She bowed over the duck. “They call me Yü Nü.”
I tipped my chin. Not a bow, but not a rejection of respect, either. I had a feeling she took that sort of thing pretty seriously. “You know what? Thanks for the offer.” I placed a hand over my belly. “But I’m really not hungry. We were just about to leave, in fact.”
“First you lie to me, and now you reject my hospitality.” She shook her head, making the light spark off the tip of her jade horn. “A less generous person might be insulted.”
Since Morales was the one with experience with this crew, I decided to keep quiet. He held up his hands. “We meant no disrespect. By all means, we would love to try your duck.”
She nodded briefly and ran a small hand over the crisp skin of the duck’s carcass. “Peking duck is a delicacy where I come from.”
“Hell?” I guessed.
She ignored my joke. “Beijing. Luckily, my people brought the recipe with us when we moved to Los Angeles. You ever try it when you were there, Special Agent Morales?”
His jaw twitched. “You made it for me on several occasions and you know it.”
Yü Nü pulled a cleaver out from under the butcher block. My hand automatically went to my sidearm. She paused and gave me a disappointed look.
“Relax, Detective. It’s for the duck.”
To punctuate her point, she brought the blade down in the center of the duck’s back. The butcher knife chopped through the crispy skin easily. I wasn’t sure whether I should feel worried or hungry, but I was both.
“I knew a man looked like you,” she said in a conversational tone, “but he called himself by another name. What was it?”
“Tommy Swan.” Morales bit off the name like a curse, only it sounded like he was damning himself instead of her.
She looked at me. “Did you know your partner used to go by an alias?”
I didn’t move or answer.
She lifted the cleaver again. “Tommy Swan disappeared right after my cousin got arrested.”
Morales crossed his arms. “He sold dangerous potions to minors.” He looked at me. “Sold at illegal raves. Last count, about twenty kids OD’d on his shit before we tracked him down at the supplier.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“Did Tommy ever tell you about the night that cop died? Sure didn’t seem like the law then.”
Morales had never mentioned that he’d actually been there the night that cop had been murdered. He’d only told me he helped cover up the murder in an effort to continue his part of the investigation. I shot him a sideways glance. He refused to look at me.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Yü Nü said with a smirk. “Anyway, I know why you are here.” With a single, decisive whack of her left hand, she lopped the duck’s neck clean from its body. “You harassing us because we’re immigrants.”
Morales tilted his chin to a don’t-bullshit-a-bullshitter angle. “Give me a break, lady. We’re Arcane agents, not INS.”
“Arcane, huh?” The cleaver came down on the torso again, cleanly cutting it in two. The carcass split open to reveal the glistening meat. “We simple restaurant folk.”
When we’d come in, she’d barely had an accent, but now she was talking like a caricature of a Chinese immigrant.
“Simple, sure,” I said. “Why would simple folk be in business with Abe Prospero?”
“Who he?”
“He’s the head of the Votary coven,” Morales said. “Just like you’re the head of the Fangshi.”
She tilted her head back and cackled. “You crazy. Yü Nü is simple cook. No Fangshi here.”
“Most cooks don’t have a private security team.” Morales tilted his head at the women standing in a semicircle behind Yü Nü.
She hacked off a wing. “Babylon is dangerous. Never know who gonna stab you in the back.” She sliced a chunk of meat from the duck’s breast. Juice and fat oozed from the roasted meat.
My shoulder blades tingled. I glanced over my shoulder. To my relief, no one was sneaking up behind me.
Morales took a step forward. The Handmaidens tensed, their hands going to their voluminous sleeves, where Lord only knew what kind of weapons were waiting to be employed.
Morales held up his hands. “Easy, ladies.” To Yü Nü he said, “Look, we all know how this is going to go down from here. Once you let us go, the first thing we’re going to do is call a judge to get a warrant. I figure we already got you on threatening federal officers, unregistered firearms, and a few hygiene violations, not to mention I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I tend to get pretty angry if I don’t eat.”
“It’s true,” I said. “He’s a bear when he’s hungry.” I shuddered theatrically. “Which means I’ll have to spend some time trying to get him to calm down and not try to get your restaurant shut down altogether.”
The cleaver came down on the duck’s other breast, lopping the entire thing off. “No one has threatened you and you’re free to go whenever you’d like. You came to me, remember?”
I noticed she’d dropped the fake immigrant accent now that we were getting down to the real business.
“As for the firearms,” she continued, “my Handmaidens are merely mentees of mine, and the armed guards outside work for the Benevolent Society of the Thousand Suns.”
Beside me, I heard Morales curse under his breath. I shot him a look but only received a quick headshake in return.
“As for closing down this restaurant, you are more than welcome to try.” She slammed the cleaver down on a wing, severing it from the torso, to punctuate her words. “I should warn you, though, that Mayor Volos loves our duck.”
I started laughing before she finished talking. Beside me, Morales cracked a smile. I slapped my knee and wiped my eyes. “Woo, thanks for that!”
Yü Nü’s scowl scored deep grooves on either side of her downturned mouth. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.
I cleared my throat and got ahold of myself. “‘I’m close personal friends with Mayor Volos,’” I mimicked. “Lady, you have no idea how little that scares me. In fact, it sorts of makes me want to try that much harder to bring you down.”
“Kate,” Morales said in a warning tone.
She clearly wasn’t keeping up, which was fine with me. Instead of continuing the back-and-forth over our errant mayor, she changed tacks. “You can stomp around in your boots and issue threats all you want, but you’re just a little girl playing a dangerous game.” Her hands glistening with fat, she began scooping the bits of skin and meat into a takeout container. She moved with an economy that hinted at years of experience butchering roasted meat in busy kitchens. “He said you’d be trouble.”
The bait she’d tossed was hard to resist, but I managed not to ask for a name. “Damn straight.”
She took my cockiness in stride. “Little girl, I been around too long to trust the word of any wizard. Especially ones that carry a badge.”
“You don’t look so tough,” I said.
Morales cursed under his breath.
Yü Nü held my gaze and lifted the cleaver into the air with her left hand. She placed her right hand flat on the chopping block, fingers spread. “You daring me, girlie?”
“Um, no?”
Her eyes glowed with disturbing zeal. Without looking down, she swung the blade. The unforgiving edge hacked right through her thumb.
Bile rushed up the back of my throat, but I forced myself not to close my eyes.
Yü Nü didn’t cringe or cry. She smiled.
The chopping block was splattered with blood. She didn’t move her hand. Watching her, I wondered what she was trying to accomplish by cutting off her damned thumb.
It didn’t take long to get my answer. The green horn began to glow, as if lit from inside. Yü Nü finally closed her eyes and the light spread until she was bathed in it.
The thumb on the chopping block began to vibrate. I blinked, wondering if it was a trick of the light. But when I reopened my eyes, sure enough, the thumb was moving toward the hand.