my elbow, angling my body to prevent him from approaching the old fae. “Did you not hear us earlier?”
“I didn’t care about your police business. Not until that filth ran over my food like a sewer rat. Now I have to throw away a whole chicken because of its touch. Who is going to pay me for that, wáwá? Who is going to pay for my chicken?” The knife remained at his side, but that wasn’t any consolation.
“The department will pay for your loss, but right now, we have to contain the statue. Did you see where it went?” I spoke as respectfully as I could, but his eyes were wild, spinning red along their edges. “It is cursed. We need to—”
“I know what it is.” The scarlet spread, lighting up most of his compound eyes. I recognized lon
ging in his expression, a simmering desire edging through the green of his lenses. “Flesh was never my weakness, wáwá, not in that way. But you know that, yes?”
I understood what he was saying. Sex drove most humans and fae. Death drove this one, and the urge to murder probably was overwhelming him. I couldn’t tell when he’d killed last—it could have been decades ago or just a day—but if we didn’t slip away soon, he’d kill again and wear two new stars on his wings.
Sometimes the human stories were right. Some of the faerie needed to bathe in blood in order to feel alive, and the old man certainly looked like he was one of them.
“Which way did it go?” I asked, my hand drifting to my side. I’d be lucky to get a shot off before he fell on us, but it would slow him down enough to give Leonard time to escape. “And are you going to let us pass?”
“I want no trouble with the police. I haven’t lived this long only to bring that wolf to my door.” He jerked his head to the exit at the end of the hall. “That leads up. To the gōngyù. You’ll probably find it up there.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, giving him as wide a berth as I could, considering the space. He pressed himself back into the false panel he’d come through, and as I passed, the death tickles began again. His victim that night might have been a chicken, but recently—very recently—something with a greater intelligence suffered a long, agonizing death at the old fae’s hands. “Leonard, go up first. I’ll follow.”
“You don’t trust me with your pet human?” His words slithered out, a spit of Mandarin I was certain Leonard didn’t understand. My partner gave me a curious look, but I motioned him on, urging him toward the stairwell tucked behind the door.
It was a challenge, old and steeped in tradition, the threatening of another faerie’s kith or kin. But this wasn’t the time or the place to revisit ancient ceremonies and start new grudges. We’d come a long way from the hills and forests, and while I respected where my bloodline came from, I wasn’t about to start a war with an assassin simply because his dinner was interrupted.
