by Rhys Ford
“Under here, you fucking idiot.” I was about to reach out and pull him under the creaky green awning covering a closed hair salon when Trent stepped in close. “Trying to drown yourself?”
Heat rolled off his body, wafts of steam rising from his thick charcoal peacoat. There wasn’t enough room for us to both fit under the cover, but we tried. He snugged up against me and shook off as much of the rain as he could.
Shifty-eyed people on the street keenly watched us huddle under the canvas. There was no mistaking what Trent was. Everything about him screamed badge, gun, and authority. He’d be shit useless undercover. But I had the feeling the rapid flick of his eyes caught everything around us, even if he probably didn’t understand half of what he was looking at—but he’d learn. Trent was sharp, a bit too sharp sometimes, and I once again wondered who Gaines had hooked me up with: a cop or some paramilitary operative biding his time until SWAT grew a tank big enough to fit him.
“I was trying not to fall into the sewer,” he growled, pulling his attention off the street and onto me. “Shit, I’m soaked through. Where is this place you’re looking for? Far?”
“We’ve only got to sprint up the alleyway. If you time it right, you can dodge most of it.” He wore cologne. I did not need to know that. I didn’t need to know my partner scented himself with vanilla and grapefruit before getting dressed in the morning, so I filed the scent under Things to Forget in my brain. My mind promptly took it out and recycled it, tickling my belly with a too familiar curl of want.
“Let’s just get to work. Sooner we get inside, the dryer I get.”
“One of the netsuke victims—Peter Wong—had a noodle factory down this way. The beat cop got a witness stating he spotted something small running under the door to the victim’s office. Next thing they know, they hear Wong gurgling, and when they break the door down to get in, they find him dead with a fist-sized carved ball lodged in his throat.” Of the victims, Wong looked the most promising to chase down, mostly because of the potential witness and that the medics tried to trach him, only to find the movement in his throat was a piece of wiggling stone. “I want to talk to Wong’s people first because he went to the same temple as the missing woman, Shelly Chan. She was looking for a statuary token when she disappeared, so I’m thinking a connection between her, Wong, and the fertility shrine god.”
“Look… before we go… before this goes any further, I’ve got to talk to you about a couple of things. Work things.” Trent shifted, and his shoulder nearly knocked my nose off my face. The rain darkened his hair, sleeking it to caramel. “Things we should probably get out into the open.”
“Now? Did you miss the rain we’re in the middle of and that we’re standing under about three feet of cover?” I shivered as the wind picked up, cutting away what little warmth I’d built up in my fingers. Rubbing my hands together, I spat out, “This couldn’t wait until we were inside someplace? You know, with walls?”
“No. Because you’re asking me to go through a door with you. And after yesterday, that means something completely different than with any other cop.” He was giving me a look I couldn’t figure out. Eventually we’d either come to understand what a wrinkled nose and one squinty eye meant or we’d kill each other. “Because I’ve got to know what I’m getting into here. With you.”
“We’re cops, Leonard.” I went back to his last name, needing the distance. “Inspectors. We work for Arcane Crimes. Things are going to get a little weird.”
“Weird I can handle. You falling off a building? I’ve got to know if that’s just crappy luck or do you have some kind of death wish I should know about?”
“What the Hell are you talking about?” The cold was seeping through me. Across the street, a miso soup vendor was setting up his cart, and I wondered if I had enough money on me to pay him to let me shove my whole body into his stockpot. The faerie blood in me ran sluggish in the cold, and the human bits weren’t too fond of the bite in the wind either. “I don’t have a death wish. The fucking building ended. This case is—”
“This case is complicated, and I’m guessing it’s going to go pretty high-profile before long. Too many people are dying, and it’s got the mark of a serial killer on it—a magic-using serial killer.” Trent flicked up the collar of his peacoat, framing his jaw in dark wool. “I’m brand-spanking new, and you just got off suspension. Eyes are going to be on you… on me. I need to know what I’m in for with you, MacCormick, because if this is your normal, I’ve got better ways I want to die.”
