by Rhys Ford
“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.
It was a cookie-cutter apartment, the kind of slap-dash series of boxes and cheap drywall cobbled together during one of the city’s rushes to provide affordable housing to the massive amount of people washing up onto San Francisco’s piers. I knew without looking there was a galley kitchen and dining area next to a front door that either led to a sidewalk or a landing with stairs. There’d be a hall and either one or two bedrooms beyond it, or possibly just a bedroom with a tiny bathroom with a tub-shower combo barely large enough to wash a medium-size dog in.
The place was beige. From the slightly tramped-down carpet to the nicotine-tinted walls and the less than comfortable knobby sofa I’d ended up on, I was left to drift in a sea of slightly burned oatmeal. Even the damned coffee table was a cheap low faux oak construct, held together by a few screws, a prayer, and a bit of duct tape.
Beige except for all of the books.
Bookshelves lined the empty wall opposite the couch and ran along the length of the apartment, then formed an L in the dining room. There was no rhyme or reason to the selection, or at least none I could see. There seemed to be a bit of everything, from mythology to historical romances and some nonfictions scattered here and there with memoirs and science textbooks. Most of the shelves were stacked two or three deep with thin books shoved into every imaginable empty space. It was a dizzying array of letters and colors shoehorned into wherever anything fit and gave every impression of a tremendous avalanche being held back by a single critical, trembling novella.
The pressing jumble returned the throb to my temples, and it quickly slid down to other parts of my body, reminding me I’d spent the last few days being tumbled around like a lost sock in a dryer. Rubbing at my chest helped a little bit. So did spotting my badge, gun, and wallet on the coffee table. My jacket was on a stubby coat tree by the door alongside a leather trench coat and a navy blue blazer.
“Shit, how fucking drunk did I get?” I never tied one on while wearing my weapon, and I never got pass-out drunk. Not since I’d stolen a fifth of whiskey from my mom’s stash under the sink and shared it with a bunch of friends. I’d been fourteen and spent the rest of the week alternating between throwing up and scrubbing all the grout in Central’s bathrooms with a cup of bleach and a manky toothbrush. “And how the Hell did I get here?”
It came back to me in dribbles, filtering in through the shuttered parts of my brain. The conversation with my grandfather. Jie’s death. Then the icy-eyed blond man who’d pulled me out of Sailor Jim’s and poured me onto his couch.
“You feeling better?” Trent’s silky rumble startled me, setting off the drums in my head again. Dust motes danced in the sunlight slicing across the living room, a golden ocean filled with plankton made of debris and dirt. “You had a rough time of it last night.”
Gods, he looked damned hot. Whichever muse the geneticist used to guard Trent’s spliced-in DNA, it’d been breathtaking. I couldn’t tell what was done. As gorgeous as Trent was, he looked human—a beautiful, perfectly sculpted man—and if he hadn’t been hiding his sapphire-and-quartz tumbled eyes, I wouldn’t have guessed anything swam in his soup but Homo sapiens.
He made other parts of me hurt, throbbing bits I hadn’t paid attention to since forever and a day ago. I didn’t like what booze and death did to me. I
was aching, needing something to fill the emptiness inside me, anything to wash away the bitter sour of fear clinging to the roof of my mouth and down the length of my throat.
I didn’t need to feel again. I didn’t want to feel again. I’d locked myself down and lived on the razor’s edge forged and honed for me by a family I didn’t even like, much less want to be a part of. I didn’t want to notice Trent’s ass or wonder how he tasted in the morning after he brushed his teeth, and the last thing I wanted in my brain was to find out how his skin would feel on my tongue.
The girls’ graves, my grandfather’s unapologetic bloodthirst, and Jie’s murder brought out everything I’d thought I’d hidden. I was sipping at my own mortality, and the primal spark in my psyche wanted to quench all of its needs, starting with a long, healthy bout of sex with a man I shouldn’t have feelings for, followed by a piece of rare steak charred on the edges and possibly accompanied by a mind-numbing amount of whiskey.
