

Copyright © 2016 by Tristan Olson  
All rights reserved

This book is provided DRM-free to ensure that buyers are not arbitrarily hindered with restrictions. In order to allow the author to be properly compensated for his work, please ensure you've received this copy through a legitimate source.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to existing persons, characters, locations, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
_For Elisabeth_

# Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Preview: Blood of the Green Children

About the Author

#  Chapter One

I woke up with my cheek in a plate of chow mein. My hand was half trapped under my head, the chopsticks I'd been holding having only narrowly missed skewering my left eye. My mouth was still half full of the cabbage I'd been chewing, now tepid and slimy, and during my unplanned nap I'd inhaled a modest amount of hoisin.

The sauce lodged in my nostrils forced me to blow my nose into my napkin, and as I did I looked around the restaurant for clues as to what had happened to me. Other patrons were similarly lifting heads from their tables or picking themselves off the floor, wiping food off faces and laps where unattended hands had dropped chopsticks or, for the less dexterous, forks.

One man woke screaming shrilly. Half his face was an angry, peeling mess and I realized that his meal had been brought to him much more recently than mine and he'd pitched forward into it, burning himself badly. The waitress waking up next to him reacted perhaps a bit too quickly and grabbed a pitcher to splash his burn with ice water, after which they stared at each other in silent shock. She scurried off to the kitchen as the man sobbed quietly from the burn.

A busboy was picking himself up off the ground near my table when I heard him hiss in pain. Some of the dishes in his bin had broken and he'd sliced his hand open as he tried to get up. I grabbed a clean napkin off the next table over and wrapped it around his palm, thankful that King Wok was nice enough to have cloth instead of paper ones. Fortunately for him the cut looked superficial, despite the impressive amount of blood staining the fabric.

People were talking all around me, asking what was going on, what had happened. I was wondering that myself, but I imagined the answers weren't going to be something the people around me would even believe, much less be able to generate. A quick look at my watch told me we'd been out for no more than five minutes.

Someone was announcing she was going to call 911 when I noticed the old woman at the table in the corner. A flowery handmade sweater covered a back with hunched shoulders, and most of her head was out of view save for a neat crochet hat. She wasn't getting up like the rest of us. I stood and apprehensively made my way towards her table.

"You okay?" I asked her, but as the words left my mouth I began to realize that it didn't matter. Like me she'd ended up face down when we were knocked out. Unlike me, she hadn't ordered noodles. I awkwardly pulled her up by the sides of her head, getting her face out of the bowl of hot wonton soup, but it was too late. Her face had been cooked. Her burns were worse than Mr. Broccoli Beef, but they were irrelevant given the fact that she wasn't breathing. Whether the burns would have killed her if she hadn't drowned in the pork broth was going to be a question for the coroner to answer, not me.

The waitress from before went ashen when she came out of the kitchen and saw the dead woman. I couldn't blame her. Even for someone as accustomed to death as I was, the sight was pretty horrific. The old woman's flesh was lobster-red and swollen. Worse yet, a little bit of white was showing in her cheeks, where the skin had been thin enough to slough off entirely and reveal the bone beneath. Facial identification would not be easy. I guess the cops would just have to check her ID, although I didn't see a purse nearby. No giant old lady bag full of last week's newspapers and crafts, not even a tiny coin purse hiding a cache of mints.

How was she planning to pay for her meal? Frowning, I checked my back pocket. My wallet was gone. My phone and keys were still in place though. My pulse quickened as I slipped my hand to check the little sheath on the back of my belt, but the two folding knives were thankfully still there. One was steel with a black handle and the other was silver with a white handle. Not only were they custom made, but they were a gift with significant emotional value. All around me, people were discovering with a second shock that their wallets and purses were missing as well.

By the time the cops arrived, the popular theory among patrons of King Wok had changed from "brief gas leak" to "creative robbery."

The authorities were represented by three blue and silver Seattle PD squad cars which took up positions around the front door like wagons defensively circling on the prairie. Their flashing lights were joined by those of two ambulances, lighting up the dark like a rave. The police escorted everyone outside into a cool fall evening, and we all had to huddle together in front of the restaurant while they waited for the tech team to arrive and make sure there wasn't a gas leak, lingering knock-out vapors, or something else potentially harmful.

The busboy and Mr. Broccoli Beef were led to the ambulances. The busboy's cut hand was deemed shallow enough to go without stitches and was professionally bandaged in the back of one vehicle. The other ambulance immediately took off towards the nearest available burn unit. That left me and seven other patrons, plus three waitresses, the manager, and the kitchen staff consisting of two guys in the traditional white coats and loose, pin-striped pants.

An unmarked police car arrived and a familiar detective stepped out into the alternating blue and red illumination. She was several inches shorter than my 5'11" and thin-limbed in a steel gray suit. Dark brown hair was pulled back from her heart-shaped face and bound behind her head, where it exploded from its tie in a riot of heavy waves as if relishing the freedom.

She started her inspection of the group of witnesses at the far side from me, and I savored the brief moments before I was noticed. I'd been present at a few too many suspicious events for her to count my existence here as just a coincidence.

"Jack Severn," she groaned as her gaze finally landed on me and she walked over. Her eyes were dark brown and locked me in place as effectively as if I were tied there. If not for those hard eyes, you'd think she was younger. "Why am I not surprised to find you here?"

"I'm the proverbial bad penny, Detective Bidarte," I answered with an apologetic smile.

She turned her head away from me and looked at the people she'd skipped to talk to me, maybe hoping one of them would point a finger at me and save her the trouble. When she turned back to glare at me again, her wide mouth was in a familiar position: her jaw shifted to one side in suspicious thought. "Do I need to bother asking if you had anything to do with this?"

"I'm offended at the assumption," I said honestly. "But it's kind of what I've come to expect from you."

Her eyes left mine for a moment to sail heavenward before coming back down and locking on me again with renewed intensity. "Okay, let's pretend you're not involved. Tell me what happened. What did you see?"

"Chicken chow mein, mostly." She shot me a dirty look and I smiled innocently, holding up my hands. "Okay, okay. I'll talk. Though I really don't have much to tell. I came in about 8:30, was eating by 8:45. I was halfway done with my food before whatever knocked us all out happened. I checked my watch when I came to at 8:57. I don't know exactly when we passed out, but we couldn't have been down for more than five minutes." I went on to summarize my actions post-revival, concluding with the realization that my wallet was stolen.

My story must have been similar enough to the others she'd heard already that she felt no need to ask any follow up questions. "Someone will let you know if your wallet is recovered," she said automatically, turning away.

"Whoa, come on Bidarte," I said, stopping myself before I actually reached out for her arm.

She stopped to glare at me. " _Detective_ Bidarte," she corrected. She looked more annoyed than angry, her dark eyes rolling. I noticed that the waitress who'd brought Mr. Broccoli Beef the water was almost falling over as she leaned in to eavesdrop on the conversation, and she wasn't alone. The rest of the kitchen staff and most of the customers were stealing curious looks in my direction.

I raised my hands again in what I hoped was a placating manner. "Detective Bidarte," I corrected, "any chance you could keep me in the loop on what you find out here?"

The look she fixed on me expressed the answer in no uncertain terms, but she went ahead and elaborated anyway to ensure I understood. "You are at best an unwelcome interloper in police investigations, but more likely simply a criminal that has thus far avoided charges. I should exercise my right to hold you on suspicion right now."

"Come on," I protested. "It's all just coincidence. I'm not that bad. I've even given you tips that have helped before. I've got a knack for this sort of thing."

"Your 'knack' is not enough to make me make me feel like commenting on an ongoing police investigation with a suspected criminal."

Ouch. I shouldn't be surprised—from her perspective, I'd probably have reached the same conclusion. "Well, if you start to feel like sharing or want some help, will you call me?"

"How about I tell you not to leave town and we call that good?" The smile she gave me was more like a wolf baring its teeth.

"Deal," I answered, grinning as if she'd just bought a timeshare off of me.

Throwing her hands up in exasperation, she went inside where the crime scene techs were taking photos of the spilled food, broken dishes, and the corpse of poor Mrs. Wonton. I watched through the window as they bagged the body and Detective Bidarte poked around the restaurant, presumably looking for clues. The techs used fingerprinting powder on the open cash register and a few other choice locations. Restaurants make a great robbery target because there's so many people in and out that practically every surface is covered in dozens of different prints. On the other hand, if these criminals were very, very stupid and hadn't worn gloves when they went for the register, the cops might have a chance of catching them that way.

The reflection on the window from outside was rather faint, dark as it was out there and with the lights on inside, so it made for kind of a ghostly effect as the waitress walked up next to me: in the window she seemed to coalesce out of the ether.

"Why didn't she ask for your contact information? She asked everyone else for theirs." Her voice was soft but confident, like a piece of rebar in a pillow.

"Odd first question," I responded quietly, not looking away from the window.

"What?" she asked.

I turned to meet her eyes. Most of the patrons of King Wok had left after being dismissed by the police, leaving me and the employees. This waitress was nearly as tall as me and quite pretty. She was Chinese and spoke with just a faint accent. Her shiny black hair fell straight past her shoulders, framing a round, tan face. "You listened to our entire conversation, and the first thing you want to ask is why she didn't want my contact info?"

Perfect teeth came out and bit her bottom lip uncertainly, but her silence prompted an answer as she continued looking up at me.

"She already has it," I finally said.

"Because you're a criminal?" she asked cautiously, no doubt based on her earlier eavesdropping.

I sighed. "No, I'm not a criminal." I looked back in the window. Some specialist techies pulled up in a big SUV. They unloaded a variety of large nondescript boxes made of black plastic with little knobs and buttons and cheap LCD screens on them that could have been liberated from a calculator. They looked kind of like off-brand videocassette recorders. Others were more like fancy hand vacuums and hummed away as they filled cartridges inside. I was impressed, I hadn't known the local PD had that kind of equipment. Actual high-tech stuff like that looks pretty boring. They went inside and waved the boxes around the air of the restaurant in a way that reminded me of a shaman smudging a room to clear out evil spirits.

"Chemical sniffers," I explained to the waitress as if she'd asked. "Some can give a result now, but others are for collecting a sample for later analysis at a lab somewhere. Not that they'll find anything." The last bit I said more to myself, but I guess I'd been too loud.

"You don't think it was knock-out gas?" she asked, her fingers toying with the hem of her shirt.

I shook my head. "Despite what TV and the movies have told us, there isn't actually anything that will knock out a bunch of people and let them wake up at exactly the same time without killing any of them."

"Someone did die," she whispered, almost to herself. It was well timed. Mrs. Wonton was being wheeled out on a gurney, an amorphous black bag disguising something that used to be a person.

"Yeah, well," I agreed, blowing air out between my lips.

At length she asked, "So if you're not really a criminal, why do the cops think you are?"

That forced a rueful chuckle out of me. "I have an unfortunate habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time a whole lot of the time. Happen to be at enough crime scenes by accident and you're bound to spend a night or two in jail. That's why they know how to contact me."

She looked me over subtly, and I bet I didn't look much like a hardened criminal. Jeans, tennis shoes, untucked t-shirt from last year's Seattle to Portland bike ride, black canvas jacket. Medium build and keeping my shoulders slouched, which didn't make me look very intimidating. Top that all off with unremarkable, dark brown hair getting shaggy behind my ears and an average, forgettable face. Really, I just looked like some guy, easy to ignore in a crowd. I doubted she would think to give me the time of day under normal circumstances, but right now I probably was at least interesting in that I seemed to know what was going on.

"So if it wasn't knock-out gas, what was it?" she prompted.

I debated internally for a moment, then figured, what the hell? Someone gets magic used on them, they have a right to know about it. "Magic," I said simply. This was usually the point in the conversation where people figured I was crazy and stopped wanting my opinion. Some even got angry. It was certainly how I'd earned Bidarte's animosity.

This time was no exception. The woman blinked at me in shock a few times before simply turning and joining the other waitresses several feet away. They had their phones out, and she joined in by taking one out of her pocket and typing furiously. If I had to guess I'd say they were all busy spreading the news of their crazy night to their friends and the internet as a whole.

I turned back to watch the cops and techs doing their little dance. Bidarte walked the scene for a while before coming outside to talk to the manager. After a brief conversation she got in her car and drove away, shooting me one last suspicious look.

I went over to the group of waitresses. "Excuse me," I said to the one who'd talked to me, "would you mind introducing me to your boss?" It's always better to have someone introduce you in awkward social situations, and since she had first approached me for conversation she was the best "in" I had.

Her eyes narrowed. "How can I introduce you if I don't know your name?"

"Good point," I replied, tilting my head in a short nod as I held out my hand. "I'm Jack Severn."

"Amy Sun," she replied, automatically taking my hand with one of hers. She gave me a considering look and then shrugged. "Fine. This way."

She walked me over to where the kitchen staff was standing a few feet away. As we approached, the manager was having a hushed conversation with someone I assumed was the head chef since the other guy in kitchen whites was standing at a distance but still watching with a respectful air, as if he was simply waiting to be given a task to carry out. The manager was your standard middle-aged Chinese guy in black slacks with a dress shirt and tie and hair going gray at the temples. The chef was doughy and had a face that looked like it was used to smiling all the time but couldn't find anything worth smiling about just now.

They were speaking in hurried tones as we walked up. I figured they were probably worrying about how long the cops were going to keep them closed and I spared a thought to wonder what their margins were like and if they could survive losing a few days of revenue plus the stigma that would follow this event.

They got quiet pretty quick when we showed up, and the manager turned to me with a conciliatory smile already taking shape. After Amy introduced me he told me his name was Henry Seng. His accent was so thick that there was a delay before I could understand what he was saying, like talking over an old transatlantic phone line. I hadn't even had a chance to speak before he was assuming I was an irate customer. "You can come back when we re-open, you'll eat free for a whole week," he said emphatically.

I raised a hand to stop him. "No, sorry, I'm not angry about anything. I was just wondering if there's some way I can help."

Henry's hands dropped and he looked at me quizzically for a moment. "Help?"

"Yeah," I said. "I've had some experience with stuff like this. I thought I might offer to look around, see if I can find anything out."

He looked more than a little skeptical, and I couldn't say I blamed him. I decided to push a little bit more with something I thought he might want. "Look, really you'd just be satisfying my curiosity. But who knows, maybe if I find out what caused this I can get the cops to let you reopen the place a few days earlier."

Henry appeared to be preparing a polite but firm rejection when the chef caught his attention. They had a short conversation in Chinese that even though I couldn't understand anything they said made me rethink who was in charge. It ended with Henry performing an acquiescing nod before turning back to me. "You can come back tomorrow, take a look around when the cops are gone." He waved vaguely in the direction of the techies inside and then started fishing around in his pocket. He came up with a key, handed it to me, and turned around to walk away with the chef without any more explanation, leaving me confused on the sidewalk with Amy for company.

"Did your boss seriously just give me a key to the restaurant?" I asked incredulously as I stared at their retreating backs. "Trusting sort, isn't he?"

Amy stared at me with mix of disbelief and awe. "I don't think so. I don't even have a key and I actually work here."

* * *

I knew I'd have no chance to get in there tonight. The techies would be at it for hours, so I made my way over to where my bike was chained to a lamppost just outside the circle of police cars. The bike doesn't look like much since I gave it an awful baby-poop yellow and toxic green spray job in matte finish shortly after I bought it. Nothing lowers your chances of having a bike stolen like greatly reducing its resale value, but I generally chained it up anyway just in case. Bike thieves aren't always discerning.

I pulled out my phone and dialed my roommate before wedging the phone between my shoulder and chin so I could fiddle with the combination lock. I heard Charlie pick up, followed by a long pause. "Exhale, Charlie," I instructed, unhooking the lock and standing up to wrap the thick cable around the seat post on my bike.

There was an explosive rush of air over the phone punctuated by a choked, "Jack."

"I just got robbed. Want to meet me at the Study and buy me a drink?"

"Yeah, sure man," Charlie replied. "You'll have to give me a minute. I just sparked this thing."

"That's fine," I answered. "Don't ride until your head's cleared a bit, okay?"

"Okay, Mom," he deadpanned before hanging up.

As far as calls to my roommate go, this was pretty typical. Charlie and I agree that pot is only for special occasions. The difference is that Charlie adopts a much more generous definition of 'special occasion' than I do: any day of the week ending in the letter 'y'.

I rolled up my right pant leg in poor-bike-nerd fashion and hit the road, mentally preparing for the slog from the International District to Capitol Hill. It was nearing midnight and being a Tuesday most of the population was indoors, so I had a nice quiet ride to organize my thoughts.

First off, I was completely in the dark as to what exactly had happened at King Wok. All I knew was that magic was involved and I had to figure out why. But I'm no wizard, so I'd have to call one I knew for a consult to explain the actual mechanics to me.

Putting that on hold, there was the ease with which I'd convinced Henry to let me poke my nose in their business. Or was it the chef I convinced? There was obviously something going on behind the scenes with those two, I just didn't know what. Either way, they'd happily handed a key over to a complete stranger. To be fair, I imagine there wasn't a lot worth stealing in the place, especially not after it had just been robbed, but still. Which raised the question of why they robbed a restaurant in the first place. They clearly had something to hide, but was it worth more than the contents of a jewelry store?

The robbers had been foolish, too. The old woman's death had been completely preventable, and they either hadn't noticed her drowning or were too callous to give a damn. Regardless, letting someone die was a careless, amateur move and changed the crime from robbery into murder. That death would draw a lot more heat from the police and dramatically up the sentence if they were caught.

And on that subject, there was Detective Bidarte and the police. I'd have to tread carefully in my search. The last thing I wanted to do was get caught interfering with an active police investigation. Again. I'm pretty sure her threats of jail after the last time had been serious. But in my defense, the cops were totally out of their depth on that one. I mean, I'm mostly out of my depth too, but I at least know that magic is real. They just think I'm a nut job who occasionally gets lucky. Of course they're half right, I'm just not always sure about which half.

#  Chapter Two

The Study is a hole in the wall bar a block down from Broadway on Capitol Hill. It's got eight stools at the bar, two tables with chairs, and six booths painted glossy black. The walls are plastered with a novelty wallpaper made to look like bookshelves full of leather-bound volumes, onto which real shelves have been bolted and filled with actual books, board games, sepia photos, tchotchkes, memorabilia, a pair of loafers, mason jars full of bottle caps, a stuffed pine marten, and the tarnished remains of what may have once been a real civil-war era handgun. All in all, it sort of felt like having a drink in the walk-in closet of a favorite if not slightly unhinged uncle.

I sat down in an empty booth and—since I wouldn't have any money to pay with until Charlie showed up—tried to make myself unobtrusive, which of course meant that that Alec, the bartender, came straight over. He's a solidly built guy with a short, dark beard, shorter hair, and seemingly more tattoos than surface area.

"What'll you have?" he prompted me.

"Nothing yet. I'm waiting for my roommate to get here and buy me a drink. I just got robbed," I added by way of explanation.

"Ouch." He went back to the bar, grabbed a glass and pulled me a pint of amber ale, my usual. "This one's on the house, then."

I nursed my beer as I reassessed my relationship to Alec. I'd never had the impression he really cared about me one way or the other, never mind liking me enough to comp me a drink if I'd had a shitty enough day. I resolved to tip him double next time. Then I realized he'd probably comp any regular like me for the future extra tips. Clever.

When Charlie arrived he bought us a pitcher and settled down across from me. I was feeling mildly paranoid so I'd sat facing the front door with my back to the wall, not that the position would help if someone put the place to sleep like they had at King Wok.

In comparison to Alec's short and well-groomed beard, Charlie's looked like he'd won it off a hermit in a squirrel eating competition. Charlie is a naturally lean guy who keeps his head shaved and has an otherwise immaculate personal grooming regimen, which makes his thick, brown, collarbone-length beard all the more incongruous. Its density suggests that if you dug around in it long enough you'd find a back road to Narnia. Don't get me wrong, he was good about cleaning it, but the hair still looked like it belonged somewhere else, like the side of a yak. It did, unfortunately, also provide a haven for pot smoke which even a brisk bike ride in the wind had barely lifted.

"So what happened?" Charlie asked, sipping his beer. I didn't interpret his blasé nature as a lack of concern for my wellbeing, that's just how he responds to all information, good or bad.

I shook my head. "Don't really know. Woke up in my dinner with my wallet gone, same as everyone else at King Wok." From there I gave him the complete rundown.

"Gas leak?" Charlie hazarded when I'd finished.

"Nah, magic shit," I said.

Charlie just nodded sagely. I've never been sure if his blind acceptance of my assertions that magic is real, having never encountered any himself, was due to natural open-mindedness or his years of habitual marijuana use, but either way it made him perfect as a roommate.

I have a thing that you could call a curse: weird stuff just tends to happen to me. If something really unnatural is going down in the area, there's a really good chance that I'll be nearby whether I'm directly involved or not. This puts me in the outer orbit of the Unseen community, which is the world of magic and monsters that would just as soon have regular humans like me and Charlie be completely unaware of their existence.

I'm still human, but there's something extra to me that seems to attract weirdness in a way that no one I've met has been able to explain. A wizard friend of mine once dubbed me a Strange Attractor, but then he came to magic by way of the kind of mathematics that doesn't involve numbers and the name is an artifact of that background.

Anyway, sometimes these things that happen around me are fatal for someone or just generally destructive, hence Detective Bidarte's distrust. This also has led me to the policy that I have to be open with my roommates about my particular peculiarities. It's not fair to share a home with an unwitting someone if the universe has elected you Most Likely to Find a Monster in Your Closet. Charlie accepted my explanation and, as far as I can tell, believed it completely. Sometimes I think he decided to be my roommate because he's hoping to actually meet some of these monsters one day.

After I finished my story we worked our way through the pitcher. When Charlie went to use the bathroom I called up Elliot, my wizard friend.

Most people would consider it rude to call someone so close to midnight, but wizards keep odd hours by necessity. As it's been explained to me, there are plenty of spells, rituals, potions, and incantations that only work at certain times of day. Of course, if one of those cases applied tonight Elliot wouldn't answer his phone or even have it anywhere near him. Magic and technology get along like velociraptors and polar bears: unpredictably, and only the terminally stupid want to be around when it's happening.

Elliot makes his living in protective charms and wards. He's the best in Seattle, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's the best on the west coast. The people in the Unseen community hire him for all sorts of things, and I know he's got a few contacts in local businesses that are "in the know" and pay him to make sure their boardrooms are free of magical interlopers. There are lots of requests for more "offensive" magic, but he doesn't want to get involved in an arms race between his customers.

He and I have an occasional working relationship in addition to our friendship. I feed him info about the weird things I encounter, which keeps him ahead of the game when it comes to knowing what's going on in his territory. In return, he's kept my home warded out the ass free of charge, which helps reduce the chances of things that eat your soul in the night coming around. There's no way I could afford Elliot's services on my paycheck, so I'm glad he likes me.

When Elliot answered the phone, all I heard was death metal for a while until he turned his music down. Must not be working magic tonight, then. Not only because the phone was on, but trying to do magic while a competing voice is scream-singing entreaties to one dark power or another is just asking for trouble.

"Jack, what can I do for you?" Elliot asked in his pleasant tenor voice.

"I've encountered a bit of a thing and I thought you might like to know about it," I said, then launched into an explanation of what happened at King Wok.

"They just gave you a key?" Elliot asked when I'd finished.

"I'm as surprised as you are. Maybe they were in shock."

"All right," Elliot said. "Did you want me to take a look?"

"Yeah, that would be great. I've got the dinner shift tomorrow, so how about something late morning, say at 11? I'll buy you lunch afterwards."

"Deal. See you tomorrow."

Charlie had returned while I was on the phone and waited patiently while I completed my conversation.

"Elliot?" he asked when I hung up.

"Yeah, we're going to go poke around the restaurant tomorrow."

"You need me to cover your shift?" Charlie and I both hold the glamorous job of bicycle sandwich delivery men at the same shop.

"Nah, we should be done long before I need to come in. Besides, I wouldn't want to mess with your day off."

We finished our pitcher and waved at Alec on the way out into a city whose night felt surprisingly bright after all the time in the dim light of the Study. We unlocked our bikes and prepared for the half-drunk ride home.

Our house is a tiny, eighty-year-old odd duck wedged between two similar buildings on a dark street halfway between Broadway and the top of Capitol Hill. We rent pretty cheap because our landlord is content to ignore us and leave our rent low as long as we don't bug him. This benevolent negligence has inspired us to take on a fair amount of the maintenance ourselves, like cleaning the gutters and fixing the leaky sink. We've also repainted the inside from the bile beige it had been since the 50s, but we hadn't told him about that yet and were cautiously optimistic that he might not even notice when he eventually came by.