“First off, technically I wasn’t on suspension. I was on administrative leave until IA cleared me of any wrongdoing. Which they did. I didn’t shoot Arnett because I was bored. He brought that down on himself because he got greedy and stupid. He put on a badge and made a promise to stand in front of people. That’s what the badge means, and he fucked that up. Not me.” I rounded on him, stabbing his way too solid chest with my finger.
He didn’t budge. Instead his face hardened into the expression I’d seen him wear when facing Gaines down. There was a fire in his eyes, muted but alive and more than willing to burn me if only he’d let loose. My common sense kicked in, reminding me Trent could probably snap my head off with a quick twist of his hands around my neck, but I wasn’t ready to be reasonable. If he was going to be protecting my ass while we went through doors, he needed to know he couldn’t be chewing on it while we were standing still.
He blinked before I did, and I continued, softening my tone, giving him room to save face, but I had to be firm. As much as I wanted to dump all of my frustration on him, I knew better. He didn’t deserve it, but Trent was going to have to learn I didn’t give a shit about what anyone was whispering behind my back or if they thought I was getting special favors. I worked the job because I’d earned the right to it, and the badge they’d pinned on me wasn’t just for decoration.
“Secondly, yeah, I get these kinds of cases, because I deliver. It may not always be pretty, and sometimes shit happens, but when it comes time to file the paperwork, there’s an arrest.” I narrowed my eyes and pushed in closer, feeling him out. “You think I care about whose eyes are on me? I don’t. I do the job.”
“It was a valid question, MacCormick. You’re working Arcane Crimes, not exactly the glamorous stuff, but you stick out, and people wonder about why you’re chasing down monsters and animated statues instead of climbing the golden ladder. With your connections, you should already be in a corner office someplace with your name in gold paint on the door.” He ducked his head when the awning gave a little, water trickling onto his shoulder. “Instead, you fuck up spectacularly, and the Powers That Be pat you on the head, then put you back onto the streets. It was all I heard about before I transferred in. So either you like working the shit jobs, or someone’s keeping you on because you’re a legacy and no one wants to blackball a martyred cop’s son.”
“Anyone saying that kind of shit about me can go fuck themselves. You included.” My retort was sharp enough to make him flinch. “I take as much shit from Gaines—Hell, from anyone up the chain of command—as anyone. What is wrong with Arcane Crimes? Some people would give their left nut to work the Asylum. You sure as shit did. And what the Hell is a legacy? Sounds like a goddamned trophy you get for showing up at school every day.”
“It’s more like you’re the golden boy who’s too chicken to work the big leagues—but getting rid of you would make the department look bad.” Trent held his hands up when I hissed my disgust. “You asked. I’m sharing. I wasn’t expecting to get you as a partner. I transferred in from… well, they put me in Central. Then this slot came up. I figured they’d move one of the other detectives in to be with you, and I’d be doing coffee runs for the squad room until someone trusted me enough to hand me a key to the bathroom. This is day two, and I’ve already seen more action and lost more sleep than most cops do in a month. I just need to know what to expect now. Working with you. I don’t have anything to base this on.”
“Peopl
e get dead from magic too, Leonard, and worse,” I reminded him. “We deal with everything: murder, robbery, and everything in between. If you thought hooking up with Arcane Crimes was going to be a walk in the park, then you fucked yourself. We don’t have a rulebook down here in the Asylum. There’s no manual. There’s no time clock. You come in, you scrape back the scum off your coffee from the day before, and then it’s game on.
“If IA and the department were patting me on the head and letting me run loose out of what—some kind of loyalty to my mother?—I’d be sitting behind a desk over in Central’s glass tower and watching the ferries come in while some hot guy in pressed blues brought me donuts and the morning paper.” I flicked his collar down, smoothing it back into place. “And don’t do that. Makes you look like a pretentious asshole. Now, we’re going to go out into the damned rain and find out who shoved a damned wooden ball covered by horny raccoon dogs down a county supervisor’s throat.”