“Roku!” Trent snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You in there? Do I have to take you in to the doc’s?”
“How’d you find me?” I winced when he strolled across the length of the carpet and pulled the blinds halfway up, flooding the room with light. “Why’d you find me?”
From the view, I knew we were above Chinatown proper, about two blocks up from the police station and an easy walk to work if Trent’d wanted to jog down a steep hill. Checking out his powerful thighs and tight ass, it wasn’t beyond belief that’s exactly how he got to work. He looked good, too damned good for my tender state, and more importantly, for my delicate heart. The damned thing—my heart, not Trent—was refusing to die back down, and suddenly the drinking myself into a stupor made sense.
“Gaines told me where you’d be, remember? I told you that last night. He thought maybe I’d have better luck getting you home. Said he didn’t have a lot of faith in you seeing reason and going quietly. He was right. It was easier to toss you into the car and bring you here than try to get you anywhere else.” His attention caught on something outside of the windows, but I couldn’t force myself to stare at the brightness beyond the glass. From the screeching, it sounded like a flock of pygmy vulture pigeons, but I’d been wrong before. Something larger screamed back, a throaty growling challenge, and then the city’s noises rose again to fill the resulting silence. Trent smiled down at me, tucked his hands into his jeans pockets, and said, “How about I make us some coffee and we have a little talk?”
“Sure thing. I just need to….” Standing was a challenge, one I wasn’t sure I could master, and Trent had the same doubts because he grabbed at my arm, holding me steady while I tried to find the bottoms of my feet. “Shit, what the Hell is wrong with me?”
“Probably exhaustion coupled with the aftereffects of downing a lot of rotgut. From the smell of your sick, I’m thinking the bartender stopped serving you top shelf at some point and switched to toilet gin.”
“Shit, gin makes me puke.”
“I noticed. My bathroom noticed. So did my shoes.” He smirked at my snarl. The skin pulled up across his cheek, whitening the lightning-struck scarring near his eye. “They’re outside on the balcony. The jury’s still out on whether or not they’re ever going on my feet again.”
“Juniper berries. It does weird things to Odonata. I’ll buy you new shoes,” I promised. “Right after I piss.”
“Forget about the shoes, Roku. Go use the bathroom. I left a toothbrush out on the counter for you to use, and if you want to take a shower, there’s a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. By the time you’re out, coffee will be done, and then you and I can hash a few things out.”
“Like the whole splice thing?” I tried for an arched eyebrow but only succeeded in tangling my forehead into a knot, or at least that’s what it felt like. “Or maybe the instant slushie action you pulled in the warren? Trying to pin you down is like wrestling with a gelatinous cube. ’Course not like you’ve been around.”
“First, it was my day off. One I took and apparently you didn’t. Second, I needed… some time to think it all over. There’s… it’s complicated, okay? I don’t know… I’ve got to work some things out in my head, but we can talk some.” His chest and shoulders briefly blocked out the sun when he turned, his body crowding into me against the end of the couch. “And when we’re done with that, we can move on to how you’re the heir to a yakuza organization, then talk about how we’re going to get our case back. Because as far as Gaines and the rest of SFPD is concerned, we’re going to have our asses parked behind a desk rubber-stamping traffic tickets until someone with an ounce of common sense catches this killer.”
I USED all of Trent’s hot water. Mostly by standing under the spitting showerhead, talking myself out of a justifiable rage at being pulled from my case. I could see Gaines’s point of view. I was too entrenched in the investigation, and not as an inspector. Even if I could fast-trot my way into Gaines’s good graces and somehow convince him I could work the murders without Jie or my grandfather affecting me, he always had his trump card—the unsuccessful attempt on my life—to play. And he’d lay that card on the green felt before I could even blink if it meant adding another foot of distance between me and the Takahashi.
Gaines was wrong. Nothing could create that distance. My grandfather would never allow it. He made that very clear in his own oblique, twisted way when I stood shoulder to shoulder with him over my dead daughters’ bodies. He wasn’t going to let me slip the leash he’d put on me more than a decade ago, and he was about ready to yank away any slack he’d given me, his impatience to bring me to heel overriding his long-game plan of letting me run myself down and surrendering.