I brushed my teeth, inspecting myself in the bathroom mirror. The brown eyes looking back at me seemed more tired than I felt, and I entertained the wild fantasy that it was a different me from some future night, giving me the distinct impression that he knew something I didn't and wasn't happy about it. On that cheery thought, I spit out my toothpaste and shuffled off to bed.

* * *

I woke up wishing I'd had more water before going to sleep. My head throbbed with the same unpredictable cadence of someone's first tap-dancing lesson, and my stomach advised against anything more adventurous than dry toast. Part of my malaise was probably the residual effects of whatever had knocked me out at King Wok, but mostly I should have planned better around the evening's beer. I was still adjusting to the switch that had flipped when I turned thirty and ended my nights of repercussion-free drinking.

I wasn't in a rush and wanted to save all my biking energy for work later, so I left my bike behind and walked down the street towards the bus. The mist from last night had been replaced by sun and sparse clouds, promising a warm early autumn day. Hopping onto a bus, I made my way through downtown towards the International District, so named because in addition to a large Chinatown it also has Japantown and Little Saigon.

Seattle can be a fun city to navigate with or without a car. It has an odd collection of buses and light trains which sometimes duck underground. The streets come together at exciting angles as competing grids of city blocks meet up at intersections where three or more throughways vie for dominance. Additionally, the downtown is sandwiched between a freshwater lake and Puget Sound, giving you bridges and ferries as well. Elliot once told me that a lot of the streets are at the angles they are due to powerful ley lines intersecting to form words of power in ancient runes. I'm not sure whether that's actually true, but frankly Elliot could tell me that the mayor is half pixie and I'd pretty much have to take his word for it, since he's in a position to know and I'm not.

Elliot had beaten me to King Wok. He was standing around the front entrance trying not to look intimidating, which is a tricky game for a 6'3" black man with a high fade and a penchant for leather jackets and black denim. Most people avoided looking at him too closely, so they wouldn't notice that he's actually pretty skinny, tended towards t-shirts with jokes about calculus on them, and had somewhat ridiculous pince-nez style glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

Once anyone broke through the outer shell and got to know him, it became clear that Elliot was a warm, excitable guy who geeked out over a variety of esoteric and nerdy topics, making him seem as harmless as a puppy. Of course, if someone _really_ got to know him they might learn that Elliot could change the weather if he set his mind to it. That's when they circled back to feeling a little intimidated, but with much more justification.

"Hey," Elliot said by way of greeting. "Is the food here any good?"

"Yeah," I answered, fishing the key Henry had given me out of my pocket and unlocking the door. "Not that I think I'll be eating here a whole lot in the future. Passing out and waking up to a fresh corpse tends to cool me off on a restaurant, you know?"

Carefully unsticking the crime scene tape and moving it to one side, I pulled the door open and a bell rang, announcing our presence to an empty room. After we slipped in I quickly walked Elliot through what had happened again, pointing out where I had been sitting and where the old lady had drowned in her soup. As I finished, Elliot started sniffing around the entrance to the kitchen. And I do mean literally sniffing.

"Leftovers smell good?" I teased.

"Nah," Elliot said automatically before pausing and giving the air another sniff. "Well, yes, actually. But I'm picking up quite a lot of magic here." A life of intermittent exposure made me usually able to sense magic, though if I was distracted I could miss it. It typically manifested as an out of place sensation or a surprise bout of synesthesia. As far as I knew it was the same for Elliot, but years of training and practice meant he was a lot more sensitive to it than me.

I followed him back into the kitchen and watched as he continued sniffing and ran his hands through the air, apparently feeling shapes or textures that were invisible to the non-magical likes of me. He followed the trail to a door which he popped open to reveal a tidy supply cupboard and suddenly even I could smell something.

"Was someone lighting matches in there?" I asked, wondering what the odor of phosphorous had to do with the events of the previous night. It was strong enough that it smelled like someone had gone through a couple packs of strike anywhere matches.

"Yes," Elliot answered. "And I'm pretty sure I know why," he added, taking one last healthy whiff. "Let's get out of here, I'll tell you over lunch."

I locked up King Wok and we retreated to the sushi place across the street.

"So what was it?" I asked him as I started mixing the soy-sauce and wasabi.

"Someone made a Hand of Glory," Elliot said, scratching his chin with two long fingers and looking at my slimy green concoction with obvious distaste.

"Can I get that again in magic college dropout?" I asked wearily. Elliot often assumed everyone else knew the same things he did. "I feel like I've heard the term before, but I'm not clear on the details."

"The quick and dirty version is that a Hand of Glory is a candle made from the left hand of a hanged murderer," Elliot answered. "Beyond being a mediocre lamp, they're also supposed to be able to open locked doors and—this is the important bit—put people to sleep as long as the wick is burning."

"Huh," I said, thinking it over. I pictured someone lighting the ends of a gnarled hand's fingertips and all of us nodding off into our meals. "Guess I was wrong when I said the cops wouldn't find any evidence. Wouldn't that show up in air samples?"

Elliot shrugged. "Maybe? Though even if it did, it could be easily missed as background. Plenty of smoke in a kitchen, and stuff gets burned all the time anyway. They probably wouldn't notice it."

"So how does one come by a Hand of Glory? They don't sell them at the Yankee Candle Company."

"No, they don't have the recipe, thank God. I haven't heard of one being used in ages. They were way more common in Europe a couple hundred years ago, but not so much now. For one thing, hanged murderers are hard to come by nowadays."

"Do you know where to get one?"

"Hanged murderer or Hand of Glory?" Elliot grimaced. "Either way, hell no. A Hand is serious dark magic, a tool for thieves and murderers. There's not a lot of above board reasons to want to put a house full of people to sleep and waltz through their security system."

Our waitress brought over our order, and only after I'd managed to grip a piece of my rainbow roll between my chopsticks did I realize that Elliot had given her my soy sauce and wasabi mixture to take away. "Hey! I was going to use that! What gives?" I demanded, annoyed.

Elliot leaned back, his expertly separated chopsticks dancing in one hand as he spoke. "In Japan, sushi chefs train for decades. It's months of sweeping the floors before they're allowed to handle the rice, let alone take a knife to a piece of fish. They put literally years of experience into every meal they make, and you want to drown it in cheap salty soy and knockoff wasabi. You might as well be eating minute rice and canned tuna. And, okay, it's likely the chef here didn't go through that training process as he looks to be in his early twenties, but at least give the actual flavor a try. Eat it straight, man."

"If I'm paying for it I'll eat it how I want," I argued petulantly, reaching for another bowl and the soy sauce bottle.

"Then I'll pay," Elliot offered quickly.

I sighed and put the bowl and bottle back. "Fine, if it means that much to you I'll give it a shot." Even I knew I sounded childish, but my methodical sushi ritual was comforting.

On the other hand, I had apparently been doing it wrong this whole time. Elliot was certainly right that the chef here wasn't some wizened sushi master, but he was also right that I had been missing out on most of the flavors of the sushi I was eating. Of course, I'm used to Elliot being right about pretty much everything so it wasn't a surprise that he was also an expert on proper sushi etiquette.

"Anyway," I continued after swallowing another mouthful of salmon roll, "where would someone get a Hand of Glory?"

Elliot paused with the grilled eel roll he'd been about to bite into suspended in midair and looked up at the ceiling. "In Seattle? I'm not sure. This is, like I said, seriously dark stuff." He popped the bite of eel into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "You ever been to the Shadow Bazaar?" he asked.

I shook my head. "That's the Unseen community market in the Underground, right?"

"Yeah," Elliot said, nodding. "I get tons of ingredients and implements from the shops there, and it's a good place to start."

"I don't have time to go today," I said. "Are you free tomorrow? I don't know where the entrances are and I'm not sure they'd consider me magic enough to let me in on my own."

Elliot shook his head. "No time tomorrow, but why don't you ask Saul for help? He's got a doorway under his place that goes straight into the Underground. And I don't think you'll have to worry about getting in. If you can see the door, you're magic enough. I think being a Strange Attractor will do the trick."

"Okay, great," I said, not sure if I actually thought it was. The idea of poking around a mysterious subterranean marketplace peopled by more than a few things that weren't truly human seemed more than a bit daunting. "So what am I looking for? Do I just go into the first curio shop and ask if they sell Hands of Glory by the dozen?"

"No," Elliot snorted. "I don't think anyone there is actually selling anything like that, certainly not openly, but I've got a supplier who might know someone who knows someone. Look for the doorway with the bright orange mortar and pestle on the sign. The guy's name is Farnsworth. Tell him I'm a friend of yours, he'll tell you what he knows."

"Cool," I said, feeling a little better about the mission now that I had some guidance. My eyes fell on the little bowl of wasabi and I pointed to it. "You said 'knockoff' wasabi?"

"Yeah," Elliot nodded. "Actual wasabi is really hard to grow and quite expensive. Unless they asked you to put on a tie at the door, the wasabi you're eating is mostly horseradish and food coloring. Cheaper materials, you know?"

* * *

We parted ways with a promise from Elliot to send me a little literature on the Hand of Glory and I headed across the street, nearly getting creamed by a Volvo as I stepped past a parked panel van. The close encounter was just another reminder that I really should join Seattle culture and stop jaywalking, but I didn't think it would stick. The van had also been blocking my view of King Wok, so I hadn't realized that Amy was standing outside peering into the darkened windows.

"You guys are closed," I said casually as I stepped up beside her.

She jumped in surprise but then smiled when she saw it was me, which was nice. "Yeah, I'm getting that. No one ever really told us when we'd be open again. I'm supposed to have a lunch shift today but I couldn't get ahold of Henry so I came down to see if anyone was around. I guess I'm lucky I caught you or I would have come down for nothing."

"I'd say we're both lucky," I countered, feeling like a cornball the second I said it, but her smile widened so I took a chance. "You want to go out some time?"

"I don't know," she teased. "I don't usually go out with hardened convicts."

I shook my head, grinning. "Convicts have been to prison, I've just spent the odd night in lockup, which, okay, isn't great, but I never did anything to deserve getting there. Wrong place, wrong time, every time, I swear it." I resisted the urge to throw an inappropriate joke about the 'hardened' bit into my babbling. "I'm just a sandwich delivery guy with bad luck."

"Oh, you're in food too?" she teased, as if either of us had a career.

"Yeah, bicycle delivery for Kal's up on the hill," I said dismissively, which was about how I felt about the job.

She sucked on her lower lip and gave me an appraising look. "How about a drink tonight?" Amy asked. "Are you free?"

"I've got the dinner shift at work, but I finish about nine."

"Then take a shower and meet me here at ten," she said with one more grin before she turned and left. I let out my breath in a whoosh, glad the conversation had gone so well and wrapped up quickly. I find there's a real time limit on how long I can go without making an ass of myself, especially around women I'm attracted to, and given the start to that conversation I'd worried I'd run out of time before I even began.

* * *

I had just enough time at home to change into bike shorts and my official Kal's tee-shirt ("Your sandwich in 30 minutes or we'll feel really bad!") and hop on my bike for the quick ride downhill towards Broadway. Kal's is on the south end of Capitol Hill, a block off the main drag where the leases are cheaper.

A weekday dinner shift at Kal's typically has two delivery bikers on at a time, though with the frequency of orders it's common to barely see one another. Tonight I was working with the only other full-timer besides Charlie and myself: Iris. As I pulled up to the back she was just heading out with a full bag, and she spared me a wave as she pushed her fixie up to speed.

As far as I could tell, Iris' main passions in life revolved around bicycles. She's short, not even clearing five feet, and moves around with an alarming speed thanks to her powerful legs. She's got dark skin and thick, straight hair due to her "propriety blend of southeast Asian genes" as she once joked while drunk. And, like I said, biking is her life and fixies are her thing. She has called Charlie and me "gear-shifting pussies" on more than one occasion, and has heaped added abuse on me for riding a mountain bike in the city. My preference comes down to city bikes just looking plain flimsy to me, and I've never been able to feel stable on them. Of course, this means I have to work a lot harder to ride, but on the other hand I can jump curbs and even bounce down stairs, both of which would likely pop the tires or even bend the rims on a city bike's wheels.

I only had to wait a few minutes before I got my first order, a quick trip six blocks south. I was there and back again in 15 minutes. The evening was filled with runs like that until about eight, shuttling sandwiches to houses and a few businesses as well. Things got interesting when I went out with my tenth Jaeger, which is our meat lover's special and filled with enough different dead animals prepared every possible way to kill a vegan on contact.

The delivery address was further north than we usually go. It was still in our operating area, but there are competing sandwich shops up that way that usually got the business. I was way out past where Broadway skips right and turns into 10th, somewhere along the east side of Volunteer Park and looking for an address on 15th Ave, which was a problem because the house numbers didn't go low enough before hitting the next block. I tried asking the houses on both sides of the street, thinking maybe it got written down wrong, with only confused and apologetic residents for my trouble. A quick call to the phone number given on the order got me a ringing line with no voice mail.

Shrugging, I assumed a prank call and headed back south towards home base and was cruising peacefully until I got pricklies on the back of my neck.

I've met enough people with some kind of real psychic powers to know that I don't have any. But the subconscious takes in a lot of information that it doesn't have a good way to communicate to the thinking part of the brain, and a general bad feeling is one signal that I've learned to pay attention to. I scanned around quickly in front of me before glancing in the little mirror sticking off of my helmet.

There was a white van a good hundred feet behind me matching my speed. I could think of few legitimate reasons for a vehicle to be going that slow on an otherwise clear street. I mean, if it was waiting for a good place to pass me without running me over it would be closer. So it had to be following me. Or was I being paranoid? Who cares? Paranoia has sometimes been the only thing that kept me alive.

I experimentally slipped into Volunteer Park, which was on the downhill side of me. Putting my mountain bike tires to good use, I cut across the grass towards the south entrance. It was still in the same general direction I'd been heading, but most cars would continue on to Aloha before turning if they were going back to Broadway like I was. Keeping an eye on the mirror, I watched the van speed up and take the street bordering the south end of the park to keep me visible. The streets here were all twisty and residential, so unless they were going to a house here, they'd really have no reason to turn there. I merged back on the street ahead of them and cut across the crosswalk onto 14th, then went back up to 15th, the same street we'd started on. They tracked me the whole time, despite the inefficiency of the route I was taking.

At this point, unless they were completely stupid, they had to know that I knew they were there. The question became what they would do about it. If they broke off and went their own way, I would know they were just surveillance, which was troubling enough but manageable. If they kept following me, they were either surveillance that didn't really care about secrecy—possibly the best option—or they meant me immediate harm. This last possibility was obviously most worrisome.

My first instinct was to stay on busy streets and just hope they weren't out for my blood. Unfortunately I was already on a quiet street, and the occupants of the van responded badly to their cover being blown. The big V8 suddenly revved menacingly behind me. I reacted on instinct and cut down the next street I saw on my right. They followed, but lost a lot of the distance between us braking into the turn.

I went into tactical mode, pushing as hard as I could and turning often. They could easily catch up to me on a straightaway, but they had to brake a lot more on the corners than I did. I knew of a parking lot up ahead where I would be able to lose them, but it meant a scary moment of cutting across the street in front of them as they accelerated out of a turn. My heart was pounding in my throat as I shot down an alley to the left. They had more warning for this turn and followed close, and I let them keep up, glancing over my shoulder and looking panicky, which wasn't difficult because I was. Getting run over is a job hazard, but usually it's accidental and no fun either way.

What they didn't know was that I knew this alley. There was a church parking lot up ahead and I swerved into it, cutting across the mostly empty spaces. There weren't any dividers between the spaces, so they were able to stay right on me. However, up ahead the parking lot bordered on the next street: a five foot drop off a steep grass slope, with a staircase for pedestrians but no vehicle exit except the alley we'd just entered through.

I shot off the stairs into space, hearing the screech of brakes behind me as the sidewalk rushed up to say "hi". I thanked my lucky stars I'd never let Iris talk me into a road bike as I waited for the impact. My shocks took the brunt of it and I managed to stay upright, pushing hard to get back up to speed while I heard the squeal of the van's tires as they desperately tried to get back to the alley.

I pedaled hard down the hill towards Kal's until I hit Cal Anderson Park with no sign that the van had managed to catch up, then went back to Broadway—beautiful, busy, witness rich Broadway—and headed towards home base, keeping my eyes peeled. Even coasting down the street I found myself breathing heavily as the stress worked its way out of my system.

"You look like shit," Iris said conversationally as I pulled into the back still looking nervously over my shoulder. I had no doubt she was right. I could feel my limbs beginning to go shaky with the adrenaline crash.

"Someone just almost ran me over," I replied, feeling the sweat drying on my forehead.

"Pff," she replied. "Happens to me six times a day. Part of biking in this city. Drivers hate us."

"No, I mean, like _me_ personally," I clarified. "Like, they chased me down half of 15th real slow, then tried to run me over."

Iris' eyes narrowed. "Did you recognize them?"

I shrugged, shaking my head. "I never got a look at the driver and I don't know the van."

"Drunken frat boys?" she hazarded. "Too wasted to tell their thrill-seeking has turned nasty?"

"I guess," I said noncommittally, unslinging my backpack and pulling out the Jaeger. "But the other thing is this sandwich was a no show. The address doesn't exist, and the phone number wouldn't pick up when I tried to call them."

Iris' eyebrows shot up as she processed the implications. "Shit," she whispered. "That's a little too coincidental for my taste. Sounds like a set up."

"Yeah," I agreed, staring at the sandwich in my hand. "It really does."

#  Chapter Three

I only had two more runs before my shift ended, and I checked the addresses for authenticity before heading out. They both proved uneventful, but I was more nervous riding than I had been since the first time I'd got in the saddle in the big city. Once I was off I hit the road after a thorough scan for suspicious vehicles. I crossed Broadway onto a side street, hopped onto the sidewalk, and stopped abruptly in the shadow of a parked car, but no one came after me so I figured I was safe. I made my way home as quickly as possible, knowing that as long as no one followed me I'd be safe once I got there.

The most useful ward Elliot has on my place is something he calls the Fog, which prevents anyone who has harmful intentions from being able to find our house, even if they had their phone barking turn-by-turn directions at them. So far we've never been robbed or had monsters show up at the door, so either it's working or we're just lucky. I figured since the scary white van didn't show up before I hit our block I was home free.

A quick shower was followed by a change into a sea-green dress shirt and some fresh jeans. I walked out the door with a lot more confidence in my safety, new clothes, different transportation, and the house's wards having put some distance between me and my mysterious attackers.

I hopped on the southbound bus and took a seat, gazing out the window and puzzling over the brief chase. Who was after me, and why? I may stick my nose where it doesn't belong on an inadvisably frequent basis, but I couldn't think of anyone who I'd ticked off enough that they'd actually be out to get me, and I was in the middle of only one Unseen mystery. The likely answer was simple: someone didn't want me poking around King Wok.

Of course, that raised more questions than it answered. How did they even know I was looking into what happened? Were they watching the restaurant this morning? And if so, why? If they'd gotten away clean last night, what brought them back today? And something I'd only half considered before: if you've got something as powerful as a Hand of Glory, why would you go after a restaurant and not a bank or a jeweler? What was so special about a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant to garner this kind of intrusion? And why were Henry and the cook so ready to let a stranger have free reign afterward?

My brain rolled around these questions without stumbling on any answers as I got off the bus and started the short walk the rest of the way to King Wok, when everything was knocked out of my head by the sight of Amy waiting for me.

She'd traded the traditional white shirt and black skirt waitress outfit for a softly clinging gray shrug with the sleeves neatly rolled to her elbows, a knee-length sky blue dress that hugged her figure and showed off her slender legs, and heels that made her as tall as me. Her hair was down and fell in a silky line straight to the middle of her back, with a red streak in it that I hadn't noticed before. She held the strap of a handbag with both hands, letting it dangle near her knees and causing her arms to push her breasts out, which I deeply appreciated and hoped was an intentional pose meant just for me. A nervous smile broke across her face as I approached.

"Hi," I said, feeling a little dumbstruck at her appearance. "You look great."

Her smile broadened. "Thanks, you clean up pretty good too."

"So," I said, desperate to keep conversation moving when the silence started dragging. Nothing's worse for a first date than silence. "Where did you want to get that drink?"

She tilted her head and looked me over. "Apex. I'd say you're dressed well enough for that."

Apex is utterly not my kind of place. It's a too-loud nightclub with DJs and overpriced liquor. They cater largely to those who want somewhere to go that's a fashion statement as well as a bar. Also, the Russian mafia has a surprisingly deep grip on the Seattle club scene, and Apex is one of their holdings. I much prefer a quiet place with a decent selection of beers on tap and a staff that knows how to pour whiskey. Long story short, Apex would never be my first or seventeenth choice. But if the beautiful, smiling girl in front of me wants to go there, well, "Apex it is."

We turned and headed north, trading sidelong glances and nervous smiles.

"So, how was work?" she asked.

"Weird," was my honest answer. "I'm pretty sure someone tried to kill me. This big van actually chased me for several blocks."

Her brown eyes widened at this, and I realized I could be coming across as either casually paranoid or just far too casual about serious attempts on my life.

"That's awful," she said eventually, with what sounded like genuine concern. "What happened?"

"So this white van..." I started, and then it hit me. I knew what had triggered my spidey-sense when the van had started following me. I _had_ seen the same van earlier today, when I'd stepped around it after coming out of the sushi place across from King Wok. And if they'd found me here once, maybe they were waiting around here again. We hadn't walked far yet and were still on the same block as the restaurant, barely a hundred feet away. I kept walking but started glancing around, scanning for danger.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked, her voice teetering over towards "I'm with a scary person".

"I just realized that the same van was here earlier this afternoon, when I was talking to you," I explained, my voice tense as I continued to search the area, now trying to look over my shoulder as discreetly as possible. "That's how they knew how to find me at work. They must have heard us talking from across the street."

There, parked at the southwest corner of the intersection behind us was the same white panel van that had been here earlier and tried to run me over a couple hours ago. I turned back the way we had been walking and quickened our pace, but not before I saw the doors open and three shadowy figures step out.

I grabbed Amy's hand, walking faster. "They're here behind us," I said, trying to sound calm and rational.

"Who?" she asked, surprising me with how calm she sounded. I felt a little guilty for assuming she'd freak out. Norms can have nerves of steel too.

"Well, I never got a look at their plates, but I'd have to say that van behind us is definitely the same one from before, and three men just got out of it," I said, risking another glance over my shoulder. "They're following us." They were walking just a little too fast to be doing anything else, and we certainly had their full attention.

Amy snuck a peek over her shoulder. "Okay," she said. "What do we do?"

I squeezed her hand reassuringly. "They're going to start running in a second, and there's no time for the cops to get here if we call them, so we run for the next street over. It's busier and better lit. Hopefully they're not willing to make a scene."

"Okay," she said again, her voice only a little shaky.

"Now!" I urged, and pulled her forward. She followed as quickly as she could, but her heels were a problem. I looked over my shoulder and saw the three men running as well and gaining on us easily. I knew immediately that we would never round the two corners we needed before they reached us, but there was an alley ahead that might give us enough time. The downside was that it was even less public than the street we were on now.

I turned hard, pulling Amy in after me. We were only a third of the way through when Amy gave a yell and jerked on my arm, her heel sliding on something and bringing her down. I spun, thinking I could scoop her up and run, but there was no time. I jumped forward, putting myself between her and the three men chasing us.

They paused and we sized each other up. They were all Asian, the one on the right a little overweight, the one on the left on the skinny side, and one in the middle with a build similar to mine. Some primal body language thing told me he was the ringleader... or maybe it was just that he was in the middle. He had longish hair slicked back to his neck, but in the poor light it was hard to make out more details on any of them. All three wore dark jeans and jackets, but not matching and with no colors or patterns that I recognized as proclaiming allegiance to any particular gang.

They didn't say anything, and after the shock of my defensive stance wore off they rushed me. I went forward to meet them, trying to get more distance between the confrontation and Amy.

Chubby and Skinny came at me with their leader hanging back. The alley was narrow here, without a lot of room for all three of them to swing without hitting each other, which told me something about the leader at least. He knew how to fight. His minions? Not so much.

