“Oh hell no,” he cut his lover off quickly. “Fucker will have me in a loony bin.”
“No, he won’t.” The man chuckled softly and tugged Damien down the hall, forcing him to take longer steps. “He’s here to help you. He can’t do that if you don’t tell him what’s going on.”
In the end, the damned Irishman was right. The doctor spent half an hour reassuring Damien he wasn’t going crazy. A soft-faced balding man, he would have faded into the beige background if not for the loud paisley bow tie he’d knotted at his throat. The bright colors were hard for Damien to shake off, and when he blinked, echoes of the pink, purple, and yellow swirls remained behind. A few flashes of light into his eyes and more questions, then Damien was outside, thankfully sucking in the garage’s exhaust-perfumed air.
“Here, more for my how-to-care-for-your-guitarist manual.” Sionn tossed Damie a folder thick with papers once they’d gotten into the Jeep.
“I should look through this and see if there’s anything about not giving it sex after midnight.” Damien breathed a sigh of relief when Sionn started up the car and backed out of their parking space.
“Planning on burning it if you find it?”
“Hell yes,” he muttered, reading through the doctor’s assessment. “I do my best work after midnight.”
As they eased out into traffic, Sionn’s phone beeped, and he handed it over to Damien. “Check if that’s Kane. He might be wanting me to grab something to take back to the house.”
It wasn’t. Instead the text spat through an unfamiliar phone number, then a message from a technician asking Sionn to meet up at his loft apartment. Damien felt the blood drain from his face and a stone form somewhere beneath his sternum.
“Eh, what’s the matter?” Sionn glanced at him, obviously concerned. “What happened? Miki—?”
“No no, Miki’s fine.” He took a deep breath, trying to use one of the calming techniques the doctor taught him. It was for shit, but he was going to try. “One of the cop techs needs to meet you. At your place. Something about checking if something’s evidence? I don’t know. I don’t speak cop.”
“I’ll drop you off—”
“Dude, that’s like an hour through traffic, and then you’ve got to fight your way back to Chinatown during lunch.” Damien swallowed the chunk of stress swelling in his throat. “I can handle this. I’ll just stay in the car or something. Not like I’ve got to go up.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind dropping you off and coming back. Just text him back and tell him I’ll head over in a bit.”
Sionn was right to look worried. Damien didn’t want to go back into the loft. He didn’t want to imagine the woman he’d hoped would protect him as a child spread out over the place he’d made love in. The idea of her dissected body on Sionn’s sofa where they’d kissed and napped was repulsive. It turned to horrifying if he dared even think about the bedroom.
“No, it’s okay,” he said, texting back furiously, his nimble fingers flying over the screen, getting a nearly immediate reply. “I’ve got to deal with some of this shit, you know? I can’t keep running away from crap. I’ll be fine. He said he’ll meet up with you inside.”
“Shouldn’t be long,” Sionn promised. “I’d already gotten the all-clear to go back. Maybe he just wants to ask something and hand over the spare keys I gave them. After that, we can head up to Hang Ah for lunch. How about that?”
“And the guys back home?” Damien chuckled at Sionn’s evil grin.
“Fuck them. If they wanted dim sum, they should have come with us instead of pretending they’re not fucking like bunnies on the couch.”
“Oh, dude, not the couch.” If the mental image of his mother was bad, the thought of Miki splayed out in an erotic pose on the sofa was enough to overload his brain. “We sit there, man. I don’t want to be sitting in their spunk. We all agreed. One rule. No sex anywhere we sit or make food.”
If anything, Sionn’s laugh was more evil than his sardonic smile. “And once more, what makes you think you haven’t already?”
MIDMORNING Chinatown on a Tuesday was a nightmare Dante himself could never have imagined. The storms rolling over the city were huddled on the horizon, plotting their next takeover and leaving the waterlogged sunshine its delusion that it could dry the streets out before they hit again.