The list of people who wanted me dead was a fairly long one—at least ten from the last count of my immediate relatives, but many of them had their own gray shadows who’d happily shove a knife into my ribs if asked. Probably a lot of them would be onboard with the idea without even a whisper from anyone. All it would take was one guy who’d fallen out of favor with one of the younger Takahashi and the idea that killing me would solve all of his social and economic problems.
My back was still slightly damp when I pulled on the T-shirt he’d left for me, and it stuck almost immediately. I had a small debate about whether I’d go commando under the sweatpants, then finally decided it didn’t really matter, so I shoved all my clothes, including my briefs, into the bag he’d given me. My eyes were still bloodshot, according to the slightly fogged-over mirror, but I wasn’t going to get any prettier staring at myself.
“Okay, MacCormick, time to get busy.” I felt better, I reassured myself, even as I sighed in deep relief when I turned off the lights before I left. The wash of darkness calmed me. It could keep the searing brightness off me if I simply stayed behind the bathroom door. That promise lasted less than half a second before reason took over. Trent would come looking for me, and I still had to go toe-to-toe with Gaines. Squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath and stepped outside to go find my partner.
Thankfully, he’d closed the blinds enough I could walk into the living room without feeling like a member of the Bela Lugosi fan club, and even better, there was an enormous cup of coffee waiting for me on the table.
“Wasn’t sure if you were hungry,” Trent said from the kitchen, and I gagged at the mere mention of food. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Coffee for now. Maybe some soup or something later.”
“Later being next month,” I grumbled as I picked up the mug. The steam rising from the slightly off-brown brew was amazing, and after I took a sip, I savored the hint of sugar in it, the trail of sweet chasing the hard chocolate punch of the rich medium roast. Every nerve in my body unknotted, and I slowly sank into the lumpy couch, finding the divots I’d made with my ass and shoulders. “Fuck, this is… perfect. Thanks.”
“Not a problem,” he reassured me as he padded into the room. He waited for me to sit back, my hands cradled protectively around my cup, then scooted the coffee table away. Setting his own mug down, h
e sat down on the table, his knees nearly brushing my shins, and studied me carefully.
His eyes were… unnerving. I’d grown used to the gray-blue he’d hidden behind, so it was going to take some getting used to the nearly electric icy stare he gave me now. The rest of him was the same, barely a hint of faerie in his solid features, but now I could maybe see a bit of something sharp in his cheekbones and strong jaw. He’d picked up his cup again, his broad thumb making long strokes along the curved white stoneware, and from what I could see, Trent wasn’t in any hurry to hammer things out.
So I tossed the first stone into the metaphorical lake to see what was lurking beneath the dark waters between us.
“Are we doing twenty questions? Or do we pick a topic, then talk it to death?” I braved another sip of the brew, and it hit me again, punching its way through my nervous system. “Because I’ve got lots of questions here, Leonard, and you haven’t been around to answer them.”
“Again, day off and needing time. Want to start with the case or…?” His focus shifted again, caught by something dark winging by the broad windows, its shape mostly hidden by the shuttered blinds. Turning back to me, he continued, “Or do you want to tell me about what happened yesterday after you left the station? And showing up at Kingfisher’s before anyone contacted you, and holding a bag with another netsuke you say tried to kill your grandfather, a known yakuza crime lord.”
The sheer size of him loomed in front of me, and Trent’s slight shifting on the coffee table forked up a nervous hash in my belly. I was still a little tender in the head from the gin I’d been served, and I hated the cracked-brain feeling it gave me, but mostly I disliked the tingle of paranoia whispering under my thoughts. Gin did shitty things to my mind and even shittier ones to my body, but mostly it strung me out until I couldn’t tell which way was up. Like being uneasy about what felt like an apex predator trapping me against a couch with a hungry, angry heat radiating off of his massive body.