I went low and hard, body checking Skinny into a brick wall and lashing out with a blind kick at Chubby. I felt it connect with something soft, probably his stomach. Spinning around I saw that the impact had only slowed Chubby down a little, and he was now charging me like a linebacker, hoping to slam me into the same wall I'd ground Skinny into. I sidestepped and tripped him, and would have followed up with a kick except now the ringleader saw an opening and came at me himself.

Up until now the fight had consisted of uncoordinated brawler moves, but Leader came at me with short, southern style kung fu jabs. I slapped a few of them away using a similar style, which earned a surprised look from him. He clearly didn't expect me to know what I was doing, and my previous moves had involved more force than finesse. Chubby had gotten back up but was looking uncertainly at the two of us in our southern fist poses, evaluating whether he should try to get involved.

Leader charged at me again, trying more strikes but now keeping his defensive options available. I responded with Nanquan forms that wouldn't have been out of place at a Wushu exhibition, translating his strikes into glancing blows. We got good and locked into our boxing match, so it took him by surprise when I feinted a jab and suddenly caught him square in the stomach with my first kick at him: a Shaolin thrust kick that sent him spinning back towards where Chubby was helping Skinny up off the ground. Leader stayed on his feet and came back at me, swinging an underpowered fist that I caught, trapping his right arm and delivering several jabs to the sensitive area in his exposed armpit before spinning him off into his minions again.

Apparently they'd all had enough. With a few rushed words to each other in Chinese they ran back the way they'd come. When I was certain they weren't faking me out I turned back to Amy, who was still sitting on the ground looking at me in shock.

"Is your ankle okay?" I asked gently, crouching down in front of her.

"What?" she said dazedly. "Um, yeah, I think so. It was just my stupid heel got caught and broke. Are _you_ okay?"

"Yeah, no problem," I replied, smiling although I could feel my hands starting to shake as the adrenaline drained out of my system. "Not sure I'm up for Apex right now," I added apologetically through a shiver.

"Hey, no problem," she said, standing up and brushing at her skirt. One of her knees was skinned, but not badly. "Let's find somewhere quieter." She pulled off the heel hanging from the back of her shoe, then took a few limping hops.

"Are you sure you're okay?" I pressed.

"Yes," Amy replied, frowning at her feet. "It's just that these shoes are all wonky now." Holding up the broken heel, she added, "It's hard to walk when one leg is a few inches shorter than the other."

"You could break off the other one," I suggested.

"Hell no," she protested hotly. "These were expensive. As it is I'm going to be paying through the nose just to get this one fixed."

We made our awkward way, Amy leaning on me and practically hopping on one foot, to a mostly empty sports bar around the corner. We got a raised eyebrow from the bartender, but he delivered my whiskey sour and Amy's appletini without comment.

"I probably would have been underdressed for Apex, but I feel overdressed for this place," I commented to Amy as I looked around. She smiled wanly around her drink before taking a healthy swallow, and I followed suit.

"That was all... very surprising," she said quietly, which seemed a bit of an understatement to me, but people process trauma in different ways. "How do you know how to fight like that?"

Leaning back, I took a smaller sip of my whiskey sour. "Well, there are really two ways to know how to fight. The first is because you get into a lot of fights, and the second is because you train so much that it's second nature," I explained.

"Okay," she said, "so which one are you?"

I gave her a crooked smile. "Both. I sort of have a knack for getting into trouble. It's practically a medical condition. Like asthma. The sad fact is that no matter what I do weird stuff is just bound to happen to me, like the slumber party at King Wok. So I've been taking some kind of self-defense class off and on for quite a while now. And if I hadn't I probably would have been dead years ago."

"That looked like more than just self-defense," Amy responded.

"The best defense is sometimes a good offense."

"So what's your deal, then?" she prodded. "Paranormal private eye?"

I shook my head ruefully. "Do you know how tough it is to be a private detective in this day and age? There's all sorts of licensing, you have to incorporate.... I don't have the time, money, or inclination."

"Come on," she teased. "You could be a great private dick."

"No," I countered, "people will tell you I'm already a great public dick."

For a moment I was worried I'd pushed it too far, but fortunately she just laughed. "So you work with the police on these kinds of things?" Her eyes suddenly widened. "Oh my god! Do the police know about all this weird stuff? Are they keeping it from the public?"

I laughed. "Hell no. Weird stuff is a million miles from their radar. Some organized crime knows about magic, but not the police. Whatever convoluted story they end up with to explain what happened at King Wok will be a story they believe in wholeheartedly, as wrong as it may be. That detective that was there the other night thinks I'm just off my meds."

"So why are you getting involved?" Her dark eyes evaluated me over the rim of her glass.

"Really, it boils down to this: I've found that it's no good running. Once one of these weird things happens to me, I'm involved whether I want to be or not. My best chance for getting through it is to get out in front of it and figure out what's going on." I took another sip of my whiskey sour. The décor here might have been lacking, but the bartender apparently knew what he was doing.

She leaned forward conspiratorially. "So what _is_ going on here?"

I shrugged. "I only know a few bits and pieces of this one. For starters, I'm pretty sure I've got a handle on what knocked us all out. Weird little artifact called a Hand of Glory. As to the 'who' and the 'why' side of things, well my best guess is the guys who were just chasing us are in on it, but I'm not sure of the motivation for everything yet."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "They wanted to rob the restaurant, right? A quick score?"

I shook my head. "If you had a magic spell that could put everyone in a building to sleep and you wanted to get rich, where's the most effective place you could use it?"

The speed at which she came up with an answer made it seem like she'd already been thinking about this. "A bank, I guess."

"Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad choice," I agreed. "There are downsides, of course. Banks still have video surveillance, and the heat from the cops would be a lot more intense."

"But restaurants don't have that kind of security, is that what you're saying?"

"Don't get too excited," I said. "I'm sure you could still come up with a higher value target than King Wok. I mean, how much money do they make in a night?"

Amy tilted her head in thought. "Henry always closes out the till at the end of the night, so I don't know exactly, but I'd guess not much. Figure $10 to $15 a person, but plenty of people pay with cards, so not a lot of cash on hand. I think he deposits the money almost daily too."

"Exactly," I said. "Which brings me back to my main question: why not go for something else? What's so special about King Wok?"

Amy shrugged. "I wish I could tell you. It's just a restaurant."

"Have you been working there long?" I asked.

Amy squinted at me. "Am I a part of your investigation now?"

I raised my hands in placation. "No, it's just we've only talked about me. I think we're at the part of the date where we should talk about you for a while. I've been led to believe women like that," I added with faux earnestness.

"But I'm boring compared to you!" she protested, then sighed when it became clear I wasn't going to keep talking. "Fine, what did you want to know?"

"How long have you..." I trailed off, unsure if I should continue with that line of questioning now.

"... worked at King Wok?" she finished for me, smiling gently. "Oh, a year? A little longer, I guess. It's kind of a messed up story."

I raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said were boring?"

"It's not an _interesting_ messed up story. I had just started working there part time while I went to school when my father got arrested. It turned out his investment firm was more of a Ponzi scheme than a business. All of the sudden my tuition wasn't being covered anymore and my side job for extra spending money was my livelihood. I hope we open again soon or I'll have to find a new job."

"Sorry," I said, regretting having pressed the issue.

"You didn't know," she said, waving the apology away. "Anyway, now my business degree is on hold until I can save up for tuition, and it turns out that most of my trust fund friends aren't interested in hanging out with me now that I'm poor."

"Jerks," I offered sagely.

Her face brightened. "Oh, I figure the SEC or someone will come for their parents soon enough, and then they'll join me in poverty."

"Did you grow up around here?" I asked, hoping to jump to a less tricky subject.

She shook her head. "I was born in Shanghai, but we moved to California when I was two. I only came to Seattle a couple years ago for school."

"Lucky Seattle," I said, raising my glass in a toast. She smiled at me warmly.

* * *

At the end of the night she asked me to walk her home and I was eager to oblige. The night's earlier excitement had left both of us feeling jumpy, and Amy was far less used to the danger than I was. I was in hyper vigilant mode as we walked, keeping an eye out for our three friends or suspicious vehicles, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary as I walked with her to a rundown little building partway up First Hill. Judging by its newer neighbors, it was destined to soon be torn down in favor of much more expensive and profitable condos. When we got there, we stood awkwardly facing each other in the dingy yellow light from the bulb over the front door.

I was saved from my internal debate about whether I should kiss her or not when she grabbed the sides of my jacket and pulled me down to her mouth, then backed up until I was pressing her against the side wall of her stoop. My hands moved to her waist and her back, pulling her closer to me.

Too soon we disengaged, our breath ragged and eyes glowing as I tugged my shirt down and she smoothed her dress.

"Let me make you dinner sometime," she said, one hand sliding down my arm and then playing with my fingers, eager to maintain some contact. Which was simply awesome.

"Yeah, okay. The peanuts at the bar weren't very filling..." I joked.

Amy laughed and pushed me playfully but kept a hold of my hand. "I'm busy tomorrow night, but how about Friday? Even if King Wok is open again, I should be working the lunch shift."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, trying to sound suave but unable to think clearly. "I'm free."

"Then be here at eight. Buzz me in number 22."

I watched her through the glass front door as she headed down the hallway, using the opportunity to stare at her ass. I got a saucy grin from her as she turned onto the stairs and caught me looking.

It took me most of the bus ride home to force myself to stop fantasizing about what would happen Friday night and instead think about the three guys who'd attacked us. I was certain they were the same ones who'd tried to run me over earlier, but how they figured into this whole story was a bit vague. They just did not seem like the kind of people I expected to have any magical juice, let alone a Hand of Glory. Really, they seemed more the mugging and convenience store holdup type. So what the hell were they doing mixed up in this? And if they were just muscle, who was the brains?

#  Chapter Four

I had Thursday off, which suited me just fine as I had a full day of investigation ahead of me. My phone rang at eight o'clock as I was contemplating whether or not getting up to pee was worth it. I didn't recognize the number, but I was still surprised to be greeted by the disinterested voice of a police clerk telling me that my wallet had been recovered and could be picked up at the police station. I'd barely mumbled that I'd come down first thing before he hung up and it occurred to me that he didn't really care.

I filled a thermos with coffee and hit the road, navigating the buses to a Seattle Police Department warehouse south of the stadiums. On the way I read an email from Elliot with the basics of Hand of Glory construction, but there wasn't much more information beyond what we'd already discussed, certainly nothing that would help me figure out what was going on. He'd also attached a picture of a medieval woodcut of the Hand. I admired the effort some ancient artist had put into rendering the ravaged nature of the hand, from the decaying flesh on the stump end to the fingertips melting away as the flames burned.

What I thought would be a simple matter of property reclamation became complicated when I discovered that valid photo ID was required, the problem being that mine was inside the evidence in question. There was no way I was the first person to have encountered this problem, and I would have thought it wouldn't be an issue, but the cop behind the desk was insisting that since I hadn't brought any ID _with_ me, I could not get my wallet back. I was beginning to suspect that my bad reputation with the SPD was the real issue when a tired voice piped up behind me.

"Just give him his wallet, Mike."

I turned to see that Detective Bidarte had snuck up while I was distracted. Behind me I heard Mike grumble as he shuffled off to get my wallet. "They move your office down here?" I joked.

She fixed me with a withering glare. "No, I just heard that you were here and thought I'd take the opportunity to impress upon you how unwise it would be for you to get involved in this investigation."

I affected an innocent expression. "Me? Get involved? Why on earth would I do that?"

"Because you love making my life difficult?" Alize guessed.

"Believe me, Detective, when I assure you that I spend no time thinking about making your life difficult," I responded.

"That is exactly the problem," she pointed out. "Doing it seems to be automatic."

My wallet arrived while I was pondering the wisdom in her statement. Once I'd filled out a couple forms I thumbed through it. Most of my stuff was still there, including my driver's license, health insurance card, and Russian bakery punch card. All that was gone was my cash and credit card.

"Where'd you find it?" I asked Alize.

"It was in a garbage bag along with the other wallets and purses. We dusted for prints, but they were pretty much unique per item, so the thieves probably wore gloves. We're running them all anyway, but I don't expect much. The effects were actually recovered yesterday morning in a dumpster only a block or so from King Wok. Our best guess is they pulled the cash and cards quickly, and then dumped the lot immediately."

I nodded. "Leaving it close is a good idea. Makes it so that if everything is found it doesn't really point in any particular direction. Of course, it would be smarter if the stuff was never found at all, but then I'm not thinking these guys are criminal masterminds."

Bidarte was nodding with me. "Yeah, I was thinking that too," she agreed, not being able to help herself once we were into the case. "Which really makes me wonder where a bunch of idiots like this got the chemicals to put a whole restaurant to sleep."

I smiled at her, knowing she wouldn't believe the truth. "It wasn't chemicals, Detective. It was magic."

She rolled her eyes so hard I thought she might do damage to her optic nerve. "No such thing, Severn."

"That reminds me," I added offhandedly. "Did I mention that someone tried to run me over while I was working yesterday, and then tried to beat me up later that night just around the block from King Wok?"

That was when I learned that Alize's left eyelid twitched when she was very angry. "You," she bit out through clenched teeth, "are coming downtown to look at mug shots. Now."

I smiled and checked my watch. "I can give you half an hour."

"You'll give me as long as it takes," she replied matter-of-factly as we exited the building.

When we reached her car, a standard issue gray sedan, she tried to convince me I had to ride in the back. "The front is for police," she insisted.

"The back is for criminals," I countered. "And since this is an unmarked vehicle that doesn't even have bars, you'd just end up looking like my chauffeur."

"Not if I flash the lights and cuff you," Alize threatened with a toothy smile.

"Does the Seattle Police Department really need another unnecessary force complaint right now?" I parried, enjoying this.

"If you spill your coffee in the front we'll have one anyway," she muttered darkly, giving up.

* * *

I had to check my knives at the door since they don't allow weapons inside the police station unless the cops are carrying them. I was a little nervous just walking in the door with them, even though they were technically legal to carry, but it wasn't a problem. If Detective Bidarte had any thoughts about my carrying weapons, she didn't share them,

Alize did not have an office to herself, but just one desk in a pool of about a dozen. They all sat under fluorescent lights on a middle floor in an uninspiring building with seventies architecture and a matching color pallet. Her desk shared its front with another desk, whose piles of paperwork evoked Stonehenge and threatened to topple onto Alize's immaculate workspace. I sat to one side as I flipped through a book of local sulky young Asian men with rap sheets.

"Can you give us anything to describe them?" Alize asked after I put the last one down, shaking my head. "Anything that will help?"

"They didn't say anything in English, so I've got no names to go on, or even general English strength to help determine if they're recent immigrants or not. It was pretty dark and I didn't notice any distinguishing jewelry or tattoos, no scars or other distinctive physical features. And I never got a look at the van's plates, and white vans are about the most common vehicle on the road. For a bunch of idiots, they're sure falling into success here."

Alize slumped a little in her chair, looking at me as if it was my fault we couldn't find them in the system. "Why didn't you call us when you they tried to run you over? Or after they attacked you?"

I scratched the back of my head and smiled sheepishly. "Honestly? I'm used to the police not believing me, so by now it's just automatic for me to handle the things that happen to me on my own."

Leaning back in her chair, Bidarte fixed me in an appraising stare. "All right, Severn, let's try this again. As much as I hate myself for even asking, what do _you_ think is happening here?"

I gave her a wincing smile. Even I knew how crazy this was going to sound. "I think a magical talisman called a Hand of Glory, a sort of candle made from the hand of hanged murderer, was used to put everyone in King Wok to sleep, and then the place was robbed. What I still can't figure out, though, is why."

The detective stood up with a defeated air and gestured toward the door. "Thank you for your input, Mr. Severn," she said tiredly. "Let me show you to the exit."

* * *

It wasn't too far from the Police Department to Saul's place, so I wandered down the street towards Pioneer Square. Saul owns a big old three-story building just east of the square that, despite all the windows having been bricked over, blends in with the city so perfectly that people never wonder why such prime real estate isn't being used as retail or restaurant space. Personally, I'm sure the lack of curiosity is due to a combination of Elliot's wards and good old human apathy.

I walked down the adjacent alley to a heavy metal door and rang the bell. I stood humming until a security camera partway up the building whirred at me, its lens telescoping in for a closer look, so I gave it a wink. A moment later the front door opened and Safi Awadi fixed me with a disdainful glare.

Safi is half a foot taller than me and slender with delicate features, dark brown skin, and close-cropped hair, the child of immigrants from somewhere in West Africa. We're not close enough that I could pry for more details about her past, as Safi considers me—and Elliot, for that matter—Saul's no-good friend who only gets him into trouble. And, to be fair, she's not exactly wrong on that point.

Her main job is Saul's lawyer and the public face for his wealth and holdings. I'm sure Saul is mentally capable of handling it all himself, but it's hard to take afternoon meetings when you're a vampire. Also, at this point his official existence is supported solely by forged documents, so proxies make things a lot easier.

"Hello, Jack," she finally said.

"Hello, Safi," I replied politely.

She reluctantly pulled the door wide and I stepped inside, ignoring the annoyed look she was shooting at me.

Inside, Saul's place is significantly homier than its industrial façade would suggest. The original building has been gutted down to the shell, replaced with a common area on the ground floor where areas are divided by Japanese-style paper walls including classic sliding doors. There's a central hallway leading to the stairs in back. The only thing that sets the interior apart from other upscale homes is that instead of windows there are a bunch of recessed digital screens showing scenes of the outdoors. Saul liked to change them up every so often, and today we were apparently pretending to look out on alpine meadows.

"Jack!" cried a voice, this one actually happy to see me. It belonged to Peter, who lived here and nominally owned the building. Fun fact: there are all sorts of demons, faeries, and other assorted bogeys—vampires included—that can't enter a human's home unless specifically invited. To that end, this was officially Peter's house that Saul just lived in, though in practice it was just the opposite. Apparently demons can be stopped by technicalities.

Anyway, Peter was something called a "donor". That is, he was a consenting food source for Saul, joined by Safi and several others in the greater Seattle area. Being a moral vampire takes a lot of careful planning and people skills.

Although Peter was also Saul's housekeeper, he didn't dress or look the part. He had a fauxhawk highlighting an old bleach job above a square, Nordic face sporting a three day beard. A ratty V-necked tee above distressed jeans made him look more like a lifelong couch-surfer than any kind of butler. There was a small ankh dangling from his right earlobe.

"It's almost lunchtime, you want a sandwich?" Peter offered cheerfully. He seemed to take great joy in welcoming me in spite of—or maybe because of—Safi's distaste for my presence. There's some kind of rivalry between them. I sometimes think Saul's donors are all jealous of each other, eager to be Saul's favorite. Myself, I try not to play off it more than I have to.

"Sure, Peter, thanks. Is Saul up yet?"

"Yeah, I think he's just getting out of the shower."

Safi spun on her heel and left us without a word, heading to her on-site office.

I was chowing down on a really good falafel sandwich Peter whipped up from last night's leftovers when Saul came into the kitchen.

Saul is very, very old. Exactly how old I'm not sure, and it's impossible to tell by looking at him. He has wavy blonde hair and pale skin, with the kind of rugged good looks that allow him to get away with bare feet, blue jeans, and a less than completely buttoned white collared shirt, whereas in the same outfit I'd just look like I was incapable of even getting dressed.

"Hello, Jack," Saul said. "I see you've been in a fight."

None of my bruises were in visible locations, but I've stopped wondering exactly how Saul knows these kinds of things. "Yes, and thanks to your training I did quite well."

Saul bowed his head slightly. "You're very kind, but even the best teacher can't train a hopeless student." He grinned up at me. "Still, I'm pretty good, aren't I?"

I gave Saul the bullet point version of what I'd recently been through and ended with a request to use his entrance to the Underground. Apparently he'd heard a little through the Unseen grapevine about it, but it wasn't vampire business so he wasn't involving himself. As far as I could tell, a lot of things in the Unseen community worked because everyone knew how to stay out of affairs that weren't theirs. In response to my request to use his entrance to the Underground he stood, nodding, and led me down the hallway to the basement. We went down another level on a narrow, wrought-iron spiral staircase to a steel door that matched the one I'd entered upstairs.

"The Shadow Bazaar can be found down the path, third branch on your left, second door on your right," Saul said, opening the door and pointing into the gloom of the Seattle Underground. He handed me a flashlight as I stepped through. "Good luck."

Seattle has a famous Underground. A fire in the early 1900s razed a lot of the city, and due to chronic flooding the city leaders decided to rebuild on a higher level. Due to a particularly virulent bout of responsibility shifting, the sidewalks were left on the original level, with the city claiming they belonged to the building owners and it was their job to raise them. Eventually ceilings with new sidewalks were built overhead, but many of the lower levels never got filled in and thus the Underground was born. Over the years the Underground has been used for speakeasies, brothels, and other even less savory pursuits before being closed off to the public. You can still tour of parts of it, though most of it is long filled in and unusable. Or so people think.

Nonhuman creatures are drawn to places like the Underground, partly because of the seclusion but also because of the magic disused places like it accumulate. The age and history are powerful, but more useful is that humans have forgotten about it. That can be harnessed and worked into the magical barriers that keep the Norms out.

I walked down a corridor with brick walls and a thin layer of fine dirt on the floor, stepping past the occasional rat and counting the alternate routes until I came to the third branch. I turned down it and glanced behind me. The tunnel I'd just left seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a wall of solid brick, but if I squinted just right I could see that it was an illusion and when I reached out my arm went right through it again. My guess is a normal person wouldn't even think to look close enough to see the difference, and they certainly had no reason to run their hands over it and test it.

I continued down the tunnel, passing a couple more branches before seeing any doors. The first door on the right was a half rotten wooden thing falling off its hinges. The second door was nine feet tall and four feet wide, made of copper alloy and intricately decorated with runes, symbols, and glyphs. Everything was dominated by a pyramid topped with an eye, like on the back of a dollar bill. I knocked on the door a few times and waited. Slowly, the eye on the top of the pyramid swiveled in my direction. I waved uncertainly. It looked away again. I waited in the silence.

Except it wasn't silent anymore, there was a noise. I could hear a distant voice and shuffling feet. Light bounced off the tunnel ahead of me. I peered into the gloom and slowly the voice resolved itself into a tour guide's patter.

Shit.

I pressed my back against the door, trying to hide in the alcove and hoping that the tour group would turn down some path before they got to this point. They did not. I held my breath as they walked past, a tour guide and a dozen or so people playing their flashlights over the brick walls as they gawked at the abandoned space.

Somehow, no one seemed to be aware of my presence. One old lady's gaze slid right over my face as if it was no more interesting than the brick around me, and certainly no one noticed the massive, arcane door that I pressed myself against.

After the group turned around a corner, the door shuddered behind me and slowly opened inward. A large, roughly man-shaped thing with pebbly gray skin and stony features—literally stony, as in 'made of rocks'—stepped aside to let me through. A golem, I guessed.

"Sorry, sir," it said in a voice reminiscent of a millstone turning. "The alcove is invisible to the mundane, but I don't like to chance opening the door while they're right there. Good thing it hid you too."

"Yeah," I said exhaling my nervous energy, "good thing. I wouldn't want to have to come up with a story to explain why I was hanging out against a wall down here."

The golem closed the door behind me as I turned to look at the Bazaar. It actually resembled the rest of the Underground I had just left behind, except there were a lot more doors and activity in this area. Signs advertised who knew what in a variety of unfamiliar languages. Most of the people here appeared to be nominally human, or at least humanoid. There was a lot of variation in skin color, much more green and blue than I'm used to seeing aboveground, but that's the fae for you. In addition to the human-shaped beings, there were also a few oddities. I saw something that I guessed was a troll, and something that looked for all the world like a donkey-sized foot cut off above the ankle. I've seen some strange stuff, but never in this concentration. It was daunting.

I turned to the golem. "Excuse me," I asked. "Can you tell me where Farnsworth's shop is?"

"Round the corner on your right," the golem said disinterestedly. It leaned against the wall, reading what appeared to be an old issue of Sports Illustrated.

Once I rounded the corner I could see the orange mortar and pestle Elliot had told me about, though I got distracted partway there by what seemed to be a mystical blacksmith. I had a small silver knife, but this place was selling silver broadswords. And even more interestingly I noticed that the burly form of Alec, the bartender from the Study, was arguing with the beetle-shaped smith.

Their discussion came to an abrupt end with the beetle bowing and scuttling into the recesses of his shop, and Alec turned around to catch me looking at him. We stared at each other awkwardly for a moment.