I was about to leave Trent to drown in the rain by himself when he grabbed my arm. There was a little bit of prissiness in me because of his words. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew people talked shit about me behind my back. Hell, sometimes they even waited for me to turn around. It didn’t matter. I bled blue probably as much as anyone on the force. It was just my bad luck I had generations of badges behind me, and people always seem to expect, I don’t know, more from me. My mother had, and Gaines certainly did. Now I had my partner pretty much echoing the same sentiment.
“Look, MacCormick… Roku… I didn’t have time to prepare for this. I was told a couple of days ago I was going to be your partner, so I tried to get my head around working with you.” His grip was strong, fingers digging into my arm. I’d worn softer manacles. “I read as much as they’d release to me and whatever was in the news, but there were a lot of people who shut down when I asked about you. Like they’d locked their lips and threw away the key. On paper, a lot of your cases look… sketchy. At least to me.”
I was sick of apologizing for who my mother was or the damned family she’d tangled me into because she couldn’t keep her hands off my waste of a father. As often as I heard how the department let me run wild, I’d also caught whispers of a cover-up because I didn’t pull my own weight. No matter what I did, no matter how high my close rate got, there were always shadows staining my work. Trent needed answers to questions that never should have been asked, doubts that never should have been raised, and other than telling him to fuck off, I didn’t have anything for him other than a reassurance I was worthy of wearing my badge.
“Most of that is because of… strings being pulled by other people, not me.” I debated extracting myself from his grasp, but I had a real fear I wouldn’t be able to. Trent Leonard was strong, a bit freakishly strong, even taking the whole Norse hewn-from-stone thing he had going for him. His eyes were flinty, and the edges of his scarring were pale, a snowflake crenulation on his tanned cheek. “They’re just cases. Typical of the crap that ends up in Arcane. Chinatown’s just got a bit more of the weird than other AC squads. But you could say that about any of the departments. Hell, have you seen our Lost and Found? We had a baby rainbow giraffe living down there for two weeks until the zoo finally came and took it in.”
“Your case files are not just weird, Roku. They’re all over the place. It’s like a stone soup of crime. People killing each other over a salamander, to a guy whose face got ripped off by a baby gryphon, and everything in between.” He loosened his hand but didn’t let go. Just stood there, holding me by the arm. “I’m just trying… look, I’m trying to be a good cop, and in order to do that, I’ve got to understand you. And not be afraid to ask questions—even stupid ones—but at the same time, you’ve got to cut me some slack. You asked me to be honest. You can’t get mad at me because I gave you what you wanted.”
It was always hard to admit it wasn’t wine on my face when I was busy pissing on myself, and Trent’s words… they stuck in my throat, a poisonous spider’s barbed web strung across the back of my tongue to catch my denial. He was right. I didn’t want him to be right. I wanted to nurse the ember of my twisted-about outrage and shove him as far away from me as I could.
That said more about me than him. I didn’t want to bury Trent in a deep hole because he ticked me off—that part was a given—no, I wanted to entomb my new partner because the damned asshole didn’t dance politely around things I’d sooner avoid. Like the truth.
“Okay.” It felt like I was coughing up a lungful of gravel, but I finally got it out. “I’ll give you that. You’re right. Just let go.”
“I don’t want to.” Trent’s murmur was nearly lost beneath another of the dragon’s low belling calls, but its sear broke through the ice on my skin. “I’ve got you, MacCormick. Here. On the side of a damned building. Hell, wherever you want to go, but you’ve got to let me in. You’ve got to tell me what we’re doing. I’m your partner here. And yeah, I’ve got to get some of the shine off my badge, but the only way I’m going to do that is if I know where your head’s at. And maybe what we’re up against. That’s all I wanted to say to you. The rest of it? It’s just noise.”
“I’m kind of hard on partners.” He might have thought I was talking about Arnett or any of the others I’d chewed through since landing a desk at the Asylum, but he wasn’t wrong about the death wish. Or at least the one I’d had for a long time after the Riots.