The Unseen community is naturally secretive. They don't talk about what they are or what they know to normal people. For instance, Elliot claims to be a consultant at parties of mixed company, and people tend to bill him as such if they pay him above the table at all. Saul does everything through the shell corporations that Safi manages, maintaining a minimal public existence. I'm a bit of an aberration. Since I'm human and don't rely on magic for my income, and I already have a long record trailing back to my youth of claiming to see monsters, I tend to be a little more blasé about keeping this stuff secret, but even I still recognize that it's bad form to out someone else. I believe that the human population would be better off if they knew about magic and monsters just for safety's sake, but I don't want to point to specific individuals.

"Uh, hey," Alec said cautiously.

"Hey," I answered in kind.

"I'm kind of busy, but we should talk about this later, yeah?" he said. It sounded curiously like an order.

"Yeah," I replied as he walked off. I noticed that a lot of the others in the market parted in front of him, although I couldn't tell if they did so out of fear or respect. Maybe he had the magic equivalent of leprosy.

I stepped away from the blacksmith and headed to Farnsworth's. I was starting to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the unusual environment underground, and the revelation about my bartender was just making it weirder. All I wanted now was to see what Farnsworth knew and then get the hell back to my comfortable existence.

#  Chapter Five

A small bell chimed over the door as I entered the apothecary. Inside it looked like a pharmacy straight out of the Wild West. It was a cramped space not much bigger than a walk-in closet, full of shelves with lots of brown glass bottles containing powders and unmarked pills. There were also a bunch of unfamiliar dried plants and herbs, plus more than a few desiccated animal parts I didn't want to examine too closely. What I assumed were the more expensive supplies were protected behind glass cabinets, including a selection of equipment: scales of varying sizes, tweezers, scalpels, scissors, and some that I couldn't put a name to, most available in different materials including gold and a variety of woods. Prices were written in dollars and an unfamiliar monetary currency with a symbol that looked like a simple crown, written as a shallow arch with five spikes out the top of it. Based on the relative pricing, the crown was worth a heck of a lot more than my cash.

Drawn by the sound of the bell, the shop's proprietor pushed aside a curtain behind the counter. He was hunched-over in a loose burgundy robe, humanoid but with skin the texture and color of a freshly plucked chicken waiting for the oven and no visible hair anywhere. The tip of his hooked nose looked like it was melting off. His dangling earlobes were pierced with several thick golden rings.

"Are you Farnsworth?" I asked cautiously.

"Yes," he answered with equal caution, eyeing me quickly as he tried to figure out where I fit into the magical community. "What can I do for you today? If you're looking for tonics and potions, my selection is small. I mostly deal in raw ingredients. Not for dabblers."

I shook my head to dismiss his concern. "Actually, I was hoping you could give me some information. Elliot said you might have a lead for me."

One hairless eyebrow rose. "Any friend of Elliot's is a friend of... well, not _mine_ , but he is one of my best customers. What can I help you with?"

"I'm looking for a Hand of Glor—" I started before Farnsworth cut me off.

"I don't deal in that kind of thing, and I'm offended that Elliot would think I do," Farnsworth said, his voice rising sharply. "Frankly, I'm shocked he's helping you with that at all."

"No, no!" I said, raising my hands in protest. "That's not what I meant! A Hand of Glory was used on me the other night and I'm trying to track down who did it. Elliot just thought you might be tapped into what's happening down here and have a better idea of where it came from."

Farnsworth gave me a long and searching look before speaking again. "I'd like to help you, but I really don't deal in that stuff. That's human body parts, and not a lot of good medicine gets made from human flesh."

He saw my gaze wander to a jar above his head, which contained, as far as I could tell, several dozen pickled human toes. "Those were freely given," the shopkeeper snapped tersely. "A Hand of Glory is entirely different. There's enough bad energy around that sort of thing to get all kinds of the wrong sort of attention. Best case scenario would be the Wardens breathing down your neck."

I'd heard of the Wardens, but never encountered them myself. They're the closest thing the Unseen community has to police, dealing rather harshly with anyone or anything that threatens to break the secrecy that has kept magic hidden from mundane eyes for centuries. I'd always thought they must do a pretty crappy job of it actually, given how much information is out there anyway, but I guess they don't take too much interest in things that humans are eager to disbelieve. Which I figure is why they leave me alone: everyone just thinks I'm crazy anyway.

"What's the worst case scenario?" I asked Farnsworth.

"That's obvious. Making a Hand of Glory is dark blood magic, and with that you always run the risk of calling demonic attention."

"So to sum up," I said, sighing as the continued silence after this pronouncement forced me to realize this was all the information I was going to get, "you can't help me. Is there anything you can tell me? Anyone you can point me at who knows more?"

Shaking his head, Farnsworth answered. "It's for the best. The sorts of people who use these things are bad news. It's a tool for thieves and assassins. Just be glad your throat wasn't slit while you were under its spell and let it go."

My frustration crashed against a heavy tide of exhaustion and suddenly I was just done. With a halfhearted "thanks" over my shoulder, I was through the door and looking for a way out of the bazaar. I cast about for a second without seeing an obvious exit sign, then gave up and went to find the golem-cum-doorman.

"I took a roundabout way here," I told him. "Can you tell me the fastest way to street level?"

He nodded, pointing. "Go left and take the first door on your right."

I followed his directions and wound up climbing a staircase so steep it was almost a ladder, which spat me out into a little alley right off Pioneer Square. I was surprised to see that it was getting dark. Guess I'd spent more time underground than I thought. No wonder I was so exhausted.

* * *

As much as I wanted to go home, have a beer, and borrow one of Charlie's videogames for the evening, there was still one nagging question about the restaurant I might be able to get answered.

I hoofed it a few blocks back into the International District towards King Wok. As I approached the block itself I slowed, keeping an eye out for my old friends with the panel van, but the vehicle was nowhere in sight. In a way that was not reassuring, given that at this point only the most mentally deficient of ne'er-do-wells would still be using it and they could have switched to any of the other vehicles lining the streets. But I couldn't see anyone suspiciously sitting in any of the parked cars, trucks, or vans, so I took a deep breath and walked down the rest of the street to the restaurant.

As one more bit of caution I hung around the front door for a while, pretending to fiddle with my phone while I watched for anyone who might try to ambush me. But after a few minutes of this I got impatient and used my loaned key to get inside.

"Hello?" I called out, just in case someone was lurking. I needed to talk to Henry and was kicking myself for not getting a phone number or some other form of contact information.

I wandered back out onto the street and looked up at the building. Like everything else in the area, there were apartments above the ground floor, but I couldn't see a door at street level. Sighing, I went back in the restaurant and through the kitchen, then out the back door into a little loading area with a padlocked steel gate to the street next to a rickety wrought-iron stairway to the next level.

I went up to the second floor and checked the door there, but could see no buzzer or resident names. Shrugging, I knocked.

It wasn't long before I heard shuffling feet and the door opened to reveal a worse for the wear Henry. He was dressed in black slacks—I suspected they were the same pair he'd been wearing Tuesday night—and a lived-in white tee shirt. Going by the wispy beard beginning on his chin he hadn't shaved since the robbery either.

His eyes brightened a little at the sight of me. "Ah! Mr. Severn! Have you found anything out?" I noticed that his accent seemed much lighter than when we'd spoken before. An act to enhance the authenticity of the restaurant, I suppose.

"A little," I said cautiously. "But I was actually hoping you could answer a question for me."

Henry's eyes went wary. "Yes?"

I decided to just go for jugular. "What's so special about your restaurant that someone would use magic to steal from it?"

His brows furrowed and he slammed the door in my face. I could hear more feet approaching the door and a heated conversation just inside conducted in Chinese. I waited. After a few moments the door opened again, and Henry had been replaced by the jolly head cook.

"Hello, Mr. Severn," he said pleasantly in heavily accented English. "My name is Seng Wen Hong, the Chef of King Wok. Would you please accompany me to my restaurant?"

"Of course," I said, matching his friendly tone. My enthusiasm wasn't fake, he had an aura about him that put me instantly at ease.

The stairs were narrow so I had to retreat ahead of him, and they creaked unsettlingly under his weight, but at the bottom I let him lead the way. "Are you and Henry brothers?" I asked. "You both have the name Seng," I clarified.

He laughed brightly, the sound somehow both light and hearty. "We are brothers of a sort. 'Seng' means 'monk'."

We went into the kitchen and he offered me a seat on a high stool while he turned his back on me to rummage about in the shelves. "The police said they would put everything back where they found it, but that was not true. My spices are all mixed up, and for some reason they switched the pots and pans. They are in bad places now. Not convenient at all."

I shrugged. "They're not cooks, they're cops."

Wen Hong stopped and seemed to mull that over before nodding and putting a wok on the range, igniting the burner with a long match. "It is nearly dinner time. Would you like some food?"

"Yes, thank you," I said.

He opened up the fridge, removed a variety of vegetables, and laid them out on a cutting board in front of me. "These vegetables are not the freshest anymore. We've been closed for a few days, after all. But they are still good enough, I think. Do you mind?"

"No, that's fine," I said.

He went to work with the kind of knife skills that would cause a mugger to back off. "Henry thinks I should not tell you some things," he said casually. "He thinks you ask dangerous questions." He tossed some thin noodles into a small pot of water over the stove, the heat on so high flames licked around the sides.

My curiosity was running rampant, I could tell there was something going on here. Something big. Something important. "I just asked what's so special about this place that someone would use magic to rob it. I think knowing that would help me find out why they robbed it. But if you don't want to tell me, I can leave it alone. I can give up, or try to find out what happened without knowing that, if your secrets are really that important to you."

He threw the veggies in the pan after a squirt of oil and tossed them. "I think I will tell you a story."

I waited patiently. Saul could sometimes use a similar tone when he was teaching me something, the whole "I'm older and wiser than you" thing, which is not entirely as irritating as it sounds when you can tell it's true.

"When there was no world, all was chaos and darkness." He kept cooking while he talked, tossing the veggies high into the air and catching them in the pan again, then pulled the noodles out of the water and added them. "In that darkness was an egg." Wen Hong pulled an egg from the fridge with a flourish, followed by a self-deprecating smile at his hokey theatricality. "Inside the egg, Pangu the giant slept and grew. He grew and grew and grew until the egg could no longer contain him, and it broke." At this he cracked the egg on the countertop and dropped its contents into the pan, stirring vigorously. "Now the lighter parts of the eggshell floated up and became the sky, and the heavier parts floated down and became the earth, and Pangu himself died, and his body became the water, the wind, the four directions, the stars, and many other things."

He dished our food into two bowls and handed me one along with a set of chopsticks. He pulled up another stool and sat facing me in the cramped space, waiting for me to take a bite.

When I did and murmured in appreciation he smiled gratefully before continuing. "Now, as important to everything as Pangu is, in this story, the important thing is the eggshell. For not all of it became the earth and the sky. One tiny part stayed an eggshell. That tiny piece of eggshell had everything in it, in a way. All the magic of creation and life that was the birth of the world, and all the chaos and darkness that the egg once lived in. The eggshell was passed down and protected by mystics and warriors since the dawn of man, and my Order have protected it until now, for that eggshell is what was stolen the other night."

He stood and went to the far wall to pull aside a poster advertising an old tour of shaolin monks. Behind it was a simple safe, the door just slightly ajar. Pulling it open, Wen Hong revealed the bare interior.

"When the police asked," Wen Hong said, "Henry told them that it contained money the thieves had taken, but it had something much more important. It had power."

I was nodding. "I don't do magic myself, but I know someone who does. That eggshell sounds like it has a lot of juice."

"And now who knows who holds it," Wen Hong continued sadly. "It is too dangerous to use or destroy, so it must be kept hidden. I told Henry to let you help us because it cannot remain out in the world. And I sense that you are the one to find it."

"I hope you're right," I said humbly. I stood and went in for a closer look at the safe. Inside it was clean and empty. "Did you have any kind of magic protection to hide it?"

Wen Hong shook his head. "The shell mostly contains itself, barely any power leaking out. And magic, even that meant to conceal, can be detected by those powerful enough. We felt it better to hide in plain sight. Nothing worth stealing at a simple restaurant."

"How do you think they found out it was here, then?" I prompted.

For the first time, Wen Hong's unflappable façade cracked. "That is my fault. We have a rule about how long we will stay in one place. The longer it is in one place, the greater the magic around the shell becomes, and the easier it is detected. But I grew complacent here. We should have left years ago. Someone sensed the power of the shell and found us."

I looked away from the safe and glanced around the kitchen, working the new information into my worldview, trying to see this place as a secret refuge for mystics. It still just looked like a kitchen. "How many monks are there?"

"Only five," he replied. "Henry, the rest of the kitchen staff, and myself."

"And you're the leader?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Then why aren't you the manager; why Henry?" I asked out of curiosity.

A smile crept back across his lips. "I like to cook. In another life, I think I would have been a chef for real."

"Maybe you should keep pretending to be one anyway," I offered. "When you move again, or even if we never find the shell. Enjoy yourself as much as you can. You're certainly good at it."

Wen Hong shook his head sadly. "I do not think I could allow myself the pleasure if the shell were not returned. I would not deserve it."

"I will do my best to find it for you," I said, solemn as the weight of the task I had taken on increased by a couple orders of magnitude.

* * *

I was bone tired by the time I got on a bus back up the hill. I'd had a full day of police interaction, rubbing elbows with monsters, and magical revelations, with a whole lot of walking and bus travel thrown into the mix, and more than anything I wanted some normalcy. The bus route took me within spitting distance of Amy's building, and it was by sheer force of will that I refrained from hopping off the bus to ring her bell and see if she'd be willing to have me over a day early.

The bus dropped me a few blocks shy of Broadway and I started my walk uphill. My path passed the Study, and I stopped to look in through the window. Alec was back behind the bar, filling a pint glass with stout as if he was a normal guy, not someone I'd seen arguing with an insect-man in the Seattle Underground. I must have stood there looking too long, because his head swiveled up like he could sense my gaze. He gave me an appraising look through the window before jerking his head in a move that was less an invitation and more a command.

_Shit,_ I thought. _Guess the day's not over yet._

I stepped inside and Alec nodded at an empty corner booth. I obediently had a seat while he pulled two pints of amber and came to join me.

I was about to speak when he held up a hand for silence. He pulled a heavy, shield-shaped talisman from the pocket of his denim vest and plunked it on the table. It looked like it was made of pig iron, and was shaped like a coat of arms: a knight with a lance spearing a writhing dragon in a heraldic art style with seven stars across the top. Alec tapped it twice. Suddenly there was ozone in the air, and I figured some mild magic had just been cast.

"There," he said. "We can talk freely now. No one will hear us."

I peered down at the talisman. "Nice," I said. "Can you get those locally?"

"You mean, does Elliot make them?" That caught me off guard, but then Elliot was a regular at the Study. It shouldn't have surprised me that a member of the Unseen community like Alec would know about Elliot's profession. "No, this is a badge of office."

I thought about who might have a magical badge of office for a moment. "You're a Warden?"

Alec nodded. "And you're... something. I've never met someone quite like what you are. I'm curious."

Shrugging, I answered, "I have a knack for encountering weird stuff. There's nothing special about me besides my strange ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when magic is concerned."

"Oh," Alec replied. "I've heard about people like you."

"People like me?" I asked, curious.

"Yeah." The flatness of his tone made it clear that Alec had no more to say on the subject. "So what were you doing down in the Shadow Bazaar?"

"You remember I told you I'd been robbed the other night? Well, I was eating at a restaurant when someone lit up a Hand of Glory."

"You were at King Wok? I didn't know you were there."

"Are you looking into it?" I asked hopefully. If the Wardens were involved maybe I could get some help.

Alec shook his head. "Not really our area. The normal police will do their best to take care of this."

"What do you mean, 'not your area'?" I demanded indignantly. "Someone uses a magic artifact to knock out a whole restaurant and a little old lady drowns in her soup and you guys aren't interested?"

Looking at me like I was a child that needed scolding he pointed one thick finger at his badge on the table. "You see the knight on this thing killing the fucking dragon? That's what we do, Jack, we slay dragons. Or werewolves. Or vampires if they make too much noise. We're all about keeping people from knowing about magic, but the cops will come up with some story all on their own. This doesn't need my help."

I sighed. "So... are you going to ice me for telling people about magic?"

At this Alec raised an eyebrow at me over his pint glass. "How many people have you told about the Unseen?"

"Um, just a couple," I said, suddenly realizing how much trouble I might be in. "Not too many people. I really only tell someone when it comes up naturally. My roommate, but I think that's only fair given how dangerous living with me can be. And this girl I just started seeing, but she was a waitress at the restaurant too, so it seemed reasonable. And... there's this police detective?"

Alec's expression had grown steadily more exasperated as I went on. "A cop? Seriously?"

"Well, dead bodies and general destruction keep showing up around me! I had to give her some kind of reason. It's not like she believes me. She just thinks I'm nuts."

He rubbed his palm over his closely-cropped hair. "Okay, stop fucking telling people! I'll be sending this up the line, and I'll try and put in a good word for you, but for now, consider yourself on probation. I mean, it's not likely that you've single-handedly dragged us out of the closet, but knock it off. We like to keep things on the down low. Besides, it makes you look mentally ill. You're lucky your waitress didn't run screaming to the hills."

"Thanks," I said, taking a drink myself. "I think." The thought of the Wardens being pissed off at me was troubling, but, hey, one problem at a time. "So, even though you're not officially investigating it, any chance you could help me figure out what's going on?"

"Tell you what," Alec said, leaning in across the table. "I'm not going to go knocking any doors down for you, but if there's anything I find out that can help you, I'll pass it on. What do you know so far?"

I laid out the basics in broad strokes, and saying it all out loud to fresh ears made me realize how little I'd managed to put together. Basically the whole story so far was just that a Hand of Glory from who knows where had somehow fallen into the hands of Seattle's least capable street gang.

"And you don't know why they'd knock over King Wok?" Alec asked.

I shook my head. Seng Wen Hong had made me promise not to tell anyone what they'd been hiding and I didn't intend to, even if it was a Warden asking. "More evidence that these guys are idiots. Maybe they're big Pulp Fiction fans and really bought into that whole 'restaurants are great robbery targets' bit."

"Yeah, maybe," Alec nodded. "Well, there is one thing I can do to help. I know a little something about Hands of Glory. Not a lot, mind you, but some. Farnsworth was right when he said they were tools for thieves, but it's more than that. The materials and rituals needed to make those things are intense. I mean, if Elliot had the inclination I'm pretty sure he could make one, but that's the scale of power we're talking about here. You're not going to get some dabbler in a walk-up apartment churning these out. I've heard that the Thieves Guild has a few sorcerers who make this kind of thing for them, but only rarely, and they keep them well guarded, saved for especially difficult scores."

There was a long pause before I asked, "The Thieves Guild? There is such a thing? Like, in modern day anywhere?"

"Shit," Alec said, grimacing. "I didn't realize how little you know. Yeah, they're real, though nothing like what you're probably imagining."

I reached for my beer again, feeling the growing throb of that special kind of headache that only comes from learning too many weird facts in too short a time period.

He continued, "The Thieves Guild does hire out their services to wealthy patrons, but we're not talking about medieval cutpurses or Victorian urchin pickpockets. They're closer to cold war spies. Normal seeming people from all walks of life who just happen to also steal things."

"Well," I hazarded, "that's not too weird."

"No," Alec agreed, "It's not. But it's what they steal when no one's paying them that's really interesting. See, they're not exactly in it for monetary gain. The Thieves Guild has more in common with a cult than a crime syndicate. They steal to appease their master."

He paused, so I asked the question he seemed to expect. "This ought to be good. Who's their master?"

"He goes by many names," the Warden answered, spinning the yarn like we were sitting around a campfire instead of a pressboard bar table. "Mr. Magpie. Sneaky Jay. John Coots. But his most common name is Black Jack Daw. He's ancient. Faerie, demon, or something else entirely, I couldn't tell you. His followers bring him precious things, glittering jewels, and magic artifacts in tribute, and in turn he grants them powers to hide in the shadows and slip through locked doors."

"If the three yahoos I beat up last night are members of a magically-enhanced cabal of thieves, then I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer," I stated flatly.

"No argument from me," Alec agreed. "But one way or another, it's a good bet the Thieves Guild are involved, and their boss is scary shit."

"Have you gone after them?"

He looked at me like I was a moron. "No, and for two reasons. One, the Thieves Guild is the very definition of what we Wardens like: quiet, unobtrusive, and wholly devoted to going unnoticed. Two, I don't want their ageless, avian thief god to decide my innards should be part of his treasure vault."

I finished my beer as a way of processing that thought, and then asked, "You don't think the Hand came from some assassins?"

"Nah, it's not really their style," Alec explained. "A Hand of Glory is like a cheat code. Too easy. Assassins are all about proving their skill. Sure, the Thieves Guild is proud of their abilities, but for them it's all about the score."

"So are the Thieves Guild active in Seattle?"

"They're active everywhere," Alec answered. "The more important questions would be: do they have a base here? And was one of their Hands of Glory here? And I unfortunately don't know the answer to either of those."

#  Chapter Six

I spent most of my lunch shift on Friday daydreaming about the upcoming dinner with Amy, which kept my mind off the nonstop deliveries. Friday lunch is Kal's busiest shift. It's the end of the week, and people are tired, lazy, and hungry, so we're constantly running sandwiches to businesses in the area. However, when I nearly biked at full speed into yet another open car door I decided my continued well-being required me to focus more on my riding and less on what Amy might have planned for me that night.

It also reminded me that the last time I'd been making deliveries someone had tried to run me over, so I replaced the daydream with a state of paranoid hyper vigilance that I was unfortunately quite familiar with.

Luckily, my shift ended uneventfully. Perhaps my recent attackers from the Urban Underachievers League had decided I wasn't worth trying to kill and they'd moved on to chasing some other poor sap, riding high on the fat stack of cash they'd surely made in robbing a sparsely packed restaurant on a Tuesday night. Ha ha. I thought it was more likely that they just didn't know I was working today. It did give me a morbid little chuckle to think of them cruising around near Kal's all day yesterday, hoping to squash me and not realizing it was my day off.

I biked home and took a quick shower. It might seem pointless since I was headed straight over to Saul's for training and I'd certainly work up another sweat, but a vampire's nose is highly sensitive so it was the polite thing to do. There was only a little time to relax at home before I grabbed some nicer clothes and stuffed them in my bag, figuring I wouldn't have time to get back up the hill and change before my big date, then I was out the door again and back in the city.

When I reached Saul's building, Safi opened the front door muttering about "doorman" not being in her job description, but apparently Peter was at the store so she just had to suck it up and let me in since Saul wasn't too keen on getting close to the sunlight outside.

A space on the ground floor was given over to an exercise room, including a large, slightly padded area for sparring in the center. The surrounding wood floors held a rack of free weights, and racks of wooden practice weapons were hung on the walls. It was sort of like stepping into a small slice of Japan, at least in the eyes of someone like me who had never been there. Saul entered in his usual workout gi, whereas I generally favored sweatpants and a tee shirt.

"Walk me through the fight you had Wednesday night," Saul ordered before we began.

I went through it with him, describing the narrow alley, having to keep Amy protected behind me, Chubby and Skinny's first attack, Leader hanging back, and then as much of the final brief bout as I could remember culminating in my surprise kick.

"Where did you go wrong?" Saul enquired after I'd finished.

I paused for a moment, thinking things over carefully. "I did win," I protested, but Saul raised a hand to cut me off.

"I'm not arguing that, but you could have won better if you'd been smarter, and lost much, much worse if 'Chubby' had been smarter. Where did you go wrong?"

I paused and mulled the scene over again before realizing what he wanted me to understand. "I fought the leader for too long. If Chubby had been smarter, he would have gone after Amy while I was distracted. I should have ended the fight faster for her safety."

Saul nodded. "You were lucky. It was smart to hide your skill against the first two, as it let you surprise their leader. However, even had you been on your own, it still would have gone on too long. The best fights are over quickly with you the victor. But when you're protecting someone else, showboating is inexcusable." One eyebrow arched and his mouth quirked in a faint smile. "Were you showing off for her?"

I could feel myself flushing with shame. "Maybe. I didn't really think about it at the time, but I might have been."

"Everyone likes to play the hero," Saul observed. "But a real hero doesn't need to play to a crowd. Did she like it?" This last was said with a sly smile.

"I'm going over to her place for dinner tonight," I admitted.

"Well, at least that worked out for you."

He drilled me brutally on hand to hand for half an hour after that. "Your opponent will not underestimate you again," Saul reminded me after we'd finished sparring. "Next time they may be armed."

And so we had another half an hour of weapons drills, mostly wooden knives but also dowels approximating anything from a baseball bat to a broom handle. This was followed by fifteen minutes of practicing disarming, with Saul holding a fake gun on me while I tried to take it or at least get it pointed away from me before he could pull the trigger.

We took a brief break and I used the time to grill Saul for information on the Thieves Guild.

"I've had dealings with them," he said vaguely, "but that was centuries ago, so I don't have anything current to give you."

"What about their leader?" I pressed. "Isn't he immortal? Have you met him?"

"Black Jack Daw?" Saul shook his head. "I never met him, but you're right to be concerned. The stories of his powers and ruthlessness are chilling."

In my experience, anything a vampire describes as "chilling" should not to be taken lightly.

The last part of the workout was the hardest. What I tend to encounter are monsters of some kind or another, things that can move faster and hit harder than any human could ever hope to. Training a human to fight creatures like vampires is kind of like training a ferret to fight a Volkswagen. But Saul has a method. Basically, he uses his super speed and strength to beat me up. For our earlier exercises he'd been fighting with the speed and strength of a fit human, but now he moved faster than any human could ever hope to and didn't pull his punches quite so much.

It was painful. Maybe one time in five I'd manage to block or dodge a strike, and I'd land a blow about as often. That might not sound like a lot, but I felt pretty good about it considering my rate used to be never.

Saul's method was based on the idea that the mind perceives a lot more than it actually processes, and that with enough repetition he could train my body to automatically fight back against a stronger, faster opponent. Really, it's the same kind of idea behind most martial arts training, just against a much tougher foe.

When we finished I rubbed a sore spot on my ribs. "This is going to bruise in the next hour, I'm sure of it," I complained.

"And if she gets your shirt off she'll think it's from your heroic battle the other night," Saul replied, grinning. "At least I avoided your face."

When I'd showered again and dressed for my date I came out to find that Saul had spilled the beans about my plans to Peter and Safi. They were gathered in the kitchen, enjoying mugs of the exotic herbal tea the vampire liked.

"You're going in that?" Peter said, giving my outfit a contemptuous once-over.

"Yeah," I said, looking down at my clothes. A scarlet cotton shirt over jeans, similar to what I'd worn on the previous date.

"A woman invites you into her home and that is how you dress?" Saul asked incredulously.

"The only time I get more formal than this is if I'm going to a wedding or somebody died," I said defensively. "I don't really have anything between this and formal wear."

"You need slacks and a jacket, if not a tie," Saul rebutted.

"I'm going to dinner at a twenty-something woman's apartment, not high tea with the Queen."

"You need a white dress shirt and a tie, but you can keep the jeans," Peter countered.

Usually I think Peter has the dress sense of a hipster at Burning Man, so his stance was particularly surprising. "This is not a negotiation," I said, closing my eyes in exasperation.

"I'm sure I have a suit that would fit you somewhere," Saul offered.

"No!" I shouted in exasperation. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but Safi, can you please talk some sense into them?"

"None of your suits would fit him properly, Saul," she said, surprising me by actually coming to my defense. "And Peter... none of your clothes look right on anyone, including you. The fact of the matter is that this girl seems to like Jack, possibly due to undiagnosed brain damage. I'm sure the clothes he's wearing will only be of minor concern to her as long as they are clean and reasonably presentable, which these are. Dressing him up would just be gilding the... well, lily is really the wrong flower. What's something more common than that? A dandelion?"

"Okay, that's enough. Thank you, Safi," I said, frowning. "Sort of."

"But," Safi continued as I headed for the door, "for god's sake leave your backpack here. She'll think you're being incredibly presumptive as to her intentions, even if she is already planning on having you spend the night. Bad enough she has to go on a date with you, don't insult her as well."

"Oh, um, yeah. Thanks," I said, sheepishly dropping it on the floor of the hall closet.

I spent the bus ride up the hill trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach. By the time I reached Amy's building and pushed the button next to "22 Sun" written in faded pencil, I had almost managed to bring them under control, but her voice over the tinny speaker brought them back with friends.

"Hello?" her voice echoed out.

"It's me, Jack."

An ancient buzz sounded as the lock clicked. I pushed the door open quickly and walked down the hall to the stairway. The building had probably been really nice at one time. There was old marble under the rug, but the varnish on the wood fixtures was scuffed and faded, and there were chips out of the banister as I went up to the second floor.

I knocked on the door for number 22 and heard a distant, "It's open!"

An optimistic rental ad would describe Amy's apartment as cozy, but in all honesty it was just small. It was a simple studio apartment with a small bathroom, small kitchen, and a small everything else. Amy's well-to-do past was evidenced by a few nice bits of decoration and some high-end electronics that were a couple years out of date, but mostly it looked like any apartment housing a recent college student: posters for bands I was vaguely familiar with, a closet with the sleeve of a peach blouse peeking through the crack between door and wall, and the requisite cheap and used couch. There was a bookshelf packed with novels and old textbooks, the spines of which were largely obscured by knickknacks, candles, and photos of a smiling Amy with her friends.

The real Amy poked her head around the corner that separated the kitchen from the living area and gave me a quick smile before turning back to the stove where she had some pasta and tomato sauce going. She'd dressed down a little bit from the other night, and under her apron was a red tank top and fitted jeans over socks.

"Should I take my shoes off?" I asked.

"Please," she answered. "And you can leave your jacket on the couch. Sorry that dinner's nothing special. There's a reason I'm a waitress and not one of the cooks."

_You don't know the half of it,_ I thought as I slipped my shoes off, but only said, "No problem. I'm in the same boat."

"Would you open the wine?" she asked, nodding her head at the bottle.

"Sure." The label had a stylized marsupial on it and wasn't identified as anything more specific than a sweet red blend, which was fine by me. I've never been able to distinguish a good wine from a bad one, and I've never had any real preferences around what to pair with any given meal.

I swung around her in the narrow kitchen and poured moderate portions for both of us before Amy nicked the bottle out of my hand to splash a little into the sauce. I noticed that despite her self-deprecating statements the mess in the kitchen indicated it had been made from scratch, not just poured out of a jar.

"Is there anything else I can help with?" I asked, groping for something to say.

"No," she said without turning, then after a pause, "actually, two things." She turned away from her cooking to bend in and give me an eager kiss, holding a hand between us so I wouldn't get tomato sauce on my clothes. "And would you mind plating the salad?" she added, waiving a hand at the fridge after we'd pulled apart.

After finding a plastic bag of greens in the bottom of her fridge and a bottle of dressing in the door I grabbed some space on the little card table that dominated the living area. By the time I'd finished getting the salad onto the plates the pasta was ready, and Amy and I danced around each other as she drained it and then brought the pot out to serve. Once that was finished she turned on some music, something smooth and popular and utterly forgettable. "The walls are paper thin," she explained. "I'd rather my neighbors hear something garbled and masked than my actual private conversations."

A few minutes later we were sitting in folding chairs opposite each other, throwing giddy smiles over our meal.

"So," I said after swallowing another bite of salad, "is the restaurant opening up again soon?"

Amy struggled to chew and get her own mouthful out of the way to answer. "Henry called me this morning. He said we'll be opening tomorrow night for dinner."

"That's good," I said, thinking of old Wen Hong. No sense staying closed, it would only cause more questions to be asked. Or maybe he just liked cooking enough that he wanted to get back to it, despite what he'd told me about feeling too guilty to take it up again.

"Tell me about it," Amy replied. "I can't afford to miss out on any more days of work. I don't want to have to dip into my college fund."

We had a few more bites in silence before she continued. "What about you? Have you found anything out about what happened? Do you know why they robbed the restaurant?"

"Not much new," I said. I didn't like lying to her, but I was beginning to worry about how dangerous this could get. Alec's warnings about the Thieves Guild had me a little spooked. If a character as shady and scary as Black Jack Daw was wrapped up in this, I didn't want to get any civilians more involved than I had too. And really, it wasn't even much of a lie. I still had no idea what a bunch of street thugs wanted with an ancient magical power source. "I did get my wallet back, though," I added absently.

"Oh, yeah," Amy said. "Me too. I picked it up this afternoon."

"Yeah, I heard that they dumped them close to the restaurant, which was a mildly intelligent option as that didn't leave a clue about where they went afterwards. Of course, they could've done the smart thing and burned them. Or thrown them in Puget Sound."

Amy frowned and considered that for a moment. "I don't mind them taking a short cut, though. I hate going to the DMV. And my purse was expensive."

Laughing, I said, "Yeah, their foolishness is our gain." I leaned one elbow against the table and it wobbled a little alarmingly.

"Don't worry," Amy said, waving her hand nonchalantly. "I've put heavier things than your arm on this table and it hasn't collapsed yet."

"You've had it a while?" I asked.

"A few years," Amy answered, nodding. "I need to save all the space I can in a place this small, hence the futon," she added, pointing to the couch with her fork.

We ate in silence for a few moments before Amy prompted me, "So if you've got nothing new in the investigation, what do we talk about?" she teased.

"Whatever normal people talk about?" I hazarded.

We finished our meal with safe, mundane talk. I didn't want to ask more about Amy's family, since that seemed like a touchy subject for her, but I answered the standard questions about myself: grew up in Wisconsin, moved out to Seattle when I was eighteen for school and the usual change of scenery, family still lives in the Badger State.

"What's your degree in?" she asked.

"I actually didn't graduate," I answered with a sigh. "I'd barely started my second quarter when forces outside my control—forces with tentacles and fangs—precipitated an early departure. So there's something else we kind of have in common."

We compared favorite movies, books, and TV shows with a reasonable amount of overlap while we cleared the dishes and folded up the table and chairs. Eventually, we ended up sitting on the couch next to each other, our knees touching.

We kissed hungrily but awkwardly, holding our wineglasses out to avoid spilling them, my other hand pulling her close by the back of her head, hers gripping the nape of my neck. As we pulled apart Amy handed me her glass. "Can you put these in the kitchen?" she asked breathlessly. "I'll make it a little cozier in here."

I found a safe place for the glasses and turned to find Amy gathering enough candles to light an entire monastery. They ranged from little tea lights to big votives, in colors all across the spectrum, including one musty puce number that proved I'd never be able to predict what girls liked. She propped open a window and then lit them. When she'd finished she turned to look at me, an expression on her face that was either nervous or giddy or somehow surprised, I couldn't be sure. We placed the candles artfully through her apartment before hitting the lights, bathing the room in a soft, warm glow that did an excellent job of making everything feel romantic. She was breathtaking in the subtler light, seeming somehow softer.

The break in the action created an unexpected wall of awkwardness, and once everything was ready we stood in the middle of the living room for a moment staring at each other.

"Better music!" Amy suggested abruptly. She went and fiddled with her mp3 player until the smooth R&B went away and was replaced by something that sounded like a cross between trance and those videos people watch to induce lucid dreaming. A perfect make-out soundtrack.

She turned back to face me, biting a little corner of her lip with a slightly nervous look. "Sorry I'm a little off," she apologized. "I wasn't necessarily planning on getting this far tonight."

"It's okay," I soothed. "We can talk more or..." But I never figured out what I was going to say next, because Amy flung her arms around my neck and pulled me down onto the couch, her legs wrapping around me as we laid back.

The couch was far from the best place for a first time in a new relationship, but we made it work, pulling clothes off each other and laughing as we barely avoided rolling onto the floor. When we'd finished we laid in a sweaty pile on the cushions for a while.

"You brought condoms to our second date? Confident much?" she teased.

"Well, you know," I said, shrugging lamely. "Scout motto: be prepared."

One perfect black eyebrow raised at me. "You were a scout?"

"No, but that doesn't mean I can't admire their ethos."

She got up to retreat into the bathroom and I drifted in a pleasant post-coital stupor until she came back. I made my own foray to the bathroom to clean up, and when I came back she was bent over the couch, now folded out as a bed, adjusting the sheets and giving me a view so inviting that I just had to take advantage of it. After that digression she made me blow out the candles while she finished getting the bed in order.

Her bed was surprisingly comfortable given that it was a futon, but I would have been happy to sleep on a pile of chipped cobblestone with her. I fell asleep on my back, Amy's head pillowed on my chest and one leg thrown over mine.

#  Chapter Seven

I'm not sure which of us woke the other up, but it ended in a predictably enjoyable manner. As much as we would have loved to stay in bed all Saturday and make each other miss work, we did the responsible thing and got up. We shared a relatively chaste shower where she marveled at the impressive collection of scars I've managed to accumulate before I hit the road.

Later that day I was at home relaxing after another uneventful shift at work. A few more days of normalcy and I might forget someone was trying to kill me. I was wondering what my next step would be in the King Wok Pangu Eggshell Investigation when my phone rang to answer that question for me.

"Hello?" I answered tentatively, again not recognizing the number.

There was a pause before I heard Detective Bidarte's voice. "So, Mr. Severn..." she began, in a tone that was shockingly unhostile. Some might even have called it friendly, though I knew better than to think so. "You said something about a hand-something the other day?"

"A Hand of Glory, yes," I said cautiously.

"And you said it's made from the hand of a murderer?" she continued. It sounded like she was having trouble even entertaining this line of thought, let alone carrying on a conversation about it.

"Yes..." I said, a suspicious feeling forming in my gut.

There was a long exhalation on the phone. "Are you available to take a look at something for me?"

* * *

The sky was getting dark by the time I locked my bike to the rack at Harborview Hospital, a multi-block compound that from the right angle reminds me of the Hell portal building from the original Ghostbusters. I spent my time dragging my feet to the entrance, not eager to enter as there are few places as full of weird energy as a hospital.

Sure, you can find all sorts of restless spirits at the site of a major battle, war crime, or other random atrocity, but if you want really bad, concentrated juju head to the biggest, oldest hospital in the area. Lots of people currently scared and dying there. Lots of victims of violent crime meet their final end there. Lots of pain and fear and anger and death. Which is not to say that good things can't happen in hospitals as well, it's just that they don't leave as much mystic residue around as the bad stuff.

Finding the main lobby was a nightmare. Harborview has about a dozen more entrances than I think it actually needs, so I wandered the corridors aimlessly for a while dodging gurneys, doctors, and cold spots that I'm sure most people mistake for malfunctioning AC. Finally I came up behind Detective Bidarte, who was looking out the double glass doors I'd apparently missed when I approached the building from the "wrong" side.

She jumped when I cleared my throat behind her. "You're late," she said testily.

"You've got a funny way of greeting someone doing you a favor," I shot back in the same tone. My accidental tour had put me on edge.

"Sorry," Bidarte apologized, deflating with a sigh. "Come on, I'll take you to the part of the hospital civilians rarely get to see."

We took a disconcertingly humid and poorly lit staircase down to the warren of tunnels underground, following the signs for "MORGUE".

"Welcome to the morgue," Alize deadpanned as we parted the heavy doors. "Most people only come down here if they work here, know someone on the slab, or are dead themselves, so count yourself lucky."

"You're right. I'd hate to be working."

This earned a scowl from her as we continued down the hall.

The morgue was quiet as the grave, appropriately. The only sound was a low background humming from an industrial refrigeration unit on the other side of the wall which I felt more than heard. One disinterested desk jockey barely gave us a passing glance when Alize flashed her badge. We crossed through another set of doors to the inner sanctum, the realm of the dead. Personally, I found it a lot more pleasant than the hospital itself, the psychic background is a lot weaker since no one actually dies down here.

She pushed us through a heavy door into a room chilled to keep the corpses preserved while they're out of the fridge. It looked exactly like any morgue you've seen on TV: One wall a grid of doors holding the recently deceased, a few stainless steel tables and a lot of cabinets. One corner was awkwardly roped off with police tape, including an autopsy table and large utility sink.

"This is a busy hospital," Alize explained. "We can't really shut down the whole morgue, so once we'd finished dusting for prints we had to let the doctors have most of it back."

"So what exactly happened?" I asked. Alize hadn't told me anything over the phone, saying she didn't want to bias me before I saw the scene.

Instead of answering, Alize walked over to the wall of coolers. She pulled one open to reveal a body bag that seemed too flat to hold an actual body. We gloved up before she unzipped it, exposing a scrawny kid who couldn't have been far out of his teens if he was legally an adult at all. I had trouble focusing on any actual features, riveted by the fact that where his left hand should be was now just a raw stump.

"Well, shit," I said flatly.

"Yeah," Alize agreed. "Understand, I think your whole 'mystic hand of sleepiness' idea is bullshit, but I couldn't help but draw the connection when a report came through the precinct about a hand stolen off the body of one of Harborview's less lively guests."

"Who was he?" I asked, leaning in for a closer look at the stump. It wasn't a clean cut by any means, but even to my untrained eye it looked like it had happened post mortem. The black plastic under his sawed off wrist was flecked with little bits of flesh, indicating the hand had been removed while the body was in the bag. If Alize was impressed by my lack of revulsion at the gore, she didn't let on. "He was not a hanged murderer, I imagine?"

"Murderer, yes, but not hanged," Alize agreed. "No one's been hanged in Washington since the nineties, though we are the last state to still have it as an option."

"Well that's... kind of awful," I replied. "So who was he? How did he get here?"

"Harborview handles inmates who need medical care more complicated than the jails can provide, and he got shanked by another guest of the county the other day. He was brought here after being stabilized at the jail, but didn't make it out of surgery."

"And he was a murderer?" I bent over to look at the name on the drawer. "Colin Kincaid? Why does that name sound familiar?"

"You probably heard it in the news," Alize answered. "He was involved in a homicide in Kent. He and a buddy killed a local girl. Anyway, today the morning shift came in and found Colin warming up on the table in the corner, sans hand."

"This morning?" I asked.

"That's right," Alize repeated. "So it happened sometime last night."

"So five days after King Wok," I thought aloud. "This is not the hand that put us to sleep."

" _If_ we lived in the kind of crazy world where that was possible," Alize qualified. "Then yes, this hand was acquired a little late for that."

Her words reminded me how unusual this situation between us was. "As much as I appreciate being in the loop on this," I said warily, "what exactly do you want from me here?"

Alize scowled and glared at the body, too embarrassed to meet my eye. "I don't know. I was hoping you could look at the body or something and tell me if that's why they took the hand."

I rubbed my forehead. "That is not the request of a skeptic," I pointed out.

"Don't throw this in my face," Alize ground out. "All I know is that you mention a hand and almost immediately a hand goes missing. I figure if anyone can think like someone who believes this would work, it's you. I mean, you _are_ someone who believes this would work."

Sighing, I explained, "Unfortunately I'm not really an expert in this side of things. I've read a bit about them, but even if I knew what I was talking about I doubt that I could look at the body and give you a definitive answer. The best I can do is to say that I don't know how effective this hand would be, given that the donor wasn't hanged." I thought about Elliot and his rant about fake wasabi and inferior materials. Would the hand of a shanked co-murderer be as good as the hand of a hanged murderer? Probably not. "Magic can be pretty particular about these little details."

"Well," she answered slowly, visibly shifting gears, "you can also help by coming to look at some surveillance tape with me. See if you recognize anyone." She sounded grateful to be back in comfortable territory with this line of inquiry.

"Yeah, okay," I agreed. We headed back for the stairs. "You get any prints?" I asked when her silence started bugging me.

"Yes, actually," she answered. "Only a handful, but the hospital staff is fanatical about wearing gloves in the morgue at all times and thoroughly washing their equipment after use, so I've got high hopes."

I followed her to a security room where a little station was set up with the footage from around the time of the event. There weren't cameras in the morgue itself, but there was one pointed at the hallway in that gave a pretty good look at anyone passing through the doors. Finding our suspects on the tape turned out to be a fairly quick job, seeing as the area was pretty dead (ha ha) at night.

"So they're not complete morons," I commented. There were two men on camera wearing scrubs and surgical masks, generally a good disguise in a hospital. These two warranted extra attention due to the cooler they were carrying; usually deliveries to the morgue show up on stretchers. The picture was grainy so details were hard to come by. I squinted at the screen for a while before I spoke again.

"These are two of the three who attacked me the other night. That one there was the leader," I pointed at the taller of the two. His pal for this little excursion was Chubby. "It's hard to be absolutely certain, since I never got a great look at them, but the hair looks the same to me. Narrow your fingerprint matching to Asians and maybe it'll speed things up."

"Thanks," Alize said sarcastically. "Any other bits of advice you want to give me, Captain Severn? Remind me, do I put the handcuffs on myself or the suspect? Should I practice on you?"

I could see the moment where she realized the other possible circumstances of that offer, and I did my best to move us past it by sheepishly saying, "Right, sorry." Out of curiosity I sped up the tape to check when they left. In and out in fifteen minutes. "How much planning went into this?" I wondered aloud.

The Detective decided to answer. "I've been wondering that myself. Honestly, the morgue's not hard to get into if you look like you belong. There are a few hours in the middle of the night where there's no desk clerk and anyone bringing a stiff down just does the paperwork themselves. The security guards barely ever come down to check on the place. Net-net, maybe they just got lucky."

"I guess we should be glad they didn't decide to just take a hand from some poor schmuck on the street," I said ruefully. "Then again, maybe that's why they were chasing me."

* * *

The bad aura at the hospital left me feeling tense. I needed something to take the edge off, and I fought the urge to ride my bike down to King Wok and flirt with Amy. Instead I headed up the hill to the Study, where I found Alec, Elliot, and Nora—Elliot's wife—playing an unfamiliar board game.

"We'd play cards," Alec explained as I sat down, "but that could be mistaken for gambling, and that kind of stuff gets your liquor license pulled. Even if I'm on my break, I still have to enforce things like that."

"Besides," Elliot said with a grin, "we'd just be losing all our money to Nora anyway."

"What are you complaining about?" Nora countered. "It's a community property state."

I met Elliot and Nora at about the same time back in my abbreviated college days, before they were an item. Nora could still be mistaken for the art student she'd been at the time. She was willowy and prone to wearing clothes with paint and clay stains on them, and her naturally red hair was cut asymmetrically in a shape that evoked a bird's wing obscuring a third of her classically freckled Irish-American face.

"Anyway," she said, flipping over a card on the table, "you both have to give me all of your bricks."

There were groans as Alec and Elliot complied.

"So how's the big case?" Nora asked me. "Alec was filling us in on what you told him."

Nora is a normal person, her only link to the Unseen being her husband and his associates. And if it tickled Amy to think of me as some kind of supernatural investigator, Nora had flat out decided years ago that that's what I was and acted as such, I think just to annoy me.

So while they continued their game I drank my beer and updated them on recent developments, especially what had happened at the hospital. I was regularly interrupted by a string of confusing double crosses and resource thefts between Elliot and Nora which in a less stable marriage probably would have led to divorce.

"You're right about the hand," Elliot said as he placed a city on the board. "Magic is all in the details, and the one they stole from the morgue will be unpredictable if they can even make a candle out of it at all."

"So how are things with the waitress?" Alec asked when it became clear that was the last word on the matter. "You had that second date yet?"

I could feel a self-satisfied smirk spreading across my face. "A gentleman never tells."

The game paused as all three looked at me.

"One," Nora began, "you are not a gentleman."

"And two," Elliot continued, "that facial expression plus that verbal expression mean only one thing, and it's tantamount to telling."

"It was the rescuing her," Alec asked, "wasn't it?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if it helped," I admitted.

"Man," Alec looked annoyed. "I kill monsters and it gets me nothing since nobody really knows about it. I need to stop a mugger. That would do the trick."

"Have you ever tried to find a mugging in progress?" I asked. "They're rarer than unicorns."

"Let's invite them over to dinner!" Nora chirped to Elliot excitedly.

"Slow down!" I said, my voice jumping an octave. "We're not at the meet-the-friends stage yet!"

Charlie wandered in around that time and we exchanged a look to remind each other that going forward the conversation had to stay mundane. Charlie knew vaguely what Elliot was and that magic and monsters were real, but given my last talk with Alec it was probably best if I showed I was on board with the keep-the-norms-in-the-dark plan.

He skipped a greeting to start with, "You didn't come home last night."

"This gentleman never told," I said to the 'ooooing' trio already at the table, as they pretended this was news to them.

"Why don't you bring her over to our place next time?" Charlie continued. "I could clean up a bit."

"We could clean for a week," I said doubtfully. "Maybe that would be enough."

We whiled away the rest of the evening until I realized I was pouring too many pints on an empty stomach and excused myself from the party. There was usually a good hot dog stand over on Pine, so I rode my bike up the hill a bit and then coasted down a quiet street running south. I had finally unwound the stress from my trip to the hospital, feeling pleasantly tipsy and getting the beer munchies.