I didn’t want a partner. Didn’t need one. And I sure as Hell kept losing the ones I wanted the most.
I’d lost everything, including myself, and I wasn’t quite ready to have someone stand beside me. Not after sitting vigil over John’s ashes—over the girls’ ashes—and instead of finding peace, I’d found a self-loathing and guilt I hadn’t quite extinguished. It was past time to let go of the weight I carried. That was the whole purpose of punching a black star into your wings—so you could carry that death weight somewhere other than your soul.
It was a pity mine were only ink. The weight had nowhere else to go but under my skin.
“I know,” Trent teased, his face gentling with a smile. “I’ve read the reports. I knew what I was stepping into. Mostly. You’re a lot more intense than I expected, and that’s not a bad thing. But I’m good with being your partner. Okay?”
He was throwing me an out, a way for me to save face, and we could go back to chasing our tails until we found something to latch onto and solve a case that gave us nothing to go on. I didn’t pull away. It seemed too… childish.
He nodded, and suddenly we were all good. Or at least he seemed to be. I was probably going to go home, fall facedown on my bed, and stress for hours after I got off work over Trent’s poking at me. Or get drunk and pass out. It all depended on how many dead bodies I stumbled over in the next fifteen hours. It was touchy some days.
“Yeah, we’re fine.” I nodded and patted him on his solid bicep, then stepped back.
We weren’t fine. Not yet. Maybe soon but not quite yet. We’d gone toe-to-toe, and neither one of us took a shot at each other. A good sign, all things considered. I took one good, long, hard look at him, fighting the turmoil inside of me. I’d gone from angry to hurt to needing him and everywhere in between. I wasn’t sure when fine was going to happen, but I was ready for it.
I was just scared fine wouldn’t be enough.
“Good.” A dimple showed in his cheek, and his eyes went molten silver. “Do we hug now?”
“No, we do not hug. No hugging on the job,” I groused, turning toward the alley. “Seriously, what are you? Five? We’re cops. We don’t hug.”
“You’d probably feel better,” he countered with an innocence I knew was about as fake as the gold watches in the jewelry store window across the street.
“How about if we go see what Peter Wong’s employees have to say about him? Doesn’t make sense for someone to off him. Wong didn’t have a family, pretty decent guy from what I was told. Hell, he owned a damned small noodle business in Chinatown. Not exactly a gold mine you’d kill
someone for.”
“Not elaborately, anyway. Sounds kind of… expensive. Unless it’s personal for the witch doing the casting, wouldn’t this kind of thing cost a shit-ton of money?” Trent quirked his mouth. “How much do you think it would cost?”
“Shit-ton is about right.” The rain wasn’t showing any sign of letting the sky show its face, and I didn’t think Wong’s Luscious Noodles’ production manager was going to wait all day for us to show up. “See that red sign over there? The one with the flying chicken—phoenix—on it? That’s where we’re headed. Let’s just make a run for—”
Phoenix are supposed to rise from ashes, blooming into a firebird bright enough to rival the sun. The city had no sun that day, but that didn’t stop someone from making their own phoenix. The alleyway boomed, and the world shook around it. Something sharp hit my chin. Then I found myself facedown on the cement sidewalk with about two hundred pounds of solid muscle covering me. My mouth was full of grit, and silt from the runoff spout coated my right cheek. The muddy water was making it hard to breathe as it seeped into my smushed-in nostril. The heat was intense, and I was half-afraid for the miso vendor across the street. Alarms were booming, and somewhere close by, someone was screaming in shock or pain, perhaps both.
“Get off,” I burbled. Then the ache began along my spine and down my legs. The cold air was rushing through the rents in my clothes, and I was sticky wet in places I couldn’t blame on the rain. I blinked and found myself looking up at Trent, or at least three wobbly versions of him, as the edges of his face began to turn black.
“Roku, hold on.” His lips were moving. I heard him speaking, but he sounded far away, fading off into the rain. And every time I blinked, he moved, shooting in and out of my sightline. Still, his voice followed me, digging past the ringing in my ears.