The buzz was knocked out of me when I was hit by something out of nowhere, sending me flailing over my bike and knocking my head against the wall of a dark and vacant building that used to house a bookstore. I struggled to get to my feet, one hand reaching behind me for one of my knives and sluggishly wondering if I needed silver or iron, but I couldn't get a hand on either hilt before I was lifted under both arms by two blurry shapes like shadows that had come unattached from their masters, only these were somehow solid and three-dimensional.

The door to the building was opened and I was carried unceremoniously inside. The bookshelves were all shoved against the walls, and I had a great but brief view of the city through the far windows before I was thrown to the ground.

"I will call the Master," said a vaporous voice. I could feel something buzzing in the air as I looked up. I was surrounded by the shadows, at least a dozen of them standing around me in a circle. I couldn't make out much detail on any of them, though. They were like silhouettes out and walking around. That one was tall, that one heavy. Those ones were probably women. That one was wearing a hat.

Suddenly there was someone new in the room standing in the circle with me. He appeared so abruptly that it was either magic or my head had been hit harder than I thought.

He was tall and thin, wearing a black coat that hung to his knees over a black, three-piece suit. A gold watch chain looped into his vest pocket, and on his head was an anachronistic derby hat. He wore the clothes so well that he didn't seem at all out of place. On him it was the most natural outfit to be wearing, even in the twenty-first century. His face was angular, with a mouth that looked a little too wide for his jaw, like it came from someone else.

At his arrival the shadows bowed to one knee and the darkness melted off of them, revealing normal looking people, some well-dressed, others in casual attire. We had also been joined by a great many members of the crow family: crows, ravens, rooks, and, of course, jackdaws. Most perched on the shelves leaning against the walls, though a few hopped casually across the floor, taking little jumps aided by quick flaps of their wings.

"You are poking around in places you don't belong," the newcomer said in a voice that sounded like it belonged in a 1920s radio serial. "Looking into the Hand of Glory. Are you seeking to steal another one? I don't know how you managed to get the first, but further thefts will soon be beyond you."

I had a very good idea of who this was: Black Jack Daw, which would make my abductors members of the Thieves Guild. And it seemed they'd jumped to a very unfortunate conclusion.

"Whoa, no," I protested quickly. "I haven't taken anything from you. I'm trying to _find_ the person who took it."

"Lies," Daw said hotly. "You have been noticed, human. Making enquiries into where to get a Hand, or make a new one."

I spent a brief moment wondering where he picked that up. Did someone squeeze Farnsworth? Then again, I'd been talking about the Hand of Glory often enough, I could have been overheard at any point, and the Thieves Guild struck me as the type to have an extensive information gathering system.

"It's true that I've been asking," I allowed, "but it was just to track down its wielder."

Black Jack Daw moved faster than I could see. Suddenly he was right on top of me, his sharp nose next to my head, taking short, hoovering sniffs. At this distance, the illusion of humanity strained and then broke. He no longer looked like a Victorian gentleman. His skin was pebbled black leather, his nose a sharp, ebon beak. My lapels were gripped by a dark talon.

After a few breathless moments he straightened and the image of normalcy returned.

"The Hand has been used on him," he announced crisply. "Not by him."

There was a faint stirring amongst the assembled thieves. "I am sorry, Master," one said. He was a man in his fifties, steel-gray hair over ruggedly handsome features with dark, heavy eyebrows. He was one of the better-dressed in the crowd, wearing a snug charcoal suit on his stocky frame. "I was misinformed. I thought him to be the thief."

Daw did not look at him, keeping his eyes focused on me. "You jeopardize your position here even further, Matthias. Losing the Hand was bad enough, but now you've wasted time chasing a fruitless lead."

Matthias bent down until his forehead was pressed against the tile floor and remained silent.

"You seek the Hand," Daw said, addressing me again. "Was something of value taken from you?"

"Not really," I answered cautiously. "But no one else was looking into it. So I figured someone had to." This was as much of the truth as I felt I could give without betraying the monks, and this... whatever he was didn't seem like he was interested in anything but the truth.

"It would be very easy to make you disappear," Daw remarked, as if he was making a casual observation on the simplicity of tying shoelaces.

The tight knot of fear in the pit of my stomach slid further down my belly, doing alarming things to my intestines. I summoned all the nihilistic bravado that a life of dealing with monsters had given me. "Well, I've got to go sometime. At least this would be an interesting way to do it."

Daw's eyes narrowed as he studied my face carefully. "I apologize for the inconvenience," he said crisply and waved his hand in a tight circular motion in the air. His acolytes turned to shadows and slipped out the windows and under doors like errant pieces of paper. Daw and I were alone.

He leaned in close to me again and the memory of what he really looked like screamed suddenly inside me. This was not a man, but something else entirely that was wearing a man costume. "I'll be keeping an eye on you," he said, and was gone as fast as he'd appeared.

I sat on the bare floor for a long time, taking deep breaths and trying to force the panic to subside. I thought about calling Elliot or even Alec, who were barely a block away, but decided against it. Even for them this would be batting out of their league. And lord knew I didn't want to drag Charlie and Nora into this. If I was going to go, I didn't want to take anyone with me. Well, except the one doing me in. I'm going after that asshole with everything I've got.

When the sweat on my skin turned clammy, I worked myself up onto shaky legs and went outside to get my bike before someone stole it, then pointed myself towards home. I'd lost my appetite entirely.

I'd barely made it two steps before Matthias was there, walking next to me. "Jesus fuck!" I howled, falling over and dragging my bike down on top of me.

"I'm sorry," he said, offering a hand up.

After a wary moment I stood, not taking his help. "Sorry for scaring me or for setting your demon of a boss on me?"

"He is not a demon!" Matthias said hotly before remembering that he was trying to start a conversation with me. "He is a god. My god. I would appreciate your respect for him."

"Your god threatened to kill me," I countered as I began walking again. "At best I'll give you tolerance, but respect is earned."

Matthias apparently decided not to argue about that, but he tagged along next to me. "I would ask for your help," he said quietly.

I raised an eyebrow at him. "You want my help? Your god seemed to want me uninvolved."

"I do not ask your help for him, I ask it for me," Matthias clarified. I wondered if he was older than he looked or talking like this was a side-effect of hanging around beings like Daw too much.

"Go on," I sighed. If I was going to keep on with this investigation, I might as well hear as much as I could from all concerned parties.

"You may have gathered that the missing Hand is my fault."

"Yeah, I had," I said flatly. If he was looking for sympathy I was not keen to oblige.

"I am the local..." he paused, looking for the right word, "manager of the Thieves Guild for this area. The area in question is all of the west coast and most of the interior of the continent. The Hand of Glory was being transported through my territory when it disappeared. The courier was found dead in an alley in SoDo with the hand missing. The fact that I was mere blocks away at the time is considered further proof of my incompetence."

"They didn't have magical protection?"

Matthias shook his head. "Too much warding is as good as a beacon to those who can sense it. For the same reason, I didn't want to handle the physical transfer myself. We prefer to remain hidden in more subtle ways."

I nodded, reminded of Wen Hong and the monks.

"Please," Matthias said, stopping and turning to face me. "I am in jeopardy. Losing the Hand is... not the first time I have failed him. My only hope to recover from my errors is to find the Hand. Maybe if I lead my master to it, my life will be spared."

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Is your god not a loving god? Have you considered converting to something more welcoming, like the Esoteric Order of Dagon or the Westboro Baptist Church?" In spite of my needling him, I found that I kind of felt sorry for the guy. If nothing else, I could understand being terrified of Black Jack Daw. Frankly, I could probably dig up some empathy for being a general screw up as well.

"Please," Matthias repeated, producing a business card bearing nothing but a phone number and forcing it into my hand.

Slipping it into my pocket, I started walking again. "No promises," I called over my shoulder, but Matthias was already gone.

#  Chapter Eight

I woke up Sunday with a pretty bad hangover. I'd never gotten around to eating and clearly hadn't had enough water either. I stumbled into the kitchen and downed a glass before grabbing a bruised banana and a sports drink. Then I made my way into the living room and plopped down on the couch. From deeper in the apartment I could hear Charlie snoring, a sound not unlike a lumber mill running at full capacity.

The visit from Black Jack Daw and his Thieves Guild had me rattled. Up until now, this had all felt pretty manageable. Fun, even. I'd easily dodged death, gotten to hand a few thugs their asses, and had an exceptional time with a pretty girl. But now there was a new piece on the board. If my friends from the alley were pawns, then Black Jack Daw was a king. A king with the combined might of a queen and knight. A chess master's Frankensteinian nightmare.

Well, one thing was for certain: I was going into lockdown. This was bigger than anything I'd ever gotten wrapped up in before, and I didn't want to drag anyone else into this that wasn't already involved. No more going to the Study or asking Alec and Elliot for help. No more advice from Saul. I couldn't do much about Charlie except hope that Elliot's wards on the house were up to protecting him.

Then there was the question, regrettably, of what to do about Amy.

Psyching myself up like I do before taking really nasty medicine, I called and she picked up on the second ring.

"Jack?" she sounded delighted to hear from me.

"Hi. How was the first night back at work?" I asked lamely, trying to put off the inevitable.

"Slow," she said, sighing. "It turns out people aren't that interested in eating at a restaurant where everyone was mugged and someone died."

"Maybe it'll pick up," I responded. "Get word out to the Goth and Satanist crowds. They'd love it."

"Yeah, maybe," she answered, sounding disinterested in the topic. "So, what are you doing later? I'm working again tonight, but maybe Monday—"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," I interrupted, feeling nearly as nervous as when Daw had materialized in front of me. "I don't think it's a good idea if we see each other for a while."

I'd never really understood how silence could be deafening until that moment. "It's not anything you did," I continued, trying to salvage things. "It's just... something happened last night, and I don't think it's safe to be around me right now."

"Does it have to do with the Hand of Glory? With what happened at the restaurant?" she asked sharply.

"It doesn't matter," I said, not wanting to get into too much detail.

"Yes it does!" Amy shot back. "I'm already involved in this! I was there too. Don't shut me out!"

I sighed heavily. "I'm really sorry, Amy. I don't want to be doing this, believe me. But I don't want to see you get hurt because you're near me. Please, please don't hate me."

"Of course I don't hate you—" she started, trying to stop where I was going with this.

"Then let me do this," I cut her off. "I'll call you again when this is all sorted out. I'd really like to see you again, but it's just not safe right now."

She exhaled shakily. "Fine. You better call me."

"I will," I answered. "Trust me. Goodbye."

"Bye."

Click. Well, not click, but an annoying double beep. Cell phones have ruined dramatic phone conversations.

* * *

I had the lunch shift again and it passed uneventfully, which only pissed me off. I wanted the three stooges to take another stab at me. This time I'd break some of their smaller bones and then beat some fucking answers out of them. Then I'd break some of their bigger bones, giftwrap the three of them in duct tape and hand them over to Black Jack Daw in the hopes he wouldn't tie me off like the loose end he probably thought I was.

My conversation with Amy had put me in a bad mood and I could feel it down to my toes. Because of this shit I would probably lose her.

Honestly, she'd actually seemed to take the whole thing pretty well, but you can never tell how someone's going to feel after they've had some time to themselves. Maybe with a little distance she'd realize that she had better things on her horizon than knocking boots with a no-prospect sandwich deliveryman who could really easily just be a paranoid schizophrenic who only thinks there's such a thing as magic. I mean, she had a return to business school to look forward to, and I had sandwiches and either a padded cell or death by monster in my future. She'd really be better off without me, even without the whole god-out-to-get-me thing.

Oh yeah, I was in a stellar fucking mood all right.

Iris saw my glower and gave me a wide berth throughout the shift, only admonishing me when she caught me throwing sandwiches in my bag like they'd caused me personal injury. When our shifts ended she grabbed me by the arm and took me out into the back alley.

"You okay?" she asked me.

"Not really," I answered.

"What's wrong?"

Iris is not at all aware of the Unseen community, but always seems prepared to accept a certain amount of craziness in the reality she is a part of, so I answered her with some selective truth. "I'm pretty sure some very scary motherfucker is trying to kill me, so I had to tell this girl I like we can't see each other for her sake."

She also has a fairly developed bullshit meter, and when it did not go off she looked at least mildly surprised. "You tell the cops?"

"They're more or less aware of the situation, but are unable to help me." This was stretching the truth a bit, but also seemed to pass.

"Fuck," Iris said in a heartfelt way, throwing one arm around my shoulders, which necessitated a fair amount of hunching over on my part. "Anything I can do to help?"

One more person I don't want involved. But it's the thought that counts. "No. Thanks, though."

* * *

An offer of help from someone completely unqualified to give it was at least enough to kick me out of my funk and have me searching for something to get the investigation moving. I went home and got changed, then started pacing around the empty apartment wondering what to do next. I was out of leads. At this point the only thing I could come up with was to go down to the International District and wander around in the hope that I'd bump into my violent, body-part snatching new friends. Before Iris talked to me I might have been tempted, but now it seemed pointless.

The answer was obvious once my phone rang and reminded me that I wasn't the only one chasing this thing down.

"Hi Detective," I said, going for the diplomatic approach. If I was going to get any information out of her, my best bet was to act like a respectful citizen for a change. "What can I do for you?"

"You can come look at some mugshots for me," she answered.

"Haven't we already tried that?" I asked.

"We have, but this time it's different. Got a hit off that print and I want to see if you know the face."

Hallelujah. "Should I come down to the precinct?"

"No," she said. "There's only so many times in a week I want to be seen with you in the office. Meet me at Apollo's Coffee, the big one on Olive. Eight?"

"I'll be there."

* * *

There was a nip in the air. It still wasn't raining, but fall was turning chilly, forcing me to add some extra layers underneath my jacket, like a hiker or a hobo. I had the time so I walked.

Bidarte had beat me there, so I quickly got my coffee and joined her at a table in the corner. Normally I don't caffeinate after noon, but what the hell, I'd act Italian for a night.

She produced a cheap three-ring binder from her bag and thumbed through it until she came to a page with six mugshots on it. One of them was a match for the print, the others were not. Basically I was looking at a police line-up without the warm bodies part. Cops usually do this because it's cheap and easy, and it's especially helpful when they can't get their hands on a suspect or he's already dead. Fun times.

Anyway, I was looking at six similar doughy Asian guys. I scanned them for only a moment before I spotted Chubby. It was the eyes. In his mugshot he had the same dull-witted look I'd seen when he'd tried to decide whether he should get involved in the fight between his boss and I.

I tapped the photo twice with my finger. "That's your boy."

Alize spun the binder and looked at him, nodding. "Yeah, it is. Marvin Chu. His prints matched up."

"Where's he from?" I asked. It was possible I'd just missed him in the sea of other suspects the other day at the station, but I doubted it. My bet was these boys weren't local, as realistically they were all in the system somewhere.

Alize spent a long time squinting at me before finally giving in and answering. "San Francisco. He was part of a Triad gang in that area."

"Was?"

Alize nodded. "The Feds and local police cracked down on them hard a couple of years ago. It was a long operation, lots of undercover work. Eventually they were able to bring the whole group down, with plenty of RICO charges to go around for the ones they couldn't pin anything specific on. Word got out that arrests were being made, and before you know it a few of the foot soldiers like Chu had disappeared. But the big fish got caught, so no one was getting too worked up about some of the minnows escaping."

"And now he's here in Seattle a few years later, using a Hand of Glory to rob a restaurant," I mused.

Alize apparently decided to ignore that. "And unfortunately his nose has been officially clean up until now. We've got a list of known associates that also escaped the noose, but they've been off our radar long enough that we don't even know where to start looking for them."

"You don't think they've hooked up with the local Triad?" I asked.

Shaking her head, Alize answered, "I'd be surprised. For one thing, we know enough about the local organization that we'd probably hear about it if they'd recruited new blood from out of town. But more importantly, these guys are tainted. They've got warrants out for their arrest from their time in Frisco, and there wasn't a lot of love lost between their group and the Triad up here even in the good old days. So why let them in now? Too much risk for a few low-level enforcers."

I was nodding along as she spoke. Organized crime in Seattle excels at flying under the radar. If you started polling people on the street, you'd find that most Seattleites don't think there's any large-scale criminal activity at all. Those that do know it's there are usually either cops or will break your jaw for asking too many questions. So the Triad wouldn't be too interested in gaining new members that already had a target painted on them.

"Any chance you want to share that list of known associates with me?" I asked hopefully.

"I shouldn't have even told you Chu's name," Alize answered. "No way I'm giving up his friends."

"Then why get me to ID him at all?" I countered. "If you've got his print, what do you need me for?"

"Because his print only links him to the hospital. If you can point the finger at him for assault as well, that's one more charge we get to throw at him at arraignment."

"And the stuff at King Wok?" I asked.

Alize's shoulders slumped a little. "Unfortunately, we can't draw a link between him and that. All we've got is that he went after you, and that could easily be a failed mugging."

"What about the hand they stole?" I asked, annoyed. "They're trying to make another Hand of Glory, obviously."

"To argue that I've got to first establish that they used your magical voodoo device in the first place, and, shockingly, I don't really think I can go to the DA with that."

"No," I said, standing up, surprised at the heat in my voice. "I guess you can't."

I stormed out of Apollo's and into the night, aware that Alize had quickly gathered her supplies and was trying to catch up to me. I walked faster, annoyed, but going to a flat-out run would be ridiculous, so she caught up to me within half a block, putting us in front of some quiet apartment buildings on a side street.

"Severn! Wait!" she said, catching my arm. "What's your problem?"

"You're my problem," I said angrily, feeling like a teenager yelling at a parent. "This shit is getting dangerous, and right now you're my best hope for getting it resolved, but that's not going to happen while you keep pretending magic doesn't exist!"

"I'm not pretending," she responded tersely. "It doesn't."

"Of course it does! You're a cop; you know there's no such thing as knockout gas like in the movies. How else would they have pulled it off? Do you think they'd be off trying to make another Hand of Glory if the first one hadn't worked so well?"

"Even if I did believe," Alize countered, her tone conciliatory, "and that's a big 'if,' I still can't charge someone with using a magical hand to put people to sleep. It's as much a crime as poaching Nessie."

I felt the hot wind draining out of my sails. I wasn't really mad at Alize, and I knew it. I was terrified of Jack Black Daw and this was what a therapist would call transference.

I think Alize could see that, because her eyes softened a bit as she looked at me. "What's wrong? Something's got you seriously spooked, and I don't think I've ever actually seen you scared of anything before. You're usually too stupid for that." Her sympathetic approach left something to be desired.

I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how and if to answer. I was saved from this decision by a fire ball.

It wasn't a big fireball, but it was big enough. It came scorching its way out of an alley across the street like a tennis-ball dipped in kerosene headed straight for Alize's back. Fortunately, fireballs don't move as fast as bullets, so I had time to grab Alize and throw her out of the way. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get out of the way myself, so it hit me square in the chest and sent me flying backwards into the nearby shrubbery.

For anyone else, death by fireball would probably be a pretty novel way to go, but I've actually been hit by a fireball once before. That necessitated a stay in the hospital that was cut mercifully short by a pretty painful healing salve that Elliot had whipped up, as he hadn't learned any healing spells yet. It had been his fireball that hit me, so it was only fair that he try to heal me. His first one, actually, and it had been an accident that it hit me, but damn if he didn't feel guilty about it afterwards. That's probably why he likes to look after me even ten years down the line. Guilt. Heck, I could show him the scar if I felt like milking it.

In any event, my chest was burning and I was prepared for this to be the end. But then I realized that my chest wasn't on fire, although my clothes were. The fireball had gone between the zips of my open jacket and through both layers of shirt underneath, which were smoldering, but my skin was fine other than the burns from my shirts. I frantically beat my flaming clothes out and rolled onto my feet.

Alize had her gun out and was holding it pointed at a figure emerging from the alley. He was thin and pallid, hairless and slightly pointy-eared. He grinned and I could see fangs. A vampire making zero attempt to hide, then. He'd gone all the way with the style, too: black clothes and a tight, knee-length riding coat.

"Hands where I can see them!" Alize shouted, her voice shaking.

The vampire complied, a grin on his face, and conjured a fireball in his right hand as he did so. A vampire mage then. Fucking fantastic.

Alize hesitated only a moment at the sight of the conjured missile before she opened fire, putting three rounds in the vampire's chest. The fireball gutted out as the vampire stumbled, but silver rounds are not standard SPD issue so stumbling was the extent of the damage.

His eyes flashed red as he charged, magic apparently discarded in favor of a close kill. I drew the silver knife from my belt and flicked it open, trying to get between them, but he was too fast. His grasping hands went for Alize, gripping her by the collar of her shirt as he went for her neck, his fangs bared. Buttons popped off her blouse as he rode her to the ground, but suddenly he leapt back, recoiling and shrieking. A glint of gold caught my eye, and I glanced down to see a chain around Alize's neck and a gold cross lying on the upper curve of her left breast.

I wasted no time, tackling the vampire and burying the knife between his ribs, digging around until his eyes widened and he collapsed into an elongated pile of dust and clothes on the ground.

I crawled back to Alize, brushing vampire ash off my jeans and coughing it out of my lungs. She was holding her gun in one hand, pointing it vaguely in the direction of the former vampire. Her eyes were wide, and she swallowed heavily.

"What the _fuck_?!" she yelled.

#  Chapter Nine

For the second time in a week, I found myself sitting in a bar talking magic with a beautiful woman. The Study was closer, but that place was too crowded for this kind of talk without Alec's fun _muffliato_ badge and it was probably a bad idea to flaunt the don't-tell-humans directive right in front of him, so we were at a dive that looked like it was two days from being closed by the health department.

I had to keep my jacket zipped up to hide the burns on my shirts, and Alize kept trying get her shirt to pretend it still had the top three buttons, obviously uncomfortable with the amount of cleavage she was sharing with me and the rest of the world. We ordered a shot of whiskey each with a couple beers to chase them and sat in a booth with no one on either side.

"So... _vampire_ ," Alize said quietly, trying the word out in its new, non-fiction context.

"Yeah, vampire," I answered. "Lucky you were wearing that cross."

Her eyebrows rose as she quickly scanned my neck. "Wait, you're telling me that vampires are real, crosses work, and you don't wear one all the fucking time? What the fuck is wrong with you?" Seeing magic seemed to have opened up the blue side of Alize's vocabulary.

"Well, for one, it would be fairly inconsiderate to my vampire friends. But more importantly, crosses don't work for me."

"What?"

"Crosses only work on vampires if you believe in God. And I'm a heathen, so... no luck for me."

Alize was looking at me like I was insane. "You know vampires are real. You know that crosses can affect them. How do you not believe?"

"You have to believe first," I explained. "I don't _believe_ crosses work, I _know_ they work if you believe in God. But since I don't believe in God, they don't work for me. It's like the placebo effect."

"You're telling me you believe in vampires and magic and not God?" Alize looked incredulous. "You've got a weird idea of where to draw the line. Also, 'vampire friends'?"

"Well, there's really just the one."

"You're friends with a vampire. Isn't that dangerous? Aren't vampires blood-sucking monsters?"

I _tsked_ with my finger. "That's racial profiling, Detective Bidarte. Why don't you just say all black people are in gangs? On the other hand, I guess vampires do have a biological imperative to drink blood, so I can kind of see your point."

She didn't seem to be paying attention to me anymore. She was staring at the other people in the bar and out the far window at the people walking by, and I gave her some time. I knew that look. She was seeing the wall that now existed between her and people who didn't know. Rearranging her worldview to fit this new information, and it was a hard adjustment.

For some people it could be pretty easy. You just realize the world is quite a bit stranger than you previously thought, and then you move on. But for a select few professions with a certain level of duty involved, like cops and reporters, I imagine it's a bit harder to work out. The reporters usually end up working for tabloids chasing down bigfoot stories or quit to start writing "fiction" novels. I don't know what the cops do. Quit and go into security, maybe. Or maybe just get used to letting cases go unsolved when you know the true explanation isn't one you can file.

"You've really been seeing these kinds of things your whole life?" she asked me.

Nodding, I answered, "Since I was a kid, yeah. Since my dad was killed."

She looked at me sharply. "Your dad?"

"Mm-hmm. Everything you'll ever track down about his death will say he was killed while we were out hunting, mauled to death by a bear. But it looked a lot like a man to me. It tore him to shreds with its bare hands, but it certainly wasn't a bear."

"I didn't know that about you," she said softly. "I'm sorry to bring it up."

"Well, I don't like to advertise it. Everyone just figured I was some scared, traumatized kid. But that wasn't the first time I'd seen something weird, and it wasn't the last. After a while I got scared my mom or my sister would be next, so I moved away from the rest of my family as soon as I could."

"Does being around you get people killed?" There was no fear in her voice, just a pragmatic search for the truth. She was a detective, through and through.

"Kind of," I said. "I don't know how, I don't know why, but either strange stuff is attracted to me or I'm attracted to it. Either way, people tend to get hurt around me. That's why I felt like a little distance from my family wouldn't be a bad thing."

It took her a moment to digest that, and when she was ready, we went over the case again and I told her everything in detail, only omitting the specifics of my fellow Unseen and the secret of Pangu's egg. We finally came to my encounter with Black Jack Daw.

"That's why you were so worked up," Alize said. "This guy's dangerous."

I nodded. "Probably the most dangerous thing I've ever met. I mean, I've met monsters before, but Daw is a god. Or a demigod, at least. He's scary, powerful, and vicious."

"You just killed a vampire, and you're still scared of this thing." She tilted her head slightly, and I could see her connecting the dots. I can kill a big scary vampire that throws fireballs, but Black Jack Daw gives me pause.

"Vampires are easy to figure out," I elaborated. "They were once human. Sure, now they've got some weird eating habits and superhuman strength, but they've still got the same basic background and thought process as you or me. But Daw is something else entirely. It's like trying to figure out how an alien would view the world. There just isn't a common point of reference. I find that a lot scarier than superpowers, honestly."

"Why did that vampire come after us? Why didn't you capture it? We could have questioned it."

"You can't capture a vampire, at least not without a lot of planning. It probably could have broken your handcuffs like they were from a kid's dress-up set. Getting out alive is good enough."

"Wait a minute, why _are_ you alive?" she asked, reminded of how the altercation started. "Didn't you get hit by that fireball?"

"Yeah, I did." I opened my jacket and looked down at the softball sized hole through my clothes. Alize reached across the table and pulled the burned edge out, checking for damage. "Maybe he wasn't a very good wizard and his fireballs only had so much burning in them."

Her fingertips brushed across my skin. It was pink and raw, but no more damaged than from a mild sunburn and didn't hurt when she poked and prodded my chest. "I'm not a corpse on a slab, you know," I finally commented.

"I can feel that." Alize seemed to realize what she was doing and snatched her hand away, actually blushing.

"Anyway," she cleared her throat, turning professional. "Where did he come from?"

I shrugged. "I don't think he was looking for a meal. Vampires like their blood raw and from a living source, not boiled in the flesh. I think this was a hit."

"Someone hired a vampire to kill us?"

"No," I answered. "Someone hired a vampire to kill me. You just happened to be there."

"Who would hire a vampire to kill you?" Alize asked. "Black Jack Daw?"

I shook my head. "I get the feeling that if Daw wanted me dead he'd take great pleasure in doing it himself."

"So what other magical enemies have you made?"

"None that I know of. Right now my only real enemy is our Triad trio, and I don't think they know any vampire assassins for hire."

Alize bit her lip, giving me an appraising look, then dug a slim folder out of her bag and slid it across the table.

"Here's what I've got on Chu's friends. Meet Andy Woo and Sam Lau."

I flipped through the folder. It was just a printed off hardcopy of their records. Andy was the leader from the other night, and Sam was the skinny guy. I finally had names for them. Unfortunately, that's about all I had. Their story matched up with Marvin Chu's. All three had been part of a San Francisco Triad and managed to slip away before the net came down on them, but they'd been quiet in the intervening years. Still nothing new to go on.

I sighed. "Shit."

"Nothing in there you can use?" Alize asked.

"I'm sorry to say there isn't. It does confirm my theory that these guys don't look like part of the Unseen community. My best guess is they stole the hand from the local Thieves Guild, though how they managed that, or knew what they had and how to use it, is a mystery to me."

Our shots were long gone and we nursed our beers in silence waiting for answers to appear. The more I thought about it, the clearer it was. The ex-Triad goons didn't have the juice to steal the Hand or hire the vampire, but someone else did. The same person? There were too many power players here for the likes of mere mortals like me. And Alize, for that matter.

"Listen, Detective Bidarte," I said, not meeting her eyes. "I think you need to give this one up. It's not safe, and you were right about what you said before. There's nothing here you can take to the prosecutor, and I don't think you're ever going to find anything you can."

"I can nail them for the hand. I've got the hospital footage and prints," she argued.

I looked up and saw the determination in her eyes. "Yeah, I guess you do," I allowed. "But there are also vampires and fireballs and a cult of religious thieves and their scary fucking bird god to deal with. If by some miracle you manage to get these ex-Triad guys in cuffs, I think you should charge them with whatever you can, but the more you dig, the more likely it is you'll run into the weird stuff. And the weird stuff will run you over."

Alize sat in silence for a long time. "You're not going to give it up, though, are you?"

I forced a smile. "Can't. I'm already trapped in it. You're not. Get clear."

She chewed her tongue, her brow knitted in a defiant mask, then got up and left without another word. I could only hope she'd take my advice.

* * *

I walked back down the hill to the site of my recent vampire slaying, thinking I could go through the left over clothes for clues. The shrill cawing of a crow caused me to glance up, and I noticed the powerlines were heavy with corvids. Looking back at my destination, I saw that the pile of dust was still there, but had been joined by a tall figure in black wearing a familiar bowler hat. He crouched over the ashes with his back to me, poking at the dusty clothes before bringing them closer to his face. Black Jack Daw was sniffing them.

"Smell anything interesting?" I asked, resisting the urge to turn and run. No way he didn't already know I was there, and I doubted I could outrun him on a rocket. Hell, he'd probably known I was going to come back here to poke around before I did. Still, I'd stopped ten feet away, unable to talk myself into getting any closer.

"Sadly, no," Daw answered. "When vampires turn to ash, anything useful tends to disappear as well and the burned smell permeates the clothes." Still facing the ashes at his feet, he straightened up. The process seemed to employ more joints than a human should possess and I had to suppress a shiver. "You can't go a night without running into trouble, can you?" he asked, turning to face me. "One Jack to another, you should really be more careful, Mr. Severn."

Suddenly he'd closed the distance between us to poke at my burned shirt. I much preferred Alize's touch to his. "Fireballs?" Daw scoffed. "The basest of parlor tricks."

"Seemed pretty hot to me," I answered. "I'm lucky that it didn't burn me."

Daw sniffed at the air near my head. "Not lucky, no." He didn't explain that remark, and I didn't have the balls to ask him to. "How goes your investigation?"

I considered only a moment before telling him. "Andy Woo, Sam Lau, and Marvin Chu. I think they stole your Hand of Glory."

"You are very generous to share this with me," Daw said.

"No, I'm not," I replied. "I just think you've got a better chance of finding them than I do. And if you do, I'd like to be there." I met his eyes by sheer force of will. His followers may have treated him with obeisance, but he seemed to appreciate my moxie. Kind of like a cat that tolerates a fearless mouse before biting its head off.

He turned his head and looked at me out the side of one eye, his hooked nose reinforcing the resemblance to a bird. "Why? To recover your lost money?"

"Sure," I answered, feigning casualness even as my heart pounded, wondering if he could tell that I was thinking of Pangu's eggshell. I still fully intended to get it back for the monks, not that I had a plan for doing so under Daw's nose. "And for vengeance." This was added mostly for Daw's benefit. If there was one human thing I thought he might understand, it was vengeance. His tone with Matthias over his failures made him seem like the vindictive type.

"We'll see," Daw said, and he turned on his heel and walked away down the street like a perfectly normal person, which was somehow scarier than if he'd just disappeared again.

* * *

After a night's sleep my chest still showed little sign of my encounter with the fireball. There were burns on it, but they were all around the edge of the impact and seemed to be collateral damage from my briefly enflamed shirt. The burns formed an angry ring of pink skin around a pristine center. For some reason the fireball itself had not burned me. It had been real enough to burn my clothes, and still had enough force knock me over, but otherwise I would have thought it was an illusion.

I desperately wanted to know why I hadn't been burned. Daw had said something about my survival not being luck, and I was having a lot of trouble letting that go. What did he know that I didn't?

Breaking the rules on my self-imposed isolation, I gave Elliot a call and arranged to meet him at his place in the afternoon to talk about my fireball experience. I justified it by thinking that a brief visit would be okay as long as I didn't involve him in the investigation itself. Besides, if anywhere in this city was safe from magic, it was Elliot and Nora's heavily warded house.

I biked down the east side of Capitol Hill to where the houses get nicer and also terrifyingly expensive, which is where Elliot and Nora live. Elliot is rather successful in the charms business, and Nora actually does okay with her sculptures as well, which is why they own a big modern polyhedron of a house nestled in the middle of a neighborhood that was experiencing a slow war between more houses like theirs and turn of the century craftsmans. Their neighbors were mostly upper middle class lawyers and software people.

I explained my confusion about the fireball failure on the way down to the basement, where Elliot did most of his magic conveniently away from any windows. If I had to guess, I'd say that the basement was actually larger than the footprint of the house. The floor was a huge chalkboard for drawing magic circles, with a drain far to one side and away from the action. The last thing you want in a summoning circle is an escape route. Several workbenches lined the walls, but they were outnumbered by closed cabinets hiding whatever ingredients and reagents Elliot used.

"So you got hit with a fireball?" Elliot asked. "And you're still walking around. Interesting."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Other than tossing me around a bit and setting my clothes on fire, I didn't get the slightest bit injured. I was hoping you could help me figure out why."

Elliot scratched his chin. "Well, I know you're not immune to fireballs. I mean, we have proof." This last was said a bit sheepishly.

"Right, so what was different about this one?"

"Well, I'm all for the scientific method." Elliot raised one hand and said a few words of power.

"Whoa!" I shouted, jumping back. "Let's not lob one at me to find out!"

He gave me a pitying look as fire danced merrily over his palm. "Don't be an idiot. Just try touching it."

"Oh, right," I said, feeling stupid as I inched forward again. I took a few deep breaths to psych myself up and raised my hand. I started with a light pass over the top, like you would playing with a candle. And it felt about like passing my hand over a candle too: a brief warmth.

I took a deep breath and lowered my hand from above. On a candle this would burn. But not here. It felt faintly warm and I could sense the rising air current, but no pain. There was heat, but it was distant and somehow removed. Clenching my teeth, I went whole hog, lowering my hand directly into it. I could feel that it was there, the faint heat and rapidly shifting air currents now joined by a tingling sensation that was my magic sense waking up and taking notice, but the heat didn't burn. Mostly I just felt the rush of air as the fireball swirled around my palm like a tiny, artificial sun.

"What are you two doing?" We turned and saw Nora standing on the stairs, looking at us like we were two children she'd just caught playing with matches. Frankly, that was not entirely an inaccurate characterization of what we were doing.

Elliot snatched the fireball away and snuffed it out with a closed fist. "Testing Jack's fireball immunity," he said.

"What? Since when is Jack immune to fireballs?" She looked nonplussed, and I filled her in on my tussle with the vampire.

"And now, look," Elliot said, conjuring up another fireball. I cautiously stuck my hand in and wiggled my fingers, all without immolating.

Nora's eyebrows knitted. "Okay, fire immunity."

"Well, fire _ball_ , at least," Elliot corrected. "That's an important distinction, actually," he continued, stepping over to a candle on a workbench. He half closed his finger and the fireball became a small flame in his hand, which he then transferred to the wick. "Try that."

I stepped forward and stuck a finger in a little too confidently. " _Shit!_ " I yelled, pulling my hand back and sucking on my singed digit.

"So, not fire," Elliot clarified. "Only magic fire. Or at least magic fireballs. I wonder if other kinds of magic fire would still burn you?"

"What do you think is behind this?" Nora asked.

Elliot squinted at me for a while. "Have any other types of magic not worked on you?"

I thought for a moment and then shook my head. "Not that I know of. I mean, the Hand of Glory certainly worked on me. I haven't actually been hit with that much magic. I mostly seem to find the monsters."

Elliot furrowed his brow then reached out and flicked my earlobe.

"Son of a— What was that for?"

"Just trying something out," he answered. He was peering at my ear with interest, and a moment later it felt heavy and swollen.

I gingerly reached up and touched my earlobe, discovering that it was now about a third again bigger than it usually was. "Um...?"

"Don't worry," Elliot said casually, "it's just an engorgement charm. I didn't put much oomph into it, so it'll wear off in a few minutes."

"And why did you engorge my ear?" I asked. It didn't hurt, it was just noticeably bigger than usual.

"To see if it would work. It was the most harmless thing I could think of."

"Well, it did work," I pointed out. "So what does that mean?"

"I'm not sure yet," Elliot said. "Have you ever used an engorgement charm before?"

"No. Wait, what do people typically use engorgement charms for?" I asked suspiciously.

Elliot grinned. "Oh, you know. Stuff. If a man wants to impress a lady friend, say. Or a woman wants to jump a cup size for a big date. Usually something like that. They're a very popular item."

He reached out and flicked my other ear. He and Nora watched it closely, but nothing seemed to happen.

"Interesting," Elliot murmured. He turned and rummaged through a drawer turning back with a sliver of gray stone with a bit of string looped around the middle. Holding it up to his lips, he whispered to it and it began spinning crazily, pointing briefly in one direction before turning quickly to another.

"Okay, I've got a theory," Elliot ventured. This was why I'd come to him. He had a theory after only a few minutes of exposure to this fairly radical idea, and since Elliot was the smartest person I knew chances were it would be a pretty good theory.

"Fire away," I said, wincing at my unintentional joke.

"You've got a knack for being involved in supernatural stuff, despite not having any supernatural power of your own," Elliot began. "Maybe this is your superpower. Given that you're constantly exposed to the kinds of things that would normally chew up and spit out a human, maybe fate is giving you a fighting chance. Maybe you build up an immunity to magic."

Nora was quicker to respond than me. "So the first time you hit him with a fireball his body learned to... not get burned by fireballs?"

"Would it work on other magic?" I asked. "Like a blanket immunity? Am I immune to, I don't know, force lightning or magic missiles now?"

Elliot shrugged. "No, it doesn't seem so. I tried the engorgement charm because it was new on you, and it worked. But when I tried it again, nothing happened. Ditto with the locating spell. There doesn't seem to be a cool down period—once you're immune, it just doesn't work anymore."

"Locating spell?" I asked. "Was that the string and stone bit?"

"Yes," Elliot explained. "And I know I've used one on you before."

"You have? When was that?"

"Remember that pub crawl a few years ago? The one where you got so drunk you passed out in an alley in Ballard and it took us hours to find you?"

"Not really," I said truthfully. "I barely remember deciding it was a good idea before we set out, the rest of the evening is gone."

"Fair enough," Elliot said ruefully. "But we were only able to find you because I used a locating spell to track you down. Locating spells are fairly neutral, since it's more about what the person is planning on doing once they find you. This stone should have pointed to you, but instead it went haywire. I think it's likely your magic inoculation can't tell a friendly spell from a bad one."

"So once a spell is used on me once..." I trailed off.

"It can't be used on you again," Nora finished.

Elliot looked worried. "No one's ever used a healing spell on you, right?"

I shook my head. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Good." He looked relieved. "Try and save that for something serious. Don't go running to a healer with a stubbed toe, okay? And seriously, don't go telling people about this magic immunity thing. It could be turned against you fairly easily. And maybe we should start trying to proactively inoculate you against some of the more dangerous magic."

I nodded. "But on the bright side, that which does not kill me literally makes me stronger."

Elliot frowned. "More like 'that which does not kill you was probably something you'll wish you could use in the future.'"

* * *

I rode back home feeling both elated and terrified. The fact that I had something you could arguably call a superpower was cool. The fact that it could also become a superweakness pretty easily was a little less cool.

My phone rang just as I was stepping off my bike at home. Caller ID said it was Henry. We'd finally exchanged numbers after I'd talked to Wen Hong. I wasn't eager to answer, as I didn't really have any good news to give him. Sure, I'd sicced Black Jack Daw on the bad guys, but that could backfire pretty easily if he realized they had Pangu's eggshell and took a liking to having it for himself. Sighing, I answered.

"Hi, Henry, how are you doing?"

An unfamiliar voice growled, "If you want to see Henry alive, come to the corner of Bayview and 5th Place South."

My spine went cold. "Where's that?"

"SoDo. Look it up, dipshit."

"Is this Andy Woo?" I asked, only half guessing. There was really only one person I could see calling to menace me over the phone right now. It didn't seem like Black Jack Daw's style.

There was a long pause before the now annoyed voice spoke again. "You have one hour. Come alone. No cops."

My stomach started doing flips. I checked the location on my phone and then pedaled full tilt south. Bayview proved difficult to find. It was a little nothing street less than a block long in the warehouse district, nestled comfortably between two big, concealing buildings. Surprise, surprise. I locked up my bike around the corner and walked over. Recognizing my nemesis the homicidal panel van, I took a deep breath and walked towards it. When I was about fifteen feet away the side opened and one of the three stooges got out. Leader. Or Andy, I reminded myself.

"Daylight meeting?" I taunted Andy as he approached. "Pretty gutsy."

Andy sneered at me. "Come quietly or you never see Henry alive again."

I looked around. "Where's Marvin and Sam?"

The sneer turned angry as Andy lashed out with a fist. Could I have blocked it? Probably. But I intended to come willingly, for Henry's sake. The blow landed on my jaw and I saw sparks as I fell. I barely felt the second blow on the back of my head before I blacked out.

#  Chapter Ten

When I came around, I noticed the pain first. The singing in my jaw barely outweighed the dull ache throughout my brain. If I survived this I had a nice round of CAT scans to look forward to. My neck also hurt, as did my arms and wrists. Gradually, I realized I was tied to an old wooden chair, my wrists bound behind me and another few loops of rope wrapped around my ankles.

I opened my eyes and looked around the room. The smells of old mold and older dust were fighting over which was going to make me sneeze first. Thin floorboards, warped with age, creaked under me, a few nails visibly rising out of place. Outside I could see night darkening the grid of single-pane windows high up on the wall, so I'd been out for a few hours at least. On the other side of the room there were more windows looking out over an empty floor. I was in a foreman's office built up over a warehouse below. And Henry was here.

He was tied up in a chair opposite me, and by the looks of things he'd been enjoying his stay even less than me. His face was a mess, one eye sealed shut with swelling and caked blood. His lips were swollen and split as well, and the general topography of his face had gone lumpy and uneven.

"You're awake? Finally." Andy walked around from behind me so I could see him. He went to stand next to Henry. "Henry here won't talk," he explained jovially, giving the man a hard smack. He had a disturbingly casual attitude towards the violence he inflicted.

"I won't ever tell you anything," Henry mumbled almost automatically, or at least he said something similar. It was hard to be sure with his ruined mouth.

Andy pulled out a gun and shot him in the head. I was shouting as soon as I saw the motion start, but it didn't matter. Andy had meant to kill Henry the second I woke. Henry was nothing but a lesson for me to show how precarious my situation was. The bullet went in at his temple and removed the other side of his head when it exited, spraying the floor with red and pink chunks as Henry slumped to one side. Here one moment, gone the next.

I did a lot of screaming and thrashing, with "Fucking bastard!" probably the most coherent thing I shouted. I'd seen more than my fair share of people dying, but I'd never seen another human do the killing. Monsters I was used to. Somehow it was worse when it was another person responsible.

"Now you know I'm serious," Andy said hollowly after I'd finally quieted down a bit. It occurred to me to wonder how many people he'd killed before. Wasn't he supposed to be low-level? Would he have done a lot of actual killing? From his empty tone I wondered if this was all as new to him as it was to me, if he was just following a script more than anything.

He walked over and squatted down in front of me, bringing his eye level below mine. "Tell me about the stone."

I figured I'd misheard him. I didn't know anything about any stone. Since when was there a stone, and where had it come from? My confused look set him off.

"The stone!" Andy shouted, slapping me. "I know you know what I'm talking about!"

He went and grabbed a duffel sitting against the far wall, bringing it closer. Opening it, he pulled out a large chunk of stone about the size of a dinner plate. It was creamy white and flat, a few inches thick at the jagged edges. At first I was confused as to why he was showing me a chunk of limestone. When I finally realized what it was I started laughing. Pangu was a giant, after all. His eggshell wouldn't be some flimsy little thing. It would be a giant chunk of calcium that looked like a stone. It was all so horrible and funny that I couldn't stop until Andy pistol whipped me. That did the trick. But I still had a grin on my face through the sudden nausea.

"You stupid fucking idiot," I growled. "You absolute goddamn waste of fucking space. You've got no idea, do you?"

Andy's face went purple with rage. "Shut up."

"Shut up? I thought you wanted me to talk? You really are a fucking moron, aren't you?" Now that I'd finally got a chance to really look at Andy, to really see his operation, it was proving my earlier suspicions. "You're a pawn. You don't have a goddamn clue what you're dealing with. You don't even know what you stole or what it's worth, do you?" I started to laugh again.

Andy punched me in the stomach and for a while I had to focus on forcing air into my lungs. But his anger was tempered with unease, and I could see that I was right.

"You want me to talk?" I muttered after I'd recovered a bit. "Fine, let me tell you a story. You can tell me if I get anything wrong."

He kept watching me silently, so I went ahead. "You're a refugee from a busted up Triad, running from the feds for a couple of years, finally landing in Seattle. Someone approaches you for a job, someone that smells like money. He gives you a freaky magic candle and tells you to use it to rob a restaurant. You can keep all the money you find, and maybe he'll give you a little something extra, and all you have to do is give him the weird hunk of rock from a hidden safe."

I could tell I was right. His eyebrows were raised, alarmed at what I knew.

"So you do the job and get the rock. But then things start going sideways. The cops are all over this because the crime was too flashy and you killed someone, and some guy you've never seen before is still poking around the restaurant. You try to kill him or grab him or scare him off a couple times, but he's surprisingly good at escaping or just plain kicking your ass.

"You skip the meeting with your employer, figuring whatever this rock was it had to be worth a lot and maybe you could get a better price on your own. You figure out what the candle was, which isn't much harder than a web search once you see what it does, and you decide to try and make another one. You can rob something bigger this time and disappear with the money. So you steal a hand from the morgue, but you find out it's a little harder than following a recipe for biscuits to make a Hand of Glory."

"Where's Marvin?" I asked abruptly, looking around. "He was there with you at the hospital. Was Sam already dead at that point? What did it? Wait, don't tell me. A creepy guy threw a fireball at him?"

Andy didn't have to answer. The nervous glance he threw over his shoulder—as if the vampire was going to leap out of the shadows at him—was confirmation enough.

"It's whoever hired you, cleaning house. Which even you've already figured out. You were a nothing flunky in San Francisco, a pawn, and you're a pawn here, too. So now you're really scared. You want to know what you stole. You want to know how to leverage it to get out of this mess. You grab Henry over there, but he proves surprisingly tight lipped. This rock means something to him, and he won't talk. So you grab me, figuring I'll be a little more forthcoming."

"And you will," Andy blurted out, trying to put some of the menace back in his voice and gain control again. To emphasize the point he hit me in the side of the head again with the pistol. But a lot of his fire had gone out. I've had worse taps, some quite recently.

"What is the stone?!" he screamed at me. He sounded more desperate than anything else now. He pulled a knife from his back pocket—one of mine, I realized—and flicked it open threateningly.

"It doesn't matter what the stone is!" I spat back. "I could tell you an interesting story all about it, and do you know what? It wouldn't help you a goddamn bit. You're fucked. You don't have the connections to find the kind of buyers that are interested in it. And if your new boss doesn't kill you, the thing that owns the Hand of Glory you used will. You were doomed the moment you lit it."

"You'll talk," Andy said as he turned and walked towards the door. His voice was suddenly more confident than it had been since we started this conversation, as if he were back on a familiar script. "Maybe if I find your little girlfriend from the restaurant. What was her name? Amy Zhang? I could have all sorts of fun with her. Maybe I could stop by her place. Or should I bring her down here? Do you like to watch? Why don't you take some time to think that over?"

He opened the door and went down a flight of stairs, his footsteps echoing in the empty warehouse below.

I felt sick. Sicker than when he first called, sicker than when he shot Henry. I couldn't do anything to help the monk, but damned if I was going to let him touch one hair on Amy's head. I tried to wiggle out of my ropes but they were well tied. No escape that way. I threw my weight a bit and guided with my toes. I was able to shimmy the chair a couple of inches to the right. I did it again. A few more inches. Again and again. The process was making a ridiculous amount of noise but I didn't care. I worked my way over towards the open door and when I finally reached it I was shaking with effort.

I was sitting at the top of a long flight of stairs down to the warehouse floor, tied to a chair. Andy was halfway up and moving fast. He looked at me as he pounded up the stairs, face tight with anger and confusion. "The fuck you think you're doing?" he shouted. "You going to escape tied to a chair?"

When he was almost touching me I threw my weight forwards and toppled down onto him. We fell and rolled all the way down, old wooden steps cracking under us every now and again. I got a good tap on my temple and felt the bone next to my eye creak dangerously.

By the time we hit the floor the old chair had fallen apart. My wrists were still behind me and I was lying on my side tilting forward, but a big piece of the chair back landed along my upper arm, and was trapped between me and Andy's throat. I had to curve my spine to one side, awkwardly pushing off the ground with my feet for leverage as I pressed down on Andy's neck while he struggled under me, trying to heave me off. He managed to get one hand around my head, his fingers digging at the eye I'd bashed on the way down the stairs. Lightning lanced through my head as my breath grew ragged, but I squeezed my eyes shut and levered more of my weight onto the wooden bar between us.

I'd never killed anyone before. No one human, anyway. I don't know how you're supposed to feel about it, but I just thought of a dead little old lady face down in some soup, and Henry, and what Andy had said he'd do to Amy, and I felt nothing but resolve as I kept pushing down with all my strength until Andy quit fighting and his eyes lost their focus.

I held the pressure a few more moments until I was certain it was done, and then rolled off his body and onto my back. I folded my legs above me and worked my wrists out from behind and under until they were in front of me, then searched Andy's pockets for my knives. I flicked open the steel one and slowly got my wrists free, then picked myself up off the floor. The altitude change caused me to throw up. Concussion. Definitely.

After sitting a while longer to calm my stomach, I made my way slowly back up the stairs. I put the piece of Pangu's eggshell back in the duffel. I should've guessed it wouldn't be some fragile little piece of shell like a chicken egg would have. It had held a giant in a swirling sea of chaos, after all. There was also a big pillar candle in the bag, mostly burned down. I took it out and inspected it. It didn't look like much, just your average big old puce colored candle, so plain it wouldn't stand out if you put it with others. But it tingled when I touched it.

The Hand of Glory. Huh. I'd assumed it would look like a hand. Looking closely, I could barely make out a few finger bones just under the surface of the wax, but it wasn't something you'd notice if you weren't looking for it. I guess the Hand of Glory was made from a hand, but it was rendered down into a normal enough candle. It didn't even smell funny.

When I turned around, Black Jack Daw was standing just inside of the doorway, Matthias and a few of his other lieutenants with him, with the usual assorted crows and ravens hanging about as well.

"You're late if you wanted vengeance," I commented, surreptitiously closing the sides of the duffel to conceal the eggshell.

Daw inclined his head slightly. "Sam Lau is dead."

"I figured that," I answered. "So's Marvin. Whoever hired these guys ordered a hit."

"You're injured," Matthias interrupted. "Do you need aid?"

"I'll be okay," I said, brushing him off. I actually could have used some medical attention, but I just wanted these guys gone as soon as possible.

"I suppose you would be," Matthias allowed. "If a vampire can't kill you, I don't think Andy Woo would really have a shot."

Before I could register either the comment or any movement Daw was next to me, his hands holding the duffel flaps delicately open.

"That's not yours," I insisted. It wasn't nerve or bravery, I was just beat up and tired to the point of dropping and beyond caring what he did to me. "But this is." I held up the remnants of the candle.

Daw took it and hissed angrily as he inspected the wick. "Wasteful. Burned hours more than it needed to be." He turned his attention back to the eggshell, but stepped away at my look. "Do not fear, Mr. Severn. I am not interested in an artifact such as that. Its power could unmake me, and I am not inclined to keep such things close. Better the monks keep it safe. Setting aside this particular instance, their track record for protecting the shell from those who would exploit it is impeccable."

He and his men turned.

"You know who hired these three, right?" I asked as the last piece clicked into place in my head.

Daw turned and cocked his head at me. "Sam Lau could not tell me. He never met the culprit."

I nodded. "I'm not surprised. But I think Andy did. Isn't that right, Matthias?"

Before Matthias could launch himself at me, or maybe at the eggshell, Daw had him up against a wall by his throat, raised above the thief god's head with one hand like he was weightless. Now that I'd managed to put it together, I was kicking myself for not figuring it out earlier.

"I'm guessing not many people know about where the Hand travels. But Matthias would, if it was coming through his territory. He didn't want to do the theft of the eggshell himself, as his scent would be all over the restaurant for you to track, so he hired these three to do it. Who knows why he wanted it, but I'm assuming it's got something to do with his dysfunctional relationship with you. But most of all, I never told him about the vampire assassin. You knew, but frankly you don't seem like the type to share information that casually. The only way he'd have known that would be if he hired the vampire."

Matthias couldn't answer for all his choking, but his eyes spoke volumes. Even under all the fear of what Daw was going to do to him—and I bet Matthias knew exactly what his god liked to do to those who displeased or betrayed him—there was a smoldering ember of rage directed at me.

"Well spotted, Mr. Severn," Black Jack Daw said, his voice more jovial than I'd heard it yet. "I owe you."

They were gone as suddenly as they'd arrived. I peered out into the warehouse and saw they'd taken Andy's body with them. A little gift of evidence removal from Daw to me, I guessed. I wondered if that paid the favor Daw had just given me, or if I really did have a favor from a god in my pocket now. And if I would ever be desperate or foolish enough to try to call it in.

I found Henry's phone in his pocket and called Seng Wen Hong. "I have the eggshell," I told him. "And..." my voice faltered, "bad news."

* * *

I spent the rest of that night in the hospital for observation. The scans suggested no permanent brain damage—thank some higher power—but I had a few cracked ribs and superficial damage to my supraorbital ridge.

I got myself discharged as quickly as I could. The police were starting to ask questions I didn't want to answer, and I wanted out before word got around to Detective Bidarte about me. I wasn't in the mood for her level of questions.

After I got home I gave Amy a call and told her the very basic version of what had happened. I should've waited longer, because I wasn't in any shape to do anything but sleep, but I desperately wanted to see her again. I also worried that the longer she went without seeing me, the sooner she'd realize she didn't need someone like me in her life.

I enticed her to come over for dinner by promising to give her more details on the case. Who exactly would make dinner was hotly debated. I insisted that as the host I would cook, and she retorted that I was injured and she should do the cooking. Plus, King Wok was closing so she had plenty of free time while she looked for a new job. I argued that it was still my turn this time and she finally relented, making me swear I'd let her do the next one.

After spending the day making the apartment reasonably presentable, I got dinner going. I put salmon in the oven, which is a great dish because it can look impressive but is dirt simple to make. Charlie did me the favor of making himself scarce for the evening and I got the table set with the fancy (not cracked) plates and silverware. I even put up candles, smiling a bit at the memory of the flickering light in Amy's apartment.

The salmon was just coming out of the oven when my phone rang.

"Jack? It's Amy."

"What's up?" I asked.

"I think I'm lost," she answered. "I've been looking for your house for like fifteen minutes and I just can't find it. My GPS says I should be there but the addresses are all wrong where I am."

My blood froze in my veins. "It's no problem," I forced out, trying to keep the strain out of my voice. "You know, I was just about to call and cancel anyway. I think I ate something bad for lunch and I'm suddenly feeling pretty iffy. Why don't we meet tomorrow and have dinner out? Neither of us will have to cook. Meet at seven in front of King Wok? I know you can find that," I teased, fighting to sound natural.

"Are you sure? I could come over and play nurse," she added flirtatiously.

"Better not," I replied. "It's not going to be pretty here tonight."

"Oh, no! I hope you're better in time for dinner tomorrow then," she answered. "See you at seven?"

"Yeah," I replied. "See you then."

* * *

Tuesday. One week since the King Wok incident and I was on my way back there to put a bow on the whole thing. The nip in the air had been joined by a heavy fall rain as I walked, but I didn't mind. The chill was soothing on the bruises and cuts Andy had left on my face.

I was standing under the awning in front of the restaurant, leaning against the darkened window when Amy arrived. She ran up and threw her arms around me, but pulled back when my hands stayed in my pockets.

"What's wrong?" she asked uncertainly.

"I wasn't sure you'd come," I answered bluntly. "But maybe you still need to know exactly what happened."

Her eyes showed apprehension as she silently asked me to elaborate.

"I've got some magical protection on my house," I explained. "If someone can't find it, it usually means they mean me harm. So I looked you up last night, after you called. You might not have given me your real last name, but oddly, Andy did. I didn't really think about it much at the time. I figured maybe he'd crossed names from another wallet. But he just forgot to use your assumed name. You were at least honest about being from California. But your dad wasn't running a pyramid scheme. He was head of the Wah Lok Triad in San Francisco. There was a lot of news coverage when the feds broke them up. A few articles even mentioned his daughter who was going to college out of state. One even said Seattle. One had a family photo. And I already knew about Andy, Sam, and Marvin. They worked for the same Triad, and therefore him. Distantly, of course. I'm sure a group of losers like them barely had direct contact."

The confusion was gone now. Her expression hardened, but she stayed silent, waiting to see where I went with this.

"I was wrong about Matthias going to Andy. He approached you. You already had an in at the restaurant and criminal ties. And Matthias ran the Thieves Guild all up and down the west coast, so it wouldn't surprise me if he knew your dad, before the bust. You called in Andy and his cronies and lit the candle yourself, then pretended you'd passed out with the rest of us. So when Henry and Wen Hong let me start investigating you got nervous and sent the boys after me, but I proved surprisingly difficult to kill. You kept playing the part of the bright-eyed waitress, enchanted by my tales of magic and danger, so I told you everything and you passed it right on to Andy. You tried to use the Hand on me after dinner, which would have kept me quiet while you finished me off. That was a good trick, hiding it by lighting all those other candles for mood. Were you surprised when it didn't work on me? You recovered quickly enough, at any rate. I figure you texted your boys while you were in the bathroom, and that's why they tried to make another one. You thought the first was all used up."

"It wasn't like that," Amy suddenly insisted. "I was scared, and I was sure you could help me."

I nodded. "I believe that. By then your deal with Matthias was going south. Was Marvin already dead? Suddenly I was less the mark and more your last chance of getting clear. But that just meant you ended up setting your remaining boys on me when I shut you out. You were desperate for information and I wasn't giving you any."

"But that's all over now," Amy pleaded, I think trying to make it true by sheer force of will.

"People are dead, Amy," I replied flatly. "It's not over until there's an accounting for that. That poor old lady at the restaurant—"

"That was an accident!" she broke in. "Everyone was just supposed to fall asleep!"

"Yeah," I said, "I suppose that's true. But you didn't exactly check to make sure everyone had fallen asleep safely, did you? And what about Henry? Did you see what Andy did to him? Probably not, I suppose. You're not the type to get your hands dirty. Lesson from your father, I guess. And for what? Money?"

"You don't understand," she pleaded. "My life was ruined! I lost my friends, I had to drop out of college, I—"

It was my turn to interrupt. "That's not a ruined life!" I said hotly. "Working your way through college? Welcome to reality. That's not worth killing for." Suddenly tired with this conversation, I added, "You're right, I don't understand you."

Everything was silent for a while, save for the rain pounding on the awning above us, drowning out everything but the occasional car that drove by.

"Are you going to call the cops?" she asked quietly.

I laughed. It was a sharp, bitter thing. "And tell them what? They can't charge you with using a magic candle, even if they believed me there's no law against that. But it's not the police you have to worry about."

Amy's eyes shot fearfully to me.

"And it's not me, either," I clarified. "Matthias has a boss that did not approve of his extracurricular activities. Black Jack Daw. Not really human, honestly. He's something much, much scarier than anything in the mundane world. My guess is he's put the screws to Matthias, partly because he likes inflicting pain, partly to find out the details of his deception. And I bet Matthias will sing like a canary even if he's not being asked any questions. Anything to make the pain stop. Anything for a quicker death. Your name will come up, and Black Jack Daw is not the type to forgive those who wrong him or to leave loose ends flapping around in the wind."

"What do I do?" Her voice was near breaking, and tears streamed unacknowledged down her cheeks.

"If I were you? I'd start running. I'd start running and I'd never stop. And maybe I'd last a month. I don't know how long you'll make it."

Amy waited for a moment, maybe thinking I was going to offer my help. Then she turned and walked away, heading west down the street. The train station was that way. It would be a good start.
Keep reading for a preview of

## Blood of the Green Children

_The next book in the_ Unseen _series, available now!_

# Chapter One

The bulb flickered at the top of the lamppost where I locked my bike, its light only intermittently illuminating a For Sale sign in front of an empty one-story-with-basement home in one of the low-rent patches on the south end of Capitol Hill. It probably wouldn't be long before someone bought it and either flipped it or tore it down to build something new, and given that I was delivering to it that time would probably come sooner rather than later. This wouldn't be the first time I was called to deliver food to a real estate agent or developer who needed a calorie boost while they mused over an offer for a complicated property.

As I walked up the steps I pulled the delivery bag out of my backpack: a paper sack containing a club sandwich, soda, and a bag of chips. Combo number one on the Kal's Deli menu.

The doorbell was silent when I tried it, but the door flew open anyway only a moment later, revealing what I suspected was a vampire rather than the real estate agent I expected. Besides an anachronistic fashion sense—this vampire was sporting a tweed suit in a Victorian cut—there aren't many physical clues to determine if someone is a vampire, but he had the top two: sun-deprived skin and a predatory smile. His amber eyes flared, sending a thrall my way like a warm flash flood.

"Come inside," he commanded, his voice flowing over me like honey. I obeyed.

Inside, the house was dark, dusty, and had the musty smell of a home left alone for too long. Nice trick on the vampire's part. They can't enter someone's home uninvited, so using this address had been a nice workaround without having to actually buy his own house. I guess he could've used a hotel, but that would probably be too public for what he intended.

Idly, I wondered if this was a typical feeding strategy among vampires. They usually behave like successful human serial killers and target those whose deaths would go largely unremarked. I briefly worried that I had fallen into that category, but maybe he liked the flavor of regularly-exercising bicyclists. That interpretation made me feel a little better about myself, even as I suspected it wasn't really true.

Then again, I didn't really want to find out either way. I had no interest in being a juice box for this guy.

When he stepped past me to close the door I sprang into action. In a quick, smooth motion I pulled a silver folding knife from the back of my belt and flicked it open. When the vampire turned around again I was already on the move, catching him completely by surprise. The blade sunk into his chest to the handle. Unfortunately, I didn't hit his heart on the first go and he shoved me away with enough force that I briefly experienced flying until the wall slammed into me. I could feel damp sheetrock cave in behind me, and I counted myself lucky that I'd managed to avoid hitting a stud.

The vampire was swearing and pulling at the blade in his chest as I pushed myself up to my feet. The serrated part near the handle probably made pulling it out hurt worse than the initial blow. Not to mention that a deep wound from a silver blade would burn like it was covered in acid.

He tried to enthrall me as I came at him again and was still bellowing "Halt!" when I plowed into him, grabbing the hilt of the knife and using my weight to force the blade deeper as I angled it towards his heart. My momentum toppled us over moments before he disintegrated, so I fell onto a pile of dust and clothes. I coughed and rolled away, spitting out corpse powder with disgust. Vampire remains are supposedly sterile, but so are autoclaved maggots and I don't want them in my mouth either.

I laid on my back, not yet ready to experiment with standing up, and stared up at the water damaged ceiling as I fished my phone out of my pocket. The adrenaline was wearing off and I was starting to feel the ache of my freshly bruised ribs and the bite of the winter cold in this derelict house.

The phone rang twice before Peter picked up. "Hello, Jack," he said cheerfully. Peter was the human who ran the household of my favorite vampire and martial arts teacher.

"Hey, Peter. Is Saul up yet?"

"Yeah, I'll get him."

There was only a brief pause before Saul's rich voice was on the other end. "Hello, Jack. How are you this evening?"

I was past the point of being able to deal in pleasantries, so my answer was curt. "I just killed a vampire."

There was no hesitation to indicate disapproval before he asked, "Are you all right?" I've yet to meet another vampire with Saul's consensual feeding habits, and Saul trusted me enough to believe I wouldn't kill one of his fellows without just cause.

"Bruised, but breathing. I just thought you'd like to know, to update your register or something." He'd never confirmed it, but I got the impression that Saul kept tabs on any vampires who spent time in his territory.

"Yes, thank you. Where did it happen?"

I gave him the address, which I'd managed to memorize as I was biking out to "deliver" to it.

"I'll come and check around, make sure he didn't have friends. I don't want anyone else getting hurt in my city." Did I mention that vampires are territorial? Saul at least was. There weren't any other vampires living permanently in Seattle, and I suspected Saul was the reason.

"Hey, Saul," I interjected before he could hang up. "I sort of promised Detective Bidarte I'd clue her in when something unusual happens to me. Are you okay if I call her about this?"

"As long as you don't tell her anything about me, I have no problem with it. You won't see me, but I'll let you know what I find."

I ended the call and was quietly grateful that Saul had enthralled me once before. It had been purely benign, mind you. Saul is very particular about his privacy and the first time I'd gone to his house for training he had wanted to make sure I had no ulterior motives. Later—and somewhat recently—I'd learned that once I've been exposed to a particular kind of magic it doesn't work on me a second time, and apparently that included vampire thralls in addition to fireballs, locating spells, and the soporific effects of a Hand of Glory. If not for the fact that my immunity seemed to hold true for really helpful things like healing magic as well, it was a pretty neat super power.

I scrolled through my contacts for a moment, trying to remember if I'd put her in as "Alize Bidarte" or "Detective Bidarte"—it was the second one, apparently I'd stored her number a long time ago—and hit the button to call her.

"This is Detective Bidarte, who is this?" came her professional voice over the phone.

"It's not like you don't know it's me," I said reproachfully. "Everything has caller ID these days."

"Yes," she answered. "But there's a good chance that one of your bogeymen is going to kill you and the next call is coming from some other homicide investigator wondering what a detective's info was doing in their victim's phone. I'm maximizing my deniability."

"That's... pragmatic," I allowed. She was right. My penchant for getting involved with the supernatural has led to my presence at more than one crime scene. I've never been charged with anything, but I'm sure plenty of cops assume it's too much for coincidence and I must be up to no good. In fact, Bidarte used to think so as well, at least until she learned the hard way that magic is real.

"Look, I just killed a vampire," I finally said, bringing myself back to the topic I'd called about. "Do you want to come check it out?"

I got the pause I'd missed when telling Saul, though for different reasons. "Really? Where? Don't touch anything, I'll come to you."

I answered her string of questions in a string of answers, then obeyed her instructions, save nudging the door closed enough that no one else in the neighborhood would get suspicious.

While I waited I called work to say I'd been knocked over by a slow moving car and wouldn't be coming back tonight, but it was near the end of my shift already so nobody minded much once I'd assured them I was okay. Winter is kind of slow for us anyway. Not as much call for cold deli sandwiches in December. No, this is the dawning of the age of hot Thai and hot pizza.

Twenty minutes later Bidarte pulled up in a sedan so forgettable I couldn't remember the make even while I was looking at it. She wasn't wearing her typical suit, instead sporting jeans and a puffy down jacket that added some bulk to her lithe body. Her dark brown hair was unfettered and bunching around her shoulders in generous waves. I could almost forget she was a cop, but she'd clipped her badge and 9mm to her belt. She also toted an aluminum cube case out of her trunk.

"Have you touched anything?" she asked as she opened the case to reveal a small forensics kit.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking," I answered sarcastically.

She brushed that off. "Of course you're fine. You called and aren't in the hospital. Did you touch anything?"

I sighed. "Not really. He opened the door before I could even knock. All I've touched is the floor around the pile of vampire ash here," I indicated the former assailant. "Also that hole in the wall is from me."

Bidarte inspected the pile of dust before turning to the door. "He wasn't wearing gloves, right?"

I shook my head. "No, so you might get something off the knob." I'd barely finished talking before she had a brush and powder out, dusting down the brass fixtures. "Don't you want to get one of your crime scene techs to do this?" I'd never seen Bidarte work a crime scene by herself. I was used to a small cloud of specialists poking around while she observed.

"And tell them what, exactly?" Bidarte retorted, not bothering to look at me as she continued. "A friend of mine killed a vampire and I'm wondering what kind of trace evidence was left behind?"

"Okay, I guess that wasn't a great idea." I needed to learn to think before I made suggestions, particularly around Bidarte. Despite my best efforts, I always ended up feeling just a little stupider around her.

"Yeah. They don't come out to a scene without an active case, and this is going to stay strictly off book. As it is I'm going to be pulling strings and calling in favors to get any of this processed at all, and I'm likely going to have to imply that one of my friends thinks her cousin is stealing from her or dealing with organized crime or something innocuous like that."

Leaning against the wall, I watched as she carefully wrapped the doorknob in clear sticky tape. "So why are you doing this at all? What do you think you'll get out of it?"

Bidarte pulled the tape off and re-adhered it to the paper backing, revealing what looked like a solid two and a half fingers. She sighed in satisfaction and carefully filed it in her case before turning to answer my question. "I've been thinking a lot over the past couple months since I found out about... all of this."

"Are you sorry you found out?" I interrupted. I'm always kind of curious what it's like for other people who get abruptly thrust into this world. I'd grown up seeing monsters and magic, so I didn't really have anything else to compare it to.

"Sometimes. It was simpler before. But that's where these forensics come in. I know I'll never be able to prosecute a vampire for enthralling a sandwich delivery boy, but if I know that the vamp is dead and I can find out if he's linked to any other open cases, then maybe I can at least focus my energy on something I do have a chance of officially solving. A normal, human murder, for instance."

I nodded. "I guess I can see the logic behind that. I'm happy to help."

Pulling a plastic bag and a small trowel out of her case, Alize crouched over the pile of ash, scooping up a cup or so.

"You're not going to find anything interesting there," I told her. "There's nothing to distinguish between vampire dust and human."

She arched an eyebrow at me. "And how do you know that? Been spending a lot of time in the lab lately, sandwich boy?"

I considered calling her out on the 'sandwich boy' remark, but she was smiling so I let it pass. "No, but I've got friends who..." I trailed off, looking at the pile more closely. "Can I borrow a glove?"

Bidarte wordlessly handed me one from her case. I crouched over the other side of the dust pile and poked at something her trowel had dislodged in the mess of clothes and leftover vamp. Reaching in, I gingerly picked up a flip phone, pinching one corner between my thumb and forefinger. It was open, ready to receive a phone number. There was a '0' dialed on the screen.

"He was making a call when you killed him?" Detective Bidarte asked.

"Not that I'd noticed. But then I was working on looking dazed, so I probably just missed it."

I offered the phone to Alize and she did the little tape trick to get prints off, the dust having been helpfully donated by the vampire. When she was done I took it back and opened up the contacts, but there were no numbers saved.

"Looks like a burner," Alize observed. "Anything in the call history?"

I checked. "Nope. Looks like he was about to make the first call." I dropped it into the open bag Alize held out to me.

"Who could he have been calling?" Bidarte asked me.

Shrugging, I replied, "Beats me. Maybe he had friends in the area waiting to bundle me into a van for a shared snack." Though probably not, I privately thought. Even ignoring the fact that vamps are bad at sharing, if there had been anything else suspicious around Saul would have found it by now and called to warn me. "Really, the only thing this phone tells me is that someone, somewhere, might start missing this guy. And I'm the one who killed him."

Bidarte considered that for a moment. "You know, Severn, typically cops tell people not to leave town. But in this case I'm wondering if a vacation might not be in your best interest."

_Continued in_ Blood of the Green Children _, available now._

#  About the Author

Photo © Helm Halfdane

Tristan Olson was raised on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. He didn't start reading until he was 10, but once he figured it out he went from trouble with Dick & Jane to reading novels over summer break. He then read mainly science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. His urge to create started with comic strips and his first efforts were published in a local paper while he was in high school. He continued to write and draw comics, publishing them online into adulthood. On his way to being a writer, Tristan has also been a photo lab monkey, pharmacy technician, and 1950s-style house husband, the latter of which is still his primary job. He spends his days caring for his two increasingly rambunctious daughters and squeezes in writing time during evenings and weekends. He currently lives in Washington State.

More information about Tristan and his books can be found at TristanOlsonBooks.com
